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At 7:00. And welcome to the Town of Sheffield Select Board meeting a meeting for September 21st. We're being recorded, although we're not live, but we do need to make that announcement. Our first item of action is approval of meeting minutes. We have meeting minutes from 728, 20 793 and nine eight, all in the year 2026.

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Have you had a chance to review them? Yes. I would like to make a motion to approve the seven, 28, 27 and nine three minutes because I was not here for nine eight. You can make it for the eight and then we will you can abstain because you were. Oh okay. Okay. As well as for nine eight.

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But I will abstain from the vote on that one. Right. I will say that. Okay. All right. All in favor? On the minutes, collectively and singly. I and I'll abstain on nine eight. And I believe you're abstaining. Stain on 720 and then 827 for being absent. Thank you. It's Renee here yet? I don't think so.

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I don't think she's here right now. Okay, then why don't we move on to item number four? Discussion and possible action on approval of the 2026 Trunk or treat. I know that we have enough.

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Do you want to come up and tell us a little bit about it? So we're hoping to get the approval for the 30th and 5 to 7. Yep. Like we did last year. It's a Friday. It's out here. It's a lot of fun. Same thing we've done every year. Yep. Yeah. Yeah I know everyone's pretty excited. We thought there might be a Halloween candy tonight.

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Maybe that would have been a bribe. So we'll hold up, and then I'm happy to make a motion that we approve it if there's second. All right. All in favor? Hi. All right. Thank you guys. And thank you for doing it. I know everyone really looks forward to it.

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Next up, we have discussion and possible action on an appointment to the Board of Health. I believe that we have a letter from doctor Bay. The client. Doctor David. Crime. David. David Klein to put himself forward for the Board of Health. And we will. We announced it. Yeah. To appoint Doctor Klein to the Board of Health. Second.

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All in favor? I the motion passes. We also have the possibility of an appointment to the planning board. Kip or Christopher McNeil has put his name forward, and he initially put his name forward as an alternate when Nadine was stepping off. But we now have a second position open.

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And so there's a that we don't know whether he's willing to take the full position. So I would love to appoint him to the position of his liking, if that makes sense. And we will follow up based on his approval of which position.

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So I'll make a motion that we appoint Christopher McNeil to whichever he chooses, the alternate or the full position, which would be filling out Robbie Cooper's term. Correct. Second. Great. All in favor? I the motion passes. I think that we have an update from our town administrator on LED streetlights. That's what I'm pulling up here. I'm not texting during the meeting.

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I just want to make sure I'm accurately conveying where the the light is. So there is a test flight available now, some of you might or might not recall. National grid, who does our streetlights, is no longer able to source the current type of streetlights that you see, which are called high pressure sodium lights.

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So moving forward, as these high pressure sodium, high pressure sodium, there's a pinkish looking streetlights. Yeah. So as those go out of style and need to be replaced, they're going to need to be able to need to be replaced with light.

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We have been in communication with National Grid regarding the color and the the brightness of these lights. The lights are exempt from our dark sky bylaw. However, we want it to be in keeping with the spirit of it.

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So what you'll see in this test flight is the lowest is the stick and possibly be, and the warmest possible color designed to be as non obstructive as possible while still appropriate light lighting the street. So just know if you take a look at it, you're seeing the best version that National Grid can do for us.

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If you want to drive by it's on County Road right at the corner of right where County Road is going one way and it meets East Road on the right, Hewins on the left, and it goes into Maple Avenue. And if anybody's confused you can reach out to me and I'll point you to the door. It's in the V of humans and County. Maple Avenue ends at county and humans and right in the crotch of that V, it's the only streetlight in that general vicinity. It's there.

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I have gone past it, and I've looked at it, and I think it's fine. It seems to be nice, bright enough, yet not crazy bright like some LEDs. It seems to replace it well. And again, it's the lowest level we can get. So really we can only go. We could only go brighter. Great. I see Rene's here.

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Renee, Renee is going to speak to us about the information on presentation on the Massachusetts Online and Connected program. Thank you. Renee Wood, 928 Boardman Street. I apologize for being late.

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I just want to make people aware of, I think, what's going to be our last program and are basically going to be four year digital equity implementation, and that is an on it's called online and connected. All right. And under this program the town of Sheffield was given 82 devices, 40 laptops 30.

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Touch tablets, seven Chromebooks and five desktop bundles with new monitors. All of this is brand new equipment from the state at no cost to the town. This equipment is now here in town, and it is eligible for deployment through the end of this year.

