 right now call the meeting to order good evening everybody is 701 and let's begin the first item on the agenda as always is public comment general issues of the day it does not have to be something that is on the agenda it can be but are there people here who wish to make public comment no okay come on up if you can state your name for the record although thank you know my name is Jeremy Harriman I represent the Willis to professional firefighters of local 4611 myself and my e-board member James Wells are here tonight to talk about some of some issues we've noticed with the proposal for the fiscal year 2025 before we start we'd like to ask just as a courtesy to everyone here tonight if you would like us to defer this time to the work session of the budget or to just continue as I think continue okay so as you may or may not know we've been into in a contract negotiation with the town since April of 23 this contract has been negotiated for three years with a goal of recruitment and retention with various proposals you know regarding health and safety our operational values even the way we dress as well as compensation and unfortunately we have been not been able to get to as many of those other proposals too deeply because we've been working out compensation issues between ourself of the town the issues that have come up during negotiations have been anywhere from you know a lack of understanding of how we do math and finances of how we give proposals back and forth for example we would give a proposal a financial proposal and we would see an exercise quote-unquote in return and often these exercises would be incomplete or inaccurate so it became difficult to try and negotiate in terms that everybody was understanding and at times we were accused of negotiating unfairly with the town we also during this time talked about why we were trying to retain employees and gain recruitment because going up to this point we had employees that were concerned about leaving the department for other departments to make more money or other opportunities to make more money the town seemingly ignored this and when it did finally come to fruition and we lost two members one transferred within the town and another moved out we have now a recruitment class in session with another schedule for April due to more employees leaving this was brought up during negotiations and it it had no effect on how we negotiated and we're now at an impasse so bringing back full circle to the point of why we're here tonight we've noticed a few discrepancies in this fair bargaining practice of the the 2025 fiscal budget being set before we've had one meeting in mediation so again you know we're gonna be budgeting or we're gonna be arguing for a budget for our employees for our membership on a budget that's gonna be voted for and passed without having an official meeting to try and and solve this before it's done so at this time I'm gonna defer to my associate to talk more of the finer details of our financial proposals so again my name is James walls and the treasurer for local 4611 and our key concern with the budget proposal right now is the compensation items for the fire department do not seem to they do not seem to accommodate what the union has proposed thus far and they seem to accommodate just what the town has proposed and I think where we're concerned about that is if this budget goes to the voters and is approved and we continue on this path of mediation and possibly fact-finding and binding arbitration we'll find ourselves in a position possibly if the if the union prevails where the compensation awarded to us would be greater than is approved in the budget and so we want to make that transparent with the most and voters we think it's both to them for them to understand that but also see if that's something that we can start to address before this goes to a vote before the town and where we're at now we have figures prepared if you like them on how much more we think we need to go into that into those line items and we can offer those to you and we can also entertain any questions and again out of respect for other people that might have public comment we can also save those discussions for the work session if you would if you would like but ultimately we're just trying to avoid a situation where the town will be forced to find other ways to accommodate the compensation of the union that maybe the voters didn't necessarily agree to do you have the number now the numbers the number that we our estimate is that it would be an additional 40 to $50,000 that would need to be added to the the total compensation items for the career staff okay what's the board's discretion to the other questions that you asked now or do you want to wait and go into the work session on the budget I think it makes much difference but if there are questions so so the shortfall would be 40 or $50,000 is that your understanding okay okay I hear it there's not much more I can say but thank you thank you yep thank you for your time yeah yeah okay any other public comment in the room or anybody online no no one on zoom okay moving on green mountain transit update my name is Clayton Clark and I'm the general manager for Green Mountain Transit and I'm very happy to be here for the first time in that role to talk to you about what's happening I'm gonna talk about our assessment of course and but also a little bit about our return to fairs some of the things that we're looking at in the future and and just of some background about Green Mountain transit very happy to be here with Amy Brewer who is our vice chair of the board of commissioners and then online with Chapin Caner I think that these two are really doing the community of Williston great service with their work on the GMT board I've really enjoyed working with them I've been in my position tomorrow is my one-year anniversary and when I found that they're they've been extremely helpful to me in transitioning to this role and and they do a great job in guiding the board in a way that I think that you would be proud of so to to provide a little bit of background on Green Mountain Transit there are seven transit agencies that operate within the the state of Vermont six of them are nonprofits and Green Mountain Transit is the outlier where we're actually a municipality that is set in statute and our traditional service area starting in 1973 when the statute was put in place was in the Chittenden County area with what was used to be CCTA that expanded a little over 10 years ago to include areas with Franklin County Washington County some of the Moyle County and Grand Isle and so one of the things that makes GMT sort of special is that there's only a handful of transit agencies in the country that have both a urban transit system and a rural transit system and so what that means is that the the funding that comes through the federal transit administration there's a separate rules and separate funding sources for rural transit and urban transit so in some ways GMT is kind of like two separate transit agencies that share a common board of commissioners and a common management team and so that's the that gives us some opportunities that some other organizations don't have but it also creates some challenges just because we are operating with two very different sets of federal requirements for how we operate and they're they're pretty different between the two so focusing on what is going on here in our urban system Williston has the distinction of being the source of our number one urban route that's then it's the number one route it is the the Williston line number one that goes from Williston to the downtown transit center in Burlington it represents 23% of our total ridership within the urban area is on on this line and last year there was 477,000 riders that used that now not all of those riders you know originated in Williston but that's what the total route ridership was and we also have service from the number 10 which is which had 344,000 riders which is about 17% of the service so between those two lines that's that's 40% of the service that that we offered to Chittenden County with our fixed route service and so I wanted to start off with that to let you know what you all are contributing towards before I get to the bad part which is the you know that this of course costs money and the thing that I need to apologize to to Eric and making his life more difficult and budgeting and to you all is that the assessment that we have for you was a 9% increase this year and that is a lot and I recognize that it's a lot and I know that that's gonna put strain on your you know municipality and I just want to make sure you know that I understand that and wish that weren't the case I'm gonna walk through a little bit of what got us there so that you could understand why why this happened so first off you know when people think about Green Mountain Transit they often think about the fixed route service that's our big buses that that you know carry lots of folks and that's part of the fixed route assessment and that portion of the assessment only went up 2.7% now we had originally thought that that was gonna go up 4% for you all but it ended up being the lower 2.7% and the reason why is that our Board of Commissioners decided to do a true-up exercise with our route funding and so what that means is that historically so that there is more certainty and and less volatility when it comes to your fixed route assessments what we do is that our the increases that happen year over year have typically been 4% that makes it nice and predictable and makes your your budgeting easier what we do is a true-up exercise every so often that ties the your fixed route assessment to the actual level of service that is being provided because sometimes that will get a little bit out of alignment and so by doing that exercise that meant that this year we only needed to go up 2.7% to get that back where it needed to be so that's the good news so where did what is the driver for the 55 I'm sorry for the 9% increase and the driver for that really is and you can see this in the assessment letter that we had sent to Eric is our paratransit assessment and so one of the things that people may not realize is that when somebody lives within three quarters of a mile of one of our routes and they have a disability that would preclude them from being able to use that fixed route transit that we're required by law to have transit provided for them and so that's what the the paratransit assessment comes from and that's a service that's provided by SSTA and so this is a door-to-door service where somebody will arrange a ride with SSTA, SSTA will have one of their vehicles come to that person's house and then will bring them to wherever it is that that they need to go and so that's and so the paratransit assessment is based on actual usage each year and so when in that program increased an amazing 55% over the previous year and one of the things about this program is that because users of it tend to use it somewhat frequently just having a few people move in or out of your community that are eligible for that service really you know drives that that assessment and so what you'll see is that you know going up and down considerably based on that migration one of the things that the GMT board of commissioners has done to make less shocking to the communities that we work with is that we're going to a new assessment model which will be based on a three-year running average and so then that way we can avoid these years when we have a 55% increase and and have that spread out over time and if we see that it's just a temporary blip up and then it comes back down then again you all will be protected from that letting you know why it's 55% here in Williston is that first off overall the ADA rides that we provided over the past year system-wide within Chittenden County increased by 20% so so throughout all of our communities the