 normally every year. I'm still requesting that although in my synopsis or report whatever you want to call it that we'll talk about in a little while I do talk about that increase a little bit more. The biggest changes in the increase in our budget is mostly in salary. The whole budget shows a 3.8% increase and most of that really is in salary. And then there's also a way in the budget and we'll go through that a little bit too about the way we're changing some of the building allocation funding. So I'm on page 138 and this right away goes right to what I was just talking about the buildings and ground staff. You can see that in past years it was quite a bit less than it is now proposed for FY25. And that's just because of one is we've got two full-time staff members now. We are looking for a third one. We're hoped to be looking for a third one. So that's where a lot of that change is coming from. And some of theirs came back in here because of the way we did the building change, right? Correct. Yeah. Otherwise, when you just hired, it's really expensive. Then the other large items on that in that whole area have to do with things that we have no real control over property and casualty insurance because it all because everything that was associated with buildings came back into this budget. Maintenance is the other really large one jump there. But once again, same issue, same reason. What's covered under maintenance? What is covered under maintenance? A lot of fuel costs? No, the fuels are split up. Maintenance is just that painting. Anything like that we come up with. We found some rot in backfield brick church that we just replaced that we weren't didn't realize was going to be gone. Any of those kind of things did. Is it like a contractor or is it like the paint? Yes. So it's the materials for maintenance. Yeah, because the staff is open. Yeah. Okay. Now, that doesn't mean we can't go to from time to time. We do use I guess I should clarify that for a lot of the painting when the outside of the buildings every summer, we do have a contractor come in and help to the touching up, especially if it's higher up stuff. So, okay, so can I just talk a little bit more in detail about the things we made. So for property, casualty, maintenance, utilities, we used to for these two buildings for the annex in here, we used to allocate those sort of arbitrarily between planning and zoning, public works, finance, clerk and manager and I'm like, this is, you know, and then Kim, get an invoice and put it five ways. And I'm like, some $10. So we brought those back all into buildings and grounds. And then for the staff, we also used to allocate part of their wages out to library because they do do things for the library and for the police department. So their wages also that were allocated to those two departments came back in. So now everything is in a building some grounds department and no more allocation, which will save lots of time. Well, it will for some people. Because we're still going to have to allocate into the different pots what maintenance is being done on what building where now we could have gone back and looked at those. So there is, it's fine, because we're going to have this asset management program that we'll talk about a little while to even though buildings weren't going to be in there initially. But that was the one of the ways we could track what went to what building by just looking back at what I got from the department. So anyway, not a big deal. So then as we go down the list, the next, and it's not really that large, but I guess that's a matter of opinion, salaries, administration, $6,000 up, road maintenance salary, excuse me, pretty self explanatory. That's what that's for, but that's up. But not much more than it really has been in past years. Benefits. That's property casualty assurance again. The one that is down that when I started reviewing this yesterday and was going down through and paying more attention and should have given it more attention before this was the salt budget. And Eric has assured me that he's going to put that back on a list so that gets back to $145,000. I mean, miscommunication. Yeah, I made an entry error should be 145. Because that is one line that we don't change. Just because we never know what the price is happening, what's happening price wise, what's what the weather is going to be like, we've been holding that number for years. San up a little bit, that just has to do with the cost of material. There's the 520 down on the retreatment that I said earlier that we had, I had asked for the $10,000 that we get every year to keep the retreatment line going. And that's the biggest, I mean, that's really yet in public works for any major changes. Besides going through and looking at capital, so the on call wages, is that somebody? What's what are on call on call wages? So on call, we have changed that that changed this last year. Water and sewer have always had an on call person. But now highway has an on call person as well in the summertime. And I'd have to get the exact dates again, I think it's November 15th May 15th or something like that. We have two people on call on highway. And in the rest of the year, we have one person on call on highway besides myself and Christine who's always on call anyway, to just to make sure our guys are very good. They get in the wintertime that, you know, they, that's what they're here for. But they're not paid to sit at home, wait for the phone to ring either. So we've done this to make sure that we can always get hold of, you know, tomorrow night, hopefully as an example, but may very well be an example that we do start to get a lot of this rain or whatever. And we need to get hold of a couple guys. Those two will be here without a doubt. And then the other ones are, like I said, they're all very good. I'm sure that we can get hold of them if we need to, especially if they know the snow is coming. But that was the whole idea behind it. So we know we could always get hold of people. So are these not not our full-time employees or these extra salaries? Oh, no, they're full-time employees. So it's extra funding for full-time employees? For the inconvenience of actually being on call, saying I will be there. Yeah, okay. Yeah, for example, not going out of town that weekend or something like that. Like, more of like the summertime in the winter, you know, people know they need to potentially get called in, but it gives us that, I think we've had incidents before, like a tree down or something like that. And okay, who can we get to come in from public works? And now we have one person who's going to know, okay, I need to be available while I'm on this on call week or something like that. Okay. Once again, once again, like I said, I'm sorry. We pay a stormwater fee for the roads to the state. Oh, yeah. Oh, to ourselves. Stormwater utility. If we're going to charge everybody else for their impervious, we have to charge ourselves to make it, to be honest. It's the same as the quarterly payments we make. Same as the payments you make. Glad you're feeling the pain too. So yes, that is exactly what that is for. Any other questions on general fund? I would just add the additional position addition. I mean, at the beginning, you know, we talked about the police as well. We'll talk about the HR director. The fourth one there is to take the regular part time buildings and grounds position, the 27 hour. Elevate that to a full time. I'm sorry, I should explain that. I'll just watch that now. That's an impossibility. We have not had any luck filling that part time position. It's just, I mean, it's hard enough to get people full time. It's not to people out there that want to do this kind of thing. We see kind of a future trajectory for the buildings and ground staff to expand that play up to four or five folks full time with some help in parks as well. But Bruce, I talked about eventually having kind of a supervisor position for buildings and grounds that would really oversee all the maintenance, all the contracts, coordination for all our buildings. At that point to trying to bring in house more janitorial work, we contracted out for a couple buildings. We don't have the staff capacity to do that now, but kind of creating like true buildings and grounds division of management here for us. So with that said, this last summer, we were so short of people, and I know Todd's after me, and I've seen it in writing somewhere to you guys, and you probably all know it anyway, that Todd was your other person over there every day working instead of so good for him for juggling both things, but you know, that was what happened there. And that goes back to talking about snow plowing, which I would have gotten into a little bit later, but taking on all the sidewalks, it's fine. We said we would do that, but we also thought we'd have two and a half people to do that. And we only have two people to do that. So I'm letting you all know so that when your phone starts ringing after the first two or one or two storms and we haven't gotten all the sidewalks cleared and just like that, that's the reason we will get them clear, but it's going to take a little bit longer. And I give a Merrick's number anyway. So capital. What page do we go to? My first one in capital is page 25. I'm just going to go through the capital one. And actually it's not really even page 25 because there's nothing underneath the manager for that side for 25. That was the old schoolhouse. We've got 24 actually, but it's for the brick church. Oh, I'm sorry, yeah. Somehow I ended up 225. Here you go. I got it. Fire protection, old brick church, page 24. This is for just what it is talking about, which is actually being designed right now is for a fire suppression system to go in the old brick church. Um, like I said, it's it's under design right now. So we don't really know what the food cost is going to be. It was $270 and $20, $19. We've raised it to 300,000 just for, but you know, we were thinking the parking lot, which we're going to talk about too, was only going to be a couple hundred thousand dollars and it's four times as much as we thought it was going to be. So we don't know what the exact number is for this project yet, but that isn't the capital there for $300,000 at this point. I put in your ARPA report as potential ARPA funds for that. It could certainly be rolled into a bond as well as we type out the parking lot for both of those projects. We'll, we shed the final number by early January to help put those final decisions for the board. In 25, we just did, which is really has nothing to do with it. 26 is what I was just talking about the town hall parking lot. This number in here is the latest estimate, latest and greatest estimate from the engineers that have just done the design for the parking lot. Some of the drivers to this, the drivers like everything else, just a cost of things, but also starting to look at putting the EV chargers and those kinds of things as well. So $860,000, which would actually add quite a bit of parking spaces out back as well. I don't remember number it off the top of my head, but I want to say 20 or 30. Yeah, 38. 