 House Select Board Discussed, East Montpelier, Fire Department FY 2021, and wants an emergency services budget request. There you go. So I'll call the council select board to order. Thank you for hosting East Montpelier. Yeah, we did it. You did it. Okay. So the meeting tonight, we had the budget meeting with the fire department staff on December 5th, and they presented to us what we have before us tonight, and Calis has spent some time reviewing our emergency services budget overall because we also have blueberry. So this lead off with that. The idea tonight is to approve the budget that was given to us by East Montpelier Fire Department. Well, review, review and approve, you need to, yeah. Oh, you're just gonna rubber stamp it? No way. Okay. We're not gonna have it a rubber stamp in anything. Oh. You know, I just had that discussion 30 seconds ago. Oh. Well, you said approve, and I'm not so sure that you wanna approve it, or I'm not so sure we're gonna approve it. Right, so we need to talk about it first. Yes, we need to discuss it. All right, and then Bruce just handed us something about this, some kind of... That's something to do after you play with the budget stuff. This is just a controller that they talked about briefly at the meeting two weeks ago. Right. And they now have more details, and they like to use that fund that we talked about a few months ago. Right, because we questioned at the meeting on the 5th why the heating cost was so high. Oh, yeah, propane costs. The propane cost, when we have a whip pellet boiler. And one of the things they said was they don't have an easy way to check to see when the pellets are being low. I don't know why they don't, or there isn't some kind of a, something or other that tells you how much is still left in the silo. And then now it sounds like part of the issue is this controller thing, which might help with some of the cost, because when the building was built, the idea was that the pellet boiler would save on heating costs overall. And it doesn't appear so far to have met that standard. Well, pellets aren't cheap anymore, either. No, they're not. I don't think this gives you inventory. It doesn't look like it does to me. Inventory? No, the controller that they're going to upgrade to... No, that's on this. I'm looking at it. It's not on what inventory. It's not gonna give you any inventory. That's all it is. They ran out of pellets. This doesn't tell you that. This has nothing to do with it. This is just... No, this is to see how it's more... Yeah, but they ran out of pellets. So that's what happened. They did a little window, you just look down. Nobody finds a provider who looked down the window. Oh, is that what it is? I don't understand what it was. It ran out of internet connectivity for monitoring and sending operational alerts. Do you think the operational alerts will say the boiler's not on? You might say you got a wall on pellets. Yeah, you think they might know by looking in the next room. Oh, so then you run out and it says, oh, you ran out, and then you go order the pellets. No, that's not what's supposed to happen. What's supposed to happen is you're getting low and then you order the pellets. Well, what's supposed to happen is you would check every fall to see how much you have left. Well, I would say you check every week or two. Right. See where you're at. So anyways, should we review the budget? That's presented to us on December 5th. Were you thinking of going through it line by line or? I just want to see what the panel select board thinks about the budget. And thank you, Bruce, for catching some numbers that might have been not quite right. Can you brief us on what numbers are up? We're looking at the, well, the top lines on the page. There's the fire that's on the first page. And then the ambulance budget bottom line figures are on the second page. And part of the big issue that we talked about on December 5th, and Katie did a good job on the minutes, was they're really struggling more and more to find staff or the ambulance. Side of what they do. And that line item has slowly crept up from year to year. And they're using per diem, I don't know where they get these per diem people from, but they're per diem people that they hire to cover the shifts of the ambulance. And they're hardest staffing time. And it's on the back last page of the staple document. They're having a really hard time finding staff to cover the ambulance. And I can't remember the figure that we landed on, but if we were to have a fully staffed, full-time ambulance accrue, what was it, like $500,000? Well, I wouldn't quite that much. The second half of that sheet is something that I put together after, the top half is what Toby gave us last December. The bottom half is what I put together after the meeting. And that number of 386, 776 is a best guess, because I think it's really low. Did that add in the employment cost? What was gone? Yeah, it's. The workers' profit did. Yeah. And the 386? Yeah, from a line at a point. So roughly $400,000. Yeah. Right, that, and I don't remember. Is that $18 an hour, times two, times 24? Well, it's 75, 25. So 75% at 18, 25, 20. To match their basic split they're doing now. And that's 365 days a year. Yes. Great. So, and where are we now on that 400,000? We're at 297, 297, 300. So 100,000 short. Where, well, are you looking at the second page of the spreadsheet? The last page. No, the last page. The last page. The last number, actually. The bottom. The bottom corner. No, no, I'm looking at this one. Look at that. Look at