total ridership went up by 20% and in Williston the share of the rides the previous year had been 3.6% of our total ADA rides and this year it was 5% so that you know was a pretty significant jump that certainly drove the the big increase a small part of that increase also is that SSTA like a lot of the providers that are struggling to get staff struggling to find the people to be able to carry out their mission they've had higher costs and that also is the has been some of the driver but I want to make sure that it's clear that that really it's the total numbers that's what's the main factor there a little bit later I'm going to talk about how we're going to be returning to fare service and one of the things is is that the return to fares will also have an impact on the paratransit assessment because just as our fixed routes have been fair free for the past few years we have been required to then make these paratransit rides fair free as well because they we can't charge a fee to somebody who has a disability that we wouldn't charge to somebody without so when we return to fare service that will apply both to our fixed routes and to our paratransit ADA rides and we think that that will end up having folks be more selective in how they use the service because what is now a free door-to-door round trip is actually going to cost them six dollars to do once fares return in March we think that that will likely decrease the overall number of rides that are provided and and that that would end up providing some assessment relief for the program the I'm going to talk a little bit about the the pressures that we're looking at and the first thing that I want to start off with is and I'd mentioned before is the labor pressures and so when I had arrived here last year roughly one in three if you saw one of our buses out in the community there was a one in three chance that the driver driving that bus was on overtime and some of that overtime was forced overtime meaning that they didn't want to be out there we we are contractually able to to say how you're going to have to work longer today and so that's a double time rate and so when you think about the the costs of having a third of your routes covered by somebody who's on overtime and many of those folks are getting double time instead of time and a half certainly that's a concern that we have one of the things I want to emphasize is that even with that over overtime rate 2.7 was the only increase that we needed on that fixed route so we actually are happy that we are able to keep that so low what we did is that previously we had a lower starting wage for our new drivers we changed that previously a driver had to be with us for a full year before they would get the full wage we negotiated mid contract with the teamsters that represent our urban drivers and what we did was is that we had it so that people would start on day one with the with the full rate that has really helped us with recruitment and the thing that's been nice is that it's helped us with recruitment without a super huge increase in the labor costs because our existing staff you know didn't get that huge increase because it went from 21 50 an hour for the starting wage to $28 an hour and and so the good news is is that that's become much more attractive for people and our overtime rate has dropped into the mid to high 20s and when we get further folks through training with that will continue to drop and our hopes are that that will then help make fixed route service continue to be somewhat affordable for our municipalities and keep those assessment increases lower labor scarcity for cdl drivers definitely is one of the biggest threats that we we see long term with being able to provide our current level of service or a higher level of service and so that makes gmt very much like you know many of the other organizations that serve our communities whether it's our emergency response staff police departments social workers health care personnel and and so we're part of that mix fiscal pressures we have been very lucky and that gmt was able to receive significant covet relief funds like a lot of municipalities like state government those you know covet relief funds are going to be coming to we're going to be exhausting them we're going to we're projected to run out of them sometime in fiscal year 26 unfortunately we provide more service than the revenue that we generate outside of those relief funds and by fiscal year 27 we're going to be looking at about a three million dollar hole that unless we identify additional revenue sources that we're going to need to fill that in order to maintain our existing service levels one of the things that i want to make sure that you know is that that revenue replacement is my highest priority as a general manager and i'm not going to be coming here looking for you all to fill that hole entirely because i know that you all are probably going over a similar fiscal cliff and and that's just not going to be an expectation that we have absolutely they they were and and that that's how we chose to use some of those federal funds and and so yes but yes some but even with even what i should say is is that even with our return to fares our projected deficit will be roughly three million dollars yeah yeah yeah the one of the things that that we're going to be looking at is if there's other non federal revenue sources i eat taxes you know that would come you know in some other way through the state and the the transportation committees and the legislature asked us to do a study this year where we would look at other ways to generate revenue that wouldn't be just coming to the municipalities and that report is going to be provided to them you know next week the report considered all sorts of things i mean it even considered hey how much money would we generate if we put toll booths on 89 you know obviously we're not going to go down that path there are a few things that seem like they may be more more feasible but ultimately it's going to be the transportation committee committees that are going to be you know thinking about how to replace those funds and one of the things that i'm going to be doing is that my background is not in transit my background is in human services i very much see public transit as an extension of my career in human services and i think that one of the things that we need to do is look at how we can find you know i got ahead of myself one of the things that i noticed in my career in human services is it didn't matter whether i was working in veterans affairs working in adult protective services working at voc rehab transportation was always a barrier to the folks that we were you know working with and one of the things that i would like to see is that hey let's work better with the agency of human services because the reality is is that our three million dollar hole is is pretty small compared to the funding that they provide you know to provide the services that they do and so that's a partnership that we would like to to explore i'm getting to the fairs i could talk for several hours with you about what our new fare system is going to be like and i'm just going to cover it briefly and offend the questions you want to you know me to go down some of those rabbit holes i'd be really happy to but i don't want to nerd out on you and one if that's not what you want um and so fares are to reserve or reserve uh return on march 6th it's a wednesday so you're probably like well why would we have them return on wednesday it's because uh march 5th is town meeting day and we did not want anyone to have confusion over fares be the reason why they didn't go out to vote and so we're just like you know what we'll start at the day after and um one of the things that we like about the system is that it's going to be much smarter and what that means is that it will give more opportunities for people to pay instead of just cash they'll be able to pay with their smartphone they'll be able to pay with a smart card a credit card and they'll also be able to pay with cash and the thing that is going to be nice is is that the system you know when we have cash uh based writers people paying with cash it we don't necessarily know like well how many people got on at this stop how many people got on at this stop and so we're going to have a lot more granular data which means that uh in future years when we come back to you uh if you said hey we want to know you know more about who's using these particular stops we would actually have the data to be able to talk to you about that and i think that that's going to make our work with the municipalities much much better and the last thing before i turn it over to you all for questions um just thinking about future considerations uh so i talked about a fiscal cliff uh you know my hope is is that we evil can evil it and get to the other side of the cliff and we don't film it and louise it you know so uh let's say that in a few years that we are um able to think about hey what what would some new services look like uh in the past year we did uh some studies on what those things could be uh one of those was looking at um having a fixed route service that would continue on route two and go all the way to richmond um that you know potentially could be um good at uh increasing the commuting you know corridor further uh into chitin county um and then the other thing that we looked at would be potentially having microtransit here in williston uh right now gmt operates the my ride microtransit system in montpelier it was the first microtransit experiment and and what that is is it's kind of like a less sexy version of uber and it does provide you know people the the door-to-door service but it's not quite instantly on demand it's you know there's a bit of a wait uh you may have to ride with other folks uh you know so it uh but that's sort of the concept um and the thought there would be that uh we would use that to get people in the parts of williston that don't have easy access to the fixed route uh that that microtransit would be able to get them uh to one of the things that we are sensitive about of course is that these services would require you know more local contributions and so we would be working with you closely to make sure that it's a service that you want and a service that you can afford so we're not going to come in and impose new services on you without uh and then increasing your assessment you know without making sure that that's the direction that you want to go in and so that was the things that I had I don't know if uh Amy or Chapin there's anything that you would like to to bring up and very uh definitely happy to answer questions and and I'll be sad if I don't get to talk about the fairs a little bit more but I'm sure that you all will uh it sounds like uh you have a lot of budgetary work to do I did see that you were if you have a need for ideas for how to use your ARPA funds GMT is a great investment you know so feel free to send some of those our way appreciate it um so Amy Chapin anything to add you know I don't have a lot to add Chapin Clayton to that a really thorough job I've been here before I've kind of shared with you it's my goal to encourage people to use our transit more since it's really um very convenient for going in lots of places south Burlington and Burlington um as well as Pessex um and so I've written articles in the newspaper to you know the observer to try to talk about it I do have a draft statement for the town report which I think is probably overdue um but I should be able to get it tomorrow um and so you know my goal is to make it um so that it's easier for everybody to access because it solves a lot of different problems and so um that's kind of how I've been representing us on the board and you know obviously looking for a fair service that you know helps people rather than anything so that's my statement okay thanks Chapin so I don't think it's a