Stamford Select Board — 2026-04-02 (Regular)
- Call to order, Pledge of Allegiance, roll call
- Agenda changes (additional excess weight permits added)
- Public comment
- Reading and approval of records and orders of March 19, 2026
- Highway update (equipment, East Road color structures grant, street sweeping, paving/grading, Klondike Road, Casella hauling)
- Recycling center lawn mowing bid / fence-line cleanup
- Correspondence (excess weight permits)
- House numbers / 911 signs
- New business: school well/runoff issue, school custodial and snow removal, library closure dispute, town plan survey, 1% option sales tax
Motions (1, 1 passed)
Approval of records and orders of March 19, 2026 Speaker 1passed
Other decisions
| Recycling center lawn mowing and fence-line cleanup | Agreed to give the work to John (a Stamford resident who did it last year) instead of a formal bid, phrasing it as a request for a quote; scope keeps last year's item (remove debris from ditch along fence on the northern property line) plus fence cleanup on both sides down to the black fence (northern and southern lines, not the schoolyard). Lori will prepare the quote request and email it to John. |
| House numbers / 911 sign outreach | Chair will add names to the list of missing house numbers (86/83 permits referenced) and email it to board members; outreach options discussed include posting on 'Stamford Informed' (Paul Dupuis), letters, door visits, and $16 signs made by the fire department. Board to decide at the next meeting how to proceed. |
| Joint meeting on library closure | Board agreed to arrange a joint meeting of the selectboard, school board, and library trustees to address the school's closure of the town-owned library for standardized testing (testing hours chosen to coincide with library open hours); Speaker 19 to email Linda Rodovick and Cindy Lamar to set it up. |
| Excess weight permits | Additional excess weight permits added to the agenda (Della Mallana, Consolidated Communication, Camp Precast, and a new QXO8 from Indiana); chair to put names next to the permits and email them to board members so known residents can be contacted before letters are sent. |
Who owes what (9)
| Action | Owner | By when | Note | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Put names next to the excess weight permits and email them to board members | Nancy L. Bushika (Chair) | — | Permit list referenced in transcript as '86 83'; exact meaning unclear. | open no date in the minutes |
| Prepare the request for a quote for lawn mowing/fence cleanup and email it to John | Lori (on behalf of the chair) | — | Scope: last year's ditch-debris item plus fence cleanup on both sides down to the black fence. | open no date in the minutes |
| Send the list of houses with missing number signs (with names) to the board and discuss next steps at the next meeting | Nancy L. Bushika (Chair) | next selectboard meeting | Options discussed: Stamford Informed post, letters, door visits, fire-department-made signs. | open no date in the minutes ¶ ¶198 |
| Post about the house-number requirement on 'Stamford Informed' | Paul Dupuis | — | Suggested during the house-number discussion. | open no date in the minutes |
| Email Linda Rodovick and Cindy Lamar to set up a joint meeting of the selectboard, school board, and library trustees | Speaker 19 (unidentified) | — | open no date in the minutes ¶ ¶364 | |
| Come down with the selectboard to inspect the school well/roof runoff issue and point out options | Rodney Holland (school maintenance) with the selectboard | before dark; Thursday 5:30 meeting suggested | Holland pressure-tested the well himself and suspects runoff from the school roof; no written report. | open no date in the minutes ¶ ¶243 |
| Select one of the four A&R alternative designs for the East Road color structures grant, get contractor estimates, and confirm with AOT that it still qualifies for the grant | Speaker 11 (highway supervisor, unidentified) | — | open no date in the minutes | |
| Locate the 1% option sales tax statute and the list of towns using it, and share with the board | — | — | Requested by the chair ('can you find that statute'); Speaker 19 referenced the Vermont Department of Taxes website; who will send it is unclear. | open no date in the minutes |
| Consider adding concrete questions about the school (building ownership, consolidation) to the town plan survey | Speaker 45 (town planner, unidentified) | — | open no date in the minutes ¶ ¶328 |
scripts/action_status.py --done "a phrase".Money (4)
| Lawn/ditch cleanup at the recycling center (last year) | Recalled from last year's cleanup cost; the town also floated a ~$200 estimate for mowing alone. | about $500 |
| 911 house number signs¶ ¶222 | Fire department makes/installs a sign for $16 (it 'makes 50 cents'); a small fine for missing numbers was discussed (a '$15 donation to the fire department' was referenced) but not settled. | $16 |
| Library budget dispute (town vs. school)¶ ¶254 | Town put in something like $30,000-$35,000 and the school side put in $12,000; $11,000 was budgeted for the past three years with only $2,500 spent, which funded a person working in the library one day a week. | $12,000 |
| 1% option sales tax (state law change)¶ ¶199 | State law changed so a charter rewrite is no longer required; a town vote suffices. As discussed, about three-quarters of the revenue would return to the town as spending money and a quarter to a fund; details were not confirmed in the meeting. | 1% |
Public comment (2)
| Speaker 1 (Charlie Jewett) | Announced he is running for state assembly from district one (Bennington district), is a fiscal/social conservative, owns the Bennington Armory gun shop in Bennington, and needs about 100 signatures, which he asked to gather at the meeting. |
| unattributed (Speaker 5, Speaker 9, and others) | Newspaper item about the Adams (Massachusetts) Fire Department's mandatory retirement age of 65 and the loss of five of its 16 active firefighters; compared with local fire department staffing and training lead times. |
Follow-ups named in the minutes
- Decide at the next meeting how to handle houses with missing number signs (names list, outreach method, signs).
