 We'll call the meeting to order at 7.10. You guys need to call yours individually, or? Oh, we're all eight-term people. We don't even have a quarter of an hour. Well, we didn't board it. Hi, here we are. Can I represent the callus slurport? Yeah, whatever it is. Should we introduce ourselves to the camera? She can just write it in the corner. So you can just write who's here from the callus, and he spoke there. Maybe she has the left slinger, the callus is the right slinger. Bruce, he's right down in the middle. For the sake of the people watching on TV later on, why don't we just go around the table? Hi, I'm Judith Dillon. I'm here on behalf of the East Montpelier Select Board. Carl, and I remember the East Montpelier Select Board. I'm sorry. Can you repeat your last name by Dillon, D-I-L-L-O-N? Sorry, even with the hearing aids, I can't see the ear. I'm muckled, too, so. Bruce Johnson? No, I missed him. I'm Carl Etnair, East Montpelier. Do you want to spell that last name for me, please? E-T-M-I-E-R. I'm Rick Heen, K-E-H-N-E, moving the callus slurport. K-E-H-N-E. I'm Sharon, S-H-A-R-O-N, and I have two last names. W-I-N-N, no hyphen, F-I-T-F-N-K, A-N-N-O-N, and I'm from the callus slurport. I'm Albert Petrola, and I'm a D-S-N-P-L-E-R. Ty Rollins, East Montpelier Fire Chief, and Judy Woodback, East Montpelier Secretary. All right. You're with the fire department? OK. The math wasn't working for me when I heard Gorge, but that's not correct. OK. Go ahead, Ty. So on our packs here, we'll start with the financials. You guys have the, we'll just start right as they're in order, sequentially. So we have the balance sheets. And if you look at the balance sheets on the top, the accounts are doing pretty well. Capital account is pretty healthy right now. You can see down in the liabilities, the two liabilities for the rescue pumper loan and the ambulance loan. Any questions on those? That's pretty straightforward. Can you, well, yeah, not really questions, just, oh, I see. There it is. I found what I was looking for. Thank you. OK. OK, so we're good on, good on Payne's loan. Moving over to page two of the profit and loss versus actual for the ambulance. I apologize, I'm going to have to start wearing glasses, so you can hear these things. The thoughts really smell so good. It is. If you look down, I guess really the highlighted one is down in the revenue side down on the left. About three quarters of the way down, it says the ambulance insurance revenue and expenses. And then the revenues to date that's been collected as the date of this. And again, this is back to the reconciled as of February and the February was $95,000 to that date. And I think this last month we transferred almost $23,000 into it, so we're in a pretty good run this year so far, in line with what you should be. In line with what you're expected. Yeah, I mean, calls are, call volumes are up some, so the revenue is keeping pace with that as it should. Which is always good. You can see down in the bottom of that, there's the COVID vaccine clinics and how much we've paid out of that. We're actually in our second round. We're in our second $100,000 contract with the state for helping to assist with vaccination clinics and testing clinics. I think that's starting to wane off a little bit as time goes on, but the contracts are still active currently, so we do have some people that are still putting some hours in the clinics, but as they slowly shut down, I think that will be mostly done in the next month or so. Is that a net wash or has that ended up being a revenue generator in terms of? No, it's a net wash. We're making a little bit of it after the overhead, but most of what the overhead coverage is on our side of paying, like the insurance costs and the tax portion of it and everything, the people doing the clinics are actually being paid $50 an hour, so they're being paid a significantly higher wage scale than typical for it because of what they're doing. And then, yeah, so that's covering the other expenses for basically internal in-house. Yeah, I got you. So it may wash yourself that we may clear a couple of thousand at the end of that, but most of that's going to be in extra administrative costs and things. We've been running that, if you remember, we've been running that as a total separate payroll line so we can really track that separately. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Any questions on that page? Okay, hearing none. Hang on, Taiwan, just a broad question. What, is there some question that we should, is there some question we should be asking or something, is there anything here that you're the least bit concerned about? No. That you're wondering about your fingers cost, nobody's going to notice. Nope. Okay. I don't know, I'll put it that way. I just wanted, that's my wondering what I should be asking that I'm not asking questions. Nope, you can see on the right hand side where you're at percentage wise on your budget on the total expenses line. A day at 63.9, if you look at the timeframe of the year, we're in line with what that should be. And again, you see fluctuations just throughout the year that may hit different high markers versus when insurance payment may be due or dispatch payment may be due, so it may spike and then it will drop back and fall in line again and it will spike. So we're in good place on that. Is it 53 or 63? 63, 63.9. 63.9. Okay. And if you have the black light, you can see the information you're looking for. Thank you. Thank you. This is very handy for budgets and survey numbers. Okay, so we're good on that page? Yeah. All right, so profit and loss budget versus actual fire. That's actually a little bigger. It's a lot of exciting things on this slide. Again, looking at the going to the total expense line at the 76% we have a few items and firefighting supplies. Again, you know, that's just an expense ratio. We put in some specific care that we purchased for ambulance personnel and regular gear for firefighting supplies. This driven those numbers. Our building number on station two is up a little bit. And again, that's in large part because of the service where it was done on mechanical systems within the building. It was time for a large scale maintenance change of filters and upkeep on some of the systems. It's not a regular annual cost and things. So that was driving some of those pieces. Water bottle pump failed on us and we'll have that replaced. Fire pump needed some extra maintenance because law says every five or six years you got to replace all your gauges and different things. And that came out there too. Fire pump in the building? What's a fire pump in the building? The building is protected for some of the systems. Okay. And the personal gear? Personal gear, right. So that would have been, you know, the equipment with the firefighters. Right, yeah, let's turn up here on things. And what did you say the firefighting supplies would? Firefighting supplies is we've had some hold you place and it's just that's all of your operational equipment that you use. We did SCBA service work this year that we have to do. So we did some extra repairs on those. It's all you tools that you can be purchasing pumps. So we bought the pump for the UTB, the high pressure off road pump for the forestry piece of it and things of it. Items like that is what falls into that category. Is that stuff that would have been unanticipated or could not have been anticipated? It's a combination of both. Some is anticipated into the budget and there's other things that do come into it. There are unbudgeted pieces that were added. Is that, do you think that line item should be increased next year? Or is this just feeding it's more of a blip? I think there's just occasional spikes that come into it based on what we're doing. Sure, I get it. And everything, we expanded some of the equipment on the forestry side with putting the UTB in service and everything. So that's not the normal that's gonna happen every year. And with a new truck coming online next year there will be hoses and things but that will kind of fall into the truck envelope. So I don't foresee large scale major equipment purchases. We've been trying to upgrade and keep in line with those as we go along so that we don't get hit with big surpluses. We are gonna see like our SCBAs which is a self-containing breath apparatus where it's going to take a big hit in the next couple of years but that is covered into the capital side of things that we're budgeting for that because that's gonna be probably a $130,000 bill for that to replace those when time comes. You talked about that the last week. Yeah, so the bigger, the really big items were covered in the capital side of things to there and then the smaller ones that you just get hit with here and there were operational. Yeah, I got it. Any other questions on that? Yeah. Okay, so again everything seems to be holding its own trends for where we need to be this time of year. And so on the next page there, profit and loss versus actual again the fall on the fire. The kind of capital activity when you look at the expenses on the trucks that is the actual truck payments that that relates back into the loans that come out of the regular revenue from the ambulance revenue to pay those. I believe at this point we've collected all the revenue from the two towns for the years. And what's for you now? Because you don't, don't according to the. We have one come in after February. Okay, yeah, so this is reconciled as of the end of February, right? The last one came what just a week ago and I'm not feeling well. It's no fun if we can't pick on Cal, that's for pain lane. And what's the $44,000 in extra income or other income for other? I cannot enter that directly for you right now actually for that look being able to look it up and have the access to it right here. The significant change, whatever it is. Why would I assume that some of that's the capital activity you're seeing coming in because of the buddies from capital side? We'd have to