that. Bruce put together. Right, but if you look at this one, what they're proposing for FY20, what it was in FY20, and then what they're proposing for FY21. That's the first page? Second. Second page. 243,000. So does that include the Marshfield money and all that? That's always confusion. The 15,000 from the ambulance. Right, they're saying Marshfield salary 41? That's the money they get from Marshfield they're putting in there. No, it's in their request. Yeah, but it's what they're doing is they're taking all of the Marshfield money and putting it directly towards the salary. Directly towards salary, so. Yeah. So their salary right now is 243 plus other expenses. Right. It was, did that include the 15,000? That wasn't, I wasn't clear on that. Remember, remember. You can't add the 15,000s that you get on. We complained about this before. Yeah. By splitting it out of the Marshfield thing. Yeah. It skews how you look at that. I know. Forget that. Just forget it. It's 242. Exactly. 236. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Okay, so, but the number you have down there is 200 and it's almost 300,000. Right. Including insurance. Okay, and payroll tax. Okay, yeah. You're talking about on the last page. Yes, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so you get into full time you're saying 400,000, that sounds a little low. It does sound low. I do believe it's low. Yeah, I think it's low. It's very low because I heard a figure that night of 500,000. Yeah, we were, I think we came up with 450,000. Depends on your assumptions of how often a paramedic is on chip. Right, because the paramedic costs more. But the savings, and I remember them saying this the other night, there is some savings by having a paramedic on staff because if they have a call that requires a paramedic to cover it, they have to pay an intercept charge to like Berry Town or Berry City for that additional cost. So that's some backwards, some background. Right, it is. But sometimes it really lines that up. We don't have a feel, I don't think, of whether it be a net savings, for example, to increase the number of shifts that they had paramedic on. You increase your pay each shift, but each time you have a paramedic call then you get a saving. So we don't know how it works. Right, right, we don't know. Because there are a lot of times that the ambulance goes out and a paramedic's not needed. So they don't get paid that paramedic hourly rate. Any time, I guess any time there's a crash or sometimes they go to somebody's house and they refuse to be transported, so they're paying somebody for that service but they can't get reimbursed by insurance because the person didn't go to the hospital so they can't claim that charge because the ambulance only went to the person's house and didn't take them to the hospital because the person refused to go. There's all kind of little nuances. And there's some shifts and they don't send the ambulance out on the call. So what? There's some shifts where they don't send the ambulance out on the call. Right, right, there's no call. Right. Right, it's not that they don't have the ambulance available, it's just there's no calls coming. Exactly. Which is a good thing. So I'd like to talk about the options that we have here as far as how we move forward with funding their labor costs. So I think they should be funded fully for a paid staff as we envision it with a $400,000 or $450,000. I don't think we should nick on dime ourselves or them any longer. I think we should make a plan to move the full fund. Because it's been stressful for them, right? Well, it just has to happen. It's going to happen. It's an actuality. Yeah, and every year we was like, oh, let's take 15,000 a year, let's do this and let's do that, we have to end that game. We have to go, and I have some thoughts on funding the capital reserve differently. I think we need to think about that. But I think we need to move to a full-time staff. Whatever, if it costs $400,000 or it costs $450,000, we need to move to that over three years or however we decide to do it. And their charge rate per call would stay the same or would they upcharge? So what? They can only charge so much. They can only charge so much. There's a cap on what they can charge. There's insurance. Well, they charge, they change. They go by the highest payment that they can get from an insurance company. And then depending on what insurance somebody has, like Medicare, Medicaid, Payless, and the actual call. And we have no control on that. That's not really our thing. You know, we have very few that are out of the pocket, cash payments per say. They have a few. Very few. Many. So I think we need a target of $400,000 or $450,000 or whatever we decide on, and we need to figure out how to get there. Tier note. Well, and I think Cal's has to talk about how we're gonna come up with that extra money. Well, I think that you need to say, if we say it's $450,000 and we're at $300,000 right now, or $300,000, we're not at $300,000 right now. That's what we're holding. No, not even at $200,000. Close to. Yes, it's close to. We need to know what that impact is on our individual cash flow. Great. So Bruce, I mentioned to Bruce today to get to the $400,000, $450,000 or $450,000? What was that? We were talking about adding $150,000. Yeah, okay. Fair enough. And so for us, that's $100,000, and that's a little over three cents on tax. Yeah. All right. What was it we heard from them in terms of availability of people to take shifts if we gave them as much money? Yeah, they claimed