machine, but you know, you just need to be able to do it. It's wonderful, it's better than I thought it would be. And I don't know if you decide that you're finally reaching the transition, how many challenges you've noticed, how much work you've done, how long can you be able to do it in one box? It doesn't mention how much time you've got to do it for a week, it doesn't mention how much time you've got to do it for a week. However, if you go through the weekend and you get to buy it, I don't think you'll be able to do it. Also, a lot of return across the state, if you get 10 in a billion people going across the state, I think it's like 10% of the pressure, I think it's like 10% of the pressure, and the state needs to start out after the fast. So, and maybe if you build up on how much you're doing, I don't know if it's not like, I don't think for many people, because it's really hard to do it, and they're not able to do it. So, basically, it's basically the approach to the number of people. So, it's really important to the community, but it's not in front of the right way, and we eventually get caught in the middle of it. Thank you. Thank you. Questions from the boards? I have to claim ignorance. I live in rural Williston. I've never had the need of a bus. So, I don't have any idea how many buses that you run or the schedule that you have, whether it's seven days a week or five days a week. Yeah, it's, we have about 70 buses in our urban fleet, and they're all 35 to 40 footers. And so, it's definitely a large operation, and we have a bus barn that contains almost all of those and let me tell you, I was in awe when I first joined and like walked in and you see a 60,000 pound bus in the air, you know, people working on it, and a building that's holding 60 buses all piled in. And so, the number one route, it operates seven days a week during Monday through Friday. It's 20 minute service, and I can't remember off the top of my head what that is on the weekend. But the thing about fixed route is that it's really where you're at. And so, if you are in rural Williston, that fixed route's probably not very helpful to you where you're at. And I think that that's where, you know, the new ideas of microtransit to get you connected to it would make sense. And so that, you know, we live in a car culture for a reason, the way, especially in a place like Vermont, which has so many people living in small towns. You know, it's going to be difficult to have, you know, folks be car free outside of city centers. So I'm not going to tell you the pipe dream that, hey, we can all just use public transit and we don't need our vehicles anymore. But certainly what our hope is, is that people who are a little further out of town are going to be able to rely on transit more than they have in the past, that they would be able to at least have the option of using it where they haven't been able to have it before. But you hit the nail on the head, is that, you know, transit is very much location, location, location. And so, and I remember when I was in the military and I was stationed in the Washington D.C. area, like where did I get my apartment across the street from the metro, you know, and so it, you know, we do know that people, you know, choose where they try to be with public transit in mind. I've also added the new parking right here and we'll soon surf by on the bus. So you, you know, for those of us not on the bus, I'm on the bus line, but for those people who are not on the bus line, you could conceivably, you know, drive to a space, jump on the bus and take it to the county, to park downtown Burlington or to Mall or, you know, a variety of two appointments or whatever. So there's creative ways to experiment with it and now is a really great time since it's fare-free and, you know, take a time when you have a chunk of time to kind of pull around with that and get me under round places. But how excited you all are. How can we make the public more aware of bus routes? Well, I can tell you that we have a marketing section and we have found that things like TV advertisement just probably is not a good, you know, use of our taxpayer dollars and so we do a lot on social media. We do advertisements. The buses themselves are sort of the advertisements and that's actually the way we generate some of our non-tax revenue is by the businesses advertising there. I can tell you that, you know, the reality is that if people are struggling, you know, with transportation, they, you know, tend to find us and out of necessity and I don't mean to sound flip or to sound like we don't value the importance of marketing because if nothing else, marketing is what makes sure that your taxpayers know that, hey, you know, the money that our community provides to this service, this is what it's doing. I can tell you that, and this is not intended to be critical at all of my predecessors, I think that we haven't done as good a job as telling the story of our service as we need to. Further questions? Well, I appreciate you redoing the numbers on the bus service because that certainly helped offset this kind of stunning SSTA increase, $18,000 is half of the money for the environmental reserve fund, you know, it's got to pay for SSTA, which obviously is the need, obviously it's a need for people that we definitely want to serve. And if you have the numbers, I can't argue with you, right? If that's what we're using and we're paying for what we're using, then that's hard to argue that we have to pay that. Just for my information, is SSTA the, is it a separate like fund and is it human services paper, any of that, or is it all coming out? Yes, and so with, so SSTA is a separate nonprofit and they are a contractor of ours and we contract with them to do the ADA rides, but they also do Medicaid, non-emergency medical transit and so that is money that comes from Diva through the Medicaid program to them and they also do a program that's older persons and disabled, O&D, it used to be called E&D and so folks are familiar with the E&D acronym, we changed it because elderly sounds kind of, you know, as I get older, I'm more sensitive to, you know, I don't like that word. And so that is a program where... That's actually my... Exactly, and you all contribute directly to them for that. And so that is what you would find where some of the human services type transportation will come through SSTA for there. Now, outside of Chittenden County, GMT does all of that itself internally. So like in Washington County, we do the fixed route, we do the ADA, we do the Medicaid, we do all of that. But that's just a very, you know, the scale there is so much, you know, different. We're not measuring in millions of riders, it's, you know, thousands of riders. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming in. Thank you. And, you know, I pulled a trick on you. Yeah. And that is that when I give my handouts in advance, then every time I look at somebody, they're just looking down. So I have much of what I talked about here. I'm going to send Eric an electronic copy. And so if you don't remember everything that I said, here it is. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks so much. Thank you, Clayton. Thank you. Wilson should get a little rebate for like giving, making 40% of your ridership a nice, easy six mile shoot down. I've got to be a moneymaker for you. I think so. I hope. I hope. And I wish you all, I'm so glad that I made it on time because I didn't realize it's nasty up there. And so I hope that you get home safely. Thank you very much. What's the fare going to be? Yes, I got a fair question. So the full priced fare will be $2. And the discount price fair will be $1. And we provide that discount or I should say for children under six, it's free. Children six to 17, it's the discounted $1. For folks who are 60 and older, it's the discounted $1. And for anyone who self identifies as disabled, we do not do any type of check. If they, if they say, hey, I have a disability, it's $1. The thing that's going to be really cool about our new system is that to make sure that our riders are financially protected. It has a fair capping system. So in the past, if you wanted the best price, you had to put money up front and buy a monthly pass. And we realized that can be a major burden to have somebody have to fork over $50. And so what we're going to do with the new system, because it is smart and it's keeping track and it knows that, hey, you know, Johnny got on, you know, and use the service today, is that once you get up to $50 for the month, it will stop charging you. And so you can keep using it and you'll still swipe your pass, but you won't be charged. And there will also be, and if you're, if you get the discounted rate, it's $25. And the fair cap for the day, so will be $2 if you get the discount and $4 if you don't. So you can ride all day long for $4 or $2 if you have the discount. The other thing that we... You can see I'm excited about this. It sounded better. Yes. I'm 60. We used to also, you know, the link routes that connect Montpelier to Burlington and that stops at the Williston Park and Ride and the St. Albans to Burlington, those used to be $4. And we said, you know, it's too complicated to have multiple rates. So we've made them the same price. And it used to be $150 per month to ride the link, to get the link monthly pass. And we're saying, no, the same $50 is going to apply. So one of the things that's nice about the new system is that that $50 will give you unlimited ridership from St. Albans through Chittin County and all the Chittin County service and to Washington County so that you can travel in this region for $50 a month. And we think that that's a good value. Great. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. Ted, I had someone on live speaker in public comments. Oh, okay. Yeah. Let's connect. Go ahead. Let's do that. Hey, Terry, I'm going to connect you now. Terry Maron. Yep, we can hear it. Yep. Thank you. and how we identify the community while they're not having a region. And then I realize that there were schools that had a financial control, and that it was our tool to look at it, and we need to be aware of the stuff that those congregations can and can't dissipate it. The kind that needs to be specifically have to do without having to do something. And then like here, what would be about having to build up a firm that can manage the need to have online check-out, to get it to work, and this is kind of for sale, whatever, for a job there. And I don't know if some of that is in the community, or if it has a lot to do with people. I don't know if that would happen to the community. The community would be able to do rather than do a little bit of selling at home. I don't know if I'm going to be able to put it into the book. I don't know if I'm going to be able to compare it or not. One good example of this is with the native congregate, who could do something under a new specific planning, have a language author or a presentation of hers. And in this case, they're going to be able to add a new one. They're going to be able to create a kind of a justification for the need that the need for this instance is concerned as a part of what would occur here in a firm that has to be done for the second day. By the 40 to 50 years of review of the parcel, one of them might create a piece of this value that only took me $2 million. And this is the parcel that was already in line. And apparently, we're going to be back to the end of the 60 to 50 while that's back at the area. And while that's forwarded, we're going to sign it down, and back at the beginning to go on. And then it's just an entire set of like-a-good videos, not a lot, but you can do it with this man. They're going to be all of them. They're going to be able to do something under the ER. If it's still going to end, you just have to go to the ER and work with the company to make sure that you're properly promoted and fulfill those duties that we've had and committed, please consider going to ER for the amount of questions so that we can deserve my actual integration with it. And if at any time, under any time, I could consider going to the ER, when the time and time and the tech may be able to hang on the way that it's going to end, or even if it's not now, then it's still going to end. You just can't think about having them slowly put it back on the barrel and having it put the pen on the factory. The names of what they did, this was really the only year I've ever heard of it, to use the company to do the list. Thank you very much for coming to me. And we're going to sign them, I think the last one, after COVID, we're going to do a list of the town, our community, what we do separately, and maybe more, where more people need more space, we need to people to get out of this. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Terry. And actually, that does segue us into the fiscal year 2025 budget work session. So, in that regard, Eric, you've prepared a memo if you can give us a highlight of, I guess, basically your memo substance, and then we'll open it up to discussion. Sure. So following the board's meeting last week, gave staff some homework to look at some potential budget changes here as you work to finalize the warning for town meeting this month. So I worked with Shirley to look at these numbers. We ran a couple of scenarios, just kind of as baselines to start your discussion. I think I say in my memo, you can kind of take this a la carte looking at different elements of the budget and leaving on a final number. So of those, pulled up for discussion in the memo here, sound like consensus of the board was to try to aim for around a 9.5% target expense rate to open your discussion with this week. So those are right around that number, and we'll go through all the details here. But the primary elements that are discussed in this memo, I won't go through all the details. It was kind of a longer memo. So all the elements of moving pieces here. So discussion about a police detective position, starting about a half year, describe how the mechanics of that build that like with an incumbent staff member that we need to backfill that open patrol position and how those pieces move together. Discussion on a human resources director position, I was talking about perhaps starting it halfway through the year. Staff wants to suggest for the board's consideration tonight, just the timing of having a position begin in January of the year would be challenging in terms of recruitment leading up to January. And also this time of year with working to decouple those duties from the finance director's position as we develop the budget and the audit closing the books. So we'll certainly make anything work as the board. This is just funding this and it's certainly an important position for the town. But just to raise those for the board, we include some elements. If you were to back up the potential start date is probably about $11,000 a month or so towards that position for each month out of fiscal year we've recalculated. So point of discussion for tonight as you should work through your budget. And manager's original transmittal one potential ad was to elevate to buildings and grounds position from year round part-time of 27 hours to full-time. We took another look at this last week and you would consider I spoke with staff about this merging the seasonal parks position with this year round buildings and grounds position to create a new full-time position. We feel the budget impact would be about $13,000 as opposed over $40,000 for the other model met with our recreation parks director and public works director to go over this they're very supportive of this model to get a third full-time employee staff thinks in the coming years working to evolve this division of buildings grounds and parks looking at perhaps a target of five full-time employees and as we get beyond the three full-time positions starts to look at other elements that we contract out janitorial on some buildings moving to cemeteries we can start to bring those services in the house to offset adding additional staff in this division over time. So some elements to think about there for you. Thank you. That piece of it environmental reserve fund said some comments about this and Terry McKay had suggested looking at a $40,000 number last week so we've run in these scenarios a couple models looking at that and one element for the board to think about here is you could always include that in your general fund budget but you also have the option of always assigning your unassigned fund balance outside the budget process so you could achieve that element with assigning fund balance outside the budget process and in turn your bottom line won't be quite as high because you're not bringing that that expense and you're likely going to offset it with a revenue of fund balance or additional taxes so mechanically that's something to think about as you think about bottom line here you have that available to you it could be something you think about in the future too if we come in with the surplus local option tax and we'll get that report in usually August to close out a fiscal year you can think about assigning some of those funds as we close the books towards the era for example. Just my thought on that I know you're on a roll but I'm afraid of you we'll come back. This will take it as it is now not in the budget so we want to put it back in the budget it's a budget act where if you put it in the budget just put it back in the budget and take something else as we're at revenue to it then next year it's a continuing it becomes a fractured every year as opposed to a continuing budget like that in my opinion. Certainly elements to think about here and whether you have it in the budget every year or not you always have that available for assigning your fund balance for different purposes as well here. Are you saying it would set a precedent? Yes. Because next year we decided we want to put $40,000 it would be a $30,000 added to the budget. Next year. So 30,000, 40,000 decreased between applied places. Okay. Based on the money we make on the local options tax we depend upon whether we put it in or not. Other elements community justice center funding we work this as a grant program fund every year our budget projection is $195,000 for FY 25 our DOC grant has picked up the vast majority of that over the years and the town of Wilson's made up the difference for the program. So we believe what the grant won't pick up this year is about $72,000 and after we put the original budget together I've been communication with Heinsberg and Richmond who also receive services from our community justice center asking them to consider a contribution towards the program. What I've received from both communities is I anticipate around a $20,000 of contributions between the two of them. So to make the town the town would then pick up the gap there and that would be more like $52,000. So I had it at $62,000 originally it's just a dialback of $10,000 we'd certainly make sure the program is funded as needed but just mechanically this is the way this could flow in the budget with some additional revenue coming in. Then one of your decision points tonight as you think through this and potential debt service for some bond projects we have the town hall parking lot project and the brick church fire suppression system project that will add an initial bond payment in FY 25 and interest for at least the parking lot project and then you can always defer the principal payment a couple of years if you choose so you could choose to defer that as well. Actually I put it here for timing of the parking lot we think that's more of 2025 construction with permitting so we could go in the winter bond pool so a year from now we'd have an interest payment due in May then the first principal payment wouldn't be due until 2026 or we could defer that too. We also tried to estimate we feel the brick church project could proceed this year we go to bond sale this summer we'd have some interest payments due this first year we'd defer the principal if the board would like so I attached to this some schedules that the bond bank ran for us just to see the financials there. We've been waiting for an estimate on the brick church project and public works director followed up with the engineer that worked today. I spent the late a little bit but I told him we're crunch time here to figure out if this is going to have a bond article or not the next week or so. He suggested not to exceed $475,000 for the project. He tells me he anticipated it to come in lower next week but we're looking for bonding authority if you choose to go a fully financed route that would be the ceiling amount as of today suggesting for that warning. Part of your discussion is deciding if you want this project to proceed if so is your funding structure bond for it fully, bond for it partially and offside with ARPA defer those are options before you depending on the timing of the you'll have some bill payments due on the debt as well. I should mention too we're going to apply for the downtown transportation fund grant for the parking lot project this is about $860,000 project. The grants we're going to apply for is $1,000. The town is required to give a 20% match as part of that application so it's $172,000 for ARPA funds for that match towards that project we can include that in our application certainly if we could also put if the board wants to bond for this ask the voters completely at town meeting day we can put that in our application as well different options available we're hoping we could get that grant money and we wouldn't find out until April we'd have to decide what the bonding authority would be up front and kind of take that approach of what the payments could be depending on the route you want to go related to that too is a decision the board would need to make do you want to combine both projects into one bond and one question on the warning or do you want to separate them out town attorney raised the point to me to consider if you're combining them you may have if you receive an unfavorable vote it may be driven by part one project as opposed to the other thoughts you have as you want how you want to warn town meeting here another element is I share the board during the budget with the fire chief we have an ambulance that's due for replacement in a couple of years we're finding the build times for these are extensive two to three years at times I should hear from the town attorney this week I ask him the question would it be recommended to get bonding authority now to borrow for the ambulance that wouldn't be done for a few years when it's due to be replaced but we want to make sure we can put in a purchase order and have the authority to pay for it and borrow the money now I'll have that feedback for you this week but that may be another element you may want to consider for the warning as well if you want to give it some thought based on what we are right now with some of these then memo just kind of goes through we went through some possible reductions in departments they're listed here some capital some operational and then finally we ran these two budget scenarios scenario one mainly had the HR director on an earlier start date and chose September 1st for illustration start discussion in this and it also did that movement of the ERF intent to sign the fund balance instead scenario two was I think it was Terry had raised this last meeting to run HR director at 50% of the year ERF with $40,000 just off trying to get that 9.5% we were 9.58% there and then you'll see there's illustrations with the tax rate as well for both of these and then surely ran the numbers of how that would affect median homeowner both overall for the year and per month and how that deviates between managers budget transmitted in December and these two scenarios