 So we'll call the meeting to order first on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Any amendments to it at this point. Nope, you're not just need a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. All in favor. All right, we do have one appointment this evening. So Farron. Are you representing conservation? Yes. So he's here in request to give some money to to the Bo Wreck project for trails on. Carlos Meadow. Yes, we're here to get the slick boards approval to release. $3,500 of the conservation commission's funds to fund. A Bo Wreck project at Carlos Meadow and right away can hand it over to fellow CC member Chris force and project manager Bo Wreck give you more details. Thank you, Farron. I'm Chris force on the project grant manager grant project manager for the vorac grant. Um, vorac, I think everybody knows everybody that's here knows what it is. It's a Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative Grant. That's a pretty good size 1. What I'll do, I wrote up a little briefing thing for the conservation commission as to why we're asking for this. And then there's been a more recent. Development that may negate us happen to use the funds, but things are kind of up in the air. So until recently, our grant project requests for proposals have resulted in. Bids that were within or near individual project budgets in November, we received bids on to the primary trail trail improvement projects in the grant that were well above the budget line items. The Carlos Meadow trail improvements were budgeted for 10,500 based on 2021 estimates when the grant was originally written. The low bid for the project came in at 14,000 since this project is primarily on town on conservation land and approaching the Bethel conservation commission to hopefully secure the additional 3,500 from the conservation fund. The related project of the 3000 foot pathway built to accessibility standards. And this is the one around the athletic fields was originally budgeted for 33,000 and we expected that this was low based upon the long delay and receiving. The funds for the state is people remember, I think it was over a year and a half from the time that. The grant was awarded and they were trying to get organized or something. So anyway, we knew that was going to be low. We did have. That was terrible. We did have the ability in the grant and move things around. Within 25% of each budget item. But what we ended up with here was a low bid of originally of 103,000. So not even close in addition to the delay from the time that grant was awarded and receiving the funding we all obviously have a long period of inflation. The supply chain issues and we had the floods all kinds of boring materials went through the roof because of you know, role of air demands. So I do were to two bidders. I worked with both of them and we were able to reduce the low bid to 79,600 and obviously still leaving a deficit because some of the funds that we're going to move around or an extension of the supply chain issues. Excess of 25%. I had to go back to the state. Working with eight is a long process as some of you know they didn't get right back to us and then they decided that they wanted to reevaluate the project because of the flooding in the summer because obviously there's a certain point. So, you know, we had a when I think it's still a real decent proposal to eliminate some of the plans we have a lot of plans that are gathering dust. So, you know, we had a couple of plans in here that are kind of plans behind other plans behind other plans. So we just shuffled some money around but kept most of the important things and the actual projects on the ground funded. But then because they wanted to reevaluate this we've been tied up for months now trying to figure out. Essentially the town is permit jurisdiction because we have a flood plain overlay district, but because they control the money, they're requesting that some changes be made and less material be brought in that sort of thing. Even though the town manager and the zoning folks in town have already said that it's an exempt project. So we're kind of in between a rock and hard place. But anyways, because of that, it may end up that everything is back close to our original budget. And we may not need the conservation money, but when we originally requested it, that's the position that we were in. Are there any questions? Through the balance sheet in here so you can see how much money, how much is in the conservation fund. Obviously this is a good use of that money. I think the money was earmarked for conservation projects. Obviously Carlos Meadows originally was a benefactor of some of the money to help, you know, get it to the River Conservancy and Chris is right. It's been a nightmare. But for all of a sudden the project is stalled. He was right, Bo Wreck, we were awarded. It took a year and a half to get the grant. And now we can't. There's no actual permit seemingly required from the state, but yet they're making us deal with everybody who permits anything in the area. So Chris has been really good about trying to work through it. And so the 3500 would definitely help, like Chris said, if we need it to, you know, to do the trail. And at this point I think the trail is going to be, isn't it just going to be natural material? That was part of the give with the state that we needed to do to try to make it more of a, you know, walking path. It's still going to be ADA accessible. It's just going to be a hard surface. Well prep for. Yeah. Yeah. So. And the conservation commission you said was in support unanimous support is now we said Farron. Well, I think I would agree if the conservation commission is on board, this seems like a logical use of that money that's in their funds. Yep. Is that a motion Lindley? Sure, I move to grant the conservation. No. I don't have it right in front of me with the wording. $3,500 if needed from conservation fund to the bullwreck grant. So moved. Hey, any further discussion? Thanks for the assist. Any time. Thank you. All in favor. Okay. All right. Well, thanks for the explanation, Chris. That was helpful. All set. That was easy. All right, we'll open up for public comment. Is there any comment this evening? That's anything that's not on the current agenda. Paul had Paul's waving. Online, Mary is in the audience. Okay, we'll take Paul. And Lyle is waving. So let's take the online is first for once and before Paul. Okay. Yeah, Chris, I was just wondering if there's any update from the school side. Now that 850 was passed and signed. If there was any update about the budget or whether or not the budget votes still going to happen or any of that kind of stuff. Yeah, I, we have our next meeting on Wednesday night. Is that a budget informational? Yeah, but we'll have a little bit more information. I mean, the information as right now is that, you know, the 850 was, was adopted. So what that means for Bethel at this point is it's, it's now going to, we're going to have to wait and see what the other communities do with their budgets, essentially, so the, the idea behind it right now is that if the other communities that were impacted by the cap now have to go back and restructure their budgets, which is likely then the more restructuring that they do their budgets. The higher the yield will go. So the less money that will have to be borrowed through the state education system. So the higher that that yield goes. Then that will help drive our tax rate down. So the, the number that we have been playing with at this at the school board is the number that was given for the report showed 12 cent increase at the budget. And we are hopeful that between the information that we've kind of been told from the state that that 12 cents could become 4 cents at Bethel. So it could be could be a change of about 8 cents on our tax rate here in Bethel. But again, that, that really determines how many communities go back and restructure their, their budgets. And we may, again, this is going to be one of those things that we're not going to know about until after town meeting day. So, because they usually won't have the yield 100% fixed until about May 1. So at that point, then we'll know, but it's kind of weird voting for something that you don't know that's even fixed. But I think it's going to go on at this point, as is the vote going on as is. Yep. Now, and then some of the information that you probably heard in some of the communities is some communities right now have have moved their. Well, some communities have have used some other means to move their town meeting days back so that they can restructure their budgets and do it one time. And they'll probably be quite a bit of communities that won't restructure that probably will send their budgets down to be restructured. Now in Bethel, our budget going down or up. There really is no restructuring for us that nor will it really get a big impact if it did get restructured. So most of our potential savings is going to come from the other communities. Restructuring there so. But the other part of that Paul is that we'd mentioned last in last meeting is that the town of Bethel is appealing our CLA. And we finally we made the appeal to the state and then we sent in our list of what, you know, issues that we had with the some determinations that the state made so whether or not that's going to fly or help our CLA come up a little bit if our CLA climbs a little bit that would also help but hard to know at this point what the state's going to do. We have submitted to the state our questions. So we'll see, you know, what we want them to revisit. We'll see if that happens as well because. Yeah, I saw the letter in the packet. You've got to go to bat. See what happens. Yeah, I mean we may we the school may have better information for Wednesday nights talk. I'll talk with the superintendent and see if he what other information was brought down since I think they voted it last Wednesday. In Montpelier so. All right, what was that Lylee Lylee. Hey, thank you so much. I just wanted to say thank you for recently putting both the agenda for the meetings and the zoom link on Facebook I think it's super super helpful. And also it wasn't there for this meeting hence why I was on the wrong zoom link and late. So just a pitch that I know you all are super busy but I think it's a really useful resource and I always appreciate when it happens. That's all we do post it on from porch forum but it wasn't on Facebook so I'll make it up. All right. Well, good to know. Thank you. Thanks. And any further ones online. See anybody else. So we'll turn in public Mary, you want to go first Mary. Okay, I can tell you a little bit about the camp book. Restoration project, which is at the mouth of camp book, which is my property. In the fall I contacted with the advice of the town office. I contacted. Jared Bork who sent me to. The agency of transportation because it's a roadway of the bridge and the roadway there. And so I had a conversation with a couple of different people there. And they did send someone out to look at the amount of gravel under the bridge and on either side of it. And so then Du Bois and King did a survey in the fall. And I talked with a few different people each time they came. And they said, yes, it needed to happen. They would put this ahead of other things they had scheduled because they didn't realize it was such problem. Because the gravel was up to within about three feet of the bottom of the bridge. My grandson could not stand up under bridge because there was so much ground there. And it extended down the broken into the river. So I waited patiently. And the December rains actually cleared out the channel on my side of the bridge and opened it up a bit on the other but it's still a problem. To back up just a little, because I'm not sure everyone knows this and it's pretty. It takes care of itself so well because after