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There are some conditions that come with it, and those are briefly and that is available to anyone who's a Sheffield Ashley Falls resident at no cost. This is a loner program, not a giver program, a loner program. It can be alone for many time from now until 1231. It must be given back to me or the town.

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It is going to be provided through myself, also through the library. And I'm hoping that the town will put up some documents on this so that people on their website, so that people will know how to go with it. It's really targeted three different priority areas education.

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So any online training, any college degree, any technical degree, anything that has to do with furthering one's education. The same thing with workforce development. We are partnering with people in town as well as non-profits that serve Sheffield and Ashley Falls. So this could be a workforce development. And it also can be anything that deals with health care. So telemedicine, accessing a portal.

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Some people need to stay more at home and they get their health care through online, through telehealth. So education or workforce development or health care or combination thereof.

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The equipment is, as I said, not given it is loaned, it can't be resold, transferred or used for any non program purposes and the equipment is going to become the town's on one one 2027. So I'm working with a number of non-profits, and we have deployed the first 15 laptops to a Spanish digital equity training class. This will be our first Spanish class, and we'll talk later about the final deployment, because the board will need to decide where this equipment is going to go.

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I'm in the process of assessing with all of the town departments and boards who may need a laptop or a tablet or a desktop, and then I'll bring that back to you.

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But I don't think there's any way that the town is going to use all 82 of these devices, and will also have laptops left over from our original digital equity implementation. So I'll be back to you on that. I do have just a flier that I'd like to put up on the on the website. I've also worked with Doug so that we do have a loner application that people need to fill out.

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And also we do have an participants agreement which basically holds the town harmless for everything. Okay. So that's kind of it in a nutshell. You can borrow this equipment for either as simple as a day.

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If you're trying to figure out whether you really like the whole telemedicine situation, and you might want to try this if you don't have the device that you need, what you need to do is to get hold of me on my website, my web. Excuse me, my email will be on this as well as my phone number, and I'll just continue to act as the point person for this, as long as that's okay with everyone as I have for the last couple of years.

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So that's in a nutshell. I think it's a wonderful opportunity. These are all Dell devices. There's no Apple devices in this and they're all new. They're all with a warranty. They're all with an antivirus. They're all ready to be used.

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So with that again I do apologize for being late, but if you have any questions, I'd love to answer them or anyone from the audience.

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I'm sorry. I believe you had mentioned to me that if somebody wants a laptop but maybe doesn't know how to use it, that there's a way they could. Yes. Thank you. Along with this, we're continuing to offer our digital equity training with Jesse Bangs and Ellie Turner over the library on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

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Lots of time available, but it is running short and that everybody seems to think, oh, we're in fall right now, so we need to sign up. This training, which is free, 45 minutes of one on one. You can take as many of these as you need, no charge.

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You go to the Bushnell Sage Library, you go to the library calendar and you sign up for the time on Wednesday or Thursday. That's best for you. Right now, I'm tracking the money very carefully because I don't want to go over our grant, and I expect that this will go through October, possibly November, possibly a little further.

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I just have to make sure we don't go over. Thank you very much, Doug. If you have any questions on how to use a device that you've borrowed or your own device, anything that basically is electronic device, the tablet, an iPhone and electronic bird feeder that you can't figure out.

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You know, social media, I mean, these two women are on it, and the compliments for their service and their education is I see I see ahead here. Okay. This this is. Yeah. No, I just I've heard that all of the they're excellent. They're excellent. I've been 8 or 9 times and have plans to go more again.

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It's all free and it will run out. And when this grant is finished, unless somebody finds some more money, this wonderful opportunity is gone. So I would encourage people to look at this. Maybe it'll be up on the website sometime this week, and to also look at the free digital equity training.

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And I pay this free digital equity training in Spanish at doing all right. Yes, I believe their first class is and they're the ones who are doing the Spanish class, which is really super. And that I believe is either tonight or tomorrow. It's Amy Bainbridge Jordan who's doing that. And it's a wonderful opportunity for our Spanish speakers to get training.

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If they need further training, we'll work something out. Okay. There is money in the budget to do that. Thank you very much, Renee, for your work on that. Thank you. Board member items. I would just like to thank our staff and our departments for helping out and keeping our facilities clean and nice.

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They've gone above and beyond what is normally expected, but we have had trouble replacing our janitorial staff, which was evident at our last meeting. But town hall looks great. The senior center looks great. Everybody and town staff, Jill Doug have pitched in, rolled up their sleeves and made our buildings presentable and take pride.

