 Brandon, I'm going to connect you right now just a moment. Hi, Brandon, can you hear me? Hello, I'm not sure if you can hear me. Your audio is muted, the town meeting TV audio on my end. So I can't hear you. Oh, there we go. Sorry about that, Brandon. You're connected with the Slack board. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. So I own a gym over on South Brown Hill Road. It's a fence that could stay six feet apart from one another. Then they were allowed to take their masks off. And they worked that into the definition of a public space. I was just wondering if there was any way that that could be considered for the Williston mask mandate. Certainly we can consider that we would need to warn the issue. So that we would at the earliest thing to do that would be next week. Next week. Yeah. And would that just be added to the agenda of the next meeting? Yes. Awesome. All right. Is there anything else that I can do to promote that as it's coming into the next week's meeting? Well, you've given us your requests and we can consider it and look for public opinion as well. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anyone else on the zoom list? No, no one else. Okay. Then we'll move on then to the rest of the agenda, which is reviewing the capital operating budgets of various departments. I've asked Eric to do a quick introduction of how we proceeded this this way in on this in the past. And hopefully. Well tonight. This is the. Budget discussion. So. We have a quorum and we have one one member who is going to be late tonight. Thanks, Terry. Yeah, for everyone listening and watching at home. This is the start of the budget review for the board. The boards received a draft budget from the manager earlier this month. So we'll have each department head presenting their budgets. That's each department to write a brief update on their initial review. And then we'll move on to the board this week and next week. And then speak to some more of the notable variances in the draft budget. Certainly it's open for the board to ask any questions at department heads for any line item as, as they're here and going through their initial review. You'll see this evening. I passed out the first possible budgets budget changes sheet that we staff tends to update as we go here. We put the draft budget together. And now what we see is we use our best informed number we have that we get some firm numbers as we go in December. So you'll see just a couple. More minor updates that we received in the last week on, on your possible changes sheet. And as the board goes through the review, certainly additional items can be added to this with the board's consensus. As we go along here to finally arrive at a, at a bottom line for town meeting. Thank you. the first person that Sarah Mason our town clerk talking about the clerk and elections department. So Sarah join us at the table you can demask us so we can hear you better. Hi everybody I'm Sarah Mason the town clerk for anyone zooming in at home that might be on your phone and being the first one in the top spot I'll try to keep this short and sweet to keep you on your schedule as much as possible. The good news for this year is that the clerk's budget tends to be fairly consistent this year is basically the same in your budget packet you'll notice that there were no major increases to report. I don't have any major spending projects that are on the horizon. Most categories that are up at all would be in the election portion of my two categories of my clerk office you know budget and then I have separate lines for elections. FY23 is going to be an on election year as I like to call it with three elections the first will be the August primary in 22 and then the general in November and then town meeting of 23 all fall within one fiscal year so that goes from you know really none this year to three for next year. So some of the things that I bumped up is going to be the full worker compensation went up a little bit the primary and the general could be busier than usual what I'm calling the lehi effect I think we're gonna see more interest in well certainly in November which if people understand the primary is almost as important if you want your people in November you need to choose them in August so I bumped those up a little bit because as some of you know it takes a little legwork beforehand for the August and for November and probably even for March so that one's up a little bit a little bit more probably supplying for ballots envelopes some of the basic necessities for putting on the election besides that most things that are up can be explained with just overall like our buildings this building number was up a little bit surely could speak to those if there were any major questions but those for the most part were just sort of overall building maintenance issues and I think besides that it was fairly straightforward and if you've had time to look at it I'll take a few questions I don't think you have any capital expenses I don't know I don't have anything no there's no major plans for anything we're pretty low-key downstairs nothing has come up yet that I need that I don't have which is good questions there which way forward great thank you thank you very much thank you Jack your price on me oh he's just he's just under into the week we're running early so welcome Jack so we welcome the chair of the Cemetery Commission Jack price to present the budget for the cemetery department thank you thank you Jerry do we have any actual numbers to present or I got them all we have in our booklets I believe you have okay you have copies of it well let's start out with the expenditures which are summarized in one on one page I think you allow that smaller itemization and I'll just run down that and then we can go item by item if you want to professional services which is basically mowing and trimming which is the largest part of our budget in our five cemeteries we've asked for twenty six thousand if you look down on the fourth line there under approved for last year for twenty twenty two excuse me that's twenty nine thousand and this this time it's twenty six thousand dollars but that is because we break that out for five thousand dollars of maintenance and repairs which it was all lumped together in twenty twenty two and that's why it looks like a decrease but it's actually a slight increase from twenty six plus five would be thirty one and I'll explain that few minutes property and casual insurance telephone and postage that's what it is the cornerstone expenses and this involves dear view only where we're still selling or we're that's where we sell all of the available burial lots east is East cemetery is completely sold out so the only full casket burials we're doing right now are in dear view and those lots the cornerstones expenses are up from thirty one hundred to thirty five hundred requested and that's basically because of the cost of the stones themselves the monument dealers set the price on that and it's a competitive thing but we anticipate an increase in that and I'll talk about that in a second equipment repairs and maintenance goes from two thousand last year is a line out of zero this year because we this coming here because we don't have we don't use any of our own equipment anymore the lawn tractors used to mow the cemeteries are gone or they're somewhere else they're not part of the cemetery equipment so memorial garden costs are basically for internments for burial of ashes and at 350 per internment that's how you get 1050 for the proposed reason it was 1550 last year well it wasn't it wasn't even listed last year this for the memorial garden stone which is the next the final line on a 1550 and that included lettering so those two items thousand fifty and six hundred for lettering is the total cost expenditures for memorial the memorial garden that the memorial garden I think you may know it is just a community cremains burial plot all of the remains that are buried in the memorial garden are actually in biodegradable boxes and there is a rough grid of where ashes are put and when we will consider that particular part of the garden to be filled up before we expand the memorial garden in the future we have that potential to do that so if you look at the more expanded version of expenditures again the requested for the coming year is 26,000 and again that includes the mowing which basically breaks down to surely I figured it out is about forty three hundred dollars per month for the mowing and trimming of the well four cemeteries if you don't eat memorial garden doesn't really take by maintenance in that respect but so for six months of that kind of maintenance comes down to 26,000 property insurance and telephone postage we could skip over I think maintenance and repairs that includes maintaining and repairing old stones some of these cemeteries are very old when they break they fall down break they have to be repaired in a timely manner and put back together and the fence around cemeteries needs maintenance and tree removal we just spent twenty five hundred dollars a couple months ago twenty four hundred dollars to take out two large trees in each cemetery so five thousand dollars is a proposal and that would pretty well cover what we need we feel barring any real unforeseen disasters next cornerstones this involves deer view only and the cornerstones which are six by six by six blocks of granite are we used to be able to get them locally but there's a lot going on in berry right now as far as ranch sheds closing are being bought up by foreign enterprises and so we've we've actually gone to local monument dealers and and tried to get a you know the same thing for for a more reasonable price the the going rate has been a hundred and sixty dollars we're and the recently we got winded that's going to go up quite a bit so we raised it to 200 last week we found out that the same monument dealer we're dealing with in sx junction projects that it'll be 235 so I think we're going to have to bid that out for you know competitive bids in the spring because there are other minded dealers try to get the best deal but right now it's two hundred dollars for a set of we're asking for two hundred dollars for a set of four I'm sorry those are the six inch by six inch yes things okay yeah when you buy a lot you have to define where that lot is avoid confusion and also just to basically grid it out and so that's that's required in addition to the cost of the lot the new owner has to purchase a set of four cornerstones yes okay next line item is equipment repairs that's gone memorial garden maintenance that that breaks down into two parts here and the more the interment cost again is 350 and we on on average three burials in the memorial garden each year so that comes up to 10 $1050 the lettering on the community stones I don't know if you're familiar with this but the memorial garden has very large stones that the the dates of birth and death are and and of course the interred names are listed on these large stones and that that lettering has gone up also so in fact it outpaced what we were actually charging for a burial over there so we've raised the cost from for lettering I think we allotted $175 last year for lettering and it's by the letter but averages a certain amount per name and date and so we've raised that to $200 to cover ourselves so we're we're doing a little bit better than breaking even but that it's a real fluid situation and there aren't too many people who do that kind of work so but I think for the next year that's what we're going to look at and finally as far as revenue is concerned this is a little bit confusing if you don't know how the cornerstones work here are you all are you on that last page with the three revenue items described as cornerstone fees cemetery lots and memorial garden fees do you have that okay that's in the revenue section that's right that's in the revenue section and it's the shortest page and it's in a landscape format we realize we forgot page numbers in the books oh yeah so if you go it's the fourth page from the back of the revenue section so that that first that first account number there describes money coming in but it's that's kind of ambiguous because it's a wash because the the when a lot is sold to a purchaser they are required to purchase a set of four cornerstones let's say for next year's reasoning it's to $200 then the they write a check to the town for $200 for the cornerstones and when the cornerstones come in from the memorial dealer the town then pays a memorial dealer the same amount out so that's you know it's a reimbursement situation so it's just bookkeeping how that works it's in and then out again and there's probably a three month delay on that actual sale of cemetery lots comes down to we sell about 10 lots in gear view each year and of those we project that about eight of those will be Williston residents and they get they purchase a lot at the amount of $500 per lot a lot is a four by ten foot area okay it's a little confusing because in the old cemetery in East Cemetery is four by eight it's a shorter thing but four by eight and a plot is defined as two or more lots okay bigger bigger word plot and lot is a subset that so that's the way you can remember they rate a lot is sold to residents at $500 a lot to non-residents at a thousand dollars a lot so we figure we're going to prop projected sell on an average a year eight lots to residents and two to non residents for a total in revenue from lot sales coming in at six thousand and finally the cost of lettering and well the cost of a lot and the lettering will come in we you know the total fee now we're raising that to $600 to caught to cover the cost the increased cost of lettering so it was 500 now we were raising it to 600 so that will for a projected number of interments in the the Memorial Garden that that gives us a revenue of approximately $1800 there so questions any questions for Jack the only question I have is I don't know how you asked it's about a cemetery but it if there's not gonna be a great increase for change and the number of burials that you anticipate burials no I don't think so in fact we anticipated maybe with a COVID going on oh I'm sorry sitting here without a mask pardon me yeah while you're talking you're fine the way I see will be to do that so we can hear you better all right thank you but I read coffee very yeah we anticipated a possibility with COVID and actually cemetery our funeral homes stockpiling bodies believe it or not you know actually it's a harsh way of put it but they actually you know we thought that that might be a problem we might have two or three times the number of interments this year once things started to relax and that didn't happen what did happen was a church in Essex Junction bought 16 lots as a as an inducement to join their church for people who join their church they get a free free lot thrown in so that that was that skewed last year's native so yeah I wonder if we should raise money that way like I have a lot of raffle perhaps you're going back to Salem a lot and plot raffle yeah well there's all sorts of things we think about none of them are legal any further questions thank you Jack appreciate all you do for the first time like moving on to planning and zoning department budget Matt Belanger director of planning is here to give us a lowdown both on operating and captain and Terry we realize with capital Melinda will run through that and we'll have her her map do that next week she had a DRP commitment great thanks for having me here I've transmitted a proposed budget to the select board it's quite similar to budgets that you've seen from the planning and zoning department in the past I have a few highlights and then I'm happy to answer questions as I mentioned in my transmittal memo we are projecting revenue very similar but about a $10,000 increase in permit fee revenue we try to be conservative about permit fee revenue but we've been very conservative and occasionally we do adjust it upward if we see that we're straying you know further away from it than than usual so that's the reasoning behind that we are seeing a decrease in our miscellaneous planning studies line item that reflects closing out the form-based code project for which we're paying a good bit more through the end of this fiscal year we are retaining some money in there for the funding of various unified planning work program projects and grant matches as we prepare for the 2025 town plan and also a few closeout activities that are likely to precipitate following the hopeful adoption of the form-based code there's some other regulatory edits and planning activities that will come out of that we have an increase in training and conferences to reflect the town's ability to offer the master