Irene. There were four levels of planning that went into the reconstruction of it then. And that was the fish and wildlife department. The national fish and wildlife department, the state department. The town of course was involved because we. Gave a lot of gravel from our property to repair camper road. And the partnership was also involved. So there were four levels of and we as land owners were that we were one of them. So the latest thing is that I got an email this week from Bruce Martin. Who's Vermont department agency of transportation. He is a roadway design project manager. And I discussed various parts of it with him and told him I was really concerned that the work that was done after Irene. And I asked a lot of questions about what they knew about what had happened there. And it was sort of sketchy. So he's coming tomorrow to talk to me and my son Colin about possibilities. And I approved the plan, which they have submitted because it asks for quite a bit of tree removal, which is very important in holding the bank in place when the water gets high in December. It was right to the top of the bridge and the banks, but after the water receded, the channel was still there. And that's because White River partnership planted hundreds of trees and particularly the willow trees. It holds it in place. I mean, the ice comes down through when we have an icy winter, which didn't happen this year. And it holds things in place. And after the water recedes, it's still there. There's more gravel than before. And there were put in, they put in three stone weirs after Irene. One of them is still pretty visible. The one by the bridge is covered with gravel and I really would like to see that one exposed and doing his job again. So we'll see where the conversation goes. You do have a right that they need you to sign off on this for them to do what they want to do. So you have some power in the situation. Hopefully you can come to that. Obviously you're outside our right away, but certainly if you run into something, I'm happy to. I know Jaren Borg pretty well. I'm happy to call Jaren and I can certainly talk to Chris Bomb. These are District 4 rep and but if you end up not getting where you want to be, you can call me or email me. I'm happy to make some phone calls and do what I can to support you. I just want to be integrity of course. Yeah, I mean it makes sense. We've done projects like that in other towns where we do those root balls of willow for the same reason. So I can understand it and hopefully when you meet with him, you will call me with him tomorrow. He'll see the logic because I remember you came in with a plan. You showed what they had done before and and you're right. If he's taken over for someone, he may not understand fully everything that has happened there. But is he going to meet you at the house or the prod or there on the river? Is it going to meet you at the house Bruce at your place or? Yeah, all right. Yeah, let me know how it goes. And if you need some phone calls made for me know I'm happy to do. I also did talk, I've got to mention that I talked with Mary and Brad Russ in the fall too. Yeah. And good about their part in there. Yeah, they're interesting. Yeah, but only once he comes down and takes a look at it and realizes what you're saying the hill. But it works amazingly well. Yeah. And it was about 12 years ago. Yeah. So if you have any, it doesn't go the way you're hoping. Let me know and try to make some phone calls. Thanks. I appreciate it. Not sure I have a lot of weight, but we'll throw around what we got. See what we can do for you. Okay. But let me know. All right. Yeah. I'm assuming that they're going to do the project like in the springtime. Is that the goal or? Yeah. Oh, right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just concerned about. Well, this is not springtime to run off this year, but of course we could have rain events. Yeah. Could have continued to have. Yeah. It's going to be 60, but that's interesting. So they're going to do it now. Oh, it's no. Yeah. I spent the summer keeping the rain out of my basement. Yeah. And all you mentioned. So yeah, well, that's good. I thought they're going to get on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. See you in none. We'll close that. And we will get to the budget informational piece of the meeting. So as we kind of went through at the first one, a couple of weeks ago. Usually kind of how I do the, the budget informational meeting addresses is at a very high level. And then if through the discussion, if anybody has any questions with either particular item or department or whatever, we can dive deeper into that. So the, the, the two highest levels to look at the budget is the revenue and the cost. The revenues. Don't the local revenues don't usually change much. So those are things that are collected through the town clerk or state aid that is given to the town. So those, the revenues year over year and hour. Town have changed $4,000 and that's based on, I don't know what we're at 400,000 or something like that. So it's, it's not a significant amount of money by any means. The, and then the cost end of things had changed year over year for $72,000. So there was a net increase of $68,000 change in our budget from, from the budget that we're currently into the one that we're proposing now. And then a lot of things at the town level, you know, thank God we're not the school and trying to figure that calculation out. But at the town level, the most part, you know, you're able to control your destiny and usually it comes down to, you know, what are the services that the citizens want and, and how much is that the cost to provide those services and this budget for the most part, we haven't really changed any of the services that we had been providing. The only significant change that we had in services that we did change was officially closing the constable department and, and hiring that service out for the Windsor County sheriffs, which we have started to have done. So that's really the only significant change that we've done in our budget for services wise. And then the rest of it is the, you know, like everybody that goes to grocery store or, or gets your paycheck, you see all the changes of healthcare benefits, inflated costs, Chris was just talking about, you know, material costs for, you know, his VOREC grants and things like that. So those are all, you know, majority of that is just all those costs that are continuing to move equipment costs, fuel costs, travel costs, all that. And then last we have a few, like we've talked about last year, and we have done some of the projects and some of the projects are still coming this year is some of the matching money for the grant money that we had secured. Last year we had talked about there was four grants that we were successful on. It was the Christian Hill grant. There was the money that we got from Bernie Sanders for Sandhill. There's the sidewalk pedestrian grant that is pleasant street. And then we have a structures grant that keeps changing locations, but we probably finally use it just down the road from Doug's house. So with those grants come matching money. So we have to make sure that we plan plan for those matches. So the Christian Hill project was, was done this past year. So that was, I would say a success. It's gone pretty well. It survived the July flooding. So we're lucky there. And then this year probably the, what we will see as citizens is the Sandhill project between the Waterline project phase two and the Sandhill piece will go be going on this year. So, and then like we talked about before, the sidewalk projects a couple of years out and then the structure project, we kind of do this summer. We move a structure grant to something else, but we're hoping to get another one in its place. So. Yeah, from Peabodyne. We'll keep the temporary bridge on Peabodyne while we do the structure near Doug and Joanne's and then thanks. We're also looking at doing another grant project on Branker Dart escapes me right now. And also because of the December flood, we incurred another $30,000 worth of damage. So we have those projects as well. Some on Upper Gilead, Woodland, and North Road. So Woodland, unfortunately, we had rebuilt in July and then of course, the flood in December took some of that out. So we certainly have our hands full for projects this summer for road, along with regular, you know, road maintenance. So. And I'll just kind of go through the High Flyers in the budget. And it is kind of an order. So it starts at well, cost wise starts page 50. There is a piece in here. You'll see on page 50, the public works personnel budget has gone down there. Some of that money with the wages has been transferred to another department that we put it in. So it's not not necessarily that it went down, but we've moved that money into the parks department. So it's a different place to recognize it on that. The biggest movers at the highway department was the materials. So we had two. Last year we were talking about salt budget and we, the current contract we had at that time, we were purchasing salt that, you know, in our budget wise is going to be in the $60,000 area. And then we had to change your budget because there was fears of $115 a ton salt and stuff like this. So we changed our budget to 90. But now that the market, you know, I think God has stabilized on that. We're able to get back to what it was before. So we're just kind of making a correction there. So the salt budget has gone back to its, to its pre-state and then, but on the other end of that we, the gravel roads budget is up. So that's really just kind of typically whatever we don't use for salt, we use for gravel on the spring. And as we all know from all the calls we get that there's lots of gravel roads that need attention in our town. So the idea instead of just taking the salt completely out was to substitute that with the gravel to try to get some, some more miles of gravel rehabilitated on our roads. And as we know, we put a lot of gravel down this year and not necessarily in the, in the order we wanted to, but it was to, to fix flood repair related things. So a lot of the work that was done this year was flood repair, not necessarily road repair maintenance. So we're trying to catch up with that for next year. The, the highway rehab money there, it shows up $45,000 there, but that is the money I was talking about about matching grants of money that we already have given to us. So, and it keeps us on that, you know, that bell curve so that we don't have to keep going like, you know, the old days was okay, we want to pay something this year. So we'll ask, we'll ask for $100,000 this year to pay. And then the next year we'd say, oh, we don't need to pay. So we'll be down here for the next year we'd say, oh, we need all this. You know, we were going back and forth. So now we're just trying to get more of a bell shape curve by asking consistent amounts. The E-Rath, which is the money that is tied to the flood repair. So we had E-Rath in there for the last two seasons from the 2019 flooding that we had been paying off responsibly. And usually you want to retire that short term debt in a three year period. So we had been paying our E-Rath or setting aside money for like the bridge that we still haven't built. So we've been setting aside money for that. And then we get to the light at the end of the tunnel. We're all set. And here comes another one. So now the money we've set aside in here is to pay off this new July flooding for the next two to three years. So we're trying to get that paid responsibly. So and I think we had total about two and a half million dollars with the flooding in July of which about a million and a half is at the town level. About a million dollars is took place up in the, up in Doug's country. So yeah, so we spent, yeah, 1.4 million on not including Hambrook, of course. And then our share of that, you know, that's then our share is going to be about 45,000. So the good thing about the million dollars with the work that was done upon Hambrook Road took forever because there's so many hoops to go through when you are dealing with the federal government. However, it's 100% paid for. So we don't owe any money on that work up there. So it took us a lot longer to get it done should have been done a lot earlier, but at least it's paid for. And then the other 1.4 million and change that were, you know, the different projects that we did. We are on the hook for 12 and a half percent of that dollar figure. So what we do is we take that dollar figure and we say, okay, over two or three, two or three years, this is how much we're going to have to ask for every year. So that's what the ERAP is for. And we're still may be on the hook for about 10 grand on Campbrook that that federal highway is not going to cover for Jay McDonald to come back and do some cleanup. So we may be on the hook for at this point we're on the hook for about 10 grand. That's the estimate I have so. So that's the ERAP piece of it. Mary has. Yep. Just interject that the plan that to take away the gravel, which is now in Campbrook. They plan to have to sell it take it away. The stuff down your place. Yeah, excuse me. The stuff in the river by, by your house. That's. That's the casella is. They plan to have to sell and take it away. I mean, it would. Castle construct. Maybe. Yeah, please. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, we wouldn't want to use that because all the silica dust that would be in that would, once you put it down, you'd be driving over and just be dusty all the time. Well, Chris knows. But yeah. So kind of moving along on that we had the. We talked about last time last year's budget we had money set aside in there for greater. A combination of yellow iron has gone through the roof to purchase. That with actually trying to find a greater that you would like to purchase. We decided to push the purchase of the greater off a couple more years. And had authorized to invest some some monies to. To maintain the greater and keep it on the road for that period of time. So, there was no greater payment in there. For this year. So that made, you know, that portion of the budget go down a little bit. The. Municipal offices wise some of the things on the movements on those for the most part is. Benefits and health care. And there was some extra money that was put in there to help out with. A part time helper. So one thing we've been consistently short handed in the office. And then, you know, all it takes is a event like. The FEMA event this summer that just really bogs us down. I mean, you could have one full time person doing FEMA the whole year. That would struggle to do it. So it's something that we had recognized for a couple of years is too much that we put on some people's plates and also doesn't give enough flexibility if somebody's out in the office. How do we cover that? So, so we have that money in there. And let's see the like. Back to the highway department. We did ink. So we took out the greater payment, but we did increase money. Contribution money into the equipment funds. So the equipment fund is what we use to fund different pieces of equipment trucks, graders, that kind of stuff. So we have increased the amount. That we allot every year to the equipment fund and and. Biggest reason for that is like we were just talking about how equipment has just skyrocketed. So, even though we may not purchase the greater this year might wait a couple more years, but will the cost come down? Probably not. So we're planning for that now. And there's a schedule for that in town report and equipment plan and we have an equipment committee that talks about it. And that was one of the biggest things after COVID that. And that was because of equipment just skyrocketed. So we were, we were pretty far off. So that's in the town report too is as an estimate. And that of course is just a plan. So it changes as the need changes. But, but that was one thing the equipment committee wanted was to see a big jump in that so they could actually keep up with big repairs and purchases. Like I said before, the, you know, the only thing in the budget that service wise that, that, that we changed this year was the constable department versus contracting out for the sheriff. So that amount was about a $15,000 increase over last year. One thing to take note is last year, we had $8,000 in there with the signage to do too. So it's be take the signage out of that really, really $23,000 more into the budget to, to get the hours of commitment from the sheriff's department that we started to see already. We continue to use the sheriff's department right now to pay towards the budget that we had currently, because I believe we had an all 30 or $40,000 that we had 30 a $30,000 deal with them until the end of June. So I will, I will say that they definitely we're talking about the last meeting. We definitely see a lot more activity with law enforcement in town. I did see that there was a big bust or we'll call it a rest that they had made. Not the one you sent us. Yeah, they had made Friday. Oh, I thought it was. Apparently, there was some, there's some person that shares two communities here in Bepple and somewhere up in Berlin, Vermont, that they had finally caught up with and taken off the street for however long. I don't know, but at least it's just kind of showing and that was 100% made with the Windsor County Sheriff's Department. And that was a drug and gun possession, right? Yeah, I don't know. I ended up with a bunch of drugs. They took off the street and some guns and but apparently was someone that kind of has connections to both communities that they had been watching. But so at least, you know, things are getting done. Which is nice to see slowly but surely the wreck department. There was a decrease in the wreck department and pretty much all that fun decrease was the difference of last year. The voters had voted to allow an extra $30,000 to finish the skateboard park. That was in the budget where this year it's not so that has been taken out. And then, like I was talking before that you'll see that the parks and public places department. Proposals up this year. The majority of that money is so majority that money is some of the money that's in the public works that just got transferred. So there was a decrease in public works move that work that money to the public places will have somebody full time this year that will be just dealing with the parks and public places. As well as working for, you know, any water sewer matters kind of fill that utility position again, as well as some work them for the road crew in the winter. And this position is also going to building maintenance and open and close the pool and some things like that so that we don't need Doug to be changing the traps over at town hall and the light bulbs. We'll actually have someone to do the maintenance stuff. So, so the most part of it was just kind of what bucket we're putting that Boston. The, we talked about that. And then we increase some money into the government ops piece of it, which is which was into the capital improvement funds. You know, we're still working on our plans slowly every time we have a bump in the road. It takes a little extra time, but we're still working on, you know, our project is to do something with a public works building. Of course, every time we start getting some momentum there, something happens in town that, you know, that shifts the focus, but we're still planning for a new or refurbished building. Here in the short term, so we also are going to have energy audits in before at town hall or town office and this building through the Merck program. So I'm hoping to secure some funding to do some updates to the town office. We have a new roof and slay the basement, but we need the obviously that buy price to go butter knife through the side of that building so we obviously need to do some insulating of the attic and maybe even some reciting. We also know we have an underground fuel tank under that little add on to the building that also needs to come out so have money set aside for that and have already talked to the environmental organization so we're going to have to pull that so once we tear off that building love to tear off that little side fees and pull that fuel tank out of there so good times. So we're going to be doing a few things there and hopefully securing some grant money to update the building. And then there's one piece here that you'll see that the phase two water line product that's ongoing right now that started last late summer. And it's not as much done as we wanted last year because the contractor was on hold for flooding repairs other ways but what the clock starts on the payment back to start paying off the bond. And we had agreed as a town that a portion of that bond payment would be put on to all of the taxpayers. And the piece of that that we're repaying as all of us taxpayers was the pieces of the roadway work that typically would have been done under a normal tax budget anyway so you know drainage improvements and and redoing the black top and things like that is what we're actually paying for as citizens where you know the the water line itself and incidental works with the water line is still being paid for through the water services. So that's the clock starts on that so we're going to have to in this next budget we're going to have to make our first payment so that's $13,000. That's in there. Lenny Leonard did have a question to just because of the way I worded the warning about that it doesn't include the additional articles library food shelf playhouse or so I did tell him you'd get to that as you wrapped up your just so you know that Yeah, so this I mean usually how we do is so just the what we'll call the the town budget base budget has a net increase of $68,000 and when you're talking how how do we pay for that by the penny on the tax rate. It can fluctuate depending on the grand list. But this year you can use for every $21,400 of cost difference or net difference that's about one penny on the tax rate. And then, you know, if you're looking at one penny on the tax rate. If you have a quarter million dollar house and you add one penny the tax rates 12 or $25 so it's so so right now what we're looking at with the $68,000 is is about a three cent increase. So when the grand list doesn't change drastically which shouldn't is a three cent increase over last year. And now just we're to back up. I don't know, nine years, eight years ago maybe somewhere around there. We had determined as a board. Well one to draft. Responsible budgets but actual budgets that are, you know in the past kind of felt that sometimes the budget was the budget and you spent more if you needed to spend more. Instead, you know we, and that when I came on to the board we had about $1.2 million worth of deficit at the town that we retired for long term debt. And some of it was definitely overspending through many budgets some of it was related to the old Irene, and there was other components in there. But at that time we kind of determined that, you know, going forward what is, you know, what is a reasonable budget to propose actually. And what is what is something a bell curve budget that we can ask for every year rather than some years we asked for a lot and other years we don't ask for anything at all. So, we had determined at the time the board when I say we because I'm the only one left but me. I think it was just before Linda came on. But there was like, you know, as Carol and myself for a couple hours and was that we came up with that we felt that a 3 cent increase target a year would be something that could follow inflation but also follow the services that were demanded by the citizens in