 I will call tonight's meeting to order very good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes. Okay, so I'll call tonight's meeting to order at 630 and First, we have we have one council member who is here remotely. So Donna, I'd ask you to identify yourself and you are muted. Are you get it's, it's happening. Okay. Try it now. Yes. Donna bait district one. Great. Excellent. Okay. I'll mention briefly logistics. We are here. For the first time since the flood in the council chambers. I'm, I think we're all very happy to be back here. We will be taking comments from from the public and from in the in the room and also remotely. Sorry. If we would ask that everyone who is participating, it looks like he has mandate. Okay. We'd ask everyone who's participating remotely to change your name display to your first and last name so that we can see and have a record of who's, who's coming to us. And for all topics on the agenda or, or not on the agenda, we ask members to limit or members of the public to limit yourself to to three minutes. And counselor bait will assist us with the with the timekeeping with the yellow and a red signal yellow at when there's one minute left to go. And red when your time is up. Now we will begin by approving the agenda. Has there been a chance to review the agenda and have any proposed changes. Okay. We'll consider the agenda to have been approved. Next item on the agenda is general business and appearances. It's an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any subject. That is not on the agenda. And again, we ask that you one be recognized by the chair to indicate your name and where you live and then limit your comments to three minutes. I'll start here in the room. Steve. First, first is a point of order. The meeting wasn't properly warned. You may not want to take any other action other than your budget discussion. The minute the packet that was sent out to the normal posting sites included a December 13 agenda, not the agenda for tonight. And that was correct or somebody went and found the current agenda. But it wasn't 2 days before the meeting as is required by open meeting law. Okay. Thank you. It sounds like you're going to dismiss it. So just it was actually posted properly in all locations except the library, the library. We did put the wrong date up and it was corrected, but it was posted in sufficient public places. So it was properly warned, but Steve is right that the library did have the wrong posting. And what were the other locations senior center in this building and all the public locations only needs to locations. Secondly, I've raised repeatedly the, I've got photos, but I'm not going to print them for you. I'm happy to email them to the council. The amount of trash that has gone down the riverbank. Especially from Shaw's, including the get glass recycle bin the crushed glass containers that roll that that are from their recycling machines has slid under the guardrail around the Palmer low property. I've been raising this for years and no improvement has been made. The amount of trash that blows down falls down the riverbank and then over it confluence all the trash that the folks beer drinkers over there throw down the bank. Most of it was conveniently removed by the flood, but that's no favor to our neighbors down river. So I would ask you that, you know, if you're going to put this environmental responsible in your budget and in your strategic plan and all that, I'd like you to walk your talk. That's enough for now. Thank you. Any other member of the public here in the room who would like to address the council. And is there any member of the public online who would like to be heard at this time. Okay, not seeing any. We have. Next up, we have the consent agenda. I'll point out to the public into the council the one item that's been added has been a street closure or a rally at the post office on Monday. We'll have the full congressional delegation here to call for the United States Postal Service to reopen a post office in Montpelier and downtown Montpelier. I tend to be here. I think anyone, anyone who is interested should be there. So is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? Is there a second? Okay. It's moved and seconded. All those in favor indicate by saying aye. Any opposed. Okay. Thank you. We are now onto the main item of business tonight, which is the budget workshop. This is the opportunity for members of the council to go over the budget with the with department heads. And we have received some questions from council members and answers from the from the manager. And do you have anything to add? Just a couple of things. All of those questions and answers will be posted in our budget information so the public can see them all. I think obviously we've got a group of people here tonight at your request. I know that public works fire and police are prepared. More prepared to speak with you than others, but I think everybody's ready if is need be. And really, this is your workshop to decide how you wish to proceed with making your decisions. Finance director does have the spreadsheet active to keep track of any changes that or potential changes and what those impacts are. And we can put it up if need be. So if or if people would like. So I think other than that, it's really how you want to move forward. Okay. Thanks. I think I did ask Bill to have our department heads is specifically fire police and public works to be here prepared to make a brief presentation so. I don't care who comes in which order. Why don't we bring the police up first. And as as you're getting settled, I know that we had some discussions at our last meeting about how many about where the where the money is where the funds are in in our budget out of out of all our city employees, which, which numbers just over 116 employees together fired police and public works are 80 of those 116 so. That's those are based very fundamental services and that's where we're spending a lot of money so. I just make one informational point with regard to the police budget before the chief gets into his presentation as there's a subtle difference between how police was handled in the budget versus fire. And DPW and that is that police has been operating. So we mentioned that we did not fund the 17th police position in this budget. We also haven't funded in this current budget we've been operating at 16 this year and last year. And that was in part because of the pay changes and that was a way to pay for them and then we had a bunch of outages and so we had agreed we would only go to 16 so the plan was to increase them to 17 in the FY 25 budget. But the budget is proposed doesn't reduce them from where they're at now, whereas in fire and DPW it is actually a reduction from their current operating system. So it was that there's a subtle difference. It's still a cut in that we were planning to add the new position back, but just so people understand I'm happy to try to explain that again if people can get it but. So I wanted, I wanted to get that out there before Eric started talking so. Okay, thanks. Thanks. So thank you. Thank you for having me. It's nice to be back here and see everybody here. I know we did some budget videos and hopefully everybody had a chance to do those so any specific questions. I'm happy to answer just a quick kind of overview on us to kind of summarize what Bill had talked about is that yes we are authorized for 17 police officers. You know, it was probably 10 to 12 months ago we were down to 11. I'm more than thrilled to say that we're at 16. So I consider that full strength. I'd like to be at 17. I'd like to be at more than 17, but we're not losing any people. If we were to lose that position right now. So to worry about people. I think that was our most important part. So this wouldn't reduce any people we're operating with with 16. Right now we have all our staffing filled, which means we have a chief, a deputy chief. We added an additional sergeant, which we thought was really important because 6 of our patrol officers have less than 4 years experience. And we felt that having, you know, somebody too young to be a supervisor in our place was a bit challenging and put a stress on them and also our PD so we added an extra sergeant and kind of boosted our more experienced people to be leaders and then try to develop those people. So there's a little cost shift somewhere along the way by adding an extra supervisor. So we thought that gave us an opportunity pretty much to develop an extra supervisor and also have some good leaders for each shift. Something else this this does address. If you notice the budget for police and then parking and I tried to deal with this a little bit in me. In the YouTube video was that we've shifted some of our police budget to the parking revenue and the reason for that is really simple is the police department manages all of the parking. From the appeals to answering phone calls to running all the dispatch, the licenses, all the checks, it's a pretty heavy lift for us to manage parking. So we shifted some of the cost of the police to more accurately reflect in the parking money. We're still watching the revenue that's coming out of parking because, you know, we're post flood and we're trying to get back. So I think we have to watch that pretty closely to make sure that we match the revenues with what's projected. So a couple of concerns for us there. You know, when you actually look at the police department, 83% of our budget is people. So when we start to look at, you know, where do you cut? You know, there's only so many pens and pencils and computer applications and programs that we can cut. So it gets down to people. And it, it's really tricky. We were able in this budget to fund more training. And in my budget video, I presented how important training is to us and how limited training is inside Vermont right now. So the reason I asked for more training was I need more money for training was I need to travel how to state often to get more training. And then I asked for a boost in the travel expenses because obviously the travel then is more expensive. So those are my big pushes for capital improvement. So we asked for zero. Well, we asked for some, but we've, we've settled for zero. We think we can manage the fleet for an extra year without a new car. And we've, we've partnered with DPW to use their, their asset tracking software, which we hope will more accurately reflect what we need and when we need it. So that's in progress. So there's a little hope there, but I think we're pretty comfortable not having a new car for this year. Once you dispatch, I think dispatchers numbers are pretty interesting. We, we have eight full-time dispatchers. We are currently full there. You know, they answer all the calls 24 seven. We're anticipating a loss of one of those dispatchers taking a job in another field closer to home. So a little tough, but the good news is I think we can fill that job pretty quickly if authorized. I think it's needed because we have one person on a long-term injury. And if you get another person out, you get the overtime that hits you pretty hard. So, you know, filling that position is really important to us. When you look at dispatch, you see about 92% of our budget as people. So again, you know, we have phones, we have computers, we have the technology, and then we have people. So to lose anything there again, it's just people. So then when we get into our parking, parking is always just an interesting thing. 96% of our budget is people again. And then, you know, two of those people are part-time. Some, you'll write enough tickets to make it their salaries pretty well covered. I try not to budget anything on tickets. I don't think that's a great way to do it, but you have to at least look at the revenue and see, you know, is the cost worth it for them. So we have to just, we're still looking at parking to see is there a better way to do that? Is there a way we can save some money? So we're still evaluating some of that stuff. And then, you know, our 3.7% in operating is just, it's technology. So, you know, do we want to have the computers that they write the tickets for? Do we want to pay for kiosks? You know, I would argue I don't want kiosks anymore. I like to park mobile. It's cheaper and it's a little easier for the end user, but that's my own personal preference. But other than that kind of gives you a little summary. We're fully staffed, you know, for the authorization at both police dispatch and also for parking. So we're in a pretty good situation. I'll subject to change with no notice, as everybody knows. But, you know, we're prepared to pivot if, you know, we lose some people here and there. Great. Thanks. Do you feel that you're, you have enough people to meet the demand at your current level of staffing? So I always would like more, you know, to be quite frank, you know, when I have somebody out, I tend to backfill. One overtime reduction strategy that we used is we went from a minimum staffing of 3, which was a supervisor and 2 patrol officers down to 2. So that's how we've saved a significant chunk of overtime as we're running, you know, instead of filling to get to 3 every time. If, you know, somebody calls out and I have 2 people already on, we're going to keep it at those 2. It's really tricky when you have to do a transport or you need to take someone to the hospital or, you know, there's, it's really tricky because that leaves 1 person or potentially 0 people here in town. So, you know, I would be more comfortable knowing that I had 3 on, but I also know the budget constraints that we have. So we had to deal with it that way. So to say, am I comfortable? It makes me nervous at night that there's only 2, but we've somehow managed. I seem to recall that a while back, way back when we were down to. 11 or 12 officers. We were talking about or maybe even you had gotten to the point of not providing 24 hour coverage. Where are we back to that now? Yeah, we've been back to 24 hour covers for quite a while. As soon as we got our staffing up and then got them trained, we're right up right away. There was a big push everybody at the PD was we take a lot of pride in being there and being available all the time. So that was a big priority, not just for me, but for everybody that works there is to make sure that we're staffed the way the city deserves. And one last question. Do you have any knowledge? I was looking at some of the comments from the public about how our level of staffing compares to other communities about our size. You know, the easiest comp for me is Barry. You know, the population is very similar and they're authorized for 21 and we're authorized for 16 to 17. So, you know, they're struggling to get to 21. I think we have an incredible environment at my player PD. Our culture is really good. Our training is really good. Our facilities are really good. The community really supports us. I think I could fill to 21. If you want to give it to me, I'd happily take it those cringing over there, but you know, I'm pretty confident in the environment that we have that we could fill those positions so. Thanks, Lauren. Thanks. I mean, I know we talked about it a little bit in December, but you know this was a topic again that the police review committee had looked at closely and and one of the points that was raised at the time that I thought was pretty compelling was, you know this, your profession is very stressful and you want to have people who you're not overtaxing that you're not putting into the situation where people are over tired and taking on shifts and I mean I guess for me I hear you and appreciate and you know I think this collegial spirit of all of the you know what can we live with for one more year. I mean, to me, I would repeat like, I would hope maybe we could budget for 16 but authorized 17 and if the state comes through with us for more money or something that that is our goal and our target but that we are kind of indicating that the target is to get to 17 if resources allow. You know I think there was a lot of analysis and that you know you all had really kind of calculated a really good balance and you know very reasonable and not overstaffed department at 17 so that would be that would be my just one thought. And just really grateful to see the training that was another big area of the police review committee really that investments are really appreciative to see that continuing commitment it's so important and similarly the you know computer programs and technology, you know that translates to data access and transparency for community members so I think that's all great so just wanted to appreciate all of those investments that are continuing. Yeah thanks so I similarly really appreciate your kind of the spirit of let's all pitch in and do what we can here and cut where we can, but I do want to make sure that we really have the needs of our community met. So, so just to confirm we do have the 24 hour coverage now is that right and we would keep it under this staffing scenario. Okay, that's correct. That's great. But you did talk a little bit about what might happen during the lean times we don't have a lot of people on and so I'm well I'm trying to really understand what the impacts to service would be by not filling that 17th. And if we could do what Lauren is suggesting and say that we're authorizing 17 if funds allow that'd be great. But can you talk a little bit more about what the impacts might be on our community without that. So that's actually a great question and I'm glad you asked it because I wasn't sure how to approach that. What happens right now with 16 officers if say I have somebody out long term which I do, you know that drops to 15 so then what happens there is you pull from your investigation unit. I don't know about you but there's been a couple fires there's been a school bus shooting there's been a few big things here in town well I had to pull the detectives off all their stuff that cover the calls and be part of the two. So where does it suffer it suffers and investigations right. So it becomes really tricky and we were just able to put the detective back, you know, on Tuesday right and what happens on Tuesday you know there's an arrest that not necessarily was the school bus shooting but was related to that and you know helps further that investigation because we had the resources to do those things so you don't really know the cause and effect until you're actually, you know feel that feel the pain a little bit of where you're pulling from, you know so what where we pull our bullpen is basically it goes from the detectives to the deputy chief. So we haven't got to the deputy chief yet and we haven't got to me yet so that part's good. You know when you get to the deputy chief it becomes a lot of the administrative tasks then become onto me, which is fine. I think we dealt with that when we had 11 or 12 but I think the demands in this town are pretty high and you know that to have somebody that can do a lot of the administrative lift is really helpful. Also keeps me healthy. So I think that part's important. You know see if I had the 17th officer. What does that mean to me. It means that if I have somebody out I'm not pulling the detectives out. It means that I have the potential to have three people scheduled and maybe I don't fill on certain days and we can look at data we we tend to you know schedule a lot we look at data and you know times a day when we might need things. You know so it would give us a I always called the bullpen you know there's there's an extra body there not necessarily an extra body there's just another body there to count on when you need it. Special events you know I always think are you going to save a ton and overtime when you have 17 and I wish I could tell you that that's the case I don't think that's the case you're not going to save a ton of overtime by the 17th because you're still going to have all your court cases and that person's going to be there and you're still going to have your court cases and that person's going to be there and then you'll be able to track you know activity you know when you have more officers you typically have more self initiated activity which you'll see in my annual report we're up about 18% and activity and a lot of that is because we have more officers out doing the work right and when you generate more work you have more courts and you have more hearings and things like that so you know the 17th is not a magic ball to save us any overtime so when you look at the cost I completely understand the budget and the numbers. Also want to just add to that because I think you were being generous. When when we were down 11 and 12 the chief and deputy were both regularly pulling chefs. You weren't just doing administrative work. So they were working. Yeah, I wasn't certain I was going to survive that that year and a half period honestly it was it was a lot. Yeah. Um, I saw your video I thought you did. Thank you. Very articulate. You and my mom. And I appreciate your feeling these questions, especially for something like me who has been through this process before and I know there's at least review committee, but, you know, I come from a construction industry where overtime is just out of the question because you under fixed contract. And people are tired they tend to cut their thumbs off on the table saw when they work late. Sometimes time is money though and you got to push the job through and get it done and so you do it. But when I saw the overtime numbers I said wow, those are really big numbers. And then I saw your video and I, I. You talked about a couple of things. And I asked a question about about overtime and it's actually been. Based on historical shortfalls actually in budgeting on overtime. So the increases are large but they're typical of what's been happening and so I'm trying to figure out, you know, how that happens. But in the in the video and again tonight you mentioned that you. You, you're, you're taking some steps that that might change that somewhat going from one super and two patrols to just two people. And you talked about having a third person would be preferable in that particular case. You also mentioned in dispatch. That going to single coverage or experimenting with single coverage. Did that experiment. So that's a great question to December was our test month and what we typically did was we ran double coverage from 8am to midnight every day of the week seven days a week. And then we'd run single coverage from midnight to 8am. So the 24 hour clock for most people it's confusing but for us it's just normal. So what we've what we've tinkered with is we are not posting overtime from 8pm to 8am. So we would run single coverage. We had three incidents of that in December. So that to say I saved a ton of money was probably about four or $500 but like, you know, as I told my kid it takes 20 nickels to get a dollar. So, you know, it adds up so and you didn't compromise coverage. It certainly covered the compromises coverage and the thing you don't know is you don't know what's going to happen. Right. So if we have that ice storm and it's there's only one person on it's a nightmare. You know, if you have a fire and you're asking for mutual aid from all over the place it's a nightmare. So it becomes really challenging for that. You know dispatches significantly over budget on overtime and the reason that they've had two people out on long term that had to be filled. You know, it's just it's it's hard. There's no bullpen. There's only the people that we have and if you want to have the coverage and the two people on. You know, we have a the capital fire district pays us a lot of money to provide a service to a lot of communities and, you know, we feel we owe it to them to provide a quality service and that service costs a lot of money. And then when two people are out you're stuck with that overtime. So both of these initiatives that the single coverage and the the patrol going from three to two. Is that was that something you tried recently or you've been doing that. So we, we instituted the when we started losing numbers of about a year and what now time flies probably two years ago right two years ago we started to do that because what we realized is exactly what Lauren was saying is we were just crushing our staff. You know they were just working and working to keep the minimum staff of three up. There's no days off, you know, you felt like you were the Patriots there for a while. I had 11 or 12 and we're trying to keep that. Yeah, so we're trying to keep the three and it just wasn't it wasn't working for us. It wasn't working for the staff and you know, the staff is the most important people we have right so if the staff isn't healthy and happy they're not delivering a good quality product to the community so the staff are the most important and I have to take care of them. I made that decision to drop the coverage. I don't like it I still don't like it. If I have to take someone to St. Johnsbury, you know, somebody in custody it's, you know, one person has to drive up to St. Johnsbury by themselves. And that leaves one person in the city, you know, if it's a female I'm not comfortable having a male drive a female all the way to St. Johnsbury you know so I have two people go. I don't want to call somebody in to do that transport or do we just say you know what we'll cite them for tomorrow and it doesn't really matter what the judge said and hope they show up tomorrow like because we just can't do it. And that's that's a hard decision we've had to make sometimes to just say you know what we can't do this. We don't have enough people to do it. It's $100 bail for something silly and you know what we're not going to do it. Well, it's a very complete answer I was hoping something for a different one but As I understand it then the the overtime that's in the budget for police is based on historical numbers and and a two person patrol instead of a three person patrol. Yeah, for the last I was hoping that you were going to try the two person you can try. So