that they could get people. So what they're doing, how they get away with per hour per DM is they hire people that have full-time jobs and it places where the benefits are already covered. So that's how they get away with not having to pay benefits and not have to pay vacation days. They're just paying for people to come in and work. Right. And that works. And it seems to work for them and that's affordable for us in a way because you're not having full-time staff yet to pay benefits to. Right. Which is expensive. Right, but if we go to that type of a model, does that then mean that they will be looking to hire staff that will incur the cost of those other jobs? That's not what they said, but. Yeah, one of them knows for sure. That's not what they said. So I'd have to take that face value. Right, I guess I think we'd need something more. So I have an attendee's meeting the fire department's requesting that a full-time staff or they have some sort of very, very important. Okay, so if we're requesting that. If you look in your packet and you look at the sheet that has a graph on it, the blue means that's that with two and eight people. The orange means it's covered by volunteers. Okay. And what they're saying is it's hard to get volunteers, it's impossible, they're up in the middle of the night. They don't want to do that anymore. There's only three or four of them that do it. And we've heard this story every single time. Yeah, every year. Every single year. And they're saying, you know, we're out there saving your life and we're exhausted and we can't do this anymore. That's what they're saying. Right, now I get that. So, and it sounds like the training mandates are pretty rigorous. So not that many people are getting the training. Yeah, right. So. The rigorous for EM. Yep. Your masks off as well as fire. Yeah, yep. But they're not having, I mean, the ambulance is what is the huge cost. And if you look at this graph, if you look at the overnight 12 p.m. to 7 a.m. Yes. That's when they have the hardest time finding staff. That's not true, exactly. Well, that's what it shows. They haven't had people there then because that's the least amount of time people get called. Right. That's the least amount of calls they get. So. But that's covered by volunteers. So, Ty and Larry can stay home and get the training. Ty and Larry can get out of the bed at two o'clock in the morning and do it. Right. And that doesn't mean that you can't get people to do it. They just, it's the least amount of calls so that's why they haven't done that. Right. So they're not talking about filling that for you? Yes. Everything would be blue. Everything would be blue. Right. Because it would probably stay on. 24 hours a day. And that's the $150,000. That's right. If you judge. Yes. Okay. Seth, can you talk a little more, though, about full-time 24-7 and still being able to staff with part, partiums? That's what it is. Well, partiums are part, so that, so. Right. Partiums, part-time. Nobody is working more than 20 hours a week. It's just a lot of people. I don't know about the 20 hours a week. I just know that these people have 40 hour a week jobs in other places and their benefits have been covered in those jobs. Just what they said. Right, what I would be concerned about is that they would then not have the per diem people and they would have staff people that then would be getting into paying for medical insurance, vacation pay, sick pay. I mean, it could very easily go that route instead of staying with more per diems. And that's when we really jump up is if we didn't staff it with mostly per diems. My concern is that once we go to full-time staff, if it's not on per diems, all of a sudden we're going to be looking at wages that they're going to want to compare to Montpelier or Willson and that the $18 an hour per diem is now going to turn into a $55 or $60,000 a year position. Right. And that would be the next logical outgrowth of the way we're going about this. We're not talking about full-time staff. We're talking about staff full-time. Right. Right. But I can- I don't know how you control that. I don't know how you do either. We should make that clear and prove in the budget that that's the condition of the approval. But- My other concern would be if we had full-time, then if they go to full-time staff, now we're committed beyond each budget year. Now we're locked in. Right. And it's a steamroller now. Well, and it's just going to keep going up. It's just going to keep the cost. It's just going to keep going up. The costs are going to go up anyway. That's all we've got. But we're trying to get to it. My prediction, how many years ago? Yeah, well, we all knew that. But the thing is, I mean, I think we should establish the target. I'm not sure how you can control what happens after that. If we can- If the target's four and 50,000, we say we're going to take three years to get there. And that's the step-by-step process. After that, I'm not sure what we're going to be able to do. Well, you're talking about a ramp-up, not fully- Right. Yeah, I was talking about a ramp-up. Oh, I thought you were talking about fully funding it now. Well, we can if you decide to. No, I thought that's what you said. I thought that's what you said. I heard on your end and then 50. You did say- 3%. How we're going to get there. I heard that. So, yeah. It's okay. Well, whatever. Clarification. Okay, but the other part of that option three, because I had three options written down, one option was we can keep doing what we're doing, which I don't