naturalist program again this year this is something we don't request to fund unless we know we can do it and it will will be something that towns can make available this year and spend popular in past years through our department and then we have an increase in the GIS and data management line this is related to an opportunity we have we'll be buying updated tax parcel shapefiles the map files that our geographic information system uses and there's an opportunity to have more of our grand list and other property data co-located into that shapefile which increases our analytical horsepower and we hope provides the department with a bit of a toehold into further coordination of property based information across the town and eventual coordination of permitting activities and things like that so long-standing goal of the department and the town other than that I think we've made a few minor adjustments just related to actual or predicted costs over the last few years and I'm happy to answer any questions that you have the operating budget so it appears that the overall cost increase has been about 14 thousand dollars pretty slim for a large department questions for Matt on the operating budget I mean my only question is related to you know we got the the energy the job description for the potential position new position with within your department I mean so obviously that would add assuming full-time 72,000 to this number so we'll be talking about that once we get through type of numbers okay and certainly well Matt's just meaning to if you have any questions on that too Matt the only question I have is I'm sorry excuse me about the planning studies so I'm excuse me so and my question is is it's a significant reduction I assume because the form-based code is coming to an end but that form-based code I assume the cost of that was pretty significant so this can only be a piece correct the 30,000 that was showing in last year's budget cannot be the overall cost of that of that yeah the overall was a huge effort the overall cost to the town on the form-based code project is about $50,000 it's actually it's a about $120,000 project but we benefit from a federal match through the transportation fund so we're getting a lot of bang for our buck I hope out of that out of that project but we also I think the the 30 that we have in this fiscal year is a little bit generous we're probably not even likely to spend all that it just it just depends on how the the two fiscal years of the project balance out we wanted to keep enough headroom because we weren't exactly sure how the project would build to us across the fiscal year last June July okay so what's next there's a couple of things so first off coming out of the form-based code you know it's a it's a different sort of land development code it's really highly integrated with future transportation infrastructure that might be built sort of at the same time as new development tap corners so there are some things the code addresses about potential new street section designs to create more walkable bikeable streets those things would not be just in the land use code they would need to be appended into the public work specifications as well so there's a piece of work to work through related to that the other things that may come out of form-based code are on our regulating plan which is that backbone document that lays out the pattern of development for tap corners there are places for streets and public paths there are also places for public green space and open space and parks we plan on bringing you a form-based code that identifies those on the regulating plan and at the same time bring you an official map that puts the town in a better position to actually gain control and ownership over those pieces of land but it's not going to make them free and it's not going to make them free to design and manage and things like that so I would anticipate some planning work around how to how to really operationalize that piece of the code bringing the public realm into tap corners and then we we are as I mentioned in the early preparation stages for that 2025 town plan the current plan expires on August 25th of 2025 our target date is to bring a complete draft comprehensive plan to this board about a year ahead of that so late late August of 24 so rolling into as we're thinking about FY 23 this is the time to start making a new request we have of the Regional Planning Commission around demographic data trends any analytical work we're looking for so that we can start that public process with the town plan by giving folks in Williston a really nice picture of where the town is at where we where we think it's going and how it's you know its place in the region is evolving things like that so mostly that's money that will be used to leverage the work of the Regional Planning Commission consultant work we also often tap it as a match for municipal planning grants we've been fortunate enough to receive a municipal planning grant this fiscal year which is related to illustrating some new design standards for the village I would hope to be able to continue to use town funds to generate more resources outside of the town's budget as well okay do you is this going to put a burden on existing staff asking the question probably more appropriately is do you have sufficient staff to do that to administer the code and and and prepare for the town plan all the all the above is talking about yeah you know we've really tried to make our day-to-day operations efficient in such a way that this longer-range work can can be given its proper attention we are experiencing more and more complex DRB approvals and applications and that is taking up a little more of our time to serve that need we are going to see a shift in the development review picture as we come in more base code because it also anticipates a more prescriptive more formulaic approval process for new buildings in the taft corners area probably not going to change the staff work that much if in any case it might be a little bit more but really the unmet need in our department isn't related to those things it's meeting the demands for things like zoning enforcement and interdepartmental coordination around enforcement the day-to-day basis and that's a slow but steadily growing need that is a challenge to meet and and it's probably one of the things that's the most challenging in terms of how much time you are able to allocate to it and plan to allocate to it because it's very demand responsive and it's very unpredictable in terms of volume so as as the community matures I think we've we've talked internally a little bit about needs for code enforcement both coming out of zoning but also coming out of fire parking other sort of you know town ordinance enforcement items that you know it may be more of a shared position at some point that can take that stuff on and be a little more systematic about it than we're necessarily able to be right now thank you any other questions I had one but in the in the transmittal memo under increases increase in GIS data management there's a sentence that the update will allow for more in-depth spatial analysis of service demands and land use and I'm just wondering like what what does that mean in-depth spatial is like if you ever said oh this is a spatial analysis but it's not in depth yeah yeah so there's there's quite a lot of information in the town that can be geographically located if you have it in the system one of the ones that I've always talked about wanting to do for example is to map water consumption across every parcel that's a water bill in town we have a department upstairs that you know has water bills that have addresses on them we have an apartment downstairs that has maps with all the addresses on them but we don't have that data in a place where it can talk to each other again what what would you use that for it would be interesting to look at both is there any relationship between where development happens and what kind of consumption happens it can give us clues about household size and types of development that may be generating different household sizes another good example is just looking at bedroom count or school bus routing or school population home address mapping so that we can offer better predictions about when there's new development coming to town is it development that is likely or not likely to put more kids in the school system we'd like to look at how an existing red residential neighborhood evolves from when it's first constructed over time so if you take like a Brennan Woods and look at you know the bedroom count and then the total population over the years so that you can predict those long-term trends Williston's often you know when we look at census data it's a little bit too small sometimes to draw meaningful conclusions from a lot of the census data knows you get the number and the number looks great and there's an interesting trend and then you look at the margin of error and you go well it's broader than the entire scale of the of the change we really shouldn't be using that number for anything with more of our sort of ownership over our own data we can provide a little bit better insight on some of those things I think all right. Thank you. Other questions and operated. There's a few things on capital that take a look at that you had to from Melinda's and we're going to do that next week for the capital. Yeah, we do that next week. Okay. I didn't understand. It's okay. Good. Okay. Then we can then go on to discuss the proposed the position within the planning department that Eric has given it the memo on. So Eric, I'll zoom you in. Matt will be discussing this. Yep, I can I can lead off and back here to speak to kind of the department or departmental working here. So the board's direction last after the last week's meeting Matt and I sat down and thought about this for an energy focused position would integrate into the planning program in the town and in greater detail and we had a couple of good conversations on this thinking about community needs as well and certainly the energy need. And what we looked at as a position at the planner level with a title we drafted energy and community developments a planner and in those regards if we focused on implementation of town's energy plan and other community planning objectives to foster vibrancy and tackling major goals within the town plan. Matt can speak this a little bit more but we have a number of goals in our town plan. We have on our staff one staff person really focused on the built space with leading development review. All staff members have a hand in that some extent and also a staff position looking on the conservation side and it's freeing up specific bandwidth for these other elements like the energy plan affordable housing elements transit and provides specific focus in those areas to kind of be that interconnectivity between our conservation and our built components in town. I think I cover that. If you want to jump in just on the how it fits into the overall planning process. Sure. Well I think as the select board's probably aware quite a few of the town's energy plan goals are directly connected to land use regulation. So there's a there's a nice connection there with some of what our department works on anyway in terms of developing zoning by law amendments or other town policies that would be more directly related to energy. We also you know as as planners we're all sort of avid generalists and we understand that everything's connected to everything else. And you know we would stand ready to support somebody in a in a role that had this focus on energy. And additionally when Eric and I talked about how this position might look as as particularly as a full time position within the department we talked about the other needs that really need some more focus affordable housing. You know the whole time I've been well in Williston and long before has been a top line desire for the town to make progress on and there has been quite a bit of progress made in terms of policies the town's adopted in sentence it's it's created but there's more work to be done there and it's really strongly parallel to the way we think an energy planner would work in that it's a little more outward facing beyond the town's boundaries than some of the other planning work we do in other words coordination with the region seeking out opportunities to leverage outside of the town funds and efforts and coordinating with the surrounding communities on that goal. So although you sort of look at it say well energy affordable housing and of course given the towns overall thrust of its town plan in terms of where and how it expects new residential projects to come online. There's a really nice land use efficient transportation energy savings and affordability connection there that I think you know with with all of that in one person's head and on their on their work plan could work really nicely and you know they have a lot of support within our department in terms of the existing planning program and everything that we already do and and know in our department. Questions comments. The first thing that struck me a little bit that was based on the salary and the qualification. I don't know how to put it in correctly. I apologize, but it's a relatively not somebody with a tremendous amount of experience is envisioned as being appropriate for this this position. Would that be correct? I think somebody with more experience could do more with the position. I think this reflects the way we typically bring people into the department and that someone at the planner level would be well suited to get a get a good start on it and they would add capability as they went. So, you know, there's there's quite a bit of groundwork to be done. That's just literally having somebody who has the focus in their in their day to work on these items. But really, you know, as I think we've seen with a couple of positions in our department over the last few years, the the ability to add capability and to expand and for Williston, as I've always thought to take a leadership role on these kind of cutting edge issues. The sky's kind of the limit in terms of where that can go. There's really a lot of ability for somebody to function at a whole bunch of levels from a, you know, walking off the street and I say here's here's the town's goals around energy, affordable housing, built environment, sustainable transportation. Go figure it out to somebody who's been doing it for a while, saying, you know, I know what we can focus on now, we can go do this. So does the the planning office has and I think this is asking you personally as the planning as the town planner. Do you have the capacity to take on this new position? Yes. Okay. We have the physical space, we would need to do a little bit of equipment budgeting. As far as being a, you know, supervision and things like that. It's myself in three full time and one part timer in the summer that there's plenty of capacity there and ability to support someone into this role. Okay. And then my I think my last question is you it discusses bringing somebody on part time. And my question is, is it really, is it realistic to expect that a qualified person, you know, the salary that's being at least presented here and and I'm going to use the words lack of benefits that come with a part time position that a good candidate would be attracted to this position? Well, you never know. There's sometimes there's someone out there where part time really, really makes sense with what they want to do. I will say in the sort of Chittenden County planning arena municipalities that have that have looked for part time help have generally taken longer to recruit. And some have ended up in the case of zoning administrators sharing up a half time person in order to turn it into a full time position to up their up their ability to recruit. So it might work for somebody that way. You probably get a broader applicant pool when it's a full time benefit position. Other questions or comments? One of the things that we've heard from the the kind of initially appointed people for the energy committee and from sustainable will listen is that is the importance of having somebody who can also grant right. And so wondering how that might kind of fold into this if that is something that falls within the capabilities and scope of planning or if that might be something that would you know weigh into falling onto surely we don't want to you know, obviously you already have a very big job. So how that might be incorporated? Yeah, all of all of our staff planners have some grant writing experience or are expected to pick some up and you know, it's really kind of a form of project management. What we're doing, we're usually