 Good evening everyone. A nice wintery day in middle sex. Getting ready for a lovely storm when we're going to get to enjoy all four seasons of the year in about 24 hours. We're going to go from 50 degrees to minus 20 in about 12 hours. Get the sandpile ready. And the generator's fired up. By your fuel early. So I will call the meeting to order. Do we have any amendments to the agenda? And we do have Ruben here with us. Welcome Ruben. And we are happy to be together with you this evening and you are number one on the agenda. So take it away. Okay I guess I'm gonna turn that around on you guys and ask what questions you have for me that I can answer for you. I know that a subset of us not but I'm not sure where your deliberations or discussions or thoughts are at. So so we're getting back to the meeting we had downstairs whenever it was a month ago. I I think I think we all felt after that meeting and the board felt after we presented to them that we had largely had some miscommunication issues between your organization and us and that was the source of a lot of angst and unhappiness that was going on on both sides and I believe unless someone feels otherwise that were that were past that and the billing issue was is resolved and understood and yeah I don't know if any other board members have any other. I haven't yeah I haven't heard anything negative since then for me it cleared a lot of a lot of things up but I know we changed some communication efforts and whatnot on our end so I guess it would be good to hear from your side if things are working well since then but I haven't I haven't heard any anything on our end. No I agree. I think that I think the big thing Ruben is to is to know what the what the plan is going forward and to you know work together to implement that plan and you know this is a good time because this is our budget time we're trying to figure out our our money and we're aware of the server issue but I'm sure there are other issues we need to be aware of and concerned about so yeah. So from my from sort of you know my vantage point I have seen that things appear to be working much better it seems like I'm not hearing the level of frustration that I was with you know getting responses to tickets and stuff so I guess I would sort of looking at you because I think you drew the short straw. One ongoing issue which is really it evolves into I think a bigger conversation. I have had an outstanding ticket now for I think it was the week after we met with you and it's regarding an email issue and I know Holland has been in contact with Rackspace and Rackspace has been not in touch with this one. The problem is it's still an outstanding issue and we seem to be getting no resolution. I don't want to put a million dollars into resolving this issue because I think the bigger problem that we have which I think is something for discussion is how happy people or unhappy people are with the email in place. I know there's been a lot of discussion that you know they can't get it on the phone or they can't get it on this computer they can't we can't easily go in and change email addresses. We had a security issue where we had to sign a document just so two people could be able to read the same email and those are you know I think as a board you should look at you know what is the solution to that and you know I know Phil spent a lot of time researching these different ones and that was his recommendation and we went with that but as one of the users of it and I've had several problems that I wanted to bring that up as something to discuss. I am going to an express and unvarnished but data backed opinion which we expressed in the document that we required you to sign when you move to Rackspace. It's not a great service. It's very inexpensive which makes it really attractive but I don't know if you saw the headlines two weeks ago but Rackspace's entire hosted exchange platform got ransomware and that really sort of fleshed out what our concerns with their service have been right along. They just don't take security and years ago they had this this fanatical support mantra that they beat their marketing trumps about and frankly they were that was fair but that has not been the experience for the past several years. Their support is atrocious and you know we're on the record so I'm not going to go too far down the rabbit hole but but suffice it to say we made you sign a damaged labor when you elected to go with that service for a number of reasons hinging on security. So our our opinion is that you should not use Rackspace. Our further opinion is that you should pick one email service provider across the ecosystem of the town and use it and that does mean it's more expensive right. It means that instead of you know maybe a couple of bucks a mailbox it's several times that for even the basic mailboxes but it does mean that you have one platform to secure one tenant to handle one set of maintenance to do and it's going to follow the standards that when you do the passive survey for example about your cyber security practices there are questions on there that you cannot answer in the affirmative honestly that's not possible in this in the Rackspace ecosystem. So so again sort of backing into that conversation again that is why we sent the liability waiver saying if you're going to require us to do this we're going to require that you indemnify us from any damages that may occur from the use of this service we just don't think it's the right service. And what would you recommend? You use Office 365 for some of your users now. Office 365 is a premium service it's much more expensive. I think it's $8 a month for a basic mailbox and depending on what your you know your needs are you might actually even more expensive mailbox than that because you may want to be able to do things like archiving and discovery so that if people are conducting town business using email system you can go back in time and that is that's you know that is a select board decision that's not an RB Tech decision but but you can't do that with Rackspace. So if I'm a Rackspace user and I go and I do something that I shouldn't using my town email address and I want to destroy the evidence I can just go clean my mailbox out and you guys have no recourse. So archiving and discovery is something that from you know meeting law to just not even with open meeting law but just best practice and protection of of town resources that you should consider right so that so that an email user can't go in and just wipe their mailbox out and have the town have no recourse. Do you have a sense of how many users we have in the current system? I don't have an exact number I think at the moment it's a small handful. I believe it's just the just the town office. 15 maybe or so. I think it's less than I don't think it's around 11 because it's all of the select board each has one. But are the select board users on Rackspace? Yes they're all on Rackspace now the highway department has one the listers have one we have three listers or two listers but they use the same mailbox and that's where we were having the trouble with the bookkeeper and I were using the same mailbox but yet with the dual authenticity or whatever we couldn't log in we have that issue so so we probably have I know the budget committee is on a distribution list so they have they don't each have a mailbox and what did you say the cost for the 365 base starting place? Change online is about eight or nine bucks a month. A mailbox just to be clear about it a mailbox is basically a person yeah right so you can have a hundred mailboxes that are distribution lists and you don't pay for those right so so those don't cost you anything in the Office 365 world. Do you have an opinion of like Google's G Suite and the services that they provide? My my opinion boils down to so fundamentally no my opinion from an operational perspective is more that I really encourage clients to pick one or the other and so if you have an organizational need for Word, Excel, you know those Office apps that means that you're going to buy them online because you can't buy the standalone versions anymore which means that you have to have an Office 365 tenant and if you have to have an Office 365 tenant then it really makes sense to not also have a Google workspace tenant that you have to administer and do all of that stuff with not to say that you can't but every piece of extra vendor or complexity ecosystem is more stuff that you have to maintain and be responsible for and secure and do all of that stuff so generally speaking I really my my encouragement is to pick one and stick with it and generally and Peter you know I am not a Microsoft fanboy at all but from a purely practical perspective and even from a security perspective the less you have to secure the easier it is and the less expensive it is. We just upgraded all the offices to 365 so that part's already in. So that just makes sense. If that's the recommendation we're already utilizing that service. I mean I think the only reason that we did Rackspace was purely for the cost. We were like okay we all need to have an email that is not our personal email and it was but also to his point it was something about the backup that we had to you don't get the backup or something with there was some kind of do you recall Sarah what that was. It's odd because I remember it's too bad Phil's not here. I remember Phil saying that one of the benefits of Rackspace was that there would be an archiving and system because we were all using our private g-mails we were on Comcast and so if we were all on Rackspace that would solve that you know the Hillary Clinton problem. Also to be 100% transparent I am not a Rackspace administrator so I could be incorrect on that but but that potential incorrect statement aside does not change our overarching organizational opinion of Rackspace and how they conduct I mean it makes sense to me what you're saying if we're already was in 365 and we can get the service out of out of that platform it doesn't look to me you know based on what I understand we pay for Rackspace but there's a significant cost difference between you know if it's eight nine dollars a user I think we were paying $120 or something like that I just noticed the bill today it was 80 something the orders but I mean there's there's not a significant significant difference and for me if there's an ease of use and on your end you know a simplicity that that comes with it from having everything kind of service together it's a no-brainer so well the other the other comment I would make and I was you know I understood the reason why but I was uncomfortable when we had to sign that indemnity agreement and that means that something bad happens and they get caught in the middle of it we have to reimburse them for their expenses and I don't believe our insurance policy covers that I would be surprised it covers that so that's going to be the full-faithing credit of the taxpayers of middle sex they're on the hook for that yeah so it just for a lot of reasons I don't think it I don't think it makes sense and you know we thought we were doing the right thing at the time we all supported it I believe but it's just turned out between the problems of the other issues and your organization's discomfort with it I think we need to move on I guess the question is what's the easiest and best way to do that and what's the time and you know do we wait till we get the new server to do it do we do it as soon as we possibly can I don't think they have a whole lot to do with each other to be completely honest okay moving mail from one service provider to another really doesn't intersect with with your internal infrastructure a whole lot so here's a little so that we keep can we keep our same email addresses oh I have all these lingering dead email addresses that it's hard to kill them as people keep trying to still be middle sex for month or yeah okay a different host the reason I'm asking the question in this meeting is before budgeting purposes yeah that's well part of the part of the discussion tonight is is to get an idea or at least give you the guidelines so you can get back to us with an idea not only of what we need to budget this next year but what we need to budget go into the future for your capital plan and so we will have to put a project together for with a quote obviously for because because in part sort of like you've experienced right depending on the type of connection that you have to the rackspace email that might mean that emails only exist on a workstation which means that that's a much more labor-intensive migration than just pulling the email out of a mailbox over on this clip cloud provider and moving them over here we have automated tools that can move from cloud to cloud the automated tools will not move from a workstation or multiple workstations back up to another cloud so as far as I know and helping out during the so I've had good success accessing rackspace on my laptop my iPad my phone and I've used to other computers when I've been out visiting my kids or whatever and I hope and pray isn't it isn't keeping those emails on those devices I don't think it is it's probably not the fact that you can see the same emails from multiple devices right but you can set it up in a way that that doesn't happen so like if you know if somebody logs in from another machine and now you can't see those emails that's because that machine was configured in a way that it's actually pulling the messages down that's not what's happening with our problem is I can't send an email from the treasurer's email to the treasurer email so like if I want to come first and I had always been able to do it up until I want to say three months ago so that's where we're having because I want all the treasurer's business to be kept in the treasurer's email and just because the bookkeeper is she's doing the daily work and I'm doing you know so we're both in tune with what's happening and we can no longer pass these emails back and forth and and I just don't want emails going you know not that I don't trust the person it's I just feel I need to have a handle on everything all the correspondence that's coming through yeah I would seem it would seem to me that you could accomplish that through two separate users and having a forwarding feature but why did it work three months ago between each other well I'm just it's it's so I can send emails to myself but I