think is effective. Well, it's not fair to them, right? It's not fair. It doesn't work. It's nickel and dimes, right? That's option one. Option two was to do as I discussed already. Well, I thought I discussed going up over three years or whatever would work in keeping the capital reserve as they last presented, but they change it every year. Now it's a hundred and some thousand, a hundred, three, five, whatever. I would propose taking the capital reserve in a different direction, which I have talked about before, but now I think what we should do, or what we could do is have a small amount of the ambulance revenue go into the capital reserve, not for buying big equipment, but for buying the small stuff that they need. And then put the equipment to the town vote. Once a year at town meeting, the equipment request in the town would pay for it. So if they need a truck or an ambulance, whatever, it would go to the town vote. This is a way of controlling the willy-nilly buying that's been going on. Buying an ambulance last month, buying this month, buying a new truck. We need to control that. Right, because now they say, well, we'll take the money out of the capital reserve fund. Right, so I say take the capital reserve, notch it down so it's a smaller amount of money. Get that money towards salary. And take the rest of the money and put it towards salary, okay? And then when they need a fire truck, they have an organized approach. Bring it to town meeting, we vote on it as a town and we'll pay for it. But the other downside to that is when you have the capital reserve fund, you don't have to come up with this huge amount of money, $400 or $300,000. $750,000. All at once, which for us, for the callous taxpayer, that's even a third, there's a lot of money. Do you think that would be $750,000? Well, it wasn't that last truck that we wound up getting. They wound up buying a new truck at one point, it was like $700,000. I don't think it was that much. It was like $450,000. It was $450,000 and we got a different. We got it down. $350,000. Right, right. But they used the capital reserve fund to help cover that cost, which was good. They're using the capital reserve fund to make payments on that. Right, that's right. One of the things about eliminating or whittling down their capital reserve is we're talking about increasing staffing by $150,000 for Eastmont Pelea, which is three cents on the tax rate. Then you turn around and you build away this capital reserve fund for equipment vehicles, essentially. And those vehicles have a lifespan. They're gonna wear out anyway. We're gonna have to pay for them anyway. So instead of having $100,000 of ambulance revenue going into a reserve fund to pay for them, now when those vehicles wear out, we're gonna pay for it full price with another increase in the tax rate. If you assume that it takes $100,000 a year to fund their capital reserve fund and it actually takes more than that, right? That's now a six cent tax increase you're talking about. No, you can't compound. That's not fair. That's right. Because part of that ambulance revenue that used to go to the capital reserve goes to staffing. Exactly. So that $150,000 we're talking about paying at a tax rate would be less than that. Yeah, you can't figure it. You're figuring it twice. You're figuring it twice. Well, that's gonna come down to the tax there. We're talking about the 150 split two-thirds, one-third. But it won't be 150 because you're gonna take the ambulance revenue. You're taking the ambulance revenue and not paying the capital reserve. So that thing we should talk about is what it is and not some fictitious $100,000 that's three cents on our tax rate number. No, that was... The problem is it is $150,000. That's looking to right of where you're allocated. But how, yes. How you get there? Yeah. Okay, but that's true, Gene. If you need a fire truck for $500,000, it is gonna cost money. Correct. What you're doing is you're controlling, you are controlling the ask. There won't be so many vehicles being bought during the year. Right now, how many, we just bought two. Yeah. Okay, so if you say you're gonna ask at town meeting for your capital purchases, I guarantee you we're not gonna have asked you for three over here. Right, well, it's more difficult to ask. Well, it is. It's a lot more than coming into a select board and saying to 10 members. Are you saying we're pushovers? Yes. I am. I mean, what I'm saying is I'm saying that. I'm saying that. And you know what? You have to record that. We did? We did? Good. What I'm saying is that truck that last 26 years, it's gonna last 26 years either way. Yes. And we're gonna have to replace it either way. And no problem. And to pretend that. We're not. Logically, this 100 and whatever it is, $1000 a year we need for the capital fund, isn't gonna come off the taxpayer's head, is short-sighted. Yeah, but I'm saying there's gonna be less vehicles on. I think the suggestion is if you have money in the bank, these good deals come up. Well, we got the money. It's a good deal. And I get that. Oh, yes. What would you call it? Iron disease. It's heavy metal. Heavy metal. And a lot of people have it. So if you have no money, you might be earning to get that deal, but. And then you look at the voters. You gotta write up a proposal for a town meeting and go and ask the voters. Get that logic. You're not gonna ask for as many vehicles. I know. So what happened now is that Gene sees one of the ambulances going down the road spewing black smoke and he talks to the fire department