but this is a your workspace to the side how you want to land on this this timeline I'm line wise you have till I think the 28th or so is the window where town meeting can start being warned so should the board reach a point tonight where you're rich consensus on these main elements of the warning and staff can finalize that and bring it to you next week in terms of all the legal motions you need to make for budget capital budget warning and bond articles but you also have the following week on the 23rd if there's any additional work to complete next week and to get these legal requirements done that's where we are surely set up a spreadsheet with all of this that we can put on the screen to help you see the numbers in real time if you'd like is for talking expense bottom lines and wrangling on the revenue side of things as well so turn to the chair how do you like to approach this well there we have two I'd say chef's choice scenario scenario scenario two but then we can also go a la carte so I guess I'd like to hear have everybody hear what everybody's preferences are I don't think there's a right or wrong way to do this but we are we're talking about a budget that's going to increase by at least 9.5% we should be sure about everything so what is the consensus of the board do we surely do you have it so that we could go and say oh strike that now what is it strike that now I love that it's my favorite when we can do that did you join the zoom meeting I just did I didn't know Gene you had your own spreadsheet is this going to be a problem Shirley and I sink on our spreadsheets that was our spreadsheet oh that's right my fault could we potentially tick off some of the some of the items are the same across I mean primarily the detective being 50% of the fiscal year would it make sense to you know come to some sort of informal consensus like is that an item we'd like to leave in the budget and then kind of go through the other pieces you know how we feel about the human resources piece we want it to be 50% or 83% we want it in there at all all of that go through right in my item start with the easy ones that's a good idea so which one's easy okay it was my understanding kind of from the last game we all confirmed in agreement that that was the way to go or that we put it adding a police detective position was the way to go so yes I'm looking at me but I do think I think that adding it in the 50% which would you know kind of hard to believe that we're talking about a year from now essentially but I do think that that makes sense in terms of in terms of financially for our town is there what are people's thoughts on that if the choice is between 50% hiring forthwith or not hiring at all what are your thoughts I think we need to get out of here already now we're just going round and round yeah and I think I mean I would like to have it the whole year but I think realistically we can better afford it for the half a year and more likely we'll still have to already have them in a short place so we'll bring another one to make sense to you Terry it's one it's it's one that's a little odd there's no way I'd ask the premises there's another thing where we need to do the fishing back um uh we need to we can finally have it we can get it on the In terms of the police detective, 50 half a year we start the person halfway through the year and Terry's other point, a number of other points but one of them was the human resources director. 83% okay what are what are people's thoughts on that? Mainly maybe just confusing things Shirley but when I was asking about if we could reduce overtime in the finance department with the HR director you said well she's mostly taking work off Aaron's desk so if we did 50% wouldn't could she work with Aaron while you're finishing up the budget and it seems like the reason we want to go to 83% is so that because because finance is too busy to train somebody in January. Really to have them here before open enrollment process starts. That's a different issue. Yeah that's true. That's a lot of time. I didn't mention that point. Yeah that makes more sense to me. Yeah we probably have myself would spend a lot of time with them with I'm wearing a new senior staff member so also make anything work but as similar this this time of year becomes busy with the budget you know September 1st October 1st I think as you decide where where you want to land here our our thought would be sometime in the fall it would be helpful but tough this is just to make care. When open enrollments November for the time? Yeah early November yeah this year we're later because changing plans but yeah. Is it too much to say what would be the scenario if we started them October 1st and it was like I mean I know that's that's splitting hairs there but is that reasonable or is that an onboarding enough process before November 1st or? We'd be fine with October 1st. I mean that that I know that's not a huge savings there but what would that be like? That $11,000. $11,000 so that's that's not insignificant. Getting closer to 9.6. There you go. 9.5. Okay so Eric I'd make these changes as we're going along except for I can't see the spreadsheet on my screen. I was trying to Scott that's the I can't see it. I can't click on it to see it on my computer. Are you sharing your screen Sharon? I am. And maybe it's because I'm going to connect why it's because that's now I think it's I just click on something bigger yeah how's that bigger if you could maybe a little bit right. My earlier conversation about the reading glasses. So what I in this spreadsheet here's the grand list that we're using and then these are just f-way 24 numbers tax rate property taxes and total expenses so I can do comparisons and rate increases so the 15 198 is the number from the original December budget that was proposed. So listening to your conversation it's up. Can I just walk through these things? It sounded like yes no you're good. This is the taking the 27 hour week per minute part time buildings and grounds person plus we had the 30 hours a week for 36 weeks parts person seasonal. We combined those together to make a full-time buildings and grounds person and that's an additional 13 yeah we and what's driving that is the insurance. There was consensus on that. I'm gonna leave that one in. PD detective is half a year so we're gonna change this like $11,000 a year so I think you should be probably 96 or so. It's my guess. 11,000 times 9. Oh you know what Eric so I was gonna explain the rest. So you can't see it because it's too small but whenever this person starts we need a new computer for them and that's about $3,000 for computer monitors etc plus we need to have a desk for them and just general office supplies so there is like $7,000 in here no matter when they send me the office supplies the telephone the postage those things would decrease but if there's start October 1st it's really not going to be much different so that is wages benefits and the startup expenses of a new employee get service so that is okay so I'm gonna way over here to the side I made a little note because there it said we got a new update for the fire suppression system in the Ulbric Church and so I recalculated the debt service for that project at $475,000 so that would be like $2,500 more in FY 25 so this $22,000 represents currently $400,000 debt for $13,400 a year and the $900 for the parking lot and that debt service is like $9,200 a year so we put that on a bond we take that away correct what you say we put that on a bond and town votes on it we take that away no that's the interest on the bond that would be due prior to June 30th of 25 oh yeah our only decision point here would be if we used ARPA funding potentially for to reduce the amount that we would have to bond mm-hmm that would that number would be lower if we were going to use ARPA funding for part of the tell me again what the total amounts were that we the bond assumption yep so do you want a number with the 475 that's real that's not in here if I add it to this but what do you have in there for what I have in there for now is 400,000 for the yep and that's 13,430 dollars yep and then 900,000 for the parking lot and that's 9,200 and that 900,000 could potentially be 700,000 if we got the grant but and we don't know 500,000 if we also use ARPA money right right so so that's probably it's the right thing to do with question it could be just skinny that number down assuming right 400 field brick church and 500 for the part right that's what I would probably do because I mean we're not that good we're off $8,000 we'll find a way to cover it somehow so make sense if you say that one more time she so if she just redid the interest payment to be 400 bill brick church and 500 for the parking lot which would be which would assume yes on the grant and yes on the ARPA 172 so you do 75,000 ARPA on the old brick church and then you do 200,000 ARPA assuming you get the grant on the parking lot is that what you're saying no I just have all the old brick church on the bond I think it's gonna be an easy sell in this community yeah we'll tell them if they don't vote yes fell powering kidding and then the parking lot you said 900 and if we assume 200 out of the grant and for rounding 172 out of ARPA but you know why just doing rounding I that would leave you about 500 bond for parking lot I'm I might suggest you may want to put the bond number assuming we don't get the grant funding so that's a fallback if you if you don't have the yeah but if you're off by $4,000 you know I mean but what for the parking lot would be off 200,000 but what's the interest on 200,000 oh I see oh I turn said I thought you were talking about what to put on the board okay that's something else elsewhere I just think that that's a yeah I follow you now in terms of the interest calculation so you get a lot you have that surely so I don't have it in here because I have to go back and calculate it'll probably take up yeah right now though our church is in yep so actually look if we can stop and ask is there consensus on that I mean that feels that feels right to me I mean I think yeah the parking lot is important for us to do but I do and you know in my you know ARPA calculations that is that is a project that I did I did envision us partially funding and so I feel comfortable with putting money towards that but I agree with Jean I do think that you know people have a strongly about the old brick church and I think that they would want us and want to protect it in case of emergency I agree Terry you okay with all that okay okay fire capital and that's the server replacement assuming it will go to a cloud system so we wouldn't need a savings allocation that's what she's the second the salt budget was erroneously reduced by five thousand dollars and Bruce requested to bring it back up to the hundred and forty five thousand from hundred and forty finance department wages that was reducing one person's overtime and reallocating the percentage of another individual time to the casualty insurance Eric and I just we looked at that and as he spoke before we have like a 25% increase because of the undervaluation of our building so we just look at an average and dropout anomaly number and so we were able to decrease it by five thousand dollars Eric talked about the community Justice Center already that just being decreased the town's portion of funding the rest of the program so that's that's that number though is as we said the number that could be another ten thousand less than that even potentially right I hedged when I put the budget together and put the town's funding at 62 instead of 72 hopefully we get some yeah and knowing in the weeks that after I transmit the original budget we'd have more of the story so now we now we know it's we need to fund seventy two thousand we should get 20 from the other towns that leaves 52 for so could we put another reduce up or take another ten thousand dollars off I mean if we because