working with a state agency that provides us with pretty good guidance on you know, here's what you need to fill out and here's when you need to do it by and you know, for surely say we if we get a grant, we tell surely hey, we got a grant and let's set up an account and here's you know, here's the timeline and we coordinate from there. But I would expect this position to you know, they would be spending a fair amount of their time working on finding and using those opportunities. Other questions or go? I think so I think the next thing we need to think about us is probably next week to further talk a little bit about it and see whether we want to put it on the magic list of increases for the budget. Okay. And that would start the thing through this through whether we think part time versus full time. The other option would be and the one that I tend to vapor is if we don't feel we can afford a full time or a full salary is as opposed to hiring somebody part time hire somebody for half a year as a second half of the year. Now, that's a full time person. You have to know we need to be cognizant of that. So when you go into the next year, it will be a fully funded position. But it's a way it's a way to help. You know, ramp up if you will. And we've done that in the past. We've done that in the past. Why am I saying any other comments or questions regarding this? Just that the energy plan, you know, the energy coordinator envisioned in plan is are we looking at the same thing tonight? Or is that is the energy plan had like a lot energy coordinator had a lot of responsibility? Yeah, I, you know, that that plan is is an adopted plan. And I think that as we've run up against some of those goals and that plan at the with the current planning staff, some of them are more achievable than others. All plans are amended from time to time. And there may be a point either as part of the overall town plan. In fact, I would certainly anticipate changes to the energy plan happening in the 2025 town plan, where we might want to reassess some of those things. Or you've seen the implementation chart we've prepared before, try to try to look at where those goals are best served. And if there's a goal in the energy plan that we thought the energy coordinator was going to take on, but it's actually happening at a statewide level or regional level, we could we can change that responsibility. You know, initially, I think the need, as I understand it for a coordinator is to work with that committee to develop, you know, a reasonable achievable policy pursuit of policy goals from the energy plan, with a little bit of, you know, bang for the buck analysis at the same time of what of what of those goals are, you know, short, medium and long term and have the greatest likelihood of success and the greatest energy savings, since that's what it's really all about. Thanks. Nothing else on this one? We can move on. Go ahead, thank you. Thank you, thank you. We'll move on to the Recreation and Parks Department, with a good one, the Director of Recreation and Parks. And then we'll talk about operating budget. All right, operating budget, if you just to point out, if you look at the revenue, we're about 14,600 less in revenue this year. And that is due to contracted programs, which we lost a couple of businesses that we worked with in the past, have gone out of business in the area, contracted and contracted instructors are not offering things with the pandemic that we've been through this last year. So you'll see a $10,000 decrease in that. And we're working to build that back up all the programs, but mainly the contracted ones. And we're using the school facilities somewhat, but less than what we have in the past. Again, staying out of the schools in the after school programs, when the kids are there doing things in the evenings and bringing back slowly the more popular programs that we know will go and use that time. So that's a little bit on the revenue side. On the operation expenditures, the highest areas is administrative salaries, taking on the full time coordinators position and benefits and then also the recreation program expenses. You'll see a large increase, but we took the senior program expenses and rolled them into recreation, rolled them into adult youth program expenses and now recreation expenses. So what we have is programs that the rec department runs, pays for and such, and then we have contracted where we're hiring other people to do it, and that can be contracted programs and or contracted things. And then a few of the decreases, large decreases, again, under contracted programs, we decreased and taken a three year average, didn't average in last year because of the impact we had, but that was the biggest piece. And that's on the recreation side. Happy to take any questions. Questions on the recreation budget, not the operating. The other part is the park maintenance and you'll see a large increase of 5,585 in the maintenance salary. And that is to extend that time frame. It was set at 32 weeks. It's going to now 36 weeks and also looking to give that person a little bit better salary than what we've had in the past. And then the other large one is the maintenance. Park maintenance has increased by 5,000. What we saw during the pandemic was the parks became more popular. People were outside as much as possible once they were allowed to go and the parks is where they went. So we saw an increase of use of parks and the budget last year and this year under park maintenance. We're spending down to almost the dollar limit type of a thing using every amount of money. One of the examples of that would be we're on a four month automatic delivery of dog waste bags. And last year I had to order two cases and a case is 6,000 bags. And that was above and beyond our regular four times a year type of thing. And I don't see that that trend has not slowed down. So I may have to increase those. So those are the things that we're seeing and just the use of the parks in general has increased. So that's the the parks division of the operating budget. Any questions for that? Are we going to do a panel tonight on this one? Yep, we can for thoughts and there's a park section. Get my act together. So let's go on into. The park and we did number these. So it's a number. Yeah, the first one in the park section. The park narrative does include the community parks and the country parks. So I oversee the community parks and Melinda oversees the country parks. I know you'll be talking about the country parks next time with her. But we're still asking for the parks replacement at $15,000 a year. And the parks improvement at $20,000 a year. And for anybody who's doing that, the improvements is taking anything new that we add to the parks and parks. Replacement is anything like a tennis court having to resurface it. So after so many years, you know, making that having that money banked and available rather than coming and saying, I need $10,000 a year next year. I need 40,000 and so on and so forth. It's a continuous yearly fund again of 20,000 for the park improvements, 15,000 for the park replacements. And you have listed on there a worksheet of what we're looking to to improve on. So in 23 under park improvements, we're looking to add basketball and hockey lines as well as basketball hoops to the rank area over at the village community park. And right now that's been repaved to be a flatter surface. The rink goes on that surface. We put up a four foot. Chain link fence to separate the skate park from that and the next step to that is is having basketball. Make it into a basketball court and in line hockey type of things. Another area for them to use. And then looking to spend 35 out of that. This fund for a picnic shelter and amenities at Brennan park, and that would be similar to the one that we have at Ross in the park. So just for pick a table is a couple of grills picnic shelter for families to use on that. On the parks improvement, what we're looking to do is. Um, 14,000 on resurfacing the basketball court. At Ross now part and right now it's a full size court and we're looking to go half court with 1, 1 basketball court and then the other half we're looking at making it a more or less asphalt play area. We have there's a daycare across the street. There's also department of children families, which we'll go down there with supervised visits and we've noticed that they'll chalk up. The tennis court and such and we put up signs that's not to do that. So we're looking to offer something hopscotch for square areas where they can chalk, draw and and that kind of thing. And the current space for the basketball court would allow us to have half court basketball as well as use the other half for what we're saying here. And you see also on there, there's $1,000 under each park for playground amenities. That is been taken out that's on your list. But it was online. That's been taken out and put into the operating budget for. Park maintenance rather than capital. And what was decided was capital would be if we had to replace a whole playground structure at $20 or $30,000 rather than a slide at $1,000. That's what we're looking to do with those 2. The other thing is Allenbrook community park. There is placeholder of 40,000 in there right now and. We are currently working with SE group consultants for a. Allenbrook community park master plan revitalization have gone through 2 steps of. Public meetings and they're into the. They're into the situation now of putting things into CAD and finalizing and whatnot. We'll have a presentation for all of you back sometime in March timeframe. But 40,000 right now is just kind of a placeholder is we don't we're anticipating the next steps would be. Permitting and engineers designs and stuff like that. So, it may be more, which we would come back to you, but we found that this is a good number to start with. And that's wreck impact for you money. So that's coming from towns or businesses and households and whatever else. So it's already money that that we have in there. And I think currently, it says here, 256. 330, but there may be a little bit more than that in there. And the wreck impact piece so that's the capital for. The parks. Good. Thank you. Questions. Just a comment to add for the board, you'll see for the revenue side of the parks, replacements. We identified our funds as a potential use there. That's 1 of their allowed uses for replacements, not improvements due to use and during the pandemic. It's in the proposal at to consider as a way to offset instead of using those dollars to help help decrease some of those other revenues. Of the boards considerations process. Okay, are there other places in the budget, this budget where offer dollars are targeted? Yep. And we can identify those as we go. I've got to cover sheet in the front of the capital budget that lists. Okay, good. Look for the thinking on the time frame in terms of. Of the actual building of the park at this point, I assume, you know, they will go to a bond for the building part of it and all of that. But what do you see as the timeline for that to happen? The consultants will give us phases ideas and they'll give us budgets with that. So, it's all going to be up to select board in the community and the money that we can find. Do we phase it? Do we take a phase and make that a couple phases to build it all out all at once type of thing? I would say that this new. Renovated revitalization plan is set for the next 10 years. And that like the old one was set for 10 years, but nothing was done to it. It kind of was done and then sat and, you know, a couple things were done up there that needed to be done. Whereas my goal is we've taken this, we've spent the money, the time, the effort. Let's see how we can move that along within the next 10 years to build out everything in the park. But I've just sat on that it's a impact being collected for that specific park build out. So now we're in a position to spend on those impact fees with the park build out. I believe the impact fee expires in another year or two. So part of the look, we'll be looking at it. Other talents would extend that impact fee. I'm looking at this project and others on the horizon as well as other sources. I'm sorry. Did I hear you correctly? Impact fee expires? The way it's when it was set up in the town bylaws, the initial impact fee study, I believe went through 2025. So when the initial impact fee was set, but then it would need to be renewed in the bylaws and have a study to help facilitate that renewal. That's a part of what I've talked to Matt about. And we can use recreation impact fees for that study to extend the impact fees. Use the recreation impact fees to extend the recreation impact fee. That's the same reaction. Creative use of money. And it makes sense. I mean, I get it. It just sounds kind of funny. There's no other further questions. We'll move on. Thank you. Okay. The only other thing is the under. Is equipment and I just wanted to point out that. Um, the park's tractor and mower increase. Um, because of just going through and getting pricing. And looking at the next 5 years of what that that would cost to replace those. We just replaced a, a zero turn mower and 24 and 26. We have another. Mower and tractor to go sort of a thing. And also the number of years. It was 1 from 7 to 6 because we're currently run a tractor right now that. Going on 7 or 8 years and the old system, and we're starting to have to put money into it. Which is, you know, money you spend out and then money, you don't get back on your trade ins and stuff like that. This is a different section of the capital, but the equipment tab and page page 10. Thank you. So there's a little bit of jumping here with us. There's also a pickup truck on page 11. Yeah, the pickup truck has not changed. Any further questions. No further questions. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. So we'll move on into the police department budget. Chief William, the tenant for our here to deliver the good evening. Welcome. We're back. That's why you're all bad pennies. All the returns. Thank you for allowing us this evening to present the FY 23 budget before a few things. I want to comment on before we get to the gist of the budget presentation and our capital presentation. But on the summary of our services, what I want to do is highlight one, one main topic there, which is our canine program. If you're well aware back in 2021. 21 we presented to the ward of the concept of having a therapy door here in town. Lieutenant walk presented the research and all that and we got the blessings and. Over a year and a half later, it's been a success. From it's in step, the community support. The donations as we reiterated during our presentation that have been privately funded. We've kept our word with that program. We've had numerous sales of t shirts stuffed animals. Face masks and most recently a book. That 2 weeks ago during a pop up we sold out within 2 hours. We have another 125 on backwater. It should be here within the next 2 weeks. We believe it's going to be around the 1st of the year. But it's been a plus of it. Numerous. We did a. Today's Tuesday. I yesterday, we did a day long presentation. We had a ride along from the free press. One of the reporters spent the day with the officer Cohen, who's the handler. And K9 Duke and and I closed out in the afternoon. So over the holidays, there'll be a prior front page article about our program. And so it's bringing a lot of positive. To the community. And I want to thank Lieutenant law for spearheading the project and Duke and officer Cohen for making the program look very positive for the community of Williston. My introduction letter seems like a groundhog day story deja vu. It seems like it's a revolving door that, you know, when I started in 2017. We were actually within 2 weeks of my swearing and we were down 5 positions and that that theme has been consistent during the 4 plus years I've been here. Like I noted in my presentation, we have only been at full strength with 2 months. And so currently we are down 3 positions as noted. So a lot of our plans that we want to do it's been stagnated. The only thing that we were able to complete was to create a lieutenants position. Again, with the blessing of the town manager and the aboard and he's sitting to my left and it was a correct decision that we made here for the continuation and the performance of police agency. We have a we've only got today word at the next police academy will be on the 24th of March. So we currently have 1 candidate that is scheduled. We're going to try to get that candidate wave. I am meeting with the director and the deputy director of the Academy. We are doing a chief's meeting and set up the time after the first year so we can put that case to them about the hours this candidate we have should be waived. They've already completed a full time Academy in New York state and and they've completed 5 years of rule 13 training. She's current of our training. So again, we'll hopefully if we can get a waiver that one less person, we have to send to the Academy. We do have a second female candidate in the queue, but she hasn't taken in the entrance requirement. That's going to happen in January because the holidays and all that. The good thing is, is that the way they've designed the next Academy, which is a plus for agencies is that normally if you went for the orientation, you failed any part of the orientation. They run, you know, sit up, push ups, whatever they've made you do that you're completely, you know, eliminated and have to stop from square one again for the next time. They're going to give you three chances to get to the Academy. There'll be no cap on the amount of students are going to be able to get in there. So that's that's good for us. The other thing is, is that, you know, now that the union contract is been approved and in the process of being signed by the union. Some of the caveats we have in there, including the increase in longevity, the educational incentives, the salary, the steps increases. We're going to recreate our job description job announcement to add those and I think those perks will probably attract some really qualified candidates like we've talked about. So that being said, I'm sure if you have anything to continue with that. I think just before we get into any of the revenues and budgetary type stuff, I think it's just important to note that Greta mentioned grants. And I know Jeff and I have had a couple conversations throughout the summer in the last 12 months. We've opened up, you're going to go back to the. Yeah, that was last December. We just moved in. We've gotten about $325,000 and awarded grants. 