 Welcome to our select board meeting here for January 28th. We call a meeting to order We'd like to approve the agenda first is there any ads or subtracts I Would mention one thing if we get time Just a brief update on New trooper that really replaced Richard if that's a possibility and Yeah, okay Other than that. I don't have any other changes Take a motion to approve Move to approve the agenda I'll second that okay All those in favor say aye. All right. All right Consent agenda items are minutes from the January 21st meeting and Liquor licenses for Shaw's and the Thatcher thatcher Hill LLC I'll make a motion that we Approve the consent agenda items as listed I'll second further discussion Done all those that approved say aye. All right Public anybody here from the public that wishes to speak Okay Why don't you come right up here ever Neighbors helping neighbors Can you hear me right sure my name is Everett coffee. I've lived in Waterbury since 1962 and I've served in a public capacity as a trustee village president raised a great family with my wife for adult kids all married and grandkids and great-grandkids, but why I'm here tonight is because a couple of reasons And I don't want to take that much time, but I'm Very doubtful To figure that within the Waterbury record last week no fault of theirs. They were presented by mr. DeSanto On a number of people are using this library doing from calculation There would be a requirement to reach that many people And maybe there's a counter somewhere that Calves to for everyone. I don't know that But a person one person a One minute Straight again every hour 19 people would have to come through the library doors to get the numbers that are in the paper and I didn't believe it last year and I don't believe it this year and I just Troubles me when what appears to me to be false figures and In my opinion that is Only to get additional funds or whatever I don't Use the library much. I'm not opposed to it However, I don't think we need to add another library and for 20 hours a week and Somebody may disagree with me and that's okay The other thing it concerns me is how Little at how much effect Does the academic development director have on the future of water very with new businesses and so on? I don't know if she did or did not have any effect on the Potential of McGillicuddy's coming to where Abad was but I do know that there have been other people that have gotten new tenants and She played no active role in it She's really under the control of revitalizing water very and I think there's some conflict of interest there sometimes So just in closing I would encourage the board Maybe not agree everything at Chris said in the waterbed record last week, but 99% of it is a fact and we've got a face reality Common sense and affordability We've got a lot of young couples in town every night the pig the reservoir Bluestone Etc. Etc. I busy a lot of people out of town Skiers and so forth, but that is not enough in my opinion Business taxes and with coffee roses questionable are they going to be here or not? we need to buckle down our belts and May have to sacrifice a little bit for a year or two We've got an awful lot of roads sidewalks that need to be done And I do appreciate the fact that the sidewalk on Manuski Street did get repaired replaced and There's a lot of good things going on in Waterbury, but I think we got to take a real sharp look at what is going on and Cut where there's possibilities, and I think the additional library person is not a necessity and I wonder really about the Information or The additional businesses that we have in Waterbury Based on the economic development Advisor, and I think she's a fine young lady But I don't know is we are getting a Dollar for a dollar there But that said if you got questions of me, I try and answer them. If not, I'd go back and sit down Okay, well, I'll be here for a little while Comments No, just just two comments not questions and thank you for coming every appreciate your concerns there is a there is a Counter in the library that counts people that go in and out And I know that I haven't looked at the computer, but there is a counter They know that they've got to you know divide by two because people come in and go out and select a guy Clicks you both going in and out. So they understand that so I did want you know there is a counter in the library and I don't know what it reads, but it's there With regard to the economic development director again all good points. I would just remind the board that The money that we're paying for the economic development director's position is municipal money but the economic development director is scheduled along with others at revitalizing library and municipal staff to be spending a lot of time on Trying to help the public and businesses through the Main Street reconstruction project We'll be getting reimbursed On the order of probably over a hundred thousand dollars from the state for for those efforts, so We're not getting reimbursed for the Fifty two thousand dollars or whatever it is that we pay our W for the economic development director But if they don't have that position It's one less person to do what we've been asking them to do so and excuse me But what one the last point I'll just run away, but Mike I Didn't say it but The figures and a number of people are based on the hours at the library is actually open and that's why I would Strongly question those figures because that would be as I said before 19 people per hour Going in and 19 going back out which would be about 30 I believe Thank you Yeah in reference to the economic development director We've had this conversation Many years back including when you know Karen Karen Miller was on the board. She was Always bringing that subject up and it's you know, it's it's back here on my radar right now Well, it's I understand the circumstance in which yeah, probably necessary at this time there may We all know there may come a time when well, I think that and I'm not suggesting I'm not suggesting that we You know Written in stone that this position is here forever It is like many things. It's it's difficult to measure You know you can Read her reports. She she produces monthly reports. She talks about what she's done with with businesses and you know Have things happen because of her or that position. I don't know have other things Not happened in other words that she prevents something from happening that is to our benefit if you know of something Somebody's thinking about leaving and they don't you know, that's that's as good as getting somebody to stay So it is difficult to To measure that I think it's reasonable to have conversations about it I think for the next couple years while we've got Main Street in our radar and pretty soon You know dealing with it day in and day out. I think we we're going to need that assistance Is there a percentage of her work then that would be Allocated to the Main Street reconstruction There is so I mean why wouldn't it be directly reimbursable if she's actually working on Working with businesses on trying to Well, the communication and all kinds of other things that would be going on Excuse me It's a reasonable question Jane The The work that our W is doing They they send us a bill for that and then we get reimbursed from the the state so My understanding is if we're paying her this money and then she's doing work for That would be attributed a bullet to Main Street we could get reimbursed for that share Okay, so if she tracks her time, yeah, they all do Okay, I think I have another question, okay That was related to what was presented last week was mentioned that the That'd be a stark preservation study done of the neighborhood. That's out beyond the roundabout On the West end of the village and I'm certainly supportive of that. I just wanted if we were soliciting more than one Cost estimate for the work because I I've done that kind of work in terms of soliciting grants myself in the past my job and I would I could certainly provide other Consultants names so that you can get three Approved equals. Yeah, well, I don't know yet if we're even doing it That will be a decision that will have to be made tonight And then, you know, we we just had this type of work done. I know that The same person who did the work That was done a year ago and this year for the village And the Everett for our utility district is the same person who we have reached out to to get prices But no commitment has been made. Okay. Thank you Okay, I guess we can throw the ball on your hands now though Okay So the first item is to authorize the submittal of the greed of grant application Steve Watts Beach talked about this when the planning budget was presented a Week or so ago, I can't remember it was last week or the week before and the friends of the Waterbury Reservoir have kind of gotten their act together and they've decided that they want to Sponsor the greed of program again This is a pass-through grant The state can't give a grant directly to an organization like the friends of the Waterbury reservoir The Recommendation is to apply for the grant The grant if awarded I think I think the friends of the Waterbury reservoir are Asking for slightly more Time for the greeter than they had last year. So I think they're asking for about twenty eight hundred the budget right now includes $2,500 Amount for that. I don't think we need to change the budget because this is completely a pass-through Whatever the cost is will be a reverse for it So the only question is is Is the select board willing to authorize me to sign the grant application and to submit it on behalf of the town? Would have any questions or comments? All right, somebody wants to make a motion then to authorize bill to Sign the greeter grant application to the state of Vermont in front of the Waterbury reservoir I'll make a motion Second I'll second that No further discussion. Although there's that approved say hi Thank you The next item is an amendment to the jannet tech janitorial contract Janitech is the company that we have contracted with to do the Cleaning and housekeeping here at this building. They also Do work at the two fire stations? There have been excellent to work with The gentleman that does the work here is very very thorough and very accommodating In contact with bill Woodruff quite often if he finds problems when he's here he lets us know So I've I've been very happy with them The price that they're asking is to go up from $1345 a month to 1370 here at the office they clean three times a week between the 1st of January and April 15th and then From April 15th to December 31st. They go back to twice a week That's worked out quite well This time of year. We want the extra time just to keep up with the floors I think it's it's it's worth it for the fire department. They're asking to go from 206 to 210 a month for The main street fire department fire station and then for the center from $108 to $110 a month The fire station down here gets once every other week and the same up there So twice a month basically so I would recommend that you authorize me to approve this contract These are the prices that I've carried through in the budgets already. So The board however needs to authorize it What's the contract here on that bill as a calendar? Yeah, January 1st to December 31st Actually, it was It's effective January 1st, but We signed the original contract on January 22nd 2016. So we're Just a little bit behind on this She was on vacation and didn't get it to me until Tuesday last week Okay, then somebody like to make a motion make a motion to approve the New amounts for the Genitech janitorial contract Those in favor That one's not a tough one to swallow It's time for the budgets, huh? Yeah It doesn't matter which one we do first It's probably because I told Carla to put the capital budgets on first. She did and maybe that's what we should do There are a couple of extra copies around if anybody wants one Is this the scene that she sent out Yeah So I sent an email Late yesterday afternoon For the capital budget and then I sent an email on Saturday late in the day Saturday for the Operating budgets. So let's look at the capital budgets first We've talked about this a little bit already and As I said in the memo the proposal is What I sent you the other day does not require any borrowing We're talking about Pretty big gaming project on Loomis Hill Road about a half a million dollars and then Two smaller jobs one on East Street and one on Jenny Davis Road Mill in overlay on East Street and an overlay on Jenny Davis Road So that's all class three roads $570,000 for that The revenue into the painting fund is exactly the same as last year from the highway fund 288,000 I'm budgeting for 82,000 from the pilot program, which is no change from the actual received last year and We have 5800 dollar, I mean five. Yeah, 58,000 dollars of debt service to pay and that's on the Loan that we took the bottom ten-year bottom for Perry Hill Moving down to the infrastructure fund again, I'm showing State grant of seventy six five there 24,000 of that grant would be for arm ring the riverbank on Little River We had hoped to do that project last year and didn't but the grant is still in force and then on Perry Hill The large culvert that's just This side of Perry Lee Road Was over topped in a flash flood storm a couple years ago We've been going back and forth with FEMA on that I'm hopeful that we'll get it done We think it's going to cost a little bit more than FEMA has Suggested, but we're also if it does we're working with them to try to get an increase in the grant So right now the seventy thousand dollars down below in the In that hundred and twenty for culvert improvements That's FEMA's number and the fifty two five would be the grant number if it's seventy if it goes up We think it's closer to eighty or eighty two And if it goes up that amount will hopefully get an additional grant, but even if we don't Will do the project 155,000 transfer in the revenues from the highway fund which is the same amount as last year And then you can see sidewalk repairs and replacement forty thousand dollars We'll definitely do The sidewalk on the other side of butler street We may be able to do the sidewalk on the other side of wenuski street. We're not positive there yet because We know wenuski street is going to be used as a little bit of a detour and And Whether we can get in there and do that work or not is is not certain at this time The culvert improvements That I'm sorry bridge improvements a hundred and thirty eight thousand six hundred dollars That's the bridge on guptle road. We talked about that a couple weeks ago with bill woodruff When he was here And then that thirty thousand dollar upgrade to structures. That's the little river project that I talked about And the Remaining fifty thousand dollars in that 120 are two relatively large culverts on lume's hill We talked about those last week Both of those budgets if there were standalone budgets The paving would end the year if this happens exactly as is on this page almost three hundred thousand dollars in the whole the Fund seventy one would be about a hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars in the whole but if we move down into the highway vehicle Cip Again the same transfer and if you read my memo I I had hoped To increase the