pull that on the line on the report. Yeah, good. It's nothing new. It's not even popped up after the hours or a number, not specifically that one but it was always there. Any other questions on that page? Hearing none, okay. So that kind of, I think that's the last page of financials. So any, before we move off of the financials we're kind of covered the ambulance revenue in number two on the agenda. And the move. So anything else, any other questions on the financial piece? Very satisfied with those. Okay. So moving on to the next page which talks about the call statistics. And this was from July to December of FY 22 where the grant told them of 398 in that six month period. And how does this compare the distribution of calls among the talents? How does that compare to previous years? I can't tell you that specifically. I guess we can see what else is in here for the charts. I don't have a comparison. Let me see which one I can get. I don't have a comparison I can give you from that from year to year. We can pull that, but I can tell you overall we are up this year within the first two and a half months we were up almost 50%. Wow. What do you, do you have any theories as to what you would attribute that to? Sick people. Not necessarily all COVID, you know, but I mean, yeah, I think just overall that just the demand is high, you know, we see those trends with aging populations and things. And, you know, individuals take, you know, cycles of life that increase call vibes that I'm specifically, and then overall in towns, you know, it can be a number of things, you know, number of car accidents can impact those numbers in terms of how many people in a car, you know, you may put five or six people on instantly right in a situation like that. And overall, overall, I mean, it would be to do this point, I was going to ask the same thing, what are the trends? It would be interesting. Well, everything that fire is up a little bit, but not nearly what ambulance is. No. But even at a more granular level from town to town up, do you see trends in some towns, not other towns? It's such a fluctuating marker. I mean, it can be one week more in one town than it can be in the next week more in another town. So it's really, the trends don't necessarily equal themselves out to say, Calus is running higher all the time. Calus may run higher for a couple of weeks and then they may drop off and go quiet for a couple of weeks. And so in the overall, you know, it's just, it's an elevated number we look at. So over time, though outside of the six month window over the past three to five years, what? That's, I think, I don't know, I interpreted your question kind of in that thing, Judith, not at the micro trend type, but kind of the macro trend like, oh, look, you know, Woodbury's always at four and the drivers, the drivers. What are the drivers of, if it's, is it, you said ambulance, okay, that's a driver. Are there drivers among the towns over time? And over bigger spans of time, not weeks, but years. I mean, that's, it's a little hard to quantify in that capacity because fires fluctuate. You know, we hit four or five structure fires right on top of each other within, you know, two weeks at the beginning of the year. And then we may go six months and not see a structure fire that we go to. So it's a little hard to quantify that in the broad spectrum of one type of incident versus another, you know, car accidents show large fluctuations and things. That overall, if you looked at the five-year growth rate, I would say we are probably 15 to 20% higher in gross call volume increase over the last five years. You know, and I don't anticipate this entire year in May stay on the same pace that we've seen in the first few months. It's just, it's hard to, at some level, maybe it's not at a town level, at this local level, but at some level that data is what drives public service campaigns, you know, interventions. If you know that you're seeing a trend in a town or in a particular line within a town over a period of time, that's information that at some level becomes useful. Yeah, and I'm wondering. I mean, there's no way to prevent a structure fire. No, I get that. There's no, I mean, I hear what you're saying for certain types of formats, but I don't think some of that formula would work the same way you're anticipating or something like this because these are the unpredictable incidents. I can't tell you if I sweat signs on the road that say, hey, slow down, it's icy today, it's gonna be less car accidents because it's icy today, right? The other response to that would be sometimes, look, it's not like that but you gotta put more salt on the road to whatever to keep the ice down or people don't drive. Okay, so point taken. If we have that data to see the trend that, oh, look, Calysis up by X amount over a period of five years, that's a, if we wanted to get really geeky about it, we could get some statistician to actually do statistical, word I can't say, statistical analysis on whether that's a significant trend by a p-factor of what and then you say, okay, look, this actually is meaningful, not according to any of us in this room but the statistician that is the, doing a project for the economics class and then you say, okay, why is that? Because that's where change comes from, that's where intervention comes from, is looking at the data and you can't look at data for just a six month period. Well, you have, you can go back in your town records for every meeting we've had, we give you these reports every year, you can take all the data and put it together and look at the trends for calls each one. Okay. I don't see on our side of it, I don't see necessarily, and I'm not downplaying what you're asking for but I don't see an intrinsic value to us with some of the information. If I can quantify that the roads are icier more times in a year causing more car accidents, it's irrelevant, right? The accidents are gonna occur, we're gonna respond. I can have accidents on dry days, I can have accidents on icy days. Okay, I'm not gonna argue with you about whether data is or is not a useful thing. I'm not saying data is not a useful thing but in terms of, you know, when I look at years from year to year on structure fires, there's not necessarily an educational way we're gonna put out that's gonna change whether a structure fire occurs at somebody's house or not. Right, we put out messages to people, you know, and if it's whether it's from wood burning situation or it's an electrical issue in an old house, those are things that don't necessarily get identified sometimes for people until those moments. You know, there's nothing that, preliminary, if I told you that look, your house is old enough, you should go have an electrician come in and inspect your house, you're not gonna have an electrician come in and inspect your house and redo all your electrical wiring because, you know, I've suggested it's a risk factor. Just going to the point of the information is out there, so I'm relatively, or I'm newer on the board so I wouldn't have the files or the records, would they be in your reports or would I look in my town? You smell very, how's the mall? We have the mall. But it's also in the town reports all the way back. But we also have them in the office. Ty, you know what I'm more interested in on that is how, you know, that with these increased, like ambulance calls, how is that impacting like the staffing levels? Is it still very manageable, is that? We're holding her up. Yeah, we have days, we had a day just the other day where we were out, two ambulances and the third one dumped right on top of us. You know, we were able to dump the patient at the hospital and take the third call, so those are good days, you know. There is other days where we're staffing one and can't staff the second one right behind it, maybe because we're out in fire. Just before you guys come in, my trucks are coming back with guys on the structure fire and up here and then the ambulance is out at the same time. You know, so again, resources are going full on. We were covering 99% of all the calls. I won't say there's, you know, typically we're not covering fire calls. There's some ambulance calls that we have to turn over just because of timing and maybe resources or we're just stretched out and maxed at that point for a variety of different calls. And are we seeing the trends where there's more and more doubled up calls? Yes. You know, what's the driver for that? There's no driver, it's just the time when somebody's emergent need in addressing that at the time. It's more the consistency over time if that's what drives the HALU staff and how you size them. The last time we were here, you were talking about hiring new folk. I'm just wondering if you did successful in that effort and how that's going? It's the ebb and flow. They come and they go. We lost the few we gained. We've, yeah, we've got two medics, two new medics that have come in. Again, we have to go through a transitional training process with these guys and getting them off the ground where they can fully be cleared and vetted from the hospital to run on their own. We've got a couple of people in classes that once they finish their classes, they'll be coming online full into it. So in terms of staffing, are you down up? Do you want to? We're fairly neutral. I mean, we would always like to have more staffing, but again, we'll talk about that a little bit later. I've got reports I'll give to you. You guys can have the data analysis from the state and how they rate the EMS system within the state. And it's an interesting read. So, but, you know, overall, everybody is seeing the trends of increased calls, especially on the emergency service and on the side of it. So Kai, you said something earlier that made me wonder whether I understand what a call is. So could you just start at the beginning? What is a call? What qualifies as a call to put a tick here? Every incident that goes out. So if I get called for an ambulance response, that's a