- Set the joint meeting of selectboard, school board, and library trustees on the library closure; consider a library-town memorandum of understanding.
- East Road grant: pick one of four alternative designs, obtain contractor estimates, and check AOT grant qualification.
- Research the 1% option sales tax statute and which towns have adopted it; possibly bring to town meeting.
- School custodial/snow removal: school to bid custodial work this summer; selectboard to weigh in on whether snow removal is part of the job.
- Town plan survey: decide whether to add school-related questions.
- Klondike Road (Clarksburg West Road) deterioration flagged as dangerous for emergency vehicles; board to 'really talk about it' someday.
What the extraction was unsure about
- Transcript is machine-generated (faster-whisper large-v3) with automated diarization that over-splits voices; most 'Speaker N' labels cannot be reliably mapped to the five named board members or other individuals, and identities were not guessed. Speaker 1 identified himself as Charlie Jewett and is the same label used for the motion to approve the minutes; attribution is by label per policy.
- The transcript ends mid-discussion of the 1% sales tax, with no recorded adjournment; the 81-minute meeting may have continued beyond the transcribed audio.
- The second for the March 19 records approval was never named (only 'Second.'), and the chair stated no vote count, so seconded_by and vote are null.
- The lawn mowing arrangement was discussed as a possible motion but no formal vote is recorded in the transcript; recorded under other_decisions as a consent decision.
- The Adams Fire Department discussion took place during the visitor window, but it is unclear whether it was part of a resident's public comment or side conversation among attendees; listed under public_comment with an unattributed label.
- Fine amount for missing house numbers is not definitively stated (references to '$15' and '$16' appear in different contexts).
- Some details are garbled by transcription (e.g., '86 83' permits, 'AOT'/'AOT' grant agency, 'all-formed' read as 'Stamford Informed'); where the transcript is unclear, the note says so rather than guessing.
- The actual transcript file lives at transcripts/2026/2026-04-02_selectboard.md; the brief's transcript link uses the path that actually resolves from data/decisions/.
Transcript
Speaker 2 — the same voice as in 39 recordings (the archive does not name this person)
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Speaker 1: I'm going to pound it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. My name is Charlie Jewett. I live in Pownall. I'm a conservative Republican and I want to run for state assembly because our district is pretty conservative and we have a pretty liberal... I'm a fiscal conservative, I'm a social conservative, rapidly pro-second amendment. I own the Bennington Armory gun shop in Bennington.
Speaker 3: You look familiar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you look familiar too.
Speaker 1: State assembly.
Speaker 1: And I need signatures. I could get some tonight.
Speaker 4: Would you want to do a selectors meeting here or? Man, you're not even making weight.
Speaker 1: Well, it's district one. So the town of Bennington is a separate district.
Speaker 5: But we are in district one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a big issue.
Speaker 6: On this side of the road or that side of the road?
Speaker 1: That could have changed the election, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, 20 votes. I sign everybody's who goes on the ballot
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm going to give you 20 years to have people willing to serve.
Speaker 1: Motion to approve. Second.
Speaker 9: Aye.
Speaker 1: Aye.
Speaker 1: Okay, highway-
Speaker 11: Does it look like it's, they're going to accept an alternative design?
Speaker 1: I'm going to need, I think, 100.
Speaker 1: And that includes Pommel, too.
Speaker 1: I'll get there. Good luck.
Speaker 1: Does that sound good?
Speaker 9: All right.
Speaker 11: In preparation for blacktopping, what does the town have to do to, like, the dirt section of Jefferson Road and the shore?
Speaker 13: It's flat-out dangerous, and you've got to try and take a fire truck up there.
Speaker 13: It's steep.
Speaker 14: I guess you just got to complain.
Speaker 15: Yeah.
Speaker 16: It makes sense when you do the roadside mowing to come down and to hit it real quick, you
Speaker 17: Yeah, that just works into it.