transfers from the operating fund into the cips in every instance But I didn't the only one that I put any additional money in was the Fire vehicle cip So all the highway cips have the same transfers last year We took the Took ownership of the dump truck today that hundred and nineteen thousand dollars We typically don't buy things in advance, but that truck was ordered last year and They weren't able to make it in time and it didn't get delivered until today and as I said the fact that That truck didn't get Built in 2018 Helped a little bit because we had the unanticipated expenditure of a hundred and fifty two thousand dollars for that sidewalk plow There's a pickup truck and then a Tractor that we use in the wreck and cemetery departments that comes out of the cip as well If all of that happens according to this Spreadsheet that fund will end with twenty five thousand six hundred and seventy eight dollars as a balance And then the fire vehicle cip at the bottom of that page Uh, the transfer in is up three percent from last year hundred and sixty six six ninety as opposed to one sixty one six thirty five budgeted and uh And right now in this cip there's There's nothing being purchased in the fire department We'll come back to that in a minute And then on the last page Fund seventy four and seventy five Fund seventy four is the fire station cip There's no balance in that fund right now and there's no expenses I we pay the debt on the fire department on the fire station bond directly out of the fire budget rather than Do another bookkeeping transfer or transfer When I set this up My hope was that we would transfer into this fund seventy four The amount of money that we need to pay the debt Plus a little bit more so that Ten 20 years down the road when we need to replace the rule for replace Windows or fixed doors or whatever That we would have some money Right now the last couple of years we haven't been putting anything into this fund and I feel disappointed about that, but We have a pretty big Tax increase to face right now as it is So I haven't moved anything in here. I think The the fund will stay there And whether we can put some aside in there, you know, even if we put in $5,000, you know, it would be it would be something that we could Have down the road, but right now there's nothing going in here And then in fund 75, I'm sorry go ahead I just before you were moved on to something else. I was just gonna go ahead and finish up. Okay So fund 75 the recreation cip the there's two columns in here The the budget 2019 column and then to the right of that It says without the grant So in the revenue side the first line item that shows up is that $50,000 Grant that you authorized being Applied for a couple meetings ago So that has been submitted. I'm not sure when we'll find out about that grant But if we receive that grant And we put in $30,000 from the record department in a transfer We'll end up with revenues of a little more than $80,000 and then on the spending side The $27,000 in the recreation building would include $15,000 worth of renovations in the bathhouse New unisex bathrooms family bathrooms And then the building really should be removed for $10,000 and then there was one other $2,000 Recreate oh and then a Sun shelter for the for the pool And then the field improvements $35,000 would Put new lights in at the softball field and at the tennis court Improved signage and then some parking lot improvements here at that grow field And then $3,500 for Lift handicap lift for the pool and then Some money for the The land behind the armory to To do some tree thinning in there and then cut some trails so we can use that That Facility that that we have And then the $1,000 a year for the community gardens So that column comes up to $76,500 And if we spend that and got the grant and did the transfer we would End up with about $6,200 in that cip at the end of the year if we don't get the grant The right hand column we would spend $15,000 to do the renovations in the bathhouse to the bathrooms We would spend $17,000 to do the lights at the softball field. We would not do the tennis court lights The playground equipment there is Actually the playground equipment can be $5,000 in both those columns. So that's a mistake that I made That's I'm sorry the $5,000 is right in that column Most of that is for Some work on the play structure at rusty park or park the rotary club is raising most of the money for that The town's share would be labor and most of this money in here would just be Paid back to the highway department to reimburse that department. So it's it's an in-house transfer really Um So if we don't get the borough grant, there'd be $37,500 worth of spending That particular cip would end up with $4768 in the hole Now if you just come back to the to the second column from the right at the very bottom of the page Uh This totals up all the revenue that are going into these funds Into the cip fund. So grant money transfers from operating budgets And the pilot money that adds up to 941,690 All the expenditures and all of the funds add up to 14 1.4 25 million That's 484,000 dollars Less revenue than expenditure But coming into the year we have 514,000 dollars in all of these cip funds So we can do everything that I just described and if it all worked out just as I described it as it's described here on paper The six cip funds would end the year with 30,536 dollars. So We can do everything that I just talked about without borrowing if We wanted to now I have another I did not email this but i'm going to hand out another spreadsheet here Um, actually i'm going to hand out two more. So these are Number one and two at the bottom So as we discussed, um Last time with gary dillon the fire chief We're to the point that, uh, this year or next And potentially the year after so sometime between 2019 and 2021 There's two Bump trucks that should be replaced according to the schedule. They're both 20 years old Next year, I think so there was some talk about Should we buy one this year? Should we buy two this year? Should we buy none this year and buy two next year or one this year and one next So if you look at the one that's That shows this number one at the bottom of the page What i've done here is, um Recommend not recommended, but the option is Borrow $500,000 this year and if we borrowed $500,000 this year I would put $300,000 of the loan proceeds into fund 70. That's at the top of page one And then we do the paving that i described and instead of having a A Deficit of $300,000 at the end of the year would have $345 in that paving cip I put the other $200,000 in the In the fund 71 Which is the infrastructure cip And that would end with a positive balance of $12,914 As opposed to The negative 187 086 that it had And then in the fire cip On 73 None of the loan proceeds would go into the fire budget, but we would buy one pumper for $475,000 And within the year with 10,368 in that cip because the fire department cip Already Will have Enough money in it To buy the pumper after the transfers made this year It'll have you know if we didn't if we did what I described first And didn't buy anything in the fire department. It would end the year with $485,000 so We could spend $475,000 for the pumper and that's an estimated net cost about $490,000 Minus the the trade in of one of the existing vehicles and the trade Gary said 15 to 20,000 this assumes 15,000 so That scenario would be if we if we were to buy one fire truck this year We wouldn't have to borrow to buy the fire truck, but If we didn't borrow at all Then our The first scenario that I talked about $30,536 being in the bank You know for all six of those funds would be Almost $500,000 in the hole so with this Scenario If we borrowed $500,000 We would end with about $55,000 all together in the In the six cip's So we could borrow 445,000 if you wanted to and have about $500 in it, but I think if we were going to borrow it wouldn't be Sad to have $55,000 in seed money going forward because we'll certainly need it Number two The same the spreadsheet that has number two handwritten at the bottom Instead of borrowing $500,000 this one contemplates borrowing $890,000 And this would be what would be necessary if you wanted to buy two fire trucks in in one year We put the same $300,000 into the paving cip And that would end with the three hundred and forty five dollars. This is all in the first page Would put a hundred ninety thousand dollars into the Infrastructure cip and that would end with twenty nine hundred dollars in it Fund seventy two doesn't get touched just like it did in the last example And then we would put four hundred thousand dollars In the fire cip And then we would spend 458,775 twice whatever that adds up to it might add it together And then we would pay the debt On the tower truck and the rescue truck And the fire cip would end It would be about 32,000 dollars in the hole But they don't have another truck to buy for a couple of years and with Transfers that we make on an annual basis of about a hundred and sixty five thousand You know after one year more it would be back in the black But if we did that We would end If everything worked out this way on your last page you'd see that would end with about A little less than three thousand dollars in the bank You know this the discount The discount on buying two trucks is about two and a half percent um, and uh, you know it's it's Two and a half percent on Almost five hundred thousand dollars is some money, but It's It's a stretch. I mean we'd have to To borrow, um, eight hundred and ninety thousand dollars I think would be a little difficult While you're mulling this over i'm going to pass out one more thing to you And then we can let me get through this and then we can talk about it all together Bill can you remind us on those pump trucks one is definitely a need of replacement the second one Were they both basically at the same age? They were they were both bought at the same time When we bought them When we bought them 20 years ago There was a town fire department and a village fire department so The town bought one And the people who lived in the village bought their own and paid for part of the town one so Now after the two departments have merged We have we've got one less truck than we had when we were two departments, which is a good thing it's just that We've got these two that are the same age and You know the other option and it's it would take a while to get there And if we waited, I think five years then would be Would be having two then because we had one truck that was Uh, I think five years uh younger But anyway, this what I've just passed out here now is showing you what our debt is as of 2000 December 31st So at the top of the page This really goes back to 2016. So if you go If you see where it says to others there and you go to the right of that Where it says Percentage and then there's 95.34 percent Just drop down from that. You see where it says principal balance 12 12 31 2016 That's what we had outstanding on December 31st 2016. So if you go down Until there's a total We we had debt In 2016 of five million nine hundred and twenty eight thousand four hundred dollars If you go back up to the top of the page The very top left of the page where it says four point six six percent Of that five million nine hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars that we owed in debt 276,400 of it we had borrowed from ourselves So that represented not quite five percent of the total So our real debt At at December 31st 2016 was that next number five million six fifty two That's what we owed to the bond bank and to the people's united bank So of our total money that we had borrowed 95 percent of it was owed to others Now if you stay in those same three columns and drop down to the bottom of the page Well go back up to the top you see the ones that are in red the Gibbs note and the storm drain note Those have been paid off The Gibbs note was paid off a couple years ago The storm drain note was paid off last year. So we didn't have to Include the storm drain note in this year's budget But going down to the bottom of the page You see there all the debt that we have outstanding now And it's all in blue It starts with the peri hill Paving bond at 400,000 if you look at the top at 2016 it was 500,000 So we paid a hundred thousand dollars if that went off already So right now if you go down to the total of those blue numbers It's five point six million dollars So we've we've paid our debt down almost 300,000 dollars from 2016 More than 300,000 dollars three hundred and twenty thousand dollars six hundred three twenty six hundred And the percentage down to the bottom left page now We have of that five point six million dollars that we owe we owe ourselves seven hundred and sixty thousand of it so 13 and a half percent of our debt is owed to ourselves. So our real debt Is four point eight million dollars that we owe to to others to the banks And the difference between the five point six that we owed in 2016 to what we owe now to others Is eight hundred and four thousand five hundred dollars. So we've done a pretty decent job of paying down our debt And then the bottom Over to the right, that's the schedule that we that we have That we have right now and So in 2019 With the debt that we owe right now our principal and interest payments Would be 650,421 dollars everybody's got that number And then going across If we don't incur any additional debt Next year our debt service will be 22,300 dollars last the year after that it will be 17 less the year after that It'll be 48,000 dollars less. So In the between now And 2026 if you sum those numbers up We've got four point five two two million dollars worth of principal and interest to pay In the next one two three four five six seven eight years including this year Down at the very bottom If That is what would happen if we borrowed 500,000 dollars this year so Where it says in small print there annual I just carried the 650 421 down from this year. That's what our debt service will be This year principal and interest if we borrow money this year We won't have to make a payment on it until next year. So the 650 421 Stays just as it is for this year and then I just assumed 500,000 dollar note At four percent simple interest Paid off in five years. So in the first year We'd have 120,000 dollars of new debt service. So it would be 748 095 next year as opposed to the 628 095 In bold up above a few lines above And our change would from this year to next we'd increase our debt service 97 624 because we've added 120 of new debt service But we're losing 22,000 dollars of old debt service So it nets out to 97 674 and then going forward We would have lower payments every year So in that scenario We would have in the next between 2019 and 2026 our debt service would be 5 Million 82,000 or five hundred and sixty thousand dollars more than it would be otherwise so I think we have the capacity to borrow if we want to do that And i'm not recommending that right now. I think you know, we can probably Make it to 2020 and 2021 to buy the fire trucks If you want and if you want to have one more year of Shedding some more debt And just understanding that if we do everything on that first cip Budget that I gave you that will have basically used all of our cip Reserves, uh, you know, we put in 288 388 So that would be 430 26 