think it's cleaner if the two people using that address or whatever have their own accounts but if you want to share the communications coming into those to the treasurer position the bookkeeper position or whatever then you can have them forward to each other so that it's you know anything that comes through the bookkeeper get shared automatically with the treasurer and I don't know that the total impact of that but you know I know that we we do some things like that where we have some some emails that are there people can send to you don't have to monitor them because they get sent to a primary so the short answer is that we as part of a mailbox or a mail migration will work with you to figure out what your workflow is and how we can best configure the new mail system to to work with that right so it may be that you but we we tend to discourage shale shared mailboxes because there's a lack of accountability there right the accountability and transparency isn't good not to say that there aren't use cases where they're really that's the thing that makes sense and so you know I in this moment I don't have a recommendation but I can tell you that we should be able to say but so really what I would say is and we should probably have a motion in both so it's in the minutes that we've decided to do this assuming we've decided tonight but assuming that's the case and we'll find out in a minute I think we need to conclude our email discussion tonight and talk about some of these other issues because we're quickly going to be going to be out of time here but I think you're getting a sense of what the concerns have been we know what your concerns are and yeah if you could get back to us yeah I mean we're we're trying to finalize our budget when Sarah I know by the end of January yeah basically the end of January I would think in the next two to three weeks we should absolutely okay well just like everybody else sooner is sooner is better right of course but even if it's a rough number and you have to say this this is a rough number for budgeting purposes but it may be more or less you know whatever just to give us something to work with so much like I did with the server right like I can give you a terrible number that we will not yeah but give us a realistic number don't make it don't make it look worse than it is please you you'll do better than that yeah you know we can actually build the project and you know we're a little backed up on doing that fine of a quote and it's likely to change because the pricing for the you know the migration tool and all of that might change in six months yeah before we're ready to actually do the migration so so it's a little like that I just have one quick question what are the other towns use I know you work with a lot of other municipalities do they go with 365 they're mostly moving through 65 where frankly I would say maybe a slim majority to maybe a little bit more of our clients are moving pretty steadily down 365 it's you know the the tools the collaboration tools teams and share point and the files you know all of those things sorry I guess I'm just talking about of our time room so sorry someone really important members sorry what should we wait and see what if the pricing really comes back at I mean the vote is to get a recommendation get a proposal I don't know maybe we don't need to go get us a proposal we can do a fine with that we can formally prove it when we have the proposal from us okay so we now have what we believe to be a good server number 18 to 20 is what Ruben had sent me and that includes I'm assuming installing and everything that's the entire project project and that is a budgetary number meaning that's a number that I am confident that this project will come in under yeah so that is a heavily contingent on pricing and availability of the server parts and hardware that supply line is train rec so an example we had a particular part inside of a server that's normally 400 bucks and they went oh sorry we're out of those right now but we can get you this one that's $4,000 oh my gosh so obviously we don't know what the new world so it did turn into like a half a day of chasing down an alternate part number so that we weren't 3,500 dollars high on the server quote so I know we need to do this as soon as possible this budget we're talking about is effective next July 1st I believe you said the earliest you could do it anyway with sometime this spring the earliest we're gonna be able to do it is probably early summer and so this has to be done if my recollection is right you're running a server 2012 which is going end of support in October so I think the server is aging I think you've got an operating system that's going out of support in fall so there's a pretty direct window and we don't want to go too far in our last meeting it was like you know we're talking about maybe six weeks of difference between when we can get to it and when the budget would accommodate we can be comfortable putting it in their shirts but we don't have to try and find the money in this your support so I guess the one question that I would have for revolving around that is lead time on components and you know if we need to authorize a purchase of components for an order now what was the impact of the town is it is it you know we pay for it when when the project's complete and we can get stuff ordered now given lead times till then or how does that work we will in place for it at a time closer to when we're ready to actually order the gear so that when we invoice you and you pay it we can turn it into an order quickly and what we often have done lately because the supply line is such a mess is presuming that you know we operate on a little bit of a leap of faith but you know we talk to you guys you guys say yeah this is in line with what we've talked about and we'll actually order the gear so that it doesn't disappear before you know we send you the invoice and you're able to approve the cutting the check or whatever we we don't have terms with our suppliers so the moment that we order it we pay for it so there's a little bit of a tension there but but we have found that holding too firm of a line has turned into a procurement nightmare that we end up spending just inordinate amounts of time on and so that sort of perceived risk of just like ordering it before we have the check in hand from the client has been something that we've done several times lately just to avoid having poor Brittany chasing parts down for three days yeah I just turn so basically we've got to be ready to pay but but you will have approved the project quote at that point yeah so we'll have you know giving you a formal quote for a server upgrade project yep and then we invoice for the parts once we get the approval and in terms of in terms of how that would go is that an over-the-week end type of project is it a we're going to be down for a few days are we going to be we usually it's usually set the expectation that you're going to be down for a day and that it should be during a work day which understanding that it's a pain from a town perspective doesn't mean that you're down down for that entire day but what that does mean is that people that are here that need things to work are able to test once we've actually moved everything across and remap the drives and done all of the stuff that needs to be done so if we do it on a weekend there's not somebody here to test to make sure that you know for example all of the modules have never been working again so it's really helpful and we always schedule in coordinate to make sure that it's a day that you know folks are here and maybe it's you know your low traffic day a degree possible but so that we can test and it also means that we're not running the clock at time and a half or double time yeah so from a cost perspective for you so in terms of our in terms of our network our other equipment what else have we got that we're looking at going ahead let's see there's not a whole lot else that we put in our multi-year plan you know the one thing that we that we recognize when we met is that we had not done a very good job of sort of syncing up once a year and so one of the things that that we did internally is historically at contract renewal time we send emails out and we say hey we'd like to meet and do a contract renewal and just like refresh tell you where you're at check in and we are we're not finding great success with getting responses to those emails people are busy and we get it and and our internal process was that we would set that meeting up and then we would build this executive summary of sort of you know here's your new current state here's your new desired state and here's the things that we would recommend that you do moving forward so recognizing that we were not getting a great response rate to those to those meeting setups at renewal time we are just building the executive summary and we'll send it to you every year and my suspicion and this has been proving to be true is that even if you don't respond to our email to pay it's renewal time we'd like to just check in there's usually enough questions about what's in the executive summary that it prompts an email back going hey we like to talk about that executive summary that you just sent over now refresh my memory our contract is July 1st June 1st I don't have that in front of me I don't recall oh it's April I think it's April but the written I'll have to look and see when the agreement ends now because I think you want to start a conversation so you know what that's that's the good news because my point was going to be this is the time of the year we really focused on that stuff we're thinking about it we're going through our planning process so that lines up perfectly with the and you know I will reiterate the offer that I made in that meeting which is that I am happy to sit down with the select board and go over what's in the executive summary and you know if you have questions about it's nice here as nice as it is to have you and look you in the eye we now have the technology to well sit down you can either be physical or virtual but what is it what is the estimated life expectancy of a new server we tell you to budget for four years four years four years it's not uncommon to run it for five and that is highly dependent on how the machine is performed over the course of the last four years was yours is starting to show some signs of age I think we had a it's it's shown a couple of issues over the summer that it's there you go there was conversation about potentially after this next server replacement by the time we get there to be moving to a completely cloud-based system entirely possible and we are completely supportive of that the driving force for you guys there's two one is multi-user quick book in the building and the other is the NIMRIC applications being in the building so as long as you have something in the building that requires a database back-end you're going to have to have a physical server here and if you're going to have to have a physical server then you might as well keep the active directory and stuff here because otherwise you're sort of stapling the two together it's sort of pivoting off of the email conversation one of the things that you don't have right now that you will have once you move to Office 365 is synchronization between the user accounts on the server and up to the Office 365 world which means that you have one place to disable or enable or provision an account so if you have somebody who leaves the organization you go into active directory you disable them and they're disabled here they can't log into the workstations and they can't log into Office 365 anymore and it's one place and you're done so that single sign on is from from a management and security perspective is really important as time goes on presuming that you know if those you move to NIMRIC in the cloud and you moved to QuickBooks online for example then you okay so presuming that those those drivers for infrastructure in the building get removed then you could move to an entirely Office 365 world all of your files all of your collaboration all of that stuff is in the Office 365 world and then what you do is you back your Office 365 instance up out of the cloud either to here or to our portal or so the other thing that enters into this is almost certainly by then four years from next summer we'll have a nice screaming screaming fast fiber line right outside our door here so that ought to make that cloud situation even better I would think right because you'll have I mean honestly your internet is relatively reliable I mean it goes out every once in a while I see you know every couple of weeks the agent status goes out okay we're looking we are looking forward to the fiber world but physically right here it's not so bad but all of the other real reservoir yeah rural areas the internet is pretty atrocious and so other questions or members during that I don't know if it's worth having it installed or should we wait until you know the system I don't know how bad that one is how often you use it I used a lot it's really slow you have a depreciating asset why I just want gas so we'll put in a service order and you know to sort of back up to our basic function if it's slowing you down you're way more expensive than a computer right so from a basic you know technological what what is a computer system but a tool like if the tools are slowing the people behind the tools down then then we need to be looking at that yeah one last quick question for you so we are right in the starting process of looking at a potentially substantial renovation to this building so if there's anything we should be thinking about from a computer point of view as we do that it would be good to know I mean if we're going to a cloud play system I don't think there's much we need to do except have plenty of outlets and places for access points okay well Roman thank you very much yeah well it's good to see you I'm giving your family a good holiday like that keep your father under control he runs around Middlesex quite a bit well he's he's he and his cohorts have brought new life to our village and we and we appreciate it very much you know speaking as not from Middlesex or you know the stuff up at Camp Mead has brought us into town a whole bunch of times right so yeah there's that new wine store I have a very favorite wine in the whole world which is a Sancerre they had