the town. Now, if you go back over the last nine years, we haven't been three cents every year. Some years it's been one, two, three and a half depending on the grand list. Yes, depending on the grand list. So like two years ago, we thought we were putting forward a two and a half cent increase and it ended up being nothing because the grand list had moved in such a way that it ate the increase. Last year on the other hand, the grand list shrunk just a little bit. So the three cent increase that we did ended up being a little bit more than three cents. So, but I think if you went back and looked over the last seven or eight years that, you know, it, the average has been under three cents. So that's kind of just something as a board, a mechanism that we look at to say this is something that we believe that we can continue to do the, the same line of services if not better services, and it's affordable for the citizens. So, so that's kind of where we kind of started our budgets we always how we started budgets that we throw everything into all that we want and then we start looking at and go how do we pay for it. And then we kind of whittle it down this year was kind of challenging because quickly a lot of the costs were inflationary costs flood repair related costs. So insurance health insurance and those things so it didn't really give you a lot of things to say oh we'd like to put this aside for rainy day. So I will say that it was kind of been more of a tighter budget, and we're seeing budgets across, you know, I'm sure it's in other states too but definitely in Vermont you're seeing in every town, you know, the town budgets up school budgets up I mean everybody's stressing about it So we tried to come with, you know, put forward, what can we do, we are able to luckily not take away any services we added one service which was nice to have the full time, we'll call it full time Sheriff's Department but better than what we were getting before, and at 3 cents. Now, the other piece that has been more challenging than normal is we do have from time to time added voted items. So a standard year, just a standard year. Maybe this will help Lenny's question but a standard year we have our standard budget, and then we typically vote in the human services piece which is a dozen dozen human services that Paul and his board put together. We always vote on the White River Valley ambulance as a separate item. So those are they pretty much get voted every year, even though we kind of say they're our base budget, but they get voted in separately. And then every once in a while we'll have something new and the something new can be to one of two things it could be something that the select board says, you know, I think this might be above the base budget so we want the voters to vote on separately, or an identity could go in petition for something and have it put right on to the warning without the select board which is what the playhouse theater. So as we go through this for additions and and two of the additions are petition both two of them. Yeah, two of them were petitions. So those aren't something that the select board decided to put on their goat. So, and as we found out with Jean, like, we even have to put the wording on there. Even if the wording doesn't 100% follow the action item. That's the way it's worded so so the four extra items. And I want to get people confused because when I say extra items we still are voting on the White River Valley ambulance we're still voting on the human services. So when we get to the human services, the one of the first ones is the food shelf so the food shelf had reached out. So just to put this in perspective, our whole human services budget for a dozen items is about $27,000. And the food shelf had asked for $25,000. So basically asked for almost the whole budget that we had allotted so we decided as a select board and they did this informally so they didn't petition for this. And then they came to the select board to ask us and we said, well, being that this the lot at amount is the whole budget for the human services that we would put that on as its its own standing item. So the food shelf will be on there for $25,000. And which means that that's about about a penny and a quarter. So note the food shelf $25,000. That's an extra penny and a quarter on your tax rate. The other piece was the South Royalton Senior Center. And if I get it wrong, it'll have a rate immediately in front of me. Just 30,000 was what they asked for. Remember the library asked for 30,000 but we put five in the budget and then they're getting their 20 they're asking for 25 separate. So this is Paul said, remember the library asked for 30. I mean the food shelf asked 30 food shelf asked 30 same thing. So 25 extra right so 25 we agreed to put you guys agreed to five in the budget then they're petition that's right. Same thing with the library you treated them you treated food shelf as in a large human services one I think are like $6,000 is like a large one so okay that's right. And the other one was South Royalton Senior Center had asked for more than normal so they had asked for a total of 10. And how much Paul did you guys give them on that one I didn't have right in front of me. Well they asked for they asked for four and then right after the advisory committee met then the senior center met and then they're like oh actually we need 10,000 so they petition for their extra money. Yeah, yeah, so so that'll be another one where there'll be $4,000 under the human services umbrella to vote for but then they're also looking for an extra 6000. So that extra 6000 has been petitioned so that will be for one to vote on. And then the Playhouse Theater for the first time last year the Playhouse Theater had petitioned to have an item for $1000 at last year's meeting, and this year they did the same thing but they had asked for 3000 this year. So those are different so the two of them to combine South Royalton and the Playhouse are like 40, like four tenths of a cent on the on the tax rate, and then the last one we had was the library. So we had, we were talking with some of the library folks at the last meeting. So the backup, maybe five years ago at the most is the allotment for the library used to be $2,500 a year. Now, now remember it's not a town library, but we had appropriated money a year to help them so $2,500 was the amount. And then about four years ago. They asked for double the budget to go to five because they had some computers or they had a bunch of equipment that was going to be all expiring at the same time. They wanted some help with the computers so we doubled it to five. And then last year, they had asked for 75. They asked for like 35 and we put 75 in and had them stand up and discuss the additional 27. And so so they originally had come to us asking for a larger amount of money than than the five. And and the conversation started was because the the library currently doesn't don't want to use the word endowment but they use. Oh, what did she say? Investment. They have like an investment account. And what's been happening is because the interest rates have been low for quite a long time is they were borrowing more. There's Lisa, they were borrowing more money a year. Then the interest was serving on it. So they were continuing at the library to eat their investment account every year. So, so we had talked last year about, you know, what what is the what is the potential future of the library look like and how can the town help out more. So, you know, we kind of went through this whole exercise we haven't quite gotten there yet but we had done some research that a library of our size should be somewhere around 100 to $125,000 a year funded library. If we had like the perfect one. But right now I believe ours was like right around 60 is that sound right Lisa 60. It's about $50,000. Yeah. And that doesn't include grants and that kind of thing. So, so this 35 that was brought up last year was really kind of money that would allow the library to not have to eat into their investment account. So hopefully that that will build so they can build the interest on that and be able to use that going forward. But at the same time, we wanted to start working with the library to try to figure out what is the vision or future of the library in the town look like some towns fund their library completely, you know, for 7080 $100,000, you know, up until four or five years ago we used to fund 2,500. So, right, vastly different. So what we've agreed to do again this year was to appropriate the $7,500 like we did last year, and then to vote the extra 7027,500. Like we did last year in its own article. So, so now that the four total articles items, we'll call the extra items food shelf, South Royalton senior center, the playhouse and the library together is about another 3 cents so on town meeting day, if, if the, if the normal budget and all the add-ons were all voted in that that is a total of six cents on the tax rate. So three three for what for the budget that the select board put together then three worth of potential add-ons that can be voted on separately. It always gets a little confusing the way it's worded on the the warning Lenny and we've been down that road year over year on sometimes we always go back to the one where everybody got confused that year. And somebody wanted, there was, I can't remember what the add-ons were, but there was like, I do remember it was $55,000. I don't remember what they were, but somebody got up and amended the budget to take $55,000 out. And so, of course, that gets voted before you do any of the add-ons. So it went through, we deducted $55,000 out of the budget, and then they went through and voted in all the add-ons. So, not only did you vote in the $55,000 add-ons, but then we had to go back into the budget to fight the $55,000 out that couldn't be the add-ons because they were voted in separately. So it was, that was the first year I was on the board. So that was like the first thing. It was like, oh, we got to find a way to cut $55,000 out of the budget. So I always will remember that one. It was just, it's confusing sometimes. So that was the kind of the informational portion of the budget. Does anybody have any questions or comments? There will be at-town meeting day. There will be different individuals that will get up and speak about different items. I'll probably be talking about the budget. I know Paul will probably talk about the human services piece, and we'll, well, I think we have an item to go through that with Rick anyway. I'll go through that. So there will be the ability to have more conversation before voting on some of these potential ones. Comment. I should have brought this a long time ago, but if we are seeing, if the human services portion that we vote on separately is not sufficient, we may want to consider increasing that amount. It's never been decided on by the select board that they'd have a budget. They just always, people seem to have asked for around the same amount of money because the select board has, in my 10 years, never come out and said, you only have $30,000 to spend. I just think historically that's where they've been, but it's certainly a discussion to have next year in budgets because I know the library wants to be fully included. They don't want to have a separate article next year where they have to stand up and ask for their $275, so it's definitely going to be a conversation to have around budget time next year to talk about what we're going to do. Paul's waving. Yeah, Paul. Here we go. Yeah, I agree with Jean. I think that we've been operating under the same guidelines for many, many years, and maybe we need to look at that and reevaluate who we fund and how much we're going to fund, and maybe that process needs to change. It's like everything else. We've been doing the same thing year after year, and maybe that needs to be