2680 So we're you know, we're putting in about 600 thousand dollars a year from the very operating funds. So I'll stop talking because i'm sure Somebody has a question Can you talk a little bit more about the delay on the trucks? I know gary said there was like a 20 year Um, I don't know if it's a compliance thing or what are the what are the potential costs or risks? Yeah, so so the iso Rating on on pump trucks is 20 years The iso does a rating and your homeowner's insurance and property owners insurance is Somewhat tied to that every so often and Everett was On the village trustees the last time that the iso actually came here and in bid a kind of a fairly intensive survey they look at Your vehicles they look at your manpower they look at your water supply Whether you have a hydrogen system or not and then they assign A number to it and I know in the village Uh, it's still the case and I don't I don't know the number Uh, I think the rating system is something like one to nine Uh, the village Has the best rating that a volunteer fire department can get Um, it has a good hydrogen system There's a hydrant just behind every 500 feet in the village Um, we have a good, uh You know over 50 Firefighters and we have good well maintained equipment So The the trucks will be 20 years old next year So we're still within bounds until we get to the following year And you know, I don't think it's going to make any difference in the iso rating They're probably not going to come around to to check and if they did and we said yeah, we've replaced one this year We're going to replace one next year. I don't think it will be a killing matter Um, and again, I'm not recommending not buying a truck this year I'm saying that if we do we have to borrow if we're going to do it Because we don't have enough money to do everything else that we plan to do if you want to cut The paving down and you know, don't do as much paving And by the fire truck we wouldn't have to borrow But if we want to do everything that is on these budget sheets and we want to buy a truck I think we have to borrow I mean, I personally Feel like as soon as we buy another truck, we start that clock again. So we have to think about that too and if we're not I mean, I understand the savings of two and a half percent for two and Of course, I don't want to put anyone it if you If I if I heard you saying that it was a A risk to the firefighters to not upgrade the truck That would be another thing, but I think we really do have to consider that we're out We are restarting that clock as soon as we buy and and you know, gary was pretty clear to us Last week and and when I talked to him about uh, not No truck this year. He said if you know, that that's fine and I think the initial um The initial, uh, I don't want to say offer but suggestion by gary was, you know, these are expensive things Maybe you want to do one this year and one next year You're right the clock will start running when we when we buy a new truck If we're supposed to get 20 years out of it Next year will be 20 years and I I don't think it will be Any Issue if we bought one next year and one the year after If we don't buy it one this year, we still have the option to buy two next year if you know situations change We can we can look at that You know, there is the only risk and I think it's minor because The fed is increasing interest rates So there's a little interest rate risk the interest rates will probably be a little bit higher Next year than they are this year But if they keep raising the interest rates kind of on their schedule that they're on it's not going to be A material difference will be a couple thousand dollars worth of a difference. It's not going to be 10 or 15 thousand dollars worth of a difference um, you know as little as four years ago in 2015 When we borrowed 500 thousand dollars for Perry Hill I felt that You know, we should spread that cost out over Over 10 years we borrowed it for one year And then the next year we refunded the note and turned it into a 10-year bond So the Perry Hill project really is going to be paid off over 11 years. We did the work in 15 We paid interest at 16 And and just rolled the note forward and turned it into a bond and then we had a 10-year amortization starting at 16 through 26 um I think now We could borrow 500 thousand dollars in And pay it off in five years now We could go to the bond bank and say let's Let's you know pay the 500 thousand dollars off in 20 years because it's a It's got a 20-year life and and there's nothing wrong with that It costs a little bit more money In in debt, but you pay it off over the course of The whole life of the truck and people that are here now that are here in 10 years Won't be paying for it after they leave and people who aren't here now and come in five years or 10 years or 15 years We'll pay there a little bit If we want to do that we can We can have that discussion a year from now. It's a little complicated. We can't We're not in a position to have a bond vote on Town meeting day right now because you need a certain amount of time for the warning you need public hearings So we can't have a bond vote But if the board next year decided that you know what let's pay this off over 20 years They could take actions to refund the note Just like we did with the Paving note which was a five-year note when we first took it And then we decided to refund it and turn it into a 10-year bond So that that's something and of course that would It would cost more in the other year life of the normal but it would In terms of your annual debt service it'd be a fraction of this other rates What are the how do the rates compare for a bond a bond? well Are they a little higher? Yeah, the the longer that you go out the Higher your rate is going to be just like if you go to the bank and get a 15-year mortgage or a 30-year mortgage Your rate for a 30-year mortgage will be a little higher It's a melded rate though. I was just looking at the rate that we got on the On the Paving bond and it's there late at the top in 2015 the first I think the first three Tronches of the bonds that they sold carried interest rates of less than 2 By the end of you know, so the The first year was I think 1.1 percent and the 10th year was about 2.6 percent and it you know it averages about 2.2 percent for the whole thing now those rates are going to be higher We're probably talking about in the Mid threes to low 4 percent rates now One of the things that gary had mentioned that I stuck with me Was trying to get some level of separation In the age of the equipment Is right now we're faced with two of them Reaching their end of use life at the same time so doubles our expense If we were to look at doing one And then pushing the other one off either one or two years And and spread that out is that How does that play in with your your calculations here? Yeah Well Certainly, I think that there's as I just explained to mark I don't think there's any danger of pushing the truck out, you know if a year from now He comes in and says, you know the truck really is in bad shape And we're going to have to pay $30,000 to keep it on the road Well, we'd probably make a decision to buy a new truck next year I didn't bring my box with me mark my all my Cip schedules in the other room. I can't remember if the third pumper is Five years from now or if it's a full 10 years from now I want to try to remember I think Gary mentioned might be 10 But I mean, I can run down and walk. No, no, I just I was wondering I guess My inclination is that if we were to invest In it, I would I would lean toward trying to separate out that that age aspect of it I kind of agree and I think that we all we have prioritized we should continue to Get as much paving it done as we can and other Infrastructure improvements, so I don't think I agree with I think I prefer not to buy two two at once yeah, I You know, it would be nice to get that two and a half percent savings, but it comes at other costs And that's kind of what I meant. I wanted to show you what it would look like if you wanted to do that but I I don't think that's Just Causes too many other dominoes to fall That's what I've been sitting here thinking absorbing what everybody's been saying and I think our day of avoiding the unavoidables is about over Because even if we kick the can on this fire truck for two years five years You know, I don't have the information in front of me, but just surmising what other Possible paving trial projects that we're going to be faced with here in the next few years if we either decide not to do anything after this year with paving or we decide to try to address the other you know reasonably bad roads maple street barns hill blush hill those two maple street and barns hill are Clearly on and then Gupto road is going to be right behind that so those are all big ticket items and we don't have the The ability to kick those that's not including any bridges or sidewalks or anything else that we got to deal with So we don't have the ability at this point the way I see it to kick those projects down the road another five ten years. It's just So, um, I knew this day was going to come I figured You know at some point we're going to have to buck up and deal with it. Um, you saw what bill's proposing for a Tax increase it uh I know he's done the best he's can He's done the best he has has been able to do with it I'd already speculated that we were going to see six to eight cents. Uh, he basically cut the budget to the bone I'm a little concerned about that um He's cut cut it to the bone to get it six cents Uh, I suspect by the end of the year just in Dealing with this winner alone The highway budget is probably either going to come in at a deficit Uh, I know there's concern about running out of sand already. Um And the only option to where we can get our sand this winter Bolton won't open up for us um We're either going to have to get it out of Nadu's because Manash sold out to Harris Probably didn't want to put sand on the roads No, we don't I'm happy with surviving. We'll try to survive with what I'm just saying there's the I know I'm tired and and no disrespect no disrespect to any of the Form a highway foreman or the current one or the public works director but if I could uh You know if I had a dollar for every Time that one of them told us that we were going to run out of sand You know, I'd be able to go out to dinner at mark's restaurant Well, I drove by there the other day and I looked at the sandpile and it was probably the smallest To spend in some time and we're we're still And I'm not saying I'm not saying we were right and I'm not saying either But what I'm trying to get at is we can Continue to try to avoid the obvious here and uh, it's we're not going to get away from it No matter how hard we try it's just it's all coming to a head And it's not going to be pretty So rather than you know, it's my belief that Of course, we're going into the reconstruction of main street a question I had for you real quick was Does this budget include that two percent of our or whatever cost we have involved in this as well the infrastructure CIP For main street has a hundred thousand dollars in it. Okay, and You know the main street project is About 21 million and two percent of that is a little over four hundred thousand It's a three-year project and some of the costs are going to be borne by the E5 for water and sewer so The hundred thousand right now is my best estimate Um, and I I don't think it will be an issue. I don't think it's going to end up being 200,000. So And you know chris, I I agree with what you're saying I'm not quite in agreement that The issues that you're describing or the things that we have to do that on the road are undoable. I think we have Uh, we have capacity. I think just this example that I've given you here right now that we've We basically have 800 thousand dollars less in debt now than we had Three years ago is a huge thing We've been borrowing, but we're borrowing from ourselves. We're paying ourselves back Into the tax stabilization fund and then we're using the increase of the tax stabilization fund to to offset taxes so All of the things that you're saying are true. They're down the road. They're coming We've got to face them I but I think that you know that that I've given an example here of $500,000 worth of bar borrowing for the fire truck that we pay off in five years and if we paid this off in 20 years You know, it's it's very it it's a very different metric. I can I can almost get on board with that simply because Suggested life expectancy of these trucks are 20 years. So it's Well, I'm not suggesting I I I would almost Be more inclined to go along with that as I as I would be to mortgage out a one of our sections of paved roads for 10 15 20 years The fact of the matter is if we decide to try to keep some kind of a reasonable schedule with the Paving projects just the few that I suggested We can mortgage them out, but they're they're going to pile on top of each other and that's going to you know accumulate A degree of tax increase You know borrowing from ourselves is great. It's still borrowing. We still have we still owe that money We just don't owe it to others, you know outside of the municipality You don't really owe the money if you if you felt yeah, you could wait but if you well, yeah And if you if you felt that Boy, you know, we really need to Pave, you know, we got a million dollars worth of paving and You know, we just can't afford to do it You could go to the voters and say write that off I wouldn't recommend it. Yeah, that's a card. I'm not willing to play right now Close to that at this at this stage of the game So I guess what I'm saying is and and we're supposed to be at the so-called peak of our economy Now the further we kick this down the road There's a risk that the economy could go in another direction Which is going to make it even tougher for us to try to afford these things later on So it's a hard choice here and uh, can you explain that a little bit in other words? When the economy starts to drop people tend to Have more difficult time Paying their own bills so to go with them go to them later on when things become a little tougher financially and say We need more money from you to do these paving projects Could be a lot tougher to squeeze it out of them during a bad economy than it is I mean, we should have money pouring out our ears right now if the economy is as good as they Suggest it is Well, I think we need to think back to what bill said which is you know What there is a certain amount of money being paid in the budget into these cips, right? So that's going to be a certain portion of what I think in our minds is we need to borrow It's of my opinion that maybe it's a good thing that two trucks are timing together to potentially get that discount And we need to consider trying to get any kind of There are going to be certain projects We we discussed this before that the budget is so high that we really we're going to have to lend because it's going to all Hit in one year, right? But if we can get the amortization schedule of these loans as close to the true life of Whether it's a vehicle or a road It starts to make sense especially at these rates that are are where we are currently because I don't know what inflation Inflation might be even flat right now, but even what bill was saying two