38 in here. Yeah, 38 new parking spaces. I structured this to at the beginning of your capital budget, you have kind of an overall summary of projects for next fiscal year and the funding sources. So that $860,000 in the draft, I think I did a couple hundred thousand from ARPA and then bonding for the balance. I didn't include it as part of the budget, but we're going to apply for a grant from the downtown transportation program that will be available in January. As a designated village center, we've never taken advantage of this funding. So those grants could be up to $200,000. We think this project is a good candidate. We'll certainly apply for that, no guarantee. So I don't think we'd hear on that until after town meeting day. So part of the board decides to go forward with this project and see if there may be part of a bond as part of this, unless you funded it all with ARPA. So we would like any bonding authority for the full balance, and then we got the grant when we went to bond sale. We could decrease the size of the bonds if we got the grant, for example, or cancel it out with the ARPA funding for something else. What's a driver for more parking spots? I rarely see it full. So even more of the history than I do for the parking capacity back there. So you're right and wrong. You don't see it full very often. But there are times where it really does get full. And a lot of it we have to remember has to go along with what's going on next door to National Guard. And if they end up having some of that going on at the same time as us, we share that parking. For those that don't know, there, the first parking lot beside the town hall annex building is actually belongs to the state and federal government. We're only about a foot outside of that building for our property line. So the only parking we're talking about that really is controlled by the town is this limited parking out back here. So it doesn't have, once again, it doesn't happen a lot, but it's one of those things that as other departments get larger ourselves, including people here in town hall or the police department, we're going to need more parking just for employees, let alone people coming here for business. There's some big issues too. You'll see that kind of dip in the middle where we have we have ice that pods we've had since I've been here at least three people including myself that slipped on the ice on their way into work. The lighting is very bad at night too, employee safety issue. We put a light on the garage out back a couple of years ago to help with that a little bit. But this project wouldn't include lighting in the parking lot to help help our staff and visitors be able to spend that. Yeah, this is an entire this is an entire tear up of this parking lot out back. It's not just repaving it. It's going right down and removing the reason for the dip in the home is there's there's drain pipes underneath there that just aren't being taken care of or and or weren't installed correctly. So it's not just a matter of paving and doing some striping. It's a total rebuild. Can't use any transportation impact fees. See if there's something like this. I have to think I don't believe this is a project we had on our original transportation impact fee project list. I'll look at that. The next one is this building contingency fund, which is just what it says. This is just money being put aside in case something happens that we're not expecting to happen. An AC unit goes, a boiler goes, something like that. So we have a fund somewhere that can be used and this is for just about any of the buildings. 33 is just my narrative or a narrative that talks a little bit about what we're doing. The current facilities, miles of roads, sidewalk, so money broke. Yeah, that down there. Most of this we're going to go over a little bit more then too as we go through the report I gave you all. Yeah, so I just assume hold off on most of that if I can, but it's doing the same thing we've been doing, getting rid of the ash trees, doing in the sidewalk construction, which we'll talk about a little bit more in the Trader Lane project, which we'll talk about a little bit more as we go along, if that's all right. 35 is the next actual capital that we're putting money in in 25. And this is just for what it shows at the top, different projects that come up and come along. One of the things that we're starting to get a little bit more pressure to do is more rapid flash beacons around town at different locations. And this would be one of those places where we could, if we got into starting to do more of those, we could take money out of here to do it along with some of the other projects that you can see that have been done in the past. Those were a big request for the ARP funds. Rapid flash beacons? Crosswalks. Look at what we have out front here. All right, pedestrian cross. Now I'm at page 72, our large highway truck rotational. Hang on, hang on, I got to get there. Okay, I'm ready. Large highway truck rotational is higher in 2025. That's because we have two trucks to replace and then still have some money left over to keep the equipment fund balanced. So we don't have to ask for quite so much money. This is one of the places we are going to start seeing large increases anyway as we go forward. Some of the reason is trying to modernize, although we're pretty modern as it is actually with our trucks, but there are some new techniques and equipment out there that can help with snow plowing and also then ends up with reductions of salt, which are or is a major item that we're going to have to deal with how we can start reducing the use of salt more and more. Trucks are getting back on a little bit quicker. We just got one of our new ones, but that was last year's truck. It took us this long to get it. It usually takes us seven or eight months to get a truck. This one took over a year. The one that we have out now, another one we have out right now that we're being told we'll probably see it in June of next year. So it's still a little bit longer, but things seem to be catching up finally. Two pickup trucks Todd and I have been waiting for for a long time. So just pickup trucks. We couldn't even get those. We got a notice the other day that said they're finally in production. So we could go down and buy one off a lot. We wanted to pay another $20,000 or $30,000 over what the town can get it for through the state contract. So we're a little bit of that mercy. Anyway, I just tell you that to let you know that things seem to be catching up in that regard. And this is what I mentioned for the board, but especially the two trucks this year that there's, I see our additional ARPA funds to help for that second truck. And I think I pulled a little bit of fund balance here too to get to the $340,000 request. Certainly higher this year for all of those factors. So there's a couple reasons why that is like that, because we do very diligently go through every year and say, this is the truck that's being replaced. We know what's going to be replaced. You know, this is what we've been getting for trade and value or resale and what happened was with COVID and everything else that happened. Everything just jumped so much on us that they're really just through our whole savings out of whack because we've been trying to put money aside ever since we bought the eighth truck. So then when we got to this point, we wouldn't have this problem, but the next one's page 73, large highway equipment. Just what it says, it's all our bigger equipment asking for money in 25, but there's nothing to be replaced in 25. But we have to keep building that so that when the other costs do come up, the next real replacement item is in 26. That's not for a new track. I mean, an additional track is that to replace the one that we have now. It's just getting to the end of its life. So yeah, that's what that is. And then when we just talked about a little bit was the highway pickup replacement. There's three of them in here. And once again, it's just to keep that item up so that as we buy, we're not coming in and asking for a lot of money on one shot. Buildings and facility mower, just what it is. So for the mowers that they use out back here, one's a tractor and one's a zero turn mower. We are actually even looking for a grant that's being worked on where we may be getting an electric zero turn mower, which is really kind of, we tried three different kinds, settled on one that we think will be the best one for us. One of them was just deadly. And it was just incredible to me. The thing we go so fast, I mean, it was just like, it was just stupid. It was like driving that one car. It was like, really? So we ruled that one out just from a safety. But anyway, so Todd and I are both looking at maybe through this grant and Melinda's been working on getting an electric zero turn. If that happens this year, we may not have to replace the zero turn that we're that we're using right now. And it would be great to have that overlap so that we can see whether the battery one is actually going to do what we want it to do for a year before we say, okay, we don't need to use that anymore. So in a way, this is really a good thing. Still want to carry the money here just in case it doesn't turn out the way we were hoping. And those funds, we have them, it's a federal earmark, $75,000 is given to the top 10 most populous communities in the state, I think to understand or secure that earmark. So Melinda's taking the lead and looking at possible projects. So the top of our list is to add those two electric mowers. And then we're thinking about a electric vehicle that's kind of a shared vehicle for staff where someone needs to go to a training down in Montpelier, someone needs to do an inspection from the assessor's office or the zoning office, they hop in the EV instead of taking their personal vehicle, reimbursement, that type of thing. Excuse me. The next one's page 76, signal replacements. This is just a capital item to keep upgrading our signals that we own that are all on Marshall Avenue. This one comes back to the same issue that's we're having with line striping anymore. There's only one person in the state of Vermont working on signals anymore besides the state of themselves. South Burlington has a technician that works for them. But there used to be two companies around doing this kind of work. And once again, now we're down to one. And even that one is down to one employee in the northeast besides the people that own the company. So it's becoming a real challenge. So it's even more important that we keep this up. We actually have some work out for them right now that they're supposed to do for us that I've been trying to get them here to get done. But that's just the reality. We're in same way with, I don't know if anybody noticed, but we had guardrails that were damaged for, I don't know, seven, eight months. They just got fixed yesterday. Once again, because there's only one company around doing that kind of work. So besides having a shortage of people, we're starting to have a shortage of companies that are doing the work we need to get done. 77 is there's no money in there when they're parking down. We're just carrying that line painting and marking machine. That's just too money in there so that we need to replace the one that we just purchased a year ago, which worked out really well. I was very surprised and pleased at the efforts and what the guys were able to get done over this year. I don't think our towns ever look better as far as markings are concerned on maybe some edge lines, but as far as turns and stop signs and all that good stuff. And some of that goes back to the fact that car or new highway supervisor, grandfather was the one that owned Scott's line striping. So he kind of grew up whether he wanted to or not. So that helped us out with that. But we don't do route two, right? That's a state. That's a state route two and two way or state abroad. So that's our capital as a whole. If you don't mind, I'd like to talk about the I call it a brief report, whatever you'd like. I tried to give you a background some information as to all what's going on in public work. Certainly not a full report by any means, but Eric had said there were some questions. So we did a little looking around. And it just happened that the American Society for Civil Engineers had just done a report for Vermont looking at Vermont's infrastructure and gave Vermont a grade of C, which would actually be surprised in the public works industry, even in traffic and everything else. If you get a C, you're actually really good. Because, you know, you don't get A's and B's very much. Besides fact, I can't get much anyway. No, C is actually very good. What I was surprised about when I looked at this is that they didn't look at pedestrian issues. So I tried to give you a little bit update on where we're at with our pedestrian facilities, including some of the places where there might be some connections that still have to happen. You all know that unfortunately, things move at a snail's pace, but we have two projects out there right now that the Vermont two way disconnect from Night Lane to Bodrie Lane is actually was moving along really quite well. And then it ended up going back to a NEPA, which is a National Environmental Protection Act, which is a death nail to projects. It just slows them down. But somebody hit us for archeological, I think, even though most of it was already been disturbed and everything else. Anyway, we're through most of that hurdle, we believe. So we should see that project in another year or so getting constructed. And that'll take care of that disconnect. And when that happens, you'll be able to go from the new park and ride all the way to Essex on Wreck or sidewalk of some sort, which will be good. Because then that will also then get you to Industrial Lab, which would get you to South Burlington, except for a section on Industrial Lab, which we were just got a grant for to take it from where the state just stopped the project up by Avenue A, we'll get from Avenue A to White Caps. So we'll still have a little space in between there up to Rossignol Park that we'll have to find funding for. But that would then get you make you that connection all the way around to, except for the fact that when