call. If I go to a fire call, that's a call. So if you send one truck or three trucks, does it make a difference? Is it still one call? It's the same, it's individual calls. These guys were at two different incidents. The ambulance was at a medical call in East Montpere. The fire truck was at a fire call mutually in the city of Montpere. But if you have a structure fire and you send all your fire trucks and an ambulance, is that one ambulance call and one fire call? The ambulance and fire show it differently because they're doing two different functions. Right, so. So if the ambulance goes to a call and then fire is called to come in to help them, that is a fire assist to the ambulance. And it reflects that way so we can travel. So you can see that on your sheet if you look under vocals, this is the first one, you can see medical assist and it says fire. That would be fire personnel under a fire tone coming to assist the ambulance for whatever reasons. So if you have five fire trucks at a structure fire, how many calls? That's one call. Thank you. The only quantifier for that is patient contacts or individual calls. So like if we went to a school bus accident and we interacted with 30 students on that bus, that would be 30 call us because each student will get their own number so that it's trying to depend on them. Even because two other ones. They're reported as individuals in the state's data system. Okay, that's helpful. Are you, are we seeing increase like opioid or overdose? We are activity, too. And we can usually see the waves of it when it comes through and starts to hit the cities. It's next out here, but some of the city activities moving farther outside of the city limits. It's a little easier to move around. Yeah, so we're seeing elevated numbers of those. Any other questions on the calls or statistics or? Why would there be? What page are you looking at? I'm looking at the Eastmount, the first one of the call statistics. Okay. In call us, the fire slash MVA is equal to the medical slash MVA. That's motor vehicle crashes, right? So, and they're equal. Why would they be more, like three times more medical MVA is an Eastmount feeler than fire? How does that work? Cause I was under the impression every time that there's a car crash, a vehicle crash, you sent out a fire truck as well. Did they get that wrong? Right, well, they would reflect on their own. Or maybe that's the case where the patient numbers are really. Well, maybe a case of where you have multiple patients and the car is gonna reflect that medical MVA number to be higher. Yeah, okay. Thank you. Which is different than just the straight medical. So the medical MVA's are not also within that medical number. Those are separate. They're totally separate. Okay, thank you. So Ty, going back to my questions earlier, is it that your system will only generate this data in one six month band? Is it not possible to look at six month bands over time, except to manually compile it? Yeah, that would have to be manually compiled. Right, or we'd have to data into another sheet. Just try to get an Excel sheet. But you could take it and you could use the sheet and look at it and say, okay, it's the easy line comparison. Sure, sure I could. I absolutely could do that. I have those skills. Are you asking us to do it for you? I will put it on by some time. No, I didn't ask you to do it for me. I'm surprised that you're not interested in that data. I will say that much. I'm surprised I'm not asking you to do it for me. I've made the point and you don't feel it would be useful for your purposes. And I get that because your job is to respond to the incident. But for other purposes, or for purposes of, you know, from a organizational oversight budget level, and planning, yeah, where we spend that money to your point on, you know, where are the IC corners? Where are just, what are the drivers of the expenses? Having that data, and you're right. I'm sure you've provided it and we could compile it. Well, that data is not going to show you an icy corner on the State Highway. And do we have time to go lobby the State Highway to go solve a corner more? No way, we're just at that time. Not necessarily you, but maybe the people within our communities or the separate communities. Or similarly, with respect to the medical, that there's more, you know, people in East Montpelier with medical calls. Does that track the demographic? Or does that an age thing? That could depend on just how sick you are. I could come to your house 10 times if you're really sick or you're in your dying, ending of life stages. And I could respond to you a lot. Where I only saw a car all once. And so there's no way to predict or forecast or change the outcome of going to your house 10 times versus going to Carl's once. Because I may see Carl once and I may never see him again for 10 years. Well, where I'd see the advantages, it's not in the small picture so much we're like that micro, it's in the macro about how much staffing, how much equipment, how much facility we're gonna need over time. You know, if we see these growth projections, we've got some years to think about it then. You know where the break points are, we're okay, we've got to add another ambulance and we have to have more teams to team it. Where are those break points? Where we've got to expand our resources staff, our staff resources and equipment to be able to handle that. To me, that's the trend information that's really valuable. I think there's some of that and you'll see in these reports that they look at overall from the state levels. But that's one of those, it's a little hard to forecast. I think it's clearly as you think. Well, I'm not seeing that. You could have a system breakdown somewhere that an organization just drops out, right? And all of a sudden that punches a huge hole in the system that then is, again, that would follow the unforecasted measure of change. That's the unpredictable side. I'm talking about the predictable side where if we see these growth, and maybe that's value, maybe it isn't. I do know what it's like to be caught on the moment where all of a sudden you cross a threshold and you're not prepared, there's a lot of money that has to go out to. Those steps are big, expense steps. So better if you can see them and plan for them. And that would be my concern. The data, I think that looking at data over time backs up the anecdotal perspective that you have that Carl is one person. Yes, and that's a one data point and possibly an outlier. But if there's a systems, you said, did you say fail or something falls apart in the system? And that drives a result. Having that trend data shows you, it backs up the observation that there was an event because here we've got all this trend and then, oh, boom, what happened there? And how do you prevent it? Because now we can see the impact. And it's not just budgeting. And maybe even in our small half a dozen communities, we're too small to be thinking about prevention but understanding the trends at least invites that conversation about other ways of not just responding but intervening and preventing. From a public health perspective, that's kind of where I'm coming from. And that's not, I'm not saying it's your job. But you have the intro. I'm not saying that at all. I'm not saying that at all. That's not at all what I'm suggesting. All I'm noticing is that you're the ones with the data that would inform a public health conversation if we wanted to have it. That's really all I'm saying. But I think the other part of it though, in terms of Rick's question, in terms of like budgeting and things, right? If you look at it and say, okay, you know, in terms of more equipment and things that's not necessarily more equipment, right? Because I may have 10 hours a day. Let's just use that as an example. This says I could run more calls in that 10 hours of the day if the calls came in that 10 hours of the day, right? Because the ambulance is available, the crew's here, they're ready to go. But that's an unpredictable measure to create of filling that 10 hour window versus when I fall into the two or three overlaps and then having to increase staffing to cover that two or three overlap, which falls into maybe four hours of the day. That's an unpredictable vision of how do you fund that and finance that and change that? Well, you fund that and you finance that by adding secondary crews and things. But if the secondary crews are sitting without the call line to support the continuous all the way through, it becomes very expensive to do that. Well, that's why I said, you know, these aren't linear progressions. They tend to be steps, right? You have to figure out what that threshold of affordability and utilization is. You know, that kind of takes a close look at data. And like right now it's not equipment. The equipment could run a lot more. Yeah. You know, but it's just... Well, it's how, you know, it's when they happen. I mean, are you having, it's the number of calls you're getting at one time. It's, so it's that, and that starts, you can drown in data at some point if you're not careful. Right. I get it, but part of this is iterative, especially at this scale. It's pretty small, so it's not, you can kind of see it and feel it as you go. But anything is, you know, if you're, I think where it's helpful is if you can get some idea of where those step points are in advance because they aren't cheap when you do get those. You know, because you're going to a whole new stage of operation. Right. Let's take your example, Ty, of someone who has 10 medical calls in a fairly short period of time. Do you have any way of knowing whether they are connected, for example, with Central Vermont Home Health and Hospice? I mean, I would, but I can't share that information with you. No, I understand that. But I'm wondering if you could look at that person and say, hey, you are connected with Central Vermont Home Health and Hospice. If you had regular visits from a nurse, then maybe some of these emergency calls