percent a four percent loan And inflation is two percent. It's not we're not That I think is it's the smarter more fiscal thing to do is to not necessarily force ourselves into spending and starting the Clock on a half a million dollar vehicle or a million dollars for two vehicles is to really look at and and maybe Press Gary a little bit more of like what's what's the true life expectancy that we can have with this truck? I understand the concern about the the insurance rating, but if we can get another year or two I just quickly did the math. It's 23,500 per year. Those trucks are going to lose value every year So I mean That starts to add up really fast if we're going to if we're going to accelerate the purchase But if we can push those out, I understand that potentially in one year we're going to have to ask for multiple Multiple loans or bonds to to accommodate these large purchases, but we also have loans coming off I think it makes more sense To make sure we don't force ourselves into a large purchase like that when we don't necessarily need to do it Well, the other thing you're going to be faced with is increased increased costs for those trucks the longer you kick them out Increased cost plus the less you're going to get out of the trade-in, which isn't you know, 20 000 for a trade-in That's a joke, but well, it's it's a joke, but it's reality. Oh, no But I mean like two years from now if it's 15 I mean like the the farther you get out in the depreciation curve the flatter it gets so really We're basically saying the the vehicle worth is valueless already Two years from now. It's going to be just as valueless the loss of $10,000 in value isn't You know isn't comparable to a single truck or two trucks losing 25 000 a year each truck so I mean you really have to think about that and sure I I expect things to get more expensive over time But we're also not asking the voters to potentially spend that money now or Looking down the road and I mean there is grand list growth There is cip money every year going into these things I think bill said that next year this just the cip if we don't do the truck this year just with the cip increase We'll potentially have enough money in that to buy the truck without borrowing I understand that we'll run into the other vehicle, but What about highway trucks? There's there's highway trucks. There's highway trucks as as well You know the we've already there was this was the year that the tandem truck was supposed to go and you know that Straight-up price for that is about 200 000 and you know, I think we'll get Reasonable trade in you know we'll get more than 20 000 for the existing truck But we already because the sidewalk plow last year we agreed to kind of push that off For at least one more year. I mean You know I I say this all the time, but I think that it's true or now than ever in that We can We can take time This coming year to look at the cip's in detail I mean, there's no other big Planning projects going on, you know the main street project is is Is going to be here. It's going to take up some of my time But bill woodruff and alec are going to be doing most of that stuff You know if we want to look at okay, let's look again at all this. I think your point about Just giving up a year's worth of depreciation even if it's just one year. That's that's a lot You know that we we plan to have those two trucks for For 20 years and they're only 19 years old now So if we if we bought a truck now you're you're you're throwing away One year's worth of that depreciation um I'm going to tell the board what I told you on the phone yesterday chris and again I I understand your concerns and i'm not trying to say that You know the glass is half full or the glass is half empty, but When I looked at waterbury's situation, I've been here for 31 years now in march When I came here the the town of the village had fun balances that hovered between you know 25 thousand dollars Deficit and 50 thousand dollars in the in the positive so we were pretty close to To the zero fund balance mark. We didn't have any reserve funds. We didn't have a cip We didn't have a tax stabilization fund. We didn't have a cemetery fund We didn't have a veterans monument fund. We didn't have any of those funds We had a highway garage that you could see through basically We had two fire stations one in waterbury center had been built privately by The waterbury center fire department Under syd Thurston's Work back in the in the 60s in the village fire department the village fire station Was built probably in the 40s early 50s And the villages department Ever it probably remembers, but uh, you know There was a lot of heat that left that building and You know, it served the community well We had the municipal office in the in the rusty parkers building and it was adequate And now 30 years later We still have one of the lower municipal tax rates in washington county We have a I call it still a new highway garage. It's 20 years old this year, but it's a much better facility than we had We have this building. We have two fire stations that are You know six seven eight years old something like that. So our infrastructure in terms of our buildings are Way up above what they were When you look out at the What we have on the ground, you know, the village just got An upgraded wastewater treatment plant that you know, seven million dollars was just put into We've got the roundabout we're going to have main street And we have a couple million dollars in reserves in the bank and In 30 years This community has done a lot of good things To put itself in a much better financial position that it was in then And we want to keep those reserves. We used the income from those reserves to help with the tax rate You know when that 644 thousand dollars came from the school, there were people that wanted to Let's have no tax rate this year. Let's just use 644 thousand dollars and And we won't have any taxes to pay this year And fortunately, you know, the select board said no, that's not a very good idea and We've we've grown that fund to almost a million dollars now And we've given the voters about 300 thousand dollars in in returns on that so I know we have a lot of challenges going forward and I know we have Highways and bridges I don't think our highways and bridges are any worse than anybody else is out there. I think we're We have average highway and bridge infrastructure I don't sense that when I drive in wadda bray that That i'm driving on any worse roads that I drive in if i'm driving in stow or my pillar or our s6 Not saying they all can't be better But it's not like everybody else is up here and we're down in the pits So I think we have capacity and I think we've got challenges ahead But I think we have the ability to meet those challenges We've proven it. I think over and over in this town that We'll we'll meet the challenges and does it require a little bit higher taxes This year it does but We had the 45 cent tax rate for 2016 17 and 18 And now it looks like it's going to go up six cents unless you decide to Cut certain things. There's been people talking about making making cuts those can be done, but That's the only way. I think right now you're going to do it. So I agree with you Chris I just think that we have A lot more capacity than and we think we do and unfortunately One of the challenges that we really face Is that the the community is getting More difficult for the average joe to afford Yeah, just just and you know, just let me finish and you know, the the county treasurer called me back at the beginning of the month and said $60,800 or whatever it is. That's your county tax And she said I can't believe it. She said waterproofs got the third highest grand list in washington county now Only behind Montpelier and barry town. We have a bigger grand list than berlin. We've got a bigger grand list than barry city And one of the reasons why we were able to keep Our tax rate one of the I think we're in the You know the lower third of the tax rates in washington county and one of the reasons We can is because I don't think we go hog wild with our spending and we have a A higher grand list so you can have a lower tax rate and generate You know generate the money that you need whereas if you have a lower grand list To get the same amount of money you have to have a higher tax rate The downside of that is that young people find it Harder to be able to move in here and buy a house because the property values Are the third highest in washington county and you know, that's a double-edged soil Or two sides of a coin a good side and a tough side I mean you've heard me say before whether the appraisals are high or whether they're low the tax rates Fluctuates in the opposite direction to to meet the needs of the debt My problem is and it has been quite a lot for some time is you know, I mean Moving forward we're going to be Think expected to ask To raise more money than we've been used to here in the Last few years, especially. I mean we've been fortunate the last three years Fortunate in other ways, you know pilot program grew we had some surpluses and things worked out and in our benefit, but I knew that would eventually come to an end You know when people pull their wallet out there and open it up and say how much more capacity do I have here and that's A lot of people that's going to be an issue But like I said a few minutes ago, we're trying to avoid the unavoidables So either we Take off a chunk of this now And then probably for the next couple years in front of us or five years however long it takes to Get through these other big ticket items You know, we just kicked the bridge down the road here for what another seven years. That's two years of that's gone so We'll be looking at that thing here pretty quick the one right over here You know, that's That's just one of the things that it's going to be on our plate here So I don't know it's uh the sixth sense doesn't surprise me a bit I've been trying to prepare myself for that I think it's In all truthfulness. I think it's low considering what we're going to be facing with The next few years so we can either Take a chunk out of that now and kick it down the road and face it again later either next year the year after that or we can belly up to it and You with it now So i'm not sure what you're saying there when you say we take a chunk of it now The operating in other words, you can kick some of it down the road talked about the operating budget yet And the operating budget is where the sixth sense is what we do in the cip This year Is not going to affect the tax rate this year We can we can do everything that I laid out in that first cip that we reviewed Without borrowing if we want to buy one or two fire trucks this year. We have to we have to borrow I think The operating budget is where the Where the transfers into the cip come from and that's six that's going to be six cents Regardless of whether we buy a fire truck or not unless you take money out of the operating budgets And as I said in my memo memo I don't if you want to take if you want to lower the tax rate in the operating budgets it requires Cutting services from what have been asked The library is asking for an additional staff person Um, you know the highway asked for an additional staff person last year But remember of the sixth sense Three cents of the sixth sense is because we have a full year the fire of the Of the police contract And we have a 40 000 request from wasi So, you know You can't say if you didn't have those we have those we made the decision a year ago to do the police I think it's Been an affordable way to get police coverage And I I think you know we all here want to go forward with that The public knew a year ago that they were really saying yes to a three hundred and sixty thousand dollar police budget when they voted To give us what we had so It's it's You know, it's three cents In terms of what we've lost in Surpluses and additional staffing requests from the library and additional Service requests in the recreation department in the lake So just remember there's that little delineation So if we kick one fire truck down the road just for kicks and grins here, how does that Impact our cip as far as uh truck replacements for the highway. I mean are they gonna Is that gonna double up on us here when that So I guess what I'm saying is either two trucks now or two trucks if we if we bought one truck this year If we decide to buy a fire truck this year, we're gonna have to borrow Because we we just we need to borrow we don't have enough money in the reserve funds to pay for everything that we're gonna do If we don't buy the truck this year Then next year we'll put another six hundred thousand dollars into the cip the cip will It's going to be about thirty thousand dollars at the end of this year So it'll have six hundred thousand dollars in it next year And then if we want to do paving and bridges and everything else We'll have to borrow a year from them. I mean, I don't think there's a way That you can that you can buy I Put the fire truck into the equation anywhere without borrowing Simple as that To get back to chris's question now it sounded like we're pushing off the uh tandem replacement For this year anyway, where does that stand in its lifespan is that something that can Afford to go a couple more years before it can afford to go one more year anyway And maybe it can go longer than that You know so potentially if if you did Uh the fire engine this year The tandem next year and then the second engine the year after Just to give the separation well it gets that stagger in there and it and it keeps Both of those entities from Having to really deal with some maintenance issues It would be it would be nice if I could sit here and and have a spreadsheet with everything on it right now unfortunately, I You know I've used up all the time that I had in the month just getting this stuff done And I think you know, I tried to say about 10 minutes ago That looking at the future cip. I think we can do that in the in the coming year We'll get through town meeting and then you know, we have a lot of time And we can run as many iterations as the board wants to see So I really I think the decision for right now for this year is Are you going to buy a firetruck this year or not? That I think is the decision. I don't think we can afford to buy two This year, especially that both of them are a year earlier than their their life expectancy So I think buying two and having to borrow eight or nine hundred thousand dollars would be tough So it's either We live with the cip budgets as we have and we end the year with about 30 grand Now every year for the past three or four We've never spent as much in the cip as we budget for You know, certain things happen this year Our paving projects cost us less than we budgeted because we thought we were going to have to do You know Take out a lot of material on willsland mountain We get up there and it turned out to be in a whole lot better shape And it was basically we fixed the storm drains in the sewer system And we overlaid it. So we saved a lot of money there Most of the projects are are in here and they're kind of Estimated at their higher levels and we tend to spend less so we can The likelihood is that We can do all the projects that's on that first sheet that I Showed you I would say it's a better