it and he was like oh yeah perfect totally knew what he was talking about new stuff well it almost it almost sounds like economic development doesn't know it's fantastic it's a great little store great not so little actually no I didn't mean to no no no but I'm just I'm just saying for a wine beer store it's a pretty good size probably bring people in around the town who like one well especially all those fancy folks going down to the valley they'll be stopping in there you go it's too bad we lost money stuff though I missed money stuff thank you thank you probably thank you all thank you have a great night before you go I cannot how about your how about any little people in your house would they like a few cookies my poor little person is home with a fever right now you can find your way out all right okay capital planning committee to outline progress and capital improvement planning and discussions of budgeting for these big ticket items action possible Randy and we have Elias and Mark on the owl good evening gentlemen is it you ready or is it I think I think Mark was gonna take me oh okay very well maybe I can turn it up I think he's coming out of the TV well you shouldn't be coming out of the TV Oh look at Elias is no baby oh is it Evelyn is that her name Elias say something yeah this is Evelyn okay okay now mark you say something yeah okay great alright I'll just make a few opening comments to start the conversation the the intent here is to consolidate and formalize capital asset replacement funding so it's easier to manage report on talk about etc and we can have a discussion about how that would look in the budget and Darinda has kindly put together a I would say a draft of a budget that would would show a capital funding section in it secondly you know we have some some big expenses coming primarily in fire and public works of course that's excluding what's gonna happen with the town hall which will likely be a bond issue so for fire outside of one replacement that's the rescue vehicle we do have a runway for funding some of those replacement costs has basically someone don't happen until late in the decade or early actually early in the 30s so but on the public works side we don't have any really any runway we've got from the asset replacement summary page you can see virtually every year from 2024 through 2030 we have something that's scheduled for replacement so if we begin to at least put some money into funding for these we'll have at least some flexibility on how we want to how we want to pay for them how we want to finance them some of these items particularly in public works some of them are of a of a size that we might be able to pay for it depending on the interest rate environment versus financing it now in terms of financing this asset inventory is put together with an assumption of a 3% interest rate and in in some conversations with to render I've updated that to 5% so the numbers on the sheet represent a 5% rate again we don't know what's going to happen looks like interest rates at least in the north in the near term are going to continue to rise how soon they'll drop as anybody's guess the other point is that the costs in this spreadsheet have not been updated for inflation because we don't we don't know what those figures would be so I just wanted to let folks know provide that context before we have our discussion can I just ask a question of this what you just handed us which is the budget we found the last page this sort of a section so what I so what I did was I removed the funds that would normally fund like the bridge fund yeah I took them out of the operating budget and put them into this section called capital planning so that's where all of our savings are going and then our budget numbers will reflect actual and in this scenario too there's a couple of places where we've never budgeted right capital planning but their recommendations their recommendations are we should have these I like and then they might fund those or whatever okay in the future just one other point I wanted to make and that's about about debt service because generally the majority of capital asset replacement ends up in debt service you know we know this generally it's trucks heavy equipment etc financed over any number of years or even even you know what 30 40 year bond ends up in debt service so just looking ahead over the next three to five years our debt service is going to increase and potentially significantly if the replacement schedules that we have that were defined are actually realistic so that's another thing to keep in mind right now I think Dorenda can correct me I think right now our debt service is around 183 thousand dollars it'll go down a bit I think Dorenda is considering paying off one of the is one year left on one of the loans but again we're going to start to add to that year by year and so that's going to continue to grow so again I don't know that we any of us have an idea on how much debt service we're willing to carry because like the federal government and interest on the debt right debt service you got to pay up you know it's not something you can take out of a budget and it it'll eat into other things that we want to do Mark correct me if I'm wrong but when we were looking at this currently that reflected like what it was it was just under 10% of the of the annual budget and based on what we looked at for the next few years that might creep to between 15 and 20% of the overall budget yeah that's that's accurate probably more more toward 15 because it depends on how much the budget increases over the years and again what that debt service is but right now I think we're about we're about 10% and I think you know that's going to go up so I think one of the other things that I'd just like to point out for for the rest of the board is through our discussions you know I think you know obviously there's there's huge investment coming and one of the conversations that we had where we could make an impact on the shorter term notes that we might be pulling against vehicles and things like that and and maybe not so necessarily making a huge dent in trying to look at some of the long-term bonds for like buildings and things like that we're really going to make a difference and and what kind of payments we have on an annual basis out there so we've tried to focus on you know those seven-year notes for equipment and and things like that instead of the long-term 30-year building notes and whatnot so things that we can we can provide a little bit more impact on so I just wanted to point that out as well so can I just clarify so in yours some of you what you're suggesting is that some of these things that we have historically gotten a loan for like a vehicle purchase for example that we are like for example highway heavy equipment and and vehicle upgrade purchases $30,000 would be what you're putting into a fund and then presumably next year so that in two years we'll have $60,000 and we would use all of that and get no loan at all for our trucks or but I mean over time eventually as we build it up there'll be more funds in there to to be able to pick and choose from but but we recognize that especially trying to start this process we're not going to be in that position for quite some time without major impact to the voters so the thought here is that as we as we begin the process and we start funding these these line items the effort is really to take off some of the peak in valleys and the impact that we have and it's essentially used as a down payment for some of those and and we're not fully you know we're not fully funding it through this effort and we're not you know borrowing a hundred percent of the cost of the vehicle either so over time it maybe it gets better and if we're able to get a year extra out of a piece of equipment because it's held up and we keep funding then then eventually it you know it builds up and and we have more flexibility at a later point in time. So I would I would just say and you've all heard me say this over the years is that I have been historically against the idea of pre-funding capital purchases because it's like charging the taxpayers for something that they might never get to use or never get to benefit from. They're paying for it but they never get to see it whereas if you borrow the money if you borrow the money as that notice paid off the taxpayers are seeing the benefit of that new trucker that greater or or whatever it is however all that said the idea of being able to make a more substantial down payment reduce the debt service and create a balance between the two things I think makes sense. It would be a long time and a lot of taxpayer paying to build up a fund to fund all of this or even a significant portion of it. So I think it's a good objective. I like the idea of the planning part is really important obviously and trying to level out the impact by having some extra funds and paying to attention to when and how we do these things. It's all a sense of the world. The payment fund is a great example. We have been funding that for years and we didn't have we covered entirely the center road project and we're going to have enough money to cover the shaded road project and you know it's and without having to make this great impact to the voters at the time we were doing the project. So there's something to be said about. Well no I agree. I mean the paving fund is the one big exception. We've always we've always funded that paving fund and we also put a little money in the bridge fund you know so it's not like it's not like we're not doing some of that but unlike unlike some towns where they you know save up money to buy the new truck or the new fire truck or whatever it is. We have not done that nor do I see a story. Yes Sarah. I have a question about funding. So as you guys know we have we have a paving fund. We have a bridge fund. What other funds do we have that have been approved by the voters? The town hall building fund. Yeah well was that and that and that was an actual created fund. Yeah we did that last year. You have restoration funds which is funny. Whenever you create a new fund it's got to go before the voters would tell me they got to say we're on board with this. Right. The budget. So I guess my next question right I figured you are just want to get this all. So I guess my next question is do you guys need another to put another fund on the warning for the 2020 March 23rd duty date equipment fund? Do we have the equipment fund? Well so that's that's the question. Yeah no it's part of the question for the select board and how do we how do we set this up and really it's a it's a capital improvement fund right where you've got different right different departments within that that have money allocated through the process and and I think the answer to your question is is yes how do we frame that I think is to be determined. I just want to first of all if you're if you're going to go forward with this you realize you have to put a question on the on the town of sage we are going to create a capital improvement fund if you don't have one you might say oh we have a bunch of little funds we don't need to do this but it sounds to me as though you guys are now moving around so that you might want to have a capital improvement fund and if so do I need to I just want to get the wording right for the warning you know there's something you're going to be voting on for in four weeks so I want I want that's what I'm going to hold on a capital improvement fund sounds like one thing but on here you have four new funds you have structures grounds you've got vehicle purchases you have heavy equipment you have opportunity fund that's a lot to put on and that's four different funds is there such a thing as having something like the capital improvement fund with sub-accounts that we only have very much my suggestion to to the budget committee was we had one and all those lines you're seeing underneath would be managed internally and not in separate funds they would be so when you're making when you're doing the presentation to the voters this is your what you're asking for for the capital improvement out that you're going to allocate 30,000 to the paving funds you're going to allocate you know 20,000 to the bridge fund 20,000 but it's one fund like that and then it would get separated we have to keep the accounting of it and not that not that it's our intent to do this but that also gives us flexibility if we need to take some extra money to do something because the money's old and not one so the budget yeah so the budget committee has had we've gone back and forth on this conversation and are they individual is it a group you know that that has a subset line item for departments underneath them and some of the conversations that we've had is you know this would I would imagine that this would require setting up some sort of a process and how this is viewed and if departments are are pushing forth you know request through the the capital improvement plan and being scored on on these efforts and that's how these things are being funded we'd like to make sure that if the highway department is being super diligent about about you know keeping things maintained and and going the extra mile to to hold on to a piece of equipment and and and gain some useful life out of it that that that those funds aren't necessarily just a free-for-all grab and and put anywhere else either benefit within their department because they're the ones making the effort to to try to hold on to the equipment maintain it better you know and what forth so I think there's a lot to be discussed and the back and forth and how that works but I think those are some of the conversations that that the budget committee and Durand has been attending all of our meeting we've been having you know understanding what were responsible put forth before the voters to sarah's point was like was a concern for us and how we present that um well actually my major concern is this whether or not you need a word you need a paragraph of the town and warning on the warning saying we are going to create a capital fund or capital improvement fund or capital plan fund yeah so I just want to talk to the lawyer about it make sure I get the wording right you know I think that was the consensus that the budget committee came to with that would be our recommendation that is to establish one capital improvement fund that has the subset from