looked at to see who we fund and how much. So I agree with Jean. I think it's a good idea to look at the way that that's meant, how that works out. I agree. I mean, not to say you want to go this direction, but I know a lot of communities, they will budget certain identities like that based upon so many pennies on the tax rate. So I'll make it up. They'll say, we'll set aside three pennies on the tax rate to do human services or to do road construction or whatever. And then, you know, so three pennies is $60,000 and you know that that's kind of your budget. And then people can kind of quantify that in their head with their tax rate. But it might be something I always just looked at it as trying to, you know, keep the minimal impact on tax rate. But I think it needs to be looked at again next year. I'd like to see another member get on the board and just kind of look at the whole process again. Part of what I, if that's our, if that's the human services that we provide as a town. It seems to me that that's, that could be more. That's just a, that's my observation. I'll work with you, Paul. It's always an item that gets started on separately, right? So there's, I think there's the ability to, within reason, well, whatever reason means is to put forward whatever that budget is here, right? But I think it might be helpful to have some sort of direction, right? And maybe that direction is in a select board direction. Maybe that's a, you know, getting some townwide information on how much should we spend a year on human services or something like that. And then, because it's really not really the select board duty, the human services, that was the piece that the select board has more or less delegated to be put together by others, right? In a committee form, so. Good thing to get together with the human services committee, look at how they've done it in the past and what the options are moving forward. I know we've had other ones in the past. In the old day, like, I know like stagecoach and stuff have always, you know, said, hey, we, I know we asked for six, but we really would like 10 every year, you know, and then we say, well, we can give you six, you know, that's kind of the way it's been, right, Paul, for a long time. They went from four to almost eight. And we split the difference and went halfway. So, yeah, but there's no real guidelines. It's just a lot of anecdotal information that the board that the committee has, and trying to balance tax implications with with how much we want to give to these folks. So I think it needs to be looked at completely. Yeah. I think the select board should meet with the human services committee and give them some guidance. Dave. Well, I was just, we don't provide any services there. Those services are provided by each entity. We just provide some funding. And for the most part, it's not, we haven't had such large asks, as we have had this year. And we usually fund what they within reason what they ask. So I guess I'm just one of those guys that I'm not going to throw $10,000 at you if you only want four. Before, why do I want to throw 10,000 at you? So I think the way that that has been worked has worked fairly well. Maybe it needs to be revisited, but I don't think we should monkey with it too much. Lindley, did you have your, I thought I saw you raise your hand, Lindley, no. So Leonard's had his hand up for a while. Just wanted to make sure he got hurt. I was just trying to see how long you keep his hand up. I'm just just out of clarification. And I know we these some of these entities are important to the town. Are you saying that the way it's done now they could ask for any amount and it would go on and it would be voted on. Like the, like they could come in and say, I want $100,000 and give you some sort of reason for that. And that would go on to a vote. Is that what you're saying? So right now, Lenny, we have, so we have the Human Services Committee that meets pretty much once a year, right, Paul? Yes. So every year at a certain time, these human services identities can petition, well, right to us explaining the services that they provide to the town and how much funding they're looking for us to give. All those get sent to Paul and the Human Services Committee. And then they look through that and typically they're all the same providers from the previous year. They just update their information and send their request in and then Paul and his committee then get their request, which what we're saying, and I think this is where Dave was saying is on a normal year, most of these are saying, hey, we're looking for $3,000 this year or $5,000. Now, there might be the occasion that someone says, you know, we really like stagecoach a couple of years ago, we really would like eight, and we were budgeting at four, and then the committee ended up giving them six, you know, they met them halfway. So I think within reason, you're right, Lenny, so that somebody could say that we want X amount. Obviously, if somebody said we want $50,000 and the whole cap is or what we typically use is 27, then that becomes something that the Human Services has to decide like, hey, we won't give you 50, but we'll give you five. And if you want more, you'll have to go to the select board to see if you can get put on the warning or have it adjusted. But remember, anybody during the human services, anybody can stand up and testify for the human services, if there is an ID, if we had that a couple of years ago, somehow accidentally we had left off one of the human services funding. I think it was $1,500 or something. And it was added in on the floor to double their funds because we had left it off. So there's always the amending that can go on. Yeah, Lenny. Just for clarity, and maybe this is more of a Therese question, what is the breakdown or how does it get defined between in the appropriations category there's local and then there's human services because we're not voting on local, we're just voting on human services. So how does that get defined who falls where? Well, it's been that way for you guys for years, nothing I changed. So things like two rivers, VLCT where our dues are so we're participating members those go under for some reason I don't know whoever named it local appropriation but that's how it fell. And so I'm not sure how they ever got divvied up. That was long before me. It's just the way that your budget's been built. A lot of times people instead of calling those local appropriations, those are really dues and things like that. So I'm not sure there's a big difference there. You just always have voted on it that way but I do think it's something that, you know, we should just revisit in general, and, and talk about when we meet you know I think this like we're should meet with a human services committee and and talk a little bit about it because, you know, see what there are for guidelines and stuff but how they ever split it up I could not say. But I was just I was trying to sort it out. You know how did the Bethel library end up there but not in human services and the Bethel food shelf ended up. Yeah, I think because why yeah library had been there for so long because they've been receiving $2,000 for years so I'm not sure when they set up the budget how that worked and maybe somebody just did it accidentally that way I'm not really sure they just labeled it local appropriations and I'm not sure how the how the difference came up but certainly you know the library is a local entity but two rivers is not so I don't know how they worked it out but again those are dues those are not appropriations we don't appropriate money to VLCT or two rivers those are dues. I think a lot of it when we just looking at now is that's the way we've always done it. Yeah, but it's a good question because just kind of looking at the appropriations category, probably a majority of those could fall under government operations which is dues and the things that we do every year. Yeah, and then there probably is to maybe three of them in here that under appropriations that could go to human services right. Yeah, so I think it's just something that we could look at as a board just maybe we clean that up a little bit. And I think you know the town has taken an eye with the equity and inclusion committee we've taken an eye to that sort of equity and this is an area that seems like maybe it needs a new a new eye to it with that lens of is this an equitable choice that this entity is in this category and this other this entity is in a completely different category one that's voted on and one that's not right it right. I would also if you're open to this I would like to request to be part of that meeting since I've been so much part of these discussions even though I'm not a member of the select board as of when that meeting happens. And it sounds like Paul needs an extra board member and I'm going to be lack of a board. Not you trying to relinquish some of your responsibility. Your board seems easier than the select board. It's just a matter of relabeling honestly and reorganizing your budget I think that's what it falls down to is removing that header local appropriations and and like Chris has moving around it's not a big deal it's just some relabeling and but certainly brings cookies to the meeting that's just fine. That's right so I made a note. Yeah so we'll look at that going forward. That's definitely a good point. And no promises on cookies Paul. Yeah, there you go. All right, any further questions on the budget itself. Don't see any hands up. Okay, so we will move forward on that. Mr Benson seared talk about town meeting warning. So we should start that by saying that this will be Mr Benson's last raw as town moderator because he's not running again. So just so everybody knows big thank you Rick how many years have you been a moderator for Bethel. 15 and countless right. So that's a right in campaign. No I'm just kidding. So, so just so people are aware to want to thank you for your service for 15 years. That's, that's wonderful as well. Yeah, I don't want to take a lot of your time but I usually come in and touch base just before town meeting to make sure to go over warnings it's a little obviously different this year with the Australian ballot for all our elected officials so potentially could be a quicker town meeting all depends on discussion and we really shouldn't predict these things because sometimes you think there's not much. You better have lunch there. You better plan on a dinner. But anyway, you know article one is just information. Basically there's no action be taken on that and no discussion as far as those positions that are open being how they're voting being voted on that day. And I did want to just ask and I picked up a little bit that Chris you'll be you'll be speaking on article to the main part of the budget. And I'm sure you'll be emphasizing that. Yes, as you were saying, X amount of money three, three cents whatever and the rest will be added on right for all additions beyond that so folks have to be clear about that. Other than Paul for for human services to you. I'm sure we'll probably be representatives that as you mentioned from each of the library who shall etc will I'll recognize if they're there to see. So with the human services part I would suspect that there may be some questioning coming from the floor. About the process that we had a couple that we, you know, like the food shelf that we moved we had a couple that we didn't fund. So there may be some questioning coming up from the floor on that. I would assume they'd have to go through the process of being recognized etc etc but you might want to keep that in the back of your mind. I have you noted here could be speaking to that if need be. But beyond that, I'm not sure if there's anything that you. Yeah, article 10 and I'm not sure who's going to be best to speak to that. I mean, I can talk to that. I mean, you and I