than a 50 50 chance that we would end up with more than $30,000 in all of the Cip is put together at the end of the year because the projects probably won't cost quite as much as They show on people that's not a guarantee, but that's kind of what's happened over the course of time I'll chime in again here on this. I think We also have to look at bill laid out pretty clearly that our debt Our principal and interest payments are going down every year So we also have to think about that as say we didn't buy the truck this year and if we I don't think a one-year separation on these trucks is Is going to put us in that much better of a position down the road I I think we have to seriously consider If we can potentially get ourselves in a position to bomb that out And we can do a 10-year bond or what's the longest bond we could potentially so we could go to a 20-year bond Which if we did that next year, when would that first payment be due? If we if we ordered a bot next year and and I Bought the truck next year received the proceeds of the bond next year the first payment would be due interest in April of 2021 and principal and interest in November of 2021 And we're saying that it you think that the rates on that would be around 4% And so let's just say a million dollars Over 20 years. What is that really quickly 50,000 a year thousand dollars a year in principle and then Principal and interest right and so for Would be another 40,000 so 90 thousand dollars in the first In the first year. Yep. I just think that's a much more fiscally responsible decision To look at doing that to make sure that we're in a position to try to get a loan that represents As close to possible the lifespan of the vehicles We always have the option of paying debt down faster You don't you don't so bonds you can't take a bond. Okay, but we have other debt That's not bonded and we potentially would still have other debt. That's not bonded I just think that in my opinion, there's no reason To try to force ourselves into a half a million dollars spend on something that has life left to it We're being told that it has life left to it and I think there are options to tackle the debts that are potentially in our future And as it's shown on this sheet, we're going to be able to afford more debt And keeping a flat debt cost, right? So if in or 2019 to 2023 There's 50,000 right there of additional Debt service that we can afford Without changing anything on the budget necessarily. So I I just really think it's it doesn't necessarily Behoove us to spend that money if we don't as if the vehicle doesn't need it And we can get another year or two out of these vehicles Yeah, and we're we're paying ourselves A higher interest rate than we could get at the bank Right now and we we decided to do that a few years ago because if you remember, you know, we The the fixed income markets back in the early 2010s were Were paltry in terms of a return that you could get So whereas we used to buy In our attack stabilization fund we would buy, you know 20 year Verizon bonds or 20 year AT&T bonds or you know, mobile oil bonds What have you and we would earn, you know anywhere between four and a half and and seven and a half percent When those bonds matured then we were faced with reinvesting those at Two and a half two percent there were there were no Bonds that were paying, you know the rates that we had before so we took that money And we put them into mutual funds that had high dividends They were, you know Income mutual funds income growth and income mutual funds They had a dividend of three and a half four percent So we were Kind of guaranteed that money and that was a hedge against if they lost value You had your interest of dividends that buoyed a little bit and if they gained value, you know You have a four percent dividend and a five percent gain in price So we did that and And we did that long enough that we kind of got upside down in terms of our policy And the board made a decision a couple of times to say well, we know the policy says and I'm just picking numbers that We're not supposed to have more than 60 percent in mutual funds and we have 75 percent. We understand that we're going to leave it there But then in 2014, I think it was when we did this paving and then I guess it was 15 What I proposed was well if we borrow this money from ourselves would take the cash out of this tax stabilization fund and We'll pay ourselves back I guess it wasn't for the the paving was a real bond. What was the first one? It was the infrastructure cip that we took in 2014 We took the cash out and I said if we pay ourselves four percent That's almost what we used to get in the old days when we were buying corporate bonds and because we owed it to ourselves It was even safer than a corporate bond. It was our own money so You know if we wanted to we could I could look at what we're paying the people's united bank and we could pay ourselves back that same rate We would lose it on the other end because you know, it wouldn't be Getting as much in the tax stabilization But anyway, well what I'm seeing here and I'm coming from the perspective of having managed fleet and equipment issues for a fairly good size operation and and there's Always the issue when you get near the end of service life, you know, can you get another year out of it? Or can you get another two years out of it? And invariably something will bite you with that I think what you've proposed here Gives us the ability to do The the paving projects that we've talked about over the last couple of years Get those done the culvert replacements and the like Without having to borrow and we've got that in place I think looking at the equipment issues We really have three sizable purchases that we're looking at and if we Push it off this year There's no guarantee that you only have to replace one of those items next year Very reasonably who could be looking at two or three of them all at one time I think the separation That we were looking at or at least I envisioned with the fire department Was the first engine replacement as year one And then the second one would actually be year three And in the interim we would be looking at the highway truck What that would do with respect to our need to borrow, um, I don't know and I You you haven't been asked to look at that but the First and second proposals you have here of the two of those Um, I would lean in favor of that first one which gets us the one engine with the borrowing going back to mark's bonding piece if We find year two year three that it's appropriate to bond for Equipment and extend that out that still keeps us Current funding for The highway projects and the bonding piece on equipment that has a life span That's more reasonable to to be bonded for That's more realistic More realistic to bond for a piece of equipment for 20 years than it is for You know, I Truly tend to agree with I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't bond for paving for more than 10 years like we did on on perry hill I don't think you can do that for 20 um, and as I said this year We have to borrow just because of the time We don't have the opportunity unless we have a special town meeting and I don't think that's worthwhile We don't have the opportunity to bond this year, but we could always refund the note a year from now and turn it into a bond If we wanted to you know Let me ask you this would it ultimately would you want to Is your suggestion to bond for both fire trucks? Or just one ultimately, you know one even after the second one's purchased would you I guess we take a look at that in other words. Could we borrow for this one? See how next year goes if it goes fine. We don't need to bond for the fire truck The third year the purchase of the second fire the second fire truck on the third year At that point We say well, we should still 300,000 dollars on this one. Yeah, right, but could we bond for both of them at that point? Yes Might be the better Like a bad way to go that seems okay Marcus and then you wouldn't be bonding for quite as much money. Yeah, I mean basically it's yeah, and I hear you I understand that as these get to the end of life you there's some risk there um On the equipment I guess I go back to Gary and and bill's note that we do take quite good care of our vehicles um, so I mean basically my whole argument is is mostly the depreciation that we're Initially started, um, but I agree. I think that's a that's an interesting idea and I think that's definitely an option to Loan and then potentially future bond to to spread that amputation out But again, I go back to if we don't need to spend it this year I personally don't think we should and we should maybe take bill suggestion of Taking the time next year to look at all of these different things and how we could Structure our debt without feeling as much pressure and timing for this year's tax rate knowing that we're already potentially looking at the the increase of six cents to to wait and let bill take 2019 to To really try to figure out our options and present it and save a little bit on depreciation I guess I'd be curious to know what possible increase in the fire trucks, you know waiting One year two years three years Yeah, uh the difference I think they said it's run about three percent right now And what's grand list expected to go up? Well, I've I factored in a half a percent this year because we got I factored in six tenths of a percent this year because that's what we got last year Let me just go look at one thing quickly. You can talk I think that's my sticking point here is that you know, obviously I've never bought a fire truck in my life I tend to Use lots of tools that are very specific to my trade And I don't buy a new one just because it's new and shiny And I and I like to use them until they're completely useless And then I buy a new one I like to get that Last mile out of out of everything And sometimes it does bite me, but I'm you know I'm talking about five hundred dollars. Well, it's not half a million dollar bills, so That's so then the other thing is it is it really bullish to Not buy two at once and save I guess it's not really that much of a say it's twenty thousand dollars a year He said about two and a half percent so three percent So you could make the argument that you don't buy one this year you buy two this year You get your three percent savings which offsets the potential increase In one of the trucks if you were to delay it a year Right and then look at doing that through a bond which would Spread out your debt service payment over the 20 years which That payment wouldn't be due until the following year. It just spreads things out to help absorb these other potential costs I guess we could kick that can down the road till next year And as you said Which I think was a good point um the bill made of Have some time to prepare looking at the cip before January year is January approved. Well, just look at it as two fire trucks on a bond I think you he was saying what he's it'd be around 50 000 plus the interest on that payment. So let's say it's Let's say that comes out to a payment of let's go 70 000 a year We're talking about spending four hundred and seventy five thousand in one year or if it Sat in a note that yearly payment would be Significantly cheaper Which I know that we would have every year following that but we're always making a we should always be making payment into these cip's so And and we do have debt coming off. So I think that is the The way to absorb some of these large things because we know we also potentially might need to borrow And we'll probably need to borrow for some of these larger paving projects But again Trying to get that amortization schedule out there at a lower rate I don't think and then absorbing whatever we can absorb through the cip I think it's is the Potentially safer mode It's not red Well with sticks and microbe out this whole municipal government thing is that you're always on the hook for Yeah, I mean in our personal lives, I mean I've got equipment that's 20 plus years old and it's still running strong and I've owned it for a long time and You know, I'm too used to being able to Wipe the slate clean and and in this case, there's no You don't have the capacity to do that. Well, I think we would except you have those two large projects the the fire station and the Minnesota complex I mean the other loan balances. I you know, I think if you look down up and down and the understanding of And I I think it's to your point Chris is that we have And also to everyone else's point of trying to get these these fire trucks off maybe potentially overlapping is that You know, we we have a certain amount per year that we're going to say goes towards x y z But if you have a large expense you have to consider the borrowing just to spread it out So I think that's exactly what we're running into but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing It's to be expected that you take These notes to help spread out those payments over multiple years But it's not to say that we can't necessarily afford that debt It's just literally how you you need to just like everyone else If you need a new piece of equipment for your your business You might not be able to afford it in year one But you know, you're going to be able to use that for 10 15 years And you might have to pay over five years to own it So I mean, I think that's basically the same thing Well, it's the unfortunate part that the life expectancy of these trucks are so limited. I mean But by the time you get it paid off, you're right back in the same ballpark again You got to go through the you know another purchase and you never get out from under it, you know, I mean But to your point, I understand. Luckily, we know there's income coming I understand what you're what you're driving at here. Can we lease a fire truck? Yeah, you can but that it's it's not worth doing No, the lease payment was mostly joking So what'd you get bill? So I just went to look, uh, you know the Increase on the fire truck would be probably somewhere between 17 to 20 thousand dollars a year in terms of you know inflation So Well We're buying it when you're out. We decided we're doing it all So if we bond if we bond next year if we bond next year for two trucks is mark fryer saying It doesn't impact our ability to buy the tandem a new tandem, right? What's the tandem cost again remind me approximately in this year's cost probably probably with the trade in 160 Which we probably would have in cip if we if we hold off and if we decide to bond out for the The fire trucks there's a potential that we can absorb 160 In a cip right the You know the reality is we've got these six cip funds and rebecca ellis When she was elected we had one cip that had everything in it and she Wanted to break it into six because she said well, you know We don't want to get in a position where we're spending Money to buy something That we really don't have but the way we We have six cip funds. And what am I telling you in the aggregate? We have 514 thousand dollars In in there right now and at the end of the year we'll have in the aggregate 30 thousand dollars in it We we use it as one cip because it's Hard to wrap your head around the fact that well, we're sitting on 300 thousand dollars But let's go out and borrow 250 thousand dollars because that particular fund is