you put ten thousand dollars in there assuming that's what the towns are gonna give us but they're gonna give us money potentially so so when the original budget transmittal Eric or it should have been seventy two thousand yeah but Eric oh I see okay okay all right I did not wrap my head around that got it okay all right that's trying to give us more the same conversation yep all right just remind me we had we had some folks from the community justice board yeah right yeah come in and we think we've addressed their concerns I'll be following up with them I know they had a discussion about staff compensation and I told them I'll have a I tend to have discussion with the employees directly apologize by the way I had some oral surgery yesterday so I have a appliance in my mouth so if I'm slurring you're you're not yeah understand me just ask again I'm happy to do a horizontal gaze misdiagnosed on you to see capital reduction of 3500 public works there to have to speak to that one because I didn't see where Bruce was taking that from yeah that was a reduction I think a thousand from building maintenance and 5000 from half paving Bruce felt we were ahead in that and our paving contract could cover us it's so you just come forward do you think that's our salt yeah there's our salt yeah yeah and the single audit fees actually Eric got this when we thought on the Burlington beer company we told them that we have a single audit because of the grant that needs to pass through the town that they were sponsored before and I believe it's in the agreements that are in draft so chances are the town by itself will not have enough federal funds all depending on you know how much our pockets typically the town by itself would not go over 750,000 so in the end they'll move for the single audit we don't have to yeah I saw that too sorry it wasn't just me yeah we need to add 30,000 yep that's just gonna start discussion okay so so 15,000 553 revised operating expenses so 125,000 and I'm clicking on the screen so you can see where I'm at is our increase from the original budget transmitted in December which is a 9.84% increase in expenses I did come up with an additional 5,000 in recreation revenue which means a hundred and twenty thousand so in this model now I'm jumping down to the FY 23 property tax revenue the original amount transmitted with this 7,985,000 in this model I'm just taking the whole hundred and twenty thousand and saying that's property taxes so 8,10511 would be generated in property taxes the property tax rate with the 0.3372 to 12.19% increase what sorry we go right ahead one other item if Terry mentioned it if the intent for that additional 30,000 for the ERF is to use fund balance we could reflect that as a revenue and not a property tax revenue as you as you think about how to balance here as you look at this we didn't go through each each line item and get consensus but I didn't think any of that was controversial is everybody good with that so if you just so now we're at 9.8% if if we leave the environmental fund money in the budget correct and then if we did it this way we could increase the do you have the increase the offsetting increase in the fund balance application how much do you do you want to fund the 30,000 with that's the intent I just don't know if it's gonna I think the discussion is that in the budget we're doing it or outside the budget right right so if you do it inside the budget yeah surely we just add it to this you could make that 5,030 however you do it sure um right you would allocate it as as the expense within the budget if you did it outside the budget we would remove that extra thirty thousand dollar expense from the budget and then you know the board could consider a motion after you adopt the budget for the warning you know your next motion is to consider allocating thirty thousand dollars the unassigned fund balance the ERF thing um that same meeting if you wanted to but I find that tempting I know the idea is that you know if we do that then in the following year then you know the the environmental reserve fund was only funded for ten thousand dollars in last year's budget so you know what's to say that we're not going to just keep doing that but I guess you know we're looking at a over 12% property tax increase right now it won't affect the property taxes if you take that both the revenue and the expense right the only thing it's going to affect is the 9.8 and whether or not you are having the size of your allocation that's in your budget in your public budget well why wouldn't taking thirty thousand dollars out affect the you also going to take it out of your revenue yeah you won't need to raise that you won't need to raise that at taxes you'll pull it from another pool of money that's okay there so you won't need to raise that taxes right okay so right here um Ted I just put minus thirty thousand so we're only I'm saying we're only 90 thousand in property taxes before alternately I just take it out of here and we're back to 120,000 as a property I don't know I defer to those of you who have more experience on whether whether it matters having it as a line item allocation in your budget or not seems to me it would but that's that's not something I can really judge well because someone is not in the select board if I pick up the budget and look at it I'm going to see it went from 40 to 10 adding part of it say 25,000 right they want 150 yeah but I mean the the conservation commission folks are going to know that we gave them more than the original 10 I mean I'm not sure they're going to be upset that it came from the reserve fund versus I don't have any experience of this I don't I don't think it's a big issue of just about Terry Terry what do you think yep go ahead no so we're discussing whether or not the $30,000 for the environmental fund should be a budget line item offset with more fund balance application or or not have it in the budget and just do it outside the budget the same 30,000 but outside the budget process and I just don't know if that matters that's kind of where I'm parked all right okay other people feel that way fine with me okay I mean the only difference is it looks like a 9.8 percent expense increase instead of a 9.6 percent increase but yeah still under 10 okay I think I've lost track where does that leave us for our decision points then I think those in terms of the scenario you've you've gone down the list there so just just to recap you've you've funded the buildings and grounds parks position the detective for half a year the HR director with an October 1 start date put in a number for the bonds based on a little bit lower of the bond amounts we took about 5,000 off there then you you've left in staffs miscellaneous I'll call more miscellaneous says we went through the budget one last time and then you've added in 30,000 to the ERF to the general fund expense and you've offset that with the use of additional $30,000 of fund balance towards as a revenue for that at that expense 90,000 increased and from the first pass 90,000 difference from the what for for so so our changes the changes were 125 so 5 is going to come from additional revenue 30 is going to come from fund balance because we're going to fund the ERF with fund balance in the budget and then 90 to come from property taxes or you could say yeah the change from what was transmitted to you in December is $90,000 additional expenses if you scroll down a little bit surely that that shows the calculator if you raise that 90 to property taxes and I would like to go over that way a little bit yep so it's this 118 a year 990 per month number yep Ted do you intend to circle back to our our our audience here for their questions okay yeah um before we get too far into revenue applications yep so yeah actually gentlemen you've been sitting very patiently and listening and I'm sure it's been fascinating I think that one of the there there's a difficulty here and that's that we are in the middle of negotiations and you're actually negotiating with the select board Eric is the manager but he's you know the contract would be approved or disapproved by the select board not the town manager but that being said I if you know that if the number is 40 or 50 thousand dollars um that you know my experience on the board is that that that's money that would be able to be found I hesitate to say that because it'd be great to have you leaving thinking that we just don't have the money um but I think we'd be able to find it I know that we would so in terms of of the budgeting process it's not that that amount is not going to tie in to you know whether the budget works overall or not because it it can it can be absorbed without stealing from other people too much or or at all um so and somebody correct me if I'm wrong on that um but it's a little more generous than I would say assuming it looks like a but if but if you if we all settle in the next three months we still have a pretty good leeway maybe that HR director doesn't start till January maybe another open position stays open for six weeks instead of get filled immediately but there's a little runway to adjust if we have to given that it would be or local options taxes are higher or we use you know um the the the same fund balance we're using you know they're they're yeah so it may not be a line item in this budget but you know if it's if it's differentiates from what is in the budget yeah yeah we certainly do appreciate you circling back around he's a tyrant no he's doing a fantastic job like really making the sound great um no we appreciate you circling back um to us to talk about that um and by no means are we you know I guess I just really want to say that we do appreciate you coming back coming back around um to that that's this topic which is probably not easy and a little surprising to see us here tonight um and by no means are we trying to like impose our presence no you know I think and if you have not you're not doing anything uh toward whatsoever so yeah we really just wanted to address the you know just what we've seen we've been watching the meetings and you know I know the town has a bigger job than just worrying about the fire department um but it you know we're because we're in this process we wanted just to voice the opinion and and make sure that no one who's trying to get as much as the size of the pie right now is going to miss out on something because we're right in the middle of it yep yeah well thank you yeah and you know negotiations are hard as a lawyer I've always hated them um and I I don't do them that much with my current job but uh to the degree that I do I still hate them so uh my uh my heart goes out to you what's a positive outlook for the future well it doesn't mean the process has to lead to injustice it's just that it's a difficult process all right we agree what I will hold thoroughly yeah ultimately this is about making sure that we can proceed in good faith with each other so I think you know circling back to us and addressing some of those concerns one of the questions we were playing to ask is depending on how things go in negotiations you know I know adding 50 000 to this is going to blow up the number so it's probably not going to happen right but the money would have to come from somewhere so we just have to understand that there's a process there's a way a mechanism for that to happen in order to really actually proceed you know with that trust on both sides yep yep great I appreciate that sure thank you um this has nothing to do with anything but I want to share uh when the camera was showing Greta and the big screen was on there were a whole bunch of red lights behind her from the window I saw that I was wondering what that was I didn't want to turn around the firefighters running out there must be some massive problem out there and I should think it turns out it's the Christmas tree right yeah anyway I'm yeah we do want to well at least acknowledge we do have a