could be avoided. Not to us, but to say that to the patient. Conceptually, that's a nice idea, but it doesn't work that way. We would not be disconnected from those calls just because there's a nurse going into the facilities. No, we didn't talk into somebody's home. Sorry, into somebody's home. There may be nursing that still goes into those situations, but that doesn't mean that the ambulance is disconnected from those calls. I'm not talking about being disconnected. I'm talking about somebody having improvements to their health because they're seeing somebody outside of an ambulance coming to their door. Yeah, I agree. I guess I'm a little confused on the road. You guys want to go down or not, of trying to, now you're gonna medically manage people within their town in their own medical conditions. I guess I'm not sure how your family works. Yeah, we address what comes in front of us day by day, minute by minute. I don't know. Some of this stuff is not as predictable as you guys are trying to make it to be, I guess. Even predicting timelines of more calls occur at this time of day versus this time of day. That may be good for a two month period, but then it just falls way off and the trends change for the next two months just by nature of how it goes. These are really, if you look at statistics, I mean, statistical molecules work better. The bigger they are, the better they work. And with you, there's a very small, these are very small groups to be. So there is a lot of fluctuation. I get large gaps in between that are, Yeah, I mean, I don't know. The question really is for us because we don't really know anything about your end of this. It's like, do you see patterns that you would, that are worth? The patterns we really see are the overall just the continuum growth. And again, that goes in stages. Sometimes we see a large burst of it and then it settles back a little bit and then it may lodge forwards, you know, it may never go back to where it was, right, it always has to cling to it, but it may jump forwards and then it rebounds backwards a little bit and then it goes, you know. Can I make a request? And you don't have to do it, just a request. But going forward, when we get this sheet again, I'm wondering if we can see the columns for like the past two years. How, just so that you had said. I'm going to make that suggestion. Yeah. It's coming. We have to go ahead and do that. I can give you the sheets separately if you'd like for those years. I can give you year to year to year so you can look at them in America. Otherwise for us to put them in. Yeah, no, that'd be great. Well, they're not set up in the system we have. That's like even with border dinner town budgets, we'd like to do that. That gives you some trend information. We see that, it gives you the comparables by that item, so yeah, it helps, that helps a lot. Yeah, I guess with that though, certain trends aren't going to necessarily show you budget reflections, I guess. No, I guess. We got it, we got it. All right, any other questions on the call logs? On the next one, Fire Department July through December Ambulance. What do you look at, what's the age? Just not numbered, it's called East Merchelior Fire Department FY22 July through December Ambulance Transport Statistics. Yep. The second row is towns, and then the column labels, no or yes. What does no or yes for column? It's just transporter and no transport. Thank you. So I spend the same time totally because I'm not doing the actual transport, but I tend to spend the same effort to come out to your house for a no-transporter to do for a transport. The only difference is it'll get paid for a no-transporter. I'm sorry, could you just explain generally what you mean by transport? The transporters that load you in the back of the ambulance and I take you to the hospital. No transporters, I come to your house because you called me to come to your house at 2 a.m. in the morning, and then you decide you don't wanna go to the hospital. So then I have you sign a paper that says, I would not like to go to the hospital at this time and we leave you and we go home. Go back to bed and get something to carry yourself. If somebody has fallen and cannot get themselves up by themselves and you guys come and help them out of the back of the bed, that's no transport. That may be, it depends on the, you know, again, that's a generalized statement. Well, my example was you put them back into bed and then sometimes, and sometimes we take them based on. No, I'm just giving an example, Ty, and try to understand what no transport is and you don't get paid for it. Yeah, or you go to a motor vehicle accident, possible injuries and you get there and nobody's hurt, they don't wanna go to hospital. Three forms or four forms, we gotta fill out. Saying that they're saying everything's okay, sign here, okay, have a good day. And it's always the central Vermont, you never take them to the UVM. We go to St. John very sometimes, we go to Morrisville, we do go to the UVM location, depending on the type of call. Okay, so it's not necessarily a geographic indicator, it's the type of call that we do. Typically, we would go to central Vermont Medical Center, we have the authorities where depending on the crew that's on the truck, we can bypass the hospital and go direct to UVM based on the nature of the call. We may be in Woodbury for a call, which then the request is for that patient wants to go to Morrisville, so we may end up going to Morrisville with that patient. And St. Jay would be- We can be anywhere over Marshfield out farther to go to St. Jay and people request that. That tends to be the less likely direction we go to, but we probably went to Coffley last year, five, six, seven times, something like that. Nice job. Okay. Did you see a loose? It's a long drive. So, yeah. Any other questions on those? No? So, and if you look at that, you know, the second page of their first couple of months, January to February, I have a question for you actually, you know, and it's, how are you reimbursed? Is that based on what insurance companies allow or do you base it on your total hauling, you know, your overall cost divided by the number of mileage? No. I mean, so, right. So, every call dictated by services provided. We would be, we're reimbursed for mileage, mileage is not touched with any deductible. Rates that typically within the area or statewide. That doesn't change that frequently for how much it is per loaded while. And then in terms of the type of calls, if I come to your house and, you know, you get oxygen, oxygen has a flat rate number that gets applied to the bill. If I start IB access onto you, it's a flat rate. If I administer drugs, it starts to take it from an ALS to ALS two calls, I mean, how many drugs I administer to you. You know, it doesn't necessarily, in the overall scope of it, it's replacing bandages and things like that. But if I use 10 bandages of it on you, and I use two bandages on Judith for the same type of call just for whatever reasons was necessary, there's no comparative difference in that, you know, she left bandages and used more. You don't get billed IRA, it's all falling in. And then, so once the bill is generated for the entirety of what the costs are, the insurance then takes their whack at it and pays the percentage of Medicare, Medicaid, they all reduce those 40% approximately on those. So, you know, and then again, you have the uninsured. We don't put our taxpayers to collections. That was decided a long time ago. So you have uninsured payment, I could come to your house 10 times and give you a thousand dollar bill and you're not paying it and we're not receiving any money. You know, it's just how it is. You may not have the ability to pay. Or the insurance covers, you know, different people's assurances that have different grades of what they cover. You know, you may have a higher deductible than Judith does, right? And we may not be able to collect the deductibles because you don't have the ability to pay personally above and beyond what the insurance pays. So that deductible becomes uncollected. That could be up to 25% or so, we'll call. But you have to cost out the door are always the same. Right, they are what they are. They are what they are, right? So you're expending money, so some cause you make a little bit, some cause you lose a lot. Now I don't think there's, you know, in actions on what your population is in town, if you see more and more aging populations and things, you're going to see more Medicare, Medicaid patients. We have a reasonable level of uninsured people that are, you know, in our towns for whatever reasons that answer that question. We'll come back to that. We'll tie the capital plan. I didn't make a copy of that because you guys were just given copies of that in December. The Striker Power Load System is installed and trucked and working here. People are happy with that. And this is just something, you know, I read through it. I think it's just got some helpful information. You guys might appreciate reading. The other piece of it that I wanted to draw together with this is it talks about, you know, funding and gaps and things. And overall, I think within our town system and our system of how we operate, you know, we're funded pretty strongly and the town support is pretty strong onto there. And so I think that's part of the takeaway ever is when they talk about, you know, building stronger systems and what does it require and things that really takes the support and backing in the towns to make that happen. There's a lot of towns that don't really have a structured system. It's within them. They maybe lie on services. Some services are covering, you know, 10, 12 pounds more than that, you know, so that when you look at the square mileage of coverage like that and roll them up, that's a huge area. So it talks a lot about different things, you know, how the COVID reactions were, education purposes, you know, development of the workforce. There was some things that came out through the