the different line items here underneath it can I just ask is heavy equipment and vehicle upgrade that refers to all of our like plows and everything not just like a greater excavator the whole nine-year trucks bigger bucket motor trucks yeah the trucks all of it yeah I'm just wondering like I go back to what Peter said about you know sort of we're always we're always getting a new truck right so it just it becomes I mean is it six of one half dozen of another right whether or not like I can see saving for something like an excavator and a greater which are these 10-year equipment right or more but like our regular cloud trucks that were every five years replacing or however we're replacing them and I and I and I you know agree with all these other funds I think these other ones are are I don't know what oh yeah that's vehicle for the fire that also includes fire like fire trucks right for a vehicle right so and those are also sort of few and far between right we're not replacing fire trucks every five years right so I'm just wondering if the heavy equipment and vehicle upgrades purchases we might want to consider using for the bigger ticket items as opposed to and then continuing to bond for our regular cloud trucks and our pickup trucks bond yeah borrow yes on borrow and finance and we may we may be in that boat and we're not we're not married to one or the other with the way that we've presented this as a as it's grouped together and I believe I guess Mark go ahead you've got your hand up so just an answer to Liz's question it's it's really about having the funds to have flexibility in what we do with them right there might be instances and what as as you describe we simply keep the money until a big ticket item like a greater comes up and we try to put as much money against it as possible it also depends on the interest rate environment at the time right if we've got a high interest rate we're going to buy a pickup truck with a plow for 50 grand and we have the money you might decide to put a big down payment on her to buy it outright but again that will depend on how much money we have in the fund will drive just how many options we're going to have it does it's nice because it does give us options I think you know as opposed to what we do now which is well we wear the mercy of the interest rate and we have to borrow to get it right whereas we might be able to say oh we can put half of the money down I'm sorry the other point I want to make is that you know we do get a discount with most of the stuff because we get trade in belly so we sort of have a we sort of have a down payment on some of this some of this stuff because we do get trade in so it's not like we're paying full boat all the time but again you know the more money we put in the fund you know for example um the fire engines we got three coming due in the early to mid 30s right who knows might be able to pay for half of one if the interest rate you know if the interest rate environment is such that it makes sense for us to do that or even pay for a whole one because as I said outside of the rescue vehicle that needs to be replaced there's not a fire engine replacement until 2032 I think and so with this would be a separate out of the budget vote right no it would be presented with part of the budget it would be presented as part of the budget but as a line item that we're creating this yeah it's just like a whole nother it's almost like a whole nother department's budget here just like you know how we isolate out the recreation budget you know the cip is its own section of the budget so as we're as we're putting to doing the work and putting the budget together just like everybody else comes to us and says okay I've got the planning commission's request here for 4450 the budget committee would essentially be coming to the select board with the funding proposal for the cip I guess my worry is that how what is the difference between getting rid of these things in here and adding some stuff up what is the what is the percentage of the whole budget like is this going to put us at a 15 percent increase and would we want to keep it out of the budget as a separate line item for the first year and then it becomes a part of the budget moving forward or not that doesn't and vote on it as a special article I'm not sure first you have to create you have to say are we going to create a capital improvement fund? Well you are going to create the fund before we can fund it right. Capital improvement fund already exists but you don't you can't you can't put uh heavy equipment in there they they have a highway fund they have a well they they don't they have a paving fund you have a paving fund but under the capital improvement that's where the highway the paving fund will exist yeah I guess I'm just saying that so right now you have a fund for you have a town hall fund you have a bridge fund you have a paving fund you have a town garage fund you have a recreation fund so if you need something like a you need a heavy equipment fund which is what Liz is talking about that fund right now doesn't exist right right so you would either have to create that or else you would have to say you know what we're going to do we're going to have to create a capital improvement fund and we're going to have subsections with this and then we're going to eliminate all those other funds right that would have to be I'm just thinking of the article warning I'm just really just thinking as a town clerk what is the worry going to be on that right and then once that is designated then you can then you can move money and then you can you know budget it right so the conservation fund that's another funding fund right all right but they ask but that is a separate article that's not capital that isn't included in the capital planning right I'm just saying I'm just thinking of all the funds it's another fund but that's kept within which yeah I know I know so just to just to back up a little bit for a minute and believe me I appreciate all the work and thought you guys have put into this but I keep looking at the scary bottom line and just wondering wondering what our appetite is as a town for budget increases I mean all this work is not going to be worth anything if we can't get a budget passed so you know I'm looking at this I'm looking at this number before before special articles of thirty seven point seven three percent right but that also has a hundred and ninety eight thousand dollars still sitting in it for the highway department I understand exactly what it is but I'm just saying all of this comes down to how big of the tax I mean what's the minimum amount of tax increase we can get by with and what's the right amount to ask for and what's the tolerance of the voters going to be and I don't know the answers to those questions but I could tell you I don't think it's thirty seven percent so yeah go ahead Mark so an answering Liz's question about you know the sixty thousand increase funding that would be what four percent of the current this year's budget so it is it's a piece there in terms of what we're looking at for budget increases as Dorinda said if you if you pulled out the hundred and eighty thousand for paving and let's just say we decided between mud seas and mitigation and gravel and left one of them in you're down to about fifteen percent for an increase over over this year now I think where we're going to end up is somewhere between 10 and 15 percent there's not a lot of fat in this budget you know I have looked at it you know I've asked her into some questions not it's just not a lot of fat in this budget so I think we will end up is we may not fund sixty thousand an additional sixty thousand for the cip but I think we should fund something even if it's only ten thousand or twenty thousand at least we start the process of annually funding capital replacement I couldn't agree with you more Mark so the other the other point that I want to bring up is you know this this is a result of requests of the of the townspeople right um so we put it we did our due diligence we put it put together the inventory put this together um and if we don't if we don't start this sometime um the impact to later but it's going to be huge yeah so that the effort put forth in the in the trying to fund this is to realize that it creates an impact an increased impact now so that's going to offset okay the dramatic increase later right and I think if it's framed and we're just we're explaining what we're doing that we're sort of shifting our you know we're we're planning for for future expenses as opposed to borrowing at the time we need the money right then and there and borrowing for the full amount that if we're explaining to them that we're we're basically budgeting differently right and that in the first year there's a pain point because you have to you have to fund it to start the the future decreases if that makes any sense so right what was the increase for the truck for this year so we just barely bought a truck right what are we looking at 40 to 45 thousand dollars worth of principal payments for that for the next five years that's because we don't have anything to put into it and if we're able to say to take this and and you know I think the warranties on the truck's bike was seven years Vic is that that ring a bell yeah and then that's all I'm going to go up and did we finance we financed for the full seven years yeah so I mean if we're if we're constantly borrowing a hundred percent for these vehicles that at who knows what kind of interest rate we're going to be facing you know that 40 percent or 40 thousand dollar increase just in the principal alone if you put that into a percentage of the budget I think what I was trying to express earlier is we're going to be hitting instead of the 10 of the budget being you know tied up into debt service and everything we're working up into that 15 and 20 percent range where if we can offset that now by or offset that later by starting to fund it now we're facing smaller increases in the future mark it it's unfortunate that we're kind of in a tough spot right we don't have a lot of runway it would be nicer if we didn't have a big capital replacement until five years from now but unfortunately in public works we're going to get hit every year for a while so in the short term it's more about softening the impact there's not really a lot we're going to be able to do in the short term in terms of the debt service and impacts to the tax rate it just isn't it's more in the long term how we save and then selectively target those funds that has the best impact on keeping the tax rate as stable as possible and none of us knows right now what that would be in the long term but as we move through this process and we're more conscious year to year we'll learn and figure out where we want to put the money but if you don't have any money you don't have any place to put it just taking out that hundred and nine and i'm not picking on the highway department i just wanted but if we took out that 198 thousand which we know was just because you misunderstood we didn't have any money in the budget already for it that's why that one got in there the mud mitigation so if we took out the 198 thousand and then took out the mud mitigation let's see we're down to uh yes so i took that out taking out those two numbers we're down to we're down to an overall budget of 19.57 percent and we haven't even looked at anything else yet but that's just using two numbers so i don't it looks horrible because we have some really bad numbers in there right now and i think that we presented it this way because you wanted to see the budget as it was initially presented and then because all the budget committee did was add 60 thousand dollars to what had already been requested isn't it 75 thousand i'm a little confused about the 60 thousand i keep no it's just so the 30 thousand for vehicles um there's 20 thousand for fire department vehicles and then 10 10 thousand in general government all of the other money that's already here is already funded the vehicle purchases i mean structure and ground upgrades 5000 and 10 000 opportunity fund it was so they added 60 000 so if you look at the look at the very bottom oh so you need to look at this look at this here so those numbers that i've circled yeah those are what we've added to that isn't already included in the budget proposal so everything else is already included in the budget proposals no i understand that i'm just looking at what dorinda has done and it looks like in past years we've never funded an opportunity fund for 10 thousand so that's that 10 000 that's 10 000 okay but we've never funded um it had yeah heavy equipment that's 30 vehicle purchase the gravel is still in the municipal but the town highway department budget structures and grounds upgrade this is that recreation the court 5000 well that was because we were giving um we were giving initially to the court i think we were doing 500 or something like that or that was a 5000 that was already there then oh and i see what you're saying that we've increased the paving fund at an additional 10 000 this year no back to 30 i mean yes that was that was 20 last year we reduced it yes it's back to normal value this year yeah yeah okay and um okay yeah but the but it's because it's you're saying those are your 15 000 dollars we're already in yeah in there we've just pulled it from the main budget i get pulled it into this subsection yeah so um yeah so i mean i i personally am in favor of of that and i don't think it's you know it is sort of you know a pain point but if it's explained properly and we're communicating that why what this means i think people will accept it yeah i mean at the end of the day i feel like we're doing what they've asked us to do and it's in the best interest i also think this isn't we need to present it to them and and ultimately it's up for them to decide but i feel like you know we've put a bunch of work into this um and and quite honestly we feel like it should be more significant than this but we recognize that times are difficult right now and mark go ahead so we're watching the time here i know i'm going to leave at 6 30 but i know we're not going to be able to make a decision on funding tonight because we have to look at the total budget start to you know go through things but at least we can get consensus that we're going to have a cip funding part of the budget going forward i think