100,000 of that was to build out the officers room. That came through the COVID grant money. So that was partially for, you know, it went through because of how the tight quarters that the officers were living in. So we were able to expand that and really get an up to date type officers room for them. Another $75,000 was to put a fiber optic cable that connected the police department now all the way down to the firehouse. So we are providing, you know, cell telephones to them in the town and everybody else. And then the 1 that I just completed and we just are getting started on was another $155,000 camera grant. We actually had the money budgeted through capital to upgrade our camera system in the police department because it was starting to fail. I came across a Homeland Security grant that I was able to get $150,000. So our entire building is getting completely redone. The town hall is getting 3 more cameras installed in the fire department, which has never had anything is getting to complete install as well. And everything is now because of that fiber optic project. Everything is fed back to the police department. So ideally ours is the most secure facility and it's able to house all that that sensitive criminal justice and every other type of information possible. So that Sergeant Eric Shepherd has helped me with the technical part of some of this stuff because that's kind of his wheelhouse. So we've worked together and we've we've received quite a bit of funds to the federal government. So that's that's always a plus and it should go to good use. And one final thing is that we were awarded a bulletproof vest reimbursement grant through the federal government through the cops office. So replacement will be half the cost for the town and the other half is picked up by the cops office. So that's that's another plus. And it's it's not a lot of money because everybody believes they're expensive, but they only replace the vests, the shields, all the add ons, the carriers and the, you know, carry ons and all that is is on us. But the vest itself is will split the cost on that. So budget, you know, we can go down through every line, but I'll highlight where the big, big increases are and then we can you can ask questions on that. The biggest thing is the personnel. So we'll start a communication during a year, do some bumps on the road from the state police. To add a third full time dispatcher and doing so again, we presented our case to the board and we were able to fill an add on a third full time and do so that allowed us to have three dispatches. So we, the senior dispatcher, we elevated to a supervisory position. So now we actually have a supervisor supervising dispatches and then the supervisor of the supervising dispatch is the supervised by alternative law. So that has increased. Now, talking about communications, I'm not sure if you've heard, you're out of the state house military, but about two months ago, two and a half months ago, we got word from the state police that they want to get out of the dispatching business. They only want to dispatch for themselves. Just stay police. So we originally were told anywhere from 1218 months that the transition you'd have to find, you know, somebody to dispatch for you. We found out that number has changed. It's now nine to 12 months. We're not sure when the stock date is because there's some other stuff that the commission has talked about about getting the state to pay regional dispatch who are currently existing to pick up those agencies that have to leave the state police. So we're not sure this Friday, one o'clock in the afternoon, we have a conference call with the commissioner to get the final details. Sergeant Shepherd is on a subcommittee of that. So we understand where it's coming from. So, you know, we're pretty much set with our three dispatches and we can add what dispatch if we need to be 24 hours, seven days a week. We've got all the infrastructure there. You know, we're originally going to be charged $55 a call. So we can, you know, offset that. And if the governor wants to throw money our way to add that, you know, for dispatcher will be gladly when I hands out asking for help and all that. Again, we were part of the Chittenden County regional dispatch setup, but that's still in the plan stages. I know we've had conversation with the town manager. They're still waiting for, you know, committed funds and complete buy-in. But you just can't wave a magic wand and one day it's operational. There's still a lot of work to be done. We can wave a magic wand and be operational tomorrow if we have to add a fourth dispatcher. So that's one of the concerns we have on our communication budget. That's why if you notice that has gone up over 100,000, about 150,000 this from last year to this year. The patrol side, that's the biggest jump. Due to the contract, the longevity, the incentive, the college educational incentives. That has been really a big jump for us. Some of the changes that we notice is our, we pay into the Chittenden Unit for special investigation. This yesterday, we were told that our assessment has gone down for the current year we're in right now for the FY22 went down for about $3,300. And for the next year, FY23, the new allotment is down about 3,000. So the number you had there, we put 18, 450, it's now down to 15, 257. So that's a decrease in that allotment. How do they assess that number? We had the formula. They sent us the formula upon that. I got a report. I know it's decreased. It's something with a UVM police are going to have someone who's no longer in the CUSY rotation. Offsetting costs, setting an officer, UVM's expenses going up. So then that offsets every other member's expense. It used to be done by the number of, in part anyway, by the number of calls that CUSY received or cases they received from a town. Yeah, I believe that's still a component of it. Have we ever had somebody on CUSY? No, we just can't afford it. You know, that's, again, that's one of the things we talk about. We got BCI in detectives positions. It'd be two positions. You know, I know, you know, we've talked about doing a management study, but I went back to my, my strategic plan that I presented to the board back in 2018. I recommended for additional, a minimum of four additional officer based on just the standard population of 10,000 that the town was not including the daytime population. And, you know, using the different formulas of what I recommended, you know, per 1,000 per officers is like, you know, 2.3 officers per 1,000. I think the study that the flight department had, I think it was 1-8, 1-9 per 1,000. So again, it's consistent. So, you know, four or five additional people, I can make it work very easily. It gives me everything I want. You know, each ship with three patrol and supervisor, two people in BCI. Each ship has a dedicated traffic person in that ship and somebody else is dedicated to do other special community policing. And we still have our BCI people and prior another supervisor in BCI to oversee the detectives and lieutenant law would be the ultimate overseer of the patrol side. So again, that's, that's whatever we get to the magic number, but I know we've talked about, you know, getting through this, this budget year and doing a study to, you know, finally articulate the needs. You know, everybody talks about the pyramid wall study when they're talking about building out traffic monitors and everybody's talking. People come up to me, ask me what the study is. I've heard 25 to 40 officers for the PD back then and when they're discussing. So if you can do the, yeah, so I can't find it, but everybody talks about it. But again, that was back in the 1980s and really 1990s when they were discussing the build out of the half corners. They're also talking about spraying their effluent over the forest at one point, aren't they? The pyramid mall is talking about spraying their effluent out over the forest. That's the way it, yeah. I think that's fair. And the other thing we're accusing is that I know Burlington is strange. You know, they're talking about removing people from there and putting them back in the patrol side and rotating them. So I'm not sure that number will start going down again. So when I looked at the study, it said that we referred 14 cases last year to them. So that's it on the budget. If anybody has a particular question on the line, I mean, within the budget, I see I concentrate on the big, big increases. I'm trying to understand the communication. And let me tell you what I think I know. Tell me where I go wrong. We're adding a new dispatcher. Correct. And we're also adding overtime where there wasn't overtime in the previous budgets. So maybe my logic is wrong, but I would think that if we're adding a new full-time person, if anything, see overtime go down. But yet we're adding a new full-time person and seeing a significant increase in overtime. So I just want to make sure I understand. Yeah, what it is, is that we really have no part-time staff. So all the vacation time, time off they need, it's covered by a full-time person at time and a half. We have, we have two part-time employees that cover the best they can. And we figured out, I think we did 100 hours. But Jeff, it's really that we add a deadline. Let's see if that's the, you know, I have a hope for having to do all of the project cover. But it's really that we've broken it down a few lines in the budget issue. I'm sorry, I had trouble hearing that last bit. It's really that we've broken it back into two lines in the budget. So we have regular wages and now overtime wages so that we can track. So the two components better and sort of do so much together. Okay. So the previous budget, it was just one lump. Yeah, it was all included. If you look, if you go back last year and look in the comment, the narrative, it tells you how many hours we figured for the overtime included. So each, like the two new dispatches, they get two weeks vacation. And then they have, you know, they're sick. We got to cover that. You know, we, we flip the coin. We might say, okay, let the state now, you know, within a few months, we might not be able to say we can flip the switch and give it to the state. So, but it's basically, it's covering the shifts when we don't have, because both part-time dispatches are full-time employees and different agencies. So a lot of times their bosses don't like them working part-time, because they'll need them at their agency. And one basically is limited because of the COVID. And their, their employer does not want them to be outside. And when we dedicated those hours to a full-time person, you know, we really do try to fill those with overtime. If that one-on-one dispatches out just to try to give the state police a mercury because they are, they're still losing people left and right. And now we switched over to a new RMS system, which is a little bit more intense for the dispatcher to be doing. We've actually are now required to do some of the case creation on our own when we're being dispatched by state police. They won't do it for us. So it's actually adding a little bit of work to the officer. So by having an in-house person, the officers here in Willison are getting a little bit more assistance during their normal day-to-day. Okay. And how far in the future is a decision about the regional dispatch? I think that goes to Eric. He's been the one that's kind of been listening. I can speak to that. I sit on, I sit on that board and, you know, we're watching to see how the state may commit funds. As chief mentioned, the biggest hurdle for CCPSA right now is the startup capital. So we'll be, we are hearing the governor may likely have a proposal in his budget to use some of the state-level ARPA funds as one time startup for regional dispatch centers. And we've got the governance and the infrastructure moving well along over the last few years. So we'll be in discussion for this board as we get some more answers about startup, what our future for dispatch for both of our public safety agencies looks like. I hope to have more answers into the spring on that because that will certainly be a longer term service delivery model. You know, what if we receive that for one agency, both agencies, neither agency? Yeah. So we'll look at all those options. We have some more guidance from the state. Okay. We hope we'll have a better answer Friday when we sit in on the meeting with the commissioner, you know, it went from charging us to not charging us to get rid of us. And all that, but I still think, you know, when they first started talking about charging us that, you know, a lot of these small agencies rely on the state police to dispatch and it's been free for years. And, you know, I think they're going to be calling their legislators and their senators and say, hey, you know, you got to help us out here. So I think that might be slowed down. It's going to slow because the legislative will come back in January by one of the big discussions they're going to have because there's only right now you have, you have the state police. So you have basically have Wilson and Westminster state police as a regional dispatch. You have Shelburne. You have a Memorial County. You have Hartford. That's it. I don't think there's anybody else. And Central Mass, but it's only a two town. You say St. Open City. Yeah. Yeah. So there's not a lot out there and you don't know what they can add on. You know, so, so that's that's a concern I have, but, you know, I think we're fortunate enough to be able to just, you know, you know, and we've already been, I've been approached by some other agencies saying that if, and when this happens, would we be willing? I haven't committed anything. Just like when I hold my head. Yeah. So. Other questions on operating. If not, we can go on to a capital or things like different things you've had. Yeah, I rearranged it in my order to make it flow easier for me. Yeah. So I'll tell you what we're going to start if you don't mind. Chairman, is that the fleet vehicle replacement one as the first one we start with? Yep. Chief, I can just get the page number for the board here. Okay. That's going to be under the equipment section and it's going to be on page one of the section. And just so people know, one thing I noticed with the equipment section is there's some duplicate numbered pages. So when you say, go to page 10 page 10. I don't have any page numbers on mine. So just, just be aware. Sorry about that. Yeah. No worries. It did take me a second. No worries. What we did was is that we combined all our vehicles into one fleet management replacement. As you're well aware up until this year is the police chief had a separate capital project. I don't treat mine as as a different mind mind seclusion. You know, I have all equipment in, you know, I can do everything. I can do everything. And so we decided to make it on the one capital plan. So