it just it didn't yet it didn't actually save anything. No and so when you start to look at when we're doing the budget itself when you start to look at the amount of time off everybody has and you start adding up time off and you know sick time and then training time you're at 789,000 hours between everybody at the PD and a lot of that has to be filled. So your numbers go up just with your contract obligations and that doesn't include court special events and all the other things that we have so the demands with no bullpen are really high. So I'm, I'm guessing then that if we authorized you for 20 police and and reduced overtime by that amount in the budget. You're saying that probably wouldn't help. I don't know if it would it would help it would help some right would you like to go and this is this is a good question for you do you want to go back to the three person coverage which is something that I would really like to do. You know to do that I would need a certain number of cops right and then when, like I said before is if you have more cops you generate more activity that results and you know, results in court time and those other things which are all over time. So you can do some creative scheduling with overtime with with court time, but like most courts are during the day, you know, you know, I have people that work 16, 8am, you know 16, which is 4pm to 8am so 16 hours a day is the courts not open so those people have to come in and their time off to cover court. Complete answer. Following up on that. We talked about doing a transport to St. Jay. Are there are there times where you make the decision to keep somebody in the lock up here in the building rather than drive them over in the middle of the night. No, we're not authorized to keep people overnight. It's not good practice for us to keep people overnight. The longest we would keep somebody is if we had to call somebody in to do the transport. It's just nothing that I'm comfortable keeping people. We're not we're not a lodging facility. We're simply a holding facility. It's not fair to the people. It's not fair to us to hold them there. I was actually just going to suggest for. Following up on the line of question from council member Alfa and we're just for everybody watching this if the chief could maybe just list the things that cause us to incur overtime just in general. I mean, you've mentioned a few but you know, replacing people, an incident court, you know, just so people understand why we generate overtime. Yeah, sure. Yeah, we run the way the way we run most of our shifts is we oftentimes can absorb a person taking a day off, but the majority of the time it is filling shifts or time off training sick leave. There's some people out on long term leave. I have, I think, three people that are military so that's, you know, two weeks a month and you know a couple times a year so that's it's a pretty significant chunk. Training is a big expense. I'm trying to get an emergency response unit up and running which is, you know, 16 hours per training day of overtime. You know, that's a it's a really important piece I've had to slow the training down which I'm not really happy about but I had to slow it down just to kind of get costs under control. It's a regional team that, you know, it's certainly not a SWAT level team but a team that is highly trained to do high risk stuff. And it's, you know, it's county wide. So it's been a big push. It's been a three year push we're on year three. I've got the funding for the final training through the cops office and I'm just trying to figure out how to make it feasible financially to continue doing it. Because years ago I would often be going down to the police academy to do do in service training on landlord tenant law has the has the academy cut back on the training that they provide. Yeah, they've significantly cut back on it. Once you once you get out of like the first couple years of being a police officer, most of the stuff that they offer is, you know, pretty basic. And I think, you know, you still have to challenge your officers you still have to, you know, find their interests and and kind of keep them going. So, you know, high level trainings are important and, you know, every time somebody comes back from a pretty good leadership training or a tactical training or a negotiation training or any type of training that kind of rejuvenates them and brings another energy back to the police department and it gets infectious you know so you try and you try and ride those waves as much as you can and like schedule those trainings so like somebody's always coming back happy and it just keeps everybody a little happier. Yeah, there's a certain number of hours each officer has to get maintained certification right. Yeah. So each officer is required a very minimal amount which is 30 hours. And it barely covers. I'm not comfortable having new officers on the road with just 30 hours of training that's if you want the bare minimum that's not me that we deserve better they deserve better the community deserves better they're going to be trained to a high standard and high level so we're going to keep investing in that and you know I have some like our canine when you know this budget cut the canine. You know, it's extremely expensive extremely expensive program from a car to outfitting to the dog. You know, it's just the overtime to the travel. You know when we started looking at people the dog had to go right so it just that was a tough that was a tough one to swallow, but you know cost wise and activity wise it didn't justify it and do I like that decision now of course I don't like that I'm probably going to lose my canine officer to another department, you know like that's that's okay. I don't like the canine and the canine and that's what we have to do but you know there's a lot of things that we can do and there's a lot there's some things we can't and that was one of them we couldn't do. Yeah, Ellen. Thank you for your presentation. So, even if hiring one more officer will not affect the overtime positively it will not reduce overtime expenses I think we should still hire because public needs is more important. In terms of public safety. Have you done any work with the city. If you want to hire this person, how can find the money without creating like too much for the budget. Sure, you know, thank you. One of the tricky parts is typically if you want to do like what they call cops grant, you know, there's a match. So, and then at the end of a certain period of time, you're on the hook for all of it. So it's really do you want to get do you want to do that and commit to that over the long term. And you know, I think this this was a time where we just had like a pretty hard budget reset to kind of get things back in order. And I'm a piece of that budget reset, you know, like, there's not anybody that's going to come after me that's not also going to say similar things that like we'd love to have all this stuff but we also think there's probably time for a budget reset to right. So, yes, I can explore that. You're fine. I think that zoom crashed. Donna, see you raise your hand. They missed my best part. Recording in progress. I need you to unmute the. Thank you. I think Donna wanted to ask a question to. Yes, we will. I'm very, very sorry, but this on remote, we couldn't hear palin at all from like her third sentence when she asked about having additional officers. I don't know if anyone else told you that. Well, we, we just got that kind of late in the process. So thanks, Donna. Do you want it? Yeah, I can. I'll ask her to speak. And is there a better way for me to try to speak since I can't unmute my unmute myself. Go ahead. Yeah, raise your hand. But yeah, that is an issue that we should. We've been trying to address. You should be able to stay unmuted, but I'm not sure if there's a way to do that. We're working on that. Okay. Well, just to restate what she said so that we can. Everyone can hear it. If you missed it, everybody else did too. So. And we didn't hear Eric's response. I mean, I totally support her about, let's have the 17 officers. But it would be nice for everybody to hear it. Thank you. I hope I can remember. So I was trying to learn if any work has been done. Without creating a burden to our budget to find some kind of financial resources to hire. And the 17th officer, I think that's, that's the reason that summarizes it pretty well. And my response was very simple that you can look at cops grants, you know, through the government and there's usually a cost share in those grant applications. And then at the end of a certain period, you're on the hook for the entire cost. And then. Go ahead and jump in on that. So typically. This might not be exact, but typically they, you know, we would only pay like 25% the first year and the government would pay federal government would pay 75%. Then the second year goes to 5050 the third year 7525 and then the fourth year we have to pay and then we have to agree to keep that position. For at least two or three years. This was this been a long standing program when they were trying to get more police officers in the street. So, and we've used it in the past. It is a way to build up. But it does require a long term commitment. So if we're in this boat next year and we're trying to cut back, we can't that would be off limits. So, and just for sake of just so people know a new police officer. At the lower end of the scale with benefits and everything and all in overtime calculator would be about $125,000 if we were to put that in the budget. $125,000 for a new officer. I couldn't tell who said that but that correct is the answer. And whoever spoke. Okay, I'd like to make sure you. Anyone who wishes to address the council to raise your hand to be recognized and we'll go from there right now. We're still going through questions that the council members might have. And I just want to clarify to that point, that includes their base pay that includes all the benefits and includes anticipated overtime, you know, we allocate certain overtime for each officer given the needs that we anticipate. So it is all in with all costs, including FICA contributions pension contributions and everything else. So that is, it's we don't pay a new officer $125,000 salary. That is the all in cost for a new officer. Thanks. Anybody, any council members up here 10. Yeah, Donna, do you, did you I have a question you wanted to ask or jump in. No, okay. Thanks. No, so just turn it. Get figure this out. So we've got roughly looks like from the numbers here, maybe a little over 300,000 overtime between the police department, the dispatch and the parking. So, you know, if you know this organization better than any of us, is there anything you'd like to do or would recommend that might soften the overtime and contribute better to the organization. So, I think I kind of answered it again, but I'll try again. I would like more officers, but I can't guarantee you that's going to save you the $125,000 that you put into it. You know, can you save 25,000 per new person. I'm not really certain. You know, I just I don't know what the activity level would be. I don't know what the court would be. I don't I don't know what there's a lot of unknowns in there. And, you know, this budget, I didn't say it for the, for the renew was kind of just that hard reset. And we use the actual numbers that we're doing. And then we had a year to sales point of us using a reduced number of staff members to kind of build in that, that overtime budget. And then, you know, we have those unique, those unique things, you know, a couple of people were out long term. I've had two long term military leaves. There's just certain things that you can't predict and then, you know, to health issues and dispatch. So, when you add all those things up, it's just a normal day for us. But I often joke, you know, when I was a patrol officer and I called in someone had to fill in because I was like, I was important then right by calling today like there's no big deal. My stuff will be there tomorrow. Right. It's but it's not the same for dispatch and it's not the same for police like someone has to answer the phone and someone has to respond to the calls like my job can stay for tomorrow. Maybe I just want to follow up on that. But you kind of said it is, which is, you know, in police and fire, it's a little different than any of our other departments because they're 24 hour operations. So, you know, we have to have a certain amount of people on, or it's ideal to have a certain amount of people on to get the work done. So in city hall or even in DPW if someone's out, they're just out and they run short for the day. Police are out and they get below, you know, people, they, we have to serve the city. So we need people on, we need a dispatch and call someone and that's at overtime. So we're paying the sick time outage or the vacation outage plus time and a half for that person. If there's a major incident and we call more people in. The flood, for example, you know, that's all at overtime. There's when there's a protest or a march or even a fun popular live event, we have extra people on in police fire and public works as well. Overtime costs. And so court police, you know, when they have to go to court on their day off that's, you know, four hours. Overtime for that. So, you know, it's, it's, it's part of the function of doing the job. And as Eric said, even if you have more people, you can manage some of that. But then those people have to go to court. Those people have time off. So it is, it's actually, it's, it's in some ways cheaper than hiring a lot of people because we're just backfilling with the folks we have to a point. I think you can't, you can't look at overtime as an inefficiency. It's kind of a cost of doing business. The question is, can we manage it as efficiently as possible and still do the business that we have and that's worth challenging ourselves every year, but particularly this year. So just taking it through. So, public service we want the best public safety we can have. And within government, we're going to study this and try to understand it. There's clearly an infinite demand for a free service public procedure there. Boom to answer the questions, do whatever you need to do. Are there tasks, things that are frequently being asked of the police department that are stretching you, but aren't really primary public safety roles is are the things we could cut back on. No, I'm not trying to, I'm trying to figure this out because I know what, you know, just listen watching teachers over the years in schools and, and they've had to take on more and more, you know, social services aspects to their jobs and I'm sure that's the same police officers because I watched it and your people are amazing. But it's like, but is there anything out there that's stretching the limits for your team that you could pull back. There's a lot of social demands obviously I mean you take a walk downtown and you can see the social demands everywhere we look right. You know, we have our embedded clinician and you know everybody's like that's the be all end all you know that's just another piece of the puzzle, you know, and they're typically with us and they don't have a magic wand anymore than anyone of us to to solve all the problems. You know, some of the things that, you know, that, that stretch our budget pretty good or those, you know, the quick pop up events, you know, and we approved one today, you know, like, that costs money, right. So, you know, I'm going to have TPW on staff to come and help me and, you know, trying not to bring any people in to do this but, you know, we have three of the highest profile politicians in our state showing up and we're running at bare bones, right. And does that make a lot of sense, you know, especially with what's going on in the world that it literally makes me nervous. So, do we want to stop those or the capital city we can't stop that you know, so it's just it's really a tricky spot to be in a capital city and have a budget crisis and you know they have real problems too. And all of those things cost a lot of money to deal with. Thanks. Council members anything else before we. Thank the chief. Okay, great presentation. Thanks. Oh, thank you. You're going through it all again. The, the expertise is, is great for this. All right, let's bring up chief gallons. Good evening. Good evening. And thank you. As chief said, thanks for having us here. And I'll start with we are one of the departments that's proposing to reduce our staffing from 17 to 16. I'll let you know that the reduction is myself. I will be retiring on July 1st. And so that without that's the 17th position that we're going to be leaving. I've been with the department 45 years and it's time to move on. I would love to stay another 45, but I hope my wife's not watching right now, but I would stay another 45, but I can't. And so it's time to move on. So what does that mean? That means the plan is to reduce from 17 to 16. And obviously when you reduce staffing, you reduce service. There's no, there's no way around it. If you go from 17 to 16. We're going to be reducing our service under the current. Scheduling that we have. We have four nights a week. We have four people working. If we drop from 17 to 16, that'll drop down. It'll drop down to three nights a week of only. For people working under the current and I want to emphasize that's under the current staffing. Situation we have. Could we look at a different way of staffing? We probably could. We could look at different things. So, but under the current that is, but in addition to that, when you drop from 17 to 16. It reduces by one. So that's one less person at a major fire. That's one less person at a flood. It's one less person to draw from. Well, I'll just start by thanking you for all those decades of service. Do we have any questions for members of the council? You know, it's just an amazing record. Thank you. So it will be upsetting seeing you to leave, but yeah, 45 years. It's a great, great time, I think. So are you, I mean, the department planning to hire new one for you or you are just promote someone from the 16, which means that if someone becomes administrative, then it is not the real 1615 right in terms of providing service. So I just want to learn how it will affect the new structure or like how it will affect. Yeah, I'm looking at the city manager. I don't think. I don't think there's a plan in place currently. Well, so. Yeah, I can tell you the plan, the plan is that we have to hire a new fire chief. So that's a plan and we certainly would make that available to members of the department if they are interested and capable. If not, we would have to search outside and then that could that could be a problem if there's no vacant position, then we would be looking at, you know, possibly someone an existing position having to be laid off and that is not anyone's desire. But that, you know, we do have to fill the chief and we'd have to probably have to figure out a way that how the chief. I mean, currently the chief can take calls, but rarely does. And it might be that we have to have someone who can take more call, you know, I think those are all things we need to work at. You know, we have six months and my plan would be to sit down with the department as a whole and see what their thoughts are about all of this and to see what we end up with with the budget. Yeah, I kind of have the same confusion. So if you're hiring a new chief, but you're cutting a position, would there be like no assistant chief in the model? Is that what you're contemplating? No, it would be, no, I think we would be cutting a firefighter position, but the deputy chief can also respond to calls as they can now. And the question is, how do the can the fire chief respond to more calls than they currently do, which is not a slam above. They're just doing a lot of things. And, you know, one of the things we have to look at isn't not only fire, but Bob has, you know, he's the health officer, the emergency management coordinator. And so we might have to pull some of those things off. You know, the assistant building inspector. So those are the kind of things that could be pulled off so that she could not have to do those things and could be doing more in the building. And then we'd have to, you know, absorb those in other places and we think we can. I mean, it's not ideal, right? I mean, the ideal would be to keep it where it is. And, but, you know, we're fighting the budget struggle like everybody else. Thank you so much for your 45 years and everything that you do and I'm, we're going to miss you a lot and I'm so grateful for all the work that you've done. Also, I, I, we had a fire at our house just a few weeks ago, and had to call the fire department and so this is our house is fine. And partly it's fine because we could call the fire department and people came right away and we're able to take care of things. And so when I think about reducing the number of people who can actually show up when somebody calls 911 because there's a fire. It makes me really nervous and uncomfortable. And what happened at our house was an electrical wire coming into the house caught on fire. And so after that was out, the firefighters stayed at the house waiting for green mountain power to show up to take care of the rest of it. Even though the fire was out, but they said, we're going to stay here because we're not really exactly, you know, just in case something happens, just in case something happens. And nothing happened and that was great. But if, if, if, if the staffing is so short that they have to say, well, I think you're okay now, maybe, maybe not probably fine, we got to go. And I'm pretty uncomfortable with that. And so, so when I'm thinking about the priorities that we have, when I'm thinking about the priorities that we've set in our strategic plan and what the public is telling us is important and what kind of the the actual fundamental services that we need to be able to provide as a city that nobody else can provide because there's nobody else you can call when you have a fire at your house there's nobody else. And so we have to be able to provide that service so I am, I'm not really happy about this plan of cutting a firefighter so I would love to find some way it's not a question for you. I'm not happy with either. It's just my, my way of saying that I would prefer to prioritize the firefighters and find somewhere else that we have to cut if necessary. You're absolutely right. That that evening of your situation we had, we were, we had four people working. So we were able to stay there, even if we had had a second call and maybe an animal's called during that two people have had to a broke break breaking away to go to the animal's call, but two still could have stayed at your, your house to assist you. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. Yeah, I was just going to weigh in on that as well. A couple of things. One, just factual, like with the last one that would be about $88,000 to, to replace that position just so people know. Secondly, you know, I, Bobby answered it, I think they, whether they were three or four on duty, they would have stayed unless they had another call anyway, just because it's the right thing to do when we have an excellent fire department and they do the right thing. But I think also, just to be clear, at least, and I see Ken's here too, but, but 80% or more of what they do is actually ambulance calls. So, you know, that's really the bulk and that's what really keeps them busy, but you know, obviously fires are bigger and scarier, but if you're lying down, need an ambulance, that's pretty scary too. So just so people understand, we call them the fire department, but really EMS is a very big, important part of their service. I can't. I want to say, is it 80? I think it's about 85%. And we've been building, we've been attempting to build a paramedic program and we've done a really good job of building the paramedic program. So if we don't continue, if we decide not to go back to 17, my hope would be and it would be up to the next fire chief that the replacement would be a firefighter paramedic. So continue to build the paramedic program, which as the city manager said, it's 85% of what we do is EMS. So that would add an additional, we could possibly add an additional paramedic to our program. Can I jump in? I think that there are people who may not be clear on what it means to so-called someone a paramedic or an EMT. Could you explain what it means? Sure. Paramedics are another, it's a higher level of emergency care of EMS care. They deliver medications. They're just a much higher level. So we have EMTs. Well, we have, I'll back even you first. We have emergency medical responders is where I am now. I used to be an EMT. I'm now at emergency. I didn't have time to keep up with the certification. And then we have EMTs and then we have advanced EMTs and we have paramedics. So paramedic is in Vermont is the highest level of care. Does that recall EMT-B? They're allowed to give charcoal and maybe one other. Yeah, those, it's all changed. There's no bees. Okay. Yeah. So, and so we, all of our, except for myself, everyone is either an advanced level EMT or a paramedic. And I would like to see the department continue to build the paramedic program. It's 85% of what we do and continue in that direction. And do you still have the on-call squad? We do not a call for us. We had one time we had a call for us. Your son was a member. Yep. Yep. We do not any, no, it was, it's been, we just have not been able to find the people to do it. Yes. Lauren, and that was, so, you know, that was a resource the city had for a long time. There's been several years that we've been without a call for us, but we also used to have part-time EMTs, part-time firefighter and EMTs with up to three at one point. And then over the years, those didn't make it through the budget process. Right. And three went down to two and went down to one and went down to nine and those supplemented some of the times and also was a good training ground for when somebody left the full time position. Often people moved up. I think several members of the current department came through that part-time program. Yep. You ride his bicycle. He came by bicycle. Yes. Yeah. And the fire chief in the city of Barry came, was started out as a part-time person in the city of Montpere. Okay. And has moved out. Lauren. Yeah, thanks. I mean, first of all, just echoing the gratitude, we'll have lots of time to celebrate you, but thank you so much for, I mean, 45 years, that's quite a record of service and built just a really amazing department. So thank you for all of that. And we look forward to continuing to celebrate you. Thank you. And what you'll be very missed. Um, I guess my question is, and maybe it's as much for Bill at one of our previous meetings, there was some conversation about, you know, staffing levels change in department. So, you know, just because it was a certain level one year, it doesn't mean that it's always the right level. And I mean, for the two that we've heard tonight, am I understanding correctly that really for both departments, 17 would be a better number. And this is just a reality of, you know, looking for places. And so this is not a right sizing of either department. This is a downsizing because of intense budget pressures. Is that accurate? 