could article 10 is the list. But I could certainly answer the questions about the listeners. Yeah, a little great for me because I'm, I'm filling in. Yeah. I'm happy to. Yeah, and I'll make it clear that that's not a position that I'll be seeking so that I don't have any. Yeah. I also wonder if that might come up to because I think that there's going to be confusion as you and I talked about between article one and article 10. I do think that there's a little confusion because in article one we're saying we're going to vote for listeners but article 10, we're eliminating listeners but so if we were still voting from the floor, we would have voted in the moderator town clerk town and then we would have had the vote to remove listeners before we moved forward but since we're doing an Australian ballot it's a little weird looking it's accurate but it's weird so that may be a question is, there's nobody running so when people get the ballot they're going to see there's nobody running for Lester. So, that's, but I'm happy to speak to article 10, unless somebody at the select board wants to do it. Can I talk about article 10 listeners or you want. No, he's saying no I can read his lips no. So I'm happy to answer those questions. Okay, great. I have a question. Yeah. I'll go back to article six, and maybe there's a reason for this, but it seems that there's a discrepancy the number listed in the article and the number in the printed budget aren't the same. Okay, acknowledge and maybe Paul acknowledges that and clarifies which one is the accurate. Yeah, which it is. 31915 versus 32165 I don't know I'll have to look lately I'm not sure if that could be my mistake. It helps that we just spent so much time looking at the human services like that's not the lumber we were just looking at. I suppose says 32165, which is what I wrote but then I can see what you're saying the article is off so I'll have to go through and figure out what's missing because I was the 5000 that the select board put on for the food shelf. Oh, right. By $200 though. Yeah, I got to look and see all difference might be something missing on the list. Yeah, I'll double check when because I don't know about I'll figure it out. Excel spreadsheet. Yeah, well it's only you know only as good as what I put into it so I'll look but thanks and Lee I don't know why none of us caught that for someone. Yeah, I'll look though I'll say we stole your thunder. We'll fix it. All right. Thanks, Lindley. No, that's good catch. Thank you. I'll have to figure out what what I missed. All right. Does not match budget. Okay. Little bit of other information of the media has been working. Teresa had given us some input after last year's meeting about other things we can do to entice or make the whole experience more interesting for folks to increase attendance. We're starting to pies and coffee again. That's always great. We have a few more. I think overall a few more people setting up their informational tables out in the side lobby. Which, which is always, always good. We've been trying to get some representatives here from like Senator Sanders office. We've not had any response from them yet. We're doing a little bit of pre town meeting. I don't want to call it entertainment but things in the auditorium to hopefully like at quarter of give people to start hearing things going on and they're and start moving their way towards towards their little bit of entertainment. I believe the, the girls who have the cheer squad are going to be doing a few things just to get some excitement going but this will all be prior to 10 o'clock. So we'll be still starting at 10 o'clock. But so just, just be aware of that you hear things going on. It's part of that. I think that's the model. I have to say there is going to be childcare. We are going to have their kids volunteering for microphone runners. There'll be at least two microphones on the one on each side for folks who can't get to the microphone in the middle to facilitate that. So we are setting up a call system for folks who need a ride to town meeting. Cindy, my path is handling that so that is a good service. So a few other things going on that they were hoping, it brings a little more interest to what we have left town meeting and hopefully hopefully we're able to keep the remaining. So that's really, I mean, that's definitely one of the nice things about the town meeting and the budget piece because, you know, there's a lot of things even, you know, we're just talking about, there's an error in the social services. Warning here, which can be amended, you know, just like there can be things amended for like, if someone wanted to add to a social service, they could amend that. And those are the really nice, unique things about town meeting day that we have is we have the ability to vote in amend for the floor. Well, you folks as a board setting a budget when it's only Australian budget gets voted down. And you know how people help with the attendance is for budget marriage meetings. It's not that much. So you don't really have an idea of what's going on, but if at town meeting when you start hearing people is whatever, complaints or reasoning, could you at least something or what it was that you had to come back with a budget. I agree. I know other towns that have gone Australian ballot and then they do an exit poll and people write things like it's too much money. That doesn't help you when you need to go back and revisit, you know, if you're going to make a change or a reduction or whatever. So, you're right now meeting is important to have a dialogue back and forth so you can understand, you know, representative of, you know what people are thinking. So I think you're right. Agreed. Yeah, so anyway, thanks. Thanks very much for giving me some time and look forward to next Tuesday. That's right. There you go. Sounds good. Thank you. So, man, are you like when you use that to learn how to be a moderator, are you rooming anybody? Well, I attempted to find someone to fill it in. Unfortunately, actually, you know, sadly, the person who was really interested a few years ago was Carl Russell. So I've spoken with a few other people that didn't come to pass. So what will happen is obviously there may be a few write-ins. There may be somewhere, there are actually a certain number to win, yeah. It's allowed. But most likely it'll be up to the select board to appoint someone for next year, which is kind of a burden on them. But, and I'm willing to tutor, work with anyone, mentor someone who comes in to fill that spot. It's rewarding. It's only once a year thing, which is good and bad. I mean, you really have to prop yourself because you do forget, but it's an interesting job. And I think there are certainly people in this town who are more capable, much more capable than I am with that position. And I'm sure it'll, someone will step up here in the next two years. No, it'll be very quiet. Yeah, well, well, very quiet. Yeah, the select board will have to take applications interview and appoint. Yeah. Same process. All right. All right. Anything further, we're good go. Awesome. All right. We're also on the town meeting kick. So, you know, we have Linley and Jean who will not be running again. So, and both of them have put in quite a long time. Jean served a three year term on the board. And we thank you for his service and Linley, I'll try to remember is three two year terms is that what you served? You and I were two years, right? I was a two year term, but I was appointed before the election. So I've served about six and a half to seven years somewhere. There you go. Trying to remember that. She loved every second of it. I did. I'm going to miss it. I'm going to come past her. You just like fall. Yeah, I figured. So, you know, thanks. Linley's been. Well, she was the second oldest member. Even me. And Jean, it was good to see a new perspective to the board and, and, you know, as we say, it's not very thankless job. It is a thankless job. No problem telling you when you, you aren't doing a good job. And I guess it is, it's kind of one of those position. It is what you want to make it, right? I mean, it could be something that you really don't put a lot of time in. You just show up to the meeting and go through it, or you could really put a lot of time into it and, you know, invest your time into whatever the items are and, and I'm prepared. And, you know, and I really do think that, you know, that one thing I like about our board is our members seem to be prepared to talk on the items and to make action on those items. And that was something that, that I really liked about Carl, when I got on with him is when I got on with Carl, whatever it was nine years ago, whatever. There was two pages of we'll call action items that they had been carrying over for, I don't know how long, you know, that the goal was to try to check these things off and it was just because you know the boards just weren't necessarily ready for action and that's at the board level, but it's also, you know, Teresa is a good job of getting everything prepared and any information that we might need to talk about or to make an action on we have that information. So, and as you see now that Barry seldom are we not prepared to make action or if we are then the next meeting we usually get it through. So, so thanks everybody for their service and I'm sure we'll see you guys back again because everybody comes back. So, I mean, look at Paul, I mean, you know, now he's running again and he just, he didn't know what to do with himself. But don't forget planning commission is looking. I want to put income. So I need, I need to, you know, You know, Dave was once on the school board and he thought he was all done with his service and now he come back. So, yeah, but there's other positions open. So just if you run for select board, you don't make it or you retired from the select board that planning commission needs help the we need a town moderator. We need justice of the peace, right? We, yeah, that's right. We need, you know, the need we just we need every, every, well, maybe not the conservation commission. They're pretty well served, but every committee needs members. So your service doesn't have to end here. Energy committee needs help. I intend to continue with one or two committees. Oh, good. Well, that's good news. And we'll find a place for Lindley. And Rick dog catcher. That sound good. We'll let you drive the car. That's right. You can use a cruiser. So, well, thanks again. Yeah. And speaking of people, we have planning commission requests to add Chuck Davis. For a three year term. Thanks, Rick. Plus anybody has anything to talk about on that. I just need a motion to appoint Chuck Davis to the planning commission. Three years. All favor. All right. Chuck stuck. All right. And we had a second class liquor license. Thanks, Chris. Have a good day. For sand board enterprises. I love the new template. I know. I mean, you might as well just nine put it in there. I know. I can't even figure heads to tails on that. I know that's all you used to be this nice two page sheet. And now I just like, I don't even know what that is. I know it's, it's what Pam. It's almost like the, it's almost like the constable information. Oscar. Yeah, go. I know it is. It's really a Dakota ring to pick it up. Like, what is going on? I know. So, Oscar's class. We're talking about the liquor license. This is liquor class here. Yeah. No, we have he hasn't gotten that far yet. He was just talking about the form. So the site, so they're looking for a second class license and then a one time, then a one time permit for wine tasting associated with the university. So he was asking if you were going to sign up for the wine tasting class. Not a big whiner. Not a big whiner. I'll say I stay away from the alcohol. Yeah. I'll go for the cheese. So unless there's any discussion or issues with that, just need a motion