COVID system, you know, during the COVID year about the COVID system for COVID years, you know, as money has been handed out left and right, good, bad and different. It allowed payments to be paid for people's schooling and things we've had a couple of paramedics that have been able to get their education paid for, you know, but that's after $30,000. But that's not the normal and that's going away, you know, and then the costs of these classes and things come out of people's pockets individually. And so it kind of looks at some of those, those scopes and demographics overall of, you know, where the impacts and the strengths and weaknesses but also the fragility of the system overall. So this is an 11-page document that we're just seeing for the first time now. What is it that you would like us to discuss? I'm not asking you to do anything with tonight. This is only an educational purpose for you. It's something that we just received in the EMS world that sent to us as a legislative report. Just as you see it, it was sent to the Vermont Legislative to look at and review as, again, they continue to look at and monitor the EMS systems and the health of the system within the state of Vermont. So it's education for you to take home, read, enjoy, throw away, burn in the fire out of care. But it's just information we're passing along that's out to the, you may not see otherwise. Was there anything in here that struck you as particularly useful for understanding your role in the community, your future planning? I don't think it's any different than what we already know. It's just kind of a correlation of it all put into one document. Again, this isn't the first one of this kind that's been put out there. You know, they've been studying and looking at these things for years and years, but it's just a new, it came across the table. So I thought I'd share it with you folks to think of. I find it interesting that it's passed, it's a years of inadequate reimbursement for service and it's rendered unreliable levels of local, state, federal support and the pressure of the global pandemic and push out the fragile system that should serve our communities to the point of crisis. It's only a matter of time before a predominantly rural EMS system suffers interruptions. That immediately affecting personal safety, et cetera, et cetera. That kind of. What page? I'm just curious. That is on page three. Page four, it says that volunteers are asked to pay between $800 and $1,500 to take an EMT or advanced EMT course. Is that true here? Does the department cover those costs? We cover those costs here, but in most cases, most people are paying that cost themselves. And the fire, is there still a fire academy or so? There is a fire academy, right? And the fire academy classes don't typically cost money. It gets her to find there will be one here this fall in the host, but. But is there a contribution that each community or fire department needs to contribute to run those? No, that's run out of a division of fire safety. So it's on the air budgets. So I'm not quite sure how to ask this question, so I may need some help from you, but I'm wondering, you mentioned that some other towns are not being as supportive of their fire and ambulance services as we are in East Montpelier and Callis. I don't think I said that. No? Not at all. What I said was East Montpelier and Callis in our towns support our system strongly that has allowed us to have a good sound system here. Robust. But nothing about any other systems in other towns. What I said was there could be at any time for any of us, right? If East Montpelier was the example, if East Montpelier was to fail as an ambulance service that punches a pretty good hole in the covers here in Central Vermont and then somebody has to pick that up because those needs don't go away, right? So then that burden then is loaded onto services that may already be burdened in running at max levels. So are there towns in this area that the taxpayers of East Montpelier and Callis are almost subsidizing because you guys end up going to a lot of calls there that you might expect their local service to take? Not for our primary coverage areas, no. In your other towns that we covered with Plainfield and Marsh Gril, they're under contract services. They're paying for those services and then the revenues start there from the collections. So my reflection overall in this, as I stated, we're in a pretty solid place of where we are. We're not hanging on the cliff by a pinky, but. So this overall conclusion that the system is on the verge of collapse without adequate reimbursement or sustainable education funding, you don't think that applies to the situation here? I didn't say there's not impacts from some of those things here. And again, it's an ebb and flow in our system as in any. I could be flush with employees six months out of the year and all of a sudden I lose three and that may make me neutral but we adapt and we move forwards. And so it's a continuing process of effort to keep our heads above water. Would you characterize the EMS service that you guys provide as being on the verge of collapse? No. Okay, no. Good. And I think I've said that several times. I think I said that we're. That's what it says for the statewide in this report. And I'm just wanting to make sure that's not. That is state-wide concern because many organizations are at their normal operational level. They can handle what they have, but the problem is when all of a sudden we struggle with getting one end on something, we need it. We call Berry City. And all of a sudden Williamstown has that same issue. They're going to call Berry City. Now Berry City becomes. Sure. They're straight. Out of service. And then who can come to them because Montpelier is busy doing something on their side. And when you look at statewide, that's kind of a little bit of a red flag. Well, that really does, it really does work as a system. They're not a dependent piece. There is a lot of overlap, I get it. So that's why they're saying there's concerns statewide at the top. Makes sense. But the system does work autonomously when that happens, right? When you're calling and moving those pieces, it's if they work in the structures in place. I can tell you who the next 20 ambulances will be to come and tell them if I need them. And our dispatchers have that same information and they can automatically make those responses and requests based on what we say to them. So I think it's just some good reading. It's just informational pieces for you guys to take home. Yeah, yeah, that's good. All right. The last thing is the new engine purchase that we had approved. So we thank you guys at the town meetings for that. The manufacturer will be toying. Our representative agent will be Shanker Lee Firetrucks out of New York State. They're our dealership that we'll be working through. The proposed timeline is probably 12 to 15 to 18 months out before it would be delivered once we sign contract. We're ready to sign contracts now. So they're working on putting the documents together for that. The, as agreed upon in the town votes was the towns of Calis and East Malpere were funding 200,000 of it. East Malpere is funding the remaining balance at this junction of the purchase prices that estimated at 425,000. East Malpere is already approved for our loan. East Malpere fire department is already approved for our loan that we need to recover that once the delivery of the truck comes into place. So that's kind of the estimate current costs. And then I guess the discussion for the two towns is the release of funds in ensuring that occurs within our current fiscal year so that we are not going into have to do a review vote. The truck obviously, I say obviously carefully but right now predictability would say based on the markets and things that will not arrive within this fiscal year. There's question of even whether we can get a chassis immediately right now based on allocations of chassis to all kinds of vendors and supply and demand is just through the roof right now. So you're looking for your manager, I think I'm just gonna repeat what you just said Ty, but you're looking for the funds that were approved at town meeting to be released in, you said current but you actually mean the upcoming fiscal year. Right, it will be the fiscal year that's coming up when they're approved to so. And the FY 22-23 fiscal year, but the truck is likely not going to be here until the following fiscal year. Yeah, that's what it's looking at. You know, we talked to the vendor that you sent me an email actually this afternoon. He said look we built a couple of trucks in 90 days which is not the normal, you know, but it was 12 to 15 months to get the chassis. So what's the model for funds to be released? Where do they live? Who earns the interest? Is that even actuarially sound or not, not actuarially counted under accounting standards? Are you allowed to do that? And I'm wondering if we voted in March of 2022 to approve this expenditure, are we obligated to expend those funds in FY 23? Can we keep them on the books? We're all looking at Ubers. The following year. I'm not going to answer for Calis but you're not using the model we use. Our approval is good forever. But it remains a select board determination as to when and how to do it. But we did not have a allocation out of current funding came out of Capra Reserve. Thank you. But one thing we do need to keep in mind is that the East Montpelier Fire Department Capital Reserve use has not yet been approved. So when that still needs to happen, when you have your final failures, that's what we were waiting on for that. Right, and that actually, so we actually have the approvals for the loan to be totally outside of that right now to cover what we need to. And then it will be the expenditure of the monthly payments going forwards or not. No, I think we would look at. So we wouldn't say we went, well, I guess collectively, this used in the example of 225,000, it would be collectively