that would be a great first step yeah i agree mark thank you yeah i i do like the presentation that during the put together here and pulling all of the non-operational pieces basically under the under the cip so the the bridge fund and the paving and all that stuff i like i think it presents itself better and and when it's put in front of folks they can they can recognize that these are investments that we're making into the future yep um it's going to take some it's going to take some time in education because i'll tell you you know the majority of the people who show up at the town meeting and the majority of people who are reading the town report they don't understand these numbers as you well know but they understand is what their tax bill is absolutely so you know we've just got to be we've just got to be ready i think we need to develop uh develop a handout to pass out of town meeting and maybe mail out to all the voters before town meeting we can think about that but um we need to settle us yep absolutely so is there a motion that's needed for the sarah that we need to to because we need it needs to go on to the ballot no but you guys pass the morning when you vote on the warning and we should i i just i just need to know for my own purposes if there is a uh article not a special article but an article that needs to be put on the morning saying we are going to create a capital improvement fund or are you just going to say something else because we gotta create the warning then you'll prove that i just need some direction as what you want to have on the on the warning and darinda are you saying we absolutely have to do this because the special the the funds that we have right now no so if you if they weren't to add any money to these other new accounts or whatever you wouldn't have to do anything you would just be realigning the way we lay out the budget presentation instead of having those funds sitting in the operating budget they would be at the bottom as future planning monies so but with that being said then the budget committee in their process felt we should be adding a little bit more and that's where these other funds were created or other line items you know that within the funds but you would have to call it something different because if we have you know if we're going to put it towards vehicle purchase we never had that before as uh a savings you know for uh vehicle purchases so if you were you would have to add that as a new idea the idea is that whatever you're holding money that's not going to be spent in that fiscal year you've got there's gotta be your budget so the taxpayers have got to be able to say yes are the voters have got to be saying you know they don't worry about the bridge of the paving fund because those funds have already been created right and they just look at the budget and say okay this is their contribution but if you're saying well now we're going to be creating putting money aside like peter says we're not going to see the benefit of for a few years then you have to the voters have to be on board about creating a fund what you guys have come up with which i personally think is brilliant which is create a capital improvement right have the subsections then people can see it it's almost like reverse debt service you're saying okay this is reverse it is but now we're seeing what we're going to say all right and as long as that fund has been approved and created then you don't have to do that every year that's what i was going to say if we had an additional like sub fund that we wanted to create like oh we want to do the playground fund right and you would have to put the same question you would anytime you're saying to the any time the voters are agreeing like peter saying they're saying we are agreed to put this money here and we may move out 20 years and we'll never see it but we think it's a good investment okay well we already have a recreation yeah i know that's why we don't have to do that alias there's not going to be a playground in town so don't look forward to that no but we already have one right so you know i think we're adding very little to this to be honest with you i think there's just a couple of new sections that we have to i like i like calling it the capital improvement fund because it ties into this whole process so say the creation of this fund is a result of this planning process long-term planning process you that you the voters act us act us to start we've spent a lot of time and effort and give credit to the people who've actually done the work and say you know this is in effect reverse debt service savings account whatever you want to call it but it's looking forward to our future capital needs which we're going to lay out for them and making an effort to levelize over time or at least mitigate the ups and downs in our in our debt service and can we though like add to this capital fund if we're putting this on a warning fire department building fund zero dollars like when we're explaining it to the town so that we don't have to keep putting it on the warning if we are like oh next year we're going to start a fire department building fund right i think i would keep your categories as general as you can like if you just want to allocate fire department and then that you're going to allocate you know twenty thousand dollars to the fire department we don't necessarily have to spell out that it's for a fire truck or if it's for breathing apparatus that can be done under a subcategory but it is what we need to explain it is for capital improvements it's not for operating money right capital for future future capital needs well and essentially it's for anything that goes through the capital improvement process so a submission to the budget committee is a necessity i would think for those types of those types of items so it solidifies you know the process as a whole and and it it kind of enforces the use of the process to get things submitted in an appropriate manner and presented to the budget committee the planning commission the select board and then to the voters you know all in a very you know defined the process so i'm just going to need some guidance for how to phrase that that article in the morning that's all and so i don't know but also just from a personal point of view i want to thank mark and alias and randy thank you so much i've lived in darinda i think this is fantastic and my 10 my 10 years here i have never heard such a thorough planning of the future expenses it's really impressive it's it's done that you guys have done really grateful as a town employee yeah and i will say you know from sitting on the budget committee uh you know mark you've put in a tremendous amount of effort thank you you care i feel like you've carried you've carried the majority of the burden here um and as far as our process goes and and just want to recognize your efforts there so thank you alias has been uh occupied with new family members barely president but i'm here well thanks guys this i mean we've got to we've got to figure out how this fits into the budget but i think you're hearing a lot of support for putting a significant number in there that i agree mark it'd be great if it could be more but with everything else we're looking at i think we've got to you know keep it under control starting the process and getting the format changed on our our financial reports on our budget requests it's going to be it's going to be a great thing so i agree thank you anything else we haven't heard much from you victor i haven't had a chance yet haven't had a chance you'll get your chance right okay okay so moving right along continued discussion about f y 24 town budget including office expenses planning commission other expenses as well as wages action possible um so we do have i guess first of all we have a revised highway budget or corrected highway budget or whatever we want to put it um and we also have a uh recreation uh budget request there's a planning commission one here somewhere yeah there it is i got it i got it thank you um so um i don't know how we want to proceed tonight um we have dorinda's so dorinda this this proposal you gave us with the with the cip funding breakout in it what does that have built in for a pay raise i think it's just three percent the three percent that we talked about the last time okay yeah three percent um and are there any other changes from the last time you just anyone you just moved things around and included the sixty thousand for that right i just everything that you've got in front of you for numbers are in both the the version that i handed out and the version the original version that was on the table yeah before i handed out the two should be the same but it looks like there's a forty five thousand dollar difference or so roughly from what i'm seeing between the two it looks like the the one the the one that doesn't incorporate the cip is running one point nine nine oh i think the difference was um mark card a couple of errors i have not put in there was two budget numbers i had not included the what was it the upgraded the ten thousand back to thirty thousand right oh yeah and then the other thirty for baby right the thirty for payment and then there was one other one um what was that the rec committee or something that i had left off yeah the five green correct right i think those were the two differences maybe folks i have to drop but thanks a lot again thank you mark thanks mark um i'll go through that i mean it was hard trying to keep track because the papers kept but definitely don't go through all this but we're not talking a huge difference here i think um this i would go with original the original one and then yeah the original one's got a little bit more money in it so yeah it does have more money in it so um the original one with the yellow highlights yes i think the date at the top was 12 14 yeah and then i'll make then i'll make the corrections from there afterwards okay okay so when you said it was a three percent raise i had that was just the number that defaults in the computer so i was is the what am i misunderstanding about the wages and why they're less this year for just for the you're talking just the um the select board assistant that's because of the crazy way you guys have it set up that it's 49 percent and 51 percent so it's how i see it down below it seems to be made up right yeah gotcha it's uh the town property maintenance is that um you know we ran a thousand dollars before and 175 now shift that i think there that one was just some extra work that was done because the mowing and all gets captured um under i think town property or something so i think there's you know it's all how these bills get coded out and that's the biggest issue no they don't ever get coded the same and um so i'll just throw this out to me and i know we gave big pay increases this past year but three percent just doesn't feel right or enough to me in light of inflation and cost of living and everything else so what is the insurance premium we don't know yet what the insurance 13 percent yeah it's going to be 30 percent more so the town's going to all of that up oh the town is going to pay 100 percent of their premiums okay so they're not going to be affected by an insurance increase no and we also pick up part of their life insurance and that's okay yeah but that's minor compared to the medical oh yeah but i mean it's only the percentages of increase yeah i just i my personal feelings are i think we just need to observe that you know those those costs with the town picking those up it's not an impact to the employee and that's a huge benefit to them so i think that should be reflective in in how we look at their well no no no i agree and i think we did we did discuss at the last meeting that we want to we want to do those sheets which i honestly thought we had done last year and i guess we did them but we never distributed them or whatever but um they need to see that and they need to you know rather than just give them the sheet that they don't understand i mean i i think we need to go down and sit down with the road crew and go right through with them so they get because i'll tell you they don't understand what it is to other towns pay 100 percent of insurance do we know i many do some do some don't okay yeah i mean it's it's is that is that process uh you've done some some of those worksheets before is it a is it a you know an hour long exercise for you to generate those for the select board no i got a formula all set up now so all i have to do is just plug in that way okay i think for me um personally as i evaluate what i feel you know might be fair to the employees i would like to see you know the overall compensation package and how that's you know how that's adjusted for them from this year from last year so that i could weigh in appropriately um that's just my my hard part the hard part about trying to look at that is it is the the benefits that they all get is one thing but the health insurance you know some take it some don't that makes a huge swing in what they're what they're uh what their compensation is currently everybody's taking except for one person okay and are they taking single or family or two person or one of them um we had two two person and three two one one two two singles and do we do a buyout for those that don't take it one that doesn't we pay eighteen hundred dollars and they but they do show that they have insurance for themselves yeah okay um the yeah i mean what is the overall increase dollar increase of of an extra percent like a four percent because the salaries are not it's the salaries are not the hugest part of our budget we don't have any employees the salaries are not what the hugest part of our budget well what you're saying is that your your cost to your health insurance and is going up and that's that they're that that's what some of the cost is to the for the employee is that correct yeah where i'm going with that is that's an added benefit so just it's a it's a cost of living that as most people make that adjustment but our employees are impacted by that because the town's picking it up picking a hundred percent yes but the but the employee looks at it like i got my insurance fully paid last year why shouldn't i this year they are they are they are getting it right absolutely but i don't i don't think we can't personally and i'll i'll speak on my own individual right what are you trying to say