you get to Muddy Brook on Willister Road, you're not going to go anywhere because South Burlington doesn't have sidewalk on their side. But nice. Now we can say it's there. So so the other one, then it's really a problem is coming over Muddy Brook on the other side, Shun Pike and Marshall Avenue, where there's on that in that case, South Burlington does have path all the way down to there. We have some sidewalk on our side. Now doesn't go very far up Marshall Ave to the Shun Pike intersection. Shun Pike is getting built out as it's being built out. Everybody's had to put in sidewalks. So we have lots of sections in there that now have to get connected together. One of the things we have tried very hard to do is build the section up Marshall Ave, excuse me, between Shun Pike and South Burnell Road. And I don't think any of us will ever see that. We've applied twice. We've been shot down twice and it's all because of wetlands. Today that road would have never gotten built. A lot of roads wouldn't have gotten built, but particularly that one would have never got built because it did go right, it went right through the middle of the wetlands. So they're really digging her heels in on that one. So the better thought is, so that we can still have that connection, is to continue with the one on Shun Pike Road. Push that one harder because then you get Shun Pike to Marshall Ave, to South Burlington. When you go the other way up Shun Pike, you get to South Burnell Road, which already has sidewalk and that gets you connected. You can go anywhere then. You can go to Tap Corners, you can go to Walmart or all those areas up in there too. So Shun Pike you can put sidewalks on, but Marshall, is that what you're saying? When you said between Shun Pike and South Burnell, South Burnell, you mean along Marshall? Is that Marshall Ave? Nope, on Shun Pike itself. From Marshall Ave to South Burnell Road along Shun Pike itself. You can't build there because of wetlands. No, no, that's a section that is being built. It's a section from Shun Pike to South Burnell on Marshall Ave. Right, okay. We're having a real hard time. I mean, I'm not saying you can never do it, but it will be very expensive because it probably would mean doing a boardwalk if you're even allowed to do that. So it's not very far either, is it? Shun Pike, the South, the Marshall? No, it's not far. I thought they kind of intersected. Yeah, it definitely would take some work and everything, but that's that Shun Pike because of the Roe Bear property. Roe Bear property was that large stretch of woodland that was there that went from Shun Pike to Williston Road where U-Haul is built now and all that other stuff is getting built, is being built out. As it's been getting built out on the Shun Pike side, they've been made to put inside one of all those parcels, but there's still going to be some sections there that will have to be built either by us or waiting for somebody else to come in to, yeah, that hurts. You can't be on the slick board if you haven't lived here for 20 years. See, Shun Pike goes, I thought, right this Marshall Avenue right here, but on the South Burlington end here, but right near the Muddybrook Bridge. Yeah, that's the Muddybrook Bridge, that's Shun Pike right there. So that you could build sidewalks on a Shun Pike, but you can't. Well, you get into here. Right. It's up, it's up, nope, if go, bring up Marshall Avenue, a little bit more, it's right there. Right here. All that wood. Oh, the curve. Right through there. That's some kind of special wetlands with all kinds of good stuff. We've been shot down, like I said, we've worked twice. Twice we tried to get funding for that. So I'm not saying we should give up on that idea, but I would say we would get more bang for our buck and probably have it happen faster if we're trying to make connections to other communities to continue on the Shun Pike. Like Leroy Road or something. What's that? Like Leroy Road or something, I don't know. Yeah, Leroy Road's right there. Yeah. I mean, you could go, you could do that too, but then that's just, you know, it's the same thing is just going up Shun Pike Road. You could go up Marshall Avenue, Leroy over Leroy and then, but I don't see, like I said, as far as right now to actually make the connection Shun Pike so much quicker. That's just going over, that's just going over the pedestrian facilities and what's there or not there and what we're taking care of. Five vehicle bridges that are mostly inspected by the state of Vermont. Ours are all pretty good shape. Three of the five are actually co-owned to South Burlington or Essex, which is a good thing. Probably the next bridge we're looking at having to do anything really to is the industrial average. And that's more because it'll be structurally deficient rather than not structurally deficient, functionally deficient rather than structurally deficient, just because of what's happening along Industrial Avenue. We have three pedestrian bridges. They are just inspected by myself and or I took Andrew with me this year just to go take a look underneath to see if there's any real problems. And our pedestrian bridges are in pretty good shape, plus they're still fairly new, especially our largest one, which is the one over on Baudry Lane or off Baudry Lane. Willis from Stormwater, responsible for quite a bit. I'm not going to go over every little thing there, but this once again, this was mostly just to give you guys an idea of what we do or don't do or what's going on out there and what really costs are looking like. This one, as we go down into the whole point of this to start with was just to say this is what we really ought to spend ARPA money on. But once again, I wanted to give you an idea of what's going on, talk about the catch bases. The fact that we're in charge of 18 stormwater ponds right now, we have the PCP plan out there, phosphorus control plan, and we still have the flow restoration plan. And what those kind of projects are looking like. We have 75.85 miles of road. That's going to change in two years when we add three more miles with what's on the books now, supposedly to get built. Ten of them are gravel. Gravels have received a lot of work lately, which has been a good thing, mostly because of the way they're connected, hydraulically connected. We've been able to get a lot of money from other places to help take care of that. Williston water and sewer water system. We purchased all our water upgrade 1968. Part of that upgrade made us more responsible for things. We're splitting the two service areas. What that means is the high side is basically from tap corners east. And that just means that the pressures in that part of this line are from the tanks. Their West is the pressure that's coming right out of the Champlain Water District. So that's why we call it, it's called the low and high side. Both will cost us the same amount of money if something goes wrong. But anyway, you know, you can just look through there and see the number of valves and everything that it really have going on. Champlain. Yeah, okay. So one of these, because it's on this still on the ARPA list is the Champlain Waterline Plans are all but done. And we could go to construction or go to bid at the end of January. And that was approved in last year's capital funding for 300,000 out of the water fund. I know Eric has talked a little bit more about some of that coming from ARPA, but if we're going to make that decision, it has to be made. We're ready to go to sit on it. Let's see. And the sewer system, just talking about, you know, everything the sewer department has and what we're responsible for just to help give you an idea as far as that's concerned. Talked about energy a little bit. One of the big things we have, and I've said it before, is we've had multiple inventories and data in all kinds of different locations. That's all getting put together right now. I've been working very hard on that. And by March, hopefully, we'll have a very good asset management program that'll allow us to have all those things in one spot. And when we're out working on things, be able to put that data in there real time will also help us with the future planning for budgets as well. So all of that, once again, was mostly just to give you all some idea of what it is we do. And now get down to ARPA and what public works feels like. Was it a good bet? Money from our perspective. So, but real quickly, the total estimated cost for projects on the updated list exceeds $9 million plus dollars. And that's without looking at everything. So the priority project, once again, I wrote right in here has changed a little bit. I've done two two memos before on ARPA funding. The one project that we're saying we believe would be the best use of ARPA funds right now would be to replace the twin culverts on Talcott Road just north of the fire department. That there's four twin, well, two twins, four culverts on Talcott Road. One was replaced in 2013 after the flooding and got damaged. And the state gave us emergency funding to replace that one. But as part of that would not allow us to touch the one next to it. Certainly would have made sense to replace them both, but we weren't allowed to replace the one that got damaged. A few years later, the one next to it started getting real bad showing some damage. So we spent some more money there and made that one in good shape actually. Has a new concrete bottom and sides in it. So those two should last for quite a while. Their sisters, the other twins are down by the fire station. There's they're showing the same deterioration that the ones up above showed where they're rotten out in the bottom. And what caused partly problem. The other ones was one, the flood, just too much water got underneath it, lifted the bottom, destroyed that culvert. The other one was freezing. Frost got underneath it, lifted the bottom and caused the problem there. So even though we've been bandating the two down by the fire department, and when I say banding, I mean bags of concrete carried down into there and trying to put things back together, they need to be replaced within the next few years, if not even right now. The water's high and I'm letting it stay high. The water's high because of beaver dam. And I'm sitting here saying this where I'm being recorded. We're leaving that water high right now. Hopefully we don't get it to freeze and get a frost underneath those pipes and lift them. I'm trying to leave that water a little bit deeper in there right now. So anyway that is, that was part of the report that we had done at one point and the number to replace those in 2019 dollars was a million dollars. So you can see that if they get wiped out and we have to do it as an emergency, it's going to be quite a bit of money besides the fact that we close the road again, excuse me, which serves the school. People weren't happy about it the last two times. And don't blame them. And that's okay. We're big boys. We can take the heat, but I just assumed not do it. If we could schedule that, it would be much better. And the replacement is a concrete bridge, either a bridge or a concrete box structure. No more, no more corrugated pipes. Of that size in the ground. The next projects that are, you know, I say are equally as important because they actually are is the River Cove pump station and upgrades to industrial out force main. The industrial out force main is being designed as we speak, but it's not still not, it's in a capital for 27. The third pump at River Cove would be nice to have and if we used money to do that one now, it would get us back on to somewhat back on to our cycle where we're trying to do every pump station every 20 years. We have 10 pump stations. So every other year we should be doing a pump station. We got backed up. And sooner or later, we won't have to be saying this anymore, but it was COVID put us behind on that. And that's another place where we're just not finding people that want to do that kind of work anymore. It's just incredible. What'll happen is it'll get to the price where it's expensive, so expensive that people will finally start jumping back in. But that's what's going to happen. So that's just a list of where we think the Trader Lane project under design. Eric's Eric knows very well what's going on with that because he's part of everything that's going on with it. It is under design right now. We're having another meeting in a week or two. We should start to see the actual layout and see some draft plans dealing with the stormwater and stuff there. But that price that that cost is obviously going to have gone up to the installation of the fire suppression system, the old brick church actively being designed already talked about a little