17. Pretty much. Since I've been the fire chief, I've been a fire chief for 14 years and it's been there. Yes. I think even when I started, I think you had four shifts of four and a chief. Yes. So 17. Yeah, I think that's pretty much. We're both of the, this is okay. Just want to make sure you understand the table operation. Yeah. Okay. That's just to make sure I was understanding that right. Thanks. Hey, any other questions from cats itself. Just continuing my overtime education. If you don't mind, I imagine we're in the same situation here 24 seven coverage you're filling in and sort of the same ways that. But the police need to fill in with, with pretty much whoever's available at the time is that means that how it, how it works. I mean, who's eligible for overtime in any given moment. Right. So everyone is eligible. You know, if one of the lieutenants is out, we replace for sick leave or vacation, we would replace them with another lieutenant, if possible. And we also have a couple senior firefighters that could fill our role if need to be or for firefighters out, but it's, you're absolutely right. You know, we have to. I knew you'd mentioned that you came through the a different industry where we wouldn't fill, but it's not possible to do that in emergency services. We have to keep that minimum level of staffing to be able to respond to the fires or respond to the medical emergencies. So we, you know, we have to maintain that level. Thanks. And I highly recommend retirement. Unless you run for counsel, then. Well, that's a possibility, I guess. Again, I hope my wife's not watching. Yes. Yes. I'm not seeing her on on the zoom. So, oh good. They film it too. She can catch it anytime. But she's not that bored, right? Quick question. So just 45 year experience is amazing. And thanks to looking at to your knowledge of this and obviously it's like any of us in our businesses have changed so much over the years. If you could just like, if you had a blank slate and you could restructure this with everything you know right now, would it look the way it looks today or other things you would do differently in terms of how the department structured. Um, well, as we, as we mentioned, we've been at 17 a long time. And so, and it's working at 17. Certainly more would be better. You heard that from chief Norton, you know, and I think you could expect that, you know, you're high. You're going to be hiring a new fire chief. That new fire chief might say, hmm, you need more folks here. You need this. Your pressures are a little different each department is so like you don't have people driving to St. John'sbury with correct, you know, that kind of thing or going to court and all those. Different pressures, but it's like how it's interesting for the organization. Just making sure you also have a lot of overtime built in here and it is that the right mix or would you be better to have another person unless overtime with chief Norton said it didn't seem like from his comments that the payback was that great. If you had another person for 125, but you might save 25. No, I have to agree. It's been looked at. I did not look at it, but previously chief Lewis and then chief Norton, two different chiefs prior to me looked at it and found that this is probably the most cost effective way to manage the department. Because yes, it would be nice to have a few more people, but I'm not sure that the overtime savings is going to be that great. Because things continue, you know, the bell continues to ring. We continue to go out. We continue to respond to animals calls. We continue to respond to fire calls. Just any types of calls kind of a similar question when I asked chief Norton, but are there any service areas that you provide that take a lot of time or draw from the organization that are kind of fringe services. I'm thinking like for you, maybe it's transports. We do some emergency, non emergency transports, but those actually those are profitable for the city amount there. Yeah, those are profitable. We do have the other events. I think Eric may have mentioned them. You know, we have the July 3, you know, we have corporate cut, because we are the capital city we have to do good fest we have, we have so many different. Tomorrow, myself and the deputy fire chief are going to be at the state house all day because of the governor's. State of the state. I mean, we're all going to be there. Those are all demands because we are the capital city. Those are all demands on us. Thanks. On that question to I have heard from the chief and some of the members of the department that I've talked with, you know, they are getting a lot of calls that I think might fall under that social service umbrella where somebody sees someone. lying down and calls 911 and it's just someone sleeping on a bench or whatever. So they go out, they run the ambulance, they go out, it doesn't, you know, they're not going to bill anybody. There's no transport. There's no medical issue or someone's intoxicated and misbehaving. So I think, I think they are getting, you know, a lot of that. And I think, you know, one of the, I know we talked about it with the council, but it's a different group now. You know, one of the impacts of when the police were short and had to cut back is then the fire department were the only people they are all night. So suddenly they were getting calls to things that they, you know, if there was a bar fight, let's say, and someone got hurt. In the past, the police would handle the bar fight and the firefighters, you know, the EMTs would be there to deal with the injury, but they get called and there's, you know, no police there. So now what, you know, they're not, you know, so I think they've been very adaptive and very creative. But yeah, I mean, we're all societies changing. It's not the same as it was. And we're seeing a lot of different, you know, the fact that we're talking about funding for homelessness. And those aren't things we talked about 20 years ago in city budgets. That's just where we're at now. Okay. Thanks. Any other questions, members of the council, Donna, I don't want to make don't need to feel like you're being overlooked. Okay. Great. Thanks a lot for coming in. Well, thank you. Thank you for having us here. Yeah. All right, now we're to public works and Kurt, I see you back there. Good evening, chromatica director public works. Thank you guys all for having us come up and talk about the impacts of the budget. I wanted to start just by highlighting some of the, the major increases to the public works operating budget. Professional services was up noted in one of the council questions. So we have a new regulatory compliance issue, which is called the three acre permit. It's related to stormwater their foresight some umpire that fall under the municipality. And we just don't have the capacity in our engineering staff to take that on. So that is one of the increases is to about $20,000 to hire some of that get that at least started. We don't have the capacity enough to do all that work, but it's a starting point. Our fleet maintenance is up about 85,000. That is really direct directly related to deferred equipment purchases with COVID and in the current budget impacts. We've deferred equipment and and so the equipment's older and that takes more to maintain it. We've had a lot of repairs is also up about 16,000. We just, we've found in recent years that we've been constantly overrunning that line item. And so that's a $16,000 increase. And then salt is just every year it goes up. And so that's about an $18,000 increase. And just real quickly on the salt, we are looking at at ways to reduce salt use. We just purchased our first articulating blade that allows us to sort of get into some of the low points and the asphalt. And we also purchased our first temperature sensor for a vehicle. And our, our goal is to eventually move into more liquids as opposed to just rock salt. And we think there's an opportunity for savings there, but it is going to take some investment and equipment and training for our staff. But we're, we're starting on that. So there's, you know, some bright points for the future and cost savings there. Before you get off the, these first couple of points with the streetlight repair. Is it's an increase over the previous year's budget, but is it bringing it in line with the actual expenditures the way kind of we're doing with the overtime lines. So we had some recent bond that was approved for street lights and traffic light repairs. And we've been pulling from that bond to do a lot of the work. And then we had some flood damage as well to some of the wiring. But the reason you're not seeing it in seeing it as an increase is because we've really been pulling it from the bond to make that work. And so then the major cut for public work since as well as police and fire is the staff reduction. And we have our overtime is primarily winter months when it snows, our staff is out there clearing the roads. And, and we have on call staff in the event, you know, the, the storm starts in the night, or even if it's just getting icy. We have staff on the ready to come in and mitigate those issues. So we are currently down to positions in our, we have two vacancies in our streets. We've been holding out because just didn't know where we're going to land on budget. So we have not advertised for those at this point. And we've been filling, you know, the routes, the plow routes through the use of our mechanic staff through use of our water sewer division staff and one wreck and wreck department employee. And we're currently in discussions with parks to get one of their staff into assist as well. So, you know, one of the concerns, particularly with the water division filling in routes. One of my concerns is, is, you know, what happens if we have a, you know, a week of heavy snow events and then we have a water leak. We just, it's a, it's, there's a slight risk there. There is a risk there and just having staff available to do both functions when you're relying on the water division to do that much plowing. The other thing is reduced service. So, you know, not. Not necessarily getting to the curb line right away and plowing will always be out. And clear the roads, but snow removal operations, the second pass to clean it up. That sort of thing just may take a little longer than people are used to. I also wanted to highlight the impacts in the summer months. So we, we basically use our staff in the summer to offset capital costs. We, we use them to do our municipal roads, general permit compliance. So there's outfall, stormwater outfall stabilization and ditching that there's grant funding available for for in kind match. So we use our staff and some of it is reimbursing grants. But one of the major impacts is in the paving program. We use our staff to do structure adjustments. So that's the manholes and the catch basins in the streets. Those have to be lowered if you're going to mill down the asphalt and then raise back up as a major savings there. That's generally an expensive line item and bids when we do bid it out. We've also done a lot more sidewalk improvements in house. Particularly asphalt, we have a asphalt sidewalk paver and it takes about 8 staff members to operate that between the trucking and the running the equipment and placing the asphalt. And then we've also done prep work for concrete sidewalk. So we found we can save a lot of money by removing the bad concrete, rebuilding the sub base for it and then pouring it back. So, yeah, those are the, those are the primary summer impacts. I should say, you know, staff did come together and we did acknowledge that we can, we can still function with the reduced position. But there are, you know, there's impacts and they're in our case public works are financial impacts on the capital side. And then there was also, I don't know if we want to get in. If this is appropriate for part of the discussion, but there was a question about how we select streets for paving. Is that something you guys would like to hear about or Okay, I will go through all my bullets and I'm always interested in that and people are always interested in paving as you know, we hear more about streets than just about anything else. So, so yes. All right. In an ideal world, you would select the streets to pay based on the condition of the asphalt and basically the, you know, a best bang for your buck so the least amount of investment in order to extend the life of the asphalt as much as possible. So that's sort of the first pass that we do. But the issue and mom player is the utilities are in really poor shape. So we are having a hard time finding a lot of streets that we are comfortable paving. And it's not just water lines. It's also the storm system that needs subsurface work before we can do that, that paving and feel comfortable that we're going to get the life expectancy that we should out of it. So that's the second pass is can we can we pay the street and the utilities going to hold up. A third factor is grouping those streets geographically. So, particularly when you're using equipment to mill asphalt down. It's expensive to move that equipment from site to site. So, to the extent we can group streets in one area under one contract. So that's the cost savings there. And then it is. It's our staff's ability to support the paving work and that impacts the cost of the work. So, like I mentioned before, the structure adjustments, sidewalk improvements resetting curb, those sort of things go into that decision making. And we'll note that this year we are planning to reconstruct the water main on Bingham Street because that is 1 of our paving streets and it does have a fair amount of leaks. And then we're also going to contract out the water work on school street that's in our operating budget. But I know we're not here to talk about the water fund tonight, but I just wanted to note that. This is the summary of how we go about selecting our streets for paving and all the factors that go into it. It's because that in an ideal world, it would just be strictly based on condition. And the most cost effective investment, but there's so many other factors that we need to consider. And then 1 other update that was asked about from council is an update on the very main intersection. So, there was a study done a while back and a new signalized intersection at the intersection of Barry and main streets was selected. Also, the state of Vermont is reconstructing the railroad tracks in that intersection that cross on main street. And they are going to need so they've done a study and that that intersection calls for signalize. You know, the lights warning lights for the crossing and they don't have the right away to put that in currently so they are in the process of acquiring right away in order to do that. Additionally, those warning lights need to be tied into the traffic signals so that in off the trains coming traffic lights stop traffic from going across the tracks. So, with those 2 things were basically on hold until the rail is ready to do their project. So we're estimating either 2025 or 2026 depending on when they're right away comes through. To actually install those and there is an approved bond for that project. Warning lights is, is it going to be the whole thing with gates and warning lights or just the warning lights. Yeah, it's just more just the warning lights. And don I see you've got your hand up. Thank you. And thank Evelyn for unmuting me. You may not have come prepared for this and I'm sorry I don't have my folder with me I'm out of state, but when you also talk about the street inventory and like why some streets get so bad, you don't do anything with them, because their investment needs to go to the streets that need to be maintained so they don't get worse. When you plane them, you, you have also these different terms before you actually redo a street. Yes, that's correct. So there are a number of treatment methods for asphalt repair. And, and they go up and in costs so there are, there's what's called crack ceiling and fog ceiling and those are basically preventative measures to extend the pavement life at a low cost. So what we call a mill and fill where you grind off the top layer of asphalt and then put back an inch or inch and a half. And there's we call reclaim, which is basically a big rototiller that comes in grinds the asphalt up creates it turns the asphalt basically into a gravel base. And then there's the construction where you remove everything, you know, pull the asphalt out, put new gravel in, and, and then repave with the full four inches of three and a half or four inches. So the, the program, you know, they'll always say you don't do the streets that are in the worst condition because they cost the most and they're still going to cost the most 10 or 15 years from now. And if you pick the streets that are in better condition, you can save them before they get to that point. So from a strictly pavement management perspective, you never do the worst first, but from a practical standpoint we realize and understand, you just can't do that you have to the street becomes unserviceable. And that's one of the things that we can do cost effectively with our staff is the reconstruction, which is the most expensive. If we use our staff or equipment to pull that asphalt to put the gravel back into compact it we can do it, you know, a fraction of the cost of a of a contractor doing that work. And one, one other point point on that does the amount of traffic that a street gets factor into it where it is on the priority list. We had, we have done that for a few years. There's, there's a, the class two roads they call them are generally the higher traffic streets. And there is a grant program from the state available that we apply for every year it's $175,000. So, in the last few years, we've been really trying to tie in, you know, receiving that grant to do the class twos. East State Street is a class two that is on the horizon in the next couple years. So that's our, our next one we did an overlay on town Hill road and that's also a class two because of it was getting difficult to service. So yeah, we do consider that but we really try to tie it into the grant funding. Can I say one of the thing Kurt about the grant funding? Could you talk a little bit more about East State? I know when I'm on the Regional Planning Commission transportation group and we've worked very hard to get the grant that goes into East State and the CSOs as well as the work on the bridge. I mean, I think it's been in line almost 10 years. It seems like forever as long as I've been on the council, we've been trying to get the state and federal funds for that street. Perhaps you could outline some of that for the residents as well as the council. Sure. So East State Street. A component of that project is a combined sewer overflow separation. So that's the storm water going into the sewer and then when it rains, the sewer gets overwhelmed and overflows to the river. We received a $1.4 million ARPA grant from the state administered from the state. To do the separation work. And it's basically separate the street is separate until it gets to the intersection of main main street any state and then it combines back to the sewer. So we plan to do what we were calling now phase one of the project this summer, which will extend from the intersection of East State and Maine out to the river to the North Branch. And that will separate the storm water out of the sewer system. We also have USDA grant and loan funding for that project. I believe it's about a three and a half million dollar grant. And it's combined with the wastewater plant funding, the upgrade proposed for the bio solids project at the wastewater plant. But the USDA loan is much lower interest than you can get on the market rate. So that actually will save a lot of money on our debt service as well as has the grant funding. There's not a class to paving grant associated with that project at this time. When the time comes, we certainly will apply for that supplement, but currently that's not funded. It's funded through the through the loan, the USDA loan. And the total project is still estimated to be 7.5 million. Yeah, we haven't updated that with recent increases from COVID and everything, but I think that's still we were conservative when we did that estimate. So I feel relatively comfortable with that still. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Great. Great. Great. You're so good at getting grants. Thank you. Just one other thing I wanted to mention and it ties into staffing is that we are also in the process of developing a stormwater utility. As I mentioned, the stormwater system in Montpelier is in poor condition. And we just there hasn't been sufficient capital funds to address it in the way we need to. So the stormwater utility will be a dedicated enterprise fund, much like the water fund to address that infrastructure. But as part of that, we had also planned to hire 1 staff member and that 2 staff members 1, 1 administrator administrator and then 1 field staff member. To do like the catch basin cleaning and the street sweeping and all those things that improves stormwater quality. But there's an opportunity there to partially fund that position at a later date to help with winter operations to the general fund. So there's an opportunity opportunity for recovering some of our staffing impacts through that stormwater utility, hoping to roll that out in July. I don't hold me to that, but that's our goal right now. Because I was kind of on hold for a while, but but that's that's moving forward again. Yeah, we had a kickoff meeting a few weeks ago with our consultant and we'll be resuming the committee here shortly. Great. Now you're. I think everyone's going to be glad that you've got more more paving money in the budget. Can you manage it all all the paving you're planning on doing with the with 1 fewer staff person. Yes, we haven't exactly worked out. What components will be doing in house and what components will need to go into the contract. We have a number of streets. Five streets proposed as reconstruction. And. Six streets propose for mill and fill. So there's structure adjustments on the mill and fill and. You know, excavation and grading work for the reconstruction projects. Okay. Thanks. Questions up here. Tim. I didn't tell you I got on the council release the depth of what you do. Thank you. I mean everything from the district heat and public works. The layers of your job are amazing. So couple of thoughts that are random on the. Stormwater utility. It will be another source of revenue, but you're still being collecting the revenue from the same people were collecting the taxes from so. To be honest about that is going to be increased taxation at some level to deal with an infrastructure system we need to deal with. And that leads into my next question is it seems like we're. Struggling for maintenance with this budget, which is what we've done for a while, but we also have heard. We've been talking for a long time about. The shape or infrastructures in water lines, the sewer lines, the storm water lines streets. Any thoughts on it if in an optimal situation, how we would start to like the water system alone. Seems like you're always putting out bonfires as they say with water line breaks. So we are nearing the completion of our preliminary engineering report and there was. You know, a lot of discussion public discussion on that and a lot of back and forth with the state. The state has historically really mandated under size. Water lines be replaced first. So non, so there's a rule that says you have to have an eight inch water main if you have a hydrant on that line. And so historically, our approach has been to try to be in compliance with our permit and do those, even if they were not the lines that tended tended to break the most. Through this process of the PR, the state has changed that requirement. And now they're saying they want us to do the lines that break the most first. And that's great because that's what we want to do too. So we have, you know, we have the water master plan that outlines a funding plan. You know, putting an extra 1% in for infrastructure improvements every year. I did a rough estimate and to do basically the majority of the lines that break the most frequently it's roughly a $13 million cost. I have not worked out the schedule yet and tied that into the funding, the master plan. But I think we can, my gut feeling is it's a roughly a 10 year period to get really the water breaks under control to a point where we're not, you know, putting out fires and we can be a little more proactive on how we approach the water system. So I'll be, you know, as we, once we get through the general fund budget, I will be coming back and talking to you folks about that plan and and how it's funded members of the council with questions. So, thanks, Kurt. For your. Well, I refer to use one man doing 10 men's work. I'm just amazed as many others were at how much you're involved in. I noticed in your video, you mentioned. And you mentioned it again tonight that you. You do some work around paving and sidewalks and that sort of thing with in house folks and that you may need to sub that out is that a. Is that a 1 for 1 trade? I mean, you're probably paying more to a subcontractor to do that work, particularly imagine this structure. The structure work. Um, yes, it absolutely costs more to hire, hire it out, but you know, reduction of 1 staff members not going to prevent us from being able to do any of that work. Maybe just not as much. Not as much of it. Right. Yeah. You mentioned out. Working on the intersection to the north branch. But to correct the CSO situation there. The reality bridges part of that. Part of the plan down the road is that. I'm trying to remember I was confused about whether that was a. A city project or a state project or some combination of the two. Could you remind me of how that. Does how you think it might go. Right. So that, that is a state project. They just sort of got it in the queue. To start designing or they're actually bidding out engineering services. The state is there will be a city contribution. Depending on if the street is closed or not that percentage changes, but the high end would be 10% for the city. And that will have to go into the capital plan. I think ultimately we'll be able to get it down. Assuming we close the, the street for the bridge repair, which I think probably going to have to lower. That's lower. That's right. Yeah. So we should be down to like 5%. But it is going to be an expensive project. And I really want to put a water main under the bridge when we do that because we've lost some of our river crossings. And we, and we just need it to, you know, stabilize pressures. That's what we would do at the same time. That's right. Yeah. So the, the work at state and main. You stated main would would start when what you're anticipated. I would say estimating mid summer. And that would go this coming summer. Correct. Yeah, just for that phase. So not the, not the work up the hill because we, we still need to the council needs to make decisions on the level of sidewalk improvements. And we have a lot of work that's not going to be performed. It's going to be done on some double sides or one side or back the way it is that we had an early discussion a while back about that, but. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. Is that that design is still ongoing though, isn't it? We were on hold because we lost our primary engineer that was doing that work. But again, we're ramping up to resume that. Um, the sort of capital budget, um, I see some, I see 50,000 for, um, essentially computer and software upgrades. Could you just talk a little bit about what, what that is? Yeah, I mean, that's, um, so we don't, uh, do that part of the budget is really through finance. And that's basically the public works contribution to the overall city, uh, computer network. Okay. Yeah, it's budgeting software. So it's, it's the finance side. Yeah. The capital plan is mostly DPW, but not entirely. Yes. Thanks, Kurt. Any other questions up here? I just want to comment to, uh, the point about the water lines and the plan, um, even while that plan is being finalized, we're moving ahead. So this year we're doing school street, bigam street and the state. Not this year, but that's already funded in, in the works, which is one of the major break line. So we're still moving ahead with priority break lines, even though the final plan isn't been agreed upon with the state. So just make, we're not sitting around waiting or actively funding and taking it. And I think we can talk a little bit more about the storm. Why are you till it? But I think some of it is also reallocating some of the funds we already use because we have that storm CSO benefit charge and the, and I think some of that thought was to reallocate that money. So it would be, it might kind of like a reappraisal of my shift who pays, but it would be not necessarily raising new funds. I think that's right. Yeah. That's correct. Um, I think there's about 200,000 like seed money that's a benefit charge funded, um, but also just to mention, um, you know, the state properties, that's because it's an air price fund that's not tax exempt. So, um, the state properties would also contribute to that. Yeah. They've got a lot of people for a people's service. That's correct. Thanks, Kurt. Um, couple questions and two comments, one just on the storm water utility. I mean, I think kind of to your point, Tim, of like, how do we have systems that can deal with the problems? And I mean, to me, that's part of what the storm water utility benefit is. It's, we can like look systematically at needs, anticipate upcoming, you know, new regulations and things and make sure that we're actually raising the funds to meet the needs and kind of tie it more directly. So I think that's an important way to think about it. And so that we don't get behind and don't end up having, you know, big systemic challenges that are really expensive. Um, so for the salt issue, I just wanted to say, I'm glad to hear you're moving towards some like new technologies. It sounds like there's some good innovations and using less salt. Um, and might be some upfront cost, but could save money. So that's, that's great and good for the environment to use less salt. As you know, um, I guess my one question was, do you, do you anticipate? Um, I mean, I'm glad to hear the storm water utility is back on. That to me was like the kind of missed opportunity as we have, you know, as we're short staffed, we can't be going after things that can actually help us, um, stay and get on track. Um, are there other things, you know, knowing there's, you know, various grants and stuff out there right now? Like, is it going to set us back? And are we going to miss opportunities? Because, you know, it sounds like you'll probably get pulled into having to do more, you know, other projects, um, instead of, you know, running the department and having the vision of what we need. So just, it feels like we might miss other grant opportunities, for example, because we just are not going to have enough staffing to be going after everything or just even knowing what's out there. So just curious how you, if you feel like, no, it's, it's all good. Or yeah, this is, I know we're in crisis mode here with this budget. So it's all just great offs, but. So, you know, I would say that the, um, the streets position isn't going to impact our ability to pursue grants, but we also do have an engineering vacancy. Um, and that, you know, that does require me to be more involved with projects and, uh, and not seek funding. Um, we are planning to hire that position, um, through the enterprise funds and really have that position focused on advancing East State Street as well as construction inspection for East State Street. And there's just a lot of, if you hire that engineering cost out, um, it's really, really expensive. So there's a, there's a really good cost savings there, at least for the first, um, two years, uh, it'll be enterprise funded and not in the general fund, uh, as it relates to, um, designing and inspecting the construction of the utilities. Um, once that position gets in, it will, uh, hopefully free me up some to do, you know, some of this other here, uh, pursue some more grants, but, um, but I don't, I don't feel that the streets position will impact that. Yeah. Good question. You've just been wondering, is, is, is involved. So when you do a project like East State Street or anything and the city brings in engineering, do we bid it out for each project or do we have a preset agreement with a firm that seems to be the one that I see all the time? Yeah. So this, um, so we always get it funded through the state revolving loan funds. There's the clean water revolving loan fund and the drinking water revolving loan funds and they have subsidies. Um, so like the, the water system, PR is, is a hundred percent state funded, um, for example, on the Indian get 50% on the clean water, which is storm and sewer. Um, and they have their own requirements for how you procure services and we do generally it's an RFQ process. So it's qualifications based and then you negotiate, um, the price. That's what, that's how the clean water side requires you to go about it. There is, and I have talked to, um, some of the state funding agencies an opportunity to do, um, uh, selection of, of, uh, engineering firms for like a subset of work for like all your water work or all your sewer work, have them kind of on retainer. We haven't, uh, had time to do that yet, but it is something I want to do, um, just to save our staff time and going through this process at its time consuming. There's no one on retainer now. We have one, we have, um, Dewfring Group is on retainer to do like hydraulic modeling because we have to do a lot of fire flow analysis, um, but it's a relatively small scale. Um, the mention of Dewfring Group reminded me that I think in the, somewhere in the, in the pro report was, uh, I'd be defraying seem to, um, have done some, make some suggestions anyway on, on funding sources and it was almost as if they were saying they would help with that processes. That would be, we would have to hire them to do that, but, um, were they just marketing themselves or, or have we ever used a firm like Dewfring to do that, to find, uh, and, and maybe an assistant writing grants for, you know, funding? Yeah, so they are primarily, and actually they just reached out to me, um, last week, um, they're primarily doing those revolving loan fund applications for us, which sometimes we do them, sometimes the consultant does them, and, you know, they are incentivized to do that because it turns into a project ideally and then there's, uh, work for them. Um, you know, I haven't asked them if they would charge us for that, actually. I haven't gotten back to them yet, but, um, or if it would be, I know, sort of a free service, but, uh, yeah, I think January 16th, the, you have to, we have to submit our list of projects, um, you get it on a priority list, and then you go through a scoring system on the state's forums, um, you know, based on, you know, public health benefits and environmental benefits, um, they have a whole, a whole scoring system, and then you get ranked through all the projects in the state for all the other communities, um, and depending on how you score as if you get grant funded or loan funded, um, most of them are eligible for loan funding. The grant funding is a lot more competitive. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Hey, any members of the council have anything more for, uh, for Kurt? I saw one question, uh, in the room, uh, Steve. Uh, good evening, Steve Whitaker. Uh, I'm, would ask the council to address how, do we ever consider interim fixes? School street specifically, the heaving under the road is causing the buses to throw children off the seats in that section. The, there's concrete infrastructure next to the phone company, they're settling. It's been, there's a bunch of water fixes that were happening, five or six of them in a period of months. Um, and the section of the sidewalk there along Kellogg Hubbard library has failed completely. The curbs are, you know, six inches out of plum and the whole sidewalk slopes to the road. I watched on July 4th, I watched a person lose control of their agent, you know, care, uh, charge in a wheelchair, the, the pitch of the sidewalk lost control of the wheelchair and through the person into a car, uh, fender and the ice melts off the Kellogg Hubbard lawn and across that sidewalk and it's treacherous to even walk. So if it's going to be three years or more or even two years to before we can complete the water and sewer, I don't know if you're doing separation there or it's already no need for it. Then we need to think, consider spending some money on an interim fix because it's, it's an untenable, unsafe and extremely hazardous situation. Um, similarly, if we're going to be two or three years out on the very street cross, uh, intersection, railroad crossing delays, et cetera, that second crosswalk on the south, south side crossing main should be eliminated. You know, it's too dangerous for people to stop for one crosswalk and it's not poorly painted and then start to proceed and all of a sudden there's somebody in another crosswalk 20 feet ahead. It's, I've watched numerous people almost get hit there and it's just, it's an untenable situation and it's very unusual for there to be four crosswalks or two crosswalks that close together, um, because it's not a state and main type intersections. Okay. So, uh, I'm concerned that things like clog storm drains and trash pickup. I'm, I saw our public works people doing the trash pickup because we got rid of the contractor, but that stuff's overflowing and it's taking people off of solving other hazards. So I think we need to give some real thought to I'm glad that the second project engineer that you found a way to fund that, that, uh, but I think there's even a, another, uh, need for even somebody to pursue money and manage projects, uh, to keep Kurt's eye on the ball. Um, that's probably enough. That's a lot, but I'd ask you not to just hear it and sweep it off. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Steve. Uh, Kurt, do you have anything to say about any of that? I, I know it's coming at you on the fly. Sort of. Yeah, well, I mean, um, we did take over trash after the flood, the July flood. Um, it was a lot of it was because our, our receptacles were sort of scattered around and some of them were missing. Um, we have not finalized that into our union contract yet. Our staff has taken it on. Um, so it is an added service. Um, you know, I also should mention that, you know, historically the lot here in City Hall has been contracted to be allowed. Um, we have a rec employee doing that for public works. It's paid through public works to do that now. Um, you know, and as you add sidewalks and bike paths and everything else, you know, it does add up and there is more to do. Um, so, you know, there's a valid point there. Um, also on, on School Street, there are a number of infrastructure issues on School Street. Uh, I'd agree the sidewalk is in poor condition. Um, the storm system runs directly under the sidewalk on School Street and it is failing. So, um, when we did some of the temporary water work a couple of winters ago, um, when we got near that, you could see just giant holes on the side of the pipe. Um, and we just, again, there's just not quite enough capital to do that. We're probably going to have to do a pretty substantial lining project on that, uh, to stabilize it. So any work we do, um, temporarily is not going to last, um, more than, I don't know how long, but not very long a year maybe, at best. Uh, we also have to do water line work. Um, what we did on School Street was very temporary. We ran, we just replaced the very worst section. There's two water mains on School Street. We did the worst section of one of the two, uh, and it was just from Hydrant to Hydrant. We still need to, um, extend the water main out into the intersection of Main Street, which is a pretty, you know, substantial project. We have to tie it to a, you know, and 14-inch main that's 100 years old, um, that's probably not round. So those are always tricky. And then we have to extend, um, down to Loomis Street. Um, so there's going to be a lot of activity there. That School Street work is this summer. Um, and so it really doesn't make sense to put money into a street that you're going to rip up in six months. Um, the sidewalk, we probably will need to do a temporary patch on that this summer. We just, with the flood this year, we didn't get to it. It wasn't our work plan. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Folks, anything else? Are we satisfied? Hey, thanks a lot, Kurt. This is very helpful. Um, I think this point, uh, it's a little early, but I'll say time for our 10 minute break. We'll come back at eight 30. All right. The time has come. Sorry, sorry to interrupt my friends, but the time has come. Um, um, Mike Miller, I see that you're here. And so, uh, you get to, I'd like to invite you to talk about what your department does. Um, your budget is not really being questioned at this point, but I think it's valuable to hear what your department's doing. So good evening, Mike Miller, planning director. Unprepped. Uh, so, uh, I oversee two small departments. So planning and community development and building inspection and code enforcement. So, uh, if you had a chance to look at the videos, um, that were put out, it really kind of summarizes what are, um, what we're looking at. Um, so the, the planning side of things is, uh, including myself is 3.8 full time equivalents. So it's two people in the planning one or 1.8 in the planning department and you've got, we're in the zoning, zoning administration piece. Josh Jerome, who is a community and economic development specialist. So, uh, when Kevin Casey left two years ago, we expanded that position knowing that the economic development agency that we had was, um, going to be folding and going under, um, you know, Bill and I had a conversation and Josh was a really good candidate to fit. He kind of does economic development. He's a real strong candidate. So we kind of expanded that position to include that role. So that way we continued to have that expertise in the city without having to go through and, um, work on a different, uh, work with a different consultant. So, um, that was a good find. And then, uh, I handle the planning side. So I do the long range planning, the zoning administration, uh, writing zoning bylaws, um, and those types of amendments, kind of the big picture stuff. The second piece, uh, is one I share with, um, Chief Gowens, which is the building inspection. So we oversee Michelle Savry, who is our one person who does the building inspections. So we have a contract with the state. Um, if we did not have Michelle, uh, we would still have all of the state inspections. Uh, we would just have to wait for the state inspectors to come through. You'd pay the same fees. Our fee schedules match theirs. Her department, um, generally pays for itself. Its fees cover her costs. So her department's about 100,000 or 113,000. I think this year, um, fees have ranged from probably as low as 60 or 70,000 during COVID when things really slowed down, uh, which was rare. But when Chris was here, we'd have years 250, 350,000 in fees. If we get a big project, we can get a couple hundred thousand dollars in fees. So in well, in excess. Um, so for the most part, that's what, um, we're kind of covering. We don't have any reductions in our department that have been proposed, uh, would be very difficult for us to absorb a reduction in with such a small staff. Um, but our, our budget for the planning is actually going down by, I think, like $500. And that is because, uh, Audra will be retiring. Anyone who's gotten a permit knows Audra. She's been here 17 years, done a fantastic job. She also does a lot of program work. So she does our community rating system, um, for FEMA. So it gets a reduction in everybody's, uh, flood insurance rates. So it's gotten to be a pretty big deal to go and kind of get those 10% discounts, but that takes a lot of work. Um, and so she handles also, we used to originally was hired just to be the administrator, kind of answer phones and do finance. And over time, she just started taking over actual, actual work, work of the, the permits. So she kind of grew with that position. And so replacing her is going to be very difficult. But, um, we've built into our budget a $12,000 reduction because she's been here so long. She's at the top of the pay scale. We're simply going to be cutting a chunk of money off her salary and whoever gets hired is going to have to earn less than she does to make the budget work. So, uh, our planning budgets level funded, um, the other funds that are generally associated with us, um, that aren't our money, uh, but the housing trust fund, usually about 110,000. Um, I believe those are requested for 250,000. We've recommended to fund it at 60,000. Uh, and the reason for that recommendation is there is $200,000 in the bank. And so we believe that's enough funds to handle, handle whatever might be coming over the next year. Um, but obviously you can't zero fund or low fund budgets forever. Um, it will work for this year. We also zeroed out the economic development funds, which were basically 100, 140,000. Those funds were used for Country Club Road. We're in a position now we think, um, if we need funding, we do have some money that came in. Um, we don't expect any large expenditures this year. Most of the work we're doing is in-house. And, um, so most of our economic development funds. So we have, we had level funding, my budget, and then a reduction in a lot of these little monies that come in to different programs, housing trust fund, arts funds, um, which we can absorb for a year. Um, but we'll have to obviously keep an eye on that. We can't do that for the long term without impacting our ability to actually have those services function. Okay, thanks, Mike. Do we have any questions from members of the council? Okay, great. Thanks a lot. Thanks. Okay, and members of the council, since this is your, uh, budget workshop, I, uh, know that we all got, uh, a memo from the, uh, from the cemetery commission, uh, making the proposal to, uh, to increase the, the budget line. For them, uh, Patrick Healy is here from the, uh, cemetery. I don't know if you want to call him up, but, uh, but if you do, we, uh, he's, he's here and available. And anybody wanted, wanted me to bring him up. Patrick, why don't you come up, come on up for a few minutes. Don't want you to feel left out, but I also want to, uh, you know, kind of keep tight on the time. So thanks for being here. All right, thank you. Um, Jake was going to be here, but I think he kind of thought that we wouldn't be asked up tonight. Um, he was, he was on, he was on earlier and he's not here now, but correct. So one thing I want to point out for some of the new faces here is the governance structure of the cemetery. We're not under you. We're not under the mayor or the bill. There's five elected commissioners that run the, the cemetery and trust for the city set up by the state legislature in 1854. So it's 170 years ago. They did that for the main reason was to keep the money separate from the town. So we're a quasi municipal corporation that's run by five publicly elected commissioners and trust for you guys. So we're separate. Um, the city, the cemetery commissioners have similar responsibilities or powers as the city council is. They can go ahead and put a ballot on the, uh, an article on the ballot without petitioning and without your permission. There's always a fine line and there's, there's always that friction on that fine line. The cemetery is owned by the city of Montpelier. My wages, our employees wages are underneath the jurisdiction of the cemetery commissioners. We work very close with the city and over the 35 years that I've been there, we've gotten a lot closer to the city. The reason why we're under, Bill, you can correct me if I'm wrong, why we're under the budget process is because we used to just come and give a presentation and say we're going to have an article for this amount. And then, um, I'm not sure which counselor it was. So why don't you just join us, uh, with the process. So that's what we did this year. We went through the process, the, um, budget Congress. Um, and, um, afterwards, what, what I request was, was, was cut back and, um, the main reason for that is not complete budgeting for the last couple of years because I got done as full time and I went to part time. We had some plans of hiring somebody, but again, that was going to take some, some money and, and to find anyone to work right now, it's tough. Um, our main workforce is the Department of Corrections. We're going to pay them no more than $28,000 for the year. They're going to send, they used to send 10 now they're down to six to eight people five days a week, mid-May to mid-November. It takes the cemetery, 200 and takes us 250 man, uh, excuse me, labor hours to mow the cemetery once. 250. Um, I've got, I've talked to some private contractors out there for mowing and it's well over, um, $200,000 if we paid a private firm to do that. We're getting it for $28,000. I have a full-time person, which we share, um, in the wintertime, it used to be, it was a shared position, it used to be a shared position with public works where eight months of the year, um, he would be at the cemetery, then four months he'd be at the, um, streets, the DPW. Now what it is, is he's at the cemetery year round and when needed he goes in for snow removal. So when they're, when they have downtime in the wintertime, and they're, and it's not snowing, um, and they don't have a lot to do, I have plenty to do at the, at the cemetery. So we, we, we, we evolved that over knowing that I was going to be getting cut back to a, a 0.6 position. Um, so getting, um, so I'll stop there and see, do you have any questions about our relationship with the city? I'll just add to that. I think Patrick pretty accurately summarized that, um, I think what happened at one point is I recall, and I think, I think facts bear this out, is that the, the cemetery had a budget item that got defeated on the ballot. And so the, the question was, can we be in the big budget? And we were working together anyway. And so the agreement that we've made and, and it's worked has been, yes, you can, we will have you in the city budget and we, as long as you follow the city's budget process. And that's, and that's worked fine. And I think that