Speaker 20: So you did that?
Speaker 21: ...replacing the sod and... I know.
Speaker 22: There used to be a culvert on the other side of that.
Speaker 23: It needs to be cleaned up.
Speaker 24: It's still there?
Speaker 23: I mean there's only what, eight inch culverts running over that, underneath that road.
Speaker 25: I'll give it to John.
Speaker 26: Under a certain amount?
Speaker 26: It's already, it already happens in a number.
Speaker 4: I'm just trying to.
Speaker 27: Nancy and I just interject something.
Speaker 28: You know. You know. I could just briefly. If you're not going to request bids. You might want to phrase it as requesting a quote. A quote rather than. Quiting putting out for bid if you're not going to put it out. Right.
Speaker 26: Correspondence. Sign uniform.
Speaker 29: Yeah, three of them.
Speaker 7: It's terrible.
Speaker 30: There's some residences in towns that they're mailed to...
Speaker 31: like a stretch of mailboxes so it's no it says either on your house visible or at the front of
Speaker 25: you want to tell yourself send me mine I already know is it worth knocking on the door and saying
Speaker 30: because the next thing is the dog list that's another issue we can't get on the
Speaker 20: register of dogs and here we are trying to get them to put signs up well that's all we can do is say put the sign up I like how Bill said because the fire department can't find you the ambulance can't find you and there you go until they find you in the spring don't kill us for not coming but we can't find you
Speaker 32: Post something.
Speaker 33: make them back a bit better.
Speaker 23: They have to sign.
Speaker 34: Well, they won't know that they need four-inch letters...
Speaker 35: You just say...
Speaker 36: Can you put it on the front door?
Speaker 37: Do people visit your site? Can you tell?
Speaker 38: Way more than the three that are here.
Speaker 4: No, we don't use that sign. We don't use that. We don't use the signboard. On the phone box out there?
Speaker 20: Could we all? Because if we put that up and not...
Speaker 39: I don't know.
Speaker 14: It fixes something by changing parts. Diagnosis works.
Speaker 25: Here's my list.
Speaker 15: Yeah, they had a separate line on them for snow removal.
Speaker 14: Well, I wasn't going to bring the school board to the school.
Speaker 26: Was it today?
Speaker 25: They did what they wanted.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yep.
Speaker 33: It makes sense to a town office slash library or.
Speaker 33: We're going to do this.
Speaker 40: We're going to do this.
Speaker 38: But it doesn't look like it.
Speaker 41: The attorney.
Speaker 26: And they had... Well, they didn't say three.
Speaker 42: Okay.
Speaker 42: Okay.
Speaker 40: building that they get for the school yeah you remember that they're turning
Speaker 43: That's BS.
Speaker 23: So, according to another person who was here
Speaker 23: No.
Speaker 7: It depends on what the superintendent says
Speaker 44: That's great. I'm actually on work right now, I'm working on the town plan survey. And a lot of those questions are kinda coming up in here, but maybe we wanna be more concrete when we ask town people and get a survey into this. Because it does ask general questions about consolidating schools and
Speaker 45: whatnot, but maybe- That's the one that you're gonna send out?
Speaker 44: We're doing the town plan when we first do a survey. Okay. I'm wondering if we want to put some questions in about the building.
Speaker 21: Well, we own this, but…
Speaker 26: If you looked at it, we would have had to join the Northern Berkshire School District.
Speaker 25: Well, I'd love to. I'd love to. I'd like to say that we're in charge and then you're going to find just what it is
Speaker 21: Yeah.
Speaker 26: And library trustees together?
Speaker 27: Sure.
Speaker 42: I was going to say, just be a trustee . . .
Speaker 46: Let's do it. Don't go in and have a date with school and just let those in charge of the library.
Speaker 47: So, what's the 1% of what?
Speaker 47: think it does because they're not because they have we all we have is the two buildings up there
Speaker 23: percentage what about like a manufacturer though then how would you get taxed off of that
Speaker 47: i don't know if you can tax something like that there's not a lot of can you find the statute and
Speaker 46: not many towns that are chartered chartered well you just have to rewrite your charter so
Speaker 48: oh okay does he still come here now that he's been power song electricity people they should
Speaker 17: tag some one percent on every dollar yeah that's a lot of money i mean we'd have to encourage more
Speaker 15: you're going to pay more for your gas they already charge more than everyone else in town or in the
Speaker 46: people that was changed because there's so many percent that's pushed we're not unique i mean
Transcribed 2026-09-04 (faster-whisper large-v3, CUDA; names corrected per data/name_fixes.json). Names corrected against the minutes. Diarization is automated and over-splits one person into several labels. Raw model output with timestamps: SRT.