underwater, you know We don't have to borrow And and we typically don't borrow unless we have to Um I think that that's a matter of philosophy I'm more inclined to to say we should borrow for things that have a 20 year life just because Why do we want to pay for it in five years when we're going to use it in 20 years and The people who are here now Are buying the whole thing and the people who are here 10 years from now aren't paying anything for it And I think because the municipality is going to be here forever That cycle is always going to be there and you you end up always paying for what you're using And I don't really think that you're mortgaging your grandkids down the road by borrowing because The the town's always going to it's not like You know after 40 years you pay off your mortgaging and don't have any more bills I mean, it's always going to be there. So I mean if we're going to have that truck for 20 years Like like you said, I mean I Like a lot of things in life. I I'd like to know what my monthly bills are You know if we can make it one but anyway, so Um, it's a lot of philosophical discussions But we're still coming back to you got to decide are we buying a fire truck this year or not Well, and again that goes back to exactly that point Maybe we're in a good position that they both need to be replaced at the same time We get that two and a half percent savings and we can spread it out over 20 years and it matches the Expectancy of those trucks and we got a little discount on buying to them at the same time Might not be the worst thing in the world as long as yeah next year with a with a bond It seems like bonding and spreading out the payments to It allows you to do other things which are That's as you're explaining might need to borrow money for paving for these bigger Projects so that's not a bad thing either so it sounds right right now then the proposal is to postpone the fire truck purchases still next year and And what's the situation with the tandem and this year as well Do the tandem this year That I can't remember the details of the tandem. Can I go another year? Yeah, it's not in the tandem this year is not in any of the scenarios Um, if we want the tan if we don't buy the fire truck and we buy the tandem We'll have to borrow two hundred thousand dollars this year. Okay, so we can put them on I would wait I think it's the fire truck or nothing Except what's on the list for this year and as I said, you know unfortunately Just haven't had the opportunity, but I can lay a lot of things out between now and next town a year from now and there's a you know There's as many different scenarios. I mean the computer does things awfully fast. I can give you like 50 choices if you want I'm on the losing end of this I would be in favor of replacing one of the fire engines this year and looking down the road to bundle that in with a With a bond, but My senses the rest of my cohorts here are looking to wait for next year And that makes sense from the perspective that we could put together a bond agenda item for those And and do it and there wouldn't be the time crunch that we that we face right now What did you estimate that payment would be but if it was just a million dollars for two trucks over 20 years at today's rates million A million divided by 20 years would be 50,000, right? Yeah, and four percent on a million would be 40,000 So 90 thousand dollars in the first year for principle and interest And then the next year It would be nine hundred and fifty thousand times four percent so you know 30 Thirty six thirty seven thousand Something like that. So you drop to 87,000 or 86,000 the next year So those are doable numbers year one would be like 140,000 is No, I thought it was 50,000 plus 90. Yeah, okay. No, it would be 50,000 plus 40 Oh, okay, so 90,000 in a in the single year would be the highest potential for a million dollars if I'm doing my math in my head A million divided by 20 is 50,000, right? Okay, and four percent times A million would be 40,000 so 90,000 in the first year, which is Which that first year would be 20 21 right Right, okay, I guess we've reached the consensus And I'm not necessarily not on your side. It's just It's just I'd rather you know, I'd rather Deal with the debt and get it over with but in this case there's no getting over it It's when it's done you're right back into doing it again So if someone if if you've kind of come to consensus if someone would Prove for the capital improvement budgets what I have marked as number one here Uh, now number one is not number one the one that had no marking. Sorry. I'm sorry The one that I sent out on saturday or sunday So how do you want to label that one? So just say uh, you approve uh, approve spending 941,000 No, that's revenues 1.425 980 million 1,425,980 thousand dollars worth of Capital improvement spending you want to make that motion I make a motion Make a motion that we approve spending 1,425,980 In combined capital improvement spending second I'll say Further discussion all those in favor say aye please Aye Okay, thank you All right, um on saturday, I also sent you out this sheet um, I'd like to talk about this first before we go into the operating budget because it The operating budget Assumes 48,165 transfer from the ci from the tax stabilization to the operating fund and In order to do that it will take two things one for the select board to say yes, that's what we'd like to have happen And then number two, uh, I think we should if we're going to do this It's kind of a well it is a change from the formula formula that they Town meeting adopted back in the Was it the early 90s that we found that yet today? yeah so Right now it talks about you know if sell The formula that we've used in the past few years is you know if it the fund has to earn The first three percent stays with the fund the next five percent gets transferred and then above that you split it What i'm proposing now is that we just go to the voters and ask them If they would authorize Withdrawing five percent of the year end value of the fund every year until They decide to change that and I I put together Six kind of pro forma What happens if scenarios and in every one of them Well not the on the first on the front page If you look at the bottom left it will say five point nine percent so that that The next from 2018 through 2038 There's a volatile stock market there ups and downs Minus 10 in the first year 17 increase in the 2030 over the course of The time the time it's a five five point nine percent return And if we took out five percent every year at the end of the year um Which still have nine hundred and ninety four thousand dollars in the fund and we would have transferred out 900,000 over that period of time The two to the right of that Are you know kind of doomsday scenarios? um That you that the stock market went down five percent every year between 2019 and 2038 um The middle one which would show what would have to happen right now is that We would take out the five percent in 2019 2020 And 35,400 in 2021 and then we wouldn't be able to take anything out again because We've got a policy that says if the value of the fund goes below the 644 that it started you can't take anything out The one to the right of that Shows if we suspended that rule And still took out five. I mean five percent a year even though the market went down five percent a year We could still get to 2038 Still have taken 388 thousand dollars out and still have 117 thousand dollars as a balance So those two are just to show what would happen in a really bad case And then on the back side I've got three different returns all kind of Volatile ups and downs The first one on the left has three pretty significant down years in a row 10 percent down in 19 13 percent down in 12 percent down in 21 If we still took out five percent a year in that scenario We'd get to 2038 Have taken 701 thousand dollars out in transfers and still have 797 thousand dollars in the bank And then the you go to the middle one That's six and a half percent Which I think anybody would take that in a heartbeat And then the one further to the right is kind of pying the sky if it was a seven and a quarter percent Return in the old days when I first started here, you know, it was not unusual for financial advisors to tell you You should plan on eight percent return We're not in that you know average We haven't had that average for a while yet and it's probably not a good idea. So anyway I looked at this I tried to look at it in a lot of different ways the the purpose of Moving to this Taking five percent out at the end of every calendar year Regardless of performance Is to move away from the formula Which some years Wouldn't allow you to take anything out and the next year would allow you to take $55,000 out and you just have a volatile swing in your revenues and this way It stabilizes it. So you you're going to miss a few really big years And I think the highest year we ever took out was about 67 thousand dollars one year and then there's been Probably six or seven years since we opened the fund where we didn't take anything out 2009 10 and 11 being the most recent ones of ours So I think this just puts us in a position to have a stable Transfer and we call it the tax stabilization fund and it's kind of Hard to call it stabilization when one year at zero the next year. It's 55 the next year. It's 20 So I think this is better So if you think this is a good idea I would ask you to make a motion to allow me to include the 48 $165 in the budget and then when we sign the warning It will have an article on there to ask the voters to approve this formula I'll make a motion to approve the transfer of 48 167 Five I know it says seven on that but in the in the budget. It's 165 48 165 dollars from the tax stabilization tax stabilization fund We're not necessarily voting on that Maneuver in the future. We're just dating what we're going to so we can discuss this at a later date But right it's going to go in front of the voters. What are you saying? I understand that but the the idea of it changing to five percent every year Are we voting on that or just the amount? Well, the motion is just the amount right the motion didn't include the Right, so the the the Motion that I Suggest that we put to the voters you have it just so I can To see if the voters will authorize the town treasurer in 2019 and in each and in each succeeding year to transfer from the tax stabilization fund to the general fund Up to five percent. So it's up to So the select board could recommend less if they wanted to and then at the end it says This authorization shall remain in force until changed by the voters Keeping the restriction in place that transfers should not be made if the fund drops below 644 000 Yeah, and I think that's that that's going to be my one comment is maybe there needs to be a ceiling But if it's five percent or less if you do have really good year It makes sense to not necessarily take it Because you have the opposite thing if you can get the joys of compounding and keeping that money in there Don't source yourself to use it says five percent or less. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I just okay. Thanks in that way If the select board says man exactly that we can live with only a $45,000 transfer and we could transfer 65. Let's leave the 20 in there, you know, you'd have that option The way that's just secures you to be able to afford to take that 45 In in down years Well, you would be taking five percent if if 45 was there But I just wanted to make sure that if you didn't have a if if for some reason the fund Doubled one year. I think it would make sense for the board to really consider not necessarily taking the full poll And that's why I said the five percent or less. Sure. That's right. I I hadn't seen the more less Okay All those that are in favor Say hi. Hi. Hi Okay, um, so we've we're down to the review of the general operating budgets We have reviewed almost all of these budgets in the past we reviewed the fire budget already Um, we reviewed the planning budget. We reviewed the recreation budgets Excuse me, and we've reviewed the The library budget The only budget really that we hadn't reviewed is the general government budget Which is on the first two pages the revenues are here on the first page And then the general government budget is on the on the second page I've made a few minor changes from what we reviewed last week I put it in the memo any expenses that we that have come in that had to be posted back to 2018 have been done I did lower The transfer that I had in the fire department budget I think I had it up at like 169,000 last week And this week I cut it back to 166 That's three percent increase over last year as opposed to five percent that I was looking at last week um And I did that just as a means to try to you know get the tax rate Down a little bit as I said earlier tonight I would have hoped to put more into the cips last year. We did put more into the cips significantly more I don't think we have that luxury this year On the revenues so if we look at the first page I I bumped the pilot up by four thousand dollars Um, and I left the increase all here in the general fund and uh, I carried 82 thousand dollars in the in the highway Paving cip that we already talked about The the pilot payment has typically gone up incrementally every year. So I don't think it's a Huge roll of the dice and it's four thousand dollars. The pilot payment has never gone down. I'm not saying never can happen, but it never has The village administrative service fee is two thousand dollars less than it was last year It's probably higher than it should be but I convinced the E fund commissioners that Leave it there for this year and then we can talk about it going forward We don't have to get into the details of that Everything else is pretty much as it was last year I did bump the town clerk's fees down a little bit from what was budgeted It is up a little bit from what we took in it's up about three thousand dollars from what we took in Went back and looked at the average and the average was about 58 or 59 thousand. So I thought we could live with 60 um knowingly repeating myself from last week the revenues for the Recreation programs and the like are all soft numbers But if we don't get those revenues the expense numbers will be similarly down. So it's just Kind of the best educated guess that we can have on the expense side Uh the first line in the general operating budget is the regular pay line That's Up about three percent You know Increases for for staff somewhere, you know, I would hope when we get to april two two and a half percent potentially um The reason why that's a little higher is because the pay that What we pay barb far is in that first line it's in the regular pay line She's expecting to to work a few more hours in 2018 She's tried to average about 20 hours in 2019 once we get to the April to november time frame, which is when the construction will be happening on main street She's expecting probably to go to 25 hours there, but that's all reimbursable by the state so there's income on the first page 65 000 of income under the Transportation liaison line and I budgeted 65 this year. We budgeted 49 last year We received 42 and again because we received 42 she actually She didn't work as much on that So the reimbursement goes