we have six mock units. And then for one mock units. Yeah. Marks of mine, the lieutenant, the K nine. Then we have an extra cruiser that we use when we have been detectives and all that. So as we start replacing the frontline cruises, the ones with the low miles will be moved down the chain. So, you know, it might go to the company dog program. We might replace the detectives and then replace them. We're on a two and a half year cycle to replace cruises. So we've got to build out over the over the years when we're going to replace them. The difficult part now is that we're everybody's behind the eight ball because the production is very slow. We went, Lieutenant today went with the sergeant to talk to him and basically they told us that after the first year she'd order your cruises now and you might get them in September, October, November. So again, you got to get in line and all that. And then the other bump in the road is that the computer chips, you know, everybody is still not getting them. So again, we try to do it that way. So we know that we're in line. We go through the state bid process. So the state does all the paperwork and the bid and they select the vendor that we should go to for all different models. So if we want floor, we want Chevrolet's, we want, you know, Dodge, you know, those type of vehicles, they bid that for us. So it's less work for us. We used to, if you remember last year, we used to have a breakdown of every item we put in the car, radios, lights, you know, and all that. It just became too complicated. So we figured out what each cruiser will cost without. So a brand new mock unit would cost us from, you know, build up complete with all the equipment we need, cages, you know, racks, lights, radios, computers and all that. It's about $85,000. And then for the unmarked, it's a lot less because our cruiser lights are different. We don't put bar lights on. We put, you know, small lights and all that. So for an unmarked unit, it's $58,000 and all that. So we look at replacing a minimum of two some years three. You notice we have a pickup truck out there. We will not have any more pickups. It's just that, again, the plan was that was going to be the truck unit. You know, we had scales and all that. But there's not many spots here in Williston. You can pull over a tractor trailer and weigh it on North Williston Road, Williston Road, you know, you drive up to the interstate and at the rest area. So we rely on to pop in the motor vehicles to assist us if we need a truck team out here and all that. So that pickup truck will be converted to another SUV. And so it'll be a lesser cost to replace that. The good thing is, is that when we auction them off, we get good resale. The last vehicle, which was a 2019, we got almost, we got 17, almost 17-5. It had over 60,000 miles. And so that was a good trade-in we got for that. So we go through HERSHACs as our auction person. So we drop the vehicle off. They do all the paperwork and then they send us a nice check to our finance. So and that goes back in here as our savings and current savings and all that. Can you talk a little bit about, I'm looking at the difference between the manager approved and the requested amount for fiscal year 2023. Is that? What we did was, is that we exceeded the top-level course. So we went over that. So we're able to reduce that this year and use our savings. We believe we'll be within that range of 160 for the replacement vehicles. And we do have some savings. So that will be offset. And then if you notice the next year's, you know, next year 2024 is up to 200. And then 2025, it's 220 and it goes 220 the rest of the way. So we're all set. So we have savings. That's a good thing with the savings. And when we sell the cars, that gives us a little necessary to play with that. Yeah, we took a look at this. We reduced the sign a little bit last year down to 100. And, you know, looking back at it, it was quite a, quite a jump in one year. So we, we did some work and we think we can smooth this impact and still get the fleet place. That's a couple of years with that two to three vehicles. And the truck factors into this a bit too. We deferred the truck for a year. And now decided not to replace the truck and create some more savings there. Yeah. During the pandemic, we, we hauled off. And the good thing is that we ended up bringing the motor in the pickup truck. So that gave us a free, free, almost a new, new pickup. That extended the life of that for another, another two years. So it worked out. And then in my reading this correctly, that the 20 vehicles total 20 vehicles. No, we don't, we only have 10, six mock units and four unmarked units. Okay. Well, I think you might be seeing that the equipment Jeff has broken out. Oh, all right. Yep. I see, I see how that, okay. Okay. I see how that works. We're going to police technology. If there's no more questions on police cruises. I don't know what page that number is. That's three three. And if for FY 23, the major purchase would be a new server. Our agency. And if you look at like some of the stuff, like the, the camera replacement and the. The recorder we're able to. You know, with the grant and that Lieutenant got that'll help us with the, the camera replacement and all that. I'm embarrassed that I don't know this, but speaking of cameras, do we have uniform cameras for our officers? Body, body cameras. No, no. We have in car video cameras that the most of the instance we have a basic motor vehicle stops or a crime in the middle of the roadway. And once you've turned your lights on, it's recorded. Yeah. Eventually, Ted, that, you know, depending how the legislators operate, there'll be a mandate down the road, probably an unfunded mandate. Yeah. So we've been looking at the cost. Some communities are starting to get more and so again, you know, it's not a cheap. The biggest thing is storage. Data storage. Yeah. That's that's most expensive. We have come up with some solutions on how to minimize those costs a little bit, but. It has to do with like storing in the cloud and like that. And that's, that's a technical thing that Eric could always come back if we ever decide to go that route. Currently, like the chief said, we do have the in car cameras. Those are dash, but we also upgraded a couple of years ago where we started putting them in the rear of the vehicles too. So when you do have a prisoner, those are recorded as well and each officer does wear mics. So, you know, within a certain distance, you can hear all the conversations on the, on the video cameras. You can activate those outside the vehicle and everything like that. So. The next thing on the agenda is traffic safety equipment. Basically, these are our speed monitors. We have out in the town. We have two trailer units and we have a few on on the poles. And we also have a, we call it a stealth or a covert one. That we can put out neighborhoods and nobody knows what it looks like. Again, the thing is, is that, you know, as well five years that once you see that thing on the pole, the speed to go down, they don't go up. So it gives us a, sometimes a false read, you know, because people are actually doing what they're supposed to be doing. But we, what we do is once we do it with the trailer, we put the covert out also. So we have two studies that we can, you know, add in and come up with an actual speed of that, that roadway. And if you go on our web page, we have all the studies out there. So if you're inquisitive to see what the streets are and look at it. But again, again, it's kind of hard, you know, when you, when you, when you're short to dedicate people, but we target every neighborhood every, every, every week. Each officer has a certain number of streets that they have to target, do direct controls on being visible. So they're out there, you know, and that hasn't stopped since the pandemic came in. We instituted that and it's been a blessing for us. And people really appreciate seeing our crews are going to the neighborhoods. So, so we, we're in the process of probably replacing at least one of them. We've been going to solar now. It's a little more costly, but life expectancy is a lot, you know, one of them, we actually built our own solar unit to fix it. And those used to die all the time. So you would put them out and then within maybe a week, you'd have to pull it back in and let it sit inside and charge for a while. Now we have the capability of just moving it from one location to the next. So they don't ever come back to the office anymore. So that's why we're able to put them out for 12, 10 months out of the year. Yeah, 300 days a year. They're able to sit out there and no, we don't write tickets off them. There's no video recordings. It's all just for data. So that way we can graph it and just kind of see what the trends are showing on our roadways. The next thing on the agenda will be firearms. Usually firearms, handguns need to be rotated or move and whatever between five and seven years. We currently carry 40 caliber. We're going to downsize and go to nine millimeters. We believe it's a better weapon for us, especially in our very congested community with all our shops and all that tap corners. We're looking at possibly doing, you know, if not, we can get a good trade in, but we might push the purchase for the FY23 budget. If not, then we'll wait till the following year. Again, evident is costs and manufacturer, but, you know, I think on the ammunition, the ammunition will be a lot less and I think for accuracy, the nine millimeter would be better for our officers out there. Continuing, the next one will be the police department door access controls. This will, this will jump sections into the buildings. It'll be the first tab after introduction in your packet and that will be page five. Everybody ready? Yep. Our police department will be 15 years old this year. And we're finding out if you look at this one and the next one I do on the building is that it's not in the fall part. We have access, electronic access to all our doors into the building and evidence not in the fail and we can't get the parts for it. So everything has to be, you know, new. That means possibly new doors, new frames, new electronics. So we decided that, you know, this, we had originally started planning it over the last three years of doing, you know, a few a year and it's been really ridiculous trying to find a vendor to do piecemeal. So we decided to opt to, you know, go right at it and replace everything that wants over the next two years. It's a safety issue for not only for the officers and the employees, but for the people that come into the building. So and the thing is, there's a lot of the stuff that was purchased back when the building was built. A lot of those businesses have gone away. So actually bringing a new company, a company that specializes in, you know, door locks and maintenance and all that. So, you know, we had to do one for the back door two years ago and it was like a really terrible, you know, cut and paste type of lock. So we want to get somebody that can do everything at once, do it professionally and that will give us a lot of, you know, 10 years before we have to replace that again. Why is this line item or this item broken into two years? It's more for just cost savings. We can get away with doing it over two years. So the technical term for how our doors look is called Swiss cheese because there's so many holes and now that then take metal plates. So if you look at some of our doors, there's actually metal plates because we've had to replace the door locks because they fail. But they don't match up with the old ones of another hole. So we have to have a vendor come in and start doing the new holes and putting different locking mechanisms on them. And, you know, like I'm in charge of the evidence room in mind for the evidence room failed. So we had to go back to a just a key for a little while, which is not the best practice until we could get up and running again. So the 41,000 upfront, that allows us to buy what they call the brain of the system. So the central locking system, they'll be one computerized system that will function the entire building. So it will talk to all the different doors. We with the 41,000, we can get the brain installed and we can get the main access points to the building. So the front for the officers in the rear for the officers of the building, we can get those up and running. And then the following year, we can then turn around and get the rest of them up and going. So by spreading it out over two years, it was more just a cost savings to try to spread it out. Okay. I had just assumed and I guess I misinterpreted that it was primarily one or two doors, but it's a whole slew of doors. I think there might even be more if you count the upstairs, because then we house the CJC upstairs. So years ago, we had to actually put a door, we had to build a door into one of the hallways to keep the secure side for like the officers locker rooms and everything like that separate. And this just history wise, it was before I got here, but this was actually supposed to be installed when that building was first built. But due to overages, that that's one of the cuts that came out of it. So but obviously now it makes it much harder because now they're going to have to run the wires through all the bricks and drilling and everything like that versus where it would already have had the power to it. So how are you going to get in if there's a power out of it? Most of them are you can override with keys. Yeah. But not to every like the evidence room is specific. You know, because there's a master key for, for most of the doors, but our police station must have a generator. And the other problem is we, because they're failing, we've actually had officers get locked in to the processing room. There is an exit at a processing obviously for fire code. So then they got to go out that door and then find their way all the way around. And you know, you may have a prisoner and then prop doors open and it's just, it's, it's not sustainable. The system we got. So I would just add on that one. That's another project we identified funding. And would you anticipate that for both years or it could, it could be, you know, if the board decides to split this over two years, we could see what our, our options are in 20 and 24. This is also something that the board wanted to complete it sooner rather than later could increase the allocation there are the lost revenue to this project along. And if there is leftover Homeland Security funds, I would venture to try to bear that in there. I know it closed, but sometimes they come back and say, hey, we have extra money. So if that does happen, I would at least try to put in for that as well. Okay. I assume these new doors are anticipating the same challenges with them when they start to fail. Hopefully, no, so this system, this system should be forever. Yeah, because at least as long as the infrastructure is in there, you can swap them out. I mean, they probably said that the first time with those ones. They need it. At least they'll be powered to the doors. We have the ability to change them out. Yeah. And if you look at different type of locks on different doors in there, they're not consistent because it's piece of me on how you, how you fixed and replace them. And believe me, before I started looking into it, I just figured you had a key and unlock the door. I didn't realize it was as technical as this. The next thing will be the police department building. That's just something. As I started that our building is 15 years old and it's not in the show 15 years of problems. We're constantly trying to fix our HVA system, our sprinkler system. Our fresh air. And that so I started discussion last year during the pandemic. With the time manager that we needed somebody to be a maintenance person or a manager of our building, not just my building, but possibly joining the fire department, the town hall have have a maintenance manager overlooking everything. You know, we had them fix the roof a couple of months ago. But there's issues up there that the possibly maybe be replaced. But the big concern is that, you know, today we had no heat in the back part of the second floor. The system fail again. I believe it's the motor that keeps tripping. It's getting overheated and stripping and all that. So we've been working with one of the local building companies to come up with a solution for us. But we decided that, you know, after 15 plus years that we need to really take a close look if we want this building to last another 15, 20 years. So we feel there's a need to bring somebody on to oversee our building, the fire department, you know, they just replace their roof. And that building is only 15 years old. And they've already