has, you know, Patrick participates in our team meetings and share employee and all those kind of things. So that, that I think pretty much what you said. So that's, that's the, the whole thing, but he's right. They could just put it, they could take their budget and put it on the ballot if they chose. That's, that's their choice. And then we would have to figure out how we wanted to, you know, work with them in the future. So we haven't had, fortunately, we've all played well in the sandbox. And, and it's always good to have friction and because it gets a lot of, a lot of ideas out on, on, on paper. And what I just wanted to make sure that everyone understands is that we are, we're bound, the, the, the five elected commissioners are all city employ, are all city residents. And this year, four out of the five have lot, have lots at, at Greenmount. So they, they have an interest. And what sometimes it puts my position is kind of in between the city and the city administration and the city, the cemetery commissioners. And so I have to try to, you know, bring the information from and the thoughts from the city over to the commissioners. And as you know, when you're a board, you can't, you don't know the qualifications to be on a board is basically you're a registered voter. Other than that, you, you may have finance background. You may not. You may have human resource background. You may not. But the cemetery has greatly benefited from being part of the city closer than it was when I started before, well, when I started, all we were doing with the city was basically buying gas at the old DPW garage on Norfield Street. And now we are intertwined and computers have come on because it used to be the city clerk, Jean Hart, if any of you remember her, would come in on Sundays and write out the checks for the bills. And then on Friday, she'd write out a hand check for payroll. But as computers came on, we kind of, you know, moved right into finance. And now we're in the 21st century. Yes. Yeah. And so as far as maintenance of the cemetery, we're kind of in a transition here. Covid put us in a spot where where the where my inmates, my the offenders could not come out of jail. So that left us two people. And so we at that point said, OK, let's look at the cemetery. And most of the cemetery was designed and built in the 1850s and the 1860s before there were even lawn mowers, before they even thought of mowing the grass. They had size where they had animals. So what we're doing is we are taking the resources that we have in mowing, which is our labor crew. And we've divided that up by half. Last year, we were we were able to straighten out four hundred pieces of granite. Either it was a flat marker or as a monument and we were able to get them all cleaned because we are not mowing the cemetery as what I call the country club look. Much of the cemetery doesn't have perpetual care on it because that wasn't a thing for a long time. And it's a very hard cemetery to walk on. Never mind. If you were to walk around the whole outside boundary on the road, it's one mile. There's like four miles worth of roads. There's a lot there. A lot that you don't see from from route two. So what we're doing with our limited resources is we're taking our crew and we're saying, OK, half the time you're going to be mowing. The other half of the time you're going to be fixing monuments, things that haven't been touched for 100 years. And the guy that works with me, Carl, is is very good as we figured out some inexpensive ways of fixing a lot of monuments that are leaning. And he's got 10 years or so experience of rock of ages, so he knows his granite. So we're we're able to to use what we have and fix fix what we have instead of trying to go back to that country club look. And that's and we took a look at the the the grass maintenance. It's it's the most cost costly tasks that we do. It's the most time consuming tasks that we do. And it's the most pollution generating tasks that we do. So we are in a transition and and that has coincided with the transition of natural burials where people want to go back into a simple pine box or even a simple cotton sheet. No one bombing, get it done and go back to the way we used to be. So there are parts of the cemetery for the first 100 years. Was there was never mode. The only time. The grass gets walked on is by the deer. Most people are just walking the roads. So we're we are transitioning to kind of like OK, we're going back and we're trying to figure that out. We're trying to go back to the grass being tall. And if you take a look at the old monuments, they are tall and they have two or three bases before the top part of the monument, which is called the die with a family name on it. And the family name would be about three or four feet high. Why? And the old timers told me this a long time ago when I started was so that they could see the family name above the hay. And it makes sense. So that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to use our limited resources. We're asking for a little bit over. A penny on the tax rate, which equals if I've done my math right, about thirty seven dollars for the average home in Montpelier for the year. And that's what we're working on. OK. Thanks, Patrick. Here. Thank you. I appreciate hearing about all that. And I I just want to say I love the way that the cemetery looks when it's not moan. I'm very much in favor of that that shift. So I'm glad you're staying in that direction. I also really appreciate how thoughtful you've been about how to use your resources wisely and frugally and very grateful for that. We did receive a letter from your chair that I I could use a little clarification about what exactly you would like from us. So in the letter, it says we're requesting the city council restore to our budget, our original budget request from the general fund of one hundred forty five thousand dollars. But I see that your your total budget is that's that's in here in our book is more like two hundred and seventy four thousand. And so I'm not really sure what it is you would the impression I get is that you would like more than what's in this proposed budget. But I'm not sure how much and what it would be for. OK. So the the money that we're asking for is the appropriation from the general fund. We also have money coming from our perpetual care fund. OK. We have money coming from burials, lot sales. But again, we don't know what those burials are going to be. And so there's always a certain percentage of the budget that we have to like guess on is some some years it's good, some years it's bad. But we try to take an average. And I see that Jake is on the line now and Jake, if you want to jump in to answer that question since it came over your signature. Sure. Can you all hear me OK? Yes. Great. Right. I think I think the question here is whether that forty some odd thousand could be restored. I think. During the original discussions on the budget, we were looking for one hundred and forty five. And now the now the budget seems to have one hundred or something in it. And so we're just hoping for a restoration of that forty thousand that I think was under discussion earlier in the process. Patrick, do I have that right? Yeah. Yeah. Great. Thanks, Jake. Kerry, are you are you set? Or no. So I'm I'm wondering. So I apologize for not being totally clear on how this well, we've probably said so. This seems seems like we have all the expenses here and but the funding sources in a separate spot in our general fund budget. There's a transfer from the general fund to the cemetery commission. And that's a revenue for them. And then their total budget has their references. So I think what they're referring to is that the cemetery's proposed budget had asked for about one hundred and forty five thousand dollar transfer from the general fund to the cemetery fund. And we did our budget process and we kind of went through and was like, who has what to cut? And Patrick's like, I got nothing to cut. Then after we went through, we realized that that was actually a forty thousand dollar increase from the prior years transfer. Forty one thousand and change. And we basically held other transfers to other funds at the same level as last year. So we went back and reduced that and communicated that to them. And so they're basically saying we. We don't want to be, you know, we'd like the forty hundred and forty five that we requested, not the hundred and five that you've got in the budget to be transferred. So that's the request from the cemetery commission. So as I'm trying to understand how that money gets spent, should I be looking at this section here of your total budget? And it sounds like are you hoping for forty thousand more dollars in your overall budget? Or are you hoping that you won't have to use forty thousand from other sources besides the general fund? Correct. The second part, we're not looking to take it out of our fund balance. So eight hundred thousand. Yeah. So our our trust fund, perpetual care fund, endowment care fund, whatever you want to call it is is approximately eight hundred thousand. When I started, you know, many years ago, it was four hundred thousand dollars. We've been able to double it and still take money out of it every year. If you want, I can be set up for a presentation to show you exactly where where money is spent. No, that's OK. That's OK. Yeah. Great. OK. Donna. Thank you. I mean, I love the cemetery. I walk there regularly during the pandemic. It saved my mental health and I love the tall grasses. I have thousands of pictures, if anybody wants some, all the seasons, all the wildflowers. However, I do feel like I I was one who said and I think we voted when. The library wanted to increase that then they'd have to be a separate ballot item. And so I'm thinking again, if we're going to cut and be firm about that, if it is considered an outside organization, I don't think they need to do a petition, but maybe be a separate item on the ballot. If I could jump in on that. I mean, that is obviously a council policy discussion. I would say that our agreement or working agreement with the cemetery is that they are part of the city's budget process. And and that's been a longstanding agreement that they won't put, you know, they don't have to petition. They have the right to put an article on a ballot. Yes, yes, I heard of the commissioners and they've foregone that right over the years in lieu of, I guess, having in one their benefit in addition to having sort of greater better synergy with the city, but is also they're part of the big budget that are standing out there by themselves, putting themselves at independent risk. So but the quid pro quo for that is they go through the city's budget process and they get through the process. So I think what I don't want to speak for them and I will let them give you their reasons why they want to do, but we did our internal budget process and the budget that I recommended to you had forty thousand dollars less in it coming from the city than the cemetery commissioners would like to see. So the commissioners are asking you to restore that forty thousand dollars and where and how they might use it or where they might get it from. I would direct your questions to them. But I, you know, I understand that I would be really I don't I would stick up for the cemetery here and say, I don't think they should be considered an outside agency. They're not an outside agency. They're a partner, if not, you know, a department, a quasi department of the city. And I'd suggest that you look at them like that, not suddenly put them in with the library or CVH or something like that. Well, I guess what I'm leaning towards and I didn't explain it very well. So thank you for more clarity is that I just I feel that there are things that I feel are essential that we've cut that I'd like to put back in. And so I feel like I wouldn't want to restore their forty thousand. But if they still want it, I would support them having a separate ballot item. That's all I meant. OK, thanks, Donna. Where is the line that is it? I can't find it either. I'm going to fund as a transfer is better than me. I mean, can I think we're about to hear that from Sarah? But in all of your. So there is a budget book detail that's included in all of your packets towards the front. On page 28 there, you'll see the transfers that go out to the funds and in there is the transfer to the cemetery operations. It's a third of the way down the page. Ten ninety three ninety ninety six oh four five is the account number that is helpful. But that's where that lives and you can see that that was the same budget amount as the prior year and they had requested that additional forty one thousand change in there to start. Thank Sarah. Any other questions from any members of the of the council before we move on? I just want to follow up on that. I appreciate I'm not trying to tell Donna that what to do or the council what to do and I appreciate the scenario. But to the extent that. That the cemetery that we consider the cemetery an agency of the city in terms of for the budget process. I submit that. I'm looking out at six other departments that would love to have ballot items. Supplemental ballot items as well. And we don't. Well, you may choose to do that. I don't know. But typically we don't. Typically the council sets the budget that it proposes to the council. And. I would hope that we resolve and you make whatever decision you make in discussions with the Cemetery Commission and come up with whatever number you decide to have. I think. I've said. All right. Other departments. When city management decides to make a cut and the proposed budget comes to us, they are OK with it. So what happened in this? Situation. So why are we discussing it? Which is OK. I'm happy to discuss what why we are discussing separately. Right. Because you recommended cut Cemetery Commission doesn't want the cut. So why are we talking about this? Why it is not like other departments? Well, because that's the problem is we are governed by a separately elected board. And I think so. Well, not always, but it has happened. And so I'll let. Well, I would say the normal procedure has always been discussion. And I think that. This is one situation I'm going to say it's been 12 maybe 15 years that we've been part of the city budget process and and to go back to what Donna has proposed. We don't want that because that's what we had before and it confuses the taxpayers. It still confuses the taxpayers today that. The city council has no say or bill has no say over the over the commission over me. So we're we've got and I mentioned it earlier, there's that fine line that we need to stay separate due to a legislative act of 1850 to 154. 170 years ago. So this is just working out the kinks and we're we're requesting it and we're putting it, you know, putting the decision on to you. Hopefully we can get. That money to where we want it to be and we'll be glad to come back and do a better job of explaining the budget. I just don't have a have it set up here and to answer your question about, you know, the departments were okay with it. We we had. We were trying to reach a financial target. And so we tried to find the best package of items included in the budget to meet the financial target. Would anybody have wished? You know, I wouldn't say anybody's OK with the reductions in their department. They would rather they not happen. I would say that I'm not OK with the list of things that we cut out of the policy items. But given what our mission is and what we have to do in the financial goal we were trying to hit, I'm comfortable recommending we think that's the best package of money to do what we need to do based on keeping it at 3.2 percent. And now your job as policy makers does decide is that still the financial goal, if it is what gets added to it, what gets subtracted from it, what how do you manage that? And I think what's different with the cemetery is that they have a separately elected commission. So Patrick put your spade and we did our process. And now a separate elected group of people said, well, we still want to go to bat for our extra money. And then you're the separately elected group of officials for all these other departments. So that's where it's different. And just one other thing to follow up on it's this $40,000 isn't a cut. It's an increase that they wanted that they didn't get, as I understand. Lauren, you had your hand up. Yeah, thanks. This has been helpful to get reoriented to this relationship, which is a little unusual. I guess for as we go into the final couple weeks of making these decisions, the thing that I'm not crystal clear on and it might be what Kerry was asking is what is the urgent need for that additional $40,000 that's more important than the police cuts and the emergency responder cuts. And the other thing, the parks department cuts and MYCC is on the chopping ball like there's cuts in every department pretty much and lots of urgent community needs. So I guess the case I would need to hear is what is not going to be done because of this that in this really tight budget year following a natural disaster in our community is not going to be done. That would be jump to the top of the list to get added back in. So I guess that would be what I haven't yet heard like clarity on what exactly it's needed for and then can process it in terms of how we would prioritize. So my answer to that is let me bring that question back to the board because again, I'm stuck between city administration, cemetery commissioners, and I don't want to guess for them. And then we will let you know what. So let me just rephrase what what you were both asking is if we don't get that money, what what are we going to do? What what effect will it have on our service? Right. And Jake, you're here. I don't know if you have an answer to that question now or or not. You have to get unmuted. Yes. You should be able to unmute yourself now, Jake. There we go. Yeah, I think it would be helpful if we could go back to the commission and come back to you with some specifics on that. Totally fair. That works if you can manage that on the time time frame you're working on that would be helpful for us. OK, totally fair. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Patrick and Jake. All right. Being here. Thank you. And again, if you have any questions, call me on my office door in the archway. It says call me anytime. When it gives my cell phone. OK, so, you know, the commissioners take their job really serious and they have their blinders are just on one department, not like yours, where you have much, much bigger departments. And OK, thanks. So thank you. OK. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, Jake. So, Sarah, would you like to come up and join us? I don't have any questions for you or anything yet, but I just think that that may be where we're going. So, council members, I. Well, I think it's great that we have a finance department that is on top of our money. And I don't think we need to take a lot of time with that unless people want to. But I think we're I think we're good. If you're good. So, council members, we're we're starting from the the budget that we heard last time and we are and we voted to go forward on that budget. And so now we're at a point where we can talk about what we want to do and that there are obviously three possibilities. Stay exactly where we are. Go higher or go lower. And. I'd like to get to hear from people on what what you would like to do. If there are things you want to. Eliminate things you want to add and. Let's just. Just start rolling here. Lauren asked one question. Kerry had asked at a previous meeting about income sensitivity. And I was wondering if those numbers had been pulled yet or if we'd have that. Yes, I just I can email you. Yeah, what that is. I'm sorry. That's OK. It's just it's a very big factor to me because a lot of what I hear. I mean, that's just a big consideration is how is it impacting the most low income folks in the community? And that's on us. We should have sent that out, but we didn't. But we we have the numbers. Yeah, I think the the state data is from twenty twenty two and the twenty twenty three data comes out in January. And like later this month. But we can we can get to the twenty twenty two. Yeah. And so what we're talking about is. What percentage of the tax paying public in Montpelier is participating in the income sensitivity program, right? That's what your question is, right? Yeah, which gives. You know, tax relief to people on, you know, up to something like close to one hundred thirty thousand dollars of household income. Everyone below that is getting kind of the lowest income folks get up to I think eight thousand dollars off their property taxes and then it ratchets down the higher your income goes. But that's a big factor when we're thinking about the impacts of any property tax increase of who is it impacting and how. And we talked about the equity screen a couple of weeks ago. So we're talking about cutting services for lower income people. Like it's just an important factor to keep in mind to, you know. So yeah, I just I'm very curious how many people are benefiting from that in the community or not. And, you know, just kind of how that plays out for community members. Right. I think it's in the fifty to fifty to sixty percent range. But when we pulled out, I'll give you the exact number, but I recall it being in the fifty to sixty percent range. Yeah, I think that's a great point, Tim. I'm sure you have this experience more than I do, but I'm regularly when someone is from talking about moving to Montpelier from out of state and they look at the. The listing cards on the multi list and or or Zillow or whatever. And it says the property tax for this house is whatever and it's some number. And I have to say, well, it's not necessarily what you pay. It's complicated. The answer is complicated. Yeah, Donna. Well, and along with that question, I'd like to see what are the other percentages if we could for other towns like Barry, just to have some ideas of what that rate is and how we compare. But I also wanted to this advocate for putting back the money for my ride. It's again, it's those people who need it the most that I feel we we can't. We shouldn't cut. So I would like to restore that forty thousand for my ride, Tim. Yeah, couple of thoughts. I think on the income sensitivity piece, it is important and it helps a lot of people. And I think on the other side of the coin as we work through budgets and also I think you get a lot of folks who feel like maybe the budgets as proposed don't affect them as much. And they're a little bit disincentivized to look at the numbers and make a decision about what it really costs because they feel like they're really not paying that bill. So I think it's had kind of an interesting impact on our budgets and how they're passed. So I'd be careful with that number. And in terms of the my ride piece, Donna, I think these where I'm at in this process and I'm new at it. So thinking I'd love to get through this and get a sense of of everything before we start just adding pieces back in. Hopefully we can do that more toward the end. My take, as I said last time is I really rather see us and which is what we've done tonight is focus on the key areas that are our responsibilities, the police, the fire, the EMTs, the public works and make sure we're handling and funding these departments properly to provide the services that benefit everyone a lot. And they're critical services. And then after that, I'm really not looking to raise the taxes. I'm looking at once we fund our key services, it will wanna look at some of these other departments and make some cuts. I think we need to. The budget that's proposed that is 3.2% is what it's billed as we already know with the tax appeals and the potential tax abatements. It's more like a 5. something percent increase on our side. And we still don't know what the schools are doing. So I think we need to work through our key services still before we start adding in other items. So, Tim, when you say you'd like to have a look at the whole picture, is there something that you think we don't have a view of yet that you wanna get, that you have answers that you wanna have or questions you wanna have answered? I mean, looking at public works, we've heard a lot about deferred infrastructure that we need to work on. There's apparently what about a $13 million estimate for current water lines. Current mentioned roughly 10 years to do that seems reasonable. I think is what I heard tonight. You know, that's a million three to a million five year and current dollars that needs to be in here somewhere if we're gonna tackle this. So just yes, and those would be in the water. This is really the general fund. Those are all funded through the water and sewer funds so they aren't really part of this. I know, but our job is to get the money. No, I get that. I know you could break it out 20 ways to Sunday, but I wanna get it. I agree with you. I'm just saying that regardless of what it is, it wouldn't affect the tax dollars. It would affect the municipal and that's coming. We'll have that shortly, that's all. I'm not understanding why it doesn't affect the tax dollars. Because it's paid out of the water and sewer rates. Okay. I guess I'm just a poor taxpayer. We just raised the checks. I mean, yes, it all comes out of the same pocket. No question about that. But it's not the general fund that we're talking about now. So let me back up a little bit. One of the reasons we emphasize the general fund at this time of year is that's the one that the voters vote on in March. So that's what we have to have done by the end of January. We have more time to do water and sewer to look at and go in more detail because you set that budget and you set those rates. So we buy necessary, we sort of have to move the tax budget along. Absolutely, we should be understanding all of it. And all I'm saying is you could add a million dollars of water line improvements and it wouldn't change