is that that's a value add for those folks most most value at me most places passing are passing the cost of the increase for health care onto their employees i understand what you're saying we're not doing that so if if apples to apples if i'm sitting here paying um vic wire you know twenty dollars an hour here and the same exact business over here is paying you twenty dollars an hour but i'm passing on your your health care to you but here i'm not the adjustment and pay to make you you know to the same point is different your paycheck is going to be less right right and so i think what randy's saying which is what i'm in favor of as well is and from a state from a standpoint of being an employee who may be married for example i'd want to compare i'd want to say like well what would my spouse be paying in health insurance versus what i'm getting as a benefit in health insurance you know so i'd want to know what is that figure what is this what is my value what am i worth basically um well that's the whole point of the what am i getting out of it right exactly the whole point i think so that's what i'm trying to say is that i think it it it makes a more transparent picture for the employee to say okay in addition to my twenty five dollars an hour i'm also getting you know twenty thousand dollars worth of an insurance benefit right absolutely i think we're victor's going with this is is you know um if i correct me if i'm if i'm mistaken but i think where you're going is they're looking at the end of the day they're paycheck and what's going on in pocket and that's what they're concerned about right yeah exactly it's a hard sell to say we paid your insurance last year but we're going to take fifty bucks more a week out of you because your insurance went up it's a hard sell for them i don't care i mean you know that oh sure and i'm not suggesting teachers union we're not going to do that i'm not suggesting i thought you said that's what you're saying no no no no no i'm just going to point it out we're going to point it out to them okay so here's here's what here's and i've i have been through this and i've told you all that i've been through this 44 years i did this every year explaining explaining to other employees at noile johnson this stuff and i tried every system in the world of how to do it i tried doing it the the big picture way the little picture way you know giving them sheets not giving them sheets everything they're giving them sheets works i think that she and what it and what it all i want to say is when they say oh my god we're only getting a three four five percent pay increase and the cost of living is eight percent or whatever it is say yes but we're absorbing this much additional cost in your health insurance and that is a direct benefit to you right and if you look at like randy and me where we work our health insurance goes up by 12 percent we have to pay for that cost so our you know cost of living increase of three percent is really negative eight percent right we're actually getting eight percent less in our check because our insurance premium went up in the town of middle sex our insurance premiums go up but our towns employees don't have to pay for that and that's huge that is not the norm for most places and that's a sell a selling point to understanding that hey we can't necessarily afford to give you a six percent raise like we did last year and the only other thing i would say liz is and i've been through this i can't i mean hundred i have had hundreds probably thousands of conversations on this subject over the years and exactly what victor says is true employees value that health insurance but they don't value it the way they value money in their paycheck at the end of the week they say that's that's great that's great i understand it but you know and and of course the choice is to say to them then okay maybe we can give you a little more money in your paycheck but you're going to have to participate in the cost of the health insurance and that's just a dollar swapping thing the peak the other thing that people do not understand about health insurance is it is one of the few things that you can give an employee which is not taxable to them so not only not only isn't a benefit but it's not added into their salary and then taxed it's a straight up benefit no taxes come out of that no social security no you know estimated taxes or whatever no so you know that that's $7,800 is really more like $10,000 in value plus what we pay doesn't get taxed either doesn't that get off our tax will come it's pre-tax yeah it's pre-tax what's pre-tax like but i'll help care premiums are pre-tax oh as long as it's a recognized yeah yeah yeah so i well that that's the only point i'm making but the the underlying question is with all that said so the answer your question is and i i quickly i quickly added up the salary numbers and i'm sure i missed a few of the small ones but but basically it's $3,000 for every for every unless i made a mistake for every one percent for every one one percent but maybe don't quote that he's just looking at no no no i didn't answer quickly quick up back to the back in three yeah it's a three percent increase for every one percent 300 307 thousand dollars is roughly what i ended up for and i'm sure i missed maybe the health officer and a few other little little things but but if you say it's if you say it's $310,000 in salaries and one percent is so every time you add one percent you're adding $3,000 to the budget yeah right and then of course the workers cop goes up a little bit and the employment goes up a little bit so it's probably life the whole nine years everything is tied to labor so i don't think you can you can peel that out without sitting in front of the spreadsheet and plugging the number because everything ties back to labor right so you can't just look at the labor line right no you can't and we have to also remember that we are still in a tight job market and that losing someone costs us a lot more than the $3,000 and then the extra percentage that we get them so so if it's four percent which is ultimately not very much it's still a nicer number in that in the you know if i got a four percent raise i'd be kind of psyched you know i don't we don't get that necessarily in a nonprofit right and so that to me is like saying oh we value you or five percent for six thousand dollars right and then we know that that person is less likely to leave us for some place else because in the grand scheme of things three percent is you know not very much money on a $60,000 well i don't agree say that say that $6,000 for two percent is actually $8,000 by the time you add in all the little miscellaneous stuff workers come for the road grouping that probably the biggest chunk um but say it's say it's $8,000 in terms of our budget that's a relatively small amount that's what i mean i mean if we if we retained one road crew member for three years because of that we would more than make that money back and i'm not suggesting that's the right number i'm just trying to i don't disagree with any of what you guys were saying i i just feel like for me to step back and look at the overall big picture that's what i would like to do personally so if it's too much to ask if i could get those sheets for folks so i can give you the sheets that were compared from last year and then plug in the new numbers for this year yeah but that doesn't the sheets that they would have gotten on july one does not include what the um increase was just so you know from when you guys went through and adjusted everybody's the numbers there but it was there was a huge jump prior to that oh absolutely there was you know anywhere from a 10 to 20 percent increase across the board would be made that and then on top of that six months later on july first they received another five percent so some folks within the town received a 25 percent increase in salary in six months um so that's what i want to be conscious of um and i don't i don't disagree with anything you guys were saying but i i feel like for me i don't think any of us are disagreeing i think it's a great idea to look at those sheets yeah and uh you know it would be also i'll i'll try and make a few phone calls and see if i can find out anything about what's going on in other other towns it's been on the list sir uh the list sir yeah but it's not any questions about it yeah i mean one town says they do three percent no matter what every single year another town says they do in five percent another town they've been talking about seven percent another town says but they're all working on that budget so they're all looking and we don't know we know some of them gave interim pay raises last year but did they give the interim pay raises that we gave last year you know it is it's it's it's not only the percentage it's what's what amount are they going to be paying the experienced guys on the road right i think and i don't know i don't know if you and you're in your world are you hearing or the other drums beating are we hearing uh what's going on out there in the world with regard to this or is it pretty much yeah pretty much the same thing they're all over the place they're all over the place yeah so we're always in other towns they're all over the place and if you really want to compare it to the state of them on right but no real consistency there is but we believe i don't want to be careful how i say this but we believe that we are now in a competitive position which means above average in terms of what our guys are making i do know that a lot of talents have started bumping up their pay scale in the last few years just because right they just can't get people yeah it's the same same as the heinesberg i mean richmond all of them they had to they had to revamp everything yeah also so uh you said this what we're looking at tonight reflects that that was the number that said yeah that's three percent okay do we know that the ones that are highlighted in yellow what's the significance of that on the budget sheet yes those are not confirmed numbers yeah that's what i thought okay thank you okay so let's see what time is it let's keep going so you know i think we're in agreement or at least i think we are at the very least that we're going to adjust that construction paving amount if not whack it out entirely because actually that construction the paving part of that is is reflected in the or will be reflected in the cip right so that's double stated what's going in well so so the paving but the paving fund is different from the number that eric gave for the paving project i think the conversation that that we should be having is there's money sitting in the paving fund right now and one of that money is coming out of the paving fund or are you including any portion of it in this year's budget correct um so the hundred ninety eight thousand dollars is a fully fully paid for it was other money was in there yeah so it's fully paid for within the budget the way it's presented now so i think the the conversation we need to have is are we going to try to pull that hundred ninety eight thousand dollars fully from the existing paving fund and just continue to fund the paving fund as we always have at thirty thousand dollars for the year so that'd be a change in this budget as prepared of a hundred and ninety eight thousand dollars less um or do we feel like it's somewhere in between my personal feeling is if we had the money in the in the paving fund planned to pay for a paving project with that then with the other increases that we're facing here i think that we should move forward with that plan and and utilize the paving fund to pay for this project if it gets us there that's my personal and i believe during that you think it does get us there right the money that we've got in there yeah i think vick and i actually figured that out way back when we were because the other the other issue is we've now we've now finally done center road we did the uh lower part going up to the school now we're going to do the upper part you know i'm not suggesting that we don't have any paving coming up in the next ten years but we don't have any in the next few years we'll finish that it'll be small about a year of middle sex yeah the only thing we should do is that long trip the section right at the town line yeah the dispute i call it the dispute well yeah that section from the dirt all the way to there is is horrendous oh because you don't know where the town line is well there's a there are two things there's the there's the part that we paid right but then there's the little part by the house by the pond where yeah my understanding is we say it belongs to Montpelier they say it belongs to us the last time around nobody paid right i think that belongs to us so i just clarified you want to take that $198,000 how does a paid budget aligns right for project no i just i don't know we need to resolve that so the $198,000 eric presented it as part of the highway department budget right so my understanding is that we have money in the paving fund right to pay that in enough to pay for that entire project right and that we would take it out of eric's presented budget to us okay and pay for the project out of the paving fund that's what i was saying and the paving fund in this year's presentation would remain at the $30,000 that we've been putting in it on an annual basis yeah all you're doing is taking money out of the paving but this won't be reflective of the budget we're just saying it's going to cover the cost that erican protects right cut the cut the highway budget by that much because you're using that which is correct yes because we already have the money right just clear okay okay so i'm going to say at least for thinking about it i'm thinking that that $188,000 is going away in the budget $198,000 $198,000 i'm sorry and then the question is we get down to mud season mitigation at $75,000 $75,000 um you know at least for starters i would say we should cut that in half well we've never budgeted for it before no i don't so it's i mean it was something that yeah and that was basically because of the big storm wasn't it yeah a lot of it was because it basically mirrors what we spent last year yeah we got some money back on it we got money back on it i think that can easily be cut but some of our money some of that wasn't it some of that for for our springtime thing i thought this what that was and that springtime