put a roof in there that I think their furnaces have been replaced, you know, it just, again, it's a concern that I had. You know, we were told by a sprinkler system that, you know, some of the work was incorrectly done. So we'll wait for them to come back and correct that. And then it's just, we're a public safety agency. So we want to make sure public safety is quickly done. So in Josh's, the lieutenant's been spearheading this working with, you know, the various people coming in, taking a look at the operations and come up with ideas and course for us. So, you know, he has a knowledge of construction. Yeah, and I did this portion of it. It was more of, it was more just a shot in the dark just to try to get and line items started. You know, ideally this price should have been done 10 to 15 years ago and the building was built, even if it wasn't a lot of money. But as we're seeing, you know, if there would have been correct maintenance, then we wouldn't be having the issue of mold right now and having to have all our HVACs fixed and getting that large cost. Don't let the fire chief know, but our sprinkler system was installed incorrectly from day 1 and apparently we've never passed inspection on that. So that's getting remedied once I found out about that system. So we're getting back to where we should be. Fortunately, we had a contractor that stays on top of it. But like I said, this is more of just to try to get a line item in there and start setting aside some funds. So that way when we do have these larger unexpected issues, we at least have something to use for that. And is there really 4 furnaces in that building? Yes, there's 4 trans systems for the furnaces. And then there's also 4 AC units up on the rooftop and those all. So the building is divided in the 4 sections for different thermostats. So it's been since I've been it's been a cold building. And we've done we've done ever in a try. And then once we brought this company and they figured out what, you know, what the controls were and all that. But again, I think it's the motor on the heating unit and the back section that it's going because we thought we had a fix. And then it was cold. And the final thing that I just want to just touch base on will be the public safety communication tower. We're not going to go into debt, but it's in here as I think we've already had some conversation. I think. And just, just for note, the portable section on there, there was actually leftover 2019 Homeland security funds for that. So we did swoop in there and just threw that out there. So I don't know if it'll go through or not. But as you can see, that's 20 portables that $7100 a piece. So that's a pretty sizable award. We were able to grab that. But there is a towel up on. No bill. No bill. We started looking at working with the property on the tower and all that with the fire department. And again, communications on a section of this town really poor. So this is opportunity for the early stages, but we needed to start like Josh was saying, we need to put some money into that and start looking at it. But this is this is going to be a project that would, you know, we're going to take the correct steps because it's it's a need down for police fire. But also it helps our public works. There is dead zones in this community. Again, we're talking for here in Williston because we're in a landing path for the airport. So where we build our towers, we have to abide by rules. So we want to make sure this is all done. But the people who currently own that property in the tower are really working with us on and they want to see this project be successful. So again, we're not high speed lane, but, you know, we started the project and very small steps and all that, but we wanted this to come out here. So when you see it that down the road, if it's done and we get successful with it being built and do what we want to do, then our communication for all our agencies within Williston will be greatly improved. And it's just just food for thought no matter which avenue we go for any dispatch and services. These are things that are going to have to happen anyways. So these are for fire and police that no matter which route we go, we are going to have to upgrade our communications in town. I would just add on that this is a critical piece of public safety infrastructure for the town. I'll be Sergeant Shepard's been taking a lead on this for some numbers together we put some rough estimates here of 1.5 million it's it's a big number tower and the equipment that would need this all that radio cost for the police built into this capital sheet about Sergeant Shepard when he gets the final numbers and some information motorola to come to a future select or be to really walk through this project and more detail of the board and what the issues are. This is a potential use of some ARPA money as well but our money would cover this entirely so I'll be I'll be looking at some other possible avenues to fund this moving forward with direction from the board after you get a full sense of what the scope is of this project. What will will be the thing that will happen that will allow this to move forward. Sorry, I didn't I may not have raised that well what is the critical thing. That will allow this to move forward for instance is it getting rights or an easement to the land is it. Yeah, I would say the property owners have been we've had a working group with them this fall and they've been very receptive to work with us on it. For my electric co-op on butter not road. So I think we have good good good dialogue with them about moving this project forward. I think the critical piece is going to be how we how we pay for it. And there would be multiple stakeholders because frankly a lot of utilities would probably be involved and want at least a part of that so it doesn't just necessarily have to be a police radio or tower or just a fire radio tower. It can serve multiple different utilities and facilities throughout the area. So it really benefits a lot of other industries as well right outside of town. Yeah, absolutely. Do you anticipate this will be in next year's budget. Okay, there's a lot. There's a lot to it. Yeah, you know, equipment and everything like that and planning and zoning and everything like that. You know, hope our hope is is that our current stuff continues to operate. This really came to a head because there was a failure on the fire end of things and you know that that's kind of what brought it to light. And we're like, we really got to start moving this up and really start getting some planning going on and you know, 1.5 is a large number. So I think it's it's only right to do all the planning and spread it out and make sure we're doing it correctly. Okay. Right. Good. Now. Thank you. Any other questions for. I think we would appreciate any information you can get to us from the meeting you have on Friday. I plan to do that. Chief Lieutenant. I don't know if you wouldn't mind just sharing briefly on the electrification of police cruisers. Yeah. It's one of those things that maybe in 5 years, you know, we're kind of now that wait and see, you know, obviously the technology is getting a lot better every single day. I know GM's coming out with with some really good technology in 23. Richmond PD just got a Tesla. So they're kind of still trying to work out the kings. It is upfitted. So it does have the police package stuff in it. So it does have radios lights, everything like that. One issue I know that they're starting to see is there's about a 20% drop in life on the battery due to the cold. My only thing is, is that, you know, 5 years down the road, I'm assuming that's all going to get better. So there is a plan this summer. For the back parking lot to be rebuilt. Yeah, but part of the capital pleasure proposal will be potentially enough by 24 to do back parking lot improvements here on the municipal campus. And part of that thinking will be enabling upfitting for charter stations for potential. Yeah, so I've had, I've had talks with Bruce and he's going to keep us in the loop and allow us to the part of the process. Definitely, you know, for ripping it up, you get to get the fiber into the ground ahead of time. You know, maybe over where we currently park our vehicles, you could see some kind of canopy with panels on top of it. So then you have parking underneath to keep the snow off of them. But you also have charging stations, fast chargers right there. I would assume at some point law enforcement is going to go that way, especially since we put so many miles on use so much fuel. I think it just comes down to are there extra batteries possibly to help run the blue lights because the last thing you want to be doing is sitting on a scene and then your battery dies and you're stuck. But, you know, some law enforcement agencies have already started to switch the hybrid. Yeah, S6 PD. So we'll be able to go over and check with them and see how that's operational. You know, there's a lot of, a lot of times that you want to be the first, you know, law enforcement likes to be the first. We're the first with the canine program. Sometimes maybe with the electric vehicles, maybe you want to be the one year after to see how it's going and then go from there. It is on the horizon. I think it is for for every day citizens as well. So we're definitely keeping an eye on that technology. And, you know, we won't be bypassed on that. We'll definitely get involved. Right. With the plan, like Josh was saying, and Tom was saying about the back lot, you know, be nice to have ports there with lean, you know, so we can put the cruises under, you know, and keep the snow off and charge them. And put, you know, maybe solar panels on top of the system. So again, just a lot of possibility, you know, out in the back there. And did I hear you correctly that they make a police package hybrid vehicle? Or it's the Ford interceptors. They do. Yes. I believe Burlington may have a couple Essex. Like I said, just purchased a couple. Yeah, they get three. So they're just, they're kind of just popping up now. We'll just kind of wait and see how they how they perform. Yeah, a lot of agencies will go with their administrative offices first and to go electric. So people in BCI, people doing, you know, talking enforcement, all that to get a try to see how long they last. And then, you know, branch into the patrol side and all that. Good. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. So moving on to the fire department. Welcome. Welcome. Give me a link. Thanks. I hope I'm going to bring a little bit more energy and color. I know you've been looking at black and white and numbers. And so you've seen my presentations before and that's hopefully the platform that I'm going to share with you tonight and get connected. We always depend upon your graphics here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm a very visual person and I would, as you know, you're already two hours into this. I don't know how you keep your eyes straight looking down through some of these. So hopefully we can bring into a good spot. Right. So, first of all, I want to extend my condolences publicly to the family that lost their home on Friday evening. That was a difficult situation for them, I'm sure. And our thoughts go out to each of them. I'll take you through as really the high level here of the FY 23 budget. And I understand that we are really the anomaly department that is carrying a big burden on this year's budget to that. And when we met as a leadership team in the department, we really told our folks that we need to focus on needs and not wants and to try to narrow this down and. And tighten up our budget to to realize that. The impact that the request for additional personnel is going to have so we've tried to narrow the operating costs down to real actual cost as. To represent what the impact of adding 9 staff potentially would be for the department. So we went into that with that in mind. And certainly we put a prioritization of the staffing and public safety and community risk in addition to the emphasis of firefighter safety. So overall, the operating budget, if you exclude benefits and wages is about a 5.7% increase and considering the cost of living. I really don't see that as a major hurdle when we're trying to accommodate 9 additional staff potentially the costs that are associated with that. And we have no, we conceded a number of capital items and we'll go over that here in a minute that were offset by grant award. So much like our police department, the fire department was recipient of a number of grants this year that have allowed us to take advantage of deferring those costs. The administrative line, the notable jump to $10,000 in equipment from the $5,000 was that we have 6 computers are ironically all coming up at the end of their life. So we contract with a local vendor to maintain all of our it and they had suggested 3 years and this is actually our 5th year with these with these machines. So it's time for them to be cycled out that would also add a single desktop computer for a workstation for new staff. So we have a dedicated area where our firefighters do their incident reports and their narrative for their electronic patient care reports. And this would add 1 more workstation there to allow them to get their reports completed. The computer apps and development line increased that was simply because the cost for the outlook product and adding new persons to that and new email addresses and the licensure for Microsoft outlook. In addition, we had to add new funds for new higher expenses, including the physicals. In the equipment and maintenance line, we separated the fire uniforms from firefighting equipment. So last year you would have seen in this FY 22 budget that it was all firefighting equipment and what I discovered is that we were buying. Uniforms and shirts and pants out of the same thing that we would buy a technical firefighting equipment from meeting fire hooks or nozzles or anything like that. And I really wanted to try to. More accurately track where our uniform expenses are. And so we separated that out in that uniform line and that number helps to offset some of our expense. And what we've been trying to do is as funding allows us to actually keep some inventory in stock in the fire department. One with the model that we run as a combination department. You never know who's going to knock on the door. And the past practice had been once you came in, then we would. Send you to get fitted for a uniform and sent out and then order that and there would be a delay of. 6 weeks or so before we actually put anybody in a uniform. And so now we've tried to standardize that and have. Unhemmed pants that are sitting in the inventory and then we'll just send it to the local seamstress and they'll have him up to the sides. And so. Just a little bit more effective. So when somebody comes knocking on the door wants to be a member of the department, we show some inclusion and say, Oh, absolutely. Here you are. Welcome to the organization. The equipment maintenance. We had hoped that we would see, as you folks know, with the addition of a new engine and a new ladder truck that the equipment maintenance line would decrease. Unfortunately. We've, we haven't quite seen that experience yet because one those units are so new and the existing apparatus. We continue to have some challenges with and, and don't get me wrong. It happens all across any fire department, but when you, when you have a 6 or $700,000 piece of apparatus, the maintenance costs are to be expected as high. And so our engine, our 2019 engine is actually out on warranty repair because the paint was having issues. So that truck's been out of service. At the repair shop for several months now, and it's in final paint right now. We hope to have it back by January. Our engine 2 has been out for 2 weeks with issues with the exhaust system in it and the diesel exhaust control and diesel emissions control. So, luckily, we had the new units in in the department, but we also have a loaner here from our vendor that was we're running frontline. Actually tonight engine 2 just came back and service this evening and putting it back as I speak. So, I, I look at equipment maintenance and we just couldn't take the risk in FY 23 to say, we're going to lower that line yet because we still have aging, aging fleet and we'll take a harder look at that. Certainly in FY 24. EMS equipment in what we looked at here and you know, I'll give credit to Tony Samanskas. Tony is our EMS coordinator for the department and Tony looked at this and with the addition of additional staff. We also have more paramedics on staff. And so when our paramedics deliver care, our paramedics do so. And they have the ability to do more invasive procedures