the tax, the property tax rate. It would change the water and sewer rates. And you'd have to look at those in those contexts. So unless it's shifting money between the two funds that. I understand what you're saying. I'm really feeling I need to do this all at once. If we have a structure that's going to spread this out and have it connected, I think we've got a flawed structure. Yeah, I'm not arguing. I just want to make sure for you and for everybody. I'm just trying to make sure my experience, this is not making sense. Well, I want to make sure for you and for everyone who's listening, that's all that. They are different funds, but it's all part of the same operation and does all come from the same people just in different ways and like, yeah. And one example of those different ways, one of the is that we have the payment and lieu of taxes program that we get money from the tax from the state, which is essentially the same rate as they would if they were a private property owner. But for the water fund, they're just a customer of the water service. And we get funds from Berlin. We have Berlin customer. So we get the hospital and the whole very early road and all that kind of stuff. So it is different sources. It is slightly different pockets. And there are a part members, people in very few, but there are some people in the community out on the water system that have wells. You know what I'm talking about. So, Donna. Thank you. And I just want to mention one thing, Tim. I brought up the bus because as much as I'm going to try to make all the budgets meeting where I'm here now in Ohio, I'm not sure I will. I just want to keep it for front of people. And also that explains why I didn't want to support the 40,000 for the cemetery. I want it for the bus, for the transportation. The other thing is in my 10 years on the city council, when I joined our street money, our capital improvement money was so far behind because the previous councils wanted to keep taxes low. And it isn't that I don't want to keep taxes low, but it's not responsible to have our budget cut that we're not doing what we need to do. And I've been lucky to be part of some of the personnel studies that have happened in the past. And I feel we really are the right size of people. And when we went through the pandemic and we had lots of people furloughed, I miss them, the departments miss them, the public miss them. So I'm not looking at cutting staff beyond what's already been offered. And I do think that it's important that we not cut the city budget so hard. And then the taxes are going to go way up because of other items on the budget, on the ballot that the voters are going to vote. So I want the right size city council budget, but I don't want us to over cut ourselves that we actually diminish our services when we're going to have other items on the ballot that may very well pass and raise taxes up there anyway. So. Thinking about what I've heard tonight, for one thing, that's thanks, Donna, that's part of why I mentioned at the very beginning of the meeting that if we look at where the jobs are, once we get past fire, police and public works, that's 70% of the jobs, 70% of the city employees. So if we look at every other department, I don't feel that we're over staffed. I don't feel that we're, we have a huge and unjustified city government, but we can talk about that. And Tim, as you have proposals, we will certainly take that up like every other proposal. What I've heard tonight so far is I've only heard I think three proposals for increases or add-ins in the budget. I've heard some support for adding a police officer, which is 125,000. Heard support for adding a firefighter, which is 88,000. And I've heard support for the suggestion for adding my ride back at 40,000. And I have not heard, and so I'm curious about whether there are other areas that people think we should be looking to add money. And of course, then the question is, do we get it from other cuts? Do we get it from revenues or what? So. You know, my main concern is, I don't think, I mean, if we increase our budget and it's the smallest increase people are gonna see in the tax structure. I don't know what the school is gonna do, but it's gonna be a pretty big whack, I think. And sitting on the BCA and going through the appeals for the reassessment, a lot of people have already been whacked by that, by the increase in the value of their property. So happening all at once now comes the municipal budget. And it just seems like we have to, I mean, I think the staff's done it, I had high hopes of, you know, wrangling some cuts out of overtime or something that, you know, I didn't fully understand, but it looks like the staff's done a pretty good job of finding this base budget to work with. But it's, Sarah, could you, I think last meeting you predicted what, you estimated what the change would actually be. I mean, the budget's at 3.1 to 3.2%, but it doesn't include national life assessment or appeal, and it doesn't include abatements and there's, and it doesn't include, well, the legislation that was proposed today, which would rebate what? The school portion or the, if it passes? I think that's right, I haven't brought through all. Yeah, could you give us again what you have? Yeah, so after the BCA adjustments per the last council meeting, that dropped the grand list down, and what that does is that right now, as the budget sits, there's a 3.2% tax revenue increase, but with the reduction in the grand list, that equates to a 3.79% tax rate increase over the prior year, and that does not account for national life going further than they've already gone or other related items, reductions or new ads to the grand list. And it doesn't include abatements? Correct. Right, because we haven't gotten there yet. We start next week. Well, and that will hit in this year, at which we have a deficit mitigation plan for, it is possible that they could also hit in next year. People can ask at any time for that. So it depends and there's a lot of unknowns. So if we see that crop up, we will then have to do additional cost saving measures to make sure we can accommodate for that. But what we know, where we stand now from the actions taken by the Board of Civil Authority is 3.79%, not 5%. Correct. The tax rate increase after I lowered based on the decisions made as of the last meeting, the tax rate would increase 3.79% at the budget you've been provided. Okay, thank you. But national life is likely to affect fiscal 25, right? Because they'll go through a process. It'll either settle or... Whenever that shakes out, there will be a repayment that is owed to them if it's less than what the Board of Civil Authority agreed to. And so that will have to be paid back. So we just need to be cautious of that as well. But of course, we don't know what's gonna happen. Correct. You know, they can challenge what the Board of Civil Authority did and they can win, they can lose, or we can wind up somewhere in the middle. I was able to find the income sensitivity data on the Vermont Department of Taxes website. They actually just have, I think, released the 2324 property tax credits by town. It's a 14-page document. So you can see the counties and the towns. For the city of Montpelier, we are, sorry, I just had it here, we have 1,894 homesteads and of those 1,212 receive income sensitivity payments in a range of amounts. And so that's about 64%. So I was off in my percentages. Correct. Really tiny. The average education credit is 1,518. And the average municipal credit is 313. That's helpful. Great, thanks. Donna. I just would like her to resay those numbers. It was 1,000 and how many households? 20? There are 1,894 homesteads filed in the city of Montpelier and of those 1,212 receive income sensitivity payments. And then they break out what portion of that income sensitivity is education tax versus municipal. And they're typically weighted more towards ed, but that's 1,518 dollars. And the municipal portion is 313 dollars. Okay, thank you very much. President Calls here, there's also a total amount of credits for the community. I think it's when you see the total amount of money that comes into the community, it's also helpful. Yeah. The total amount of income sensitivity payments received by the city of Montpelier is 2,262,180 dollars. Thanks, and could you email us to us and put it on the budget section of the webpage? Absolutely. Great, thanks. Lauren. Thanks, yeah, just a few thoughts. I think the way I'm currently thinking about the budget, I mean, I've repeated it numerous times. Like my hope is that any positions that are being cut because of the budget crisis we're in that we're not eliminating them, that we're maintaining the hiring freeze on them. If that's the situation or we're kind of considering it in a hiring freeze pending as we go fight up the hill for some state dollars, if more resources come in and I pledge myself to go up there and lobby for those. So, and maybe I'd brought up last time, maybe it's like we start them partway through the year or there's ways that we look at a January 1st hiring date or something so that it's a less of a hit to the FY25 budget but that has us on track to bring those resources back to the department. So maybe we can think a little creatively, save some money given how challenging this budget is. So I'd be interested in if there's anything this staff could come up with that would be like a reasonable plan to get us there. Definitely hearing everyone wants to be fully staffing, certainly police, fire and DPW, I think. So that's one thing. And I mean, I would extend the idea of kind of the goal to be rehiring in the parks department and the other cuts too. Like I just want them to be seen for me. I think that they are temporary cuts because we're in a budget crisis following this devastating event in our community. They're not long-term cuts that I want to support. The one other thought that I brought up a couple weeks ago, I would love to see something like 25,000 put in for city committee funds. Something that if there's an opportunity to go after a grant and we need some kind of city match or there's a really timely project and that would come back to council and we could approve if those funds get used but just kind of zeroing out a whole bunch of our committees that are gonna really make that work really difficult to do. I think having some opportunity to seize onto opportunities over the course of that year would be really beneficial. Okay, thanks. Kurt, I realized as I say come up and I realized that we didn't get from you a figure for what it would cost to add that position back in. That's also $88,000. Yeah, that's also $88,000. Okay, but that's not what you were coming up to say. No, I wanted to make two points. One to what Lauren just mentioned about ways to offset positions particularly in DPW. I talked a little bit about the MRGP grant or the municipal roads general permit and the grant associated with that. Right now we have in the budget half of that available grant. Just based on staffing, we don't know that we could do the in-kind match to do all the work. I would be willing to commit from DPW to do all of the match to get that grant to reduce the cost of that employee. Obviously we do not, I don't wanna lose a staff member, it does impact CIP and so that's I think $20,000 or $40,000 so I can't remember the exact number but I could get that for you next meeting. The half we put in was $23,000. So another $23,000 off that $88,000 is potential. The second point I wanted to make with regard to Tim's concerns about the not including the water and sewer rates in this discussion, I was just emailing with our consultant and I'm gonna really try to get that ready for the next meeting. The priority list and where we're heading and what the schedule is for water line replacement. So I'm gonna do my absolute best to have that ready by the 10th, if not then certainly by the 24th but I will definitely target for the next meeting just so you can kind of look at the whole big picture. Now, Sarah just to, since you've got the live thing on there, if we were to say, let's put back in everything that's been suggested here as an add in. So police officer, firefighter, DPW, my ride and $25,000 committee funds. That would add 2.76 cents to the tax rate and it would make the tax rate increase be 6.99% over 24. It seems like kind of a lot. Yep. With the BCA, but without the unknown national line. Lauren. Just to remind me, sorry, I know it's asked in the previous meeting and I just can't remember the answer. Does this assume that we are getting that the bill that was introduced for the education tax refund, which seems very likely that we will. So I mean, I'm just like some of these if we do, what would we fund with that is how I would like to. So we have to pay the education tax anyway. So getting that refund back from the state is reimbursing us for fronting the school. We're still there's no, it could be in that loss, but there's no. That would be in this current school. Right, that would be in this budget. Batements, if you reimburs the batements and we have to pay the ed fund, that would reimburse us. Okay, so that's not impacting this. That's part of the $1.5 million current budget. I keep hoping it's gonna be like some money for us and I keep getting the answer. I don't. No, we don't, but the bill that's introduced is to help offset this. Because if we abate the taxes, we're still on the hook for the full education tax. So the municipal taxpayers have to pay the ed portion of all those abated taxes and doesn't come out of the school budget, it comes out of the municipal budget. So this bill would help offset those education reimbursements that municipal governments have to make. But we don't know to what extent and will it pass? I mean, I think it will pass, but who knows? And so no, we have not assumed any money at all. But again, that would be in the current most like, I mean, as Sarah said, there could be abatement requests next year too, but they're likely or to be for this fiscal year. So it would help us not reach 1.5 million. And actually, no, that was on top of that. Education portion was not included in the 1.5 million deficit mitigation plan. That's in addition. So that's another whole chunk of change. And I just noticed as I was going over the bill last night that it's drafted right now with an effective date of July one. And we could probably, as it goes through the committee process, it might be that the section on education reimbursement would have effective on passage or something so that it could come in the current fiscal year. Donna. Thank you. I wanted to go back to the added police and FAR. Part of what I thought I heard Lauren say and maybe Carrie did too, was to have the 16 in the budget this year with the intention of the 17th coming back if we get additional funding versus putting those back in full till. No, you're not wrong. That's definitely what Lauren said. And I don't have a concrete proposal. Okay. But I was just saying, well, let's just... Yeah, see what it costs. Let's just play what if, you know, there is... That's just too much. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Sarah, how did you do that little bit of math that you just did? I mean, is that the tool that... Yeah, so that tool was sent out to you. I made adjustments to it in advance of this meeting so that I could give you percentages quicker. And so my plan is to put that, the updated version on the website and to send that out to all of you again. Okay, yeah, because I have that link. I think Kelly sent me a version. Does that, do I have the updated version? No. And so the updated version will go on the city's webpage. And what that means is that anyone out there in taxpayer land or in zoom land can do the same thing. They can go through the budget and say, well, what changes can be made and what impact will that have on the total bottom line and on the property tax rate? It's a very cool thing. Yes, Bellen. We are talking about increasing the tax rate. How much we can, how much support we can provide through city revenues if we added these things to the budget? Revenues, city revenues, or we are not planning to use any of the revenues for the budget, just the tax thing. Well, we've already made our estimate for what kind of external revenues. So whether it's state funds or rooms, meals, alcohol, tax, those types of revenue, we've already, this budget is based on our conservative estimate of what we think those revenues would be. So at this point, any additions to the budget or deletions would be really coming from the tax rate unless you all wanted to up the revenue estimates based on knowing something that we don't know. But I see that whatever we want to add to the budget will affect the tax rate. We cannot use any city revenues because... That's correct. A really possible exception of like, for example, Kurt just mentioned, if there was an additional person, we might be able to get some additional revenue. So instead of it being a net $88,000, it might be a net $50,000, some $1,000. But that's kind of rare. I mean, I'll think there's other dependent revenues on specific expenses that I'm aware of. It seems like we've got to find something, at least for me to be, I'm not comfortable with this. And even if we started out roughly 3% and it's creeping up to 3.9 or 7.9 or whatever it is going to keep going and get this rate because there's some big unknowns. I mean, how do we find, I guess I'm trying to find where we can look for the changes. I mean, if we go back and say, Bill, okay, we want to hold it more at 3.2 or we started, what would be the next level of adjustments? Is that, I just don't feel like I know the internal workings of this well enough to do that. Well, I'm not sure how to answer that question. One thing we know is that the majority of our budget is personnel. That's right. And so cutting the way, when the budget as proposed saves money, it saves money by cutting positions. Mostly. It's interesting. And others. Yeah. But our role is to provide the services and our job is to determine how can we provide those services is not to be a full employment agency. No, I agree. So really it's, we're responsible to at least review this and look at it and say, why do we have five people in the city manager's office? You know, or why do we have, how does community justice fund? Or, you know, whatever the questions are, those are pieces we really need to be working through. Fair dance. Sure. If you want to talk about any of those, we're happy to talk. I do. Yes. So community justice, 100% state funded. So that's really not worth. Right. That's easy, yeah. And city manager's office is the same three people that we've had since I began here, which was, you know, once time with Sandy and Bev and me, and now is Mary and Kelly and me. And then we've added Evelyn's communications position and Chris's sustainability and facilities coordinator position, which were basically based on council priorities and requesting funding. So those are the five that we have instead of the three over to address specific needs. And so those are changes in recent years that have been made. Otherwise there's really in the major change, I think otherwise in the city manager's budget was again, much like with overtime and other departments, we'd been sort of underfunding legal thinking this is the year we'll get by without spending is, you know, oh yeah, our lawsuits are biased. And so we finally up the legal to match our spending trend. So that's, so I mean, really there's no other change in our offices than those. Assistant city manager, since you got here, right? No. That was on before you got here. Well, so when I got here, Mike Jones served as the assistant city manager as the assessor and then Bev became, Bev was the assistant manager really from the whole time I was here. I mean, that was her job title. And so then we've replaced her with Jesse and then Sue and Cameron and now Kelly. I mean, it's, it's not a new position, 29 years old at least. If not longer. And then, so the only new, like I said, the sustainability position, the communications position renews to address specific issues. And so certainly those are new and expanded areas of service. And I don't know what we would have done without either of them in the flooding scenario. They were both very critical in terms of even now putting back our communicating with the residents about what's going on and putting back what we're doing. But, you know, we need everything. So I hear you, but the, so I'm happy to answer those questions. Like I said, CJC is 100% state funded. It's fully granted. Our only contribution basically is providing them space and that kind of thing. And they actually provide services to our own city services and they do some extra things from up here residents that they don't do for other places in return for that. Mediation services and those kind of things. And they do great work in the community. But we're happy, I mean, we're happy to talk about the finance department or clerk, well, clerk's not here, but clerk, treasurer's work and I don't know, anybody else said, I mean, the assessing office, you know, was a full-time person and two full-time people. Now, Jane is part-time and Marty's a contractor. So that has not grown at all. And obviously assessing is something we have to do. Clerk is two people and finances hasn't really changed. Yeah, I mean, those are, so, you know, we can go through what everybody does, happy to, but in terms of changes, I know I hear that too, you know, it's all these people, but it really, you know, some of them, you know, I think, yeah, so maybe their titles have changed but their jobs haven't. That's right. Just pressuring because it's the classic, it almost feels like, okay, these are all the good reasons we can't change anything, but I think we just have to look at the options and understand. I'm not arguing why we can't change anything. I'm just... So I guess the question is what to ask you to do. You know, so, I mean, ultimately you have to set the priorities. Yeah. You know, obviously, I wouldn't expect that you would go into detail and make changes to the budget, but you can say we want to hit a certain level and these are the things we'd prioritize. And, you know, if certain priorities aren't as important as they were, tell us that. And if some departments or operations aren't as important as others, tell us that or if you think they're important enough to continue. You know, we based our budget presentation seeing on the needs that we have and the services we're providing to the residents and made our best, you know. Yes. When it's left, yeah, right. So you... Sometimes we get a lot of guidance in advance of the budget about where priorities are and what level you want to get. And sometimes we don't. And we didn't, you know, you... Given the fact that there's a lot of not new people, we were kind of left to our own devices. So we, on our own, chose to bring it in at the inflation rate, not knowing what BCA was going to do and to recommend the array of services and costs that are in there. And now it's your job to say, well, did we get it right or wrong and how do you want to change it? And we are the priorities and you can send us back, but you need to give us... At this point, if you just send us back, we don't have any more information than we had before. So if you send us back to do some work, please tell us where your priorities are and we can try to meet them, but we can't operate in a vacuum. This is... The budget's been plopped on your desks and now it's up to you to decide what you want to do with it. I mean, not tonight, but... Lauren. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I just again have, I think, a different philosophy than Tim on some of this. And part of it is just having now been one of the longer serving members and hearing over and over again from the departments. Like there's not a lot of that to trim from the departments. Consistently, we hear a need for better services, better infrastructure. And to me, that doesn't scream, we're a bloated bureaucracy that needs a lot of cuts. It's we need to strategically invest. I fear that this budget is already erring towards being irresponsible in ways that is going to cost taxpayers more money over the next decade, things like we're deferring a bunch of equipment purchases that they might break this year and we're gonna spend more fixing it and then buying a new one. And so I think we're already at that really slim budget that I mean, I'm uncomfortable, it's too low, even though I'm also really concerned about the tax rate. And this is like as we keep talking about, but I mean, I certainly would not support going any lower than this and adding a little bit in to just make sure that we're not missing opportunities and figuring out some way to be building to get the staffing back specifically, for the emergency services and things to the levels that seem like are better serving our community. That's my current approach. It seems like there are some questions that are not all the questions are unknowns are bad. And I think it's worth keeping that in mind. Obviously we don't know what's gonna happen with the abatements, we don't know what's gonna happen with some of the appeals of the assessments. On the other hand, we don't know what the room's meals and alcohol tax is gonna be for the next year. We're talking not starting until July, we don't know what the revenues are gonna be. And as we see restaurants starting to open again, we can anticipate an increase in that. I assume some of that is built into the assumptions, but... So I have reduced local options tax revenue from how we have historically budgeted given all of the unknowns. And that there's no real way to data mine. It's kind of the Vermont tax department's secret. It's just not data they share. So there's no way for me to analyze to determine what is happening now and what will happen. So I think, well, it's a conservative approach. And if revenues return, that's great. And we can revisit how to use those. But I think the budget that's sitting in there now is the best guess at what it could look like in 25. Now, one of the things that the state legislature used to do, and I don't know if they still do it anymore, is they used to have this thing called the waterfall. Remember that? Do they still do that? I don't think they do. If there's more money, they can specify, well, what comes next? What the next expenditures are with that additional revenue. And that's kind of what Lauren was talking about with the police and fire department, you know, that maybe we don't have enough money to fund those positions now, but six months into the year, we don't know where we're going to be. And so I don't know if we need to formally do that. And that's a question for you, Bill. If we adopt a budget of a certain amount, and then it turns out that our revenues are above what we budgeted for, how do we manage that? So I will answer that question, hopefully succinctly, but I also observed that six months into the fiscal year next year would be right now. So we are six months into the current year. So you will be sitting here doing the budget, and we'll have a sense of how that current year is going, and you'll be able to make those decisions. So the vote, and this is why it is different than the other budgets. The vote that takes place in March sets the amount of, the voters approved the amount of tax dollars to be raised. And that, and we then set a tax rate against the grand list. The city council, so the budget, you know, the budget explains that, but the city council can, as you know, we get grants, we get different things, or like this year, we had revenue shortfalls. We actually had to reduce the budget. It didn't change the tax dollars to, well, other than the fact that we expected some of them to be lower. So you can't change that tax dollar number, but if we suddenly were $500,000 ahead, you know, you would have the option to consider if you wanted to spend that, if you thought it was sustainable. You know, going forward, if it was, I would, you know, or is it a one-time thing? And so we only want to spend it on one project or something. You have that flexibility at any time. And in fact, as we manage the budget throughout the year, we do that all the time. I mean, if a bad winter and something goes up, we try to offset it somewhere else. And that's, even our departments have struggled with that sometimes because they're like, hey, we're under budget. And we're like, you still can't spend it on another budget, you know, one over. We're looking at the whole thing. And so, yes, you have that flexibility and you don't necessarily have to vote it. You can decide it at any given time or we can come and propose it. What you set for the tax dollars is really, that's what it is. It's saying to voters, this is how much, and obviously there's a good faith promise there when you say, here's all the things we've included and haven't included that we'll do those, you know, get to, you know, vote the tax dollars and suddenly change the priorities all around that. I mean, you probably legally could, but I wouldn't advise it. Helen. So not having that much alternative, right? Because I don't want to have any tax increase, but city doesn't have that much revenue to help that we want to see in the primary services like fire, police and public works. Then that's our only chance as a city council to have a tax increase. So. Reduction somewhere else. But then as we talk, those are your choices. Yeah, but we try, right? And there's no place to reduce anything. So it is really, I, so it is great, all these discussions, but if we will be end up the place we have started, like, okay, we need to have tax increase. Then I feel a little bit, I don't want to say this, but just like, I was like, yeah, not powerless, but no option, right? What, what, what do you want to do now as a city council? Because all the things we are trying to see in the budget will lead something that we don't want. Let me talk for myself. I don't want like tax increase. And like we are talking about room or like service tax or like other things as a still revenue. And we said, oh, maybe businesses cannot do this. Like maybe they will not reopen, but at the same time, residents are the same situation, right? If we increase the tax, most of them cannot pay that one either. So I, again, maybe it's very, you know, general question, but what is the solution? So should we just say, okay, we will go with the tax rate? Is it the easiest option to do? Because why are we discussing all these things if it will take us to the tax increase in the end? What you, you said something that I'd like to explore a little bit that you said you don't want to see a tax increase or tax rate increase. Are you saying that your goal for the budget for next year would be to be a flat tax rate without even the rate of inflation increase that's been proposed to us? Option for the residents, right? That's much tax increase. Let me start with 3.1, right? Okay, yeah, good. It sounds good then. As you ask, oh, could you please add this, Sarah? Then like, oh, it is like, no, it is 3.1 something. I'm talking about that increase. Gotcha. So all the residents, we talk about like about 64%, like income sensitivity, you know, it is a lot, right? So if you are, if our only solution to have a tax increase, then most of the people, even if they vote this budget on March, they will affect it by its negative. So I'm just trying to understand our options. We don't have any revenues that can help us. We cannot make more cuts because there's no way to do this. It is really difficult, like for all of us, not only city council, but for city staff too. So it is very, very difficult situation. Well, let me jump in before you do, Bill. You know, you're saying there's no way to make cuts. Tim has been saying he doesn't believe there's no way to make cuts that he thinks we can find cuts. And so that's not quite the same, but we, my perspective is that we provide a whole bundle of services for the voters, for the residents of Montpelier. And everything that we've put in the budget for all the years that I've been on the council and for many years before that have been services that have really been important to the city and people have supported them even when it's resulted in tax increases. But if you or Tim or anyone wants to make an argument that we want to cut the size of city government and save money by doing that, then that's an argument to make. And we've got two meetings coming up to make it. And the council will vote on whether we do that. And then the voters will ultimately vote on what they're willing to do. So, Bill. Yeah, so I was going to see something similar, which is that, I mean, just to be clear, everything's a choice. And, you know, I, when I talked to you all in March about the rules and I talked about, you know, the council sets the policy and we implement your policy. Our job is to recommend a budget to you. The biggest policy decision you make every year is basically how to spend other people's money. You've heard me say that. So this is what this is. So you have the full range of choices. If you wish to have no tax increase, and it's what, $360,000 or something like that, you could do that. You would have to then decide which services we don't provide at the same level we provide. So what you've been hearing when you say we can't do this is if you want to continue providing police, fire, public works or anything else, similarly to what we're doing where you've been hearing from your folks what the impacts are. So if you want to reduce those departments or any other department, because there's some you haven't heard from yet. That's a policy choice. So just like that list of things that we're not funding, whether it's, you know, the housing trust fund, all those things, you know, we're saying this isn't as important to us this year as doing something else. So, you know, it's your job as an elected group of officials to decide what's best for the community, what's the right mix of budget, tax rate and services. And, you know, there's no right answer. If there's a right answer, we just calculated and it would be done. It's a priority question. It's a policy, small P political question. You know, I can't answer that for you. I get, I work for you. My job is to do what you want to do. My job was in our team's job is to give you our best proposal based on what we understood to be your priorities and what we understood to be your financial parameters. Now, so, and we can answer all the questions you want. If you want to take, if you want to know what it would cost, what it would do if we cut three police officers, the chief would tell you that if you wanted to know what it would look like adding three, you know, that that's what we're here for. We're your resources. By the end of the day, you get elected to decide what's the right mix of all this for the community. So it's not that you can't do it. It's you've got to, you know, the majority of you have to choose to do and that's how, how it goes. So, you know, and, and we'll help you through the process anyway we can, but I can't tell you what to do other than saying, you know, unless you give me more direction of where you will, you know, is it zero? Is it 5%? Is it 3.2 or 3.79? What is it? And we're, what, what's important to you? And then we can help you get to where you want to go. There's like, remember the plane, right? What's your destination? Where do you want to go? How fast do you want to get there? How much do you want to spend together? This is, do you want to take seven stops in the low budget way or, you know, do you want to have the nonstop jet? May I, if it helps to provide any perspective, the average residential property value is around 370,000. The budget that was presented to you would be a $121 tax increase for the year. And if you wanted to reduce the tax rate from the 3.79 back to the 3.2, that would be another 68,000 in cuts. And then back to a no tax rate increase would be an additional $368,000 worth of cuts. That helps. So a little low around 430,000 to get to zero. Yeah. Tim. Well, what, what, I think it, you know, it's tough because we can make choices and they're tough choices and they're political choices. And really it just feels like governing by choosing a percentage and it's, it doesn't feel like the right way to do it, but it looks like that's the way it's been done in the past and probably what we're going to do again. I mean, last year it was a quick wham bam and you just approved what an 8.5%, I think is what it was. Unfortunately, it didn't affect everyone the same way I understand, but I look at the impact of that on our taxes and it was not an 8.5% increase. It was a lot more. It was almost double that. And so that's why when I hear your, your predictions, I'm a little skeptical. I'm just not sure how that all works out. There was a lot of factors, but, you know, we're really, there's a lot of people impacted here that aren't paying the costs and when they start to have to pay the costs, like our tenants, I mean, I haven't raised the rents to cover last year's increase and I have to. I mean, it's just, I mean, just, it's unbelievable the increase that was caused by last year's increase and we're going to do it again. And that's only taxes. It doesn't count water, sewer insurance and all the other things that are going up, as you know from our budget. So I think we've got to look at this really hard and we've got to find a way to focus. But if you guys don't want it, it takes all of us to vote. If it's just me making noise and the rest of you are going to say, oh, what the heck, let's do 3.79 or whatever. And then we're going to see all the other impacts on top of that when national life prevails if they do. And I think there's a chance. And when we get through the other adjustments, we're going to have to make for. Lots of use of properties because of the flood, you know, we still don't have any of the hotels in town's up. The capital plaza is still down. The interval pillars not doing much. So I don't think you're going to see a lot of the revenues. Jack's hoping for that waterfall. I don't think you're going to see it this year. So it's not realistic to plan for it. I think we really need to find a way to break this out. And I can't do it tonight, but I'll try to be ready for the next one. Yeah, no one's saying you have to do it tonight. But is it just me or the rest of you feel like there's any read for adjustments? Because if you don't. Well, what I'll get to you in just a second. What I would say, Tim, is that. I would. Caution it saying at phrasing it as. You're saying that you want to take a close look at what we do. And the rest of the members of the council are just saying. Oh, what the heck. I think every member of the council is taking a close look at what we do and taking a serious look at the services and. And the costs and making. Possibly making a different judgment than you about. What's worth it, but I saying. Characterizing it. Oh, what the heck is like saying that. Other members of the council are really not. Taking it seriously and really not doing their following meeting, their obligation to, to the voters to. Adding a lot of words to. Well, I am, but it's just very quiet. And I don't have. Just find out what people think. And without that, that was my conclusion. Okay. Yeah. So, so. I think we are all struggling with it. And I mean, I know when I first saw the proposed budget. I was just struck by the fact that the. The positions that were cut were in the, you know, the. The three places where my constituents tell me they're most concerned about services. You know, I would. I would love to stay at 3.1. I mean, I was hoping to get under 3.1. If we could, it looks like that's really, really hard to do, but. Billy, we're talking earlier about. You know, getting direction. I mean, if we had said. 3.1 and don't cut from police fire or DPW would have done that. And we could still take a look at what that would mean. Right. I would like to see that. I don't, I don't know if that I would. Vote for, for whatever those cuts would be. I don't know what they would be, but I would like to, I'd like to see them because I think others have expressed. A similar concern that we're, we're making personnel cuts in. In fundamental services that. You know, that residents are most concerned about. So I appreciate that. Couple responses that number one. The, first of all, they're not the only places we, there's a position cut in rec. There's a pretty substantial cut in parks the whole summer staff. We, I think we cut back some summer staff at rec as well in addition to a full time position. We're still got more internal positions we're looking at. So, so they weren't the only ones. I want to say that number one, number two. Many of the departments are very small. You know, you heard, heard the planning department and. So. You know, a one person cut to them is a 20% reduction as opposed to a much smaller reduction. And then, you know, planning just picking on planning specifically. We knew we were cutting out all the funds. We knew we were cutting out all the funds. We knew we were cutting out all the economic development funds and those kinds of things. We wanted to keep the wherewithal to at least do stuff internally and like move the country club program, you know, other projects, other priorities that are still happening. In the city. Then going specifically to the three departments. I agree. Those are the top priority departments in police. Again, it wasn't so much a cut as we didn't add. Funding. So it was, we, you know, we would like to add the 17th position. We didn't do it. So, so that was one and in DPW. They've been running short. They're currently running short too. And so it was like, well, if we can fill one of them. We're better off than we are today. It's not ideal. The fire. It's a, it's a, it's a real reduction. And honestly, I think they're the ones of those three. That's the one that will feel it the most out of those big three. Not that the others won't, I don't want to, you know, play favorites, but I think that's just the case. So that, that's how we got there. But you know, a lot of people were given at the office and it was how do we reach it? You know, to Tim's point, setting a percentage isn't necessarily the best way. But when you, when you don't have anything else, I mean, if there's another way to, you know, if you want to just go through the budget and decide where you want to, you know, one way is just go through every, you know, I'm not saying this what the heck, but you know, the other option is we come into you with the budget we had, which was, you know, with the extra million and a half. And say, here's, here's, here it is fully loaded. Let's just go through what, what do you guys want to put in and out and you have all that information. And so you, you could put it all back in and start from scratch or you could do whatever you want or you could send us back to the drive. You know, there's no right way to do a budget other than the way that works for, you know, your group and, you know, maybe another year we'll have a different conversation in September or October about how we want to do this. So, you know, we're open to whatever we want to make where our job is to make this work for, for you folks and for the community. And so that's, you know, I want to be clear that what it wasn't just, hey, let's take these positions because and but, and they weren't the only ones and so. Yeah, so I'm, I'm, I agree that coming up with a percentage and then trying to make your budget fit it is not a good way to do budgeting but but I think we're a little bit stuck with that. And I keep coming back to this idea that we have been hearing from the public and we have set in our own priorities that public safety public works are are essential. And so I'm not comfortable with the cuts that are proposed to those that would be much happier putting those back in. And, and I, and I would like to, I would like to, I would like to consider the possibility that we're going to have to have a higher tax increase than 3.2% in order to be able to provide the services that we want to provide. I'm not close to that idea. And Sarah gave us a sort of an estimate on what the increase on a tax bill would be for the 3.2%. I'd be interested to know what that would be for the six or whatever it was. I think that would help give us a little bit more perspective. Yeah, adding everything back in the 6.99% would be a $223 tax increase, which is 102 up from that previous amount. Okay. Okay. That's helpful. And that includes my ride and the 25,000 that morning. So I can take those out and give you that. Okay. That was all of that. All right. Yeah, and those two are 65,000. So, yeah. Ellen. So I know that Bill mention this before and I agree with him that the money FEMA gave to us, we can we shouldn't put it in the budget, but can we use at least some of it for this year, not the like the budget items, it has to be there like forever, but just to give some relief. Is there, I'm trying to find like, talk about different options. You know, we can say no, we cannot do it. It's okay. But just like, is there any way to use some external money to create some kind of relief at least for this year. Well, if we do that, the money's gone. Yeah, I know, like, that's the problem right. Is it the discussion? Yes. So, I think our plan was having that on the agenda for the next week's meeting and with some some suggestions, you know, recommendations. And I think. Yeah, let's just leave it at that because I want to like to go through the options. There are some options. I mean, I, you know, I pretty sure what I'm going to recommend, but I will wait till I talk to the full staff, but I think we ought to be quite careful. This is a one time opportunity and if we're going to move this project. We'll talk about that next week. So there we are. Go ahead. Okay, for this discussion, I want to see fire, public works and police department, these three positions to be added to the budget. And again, I don't want to see tax increase personally, but these are important positions so we need to have them. That's my overall insight for the discussion for tonight. Okay, thank you. So Sarah, if we, if we add those three positions, but not the other 65,000, what, where does that place 301,000 of those three. DPW and fire are at 88,000 a piece and the police is at 125 and that includes all benefits and we budget for vacant positions or unknowns that a two person plan and and so it's a gamble as far as whether they come on with a family and it comes in higher or they come in at single and it comes in lower. But so if we put those three in there, that's 301,000, that's a 6.42% tax rate increase, and the average bill would see $205 increased, which is 84 over the 3.79. I don't know if there are other counselors who have ideas for other places to cut to compensate for that. But this would be the time to bring those up. Nobody seems to want to I what about Bill at one point near you throughout the I know this will get people all excited because nobody comes out like the seniors when they want something but I think the thought of having a co director for the senior center and the wreck from an administrative point of view, make sense. We've had times in our past when it was that work and the director of the wreck was not a full time position and it was augmented with other responsibilities so I think that could happen again and maybe if that's a place we need to look for some potential savings and find a model that works for both departments I think we can do it if people want to be positive and try to do it. That sounds like something to look into. So it shouldn't take a lot. Are there any other places where we've had structural I mean because we can find some structural change that would help. You know if we have a fire chief retiring and look at the structure there do we need as many layers as we have and we have a fire chief and assistant chief six lieutenants and we're not a huge fire department. Maybe if you promote a new chief and don't have an assistant chief and we are going to I don't know there is there a way to look at your structure and still make it work. So what are you thinking Tim cutting the number of personnel of administrative personnel and trying to keep the firemen and the mts staffed yes. Okay. And are there other places like that that we can at least consider and other departments I don't know. Well, yeah I keep I keep coming back to and you all have this information I keep coming back to this listing of the organizational chart and the listing of all the departments, and they're mostly really small. So any cutting one position from any of those departments after after police fire and public works, the next biggest department is is finance and that's six and three quarters. And I don't know what, what would happen with a cut of a position from finance. I'm currently operating with one vacant position. And so we are spreading the workload across everybody but it's a difficult task and it makes collecting payments in the clerk's office more difficult and processing the volume of payments and payroll and all of the things that we do and monitor so I think we would figure out how to make it work. If that was where we headed but it wouldn't be ideal. So where we are right now is 5.75. We have 6.75 in the budget. I am at 5.75 at the moment, because I've been holding my position open to try to curb any kind of deficit we might see in 24. Yep. And that's actually a good point which is some of the reason some of these positions are vacant is because we are trying to watch our spending in this current year. And in the budget we are trying to save as much money everywhere we can because as you know we had a bad year last year and then we had flood and revenue issues so we are trying to sort of overcome all of that and we're on the heels of COVID so we've had a long run of bad financial standing. Yeah, just I think just reiterating that just you know having been here through crisis upon crisis and you know when people last year saw a big tax increase it was compounding pressures from getting hit by COVID. State government is investing less in services that then are falling onto cities like homelessness and all of a sudden we're sitting here and these are community members of ours that we have to figure out how to support in various ways. So we're getting these increased costs the same way the school districts are getting increased social service requirements on them. And I mean I think there's like bigger structural issue so it's a lot harder to look at our little budget and figure out you know what are big cuts to make them. And then you know the state budgets been doing that too but the knees don't go away they are falling onto us and so it's just a really frustrating position to be in. You know I it's it's so hard it's putting us in this position where we don't want to make taxes untenable for our community members and we have these urgent needs that the city provides and so it's just it's just to voice that frustration. Yep, Donna. Thank you. And going to Lauren's point. Yes, I mean for three years we reduced budgets we wouldn't have a deficit. Taxes still went up because they were cost all around the pandemic. And likewise with the flood. So I don't want to be to cut back but I'm still going to advocate for keeping the 16 in the department, keeping that number we have now. And so I think it's important for us that Robert retires, and that we in our least our mindset and plans that if indeed, we don't have another flood next summer, or whatever, that we might be able to grow that both departments back up to 17 but I don't think this is the year to do it. And I look at the seniors and they really, there really is a need for a senior expert and if it's not the director then somewhere in there you've got to have someone who really knows about senior services. They are a different animal than the rec department. And so there's one thing about just an administrator but within the