to approve those two requests. So moved. Okay. All in favor. Hi. Hi. All right. Have it. Anything left on the town manager's report that's. Yeah, there is something in there. You can see that. I've never done this before put it in the packet. But, um, Brian Wright, a resident of. Great road wanted to know about the highway department breakdown from December to February. So I just went through their time cards and came up with some hours. I wasn't going to reprint every single time card because he wanted to know what the. Highway department, I guess, had been up to. So I went through quick and just tallied up everybody's hours. And then today he emailed me want to know where they had cut brush. So I told him, it was Pevine Park, Pevine Boulevard, Camp Brook Road. He was going to go follow up and look in those areas, I guess. And he's requesting that this be done on a regular basis, but I'll be honest. I mean, I look at their time cards and deal with it. I'm not. I don't necessarily have the time to. To do this every, you know, to keep an update on one specific department. I mean, you can. So I'm not sure if that's something that the select board wants moving forward. I did this as a one time thing for Brian to kind of see and and. But it wasn't anything I had tended to keep up on. Unless this is something that you want to see on a monthly basis. No. I don't. I don't. I see the time fair to when I do pay right, but I mean, it's. They're busy. That's all I know is that. Yeah. They're in motion. I mean, I. Prior to me kind of likes it. It was. Kind of nice to see what they've been putting hours to. I mean, I can certainly create again. I don't want to put together something that is going to. Take a lot of time to put, you know. Together out there, like. The line between being a supervisory board and micromanaging. Yeah. I mean, I just went through their time cards. I could. Use this template and then just every payroll that I approve at their hours then, but. You know, we don't do it for obviously for any other department, but they give me detail on what they're doing where they're calling because I need to see it. They also do that because if they're working on grants or there's FEMA works. It's not like anybody's trying to hide anything. They spell right out exactly what they worked on where they were. What they were doing. They are, but I'm not sure I need to have everybody and their brother coming in and going through people's time cards. Honestly, that's why I did it agreed to do it in a spreadsheet because, you know, then otherwise somebody, you know, but yes, it's public record. So I that's why I took the time to put it together. But if it's not, we could try it for a couple of months and. Not that I want to open up the can of worms here, but so our current time card system at the town. What, what does that look like? It's just paper card on. Yeah. Has there been any discussions about maybe going to. Like an electronic time card. We might because there are very simplified versions of it that you can literally do on an iPad. Right. For the nice things about that for you is. You could just. I'll make it up. I'll make it up. There could be like 10 different categories that they could put their time into. Right. And when they put it into one of those categories, you could easily if, if you had a request like that, you could easily populate a report rather than have to spend a bunch of time putting it on. Right. You know, counting it up. Well, it may be because I'm going to start fighting with the state pretty soon about that software that I want after the whole FEMA. And then they're coming around with their template and they're taking pictures and doing estimates and then we're out, you know, the slide rule and abacus and a piece of paper trying to figure it out. So I'm, I'm going to look at that software and that may be more inclusive. It may do time cards as well. But I like the detail because a this is easier for the guys. They all either have a file or put board up there and they write a lot of detail in there about what they were doing and what piece of equipment they were using. And so when I have to go double back to do FEMA work, you know, they're very specific about what they've been up to. So I don't know. So I mean, I guess I just have to not the nice thing that you can do. And it doesn't take a lot as you can. And I don't even know what apps you have, but I'm just thinking back at my work is have no apps right now. I mean, you know, you can establish your, your vehicle, you know, your equipment as well. And you can associate hours to the equipment. So you know that that equipment ran for 100 hours. And that's what, which is nice things because you could pull up a report to say, I don't know, I'll make it up. Let's say a service is required after every 500 hours. And you can say, Oh, well, that greater is due for service. And, you know, I mean, so there's a lot of nice things that matter that I've had a conversation with Ryan Slack about it because the state has a specific software. And he had gone to somebody at the States and why don't you let the towns use this? And that's what he does. And it's all very helpful. So I need to get ahold of Ryan to see if that's the same software. This other software that they were using for road construction also does his payroll and vehicle maintenance. So I have to, I mean, it's just awesome. I mean, it's so easy to print out a report like how much overtime. Okay, we'll just print it off and say, Oh, we had 40 hours overtime. Exactly. And then you know, and like, you don't have to like go through the time. Trust me. I've been through it. Did you have something 800 times because of FEMA? Yeah, I think, you know, obviously if we go to an online system, that's solved. But I think the bigger thing is I don't think it's a smart use for the board to approve. And again, there's a lot of work to be done. I think the three, four, one. And so there's the three, six times spent on one citizen's concern. If the town was receiving a number of calls about, hey, the road crew is up here theoretically cutting brush and actually it wasn't done well or it wasn't. Done at all, then that's legitimate reason to me, but the town isn't heard concern across the board. I think it just doesn't outweigh what the concern is and unless they that citizen could prove hey I really think you're missing something here or there were other pieces connecting into this that don't seem to be there. I don't think it's worth approving you to spend more time on this than it's worth. But that's just my 2 cents on it. That's good. Unless we're going to do it for all departments. I don't think we should do it for one. But a regular basis. It's a slip of a slope. Now we want to know what Trice does every day and what she does. I don't write details. Well, there's only one. But it could be, it could be, you know, what does this person do all day? Water department do all day. What does Richard do all day? Well, what does Dietrich do? Or whoever it would be. It's a slippery slope in mind. Well, I'll look into the slide. Like I said, I have a note and it was for and I told the state that that I was going to gear up and fight with the state after I got through FEMA because I want that software for, you know, any any possible future flooding. So let's see what the software can do and. And see what see what I would again, I'm not in favor of us doing this all the time. I just thought it just inspired a thing in my head thinking maybe we, you know, if we're not at this point, if we're not digitalized, we should be. Yeah, it's a place to think about. And it's not like it was 10 years ago where it cost major money. Now, right now it's, you know, the biggest investment probably would be you get the form in an iPad. Yeah, and they have an iPad is very easy. You can put them in the bill and they have an indestructible case. And it's really simple. And then even things like they have one flood repair. You know, God forbid we have another flood, which is coming in four years. It happens, but at least at least then they could put on their time card. This was you could say, hey, I opened up a phase code for flood repair. It's going to be this that's on your time card. And then, you know, bam, like all that time's laying in there or flood material or whatever, and then you can populate that. I mean, think how many hours you went through trying to figure that stuff out, right? Where maybe maybe hopefully you could just hit a report and come down. Exactly. No, it's definitely. Yeah. So like I said, it may be part of that software that I already talked to the one department of the trans about their piece. And I have to I have the name of the software and stuff to see. So what was the what was I saw in there? What was the grant or what was the equipment associated with the grant that Richard got? Yeah. So his is in here. You have something he was going to bill or know what happened is remember when we had our sewer or wastewater treatment plant review, they came in and the EPA had given the state some rules about five years ago. And they finally were saying, look, if you don't enforce those, we're going to. And part of it is that we needed we have to use this new sampler and flow meter. And we ended up borrowing one from because of Clayton, our relationship with Clayton with Marsh working part time for us from Heartland. So we need to get this new sampler. We have one outdoors and one inside. And as you can see, the whole thing is over twenty thousand dollars worth of equipment. And last time when they came originally, they said there was an application, a grant application. I came into the office to do it and it already expired. And so then they came up with this. So Richard did the application and is going to receive over twenty thousand dollars worth of wastewater equipment to handle those new APA requirements. So and while we talk about that, we should talk about this. So a water customers or users received a water service line customer survey in their billing statement. So they should have received it now. And what this is about is the state of Vermont department, you know, and our is requiring us by October twenty twenty four. We have to provide to the state a list of what every single water users service line is made of. Is it galvanized? Is it plastic? Is it lead? Whatever it is. And this tells you kind of a self reporting go in your basement and please tell us this information. And this is how to if you need to a scratch test to figure out whether what you got for metal in there. And we have to provide that information to the state. And so this was a first step. This was Richard's idea, which was a great idea. And because we have, you know, over three hundred connections in water. So if the majority of the residents take the time to fill this out, then we fill this in along with your span number, name and address. And we'll know what your service line is made of. If whoever does not respond, we're going to have to hire someone, a contract or somebody to make appointments with every single person that does not respond and go in their basement and take a look at what they have for a service line and and try to figure it out. So the state is doing this because it's an EPA requirement. So the feds tell the state and the state has to do it. So I spoke to a gentleman at the state today and said, you know, my guesstimate is that the state will at some point receive money. So that if anyone, I'm not sure if it's going to be galvanized, but if they had a lead service line, the state will the state will get money, they'll funnel it to the to the town and the town is going to have to work with the homeowner to update their service line. Now, I will say I'm opposed to this idea because our ordinance, as do most water ordinances say, stops at the curb, stops at the curb, stops, which it shouldn't matter what goes on behind