bit. So you guys know about that. And another one that would be really helpful. And I think, well, I think I know would save on man hours is if we were able to do our meter reading all by drive by download and or actually antennas that can bring it all right to Kim's office. So we don't have to have people out physically reading meters four times a year for them doing that. Most of the time of the year, it's not too bad, but we have had a few winners where we can't even get to meters to read them. And then you have to estimate them and then they're not right and the next time comes around. So anyway, it would be just be another good use of funds from public works. And I did still attach the list that I had given you all before update a little bit. And that's it. Thank you all. And on behalf of public works, thank you for all your support. We guys appreciate it. I know they're all having fun today because I know tomorrow they may not be able to. The money brought on Marshall Avenue, that was a bridge right there, correct? Is that a concrete bridge? It's not a bridge. It's a bottomless concrete arch, basically for lack of a better term. It's not a bridge. Concrete box. That's something similar to what you're looking at on South Alcott Road between Culver. Alcott Road, the report called for just a bridge period, Mike. So not concrete going down to the bottom, abutments obviously, but then a steel bridge or whatever on top. Muddy Brook is the actual concrete structure that goes all the way up in the top then becomes part of the bridge deck. There were some good pictures of that that shows the construction of that. Not the same as a bridge. A bridge has abutments. Obviously concrete abutments to help hold it up and the span goes over it. This is actually a concrete structure that's down in the ground with no bottom. So in a way, it's a bridge. It's just not called a bridge. A bridge you can go in and pick the bridge up or replace steel or whatever. You're not going to do that on this concrete structure. It's bad as one whole piece. Put it in pieces, but now it's one whole piece. Yeah, I guess you have to look at both of them to see what the difference is. I can't picture it in my mind. I've never seen it. No, no, we would certainly, if that was the way and that's the way we'd like to see this go, is it would certainly be looked at again to see what kind of structure makes the most sense. I don't want any bridges. We don't want any bridges. Bridges are a pain in the butt. But if it's a bridge or the concrete structure and the concrete structure is one and a half times as much or something, then you have to look at it from... So yeah, I would tell you right now, we don't have one another bridge. Sounds like the culverts could be a pain in the butt too though. The culverts are pain in the butt. More so. I'll take a bridge over a culvert. The culverts are just wearing out. All galvanized metal. They're just wearing out. Can't go with plastic on them. Not that size. Not that size. I don't put, just so you know, we, not I, we don't put in any, we don't put in any metal pipe unless it comes down to the fact that you just can't get it in plastic that size. What's the max? Today, today you use aluminum pipe. Don't even go with cargate steel. Use aluminized pipe. Last longer. It's just as strong. Oh, aluminum. It's just as strong. Pick up truck and batter. What's that? Pick up trucks. Some of them now are aluminum. Yeah. Anyway, it took longer than Todd sitting back here waiting, so. Are there other questions for Bruce before? My question is actually for you, Eric. Is the ARPA, I'm looking at the ARPA project select for the sheet now. It doesn't look like the Tau Cut project is reflected in there. Yeah. So that's something new as Bruce updated this the last couple of weeks. So I think on that list, I put. There's a couple of water and sewer. Yeah. I don't see that particular one. I'm just. I took those from the last list. Yeah. That'd be good to keep in mind as you, as you look at that as well. In other words, with that one in a million dollar project, what's the likelihood that you think of any state money to help? We would certainly go after. We would certainly go after, excuse me, bridge and culvert money, right? But that's maybe 200, 250,000 dollars. No, we would, yeah, we would look for southern fun. But I don't know. It doesn't qualify right now as a bridge. So I don't know that there's bridge money available from the state for it. Now, if we put any bridge, does that mean we should be able to get money now? I don't know the answer, but we would certainly explore. As part of the part of the stuff with ARPA is always the timing issue like committed this year, or you need to spend it by the end of 26. So it's trying to build that stack of funding for the project. Any other questions for Bruce? Hydrant replacements, those are, would you consider those a safety issue? Over 50 years, over 35 years? Those culverts? The hydrants, fire hydrants. No, they're not a, no, they're, they're still functional. I think the way we're replacing them is fine. If we go and replace a whole bunch of those wholesale, then we're back in the same boat later on, whereas the way we're doing it now, you could just keep rotating them around. It just comes down to the fact that some of them now we can't get parts for. So if something happens and we have to replace it, we end up putting a new or different one there. But I think the way we're, I think the program we have going on right now is the right way to continue with that money. We have over, we're probably at 700 hydrants now. If one's broke, there's one nearby that's going to be fine. And we got so many freaking hydrants, it's not even, so, but that's a whole other story. Bruce had that on the ARPA list as, you know, potential to accelerate that program, but it's, what we're doing today isn't a detriment overall. It, you know, it's, it's the money that could increase that frequency. But I asked Bruce to do that. See, he wouldn't put that as a top priority of if you're looking at ways to spend ARPA money. You know, the list I just gave you, it would be our priorities, the top priorities. And I do know that that's changed from the last two memos, like I said, but those would be our priorities. Thank you. Thanks Bruce. Thank you. Come on down. Hi. Hello. What did you want to start with? Operating? Operating. So the operating budget, page 153. What did you look at for the top? Yeah. Yeah. So just, just our community services and such, but page 156 is, is the overall expenditures of the department. So we start on 157 with the actual budget itself. You can, and we see that administrative salaries have increased the salaries of day camps. We increased that by 2700, 10 dollars. And the reason for that is to stay more competitive and attract qualified people. It's, it's hard to get good people when you're competing with, you know, the area of businesses that can give 18, 19 dollars to, to starting ones. So we, the salary wages will be 1380 something, I think it is. So we start our younger staff off, our junior staff at like $14 an hour, our counselors at 16, our lead counselors, head counselors at 17 and then administrative staff at 18, 19. So that's that increase. But you'll, as we go down through the budget, you'll see that the day camp expenses have been decreased by 7000. So we've actually taken from what our program does or busing or field trips or anything like that, we looked at that and allocated that money to salaries to increase those, to attract people, better people, more qualified people and more people. 10 years ago or actually not prior to COVID, we would have 60 applicants. We're lucky if we got six last year sort of thing. So that's kind of the reason for that. Seasonal salaries or youth sports and such that stayed the same. Benefits of course increase on page 158, slight increase on training conferences because we now have two people attending some training and conferences. Property and casualty has gone up some and telephone, postage increased by 150 on page 159. Again, you can see that the decrease in the day camp expenses, contracted, contracted camp expenses, I'll talk with these together, contracted camp expenses and contracted program expenses are hard to justify. So we usually take like a three-year average, did a two-year average because three years would have put us into COVID and that was very low. And those fluctuate from year to year, but on those contracted programs, we always are making money. So if a program is $100, we will take 10 of it and pay the instructor and a contracted program is not a rec program, not a program I'm running, not one that Alex is running, not an employee or a seasonal employee that we're hiring. It's like a contracted instructor comes in and they want $90 a person. So we take 10 and we pay out 90. So we're always going to be in the positive on the revenue side. So if we looked at the revenue contracted camps went up in revenue and it's a higher revenue than the expense and that same thing happens with contracted programs. Contracted camps, we take $25 per camper and those are administrative fees that we incur and stuff like that. The recreation programs, you can see contracted programs decreased by after I said all that contracted programs decreased by $5,000 because we've added a line item and it comes up later of the rec zone because we've moved programs out of other areas and we're doing them in the rec zone. So to get a better idea of the revenue coming in the expenses of the rec zone, it's created its own. So we now have contracted camps, contracted programs and the rec zone where contracted camps or programs could be held. Sounds all kind of confusing but ultimately all the revenue that we bring in covers the expenses that we have throughout for programming and we don't spend all, we don't use all the expense money each year. We have a leftover there every year. So that's on page 160 is where that rec zone is showed up and we came up with 42936. A big chunk of that is facility rental at 31956 will be a year come March. So we're looking to renew that and talk with them. We have Comcast some maintenance and then the programs about 10,000 at this point and that's guessing because we're always trying to create new programs to offer there. We're currently offering four or five ongoing programs, some for seniors, some for adults. You drop in, you pay $5 for a senior program, you pay $10 for an adult program and we're splitting that 80-20 with the instructor and then we're holding like dog training there and we just got a couple donations of ping pong tables. So we're looking to start to pick up ping pong in there so on and so forth and going forward with other programs as well. So looking to build that space as much as possible and we've also opened that space up to rentals for meetings or gatherings that people may have like a baby shower or wedding thing or that kind of those types of rentals. So programs in the rec zone or is the same thing as contracted program expenses only there in the rec zone? Yes. So I took 5,000 out of the contracted programs and put it towards that 10,000 that's in the rec zone for programming because we have moved some of those programs over and we'll continue to create new programs and put them in that space as well. And you're trying to see you want you're trying to see if the rec zone is a program that you want you want the costs associated with that together so you can evaluate it. Yes, yeah. Who would someone contact if they were interested in renting the rec zone? Us, the recreation and parks department. We have it on our website for rentals and people can call us or email us as well. Okay I know someone looking for some space. Oops gonna up their revenue then. So that's the operating budget for the recreation services of the department and on my transmittal sheet I mentioned that a program fund and it's not anything we're looking to do right now but I just want to make you aware of it a program fund would pull these programs like contracted and camps and recreation programs in the end zone it would pull them out and make it its own budget its own set and in turn it would the program fund would roll over each year so if we made 50,000 in revenue we spent 40,000 that 10,000 would roll over for the next year to be used by the recreation department and what the idea is people who are paying to play to recreate to be educated their money stays in programs to enhance the programming and stuff like that if actually this didn't change but the special events at 17-5 we have no revenue coming into that but that would be a program that would go over as well because it is a program the Independence Day celebration and such and any other