thing is so it's not a good way that's a not an efficient use of gravel you don't put gravel you give you a clean stone yeah you know whatever you spend there for for aggregate is not an efficient way to spend to build your road no it's an urgency you're better off to put it in the summertime even if you have to put in a little bit less you'll get you'll get by with it and just keep adding to it every you know keep adding every year and it'll take it'll cure your winter when you're trying to do the breaststroke to get out of the window of your truck and get to the side of the road seems like whatever you should dump in that mud it's whatever you're suggesting that should become a cip item that we start saving for i had suggested that the hundred thousand dollars originally that we put in for the gravel budget out of their operational budget was a cip item but i think at that point that was felt that that they wanted to keep it in their operational budget but i don't see this as a one year goes away at the end of the year so i don't see this as a one year expense so my my personal feelings are if we include it in that cip grouping you can you can allocate the money to it this year and if we spend 75 percent of it you still got 25 sitting there to your point if you spend 75 this year and you're in the way it's presented now it goes away it goes away right so i would rather see it in the in the capital improvement plan because i don't think one year of of this level of investment into gravel gets us to where our roads need to be that level needs to be there over here so peter and and select board a way that's what i can explain it to you is when we did mccollar not because i live on mccollar hill it's not what we did mccollar hill road we used to have some really bad bad you know frost heaves and frost springtime and we fixed that we did stat so we ditch our other roads we could you know a lot of them are east hill all the way down and and that's all been but we only put three or four inches of that granite gravel which is a combination of granite and bank gravel and i have to be careful what i say here because it comes out of mccollar's pit i don't want to push any one person but it's it's a it's at least mine but that lasted for how many years and now it needs you know we really should be adding gravel to all our roads every year yeah right and not not all of them but our sections every year you have to be adding to them all the time you can't that's what we that's what we tell them where we got in our our our old long highway plan you know where we had we do this section of this road this year and then you know something can get postponed because we'd have a flood you know we still didn't get done for whatever it was ten years still not done you know and and then all of a sudden we're in a bad place east hill as you know now when it when you get that freeze thought cycle it's like grease like that layer of mud and slop at some time we'll fix that for you i know time freeze still and i'm not saying that just because i look there so in f y 22 we spent 29 almost 30 000 we budgeted for this year 40 000 dollars so i mean we we need to have the money there but we also need to make a point to do it right right and that's the difference right right you know right you get doing this this this thing right makes you know it's it's all over you can't do it so that brings us to the conversation of of road maintenance versus road construction right so you know anyway i won't i won't go down well just for not saying this is the final number but what i'm hearing i think what i'm hearing is take out the 198 and take out the 75 yep i'm taking out the 75 mud mitigation or cutting in the half i thought you said cut it in half but well i said cut it in half initially i don't know what's what you're like i mean is that is that number that 38 000 or half of it yeah is that going to go into the cip so i think the hundred thousand dollars for the gravel specific underneath underneath your summer maintenance summer maintenance i think that's a cip item okay the mud mitigation i could go either way on it um so just just so we know that that number came from i believe that's what we paid for the stone in the spring time is that correct right that's 76 thousand dollars right and that's what i was figuring it if we got major problems like we had last spring and we have all this mud that you cannot navigate did that include something into it did that include the trucking of the stone i think that's a good that's all inclusive yeah okay yeah i would just like to comment that on a that's where that number came from i think on a capital improvement plan they they discourage you from using roads as a capital huh yeah that it's it's buildings and equipment okay so they would say it's maintenance not so you just keep it in your regular budget okay and not put it in camp well we could i mean if you're concerned about spending the money on gravel we can spend the money on gravel we can do that well i mean worst case scenario what i'm saying is if you're saying that you don't want to lose it if it's there and we lose it worst worst case scenario we we have a good year we don't have to spend all the money we're we're flush with cash right which we all know how that goes but let's just say let's be optimistic and say that's the case there's nothing stopping us from from taking a light item like that and stock piling some gravel i just don't have some stuff for the for the usually do for the next for the next event right so that's fine in that last year you want to remember it was a very interesting point you brought up when it said to deliver it i think we only had one truck that was running at that time right so we had a good amount of money we hired a lot of trucks that's all i'm trying to say yeah thank you and as far as mud is concerned you don't want to put gravel in mud you add gravel to mud you just make more mud you have to put clean stone so this change my mitigation to like 40 000 or i mean 35 000 or yeah 38 5 so the middle 38 5 you want to go 38 i'm sorry are you talking about uh season by mitigation right but instead of instead of or instead of so that's trucking and material trucking and material but that doesn't sound like it not but you said we spent 70 000 on that the graph okay but all but Liz all all all we're trying to do here is and we you know we're going to go through this we're going to find a few thousand dollars here in there as we go through all the line items in this budget but we're trying to look at the big numbers right i mean we didn't have it in the budget before we we had to do it so now we've got something in the budget we haven't been budgeting anything for it before and we have something new so just just to your point is that you didn't feel like it was enough before we didn't have anything oh we didn't we have something new this year the stone that comes the by-product from screening the sand in our sand pit and we've used that a couple of times we already this year he used it the other day in your house and that might hold there just past mccollill i don't know how many how many thousand yards we got we've got a few and we use some on center room yeah where the money just and some of it we've got the ground up we've got the ground up asphalt too right which is combined with gravel yeah yeah my plan for that was the the finger rule is not the main arteries yep so just you know we're gonna we're gonna beat ourselves up here it's it's seven o'clock but darinda i know jeopardy are we working just on the height of the public work section of this right now so i have a couple of questions on that okay can i can i just finish my thing and then go ahead so let's for purposes of our budget review here reduce the 75 to half that and knock out the hundred ninety eight thirty seven fifty what five hundred five line item public works let's learn line item 204 and line item 190 203 oh i'm sorry okay sometimes my eyes don't mind of course right especially late at night when i bet i can't handle it i guess okay i gotta be excused but he's got to go to another meeting what training got it trained to be a fire take some cookies to the fire department yes take some cookies yeah i mean we're to we're out to the center and i try to get rid of our cookies so we don't um is there up here to play 18.05 18 1805 before specialist takes her as whole place in the because you see her that's at least in the realm of reason right which i get said from when we first came in but i think it's more good i'm very well but yeah and i mean i will say as the budget committee had this conversation you know we were 12 to 15 percent is what we felt like we could realistically pay all of us i am good so okay well we're gonna find we're gonna we're gonna find some other money here in there but i think those are the you know what we've got to think about the wages we're gonna look at that um how's our slush fund done well i think we need to we're gonna have slush funds out play out what's slush fund is it yeah that was last year i don't think a couple hundred mountains is really not a question so erish before before you go one of the last questions that i have for the for the highway stuff is um you know the culverts we've we've got quite a stockpile a little carry in $14,000 in there what are your feelings on that line item is that is that seem reasonable is that an area where if we needed to cut something we could cut something or you could they we've got some but we only have a few 24 inch and then we got a bunch of 18 and if you need to do anything more than that's bigger than 18 you and they're buying it all yeah and it's it's probably i think 24 inches like 15 dollars a foot 30 times that's twice as much it adds up quick it's expensive here if you have anything before you go for a highway report any uh just we had snow last week and we got some rain coming right there you go that's all we need to know what about this is good because i don't know what you took all her cookies why don't you just put grab a paving fund doesn't can't you just do that i mean it's paving all right no okay we're gonna kill you separate you'd have to change the paving fund to a road maintenance fund or something like that it's all still right these are the best ones we shouldn't have any of these nice drives okay darinda i think we are down to at long last the treacherous report a few of any energy left so so we're not reviewing any of the budget then is that what we're talking about i mean you mean for a line item well for anything i mean i just plugged in all these numbers for the any item that wasn't presented and then i mean when are we gonna work on this because we have two meetings left and we're not addressing any of these line items we gotta go at some point we're gonna sit down and go right throw it and when well that's i mean because i have to then take all this and do my thing with it and get everything to serif we're printing and reports and everything else so um i thought that i would say i don't know what are we what do we have what do we have on our agenda for our next meetings are anything big to me it's a fire department and then you're gonna come back here the good news is the good news is that you have one extra week town meeting has never been as late as it is this year i mean this is on the end of the cycle you're at march seven that provides you a little time but but i agree we need to sit here and go line by line that takes a lot of well i guess my question for you darinda is what are your big concerns like like i for example i can't tell you right now what well i mean i it's certainly what we haven't plugged into any of these numbers is anything we've discussed as far as um you know the computer number now what are what are we going to be putting in for that um we i wanted to ask i had questions for and maybe we can basically can answer it but i had questions about a few of the items within the highway department that just don't seem realistic but maybe they are um we also had an fy 23 highway grant is that happening because you haven't put any money in for the match if but that's probably an in-kind match so might be okay there that's kind of we haven't heard back on that you haven't heard back on it okay but just filed it but that's but it's a budget item if we have to put money into it but it's 20 percent is it in kind but sure okay well if not it's 5500 dollars um we talked we haven't talked i mean there's a ton of things here that we haven't really talked about here's what here's what i would suggest we've we've we beat the capital improvement fund to death i think for the time being other than agreeing on what the final number is whether it's 60 000 or some other number um i think we need to look at each department every line item and i'm you know i i i start to lose the excuse me what was in those peak games oh god i hope you're not do you have some funny stuff in there no are you allergic to something not that i know of but seem to be losing my voice you know when you get down to the 283 dollar items i don't i don't get very excited but the five thousand dollar items we need to pay attention to right right no i get that and i'm not questioning 200 dollar items i'm quite happening you know these bigger ones um and we certainly you know so yeah if we're going to address it at another meeting i i just would it help if we talked can we do that before the next meeting and we can just we can tell you whether we think the stuff in the highway budget is right on or some room is that legal to do that you were you talking with the treasurer yeah you can talk to the treasurer not that it wouldn't bring it up in the meeting but i would think you would sail along through it a lot i'm not just talking the highway budget you know there's like just i mean some of them are utility why if we're spending um i had some question on the utility yeah it's like wire if we spent $1,800 on electricity why are we budgeting four thousand 15 percent increase huh watch no electric 15 percent well that's still i don't think we're going to amount to a two thousand double your thing well i mean like for town hall if you want to take the electricity for example you know we had a $3,500 budget that we were looking at and now we're we're reducing that by 500 for this year um you know there's that 15 percent but it went the other way right so i just had questions as to you know why that was a reduction instead