that, but it would be incrementally based on the loan payments over either a five or six year period. Ty, would you do me the favor of putting that in an email to me please? Specifically what you're asking for, what it would look like, and I don't even know what, I don't, I know enough to ask a question whether from an accounting standpoint, that's even permissible, but I don't know the answer, so that's good news. So the answer is yes, because we are not looking to take the money and sit on it in an account in East Montpelier. Okay. Priority, priority. We would take that money and apply it into the truck. So I can apply money into the truck from the day of signing on. And it goes to the. It would go to the vendor? To the vendor. Or we can apply it into North Country Credit Union. So we have options on payment installments we can make on the truck. We have options we can pay just the chassis. When the chassis arrives to them, we have options we don't have to pay a penny until the truck delivery. So. What we don't want to do is get caught to a situation where we have to go back to do a revoke on this. I hear you, I hear you, and all I'm asking is that you put the request in writing so that I've, only so I'm not middleman. Right. Getting some detail wrong and lay out what the options are as you just described them. If you would do that, I would really appreciate it. Yeah, I think the options are, again, I can show you what they are, but again, it's what, you know, the different towns, if you move together and move separately, the town in East Montpelier is probably a little more fluid on being able to move theirs by just a vote of the meeting because the funds are available. You know, I'm giving you the heads up so that Calis has preparation time to, if you're taking, I assume you're taking a bottom note, maybe you're not, maybe you have other sources of funds you're going to use for that purpose. So, when do you think that you'll be able to send me an email putting all of that in writing? Probably being tonight's Thursday night. It would probably be sometime early next week. Okay, thank you. Would you send that to East Montpelier's board as well? And we'll send official requests for votes. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. So the other question would be if the monies are released from the towns and paid to the manufacturer of the truck, do the towns want to see a bond on the truck? That can be another question you raised in the email. That's something we'll process at the board. We have no power to decide anything. We're not a quorum. I was just asking as a statement with a question mark. What I would tell you is the bond will cost, you know, probably four to $5,000 to put a bond against the truck. Have you been seeing that? Obviously, we've never done it. So have you seen that with other departments that have run into this? No, it's more, I think the influence of that more comes from town governments of what different town governments feel and have a sense of. So not everybody's doing it. There aren't that many in our situation. Right. So I don't know why we'd be doing a bond. Certainly Montpelier would not bond with Montpelier's fire department. Right. And I can't imagine a scenario where we would feel the need to bond in action of yours that we've approved. We don't necessarily feel the need for the bond. I'm just putting it out there for you guys as a questioning statement of if you guys have a concern on the security of the payment to the fire truck company. You know, because again, we can- But remember, we're paying for the damn bond that we're asking for. See, there's something there going, why are we doing that? We're basically insuring ourselves to the city. Right. Because the other side of that, obviously, is we can take and secure the monies, right? Whether it's in North Country Credit Union with our loan asset to purchase, and we don't pay them a penny until delivery. And then it's 100% if the truck doesn't show. Okay. If they were to fold for some reason, we'd have no loss whatsoever, right? Because we're still holding our assets. And I don't foresee them folding or anything like that, but that's some of what people look at in the overall. Is it, what's the, you know, situation of the company overall, and the company's solid, and things that we don't have any question on that part of the lesson. The hard part here is, without knowing the exact deal you're working with, we can't see what your benefit is for pre-paying anything. So from my perspective, we shouldn't be pre-paying until we know if there's an actual gain to it. Well, you're only holding the money as long as you can, as long as you're getting a financial benefit. Right. As long as it's within, it doesn't impact law around how we spend money on the town end. To me, it's kind of logical to pay at when on delivery. Yeah. So it's less than 2% of what the savings would be, even if you were to give them the entire amount upfront overall. So it's, I don't want to say it's no money, but it's small money at the end of it, versus if you, so let's say, if Calis takes a loan, right, and you take a loan today and the truck doesn't deliver for 15 months, you're paying costs. So what is the cost for that 15 months of money? You know, e-small payers in a different place because the money's in the Cal, making some money, you know, whatever, less than a percentage. It's not a negative percent. Yeah, but it may get there. So there's costs for trying to do that. So the end of the savings may not be that beneficial in the overall depending on how it is. You know, the same with us, right? If we were to take the note early on in e-small payer, for the fire to fire, we're gonna start paying notes, we're gonna pay insurance costs and things like that going into it. So the costs may not be, you know, for what we're looking at, it doesn't necessarily make sense to incur a year before the trucks can be delivered. But again, you don't know what interest rates are gonna be down the road. You know, they would allow us to be, if we do five years, we're right now, we're at like three and a half percent. If we do six years, we'd be a little over 4% next year. Who knows? Yeah, we're anticipating it to be, we're looking to do a five year note. I think the other thing kind of tying this in and not trying to veer off to us, but back to that number three on there, where the capital plan is looking at the possibilities and if you go back to your budget sheet on the second page, when you look at the capital account, the capital account of having 180,000 in there currently, is to, I think our goal is to pay off one of the trucks this year once this fiscal year ends. Is that we look at the capital and review that. So we would reduce the indebtedness of one of the notes currently paying out of that capital fund, saving the interest for the last year or so on that account. Sort of depends on what the interest rate you're paying is. Be very careful with that, because you're not gonna replace it at the same rate. No, right, no, a lot higher. Right, so we're gonna look at that once we get to the end of the fiscal year. And you know, if that makes sense, we don't have to do that. The bank hasn't required it to say, hey, we want you to reduce, because you're carrying two notes right now with us. We want that note cleared up before. Obviously shows that, oh, if that happens, that's all the better for them, but it's not anything that's required or anything to do. But we might have the ability to do it with the funds that are in there and everything. And obviously those funds that are there, as you guys know, they're not making a lot of money onto them. But if we can reduce what the interest is overall, we're probably in that 3% range, I would guess on those notes right now. So we might say, you know, 1% and a half, 2% money. And so again, it's not, that's a lot of money, but. So those are the kind of thoughts on that. So we'll take whatever feedback you guys have on those. I'll send you the requests, release the monies. And the bond questions. Yeah, just the timing, the issues, you know, when. Yeah, I mean, I think what I told you was the best, you know, that's what he gave us in an email, and he puts four or five question marks out to that. And it's just all depending on delivery of the chassis. And your question, I think, is less about wanting us to pay in this fiscal year. It's really, you want an assurance that the money will be there for whatever fashion we are able to offer that assurance. Without having to go back to the votes. I heard you say, without having to go back to the voters. Right. I don't want to get to a point where with you folks in Calis, to all of a sudden, you guys have to go out and do all this paperwork and go through the meetings and meetings, and we're, you know, six weeks to get through meetings type of thing to get that process done and approved for you guys to take out the notar bond for the loan that you guys worked that out ahead of time, have that ready to go. The money has to be ready. So, right. So if I said to you trucks delivering in 30 days, I need that money, or if we were gonna pay on the chassis payment on the front side, you know, that occurs in 90 days. Are you ready in 90 days to? Well, so that's the second issue then. That's the second issue from making sure that we have money in the FYC, FY24, that's the question I heard first, is how are we, how and whether, whether is a question, whether we can be assured without going back to the voters that there will be the money in FY24 is one question. And then your second one then is, and when it's time to buy the truck, it's time to buy the truck, and the money's gotta be ready. Right. Two things. Well, it's easier. I don't wanna sign a contract F3 for a truck, and then have there be questions about the monies that were voted and approved. Yeah, it would be, I mean, there are two variables happening kind of simultaneously. When you're paying for the truck, and which might dictate when they have to