special events that money would be used to enhance those programs and to bring in other ones as well so that's on the transmittal letter it says program fund that's what that's about it would again take out all those program things that have to do with programs and pull them into an account that rolls old Todd approached me with that idea and I ran it by the town attorney to see if we could establish a special revenue fund that way if you need voter approval and the town attorney said you didn't right I wasn't ready to make that recommended change structurally in the general fund right now I told Todd we'll think about it over the next several months maybe anticipation next budget year but just thinking on some mechanics there a bit essentially you'll be removing these expenses and their revenues from the general fund and into that program fund for recreation so something we'll talk to Todd about that we'll think more about and see how that would function structurally for us good so I just bring it up to you at this time just to kind of give you a heads up that is something that we would like to look at and work on and we would do that with Eric going forward so the operating side of park services the salaries has gone up is and I would turn to Shirley just asking is this the there's no change to the part-time seasonal right okay so we have a part-time seasonal park maintenance staff which I hire and then a full-time buildings and grounds out of Bruce's budget who come a person physically comes into parks and works for for us with that part-time person so the increase is that full-time per building and grounds persons salary and such there's no change of merit yeah yeah so there's no change to the part-time seasonal which is 30 hours a week for 30 weeks at about $20 I think yeah so and then park and minute minute park admin salary is mine and one of the other things that I've discussed with Shirley and Eric is kind of taking this and just making an administrative line item that's like my whole salary rather than split it between parks because it's all coming out of the same place but that's that's that that is that increase benefits course increase because of those upper two equipment rental review goes down a little bit and that was because during COVID we were using a lot of portlets so we just kind of adjusted that to what our needs are now we put four portlets and three of the parks and over by the Babe Ruth field behind the school and then in the wintertime now we're putting one at Village Community Park because there's still a lot of walkers and they rely on that and also we have a skating rink so it's it's handy to have that there as well and then utilities went down quite a bit we didn't use any water in the irrigation at Allenbrook didn't need to and didn't need to and then the other the other big increase is athletic field maintenance last year we took the park maintenance and upgrades and and separated athletic field maintenance because they were kind of two different things and we're using the money from rentals of park facilities so field courts and amenities like that so I asked last year that we put make a separate revenue and we always had a revenue field use fees but make a separate expense for that and last year we we had a set for 20,000 and we spent 17 and we made like 24 and then going into this year we're already at the 17-18 mark and we haven't got the spring revenue yet so that's kind of I I see this one kind of like the contracted one where you know I'm going to spend as much as I can of that maybe go over this expense but not go over the revenue that we bring in and again on the trans middle and I'll bring this up to you now I also asked Eric to if we could look at taking the field use fees and changing that to an athletic field courts and making it a like the program fund that it would roll over so basically what we're saying is the people who are renting fields and court their money is staying into improving restoring whatever the case may be the fields and courts for them and it would enable us to move some things out of the capital budget you know like buying soccer goals I would make it part of this because the soccer goals are being used by those people and the general public can at residence anytime can use a field no fee attached they can use the the the goals but the wear and tear is going to be the club rec soccer and the adult soccer that goes on and that kind of stuff and right now our all of our rec soccer programs lacrosse programs and any of the sports camps in the summertime 20 percent of the red I didn't I didn't raise registration fees 20 percent of the registration fee for any rec program that's used in field or court space is being diverted to the field use fees fund so even rec programs rec users are use our part of their registration fee is going towards that athletic field so if we could roll that over and and you know use that money or build that account up then there's projects that we could do that we were not asking in capital or the operating fund or taxpayers to pay for because both the program fund and this athletic field fund I like to say you pay to play so we're taking your money and we're reinvesting it into the areas that that you're doing sort of thing and again that's nothing that's affecting this budget but just something that I mean we're on the table we're talking about and you could see in the future so that is our operating budget for recreation parks and I think there's an increase of 60 000 one I can see I think that correctly yep 60 000 and like I said you know 42 of that is the the rec zone but five of that we've taken away so I also try to move money around and put it in different places but ultimately our history has been we bring in more money than we expend out or anything any any questions on the operating budget capital for the rec department I'm going to jump right to parks improvement page 43 we'll save now for last time yeah okay yeah we'll save the people or yeah well the most expensive they wouldn't have to look at it um a few years back instead of coming and share this with for the the new members of the slick board a few years back I propose having a parks improvement and parks replacement capital fund and every year just putting 20 000 or 25 000 in it each year and that those funds would build up and we would have different projects that we would you know see that a need of and look to do so the the park's improvement we're looking for 20 000 and that is for the next three years and then jump it up to 25 000 and 10 000 of that is coming from the general fund and 10 000 from impact and park improvements has done things um what you have is is just from like 24 going forward but if we expanded that we would see that well actually this is the ice rink was was made with that hands-free restroom that happened during COVID we put in basketball hoops we put in um picnic shelters so we've done a lot to improve the parks and add things that we felt were not necessary but needed and also things that people could use and 25 both in the parks replacement and the parks and improvement there isn't a lot being asked for expenditure and two reasons for that is um ARPA funds that we have asked for some things and the recreation parks committee asked for some things through the ARPA fund so if if we get that those will be done if not then we can build that in later also um the work at allenbrook which we'll talk about we wanted to leave some money towards that i had 5000 in this year's budget um 24 budget but i moved it to 25 and that is to add some amenities to the top playgrounds which we have one at village community park and we have one at brennan and it may be that looking at a couple different things at this point in time um there's some handicapped swings which we don't have in the public parks there's one at wilson community park over at uh behind the central school um but there's and there's also swings that an adult could be on one side and the child could be on the other side and they could swing together um runners and stand behind and push and so this something we're looking at to um make that an improvement into the parks the other is the park's replacement and that's 20 000 a year then it increases to 25 and again you see a long list of of of listing of parks and a long list of different things that are in those parks we didn't put anything in for 25 uh the funds are a little low and you want to build them back up but also arpa money and the one thing that should be done is in village community park you can see i have it in 26 we should look at pay repaving that lot restraping it there's a couple areas where the the white fence is we have an opening so if we build bridges or culverts through that swale area also the energy committee is melinda is working on ev charging stations over there so it's all it's oh and then parking is parking is an issue that they're parking along the roadway which is enabling or not able for pub for um fire ems and police services to get down that way so um we really need to look at all that as a whole so these are our two parks capitals and instead of coming to you and saying hey we would like a hundred thousand dollars to do this project and and so on and so forth we ask just for 20 000 or 25 000 dollars each year to build that fund up and to do those projects as we can sort of thing the other thing if i could just for a second what we typically do by having this list too um it enables um sometimes we might be planning to do a project one year but we find oh we really need to do this other projects sooner than that so by having that identified in the fund it gives some flexibility for staff to to change the order or not not have to amend the whole capital plan at that point if you go back to page 44 for a second the park's improvement um up above village community park is recreational parks master plan it's something within the last couple of weeks that eric and i have talked about and we he place hold 30 000 we'll need a little bit more than that according to but um the the town just finished as you know a scoping study for indoor recreation programs and facilities we have these we have the improvement so everything that we've built we're looking to improve our replace and then we have this improvement fund and it's kind of banned these little things that i think or i've heard um but now we're moving into larger things like courts at brennan a basketball court a tennis court pickleball court we've had this asked for a rebound court which is kind of like hitting a tennis ball up against a you know plywood and to come back so you you just play on your own and they want us to do that on our existing courts and it's you know we're saying oh if someone's playing and you're or if you're doing that someone wants to come and play and and that kind of thing so rosenow currently has basketball courts tennis court pickleball courts and it has a hard surface play area so making brennan similar to rosenow would be great as mountain view drive is is um growing up the golf course uh next right next door to the park that development you know paper the other day had the development just a little bit further down the road near the meditation place so all that's growing up and people say to us what about brennan woods well they can use that park but they have their own amenities you know i think a pool and a tennis court as well but um that area is growing up so making rosenow and brennan look the same you know that's four to five hundred thousand dollars this twenty thousand dollars a year it means you know ten or twenty years i was looking to do that so we're definitely looking at more expensive projects as we move forward so the recreation and parks master plan would focus on that outdoor recreation piece what is people looking for outdoor recreation we've heard dog park rebound you know another disc golf and all these different things so this plan would help us to identify those incorporate incorporate the indoor facilities into that and also look at the department how the department has to grow um you you asked the question the other day about you know teen programming and and you know having a place would be great but we also need to have a person so growing that and the library has said well you know we get teens that come over they have a staff i don't know how many but it's more than the two that we have sort of the thing so it would this plan would just help just help to develop and give a guidance to the growth of the department moving forward and um ultimately when my time is done here i would like to leave a plan for the next person so they don't have to come in and figure out what's next what do i do i spent the first