of an increase well here's guys here's what i would suggest here we are once again jumping around all over the right you're all over the i think i think what we need to do is and i'm going to spend some time looking at this budget before next meeting i would suggest everybody else do it and pick out especially you go in and pick out the ones that you're uncomfortable so we'll go through it we'll go through it department by department instead of instead of jumping here there and everywhere and try and make some uh try and make some sense that can i still ask the question i'm still a little unclear about um so the budget i'm trying to remember because i get confused with fiscal years line item or column d that's the current year we're in that's the current year we're in however the salaries was that what we budgeted versus what we actually no the current year we gave races the previous year right well they got both they got both yeah right but but for this budget fiscal year 2022 23 that we approved that in march of right and it that's when they got the five percent on july one and that's when they got the five percent and was there anything after that that we gave them as a boost no not after the july not after july everything was done and make it was either november or December and then in july so my question is why in this budget for 2023 24 are the salary increases like these variable increases like 0.82 percent like for the town wages for the um the road crew it's 0.38 percent remember we have three employees and how we have four employees yeah everything changes people's number of hours they're working which is something else that should be you know when we're looking at salary you know are we doing realistic numbers for the number of hours like um you know it's should this person you know be working you know like i don't want to tell anybody under the hat but you know what does somebody on the rec make a deal for five hours every week i don't know right you know so are we looking at you know realistic numbers when we're doing this okay but well i still feel like i understand what you're saying about the wages you have different people somebody quits blah blah blah but like the number in column e on line 172 263 991 where did that number come from which which number what line column e line 172 172 i got to see what it says like where did you okay so that 63 991 because that came from taking the people salaries and adding the wages plus a three percent increase and um okay and it just happens to show up i understand that the point three percent is because you had an extra whatever you had fewer people or whatever the case may be we're more people but i don't know why it's that different but well because the person that's no longer working for us the new person is making a different rate of pay yeah yeah yeah okay that that makes sense so so you have put in and you said this but i just want to clarify for the wages on anything that says wages there's a three percent increase in their current wage based on the people that are working right now so those are accurate numbers with the three percent that's what their current wage is plus three percent okay and that's plugging in that's plugging in an estimate for over time hours and all that that's allowing for and in the the only ones that get over time hours is the highway and that's estimating 225 hours i have a question yes why is my why am i earning less a select worker the percentage because i told you it's how it's being coded out into the computer because it's not being divided as 49 and 51 uh i think it's coming up at 50 50 or something like that i don't know it's just it's not your wages isn't any different it's just the way it all got entered into the system why are we making less of a select worker okay guys because it's now it's not quarter after seven we're gonna go through this please everyone take a look at this highlight the line items you want to talk about and what your questions are and we're going to go through it department by department line by line and hopefully we're not going to be here for six hours um is this is there any reason why you can't share um the actual spreadsheet as opposed to like a pdf of the spreadsheet do not want to do that as like a copy well last time i can do that but i can tell you everybody started playing with it everybody starts making changes conversions when everything well i'm just saying something offline that i could play with not something that would be a real time i wouldn't be i wouldn't be touching your budget but like a right but then we sat here in a meeting and no offense to anybody but well i came up with yeah right and i came up with and it's like okay so that's exactly what listen wants to know and that's what everybody wants to do and then we end up with who started with what you know but i can be happy to send it to you and yeah i mean i'm not going to come up and say oh i came up with this through this but sometimes it's just helpful to to um to actually be able to look at the numbers and see what the calculations are and again i just like spreadsheets what i really i don't like gdx those spreadsheets people to think about is and you know you can't do a budget back where you got to do a budget from the bottom up but are we comfortable with a 13 14 50 15 increase in a budget request and i guess i'm here for people that we are but i you know i struggle with it too peter you know the the the increase is larger than people are probably going to be comfortable with but i mean knowing knowing what went into you know the efforts and and where the increases are i mean i think it's it's defendable it's i i honestly feel like you know the highway department is doing their due diligence to try to set themselves up for success you know the the capital improvement um plan you know it's trying to set the tariff i guess let's let's not be sure i'm just saying i think it's something i have to present i get a i get a sense that we are getting close to consensus about something in that rain i want to know how playing field only came up with seven percent and and this is my question i'm asking this seriously do towns often not want to raise their budget and then know that they're going to go over budget well how many years so that it's just a softer uh blow i mean peter peter's mentioned before that as uh history presents itself the board has kind of come to the table with with an making an effort an intentional effort of you know i we don't want to see it exceed you know an increase of five percent or three percent or whatever the number is for that year they've been very intentional about doing that doing that time or after time creates a situation where you know it's the deferred maintenance model right and now we're now we're struggling to catch up what was last year's nine point nine point seven six yeah something like that like four percent more than that so it was a dent the act but i think there's a lot of room in the budget to still make cuts because there's many things we haven't talked about like for instance this health insurance i've budgeted the new person being a single person even though they're not on the budget but the potential is they could possibly become on the budget and it could possibly be a family plan as opposed to a single person plan we have but then we have another situation where somebody's going to be coming off the plan halfway through the year so we have i think there's it's more than just there's a lot of back you know digging underneath it's ours it's um this type of thing health insurance is a big one um i also think you could cut 20 000 out of the budget if we paid off the truck that is got one more year on it you could take that payment out of the debt service and pay for it now and because we have the money the extra money and we would bring the budget down 20 000 that way but yeah the other thing the other thing that we haven't talked about at all in this budget process is if and how the arpa funds are in this and that's exactly what you're talking about arpa funds there's you know is there going to be some kind of settlement for our tax person is there going to be i mean i have a whole list of stuff that is you know it can't be talked about in five minutes so i know i know the only thing i the only thing i would say and i've struggled with that health insurance thing down through the years is if you really know for certain that somebody's coming on or off the health insurance that's one thing but if it's just oh we might hire somebody and they might need a family plan i've never been in favor of putting that in the budget i mean if that happens it happens or maybe you put a little money into to cover something like that but it's some of the stuff that we're trying to think about we're projecting things that are truly unknown i mean we have to do the best we can with what we've got but i'm a big proponent of at the at the end or near the end of this process and i'm suggesting it needs to be at the next meeting but the number one item on the agenda once we finish up with our little huda with the fire department is to go right through this sucker from end to end line by line and during do you can ask all your questions and won't report no highway report just budget budget showdown yeah i just you know there's i i'm not so much concerned about where we're at with the budget right now it's because i think there's a lot of we can make a lot of adjustments yeah yeah well we've never gone we you know we we've jumped and hit and hopped around all over the place mostly focusing on the highway budget which of course is where most of the money is but there's a lot of other money in here so i'm going to say our budget discussion for this evening is concluded thank you is that okay yes do you have anything else stirring up by way of a report uh no i gave you a budget status report yeah thank you okay i we do need to approve the minutes wait hold on did we talk about the highway department yes snowed last week there's a wicked range we need to approve the minutes from the december 6th meeting is there a motion i'll move it okay second brandy thank you all in favor hi hi we need to accept theo kennedy's resignation for the budget committee action likely thank you theo yeah for your service so we need a motion right like victor just made it yeah okay you'll second it lives all second all in favor hi any opposed margaret schwarz's resignation as emergency management coordinator so that means we don't have an emergency management coordinator that's correct or is it me again once you accept that i think it's false to you right let's not talk about that so we need to find someone let's hope that this race sort of doesn't yeah okay motion please accept her resignation and thank her for her service to our emergency management committee second second okay all in favor i i uh orders are going to be signed i guess they're over there i haven't signed yet um any other matters that may come before the board i do have one thing uh right before tonight's meeting i got an email from phil saying the flu has passed through the rest of my family has finally struck me so i won't be attending tonight also would you please inform the board that i will not be seeking re-election thanks i haven't talked to him about that i don't know anything about that other than not other than the event sir what's the deadline for people to get signatures 5 p.m. january 3 so who's up for europe for re-election europe no i'm not i thought i would but i'm not no it was it was phil and victor it's phil and victor no um okay you and i are on the same schedule then or no you're three years or two years three but i'm next year and i'm two years and so yes i'll mind i just also want to say that uh the court if you saw uh jeff coons's report eric was reelected she yeah part of her so that's great let's go put that in minutes yeah that's cool congratulations eric and i'm running for two years what are you on now are you on a two and three i think she was two years is that right sarah i don't know your your your petitions downstairs i'll have to check what number you put in did anyone i think it was a two year yeah it's two years your two years that's right has anyone not signed it just um on a side note not signed the north branch nature center petition i have one here if someone wants to sign it to get on the ballot i believe i did so they're 2,400 is there anyone who wants to sign it 24 hundred huh 2,500 2,500 they upped it from their 2,000 dollars request i'll sign it again she'll bounce me uh as far as resignations going and and vacant physicians um i know periodically you put something on what are what are our thoughts about more frequently i try not to do it periodically honestly post it in the board i don't have any there's no legal requirement to be put it on the website or on front porch form but i do post it on the board which is a legal requirement yeah i'm just 10 days with the 10 days of the board accepting this i have to pose to two places and say this is up i'm just trying to recognize how difficult it is to fill positions within the activities of the town and uh i was having a conversation today about just that issue and uh just came to a recognition that you know when something is posted once in front of me i kind of dismiss it if you will but if it's if it's out there more frequently i might have paid attention to things more so i was just i'll put it out there that's why i put all the the list of the offices that were open yeah i saw i saw what you put out on front porch forum the other day i haven't received any and i think you should put the deadline for the signature and maybe the link where they can get the form for i agree with randy i think that it's for transparency purposes if we know that there's an upcoming so far i've really done i've really made a good job i don't think you have to i'm trying to actually include the part that says it's a town people don't like who the select board appointed they put their own special meeting was set up for signature to get that person they didn't know until last year yeah i would just it was just something i was thinking about today so yeah i would just encourage anybody you know to please run for office because we have a lot of owners the blue things the blue thing i need blue things so so you know so with with that with that and we're yeah i've got a copy here just saying the meeting is adjourned