hand in hand with the hours worked is what i'm trying to say um The historical society is down about six thousand dollars. They had a grant from Karen steel to pay for an archivist that money will run out sometime in 2019 and It's not likely that they will Keep that position It's a municipal position. We had to put that person on the town payroll just because Workers comp and fight get all the rest of it The historical society does reimburse us. So again, that's um It's an in and out. It's no expense to the town The municipal building operating fund right in the middle of the page there in the general government Is down 22,695 dollars That's a payment that we simply make to the municipal building operating fund. We talked about that last week The time that the public works department is spending here is lowering and Last year's budget and this year's budget had the one-time expense of the generator, which is you know $80,000 ish And that won't be happening again. So That's bill. Why would I think that we were going to close that? That line item out Was that uh, well, wasn't there a surplus in the municipal building operating fund? That paid for the generator and I thought we were going to Like drain that and well, we we had two funds We had the building fund and then we had the municipal building operating fund We had a surplus in the building fund and we dumped that money into the I mean, we we took the surplus in the building fund and dumped it into the municipal operating fund And so we got uh, some extra revenue in there last year The building fund is closed. It's gone the municipal operating fund is still there and and I just have that fund because it's easier to Apportion the costs between the library and the and the town that way The library's Payment into the municipal building operating fund is down by the same percentage. So And going forward. I think that line is Probably not Going to go higher than the 45 that i'm budgeting. It may actually go down a little bit. I think we're Kind of still on the downslope and then after This year we'll probably level off going forward Um So we had a big savings there But if you go down a few lines to the commercial audit, which is in purple font if your font is big enough to see it 30205 is being carried in the 2019 budget, which is 2000 20 205 dollars higher than last year's budget Um When we well, you didn't look at it when I looked at this a couple weeks ago I had 22 000 dollars there The reason it's 3205 is because we haven't finished paying for The 2017 audit yet and the auditor told me he wanted me to post it in 2000 19 so If we had paid it and posted it to 2018 that 13 796 would be 22 000 dollars and 30 000 205 would be 22 000 dollars and it would wash so it doesn't really matter But it's still higher than we were a year ago We budgeted 10 000 a year ago and and we were blown out of the water by the prices that we got Contracted services and public safety Uh 365 100 that's 180 000 100 dollars more than we budgeted last year And that's for the full year's worth of the police contract And um, I think that's it's a bargain for us. I think we're getting good service But we're paying the full boat this year. So that's that Fire department we've already talked about Let's see Oh Yeah, health and social services. No big deal there pool programs You can ask questions about any of these but i'm just hitting the Budgets that we haven't talked about before So if you turn over a couple pages and get the special articles Because we've talked about the recreation budgets and the planning budget I'll come back to the planning budget in a second So the special articles, um, we're We're proposing of We we have requests for 95 868 dollars worth of special articles in 2019 That's 1268 dollars higher than it was last year and What's happened is The budget amendment that We made from the floor last year. We added 37 500 to the Special articles for the 51 south main street parking lot We didn't actually pay the village. We didn't buy that parking lot. So We budgeted for the expense We knew in the summer when we set the tax rate that we weren't going to be doing that So we didn't raise that 37 500 dollars But this year The ambulance is requesting their first time ever a request for a payment from the municipality It's 39 770 dollars and we talked to those folks a couple months ago The select board supported the Inclusion of it but indicated and made a motion to the effect that We would put that on the warning so that the bullies would Clearly understand it and have a chance to vote on it so Once we once the select board approves the budget going forward I will actually pull out all these special articles. So the budget will will go down by about a hundred thousand dollars because The budget won't include the articles until they're approved But I want to show The budget and the tax rate implications assuming they all pass. So they're all in here The last thing on the planning department budget When I was out of the room last week You listen to Steve talk about the The historic survey for the furrier edition It's in the professional services line 14100 dollars I think somewhere between 11 and 12 thousand of that 14 one is for that historical survey So if you want to do that You got to keep the 14 one there the other $2,000 or so is to pay for the People the person who takes the minutes for the planning department. So that's going to stay And um That's really it What I remembered last night Was that we had talked a couple weeks ago about Having a little bit of money Couple three thousand dollars in place in case the opportunity arose to Spend it on that looking at the whole air b&b thing remember that I I did not put that in the budget If you want that in the budget, I think it might be helpful to have that money I'd add three thousand dollars to the planning budget Um and the historic district surveys To me That's the only kind of discretionary line in in the budget unless you want to Do things like cut the appropriation to the library or you know peel back Significantly in that highway spending or in the Um You know cutting services from what we have now, so I'll stop talking and let you ask a few questions We're getting near the end. I know so So with what you got here The tax rate proposed is yeah, so if you turn back to the front page, I should have finished I should have finished this if you turn back to the front page Um up in the top right where there's just those Um three or four lines there with nothing underneath it in the columns The the number right to the right of where it says percent change seven million four hundred and sixty two thousand two hundred and thirty dollars That was the 2018 grand list number The number to the right of that seven million five hundred and seven thousand dollars Is a six tenths of one percent increase on the grand list Below the 2018 grand list number Is a number that's in purple font three million three eighty six seven eighty. That's the taxes that we raised in 2018 If you divide Those taxes by the seven point four million dollar grand list you see right below that Point four five three eight five whatever That was the tax rate required last summer 45 Point almost four cents. We rounded down to 45 cents over to the right Under the seven point five million dollar grand list You see three million eight sixty five three eighty That is the taxes that you would need to raise to support this budget that we've just talked about if you don't make any changes Dividing the taxes by the grand list. It's point five one four nine Uh, rounded I would round that down again to 51 cents And and that would be a six cent increase in the in the grand lift I mean in the tax rate And I think That's around 13.3 percent the 14.13 above there is is one of the other numbers but The uh, yeah the 478 thousand 600 dollars of additional taxes is 14.13 percent more taxes But when you factor in a six tenths of a percent increase in the grand list The tax rate increase would be 13.3. I think and 13.3 doesn't show on this page anywhere I'm just remembering that and then to the right there. I'm just showing that um The uh Of the 478 600 thousand dollar Increase from one year to the next The additional 180 thousand dollars and the 40 thousand dollars for wassey police and wassey Is 222,320 of the 478? the remaining other tax increases for the loss of Loss of fund balance uh from one year to the next and additional Uh spending that we're doing Would be the other 256,280 so of the six cent tax the the tax rate increase um Would be about three cents for the police and a little more than three cents for the other tax increases And that that's just taking the the straight taxes The percentages are a little different because the grand list is included there so um A penny on the tax rate raises about 75 thousand dollars, so You got to get about you know 42,500 out to drop it by a half a cent To drop by a penny you got to get 75 thousand dollars out Which I think will be hard to do unless you Unless you decide to cut something It could be really argued too that the the police we were able to find that money, but really it's 385, right? Or 365 divided by 70, so it's really Five cents. Yeah, the the it's the difference from last year, right? But but ultimately it's five cents It's just you're showing the difference, but I'm just showing the difference Yeah, but I think it's important that the public knows that that's really five cents. We're almost We're we're really raising it one penny plus the police budget Look at it as a way that the police budget didn't exist If you go back sure go back to 2017 When we had a 45 cent tax rate and then you skip 2018 and go to 2019 It's 365 thousand dollars more for police than it was in 2017 And it's five cents, but half of it was last year and half of it was this year. So You know it is 365 thousand divided by 75 it's it's five cents of the Of the 51 cent tax rate But To be fair it's it's half again So You know you can do anything you want. Oh, it's half again because Yeah, because we paid half of it last year Comments at all on that Just thinking came in lower than you were expecting Yeah, I said six to eight. So yeah I don't see a lot of fluff in the budget. I mean Done cutting 75 thousand dollars out of this thing would be Hard Well, I was going to continue to pick a fight over the library increase For the sake of the rest of the budget, but Probably not worth fight a fight worth picking so In total the library's budget The taxes to run the library 51,530 dollars in total more than they were last year And it's almost 12 percent Their budget has gone up 2.3 percent from last year um The position that they talked about when you know dan and almi made the presentation and whatever it talked about tonight is About seven twelfths the cost it's going the same thing will happen next year to that line item as happened to the police this year The new the new staff person is scheduled to come on in june So we're paying that You know seven twelfths of the year in 2019 and then they'll be a full year's worth next year But even if you ask the library commissioners To take an additional 50 thousand dollars out of their trust to cover the 51 thousand dollar tax increase that they're having You're going to save Six tenths of one cent on the so the the the tax rate would go from With a sixth tenths of a percent increase in the grand list the tax rate would go from point five one four To about point five oh eight And you'd still have a 51 cent tax rate because you're ground up a couple of percentage points versus down a couple so I understand the The concern and You know, it's I think it's more of a philosophical concern than a than a Real money in your pocket concern right now You're asking for an additional staff. They made their presentation with regard to the numbers I tend to believe their numbers are right. I understand whatever it was saying but You know circulation is Is measured in different ways the the volume of things that come out. I don't remember the number of patrons that they had And if you're Concerned about the staff what you have to remember is even if you cut their budget by 50 thousand dollars They can still hire the staff if they want they can Try to find the 50 thousand dollars Somewhere else in the budget, you know take 25 more out of their their surplus and find 25 thousand dollars worth of savings they might still have the High of the person and And the law is clear that the library commissioners get to make the day to say day decisions So even if you don't think they should have the staff person It's not really in your purview to make that decision So is there any other Comments concerns Not hearing much here from people Largest tax increase we've seen in some time in the stuff that's being paid for is Is pretty critical stuff As that mentioned before there's not there's not much to really pick apart without having a Having an impact I also think we were lucky to have no tax increase for three years Well, we worked hard not to have a tax increase for three years There was some luck involved we benefited from having no tax increase it was hard work Well, and I think we had some huge projects come on to the grand list In those years that helped in a big way and I think that's something That I think moving forward, you know, even the conversation tonight about Values in this town is that we do have to think about You know part of the reason the values are up is supply demand, right? So There's something to be said for You know as we talk about growth of this town that The reason we were able to stay flat was the growth at the grand list and I think we we We need to keep that in the back of our mind that you know, if as long as we continue in popularity if we do nothing and we try to Hinder smart growth, we could potentially be putting ourselves in a worse situation. We do need to We do need to address that to a certain degree to make sure that You know because if supply demand doesn't keep up and we we don't We work against growth. We could potentially see increased values, but that also brings increased taxes and bringing on Certain projects to address some of the residential squeezes whether it's airbnb Or whatever. I just know that personally in my employees that they struggle to find affordable housing around here and I think Finding an affordable single-family home is also another problem in this town. So I think addressing some of those issues and finding The right people that want to come in and do those Those projects and help with those demands could potentially help You know increase grand list that increases incomes, you know, because I immediately went to incomes when I When I when we we started saying well, what do we have any comments on it and you know incomes aren't keeping up with income increases aren't keeping up with in expense increases, which part of it is that we voted in the police department, but You know, we're I don't think we should expect year to year that expenses aren't going to increase at a certain rate and If we don't have grand list growth, we're going to have to expect a higher rate So I think, you know, there's there's a balance there without getting too out of control And I think it helps the town Well increased values doesn't always have to equate into increase taxes tax rate Is structured to service the debt so if you can