five years doing that and now i'm spending the next five years making it happen right sort of the thing so that's that if you see that there that's what that's about um did you add that to the arpa yeah so i possibly i sent out to the board yesterday and updated arpa kind of scoring rubric and there's two new projects we'll talk this is the first one about parks related so um the number for that that tog that just this week was more in the seventy thousand dollar range it's for that master plan so um i suggested as part of the arpa maybe splitting it half with arpa and half we could draw from from these uh capital savings funds the other component of this i think i mentioned earlier with uh re upping the wreck impact fee that master plan will be critical to identify the projects based beyond so it's it's a good prerequisite for the impact fee as well um to really identify what those are going to be to define that scope but in the next year and a half year i might i don't know what that uh study would master plan development would look like but i don't know if what community is ready for another survey right we we could certainly time it to um you know for maybe a year from now or something like that before we get too far into the wreck impact fee for and do it later in 25 or something that's a good point you know tight you don't want outreach fatigue with all yeah yeah and it feels also feels feels like oh well what are we made of money there towns asking us what what we want for this what we want for this so who's paying for all that so i just yeah sure maybe take a little breather and i think of how you could spend 70 000 putting together this a report like this unless you're doing a lot of public outreach yeah yeah you had taught i got in the number from a firm that we've used in the past sometimes it goes kind of a baseline before we would get this out obviously but to get a budget number ties well into the town plan work too well yeah i think tied into the brennan brennan park we'll just tie in how how do you get there there's no wreck path on mountain view sidewalk there's no sidewalk on mountain oh mountain view that's correct that's always been the downside to that park for me you can't get there unless you live in brennan woods so or drive like there before uh streets but would you i mean you're trying to if you're if you're trying to put this in place because we're now going to build another 200 houses on mountain view that's sort of the impetus for improving that park well then you have to kind of get there so the conundrum we have on mountain view as the circ alternatives project phase three projects not funded by the state yet but it's uh it's creating um additional facilities on mountain view i think that i think what they decided was a widening of the road and not the off-site recreation path but at some point we're hoping money will be allocated from the state through the transportation improvement program federal money that flows through beach rams that's then allocated out but i don't have a good sense of when that's going to be it's also like the exit 12 improvements are part of that circ alternatives phase two as well um at some point we'll have funding from the federal level to improve mountain road but i will i won't dare guess when i know when the other day when you said or somebody mentioned that the bond for the um side for the sidewalk the rec path bond is sunsetting you know it's almost done that's like we've been talking about that stretch along mountain view was was on the short list but was below the line we couldn't fund it so yeah that's been at least that long so we're trying to figure that one out yeah yeah on page 71 is the equipment fund for the the park and we have a parks tractor and mowers replacement and there's 9500 there for those three and i think they're on a um um six year cycle for replacing as bruce had mentioned we are part of the grant to look at a zero turn mower um however we would not give up our 60 inch mower that you see on here um both in the future because um parks are growing and we will we'll need that though when if the zero turn works out then when we go to replace that 60 inch mower we would look at zero turns so we would have two zero turn 60 60 inch mowers and at this time they're not creating a 72 inch mower which we use for our um athletic fields because we they're larger in size and they they cut more and and that kind of thing so um we we would add zero turn to our our our fleet and then possibly look to i traded out another zero turn that works out and then the recreation pickup truck replacement actually at this point in time that's not replacement it's actually getting one ours as you know was in an accident last march and we've been without one since then um we hear it's in production i don't know how long that means but we will be in need of a pickup truck a january third for the ski and ride program so i think public works will work with us on that i we did check locally and actually throughout new england to see what was available and this is the this is the truck that we would be getting from the state this is the truck locally a lesser truck if we bought one locally and it would still be more than the state bid type of thing so it wasn't feasible and or prudent in spending the taxpayers money to get something less than and still cost us more than as well and then you see the third one there is the parks field lining robot it's not on the the capital budget for 25 that placeholder has been put in there for 26 we're asking through arpa money for a field lining robot and a field lining robot basically goes out and lines the field so manpower wise you don't have somebody having to to walk when we do five fields out here at village community park one person to well two people to settle those is about an eight hour day one person to go and line well though after they've already been lined is about two two and a half hours a robot is a lot less than that he uses less paint and the lines are actually very clear very precise very you know we're a recreation part department understand that but very professional looking um it's like it's electric so we're moving towards that electric rather than um we had a gas powered one we have a co21 sort of things and while the line well the robot is lining this field a person watching that could be mowing these other two fields where the robot would then move over to so it's it's it's like having another person who can do our lining for us sort of thing I have to tell you I thought that was so cool I sent it to Tom Mungin at the high school the maintenance guy at the high school but it'd be great if we could figure out how to share it because we mostly line during the school year and you have to keep up with it in the summer so it sounds really fun they could look great a great gps control to get the lines right get make it fast make it but that's a lot of money for for lining fields um the well actually I should point out that um this is probably the probably more than initial costs would be and there's a yearly service fee of like 16 or $1,700 which would come out of the athletic field field rental field rentals which is the the players the people that are paying to play it would come out of that so this is just the initial cost and also when this if if we're able to get this and this gets broken out it would get broken out over a 10 six eight to 10 year period where 38,000 let's say $40,000 was divided by 10 years so it's $4,000 a year so it looks like a big price now yes but that's uh to purchase it all right and then the final is on page 42 which is Allenbrook Community Park and um a revitalization was done of the park and spring of 22 so we have a preferred concept plan of that and we are we put out an r of q we're looking to award that r of q for engineering designs um and phase one construction plans and the bid package and that would probably be that's looking to be about $200,000 which would could come out of the 850 that's on there but we're also considering a grant that would uh it's called Vorek for my outdoor recreation and that could help with that as well and in turn we would hope to be able to start construction at Allenbrook in 25 or 26 moving forward yeah the so this sheet on page 42 we need to do some updates because a lot's happened the last couple of weeks here and more information so um what we have is prepared to make this award the current capital savings account has sure like $240,000 in it or so and then we have these um recreation impact fees that we haven't um that we haven't allocated that are available to use for the park so when we look at all money available including rec impact fees it's just over $700,000 so as we work through this with trying to figure out first what the engineering costs are going to be and now we have a number after the bids came in our intent here is to award that contract we have money in this capital savings account to do that and then as the engineers work we we're going to task them with designing the park build out and focusing on how to phase it so then we'll know the first phase is going to be infrastructure parking um stormwater work maybe some initial um undergrad utility work as we have the phases lined out what construction estimates are then we can understand how we're going to approach it and basically see how much money we have how to approach that so whatever's remaining in this account um after we do the uh engineering and if we get any grant money to help us with that that's going to help us design that first phase of construction um so it would be the plan from here is to get this park build out finally happening um but understand what that cost going to be and how we're going to phase it in and that's why I added this to your ARPA sheet as well thinking about these these numbers we know it's not going to it's going to be a project that's multi millions of dollars over a number of years here to build out that park so if we get the grant great from the state but if we don't we're going to be spending more money out of here for the engineering and it's going to decrease the amount we have available for initial phase of construction um any additional ARPA money into here would help um uh expand that initial phase once we see what what the cost numbers start to look like and that initial phase just we haven't figured out what it is yet but it would be the infrastructure of that phase as well as leading to other phases so that we're not going back and tearing something up that we've already built up and spent money on as well as um a dedicated road and parking for the park compared to um using allen brooks schools which is what we're currently using their entrance and parking um the the area or the distance from the parking lot to where our two fields multi-purpose fields are right now as it's probably about 500 feet and um once you get off the path there's no accessibility so parking lot would put accessibility closer to park amenities and such and it would also separate the school and the park which is a concern at wilson uh central school and and the village community park at um you know around eight o'clock in the morning and one two o'clock three o'clock the early dismissal and three regular one um the library the park and the school at the same time that's a lot of parking doesn't last very long which is a good thing but it does add a lot of parking stuff like that so we've learned from this and it's worked out great and there'll be some things that we we carry over in town but allen brook park but there'll be some things that we would want to do differently as well and then the school district certainly a partner in this we we engaged them out so we did the revitalized master plan there as well and uh we planned to um i'll be sending them a note so we talked about this was coming so we'll be in communication about what that engineering looks like and and working on the property and making sure things aligned and everyone's communicating well with the best we can sign this plan that's all i have actually if i could just say one of the just to um the gene to your come about the robot and line you know we'd be happy to work with the school but we line field spring summer and fall we have um soccer five fields out here plus lacrosse three fields and then um also all the baseball fields and softball fields for the school and then the fall soccer for the school yeah i know it's not exactly so yeah i do not do it but for other people just saw the people on the board to know that yeah we're we're busy from may 1st uh november 1st and beyond in the park that is currently the only access to the allen brook park is my car correct uh no there's a um a rec