shift working part tonight um through the storm yeah we appreciate what those guys are doing a lot of them we would like to offend here but I do believe there was a incident um right at the start of the meeting as well we have several other members of the department are off serving in other communities tonight as well so um while it's just myself and Jeremy here by no means is it uh anemic going yeah um they're just doing their duty elsewhere sure absolutely yep yep yeah and it's very much appreciated um my uh my daughter on Christmas Eve came over to the department with a with a tertiary a french canadian meat pie and uh and um she said that whichever firefighter she rang on the door like sprinted down the stairs uh and grabbed the food and was very appreciative and uh I think I've said this before but oh she did the same thing for the police department and they they were slightly suspicious so sounds like they didn't have a detective so thank you again very much thank you thank you thank you stay safe tonight yeah good morning it's going to be like when we get outside I think at the wake of 10 o'clock we'll be raiding it won't be easy to get them so does that bring us to where we could make a motion um I'd suggest um staff gives everything a final look okay and brings it back to you next week maybe we have a straw full that we all agree on the numbers that we're looking at okay let's let's let's do that I mean was there a question about applying more fund balance or anything are we comfortable with the revenue side of it I kind of get this off before we do that conversation um I think we left it on that using more fund balance gives me I think we're at that 16 percent and to me that feels like it's lower than we bit and I know that we can go in you know it's recommended between 10 and 20 but typically we've been at the higher point of that because we rely so heavily on local options tax um for me personally I feel as just thinking about it you know because that number is so variable and and and I would prefer a higher fund balance so I would be hesitant to use additional um because of the what I made a note next week when we just confirmed these numbers will give you enough to fund balance okay okay I don't disagree I I really don't but I um just out of curiosity if you wanted to get to a single digit tax rate increase what would how much more would we have to apply you could you could get 30 reduction you have surely you could bump that up and just see what just see what happens to the 10.53 oh sorry it's applied to the bottom so we're at the bottom so so we're line 41 is essentially the e 41 is the increase so that first percentage surely that is the December transmittal the 10.53 correct yep yeah back we're just starting to shake whoa that would do it I'm definitely not comfortable well that would eliminate it so it'd be like an extra hunt over 100 keep the one yeah each cents about 215 that's 160,000 more to get to 198 you can put it back to 30 one thing we look we've looked at the last couple years is kind of that per month cost for a median homeowner um so that that expression I think that's 990 um yeah that way yeah so that's the second cluster right line 41 so the change under this model is 100 for a median home which is $300,000 assessment 118.81 for the year 990 well the school board's getting much better much worse news than this tonight so I think we're going to be the headline story yep I mean I do have a question for you in our email oh that's good yeah so did you see the the left part is that providing information about education taxes and I responded by saying I took the current letter that we've got by 5% based on the fact that school and maybe that's not right the school increase going to be a 5% cap it's 5% cap for CLA which is going to be 18% okay so so we're going to find somebody we'll squeeze out another couple of hours yeah I'm just thinking that then if that's the case then our education adminity will go up right so we'll circle back yeah that'd be great yeah so yeah with that the town as the agent to collect all taxes gets a gets a fee for doing that it's based on the amount of education tax the town collects a proportion so I'm sorry for being thickheaded but where do we leave this it sounds like we have a revenue I'm sorry an expense number for the budget revenue side it's a question of reserve fund at this point is that about right okay current calculation of the fund balance to see where we are yeah so is that something wait until next week when we have that number and well true well the interest number and then maybe we can work to see if we have a thousand in the budget for the education and probably not going to be material change okay so we won't worry about it okay all right what we'll do is we typically like just double check all the expense numbers one last time so when you're warning you have a bottom line to raise and then bottom line expenses and the amount to raise with taxes so we're wants to look at the taxes one last time next week that's a revenue question I can I can put in the draft warning you know these numbers tonight and if there's a discussion on it on a change there after you have some time to think about it some more we can easily change it and resign the warning you have the only other number we should reach I I haven't seen anything from the county tax final yeah so I'll make a note for the time but all staff needs tonight there's no further questions from the board okay great next agenda item the ARPA funds discussion so a question just to confirm um under the board what's going on this road last week but certainly um you'll have to also approve the capital plan and budget um at your meeting next week so um having consensus about what you want to fund from that capital budget through ARPA will be important um and kind of how I see a sequence of approvals for the board on the capital budget given these different revenue elements would be a motion to adopt the capital plan and budget an emotion to consider utilize the unassigned fund balance to fill that part of the um capital budget and then a motion to use ARPA funds um as of a memo transmitted by the manager to allocate those towards capital budget projects um because we're treating ARPA as its own fund that money is available right away we don't necessarily have to wait till the new fiscal year to spend it so for example if you fund the um say the community center project phase two we could engage and work to move that along this winter the spring we'll need to wait till July because the those funds are available now um I I put that all in the capital budget as a way to discuss the revenue a little easier in that framework than and stuff that's how to suggest for a process but um feedback tonight would just be helpful to see make sure this consensus on the what projects are going to be funded in that capital especially as the equipment stuff and then um just need some feedback on the ARPA towards the bond items so we can prep the bond resolutions for the attorney this week as well and then um you could hold off on some of these other decisions till February for ARPA funds I I know um there's a lot I threw at you with the TIF last week and chatting with Ted um we're going to plan to have probably a several panel of communities who have worked with TIFs to bring to the board probably hopefully in February um to help have you opportunity to ask questions so the TIF practitioners who you can from other colleagues to help you think about that component as well but tonight are you really just asking that Boba kicked around last week which was on this capital page nine to confirm that yeah yeah that and certainly any way the board wants to go with it with ARPA tonight but it would be helpful for staff just understand on that page nine if there's any removals I know the body cams was was one that was I think that might have been the one that was brought up last yeah what I had just checked off was the body cams we took out so we just kind of down to the debt we just had question marks on the debt so I mean the you know the brick church in the town hall talking about what the one said we kind of left open everybody it's a the capital part of the budget uh yeah starts over so we'll have way through the second page nine so the police cams that was the one that you know well credit had kind of said we shouldn't be using ARPA funds for things that are not one time this was the least and so kind of around taking those out which didn't flip out on so I thought that'd be okay yeah um I could take an opportunity for this item you know certainly is something we'd recommend for the department they're the only department and county that doesn't have body cams that protects the officer and people they're engaging with to document it and then the less lethal use of force using using tasers is certainly a use of fourth option for the department to consider moving forward so I certainly recommend moving forward with this but given where we were with the money with $30,000 being another significant investment I'd landed on ARPA to start the discussion yeah it feels like a rack in a heart place because I do feel like it's imperative that our release force has these body cams um but then so then but so I support them having them either way so it's a matter matter of if it becomes another budget item or if it becomes an ARPA expense for this year with an anticipated with the knowledge that we're kind of breaking our you know unspoken rule of funding something um that's an ongoing expense given the given you know as tough as I mean you know we're pulling an 11,000 one month of you know the position versus you know this and that I'm inclined to say let's break our own rule and use the ARPA funding yeah I guess I'm just a little uncomfortable with the whole process of funding things now or mid-year and finding our hands for next year because who knows what the next year will look like right it might be a disaster and then we've already tied our salt hands we have no kind of position because we've committed to body cams so my preference would always be if you're going to have an ongoing expense you have the discussion you prioritize your budget this would be tiring I mean because I was running into that with the the rec zone building which is not in last this year's budget but we have it our hands are tied it's an extra budget you know and that's half a position so you know why I really prefer not to slide things in because it's free money and then next it kicked the can down the road I mean if I agree with you I think it's something we should have but it has to be a prioritized discussion on the budget not free money and we'll deal with it later mm-hmm is there any way that the body cam would protect us for the future with you know if something happens you know protect the police officer well I think that's the idea what the you know what what chief said when he was here is that it protects not only that the the officers but also the citizens you know that it's you know it's really and but we are the only ones that don't have it so I think it like I said I think it's imperative that we as town provide these for our you know our our our folks I'm wondering if there's if there's a capital capital expense that we could fund through ARPA for this year and then put this into the budget instead if that would you know right we looked to be honest I had the same same aspiration yeah yeah right guys this puts the board in a in a tough spot you know where I landed I prioritized all the equipment replacements with escalating costs here you know it's it's always there's going to be a trade-off either way here without increasing the bottom line you know we could for like the police cruiser replacement we could pump more into ARPA for next year there but we know we're going to have more and more operating costs for police cruisers so I I just I'm wary of relying too much outside of just the operating