that. But the state is not what the state isn't going to do is they're not going to give out 500 individual grants to homeowners. So what they're doing is exactly what we figured they're going to force it down onto the towns and we're going to have to deal with it. That's pushback. Well, we haven't gotten there yet. So our responsibility starts at the curb stops as long as we are delivering water in the quality that is laid out there. Once it gets to the curb stop, whatever happens beyond the curb stops on our house. And that's what I said today. I said, I'll be interested to see how much pushback you got. But he also said that's why Bennington got 10 million dollars in lead replacement because they weren't just doing a water project. They were also doing service lines. But I said they're doing people's service lines out. Did they is their ordinance different? Maybe it perhaps could be, but I know I don't see how you would. It's not yours. Well, but you know what? The if they're doing it for free, then the homeowner is not going to block. They don't want to have a lead water line and they're going to let you come in. And I'm sure there was also easements. So I'm sure that 10 million dollars that Bennington got from the state was managing legal easements as well as the replacement. So anyways, at this point, we have to we have to, you know, get this information done and get it to the state. The state gentleman told me today that the EPA is they're going to give the information to EPA, but it won't have a name attached to it. It's just going to be an address with whatever your water line is. He also alluded to the fact that maybe that I don't think it's going to be galvanized. I think it's going to be if you have a lead line, because he said if you have a lead water line and somebody else is down downstream of that, that the lead in that water line could attach to another galvanized line nearby. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. But the requirement is that we have it done and that's what we will do. We will provide the information to the state. We do have access to a grant of about, I don't know, 30 to 40 grand. And that comes with state rules, which are either you pay for it in house and use in house personnel or you hire a contractor. So at this point, we're doing what we can in house because we do know from our 2.8 million dollar water project and this 2.5 million dollar water project, we do know what some service lines are. We're filling in that information, really encouraging every resident to take the time to fill this out and drop it off at the town office and let us know what your water line is. And then at the end, if we have 50 or 100 people left, then we'll take advantage of the grant and hire someone to to figure out what the rest of the water lines are or service lines are. At this point, you know, I'm obviously we're well aware that multiple people have galvanized lines, but I'm not sure that anybody that we are aware of at this point has a lead service line. So, you know, after Irene, you had a lot of upgrades and things like that. So, so something of someone's that for school, you know, honestly, at this point, I don't I don't know. He's curious. Yeah. I don't have a plan yet until I see where we are and what this response round is. But yeah, I mean, it could be someone who was, you know, obviously responsible. But and so, yeah, we'll say what's coming in at the house of what's in the ground outside, you know, exactly. They're wanting us to go into the basement 10 times. It could have been saying that you go in the basement and look at it. It could be plastic, but could you get 10 feet outside the house that turned in that could be old lead pipe in the exact way? You don't know. No. And so you're right. And and but this is not our rule. This is EPA and the EPA, you know, the way the EPA works is the state is not does not have their own EPA. The state is currently authorized by the feds to implement their rules. So, you know, how this works, things rolled out. I don't understand it. I like how they. Anyways, yeah, so this is where we're at. That's what the gentleman property. I don't understand how the EPA is even involved in that because it's as he says it's health and welfare because if you have people in the house that are drinking and water that's contaminated with lead, just like all the lead paint rules they came out with. So again, like I said, I'm not I'm opposed to I'm not opposed to the landowner getting money to do it themselves. What I'm opposed to is me having a higher contract. One person I would the town have to be responsible for that. And I don't know the rules yet. And it could be that we just have to be a funneling mechanism to the homeowner. But that means we still have to see the bills. We still have to make sure that the person had it done and still have to make sure that they paid the contractor school. Yeah, right. So I don't know how it's going to sugar out. All I know is the short term bowl is October 2024. So please fill out your water service line information and drop it off at the town. You know, the one I think it's remind now you can have this if I can throw it. Oh, great. I was like, yeah, yeah, you do. And so it's nice. So yeah, so we're doing that. Also had a conversation with Frank Severy in Rochester today. Looks like the town of Rochester has a couple of projects that they're going to be taking care of on Camp Brook Road. And he said, don't you have another project to do? What kind of projects are they doing? Culver. Yeah, they have a couple of culver placements. And so we may be working with Rochester to try to schedule closure at the same time so that we do our project when they're doing theirs, that way we can share the cost of signage. And, you know, I'm just going to apologize right now. I told him I didn't really feel like out for another public beating, but, you know, so Rochester has some things to do there. So we're going to try to work to coordinate that. We also talked about Frank and I told him that we had moved forward last year, looking for money from Peter Welch for another federal ear mark for Camp Brook and that we didn't make it through the, you know, hoops of fire, but talked to Frank and said, you know, next time would you work with me to do it so we could make an application to either Senator Sanders or Welch looking for, you know, some sizable money to do the deal with the infrastructure and paving on Camp Brook. And they said they would, he said he'd be more than happy to do that. We could get support letters from more of both fire departments. They also had done a traffic survey up there, not long ago, so we could have some data about how many cars go over. So maybe a joint application for an ear mark. Could go. But yes, so I told Frank that I'd reach out to Jay McDonald and see when they were coming and which we'll try to coordinate our effort. So don't shoot the messenger. But we are at some point going to be closing in for a road again. So, so, you know, yeah, more. So that's like, oh, yeah. He knows his way around. Exactly. So anyway, yeah, you know, the detour is always one of that. But you know, it puts more people over the dirt roads and stuff. So I'm just going to say, I'm sorry in advance. So it's not in the trees. Lockers are closed to the east. It is closed right below our house. Those people from Rochester are going to be coming up over the mountain to go. Right. So they're going to have to do one hundred and one seven. So that'd be nice. Yeah, yeah. So and then we can split the cost of signage and work together. And and, you know, we owe a big thanks to Rochester. They were great during this project. They we certainly we paid them, reimbursed them, but they plowed and sanded a section of our road, which, you know, we couldn't have done it without them. They were super helpful about it and easy to deal with. So big thank you to John. He's the road foreman in Rochester for doing that. And yeah, they're good neighbors. So but yeah. So at some point to be determined, we will be. Those in camp record again. Tell your friends. Let's get the phone calls. But I hope it'll be won't be the winter time. So. But that's it for the town managers report. And I'm just reminding people a town meeting next week. Yeah, Tuesday. Select board meeting minutes from the 12th of February. I have one correction that you, Jordan's last name was listed as foreman. And I believe it's Garo. Oh, that's exciting to catch that. Sorry, Jordan. I didn't even see that. OK, any other corrections to the. Meeting minutes. No, it's not just need a motion to approve as amended. Don't move. Thank you. OK, on favor. All righty. Yeah. And there was a bunch of other communications in there. Ret committee was in there planning commission. I think there was one other one. Let's get a number. Oh, hey, Ellie, can I ask you a question? I forgot to ask you a question. I I can't remember. Honestly, if I emailed with you or if I emailed with. Kyle, all right, so I can't remember. So I apologize, but I had seen your notes and I had talked to Michael Parker. I think I know I emailed somebody saying that he'd recommended possibly some product called Elephant Snot to remove the graffiti. But if we do that, it's going to remove the coding that we already paid for. So I had emailed and like I said, I apologize. I thought it was you basically we're not going to do anything. We're just going to skateboard it off. We're not going to paint it. We're not going to do anything with it. And we'll just skate it off. You didn't email me. You know, I'm not the best pile. I apologize. Right. And we had talked about not doing anything because we've gotten all kinds of ideas of power wash and all kinds of things. And so we it's confirmed that, you know, and thought we could do something in the spring or summer, but we decided no, we'll just. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? Luckily, thank goodness is it was nothing vulgar. And I'm sure once those people get out there with their skateboards and bikes, it'll probably just wear right down. And I'm afraid, too, that if we do do it, that it's an invitation to come back. And then maybe we won't like so much what they put the next time. Unfortunately, my kids have a project of a design project or whatever. But but so many of people that we asked like Dana or the art teacher, they said it would be shiny paint and it would it would be more and more and more or less would ruin it more. So it wouldn't it wouldn't it wouldn't be a good idea. But hopefully, I was flipped the pamphlet wear it right off. So yeah, all right. Good. I saw yeah, it must have been Kyle. I just can't I couldn't remember because he was kind of overseeing it. So it must have been him that I'd emailed. So I just couldn't remember. But no, all right. So it was probably him because he and I were dealing with the construction. So excellent. All right. Well, good. Good. Good. It'll be one of those things. So it's good that you asked me here tonight. Thanks. Thanks. I'm sure we rework that at our meeting next week. We have a meeting next week. So well, you know, probably no, no, I saw it. I was up there inside. Well, yeah, I know it's it's unfortunate. Yeah, only a bummer. Well, thanks. Yeah. No, thanks for clarifying because I was I saw it in there and I meant to ask. So yeah. And so thank you. Anything else to come before the board? I'm just reminding. Oh, so the CLA Rick Benson did send a list to to our district advisor, Jen Myers, and Jen's going to review the list and then get back to us. So whether or not that's going to change our CLA or not, you know, probably unlikely, but we did have some questions about why some things that Mo and Judy wanted omitted they included. So, you know, we'll see. We're trying and I'll let you know what the results are. All right. Anything else? OK, you're none. Just need a motion to adjourn. So we'll move. Second.