path that goes from coyote lane to uh talcott road and it runs through the park and through the school land so somebody from like brennan woods could also get over to coyote lane yep and there's actually um you can go from north wilson road the federated church parking lot all the way to talcott either walking or biking you do the you do the path through the park and then there's um there's little signs they're not they're not well established but you go through south ridge and you connect that cody cody run or cody lane onto the bike path again and go through allen brook and you end up out of talcott so there's a way to get from one end of town to the other without having to travel on 2a it's not straight it's not you know all path it's a sidewalk or path it's a mixture but it is in a way that people can get from one end so i don't yeah because of my location i don't ever use those parks but i mean just sitting here trying to think how would you go from point a to point b it's a really heavily heavily used um pathway um between the two schools and like lots of kids travel to school every day that way coming from those neighborhoods um and that's why i think one of the i want to say the energy committee maybe and a couple of the committees had suggested putting better signage in right of ways and things like that for those areas to make that an easier um bike and walkable commute yeah and we have those directions and map on the recreation website for people to access and find and and utilize because right now it's not well signed it could be better signed and i think the energy committee also talked about doing a bike path lane like on or on a roadway like you would see if you went to burlington there's roadway but a dedicated you know bikes have the right away type of thing through that so those would be great to do for people using it other questions good talk thank you Todd thank you thank you for your informative general administration oh we're waiting for this one so there's a number of subcategories here so maybe uh a particular order we want to take it but perhaps having surely do the finance department budget first so in the finance budget um bottom line is we oops you're off to this Scott um our budget has um changed by less than $500 between the two years um i'm gonna i'll start with the listers um the probably biggest change in the listers budget is um our assistant assessor is looking to retire this year um and we have the administrative assistant Michaela who when we hired her we knew that dick was probably going to be announcing his retirement so um she actually is an appraiser as well as working in the assessor's office so she will step up and um go to 28 hours a week from her current 16 hours a week so we will actually be one person less in the office um but that is the plan and the plan is for her to work more with Bill Hinman our contracted assessor to continue to educate her and and teach her more and our vision is that would become a full-time position a one-person full-time office um other than that um the contract assessor rates went up but really by the same amount as COLA and finance department um that's just a matter of um reflecting COLA and merit we also Erin was in our budget um 50 percent in in the finance budget 50 percent in the town manager budget she's now in the FY 25 budget 100 percent in the town manager budget um we also have our part time our assistant treasurer slash finance assistant um at 25 hours a week um in this budget let's see um and again those increases are offset by the fact and that's why we really don't have much of a change in our budget but um offset by the fact that those buildings and grounds allocations are no longer in finance anymore and and we never allocated any of it to the listeners anyways it was just finance the clerk and the manager's office so I assume this is where an HR director would would be budgeted in um and yeah well I think that'll come as a discussion at the end so it's not in here right now it's not in right but it would theoretically this is where it would go either that or under the it'll be a separate department okay so we'd pull out all of it okay but I thought I heard you say that Erin was 50 percent here and now she's zero percent here so why'd the budget go salaries go up we increase part of it is just colomeric and um we increase the hours for the assistant treasurer and the finance assistant now working 25 hours a week so we increase those hours just a little bit 10 percent increase in the salary as it stands here so I don't know how much it took out for Erin but yeah oh I'm sorry the other piece is so you know on that project list is those allocations that we need to get to some time study to for water sewer storm water so in FY 24 we have that assistant treasurer finance assistant at at 45 percent so 15 percent to each of those and in this budget I moved her down to be four percent because most of just in the short time she's been here most of her her receding is really the thing that it pertains to water sewer storm water most other things are projects for me they're related to the treasurer function she's being trained to be the backup for ap so that 15 percent allocation was way too high so I brought it down significantly to reflect on an actual basis more what that assistant treasurer finance assistant is actually doing so that's actually probably the bigger part of the change there is really that change in the reallocation okay thanks so that's it that's very operating that's it for me um is there capital for you I have no capital um stapler $5,000 stapler 18 yeah yeah I guess you know the only other thing we're looking at is um nem rick who is the software that we use I went to a training they had a seminar the other day and it was really on ap and payroll year end but um I think you heard Aaron talking about moving to the cloud so they have nem rick in the cloud and um really we we own nem rick software and now we just pay an annual maintenance fee but I when time allows would really like to pursue nem rick in the cloud I mean the just number one it takes the liability office of having information on our server right um it's more secure in the cloud um it also offers some other advantages in terms of when we're working from home how we can connect to it it will reduce the the cost um so right now for Lynn and I to work from home um we use a different way to access than when Eric works he and it costs a lot more and we have to pay for I think 25 minimum users even though it's primarily Lynn and I so um so there are some benefits and just how we can utilize nem rick right now because of the way it runs on our server it really limits the how effective Lynn and I work at home it because you can only have one screen so you're flipping back and forth a lot so um so in my budget I actually have 2000 and I think it's called like payroll software which we'd like to go to on-time reporting but again we haven't so I'm going to pursue getting some information on the change to nem rick in the cloud and maybe those dollars will cover it in the FY 25 budget but if not we we'll see when we come back for version in January if we have some changes but that is definitely the way for us to move forward it's the the security is taking it off of the server sitting here is huge yeah absolutely gonna cost you a fortune to take care of that so yeah absolutely and not only that then they maintain I mean your data so that was one of my questions what about retention I mean it's that they don't there's no cutoff with retention it's going to be out there so we have access to our data for as long as we've been on nem rick so um and I guess I'll just mention quickly um because Jack wanted to know if he needed to come to the meeting to talk about the cemetery budget so I am on page 149 surely can handle this yep there is not a big increase but the the real increase is in the professional services line of 3000 which you know Bruce reached out and got a estimate for us but that is really the cemetery maintenance the mowing in the the weed whacking of the cemetery which um has been going up annually so that's just a small increase for it three other questions I can jump to general administration tab this one has a number of sub items I can give a quick overview um so we have the general overhead select war technology in town manager's office um general overhead primarily you see the move reflected um for the buildings and grounds taking taking it out of um custodial services and rolling it into there um it's also has things like legal services we increased that a little bit based on prior years certainly a couple union contracts have played into some of that cost just a a number of things we've worked through on on a legal and it's um we that seems to be a good number year to year we'll fluctuate depending on needs but we pump that up a little bit for next year um select board your budgets um not a lot of change we do a cola for the select board stipend and the regular expenses that includes things like town meeting tv recording secretary things of that nature um bigger increase in our technology line so it's like a few applications things driving that we use a managed services contract to manage all our it needs so we don't have an in-house it staff person we we use an external source we've been doing that about five years now it's worked very well um they've had some costs i've gone up the last couple years they didn't increase their fees at all during the pandemic which was great and they gave us a lot of in-kind support for remote works they've been certainly a good partner for us it's a per workstation um contracts we've also had a couple new employees a couple new workstations so that that factors in there our website hosting we need to do a new contract our we had a pretty good deal on this before but our company got bought out and we are in the process right now updating our website to a new template from the circa 20 2009 website template that's there this will be a erin dickinson's leading map project with a with a staff um league group so we hope to roll that out in the spring sometime so we had some added costs there with that new contract we entered into and then additionally with technology certainly protecting our data from a cyber security standpoint is immensely important we're looking to roll out some new tools with two-factor authentication that's been recommended by our provider and continue those remote work tools that surely mentioned so it's certainly something that continues drives what we do here every day and it's good investment in it for security and operational standpoint that that's where that number is being driven from town manager's office budget um some changes in front of the new manager's contract extension um bringing the staff salary back into just the manager's office um also the benefits reflect that a little bit more in training and conferences i haven't gone to the uh international city manager's association national conference um i'd like to start doing that when i can so i'm hoping to go to that next year since pittsburgh pennsylvania so i put a little extra money in there for just travel and going to that this isn't related to having a new baby at home is it yeah that's why i didn't go this year that's my wife not this year but next year rick maguire always spoke highly of doing those conferences it's a good professional development uh that i'd like to take advantage of that's the general administration there's any questions from the board on what was the uh big bump in 23 for professional services under select board like $30,000 it was removal of the tatro trailer we just didn't have it but oh so um it was a piece of property that we went to tax sale and then found out that we actually cleaned it and then we had to just rip it out so it was that's 30 000 of it was that did you guys enjoy doing that for 30 000 yeah things you learned oh we actually own that okay um thank you any other questions for either eric or shrew i'll go to the outside services tab next um these are all mainly external um entities with um the exception of this is where our environmental reserve fund transfer lives along with we put some seeded seed mine into affordable housing oh wait i gotta find this one where is this tab oh sorry go to page 19 yeah thanks services sorry the record flow that's where you have the erf and the other um affordable housing trust i i didn't put anything in the affordable housing trust i i was thinking the committee's really getting going we're gonna potentially see some money there from the payment in lua provision but i think as they bring to you a proposal of how to use this money and how to grow it um we'll certainly