have, when we all have to have the money available. And that seems to be up in the air because it's, you're not certain whether it's gonna be paying now or paying up on delivery. I can do it either way. So if you give me a check tomorrow, I can give them a check when I sign the contract, and that money goes right into the truck tomorrow. So it's not a question on my side. It's really more of a question for your side of it. We can do, we can move it as fast as the money's there. What I'm looking to make sure of is that there's no glitch in the money once I sign the contract. Well, we're approved for the next, as of July one, right? That's when our fiscal, that's when the money is available and the new fiscal coming ahead. And the truck won't be delivered in that fiscal, probably it's gonna be in the following 24th. So with us, I mean, it seems to be like we would just, for simplicity's sake, and not to go to the town, I'm guessing we can't roll that forward without another vote. So I'm guessing we would wanna pay that money out before the end of the coming, this fiscal ahead. So wherever that went, however that was paid against the truck for, if it went into a holding account for. Well, if it does that, yeah. And if it does that, where? I mean, these are questions. Well, we put it with North Country with the loan. It would secure with them to be for the loan when the loan came through and we were paying in entirety. So if you guys say, hey, listen, we'd rather our money not grow than be paid into the front side of this truck, which is the same investment. Then we would hold it in North Country with the loan, readiness for the entire project and we would pay as an end loan. Or we might hold it. What are we either way? However, as long as it's released, it doesn't become an issue down the road. We could only collect a little bit of interest if we wanted to. So, yeah, I think that we, really, we need to process the question as an entire board. Right. So what's the difference in the contract that you would see in terms of paying up front versus paying upon delivery? Yeah, that's a good question. I like that question. It's in 3% maybe? No, it's one and a half to 2% based on the increments. It's not a large amount of money. That's not a worth to you, really. Well, we'd say we'd lose. Because we might mute as a board and decide that we would rather fold on to our money until the truck is ready for delivery. But if we found that we'd get a $25,000 discount if we paid up front, then we might look at it differently. Yeah, no, it's not $25,000. So can I just say one thing? This is a very weird way to go about this. We actually need to see the documents. We're waiting for them to come in for the final contract. And we need to make that final decision as to whether we're going to support the capital reserve use. This is impossible to do in splitting off little pieces. We have to see the whole thing in one place. And we'll have those documents. What I wanted to get on the table tonight while we have the joint meeting and everybody sitting at the same table is the need to work on this. How you guys work it out together, or don't. That's between you two guys to communicate. Or if one time it wants to do one thing and the other time it wants to do another, that's fine. As long as we don't end up with a conflict down the road. But there's only going to be one purchase. It's either going to be up front or at the end. So far, that hasn't been decided. It's looking like there's no real advantage to paying up front. Because the savings for the incentive is 1% or 2% as represented by you. So it looks like we're looking at paying on delivery. So we're all kind of looking at the same time frame. And based on that time frame, you want a representation or assurances that both of us, both towns, will be able to deliver our share. How we deliver, how we get our respective shares, that's up to them, that's up to us. But we need to be able to deliver within what? 30 days, 90 days? Probably a 30-day window, I would think, would be we would know before delivery of what that would be. So before signing the contract, then we'll continue to discuss this. And we'll see the documents that Bruce was talking about, the options, and then we'll be able to give you approval to use the capital reserve fund and so on. Is that correct? Yeah, it can. So I guess you guys are looking to have a joint meeting of discussion between the two towns at that point, or is it? I don't think you need to do that. But again, if that's going to be the consensus of how do you come to end pay or front pay, or just each time. Just to make an example, in the past, you've always provided a set of documents that laid out the costs that you're facing and then the breakdown of how it was going to be handled. That's the document that showed what the capital costs were going to be. And the best timing, we can come up with it. None of us have a clue. We just had our trust pushed out three months. Not a whole lot of control of that one right now. The guy's front paying or you guys end paying? No, we're not going to pay until the end, because nobody has a clue when it's going to be out there. I don't know how the bank's going to loan on it right now, because they don't have a clue. But we've always had a plan and actual hard numbers based on the loans you were looking at. And we haven't seen any of that yet. We haven't even seen the numbers on the truck you're buying. The projected numbers. Well, the $425,000. Right, we just threw that number out there, but we never saw it on paper. That's a big number. But again, it's only every day it can change. So right now, when we go back to it, so I guess part of it is, so if this comes into a delay process where we hold this, that truck is going to potentially get more and more expensive as we go down the road. It may even after you sign the contract, which is what's happening with the trucks right now. We've already had two increases in three months. Right. And whether. They built money into this. The contract actually has $5,000 into it to cover the incremental increase of the taxes. Yeah, so did ours. Because they're free. We blew through that within the first month. Right. Well, that's right. There's no wind in this sometimes. No, I get it. Well, we just have to deal with it. Yeah. But the boards need that preliminary information to then make their approvals so that you have something, you have the right to do what you want to do. Right. Right now, you don't have it. Yeah, and that's what we're talking about. That's what we need to do to figure out how you guys want to handle it. I don't want to preliminary sign a contract without the agreements. That's why we want to have the discussions. I can tell you what the payments are based on and what the savings are based on, and we want to estimate that we had four weeks ago when they were sent a proposal. So just in terms of timing, we have a meeting coming up on Monday, and then our next scheduled meeting is first Monday, May. So it sounds like the May meeting would be the one that we would take it up on if you're going to be getting to us early next week. All right, any other questions on the? A couple other things that I had in mind that I did not get onto this list. I apologize for that. There's a couple of things here at the building we're looking at. One of them is a capital improvement on all of the lighting. We've got some light fixtures in our office, especially, that are burning through bulbs monthly. They're burning out the system. So we've got some issues with our little ballast. These are all originals. These are fluorescent lights, not LEDs. We've also got some parking lights, one that's totally out. The other ones that are running at 50% are lost. Parking a lot light? Yeah, because their longevity is just out. We do have an estimate of costs to convert everything to LEDs for this room, the main office, all the can lights that are in the hallways that are on auto sensors, and all of the bay lights to LEDs with including the heads out in the parking lot for $7,300. The heads in the parking lot are probably about a third of that cost overall. Right now, with the rebates on the fixtures, like the heads in the parking lot, we can save $100 a piece on those, which is 25% of the cost of the actual fixture. The rest of the fixtures, we're saving right around 50% on all the costs of the fixtures, and then everything in the building will be converted to LEDs that are the main operational lights. There's only a few that would be left that wouldn't, but they're a low usage light that we didn't feel was necessary to put in at this point. What was the cost on that again, estimate? It was $7,300. $7,300. $7,300, and that's with the rebates. So then there's discussion of do we take it, we can take it from our capital, and then there's still a little bit of bond money left, that's something we look at with the bond money. The other component for the building signs before we go off the discussion, maybe out on the side where the dumpster is and where the driveway extends, as you first come in with the trailer sitting right now, there's a patch of dirt right there. That really is just a mud hole for us every year because that's where all the snow gets clogged and things is that we would like to pave that connection. We actually need the additional parking spots and pave that connector between there. It's a small area. You'd have to dig the base, make a base under it and then pave that section. That would give us a spot to park the trailer. It would give us a spot to park additional calls, especially on emergency calls if there's other things going on in the buildings and things like right now, if I had fire calls coming in and everybody came in, there wouldn't be enough parking for people. But that would give us another four spots of parking over there that would be beneficial. I don't have the cost on the paving part yet. The paving guy's gonna come out and meet me. We're gonna do it this week, but it won't happen until next week at this point. So just put the numbers together, ask it as a bond use, and send them over to us and we'll use the protocol we've got in place. And if it makes sense, both of those things in theory could fall under that account. It'll pretty much strip that account of anything that's left. Does that, does, so follow up question then. Does, I was wondering, do you need our permission? This is your budget. No, it's the bond remainder fund is actually in East Montpelier. I see. It's our bond. So the remainder fund stayed with us. Yeah, the protocol for using it is that it had, at this point, it just has to relate to a rational purpose for the building. The trick with Callis is we would send you the documents. You would either say we have a concern about this or not, but the decision would be made by the East Montpelier select order. So it's bond fund from the original? From the original, there's leftover monies. I gotcha. And we've burned through about 75% of it. So the proposal is instead of taking it out of a budget to go to those little slush monies. It's a super bond, yeah. There's no reason to hold on to that money that isn't designed to be a capital reserve fund for use down the road. Gotcha. So if there's some purpose that can be put forth. These are reasonable abuses for that. So we'll, so we and Callis will get a proposal that we can react to. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, so we're just, you know, again, putting that there for discussion, people's information pieces. So if there's questions now that we need some other additional information, we'll put the proposals together and get them sent off. The things we're still gathering, the cost structure on the pavement part of it. We have the light pieces. Just for fun, have you asked Washington Electric if they do the LEDs for you out there? They did ours in their parking lot, which are our lights. They blow them in for us. Even though it's GMP. No, that's actually Washington Electric. Oh, really? Managed. Okay. GMP isn't charging anybody for them. We think they're getting paid through the traffic, like billing. So V-Trans is probably paying for them. We've always used Washington Electric to do the actual maintenance on them. And they do it for free. Awesome. We did not specifically ask them on the light heads out there. We could ask them if they have some, you know, if they were willing to put them in. They can't hurt, sorry. Just on the pavement, I'm just wondering if you considered or thought of gravel versus pavement and would that solve your mud problem and utility problem? No, we want to pave it, yeah. It's a mud hole now. The gravel will eventually become a mud hole and things as well. So, yeah, that piece of pavement would be important. It should have been, it was a design thing initially in the village. It would have been pavement from the very beginning. You're thinking more like a pervious service versus it's a pretty small area. It's a good idea. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know what you're... It collects right there into a retention ditch. So it's not free-flowing out of there. It's the way it's designed, so. The retention pod in there, like a... Sort of, yeah. There's a berm on the right side out where it sits in pretty good terms. They got the things there, so it's not a free-flowing. You know, that collects actually everything all the way up through and goes into that holding zones from, it's good, because it goes through the culverts in the front here. That actually has worked well. Yeah. It had no right to work as well as it has. This was a mud hole that we built in. Correct. And for it to have held together for a decade already and without any real maintenance, it's pretty impressive. Yeah, well done. Yeah, because we've got the drain that comes down the side. It takes up the yard water in the back. That's actually all of the roads, like the housing 14. And that goes into the ditch over on the same side that daylight's out into there, so. The only other thing was they just wanted to talk about burn, open burn complaints, that if the towns receive open burn complaints, please make sure that I'm aware of them. And the one I can speak to in particular, that from the other day, we arrived at a grass fire and the individual who started it wasn't intending for it to become a grass fire, it got out of hand, whatever, we went towards the neighbor's house. And the neighbor was, I read at us because he says, I have called the town, he was complained, and nobody's done anything. And the next thing you know, Jason and I are in the middle of one guy because he's had it to fisticuffs with the other guy and that told him I warned him he would be arrested. And the other guys- Feel free. And the other guy says, I will put a bullet in you. So we're in the middle of this. This is what we've heard before, Ty. I understand. The health officer out there, the constable out there, those are two jerks. We had no heads up to arrive to the one guy, right? We never knew he was burning out there until the other guy called and said there's a fire. I know. But he's like, hey, I called the town. So it would be beneficial to the town to have those complaints. Let us know as a fire warden whenever so that we can look at them or that we can just have a heads up because it was not a pleasant greeting when we pulled in. Do people actually apply for or request burn permits? Like they're on the spot. Yes, it's supposed to be. They're supposed to. Okay, I just- So this was an unpermitted- Yeah. In a small fire pit style. I was supposed to say it was a fire pit. It wasn't intentional to do what it did and get away from, you know. Yeah, okay. But we, in a small pit here, I as the fire warden and the staff does go out and do inspections. We inspect all of our burn permits. But that's a state police issue that was happening there. No, I understand. But I think it had it been something like, because he had said he'd even made these complaints out of the fire backers last year. Not about a fire pit. See, that's the trick. He was complaining about trash. No, not about open burning. That's what I'm saying. No open burning. He was complaining about trash. Being burned or? No, stored. Okay. This is a challenging spot. Well, actually, this is public information. So it's not a problem. The complaints that come into us, we send the health officer out, usually with the constable in these kind of circumstances. If you can't get anywhere with that, the state police are called in, which they were in this case. But those are two guys that have no respect for any of us, period. And it's one of those where you sit there and go, hopefully the state police has them on their radar, because there isn't a whole lot any of us can do about it. I'm not looking for the health officer side reports, but if there was some specifically relating to open burning. Again. There was no open burning. Anything. That's why when you said it, we were sitting there. That was the information that we were given on site in the outside. We know the information because we heard it too. Okay. So, Ty, about the worst, but when you say call it you, I mean, I take it for call us, we're gonna be calling Greg, Greg, not. You should call Greg, who should follow up. So like, if you called me and he's my parent, and said, hey, these guys are open burning, I will go look at those. And then we'll look to see if they're burning trash and everything and follow up with it. Okay. Whether or not they get written a fine or not, it depends on the situations and things, you know. I mean, this was an accident that occurred by burning some cardboard and things, but overall, and again, it may have been misrepresented in the guy's anger towards us, but the guy was irate at us as a fire department that we did not correctly address this situation before, for the burning. And the garbage aside, that was his accusations against us. So he came at my fire guys upon arrival with great anger that we hadn't dealt with this ahead of time. And then as it's almost burning his shed down in his equipment, the neighbor's camper, you know, it just fueled everything into this rage of then, like I said, Jason Wong and I stood between this guy to stop him in the field. And I told him I would have him arrested because of it, that he was headed to go, you know, and then when the guy's behind my back, saying I'm gonna put a bullet in you, that's not where we wanna be in the position of when we could have possibly, I say possibly in some situations, if it had been anything identified because of hope and burning previously, we may have been able to do something. That doesn't mean it's gonna stop them from doing it, but it would have at least given us a heads up for what we may have been forecast to see. Please remember what you're saying. You guys see a lot more than we do and you never pass anything on to us. We did have a open complaint that ended up with the state police, but when you've got a neighbor who screams first, for a second, and then another neighbor who doesn't appear to think at all, which is the one that threatened the gun thing, there isn't anything any of us can do about it. That was a state police incident right from the get go. And as I said, they've been called before for those two exact guys because the one that threatened the gun does some really stupid stuff and the one that calls monitors. And that stuff has passed along. We don't sit on any of it, but fire had never been mentioned before. That was a new one. We were kind of hoping the fire would take out the trash because the rats were the problem against the health officer. At least you don't have horses. So sad. From my understanding, they were familiar to us. I wonder if you're related. All right, anyways, that was it. I just wanted to put that on the table. Thanks. Any other questions? Desired to move to the next early hour. Thank you, sir. Thanks, Mel. I'll look for a note from you early next week. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.