Increase your values and not incur more debt your taxes should go down That's the way it should work, but I have yet to see it happen We were able to stabilize at a 45 cent rate for three years through other fortunate occurrences that assisted us in Paying for what we had to pay for like just like the pilot pilot program increasing When you say debt, do you mean expenses or do you mean debt? Because I'm saying I'm saying expenses. I'm sorry. I'm yeah to me that is that is an expense, but In your case, yes, expenses if you incur more expenses in the municipality Then you have to adjust the tax structure to service that debt But if on its own if we didn't incur any more expenses and our debt Stayed what it is taxes should go down right Yeah, if you don't if your expenses stay flat and your And your property values grow your tax rate and your taxes will go down. I think that Expenses do typically rise over time and if you're lucky your grand list Keeps up and you know I think more times than not The grand list growth has been a little less than the inflationary growth Here like last year, you know inflation was 2.1 percent our grand list grew extensive 1 percent last year There's been years where we've had three or four percent grand list growth While in the village in the town, I think the highest I remember is about three percent But anyway So just well just the one yeah, I need a motion I just want to make sure and I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't do it The the only discretionary line in here is this $14,000 line in the planning department for the change in the tax rate history project Merit that we philosophically I had objections to that because I don't think Given with the expenses we were facing that necessarily now is the time to do it, but The amount of money we're talking about and It it saves nothing And it's just a matter of throwing dirt against the wall. So well, what about Because I I think there's value to doing that to and I think that that's entirely appropriate um, my objection is that Is now the time we need to do that and I don't know that we need to but uh, given The insignificant amount that we're talking about. Um, it it makes no sense to delay it So I was anticipating somebody was going to want to take it out And if you wanted to take out the 12, I was going to ask you to put three or four back in for the The housing study if that ever came up. So the alternative is to add three or four and make that You know 17 if it really doesn't matter one way or the other I mean, I I think That we should be prepared to do with if the opportunity arrives And to go back to an earlier Part of the discussion is that we we tend not to Expand everything that we've budgeted anyway and that that $3,000 amount. I mean We can find it is what you're saying you've said that before I have heard you many times. I have okay find it somewhere So I would agree. I think you'll find it somewhere somebody like to Make his motion To approve the budget as presented under the scenario that raised 478,600 additional in taxes that correct, mil For uh I think what you might want to say is that you Just just say that you approve the general operating budget general operating budgets as presented And I'll put a date on this Second from someone second Any further discussion all those who wish to approve say aye All right. All right Thank you another season over Well, kind of the crunching is over now the writing begins right Okay, what's next on the agenda anything I think we have to look at the warning, right? We have version version two we're going with version two Which is the article eight? Uh reference to the five percent Article seven is was the article eight tax civilizations from Now the question I have with that is article seven With the What we saw in here, um, the the wassey piece had been included Yeah, so what will happen is I'm going to When I go back to work on this the budget the general operating budget right now Not including the highway and the and the library There's two million nine hundred and ten thousand dollars and that includes All the special articles, so I'm going to take ninety five thousand eight hundred and sixty eight dollars out So the budget that will go before the voters will be Without the special articles so article seven will be the first special article if you will So we won't double pay them I was just wondering from a bookkeeping perspective We won't double taxes Bill and I had talked about Moving, uh the last article Possibly to the front What do you think about that? To do any other business yeah because of what happened last year there with the uh Well because everybody left and then everything happened. Well the the issue of the Somebody tried to get the town meeting to approve the gun thing And a wasn't worn and b a lot of people had left The moving it up doesn't do anything about it's not worn It's just they get to talk about it with everybody there as opposed to half the people If you want, I mean it's sort of up to you to do that if you want Well people usually sit through the meeting listen and debate and then may have some other stuff I want to do at the end So you're suggesting that we don't I suppose you could do what you do on this agenda on your select board agenda first you could just put public comment at the beginning And then keep other business at the end and if people want to bring something up at the beginning that could do it Any comment just no maybe It's always it's such a wild card thing. It really depends what happens the week before meeting that gets under somebody's vomit and away you go well, so uh Yeah, and um Of the three people that are going to see this warning in the paper and actually read it And notice that that's out of place somebody's going to come to the meeting and still Complain about it being in a different spot. So I don't know You could put it, you know, you could put it right before the budget stuff if you want You typically it's not a bad idea. We typically, you know Go through and then there's a break for the Keith Wallace award and to let the legislators talk And if you wanted to just tell jeff to say You know, we've kind of taken a break in the you don't even have to put it in there just tell him look Last year we had a situation where Some important things came up at the end of the meeting. They weren't here You have anything that you want to discuss right now before we get back to business You can talk about that with him next week or whenever he comes in But So it wouldn't have to be in the report Or in the warning Yeah, they can't take any action anyway. I think you just asked jeff to to just say We've taken a break for the Keith Wallace award the legislative legislators have talked Some of you have places to go and you can't stay to the end Does anybody have anything you want to talk about other business now? and then we'll We can come back Instead of putting it sounds like a natural way to deal with the issue It doesn't call it Okay No, I just was trying to you know Solve an issue that occurred last year and give people a fair shake of they had other issues that The majority of the taxpayers were there to talk about it I think it's a good idea to move it and hope that there are more heads in the room that People don't feel like they got left out Just so that i'm unclear with this because we're we're we're talking like this We're going to retain article 20 at the very end anyway. We're just going to have an Interlude For a conversation that will be inserted Before we do the the budget. Yeah somewhere around when we do the Keith Wallace award and all that stuff Makes sense So a motion to approve the warning as presented that you'd like That's fine Somebody's got to make the motion for so moved. Okay Any further discussion All right, everybody's tired All that approve. Oh, I'm sorry All those who approve Hi All set says this the fit the official signatory What's that? This is the official you have signing the last so we're Done there the last issue was just quickly a police update on trooper and yeah, um The new troopers started. Uh, he's working the day shift that Uh trooper rostrum had originally had so he's working the monday through friday We're planning on having lieutenant white here for a meeting on the 19th So he'll be able to provide more detail on that but right now both the troopers are in place and doing their work The new trooper Is Keith luya He's actually uh from the stow area. So he Go up around here I've been stationed Down south a little bit uh here originally and wanted to get back in the area to do the hiring and Or the interview and selection process and he was really motivated to to be back here right now understand he's staying with family and Has every intent to be Long-term part of our community He's young enough you'd be around for a while. Yeah, it should be Quick question on police do we need to be thinking about What's next and if the state has an appetite for extending that contract and when would we need to trigger that conversation? So another year or so um one Uh, we're not quite one full year into the three year Commitment. So as far as the budget goes We we had to have here In the team we'll have the full year this year. We'll have the full year next year 20 and then Six months into 21. So In time for the the town meeting in 2021 When we would want to tighten up on Right now the feedback has been positive from both what I've heard in the Community and and what the state police record on their own. So have any other towns done it? I know there were a couple talking about it. No, um, they The intent of um, the state police was to really fully Run it out here as a as a beta test and then if it does work and is practical for expansion There are a number of other communities that have expressed interest in So I I think it would be good for those who keep long distance calendars that Say Spring to July of 20 we should start talking about what we want to do So we get through this full year get through Next year's town meeting and then after town meeting in 20 start really Talking together and talking to the state about you know at that point you'll have a couple of years under your belt of of Activity and everything and have a better sense of that. Plus, uh, they'll be the renegotiation of what the Uh, what the cost would be the thing that should be different with that is that We shouldn't have to pay for a completely new outfit like we did on the original setup So it'll be more or salary stuff. There'll be Car replacement stuff that we'll have to factor in there, but all the all the rest of the tenant equipment is already purchased so You think there's a potential that it might go down if we stayed with a two trooper Contract might not go up as much That's a reduction in the budget is a lower increase than it That's it exactly. Um, have they Just a real quick final question on this. Um, have they said that they feel like Two troopers right now is enough to service the town appropriately and they don't feel like They're overwhelmed by the amount of work or anything like that Yeah, the, um What we've seen I've I've got the last month's Stats that I want to pull together, but Our goal has been that The bulk of the coverage would be provided by the troopers assigned here Granted, they're only working 80 hours out of the out of the week Up until the transition in december That really was the case tail end of november and end of december rick was taking some time off In preparation for his retirement and everything so there was more coverage by the middle sex troopers than The local troopers, but now that We've got two two folks back online. I would expect that the january one would show that shift back again Yeah, and I think I think the other thing too to remember is that You know Maybe the two Have higher case loads than And if you had a third person that each have a few less cases, but in I think in terms of The global state police view of it Um, it's taking a lot of burden off What middle sex was doing before yeah, and that's the kind of the acid test is that It's making the troopers of middle sex happy that somebody is here covering that case load and again until we got into Later november and december Winter time tends to slow down a little bit for activities The first two months We roughly around a hundred calls for service a month um, it's it's been down in the 80 range and november and december, but again, that's that's what driven and like but It's it's a consistency criminal commel more when it's weather and that's why I never would want to do that line of work in a warm climate You never get the winter break But I think the point was just it seemed like two Can we sense yet if two troopers is adequate for that number of calls? Yeah, the uh predictable the the good Fortune for us is that when they require any sort of supplementation or assistance The yeah, the main station is just a couple of miles down the road. So that's in the world of state police That's that's golden, right? It's only a 10 or 15 minute response as opposed to that A half hour 45 minutes that you get And I think I think what we should be more worried about and it's not that i'm concerned that the two troopers might have a heavy case load We're paying the state for that I think the measurement that we want to look at Is do we have people in the community who feel that they're not getting the service that they That they need and so far everything I hear is good that that people See the troopers driving by just patrolling when they call They they they get answered they they come and it's not like, you know Nobody's picking up the phone and calling me and saying hey, you know, I called the state police Last week and they still haven't gotten back to me, you know I had one one the resident that was actually Teed off because he got pulled over and he couldn't believe that you know Why what do we need a police department for? He only got a warning, but uh Yeah, he was pretty pretty ticked off there that even got pulled over. He was in a rush to go to work and Before your adjourn I would recommend if it's all right with you that you have a meeting scheduled for next week, which is the first monday in february and we've met for Four weeks in a row. I think on the agenda and there's really nothing so The the next meeting would Was supposed to be on February 18th, which would be president's day. So we would propose that we meet on tuesday the 19th yeah and Bill when we had talked about this earlier having Lieutenant white join us. I guess there's been a request to perhaps schedule that meeting at six as opposed to seven He had asked for earlier, but there was something in an email that you asked I didn't know if that was a Standing request or if it was only because it was supposed to be on a certain day. So I'll let her find that Reach out to him and figure it out. Okay So the potential is we might be earlier But otherwise the 19th is looking good You don't need a motion for that Uh, I think you should just you should make a motion to cancel your meeting scheduled for february for and That you'll meet next on the 19th at an appointed time to be determined later You don't have to say all that So moved. There you go I'll second that. Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye Motion to adjourn So moved Second all those approve. Aye. Aye. Aye