have a more kind of robust methodology to think about that into the future so um we didn't we didn't have anything there last year either as we were scaling back kind of waiting to see what the next steps were then we have these categories health um our health officer stipends in there visiting nurses association the town is for their services every year um general health employee health and safety programs we've done a lot of wellness stuff out of that um you know some um lunches for staff things so support staff from a from just an overall organizational standpoint looking for main variances here i think i don't think we have the county tax bill yet so that's that's an estimate that right surely that can change right it goes up then just from from outside groups are a part of um regional planning commission member of that malika so those increases aren't huge like ira coy association um we'll have them scheduled to speak to you um they request i think i think they request about 15 000 each year i've put in 10 the last couple of years um so they're gonna have that conversation with them where where you want to land on on that number um our social services organizations um you have a committee that um gets those requests and allocates those funds a number of local nonprofits that are make requests and then this money that's in the budget the select board tasked that committee with allocating for those requests i know they've certainly gotten a lot of requests the last few years which exceed the amount of money that's allocated given that i gave it a small increase of a couple thousand dollars but there's certainly there's certainly a lot of need there community partnerships include things like the town band use female rep department and this is comes out of this budget now very small increase there the largest increase we're seeing is transportation that's green mountain transit being a member of that entity um we're also part of the um the ADA program and the elderly and disabled transportation program i did email their CFO to ask why the big jump in the ADA allocation of 18 thousand dollars and i um i'm pulling it up i i recall it's mainly driven by use um so we're seeing it's based on a number of users um well um i remember i think they came and talked to us like one of my very first meetings and then they were going away from use and going towards population which i remember saying that so maybe they didn't haven't pulled that trigger yet but i can't believe our use has gone up that much i'll find the email from it because i i asked him that she said it was based upon population not use right so just they wanted to go to population not use but i thought put us at a huge disadvantage and that that may be the just a general number the 230 thousand dollars for the bus line itself okay so maybe they didn't change that which is why it's relatively flat yeah that would make more sense i'm planning to ask them to come in january because this is certainly a larger variant so we typically have them come once a year so they can maybe they would be good to answer those questions about their their assessments of the town there i point that out as as a larger one within within this budget what's clock winding so we have a town clock winder we have a town clock it's in the steeple the federated church it's we own the clock in the church we own the clock we own the clock and we when the church steeple was replaced the clock stayed in there we've we pay someone bill white who passed away a couple years ago he that clockings be wound a couple times a week so we have a stationary bicycle that uses a counterweight of a box of rocks and someone has to ride the bicycle to pull the counterweight in the clock so we pay um brian that's really got to be part of whatever your wilson thing is for the year what you're yeah i i i did a video about it a few years ago yeah interviewed bill i still want to see it in person all these years yeah i know you have to get up there we'll arrange that it's uh it'd be like being the capital rotunda i'm finally made it should be seen it's it's gonna be and the board recognized bill white for his service and named the the clock room after him after a three passed you know nice resident yeah um eric what's the $1,000 for residents assistance under social services yeah we typically use that um shrill you tend to manage if we get on someone who might might need some help and yep someone who might have their electricity turned off or they don't have money to pay a fuel bill then they give me permission to reach out to whoever it's typically utilities sometimes it's been run they'll give me permission to talk to the provider so we can get the big picture before making a decision about how much we're gonna help okay sounds good thanks ssta that must be in here too somewhere isn't it yep that's part of transportation services that would be e and e and d transportation yeah there's no other questions there we're almost there just the lightning round here um so you have a tab called uh capital and debts it's right near the beginning here who's nice handwriting is it yours surely or is it no definitely not my that was samara who um actually a teacher and oh she worked for us the last three summers so that was samara okay so here you'll see in our on i'm on page 55 um this is always a good schedule for the board to be aware of it's our debt service so you'll see all our outstanding debt items here and the payment uh point out new to this is i think surely rolled our we have two different ambulances that are rolled into the principal and interest payments so the addition of the new ambulance this year that we're now paying off you see that number jumped overall as we have these bonds that are maturing as the principal gets paid off the interests are going down each year so that contributes to a decrease in some of these lines so where i i'd say we're in an overall it's a good um good place in our debt schedule i think we're just under seven percent of our operating budget it's debt um as we look forward the next couple years we're gonna start seeing those um public safety buildings mature um on page 57 you'll see um public safety principle and interest the three bond series maturity dates in 25 26 and 27 so you see those are you add up those principal payments that's $320,000 that would be mature as of f y 28 uh with 165 of that maturing in f y 26 so those start to come off our books along with the sidewalk bond um i believe that's that's about the same time two and 26 as i recall i was going to say that if you go to the capital budget tab page 11 you will actually see how those are rolling off there's a five-year amortization it's much easier to see it there yeah that's the better look yeah i like i like this as the town thinks about any potential new bonds if if you were to decide to bond for part of the parking lot or old brick church fire suppression or combination thereof we'd have to um put at least the first interest payment in here so that would be in addition to the operating budget we we'd estimate what the um we thought the bond interest rate would be to the budget for that so that would be an add to the budget on the capital side of the operating budget so as you go through the well while you're here in capital you're at a page nine of capital this is where we have everything in the capital budget with a revenue source attached to it so the the operating category is from the operating budget so it's five hundred and five eight hundred so so those funds are transferred from the general funds to the capital fund so this capital tab in general fund that reflects this money that's going into the capital fund for the general fund those that's how they're going to be tied each other um i mentioned in previous years this column for fund balance this hundred and sixty seven two fifty we would have that originate um going assigned to the general fund then transfer the capital fund so what we're suggesting this year is just to allocate it directly to the capital fund and not have it flow through the general fund before in that capital tab you'll see in the general fund there was other movement of those fund balance dollars as well so do those not have to be approved by voters they um the select board can commit um can assign them um and i ran this by our auditors but i wanted to double check it with the town attorney so i've sent him a a note on that too just to make sure or or we're set on that yeah that would be different than the school municipality so yeah and the select board's policy the select board can can assign these these funds as well like during the year well okay yeah trust you trust us just yeah you we have to vote on them you're gonna move if you're gonna assign money to that fund yeah that's why i want to double check our policy with with the town attorney make sure we've tend to bake these things into the general fund every year that the voters approve that way right right so i just uh i'll report back back want to double i always want to double check these things sure so that is debt and capital are there fund balance updates in here yeah i'd be the transmittal page 14 page 14 good eric while we're looking at that on page 14 it seems like if we had you tell me if i'm wrong about that we used fund balances as being proposed to us now we're still going to be near the we're going to be 16.3 percent of the operating yep yeah yep as notice i think the government finance officer association at the top of the page not that i know exactly what that is is recommending two months of operating expenses maintained and unrestricted balance that's about two and a half just a little over two and a half million ted when you look at that calculation this is the operating fund fund balance though correct those all sorts of other fund balances impact fees and all that kind of stuff right and that they're not in any of this that's what i'm just wanting to make sure i understood yep yeah and this when shrillian i do we started doing this exercise a few years ago with try to understand where this was going to land trying to forecast it out 18 months or so but becomes a policy decision for you of how much do you want to do you want to use and we've come into this pattern where we haven't had to touch it but uh at some point it's not going to be there and you're going to keep a keep a healthy reserve audience for this one the last piece is just the revenue budget you've heard from most departments on their department revenue i'm on page 37 right now but i i covered most of this in my overview on tuesday night but basically where this is where we get the tax rate and the tax revenue the local option tax as well and all the details run through here but the big overall it's this initial budget has a three and a half cent tax rate increase the local option tax we're increasing by just over a half million dollars based on the look back the last few years and applying a growth factor um we're starting to see it used to be really 50 percent property 25 local option tax 25 everything else that 25 percent of everything else including fund balance a little bit of arpa we're starting to take that down a little bit more apply more of the option some property taxes and those are all the elements of your budget proposals to think of questions for eric before we there's no this whole thing has been a manager's import all that yeah so i think the next agenda in front of me but the next thing would be um um yeah um but are there any final thoughts on things that we've covered lots of them but yeah lots of consuming one day well so um we are gonna reconvene on january second um that will be a public hearing um okay um can i ask what people think of the first time we've done this on a saturday as opposed to once a week every week during december i think it's preferable yeah i do i was not looking forward to six hours but it went brutal yeah we have a very entertaining staff it's not just it's not just education well i don't even know why you do it every night in december but i know that's that even anytime i'm more fresh this time of day than i am at it pocket night so there's even if it was just that okay so um january second um six six thirty yeah that work every one six thirty start on january second for executive session you know to that was just going to add or gene and mike's um information when we come back in january we'll actually have a list of revenue changes and expenditure changes as some of these numbers um uh we receive the county tax or we receive more the final numbers from some of these things so we will have some changes to these numbers you're looking at now okay everybody have a good rest of the month and happy holidays we are