budget on these equipment replacements I must have gone back and forth on this a dozen times we put this together too is there anything like an IT that we could defer or you know programming that we do if we end up with more revenue but we don't put it in the budget there must be some creative way to solve this problem we can take another pass at it this week I uh probably given a due diligence I just don't want to try to figure it out on the fly here too much um we can take some time to look at it and see if we have some options to present the board on this $400,000 equipment costs something we can find if we can't though I'm actually I'm inclined to break our rule and use ARPA funds on it I think the cameras are absolutely critical for everybody they're you know I think citizens have a greater confidence in law enforcement when there is a camera and law enforcement has greater confidence in their job because they know that if a falsehood is made about their conduct that it can be disproved so it keeps everybody that much safer you know and again this this budget is not as bad as the recession after 9-11 and the things that were going on there but it's a similar similarly difficult and it's you know at that time we had to make decisions that were you know kind of one-offs and we were hoping that the next year would be better and it was you know I I've not one to not plan for worst-case scenarios I'm a big worst-case scenario person but uh I think maybe on things like that we can take a gamble if we put the $30,000 in the budget does it knock us over 10% or are we just at 9.9 instead of 9.8? I agree again. I mean I don't want to be I think I don't think these are imperative it's just that it shouldn't be you say it's something that's imperative to add at the last minute there's lots of stuff. So that brings us to 10 points. There's your challenger I'm just looking at it you know now my I always look at something like building contingency fund for $5,000 it's good to build up those contingency funds but ultimately if we had something great we would just need to replace it too whether it's in the fund or not so that might be now likely there look at the there first maybe we can siphon a little bit off somewhere else so I can I can do something similar if the board would like just run a couple couple options just to give you some something to consider next year yeah yeah okay thank you so where else do we need to focus on the question of the bonds and what if I need to offset or to utilize ARPA funds for the for the the total project versus debt well so we talked I mean I think we kind of came to consensus right of using $200,000 from ARPA for the parking lot and then not using any ARPA for the Frick Church yeah that was my understanding that was my understanding too okay Terry you okay with that Terry can you hear us maybe lost power okay Mike yeah I agree and to your point Eric we would have to warn the right the warning assuming we don't get that $200,000 grant but if we got it it would be lower right yeah well we go to bond sale yeah we wouldn't have to sell as many bonds so let's see if we're you know it's $860,000 a project rounded up to $900,000 and we say we get 200 of that from a grant you know you may want bonding authority up to $700,000 just to just to give yourself a little space here plus 400 right well the other the other bond to be 400 yeah we probably depending on when we get the number they suggested doing a authority of the 475 and understanding the number we'd like to come in maybe it's 450 but engineers suggested that it was 475 and bonding authority so consensus yep okay and separate bond articles yes I think yeah I mean my my only concern is that you have people picking one and picking their favorite child right yeah so people are choosing which one they want and which one they don't as opposed to we want so that's the gamble but if the number is going to be over a million dollars I think it's good yeah I would split it anyway I think this because I um yeah it's direct or direct democracy that people get to choose which one the town spends the money on and also I I suspect that both bonds will pass I don't know that this this year and less certain than I have been I'm not even sure this budget's gonna pass but you know the each each project will have its different constituencies um the the parking lot does have environmental overtones to it so um anyway I would recommend both uh the separate bonds for each that covers what we need okay all these moving pieces it's always it's always it's time to help these pieces so the plan then just so for for my knowledge will be to discuss the remainder after after we pass the budget kind of discussions to then really assign the rest of the ARPA funding up up to the board um you know we ten I talked about getting some folks for that tiff discussion um however you want to approach it and then the rest of it yeah just kind of decide okay so we I feel like we just need like a meeting with with a 730 start uh you know for this item to be out at 730 and not 830 or 845 because I feel like it's a long discussion yeah I agree put it early yeah yeah right I would say I'm kind of spreadsheet I would love it I would love it yes mm-hmm that would be great yeah so I believe that takes us to the next item on the agenda would be the draft town meeting warning covered most of it so for the for Mike and Jean um typically we'll transmit a draft warning to the board as we we're getting close here um so I've I've kept everything the same as last year we went back to an in-person town meeting in the auditorium after the fortune for a couple years um typically um a couple floor articles which are moderator do dates for taxes except the only report any other business and then really the the meetings adjourned until Australian balloting the next day but while everyone's there the manager will do a walkthrough of the budget articles the bond articles leave it open to any any questions from the audience on these topics that typically the school district will provide a budget presentation as well after after that the town clerk Sarah Mason's prepared the the terms up most of the down articles here so I worked with Sarah to double check that from her office so really the the articles the town-based article 5 will be this budget article will plug in the bottom line expenses the amount to raise by taxes um and then I'll work with the town attorney to get the language for these two separate bond items put together and there's still the question of that ambulance bonding authority for the future order which I should have clarity on this week as well um there is a deadline and I think in a week or two for petitioned articles um that five percent of voters submit a petition for an article for the ballot and it's um meets the qualifications that the board would have to put it on the warning um I don't I'm not aware of anything that's come in yet or any um discussion about something like that um then this leaves a question are there any other other articles the board wants to consider for its warning as well I'm sorry maybe I misunderstood but there's going to be more discussion on the ARPA funds yes next week um and then after that too I mean we were not exhausting all of the ARPA funds through the budget so we'll have decisions to make after the after budget season pretty quickly actually to uh to decide how to allocate the rest of the money so we're not going to be approving this tonight obviously because no there's a lot of blanks in it yeah yeah just seeking feedback um you know from the board is there mainly is there any other articles you want to have on the warning here and then you know I'd I'd endeavor to um we'll have the bond language next week the board will make some final decisions here on on the budget bottom line you know something could potentially change as we look at the body camera question that could change a number slightly so um you know even if we uh what could happen next week's the numbers change slightly after a little bit of work I could have this draft warning the board could adopt it subject to final changes then I'll make those changes and just have you the board members stop by to sign it in town hall a week after that we'll get it posted so we've done that in the past as um or if we need to the board needs one more meeting just to come in and pass a few motions here to get things ready we can it's at your discretion what how you want to how you want the process to play out the next couple weeks here but okay I think a lot of work good work tonight from the board I think staff's got great feedback on direction just final finalize most of this town attorney will be uh providing his opinion to me this this week so um the the board will get that uh this week as well to think about for next one okay so it'll be the third bond item now yep now do we touch does this necessarily kick the um library and the community center to next year or we'd also have an option like a november bond if we wanted to right this year likely you'd have a november option um it will just really depend on how the work progresses and understanding um thinking kind of in the library's case kind of what the you know what what the timeline looks like from the um to get that designed that cost looks like I can get a better sense on that um it sounds like the formal option to allocate those funds will like be likely be at next week's meeting so I've told the consultant to you know the board was going in that direction so I could say that for the maybe possible for the library piece but uh for community centers yeah that'll be further out and as you're talking about sites and things like that so okay um so we'll take up the town meeting warning next week and that would bring us up to the managers report yeah hold on um mentioned we've we've hired three new members to our fire department um Justin Soder Alexander Lewis and Nathan Libby they uh began their employment earlier this week they're in going an eight week training academy the department's running so it's great to have have those folks join our department here um and just echo the comments earlier thanks for our public safety and public work staff who are out there tonight um working working hard I think it'll be a maybe a long night out there and um and we did have a significant car accident last week and I just want to recognize our emergency responders too for all their work there so I'm going to achieve collect after and just have you know the response went and you know the incident went and showed the value in having our staffing the way it is to be able to staff two ambulances to get to that call and I think we need five ambulances and all five or six transfer say the picture it looks like there's a lot more than just arts equipment there yeah um chief was like the first one on scene he was on his way to a meeting here our staff meeting and uh and I saw the police all rush out to respond so I just I know it's been a big investment in the staff in the fire department the last few years and an incident like that really illustrates um the value of having having that staff that second you know the other item I have is um chatting with Ted um likely looking at an executive session for next meeting um see if the board would be open to a 630 start uh 630 next Tuesday next Tuesday holding them by from New York yes I don't know you might it might it might keep you there yeah you might love it Mike and you know that works for me call us from Broadway okay so 630 next week so work for you Terry okay that brings us to other business is there any other business okay uh nobody parties here in the winter time yeah I know I know it's the first yeah dry dry January I was like yeah dry January catering permit season yeah so uh final thoughts on agenda items from this meeting anything no you handle the police I thought you there's the fire folks okay if there is nothing else then we will be adjourned