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And I take pride in the effort that they have put in and the time they've given the select board to find somebody. I believe we have found somebody to do our janitorial cleaning. Hopefully she will start soon, but I'm just want our staff to know that it is appreciated and that it does not go unnoticed.

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So thank you. Thank you. And the highway department looks the same. I would just say they pointed quite a bit of material in their space, so keeping that clean is complicated. I have a few other announcements that I would like to make provided that I can read them.

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One of which is that people may have read The Berkshire Eagle this morning and seen a note about the budget, and the article went on about, about about some budget shortfalls in previous years and some mis accounting. I spoke with Brian Ricca and we were meeting with them more broadly in October.

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But a lot of these are issues from 2025 that they're talking about in the article, which was a little unclear, and 2025 and 26 will be something that they're examining as well. But ideally, at least with somebody new in the business office there, we're hoping that all of these issues will be resolved. But I imagine people heard that and might have had some concern about it.

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I was also excited this past weekend to see a thousand people that Dewey Hall for the Dahlia Festival and a garlic festival over at the historic, which is a historic commission, but the historical society. And then in a few weeks, we have Sheffield days that are being run by the Chamber of Southern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce.

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And the other thing I'd like to announce is that people probably know that the strategic Plan survey, which is really our comprehensive plan, is online and people can fill that out. We're hoping as many residents as possible with fill that Out. It really helps us to plan for the next 25 years.

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I took the survey and it probably took me 5 or 10 minutes of time, and it actually gave me a list of sites that I've never visited in Sheffield. So I'm kind of looking forward to using it as a tour guide as well. But I do hope everyone will share that with others. You can do it online.

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You can also pick out pick up a hard copy, I believe at the senior center or the library that they will input for you, and I'm happy to help anybody if they're having trouble. Any notices from you know, I'll add, if somebody is having trouble filling out that survey, they can reach out and we're happy to help.

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There's cards advertising it all over the place. I just saw when I was when I went to get this. So we're definitely spreading the word on that. And we want as many people as possible to fill out those applications.

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Other than that, a number of the events that you already mentioned, thanks so much to everybody who's been involved in putting those on. As we head into the fall and winter, there's a rumor that there's a pancake breakfast that might you might be able to fill out the survey and get pancakes that fall in early October. So if you haven't done it by then, we hope that a pancake bribe will get you there.

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And comments from public comments from the audience.

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Susan, would you like to come up and identify yourself? If someone is to become the slave one for the family of Fairfield, I believe it's an open position. Pleasantly.

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Should they simply write a letter of interest about being appointed for this position? On some of these? Certainly. Can we actually, as a board, have been talking about creating some rituals and protocols about how we're going to be taking in information on the trees as well? Currently, Dave Root serves as the tree warden as part of his position description.

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But we're looking at a possibility of knowing that there are a lot of trees that people are having an issue with in town. We're looking at having a protocol in place for identifying them, for people reporting them for a check back in that. And then we, of course, have a budget set aside to do some work.

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Well, not having any influence in having the position film as an individual. If somebody has interest, they could certainly as we're in this process, we could we could be looking for somebody. So somebody should certainly feel free to put their name for him. Okay. Thank you. And we've got the vision bill pay currently it is not well what a typically is.

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And this is the case in in both communities that I've worked in it's it's designated usually as part of somebody's broader position. So it's often somebody in a town's highway department, usually the superintendent and maybe what most towns typically do. And again the 8500. Yeah. So I don't know if there's specific situation.

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Some towns may have their own person who all they do is they treat word. That's possible. Many towns designate somebody who they have hired already as part of other responsibilities as their true ward. Right. But so that's kind of the well, you advertise that you think because it becomes a position.

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So as I just stated, we really are working on a protocol for it, and we would like to put that forward. I've been reading around the state to see what everyone does, and to be honest, it's quite a mixed bag of how everyone approaches this.

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But with storms and things happening, we feel like it would be better to have a system of reporting that we feel is consistent and fair across the town. Oh, I feel good working on the procedure and the and there would be a position description and an approach as well. And.

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I have one question.

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If you feel in the process of returning it in the incident, will you be asking gave to fill out a report and annual report? It can be published in your annual report for 2000. I think that's worth considering and I'll take that under advisement. So you're working on that okay. All right. Thank you very much.

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Thank you. Susan.

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Any other public comments? All right. If not without further comment, I make a motion to adjourn. So move. Thank you. All in favor? I thank you all very much.