programs within the senior center. I think it's real important that we have some staff that really has that really important expertise. And so Tim, and I think it does help to hear things and you know maybe something someone will say next meeting and other things will click and we may all change some different positions so I felt every year this council has deliberated it may not look like it from the previous but that we studied and that we looked and we made a commitment to meet certain goals and we're willing to find the money to ask for the money to do it. So, I think it's worth having more discussions. Thank you. Thanks Donna. Other ideas or places to just try to. So we've got the Elks Club. I mean it's, we saw the community survey there's a fair number of responses that suggest we should sell it. We'll talk about it next week but it seems like that's a piece that it's not generating funds it's a it's losing at this point right. It's got to be bill. It's not making money. We're not taxes on it. You've got buildings you've had to deal with mold and remediation you haven't collected rent. Well we can provide we'll provide you the finances. And when you do that could you please give me that thing I asked for earlier and you did once before but update it with what we've got into it so far. Absolutely. That'd be great. So we got that fund we've got our fund lucid money expenses are covering themselves we do we are renting it we're getting rent from the shelter. This covers because you're paying the heat and all the yeah so you really just it's a gift it's a very nice thing to do but you're not making money. No but we're covering our costs. No but you said we were losing money. Well you are because you're not really amortizing a mortgage you're not collecting taxes and you've got to maintain the building you're losing money. Yes. And maybe you know that's it's not me it's all of us. I know but that's what I'm saying let's look for things that are carrying the water the parking fund maybe is another thing to look at is there a way to restructure that. Where else are we losing money. District heat. Yeah. A couple hundred thousand a year. I mean, if everything's on the table we got to talk about this stuff. And we haven't. So what more do I have to do than bring it up do I need to come into the proposal for you or is. I think you've identified some things that you've asked the city manager to look at and I think we can expect to see some data that can be inputs to the discussion or next meeting. I mean so yeah to your point Tim I mean I can't tell you. We'll give you all the data about the Elks Club and I think that's a you know that again that's a policy discussion of council is whether. You know it was it was purchased with a long term vision and there's a plan and there's we can talk about that and people either want to see that through or not and that's a choice to make. And that would you know that would provide one time revenue would but. You know district heat. Again that's an operation of the city. We can go through all the budget and the operation I don't know. What else I mean what we desperately as you know because you're a customer we desperately need more customers than we but we are kicking every tire we can on that. But yeah I don't think we can't stop providing it so. Yeah is there something we could do about that though. Well I think we really need more customers is really what it comes down to but so you know we can certainly go but it's a conversation absolutely but in terms of. And those are you know maybe bigger conversations so yeah I you know I think you don't need to come up with a proposal from my perspective I think other than saying. In addition to we have this is like what should we do about it's then what's the next step with it right so. You know how can we what then we're happy to talk about any of it because again we want to do what you want to do. So. So thinking about that since you brought up district heat. Bill there's no way that we could just say well okay. We tried district heat it was an experiment we're not happy with the outcome so we're dumping it we can't do that right. We can't do that until our contracts with our customers are up. Because they've you know they've invested in us and we've invested in them and. And I'd have to look at the state contract I think there might be an hour after so. And then we have debt that we have to pay off of the debt expires or supposedly expires coincident with the contracts maybe not we'll look at that but yeah so no we can't just say this year we're not going to do district heat anymore. And nor you know again there are people counting on that and including these buildings. Yeah. So, you know it would be a it would be a long process to look at that. But we're not going to solve this problem tonight. Laura just just very briefly I mean that's an example where part of Chris's job as our sustainable sustainability and facilities director is trying to finally have capacity to go and try to actually drum up business which there hasn't been capacity to do before. I mean, I mean I think a spotlight on this and like what's happening and what's our more clear goals and targets and like yeah like I welcome that decision and I think that's an example where we actually needed capacity and. You know, obviously he's gotten pulled into flood repair and stuff in the interim but. Yeah, I'd love to see us focus on how do we actually make this work. But I assume and bill you can correct me if I'm wrong that the in kind work, like of having in transferring internal city employees to doing flood relief. Is that something that we're finding a claim again with FEMA for. Yeah, so the different categories of damage allow for different things. And so for the emergency response period we will be able to submit for overtime for debris pickup will be able to submit for DPW's time doing that. So each one kind of has a different threshold so when we can recoup those costs we will and we are all tracking them to be sure. And at the very end there's also an admin portion so all of my time working on this and Kelly and everybody else's time. We're allocated a percentage and we can submit on that so we've been tracking to try to recoup as much as possible. But a city employee who would have been on payroll anyway, and their function was just shifted from running the rect department or running the parks department to running the hub. That's that's just shifting that's not a reimbursable correct so during the emergency response period. We all maneuvered to operate the best we could and fill in where we could and if that's budgeted payroll which they all are with the exception of some of the parks time that was in there that their regular time will be reimbursable the rest of it will not just over time. Good to know. Is there anything else that we can fruitfully do tonight because I don't want to make people stay beyond the point that we're accomplishing anything. We're going to call the school board and see how big their increases. Well, I mean if it's really 18% and we add six, talking about a 24 25%. Well, it doesn't quite work that way, but it's hot. Right. But it's not anyway. I'd like to tell his idea that I think we should meet with the school board and it's, it hasn't happened in a long time apparently tried it. Yeah. And we can go meet them they don't have to come here but I think it's worthwhile to have some dialogue and conversation. It's we're all one community and having these two ships sailing off their own directions is not good. There were there were a number. If you if you all read the the the free comments to the survey. The survey was about the city budget and there were a lot of comments that were saying we got to do something about school funding in one way or another. And I think they, they said that to us because we were the ones who were looking for input and they they gave it and I think not everybody understands the difference between city and school budgets but and it comes out of people's pockets the same way. Lauren. Yeah, I do think we need to. I mean, it's not going to be 18% like that was that's not real so like let's not scare people that that's a real number like that that's not going to happen like but we need to understand because I think there's there's this year and there's a window where there's like lowered impacts because of the way they wrote the state policy that's changing the formula and then in a few years it could it could jump really substantially and like it does implicate because it's like we've been talking about the same people paying paying these taxes and so how is that going to impact what the city is going to be able to do and how are we planning together or is there a state policy change that's you know none of this is inevitable either but I think you know and and maybe there's a smaller conversation around the budget now but I think like a bigger conversation in the future with the school board to understand what what's really happening here what are the implications for our community and how do we together think about I mean I think that would be valuable because it is this changing landscape it's really hard to understand from following just the media. That reminds me actually harken back to something that Tim said earlier and and I don't know why I didn't think of it when you said it then but we're talking about the water and sewer rates along with everything else and you know I know you don't have the all the final budgets but our plan. Again, subject to your review is that the water and sewer rates will be also be at the inflation rate plus the pop the council policy 1% again you can change that plan but that that is current council policy. Until it changes and so that's the end that 1% in dedicated infrastructure so that's what you can expect for there won't be anything extraordinary beyond those for either of those rates. So I should have thought of that when I mentioned it so and then Kurt will talk to you about the plan for infrastructure. I said so it. Where the mayor is into how we were going to move forward. Sorry a couple questions we had, we have a meeting next week are regularly scheduled Council meeting so there will be a couple of other items on the agenda besides this but again primarily budget. And then the 24th is kind of the last one because we run out of time. So we had put on the calendar maybe a 17th meeting. It seems like maybe we need that. And one of the other things, but again up to you whether you want to have three more or two more discussions like this. But I think what we have done in the past and I my take is that we are nowhere close to being able to do this is often going into the meeting next week we would have a preliminary council budget for the first public hearing and I don't think we're anywhere close to that so one. So I guess we should decide how we want to proceed and whether you want if you want to have a meeting on the 17th and if you want to have that is with a goal of next meeting setting at least a preliminary budget knowing you have two meetings to change it because we typically have we try to have two public hearings on the budget they're not required but we try to do it just because it's good thing to do. I do think we should do that. That's it's so I think we should add a meeting to the seven on the 17. I agree. Anybody saying no she come up with a magic solution. Yes. Always better to cancel. Everybody likes to cancel a meeting was already scheduled so. Okay, let's do that. So maybe it is not easy to do is there any way we can also add some item to discuss how we can make city revenues more than it is now like to find other channels in addition all the things we have right. So I know we are a small town, our options are limited, but maybe we should brainstorm and find one or have extra, you know way of creating some revenue for the city. It's a non tax revenue you're talking about. Yeah. And are you thinking about it for money that would start flowing in on July 1 of this year are you thinking more long term than that long term just like started discussion because I think we have two options right tax or revenue. So, why can't we start this because okay, can we find other revenue channels. If we cannot find it's fine, but at least, you know, to brainstorm this things. What I'm going to say, I'm going to suggest it is possible. I'm going to suggest since we're, you're not proposing this for the fiscal 2025 budget. I'm going to suggest we, we do that, but after we have we have enough hands are full enough dealing with the budget. If we can, if we can make it for this year budget it's great. That's what I am just asking is it possible to bill as a city manager. If it is not possible to do this for this year. Yeah, let's do it later. After the budget discussions but we should start somewhere right from somewhere. Quickly on that and I, for anybody interested in that topic. You might want to take a look at the revenue section in in the book to see exactly what we currently get for revenues. You know, there are some things, you know, that we are legally allowed to have revenues for some things that we're not so fees for services, you know, we could increase permit fees we could you know, but those are also policy questions because we don't want to have encourage more housing and more development than, you know, is that, you know, but those are the kinds of things right so they're all policy questions right they're all. So fees for services. You know, some, I mean we are we have the ambulance fees but they're somewhat set by insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid and those kind of things so we have limits there, you know, we can't just arbitrarily raise them. You know, some of our fees come from, you know, a lot of our revenue comes from the state so they decide how much highway aid we get they decide, you know, how much pilot funding we get there's so so some of those are, you know, state revenue programs. You know, we have our local options tax that if there is one and I am not proposing this this year but there is one avenue there the local sales tax that we have not taken advantage of and that requires a charter change. We'd have to have a ballot vote and go through the legislature, and that could bring in I can't. I got the number wrong last year so I don't want to. I'll wait until we have it right but I mean that's probably the biggest revenue chunk that's still on the table that we haven't gone after but it also it's a sales tax me people are paying it and, you know, we we talked about it a little internally with our team, whether we should bring it up again this year and our thought was, you know, downtown spend through enough. It's not, you know, let's just get everybody back on their feet before we start talking about this but that is honestly, you know, we over the years we've talked about you know payroll taxes and gas tax and you know all those have any any kind of thing that we do has to be approved by the state legislature. So there's a pretty limited pool of what they will approve based on their history, which is not to say they would never do it but you know if you're going to put a lot of time and effort into it, it needs that that they're pretty clear and so otherwise it's really fees. So what do we charge for certain services, you know, I mean, do we want to start charging fees to everybody who has an event in Montpelier, or at least some fire costs you know one hand yes, on the other hand, councils in the past have said, we want a vibrant community we like having these events when we're happy to contribute the city's cost to helping make these things happen. You know maybe that time has passed. So, I mean there are some but are those going to be you know a million dollars is going to drastically change the tax rate. No. Parking parking fees parking seats do we want to raise parking rates and tell you have your hand up. Okay, Lauren. Just thinking of how next meeting can go. I mean I think potentially so there's obviously the really good presentation we've gotten for kind of the city staff proposed budget. We tonight have identified a set of potential changes to that and there's I think, you know, so I'm assuming like you. You all will present, you know, Council so far this is what we've heard for some recommendations like my hope would be that we can all be as clear as possible before that meeting and come in so you know if there's other ideas anyone has of what about this potential budget cut or that, like, however we can clearly convey so that that could be part of the presentation and we can start focusing in on and making decisions obviously we might have some other brilliant ideas as we all talk but trying to be as clear as possible to present like this is the kind of like the universe of ideas that have been put out that's finite and that we can start kind of talking hashing through the implications of different decisions. Yeah. I assume how it will go. I hope so and I would encourage any member of the Council has a change they want to propose up or down. If you can get it to bill to be to get a response and to work through the finances by Monday. That would be ideal. It would be even better. But it's already Wednesday night. But yeah, and you know we have the tool set up so we can add in you all have it to to play with but I think you know you're right having a list of sort of everything, every potential that you'd like to see added back and every idea for reduction. And at that point you know what's the right mix and we're you know maybe, you know, notwithstanding the argument that setting a limit is a good but you know where you get to have some goal you're working to. Otherwise, or you could just vote, we want to make these cuts and these things and you end up where you end up but you know then you end then what happens is you put all in all of a sudden then you're at 8% you know we don't want to be here. So, it is good to have some sense of what you can, you can have a goal where you're trying to get to and then change that at the end when you see how far off you are from it but it helps to be driving to a certain destination. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we don't want to be at 6.99%. But we probably don't want to be at 6.42%. But I don't want to be at 0% either, because I think that that really cuts vital services. I think we're done. I think that's the conversation for tonight. Next up, we don't have any other business because we did the street closure under the consent city council reports. Lauren. Really briefly just reiterating event calling on the postal service to bring back downtown post office Monday, January 8 1230 in front of the federal building it would be great to get a crowd there. I think just showing that the community really cares about this could be a powerful statement. The Montpelier commission for recovery and resilience is holding a public forum February 15 in the evening so stay tuned on details for that. There was a great event that many of us were at today at the state house really sharing a lot of the powerful stories of the impacts of the flood and calling on the state legislature to step up. And the governor to help communities like ours so that was great to see and hopefully good things will come out of that some good legislation proposed by our representatives. And the legislative committee, it would be great. Maybe maybe we could meet at the state house in the cafeteria and kind of hash out even just that like specific wish list that we need to go then push on them to help us raise some revenue. Another way we can raise revenue. Yeah, at the state to step up. Thanks. Pass. Tim. Sal. Well, I was going to announce that I'm probably going to run again for this position but it's so much fun maybe I should get somebody else to change. No, but I think I think I'm going to do that. I mean it's it's more work than I thought it might be but I don't have floods every year. I'm still here. You didn't tell me about the BCA. But yeah, that's been a real yuck as well. So who knows you may have stuck with me for another two years. Great because it's been hard to keep somebody in that chair. It's been like a one and done for a number of years. Oh, okay. Because you didn't want to sit next to your husband. Got it. So cherry. I just want to say I'm really happy to be back in this room. It's just, it's really nice and I was counting how long it had been. And it's amazing that it was six months but also at the same time. Six months ago we didn't think we were going to be here at this point right we thought it could be a lot longer so that's the good news. Donna, you're muted so hold on a second. Okay try it now. Thank you. I have to put my hand up to get her attention. So thank you. We decided to have more fun and rerun for reelection. And, you know, it will be really interesting and we all get challenged and we can talk about what we've learned and. And how hard it is. It's hard with the engagement of the whole community when you have just these pockets of people talking and doing surveys and how to get a big picture to be a leader, as well as to follow people's voices. So it's a real hard mix. But I'm glad to have all of you to work with. And I really miss not being there with you in the back in city hall. So I'll see you next week still by zoom. Great. Thank you. Thanks Donna. Mayor's report. I just have a few things to talk about. One is a couple of weeks ago. We had John Snell come in and do report on the, on the farmers market and I asked them some questions about the participation, but in food stamps or three squares. And I got the information from him and it's really quite impressive the. Redemptions of crop cash alone increased by over $6,600 in just six months and compared to last year's 12 month average season. So in crop cash redemptions from May to October in 2022 were about 8100 in May to October of 2023. And that resulted in $14 snap issued at the market more than doubled up to $29,546 number of snap transactions almost doubled. And there's another program called crop cash plus, which brought in another over $28,000 in redemptions to market. So, for people of low income who have a hard time. Good helpful fresh food. It is, it really was very helpful for people and I think this is a great news. Second, I'll echo. We had the rally at the on the state house steps this afternoon at lunchtime. There was, I would say a better turnout. Good at that. There are a good number of legislators there because they're right there, of course, with their good number of community members there to cheer us on the proposal legislative proposal by our two house members Connor Casey and Kate McCann and their family counterparts Peter Anthony and Jonathan Williams. We're all there. It's a 21 page bill and there's a there's a lot in it and it's leadership at this point is not fighting this and so I think we got to work. We've got work to do and the governor did not immediately sign up and say yeah let me get get on this and do everything you say but but it could make a big difference to to the city of Montpelier and other municipalities that were hit by the flooding this year if if it passes even even a good chunk of it not to mention the whole thing. And finally, for the people who are who are still out there watching, I encourage you to go to the city's webpage and watch the videos the budget and department videos on our cities webpage because there's good stuff there and there's all this stuff about well what do these departments do what is this four person or seven person department do you get a lot of answers and it helps you be an informed evaluator of the of the budget proposals. That's what I've got. City clerks report. Unmuted. Okay, that's better. Yes, contrary to what Bill says I am here. You always think I'm not here, not there literally but I'm here and my report is simply that yes it's election season I want everybody to know we're in it. So now's the time to pick up. If you want dummy petitions are, you know, for running for office or we're getting something on the ballot. You can get them from the clerk section of the website or you're welcome to stop by the office. We'll get you all squared away I don't have it in front of me and I should I think the deadline for candidates is the 29th. The other thing is we've got the BCA meeting back starting tomorrow. As everybody needs to be there sorry cats getting here. We're only got a couple that we're going to hear we're almost done before the abatement start but I'll run a little mock abatement here. Well, Jack will run it as the chair. But I'll be a mock appellant so we can go through a mock hearing so folks can really you all can really understand what we'll be getting into. But that's, that's it that's all I got. Thanks, and cats do not contribute to a quorum so human members are required. You're going about how much you can see me going. City manager's report. Well apparently we have a speciesist mayor discriminating against four legged creatures. I don't have actually have much. I think that first of all, for all of you that are choosing to run for your election. Good. Thank you. And for the 1st year people. I will simply say that the BCA this year was, you know, an unusual thing because of the reappraisal and the flood was an unusual thing. And this budget difficulty is an unusual thing. So hopefully we'll have smoother sailing. Next year for all of you if is for those of you that are returning and for those of you that may be returning would be great. The only other thing I'd say is it is also great to be back here. I'd note that at some point in the future. We may only have half of the room available. We are we will be moving the justice center into that office and out of the senior center. So I don't know. We haven't really worked out with them. So just we might have a smaller room working with but for now it's great. You know, all the city staff will actually have to sit up here where they can hear. So, um, anyway, so that's all I got. Thanks for your hard work on this. This is tough. Great. Okay. And at 11pm we are adjourned.