and as you can imagine the more invasive procedures that you do. Yes, we have the potential to save more lives with the equipment, the hardware, the supplies actually cost more. So this is our best guest estimate of what that increase is going to look like of about $3,300 because the additional. Uh, trained personnel on staff. As you heard Lieutenant more and she fully speak of the station needed its new roof and this is 1 of the successes of the year here for the part fire department. I. I thought you would appreciate the lines in this picture. This just shows the quality workmanship that went into that. So I appreciate the select board support on replacement of that. That roof. The 1st floor of the station we had repainted in 2021 calendar year 21. The 2nd floor will be placed on hold for FY 23. And that's a cost savings measure. While it's the appearance needs it. I'm certainly certain that we can defer it without having it. Cascade and have an ill effect later on. We will have to at the recommendation of the roofing vendor will have to start looking at the exterior of the station because as you heard she fully speak of that the. The cocking and the paint on the outside of the station is actually showing signs of where and there's opening up some of the joints that are. On the fascia and trim boards there. So we were originally trying to push that forward in this year's budget, but knowing how tight it was going to be. This is an area that we elected to defer. And we'll again be exploring it in FY 24. But we level funded all other lines within the facilities budget. EMS supplies so EMS equipment we looked at before EMS supplies is the day to day supplies and we again the cost of materials is going up and this is what this is reflective of. And we have the potential to run more incidents more EMS incidents where we hope we anticipate to be around 1200 incidents in FY 23. The decrease there is a decrease here, which I understand you always appreciate hearing is that in the dispatch services line as you heard Lieutenant Moore speak of the the Valkor RMS, which is the records management software that the state is transitioning to when in this in the FY 22 budget we had about $3000 set aside for the cat RMS link to from the from the cat into our department incident reporting software that would build that bridge to automatically when I spoke to the state about that developing in the bridge for existing fire department RMS, the state assures me that that cost will be born by the state that we will not have to build that link and that they would pay for it. Of note though that is not live within the fire dispatch system so I believe that it as Josh said here earlier that it's gone live for police the police department, it has not gone live from the fire side of the house yet. One of the new projects that we're excited to roll out in the fire department is the addition of a learning management system. The saturation of how busy our staff was didn't allow for curriculum development so when we were trying to roll out continuing education classes, both in fire EMS or technical rescue disciplines. We were spending a lot of staff time focusing on the shiny discipline of the day is my way best way of putting it is all right let's let's let's teach about this but we couldn't do a wide array. So the captain did a bunch of research for us and he came back with the proposal to to look at a product called fire rescue one Academy for the entirety of FY 23 with all the staff including the new hires are expensive would be around $3200 to do that and what that does is we have access to hundreds of hours of prepackaged fire EMS and rescue curriculums. So we could assign that out to staff instead of spending staff time on curriculum development. This is already vetted curriculum that goes out there meets our continuing standards for both fire and EMS we don't have to second guess it or do a crosswalk on the matrices to make sure that it's valid and within the with the scope of our continuing ed requirements. So that's all at our thumbnail in that as well is the instructor packets which gives you the curriculum and instructional guides on how to teach that. So our folks really can have the step by step guide. They also include evaluation methods so testing instruments that are part of that if we elect to test to a certain certification and a training management system where all of our personnel have the ability to upload any of the training that they participate in. What I found is that we do a poor job of we do a great job of training we do a poor job of documenting that we did the training and because that takes time. And so I've worked to try to build that break that down so we didn't have so many barriers but this LMS will allow people to have the correct credentials so you can go in and enter your own training in there without a barrier. So it's more efficient use of firefighter time and creation of educational content. We've actually initiated this relationship already we've we've met with the fire rescue one Academy this year and they've given us a prorated cost to roll this out effective this in this budget year and we'll begin that January 1st. Staffing as everyone in this room knows really is the crux behind the increase in in your budget, the fire department budget, the limited career staff. The challenges that you've all heard about here through both my words and the words of the AP AP Triton consulting the declining call staff personnel I. Recreate to inform you that I actually received a letter of intent to for our call Lieutenant one of our call lieutenants to resign effective December 31. So that takes us down a critical a critical position person had a lot of experience and a lot of historical knowledge of the department slowing down for us. We see an increase EMS call volume and we continue to have troubles meeting the demand for service. We had we had fortunate by the end of the event on Friday night 11 firefighters show up out of our department roster. I would say that after three after 2 a.m. on Friday evening, we ran three calls before the started shift change at 630 the morning and one of those calls was a critically ill patient where we can we left the engine company sitting beside the road. And I had, I had left the firehouse around 230 we got dispatch for motor vehicle crash and came back in and by the that time. That we had one person that actually stood by probationary person that could do nothing but protect the security of the apparatus so that person did help us in that way but there was no other staff to help out. So it truly is is the staffing is is a real issue as you've all seen. And you've seen the slide before this is the call staff payroll hours by month and that trend continues of note. This does it only goes through August of 2021. The consultant had recommended and we have discussed this at here at the board that this is the FY 23 estimated wage scale costs for firefighter 1 the advanced EMT. And so this is a little bit higher than what you saw in the presentation the last time was in front of you and that has to do with. And if you have any questions I'll defer to Shirley about trying to explain that surely and I will work on that today. She's still I'll give her the expertise on that but salary and benefits costs that's where that number resides today. Wages we're still continuing to look at a new call staff wage model for FY 23, including weekend incentive. So the difference between the the week day and the weekend is that you don't have myself or the deputy in the in the firehouse or the captain in the firehouse to help answer calls and we've been helping alleviate that burden when we go with concurrent calls. The career staff increases of 9 firefighters the total estimated cost per firefighter and the EMT level and the reason I had surely the Shirley and I worked out that amount at that certification is that that's more likely what that person is going to to hold when they would have when we as as we operate emergency medical services. People that enter the department at the EMT basic level the natural natural progression is to go on to the advanced EMT level if not the paramedic level so they can do so they can offer more procedures to our patient population. The CPI northeast was estimated at the time we worked at this budget at 3.3. I believe that that number is going to change and that'll be amended as staff has the accurate number. But the majority of the change here there was $117,000 and changes for the current staff between wages and benefits and $791,000 with increased due to the new staff and that's at 9 new staff. A little bit about the projected timeline for hiring I haven't had a chance to actually speak to the town manager about this we will meet on Thursday but we met on with other career fire departments throughout the state today on the challenges that they're having so we're trying to work this out and the timeline the rough timeline that we have now the we have anticipated positions open so the application process is open. That application would be held open through January 30th and at that time we would look at resumes and see what we had for qualified candidates and then decide where we're going to interview those candidates. And come up with a list of qualified candidates there's some still some other challenges that occur there. None of that we would not have any conditional offers of employment until after the town meeting day budget vote. The cost that would potentially be incurred here in FY 22 salary and benefits would be around $150,000 and the training Academy costs for the eight week Academy is just shy of $28,000 to run them through the Academy. The ARPA funds and so Jeff I believe you had spoke earlier about dedicated or potential uses for ARPA funds that the manager has we've had this discussion to cover this one time expense of firefighter radios those are $6,200 each. Initial set of firefighting turnout years 4,500 and that includes the helmet the boots so helmets to shy 500 the boots are at 500 right now the gloves are over 100 the hoods are over 100. What that what we wouldn't need to do to get them a backup set is we wouldn't have to buy a second helmet we wouldn't have to buy a second set of boots. So we would take that 1000 off to get them the turnout coat and pants so $7,000 excuse me $8,000 there, and then the hiring costs for physical exam background checks etc so $135,000 potentially of our performance. Capital equipment it's it's my desire and you challenged the police department on this is a little bit as well as I'd love to look in I've had the discussion with the deputy about replacing the command vehicle with the potential for with electric vehicles I just don't. Neither of us know if the technology is going to be ready and I think he's heard the same apprehension here at our law enforcement partners is that we'd like to explore that when pay close attention to that. This it doesn't if it's not the FY 23 budget but his money that's going to that that capital investment and really is going to be dependent on technology but we certainly have an eye on that we've been watching vendor products and to come out there and we're just waiting for that to be released and at least some agency to take the lead and and show us the reliability and the dependability of that before we. Before we like it like you heard earlier with Lieutenant Moore saying that we end up with a meeting to charge a battery on the side of the road. Capital capital equipment budget for the fire department and increase that we would look at would be to purchase a third 12 lead. Defibrillator and so what we that would allow us to do is that excuse me. It would allow us to have another 12 lead diagnostic monitor on a second fire apparatus so right now if the engine in the ambulance go out. We don't necessarily have another 12 lead diagnostic machine on another spare one in the fire house so this would be allow us to do that. That each year we put around $8000 away for our hydraulic rescue tools and that's for vehicle extrication and we feel that we can defer this year with with no expectation of making it up next year. Just the way that we were seeing the life of these tools. We anticipate that it should be fine that we can defer that 8000. Additionally, we've deferred $21,000 in the fire radio replacement. We received a $50,000 grant award from the homeland security unit as part of a package that we put together in our rescue task force. We're able to purchase 8 portable radios. So that helps us defer that radio replacement costs in addition to potential ARPA funds for new hire for. The other deferment we have done is in the fire equipment line and so you may have. Understood or maybe you didn't understand that within our. Contract with the apparatus manufacturer for the aerial ladder we had a delivery date penalty. Built into that contract and for every day that they didn't meet that they were. Penalize this a financial amount. So what we've done is taken that penalty and we've been able to order and purchase thermal imaging cameras, which would have been purchased under the capital equipment account. So that was allowing us to defer that amount as well. So we took the penalty. We took, we suffered because we took a little bit of a delay and getting the apparatus delivered. But now the apparatus dealer is actually paying for the equipment for us. The ambulance replacement plan. The ambulance is slated to be replaced in FY 23. We finalized the order. We signed the purchase order in late August. We finalized the order at the pre build in October. And as you heard earlier, there's a national chassis shortage. And so the story we spoke to the vendor today. We were told a 500 plus day build time at the time of order. And today they don't believe we're going to get that truck before September. So that would be almost a $700 a 700 day build time. So yeah, so that will be part of debt that will go in front of the voters on them on the ballot as well. Yeah, and I think it's that cheap. We historically the town son of lease purchases for these ambulances. Short term finance debt has a number of advantages for interest rates and those items. So I'll be for the floor to consider putting that on the morning. We are using FY 2018 fire at grant. We have some unallocated funds and surely is working with Lieutenant Baker and we're able to secure an amendment to that grant. And it's our hope that we'll purchase the power load caught and system that goes into this ambulance out of those funds to help offset that cost and keep it down below the potential cost that it has capital buildings for FY 23. We were able to defer the $18,000 and paving from FY 23, but we'll fully fund it in FY 24 36,000 the station. The asphalt at the station has been sealed or all the cracks have been sealed and now that sealant has come up and the cracks are showing their their face again and we're going to this is going to be an item that we're actually going to need to take action on an FY 24. So that will need to, although it's going to be deferred, we'll have to absorb it in 24. We began a phone system upgrade in FY 22 that was done through some bit of grant, but there's, we still have handsets that we didn't have the funding for. I'll continue to look at that the potential for any year end funds that this year it's about $7,500 that we still need to buy the remaining handsets. And they were handsets that we didn't prioritize, but it's the handsets that are on the far end of the apparatus bay over away from the administrative section. All it makes for right now is our staff has to kind of rush back to the closest phone a little bit. So when we have the funds, if we have the fund here in 22, we'll try to take care of it then, but if not, we haven't included our capital 23. The fire annex modification that was money that we had continued to set aside for the potential for renovation of space in the garage where the command vehicles are located and not knowing what the future of the station is going to look like. It didn't make sense for us to continue to put like small dollars in there when we're really talking about big dollar issues. It wasn't realistic. So the recommendation is that we'll have a programmatic analysis of the station in its entirety to see and we'll look at that potentially with a master plan and the needs of the community. It didn't make sense for us to keep putting deferring that money when the project wasn't going to be realistic. The scope of the project was much larger than we first anticipated. That's the high level of it. I'm sure there's a number of questions here. Happy to try to try to tackle them as I as I can. Thank you chief for doing both operations and capital that was very helpful. Questions on either part of it. Nine firefighters. The concept is they'll be fully funded in the school year 2023. Yes. And that's because they're just absolutely needed all year. Yes, sir. It burns just hypothetically. Hypothetically, if the decision were to fund half of them full time half them half time, meaning the second half of the year. It's an approach we've used for some physicians in town instead of hiring them for the whole fiscal year. You hire them for the second half of the fiscal year. So that first year, you only spend, you know, roughly half of the salary of, you know, their meals. That would not work in this case in your mind. Well, I would say that you'd either you couldn't divide it in half, you'd have to divide it in thirds. Okay. So it'd be two thirds and one third. Okay. And do you understand that that's based upon three shifts in the cycle that half this doesn't work. It doesn't mathematically equate to a balance. And the one third option is not doesn't do anything for operational benefit. So if you only hired three, we wouldn't be able to put it still only puts a person on the first out engine. It doesn't help us with the concurrent, concurrent call issue. And that's really where the nine comes in. The nine is about the potential to answer that 30% of the time that we're running concurrent incidents where we have to try to answer, divide and conquer across the community. And so when you would look at a single firefighter addition, you would only they would be on the apparatus so you could render aid to the call at hand. But any subsequent calls would still go to be a challenge for the community. So the practice of potentially abandoning a fire apparatus. Maybe we don't abandon the fire apparatus, but it leaves a single firefighter. So you haven't really added any capability you need to have that depth. And the fire station it's it's capable of handling the additional staff. It is. Other questions. We recognize this is a challenge. We know this is a challenge. But we also want you to know where we're at operationally. And we're living that challenge. So I think if we look at it for the total impact. And I think the observer had it documented here today at $150 a year on the median income home. Total budget, not just fire budget, but if I had that ability, I think that's money well spent for $150. So appreciate everyone's time. Thank you. The house that burned last Friday belong to a little acquaintance of mine. Thank you for doing what you could do out there even though I couldn't say thanks. Yeah, it's a it's an emotional situation. For sure. So, yeah, I'm very proud of our staff they worked. They worked their butts off. Thank you. We'll move on then to general administration budget and Eric and surely will handle the floor. Or five different parts of it. So. Eric, I'll turn it over to you. And we can. Well, this could be considered the lightning round of the evening. There's not a whole lot. Like that word goes to Sarah. I can start off surely. I'm on the beginning of general admin. So get a high level this covers manager's office general overhead select board technology. Manager's office itself. The major variance for the general overhead I've increased legal by about $5,000 based on prior years experience on the actuals there and they got a little lump up is warranted. The building maintenance component of that is also going up about 3,500 and that's a formula we split for all departments in the building that surely comes up with that division on those numbers. Select board budget is going down a little bit. And I think that was that's tied to some of the contractual items in there surely with them. Yes. Just gotten here and should know that my house. Forget it. There was the $1,800 that was removed. That was the. Tax. I'll call it rebate tax discount for the Masonic temple when it was owned as by a nonprofit. So that was removed. That's probably the biggest item in there. Yeah. There was. I'll just say this for all of the budgets again as the auditors continue to look at more things and we chat about more things. In the manager's budget used to be like longevity pay and the merit pay and then we used it for the budget and then we used to, you know, Expense the merit pay to the departments and, you know, auditors and I'm glad because it doesn't make any sense put the budget where the expenditures are going to be. So the town manager's bonus with the select board budget that now sits in the town manager's budget and not in the select board budget, even though you control it, it's where the expenses actually going to lie. So that was moved out of the budget as well. So and same thing across all of these budgets for longevity and merit. Those used to sit in town manager's budget. They now sit in each of the individual department budgets where they should be expense at the end of the day. Okay. So can I get this correct? Yep. The manager controls the select board budget and the select board controls the manager salary. Offer the expenses at the pleasure. It's moving on to technology essentially level funded where that covers our it costs. Mainly service contracts and some new equipment for town staff and the administrative buildings here. It's essentially level. I decreased a little bit so you need to buy as many computers next year. So that's where that comes a little bit lower than the manager's office itself. Probably the big decrease there is having now Aaron Dickinson on board as our HR coordinator and assistant to the manager we've, we've split her the salary for that position between a manager's office finance office to, to account for the split duties and where they fall within budgets. That's where you see that large variance there. There's not any questions on those pieces I can toss the Shirley for finance budget. Okay. So I'm going to start with the board of listers. The changes there haven't, aren't very many, but the professional services. What page? So I'm under general admin if you go past Eric's, if you go past the detailed pages of Eric's the finance department is right after that. Thank you. And I'm just looking at the overall summary page, not the individual detailed pages. So professional services that Bill Hinman our contracted assessor his rate did go up about 5% this year. Office equipment, we're going to need a new computer for one of the, the assistant assessor. And then the tax maps was something we had moved to the reappraisal fund, but we're moving it back to the general fund, because we've done an analysis of the reappraisal fund and we when the reappraisal will be done and we just figure we'll have enough money to pay for the reappraisal. So this little bit is coming back into the general fund. So that is it for the big variances in the board of the listers budget. Let me keep going questions. Okay. So the cash receipts and the management, we just got rid of that we are finance now. Make it easy. And there's really no reason to separate it because Mary, who's our pressure works for finance to when just we're a department and we share tasks. So we just got rid of that additional function, let's say. So as Eric already mentioned, the reason the department staff is as higher is because 50% of errands or the HR coordinator assistant to the town manager 50% of her salary and benefits is in finance and HR. Let's see the my writing is so small. I can't even see it myself. The service property and casualty insurance. It looks like it's new, but it's really the fact that that cost is being allocated between the clerk, the town manager and finance and HR. So I take the overall calculation for that for what's for the building and then I just divided amongst the three of us and we all share it equally. Computer applications. We pay for Adobe software. So because we're, you know, we're, we're moving to, you know, paperless slowly but we're getting there. So we, in order to have the version of Adobe that we can read right on it and make notes, we have to, we pay for that. And in this line item is $2,000 for some payroll software. So, you know, that may not do it for us, but I've started just peeking at a couple different demonstrations. We'd like to get some payroll software that integrates with our network payroll software so that people can do their time entry in the cloud and have it interface with NEMRIC. So right now it's still all on paper and it's just not. Yeah. Thank you, Greta. It's just not very efficient. So we need to move into the 21st century here. So hope to get through that process in FY23. Yeah. Thank you chief. I thought you'd be favorable to that one. Let's see. Thanks for staying by the way. I thought everyone would be gone by now. Building maintenance, it really is looking at our history. And again, that cost is divided. It includes the building and grounds persons, persons and public works that actually do the building cleaning and maintenance. So we divide their wages amongst all the departments that they serve. So I calculate that for this building and then it's just split between the manager of the clerk and the finance office. And I guess for office equipment, the number there is that Mary needs a new computer next year so that is in there. But those are the biggies. Training and conferences is zero and now it's up. Really, that's just moving from the town manager's office to the finance because my expenses were sitting there previously. So not new dollars. Just move dollars. Yep. Okay. So now I'm going to go to your tab that services. So on this one I think I'll be faster than Sarah. Because most of it is really not changing. I mean the biggest change here is that last year we had the 34,000 for the CCPSA and you heard Eric speak about it earlier. We're waiting to see if we're going to get ARPA funded. So there is nothing in this budget for any further funding to the CCPSA for now. A couple of these numbers we do not have final yet. GMT bus service that's the next biggest change and that really is based on the fact that their costs are more and that just flows through to us. So that was all I was going to mention because everything else is, well, I should actually say Lake Iroquois Association, they asked for 15,000 to help with continue the lake cleanup and education. So that is in this budget for 15,000 is an increase of 5,000 from the FY 22 budget. Shirley, could you mention why you're there? We moved the ERF and. Oh, yes, yes, good point. So we used to have what we call it Eric, the preservation or something like that. Housing preservation. Here we go. And I said, why do we have a budget category with two things in it? So we just moved it in here to make it a little. A couple less pages, I guess, saving paper. There's our effort. So those costs have not changed or our proposal has not changed from last year. Any questions on this? Okay, so the next section we are going to is called capital expenses. And I'm going to just talk about the debt piece of this because of the capital expenses. The funding from each of those sheets that Eric really went through all of the capital budget process and decided how to fund things, whether it was from operating budget. As you know, the thing that looks different there is there's no more host town fund. So in FY 22, the host host town fund previously was its own fund and really never should have been those funds are just general funds for the town. They weren't specific to anything, but they were used to fund our capital budget. So now that host town revenue is just part of the general fund revenue. And therefore, that revenue is just in the operating budget as capital projects or capital equipment being funded to there. But Eric really took the fine look at how to fund our operating budget between, you know, what's going coming from operating taxes and other revenue sources. And ARPA and some of it from fund balance to try to minimize that tax rate impact. So in regards to the debt services in FY 23, that will be the last principal and interest payment on our library roof debt. So that will be gone. The muddy brook is new on the sheet, but that's the new debt that we have from the Colbert project. The fire engine 18 principle that that the way that debt service was structured is that we paid interest for six years. And then for the last seven years of that debt, we pay principal and interest. So that is new this year, but the debt's not new, just the principal part of that debt is new. And then everything else is kind of status quo, but I'm going to jump down to the very bottom, the fire station roof principle. That's principle twice. Sorry, I missed that. It should say principal and interest. That was an FY 22. So there is no ongoing debt for that because we didn't borrow. We had savings from the timing of the muddy brook funding that happened later than we thought. So we had 14,000 in savings in our FY 22 budget. Plus we had the savings because of the new fire trucks also that debt being delayed. There was another 77,000 in the FY 22 budget. So that was 91,000 of savings and FY 22 budget that we use to just pay for the fire. Ruth directly and the rest came out of balance or, you know, other favorable variants to budget by the end of the year. And that's it. And the front of your capital budget is the full debt schedule as well. You'll see when our three or four pages in, but it'll show you the maturity of these bonds that town has outstanding. So introduction tab and it's. Improve our page number because I got a book. Yeah, I don't have a book with page procedure. It's a front midway through capital. If you find the tax impact summary, it's 2 pages after that. And it says debt schedule on the top. Just want to flag for the board here. Some of these 20 year bonds the town had when putting in our new facility public safety facilities. We can see that there is a light at the end of repaying that debt here coming up by this decade. It is 3 series bond. So the 1st 1 has a maturity in in FY 25 than the 2nd and 26 2nd and 27. So that's making up a significant portion of our annual debt service right now. And as we think about debt capacity and future capability on debt capacity that that window is is potentially coming up for the town. The public works building that's a little bit further 2023, but those are our largest annual debt payments we have right now. And if you go to the page before that, I'm just going to follow up on some comments that Bob made. It's the schedule is called town of Willis and unfinished capital project. It's just a short schedule. We haven't talked about this one a lot in the past, but we've always had it. So these are different pots of money that have been previously committed to certain projects. So if you look at the column that says recreation impact fees. So 63,000 of that was committed and the years are 2006. We've been holding on to that one for a while to sidewalks, paths, whatever. And then the 90,000 is the FY 22 and FY 23 funding for the sidewalk bond so we can we can use the wreck impact fees. Help paid for the the debt on the sidewalk bond in FY 22 and 23 previously we have 15,000 a year we increase that to 45,000 a year just to help minimize the tax rate increase. But if you there's the line that says current cash balance $768,000. Right at the bottom of that. So I'll go up. So I'll go up one more. So it says total $153,574. So those are dollars committed out of these wreck impact fees. There's $768,000 in cash in the wreck impact fees. So it looks like we have a surplus of 614,000. And then previously committed for the Allenbrook Community Park is the 120,000 it's the number you see down there is a negative. So to follow up on what taught that he said there's actually more money in the wreck impact fees and that schedule was showing because this amount has not actually been committed and Eric and I have had a conversation and and we'll bring something to you to you. As we work through an analysis of the wreck impact fees, but essentially those dollars are there that can be committed to Allenbrook to the build out of Allenbrook Park as well. So I just wanted to follow up on that comment that Todd had made. Anything else under capital that we need to talk about? I've got a capital sheet I'll wait till next week in the library trust. These are here just on a on a project scope out community center library. Right. For next. Any questions for Eric or Shirley? I don't think we just stopped. No, we can go on some managers. Is that one item we almost had our time here. This reminder we set the start for next week at 630 as well a little bit earlier. Got some general business on the agenda then round out budgets with public works library. A couple items we missed tonight and a discussion of revenue. You'll have heard all of the overview on of the budget proposal at that point for the holidays. Is there any other business to talk about today? No. All right, we did well in three hours. So we are.