about it. And they say, oh my goodness, this ambulance is spewing black smoke. We need to put $4,000 into it to stop that. It was $8,000. No, $8,000. And then we need to buy another one because this one needs to be replaced. Why? It had black smoke. What happened? It was fixed. It was there. It was fixed. It was fixed. It was fixed. And by the way, we discovered it needs to be replaced. Why? We need to do that. No, we didn't decide what it needed to be replaced. What happens if they have to come to town meeting? And then you yell at them. Yes. Putting $8,000 into something that they're gonna sell right away. No, no, let's replay the schedule of this. Okay. So, June 1st is going down the road and has black smoke. Okay? Jean's very observant. Notice that. They say, if the guys are gonna fix it, guess what? Then you'd have to use it the rest of the year. That's right. Collect your money on that. Collect your money, get your money back. You just put the money into repair. You know what I do on my farm when something gets broken? I fix it. And I keep using it. If there's something more that needs to go into it, they put more money into it until... You know what? You're imagining the worst case. And then you yell at them. Okay. You're imagining the worst case scenario. Yes. Okay. So, gee, maybe that would happen. You'd have to put money into the vehicle twice. But I have over 20 vehicles that roll on the road every single day. We fix them. It's always cheaper to repair. It's much cheaper to repair than I knew. It's always... It's always cheaper. I always have used it. They have a fictitious repair budget. What's that? $5,000 for repairs. So, two things. That's ridiculous. Yes. Two things. What? The voters can vote down the truck. Okay. So, then they don't get it. Oh, darn. But then they're also always talking about how the truck or the ambulance has to meet some kind of... And how the ambulance codes the ambulance in changes. So, does that mean if it doesn't meet those requirements, they can't have it on the road? No. Because it's not... Well, that would force the road. That would force the road. You know, I want to tell you something. Most of the time, stuff's not turned down. If they ask for a fire truck, most of the voters are going to vote for it. And that's okay. But I'm not saying the voters are... I'm not saying they don't need it, okay? What I'm saying is it poses a discipline for buying equipment. Well... That works a little bit better in my opinion. Well, for instance, Woodbury. Yes. After all these years of coming to the town when they needed a new truck and we need to come up with however whatever our half share is, they're now starting a capital equipment reserve fund. That's the town. Or is it the... No, we're fine department on the road. We're a department on the road. Which it's like, yes, finally. So that I mean, it's like you... So we're going in opposite directions. We're going in opposite directions. We've been trying to get Woodbury where they're at last year. And now we're asking East Montpelier to go backwards. I'm not so sure I'm sold on the idea. You think it's back, well, we spent the past four or five years pushing the East Montpelier emergency services to establish an accurate capital reserve fund. And when we finally start getting towards something that resembles a real capital fund, now we're going to turn around and go in the other direction and say, no, this isn't a good idea. I think the problem is us, it's not them. If we're... Oh, no. If we're... Well, no. If they're coming in saying we got a great deal on an ambulance and we got a pile of money in the bank and we just rubber-stamped it like we all did. And we are the problem. If the voters face with the same set of circumstances may or may not have rubber-stamped it, then we need to more often put ourselves in the shoes of the voters. And maybe we've all been on select for too long. Okay, so all I'm saying though is I'm just trying to change behavior. I'm just trying to change behaviors. All I'm trying to change behavior. Well, I think that we didn't necessarily rubber-stamp things. We have given them, you know, sell it to us. Why should we agree to this? I don't think we've just been rubber-stamping. I think we've listened really hard to and asked a lot of questions that they didn't like about why you need this particular piece of equipment. I'm just saying that if you adopted a different plan on the cap reserve on buying vehicles, it would change behavior. But then when we do buy a vehicle, it's gonna try to levelize things and make it more incremental rather than spiking. I mean, when we do that, what's gonna happen is instead of buying rescue three for $45,000 used, we're gonna buy rescue three for $225,000 new. I guess that's gonna be their only option if they have to wait to town meeting each time. Right. Yeah, they're gonna spec out a brand new vehicle and with all the bells and whistles. Yeah, bells. Yeah, bells and whistles. Whistles, too. Whistles. Whistles, too. We just buy one every 10 years. Yeah, more. Say, buying two a year. Okay, so that's just the second part of these options. No, I mean, it doesn't hurt to have options. I like discussing options. The first part of the discussion was how to fund their salary. If you wanna do that. If you wanna do it over a couple years or you wanna just do it all at once or you wanna do it over three years, I don't know. I'm just pointing that out there. And I just think that we need to get there. So part of what you were suggesting in eliminating the capital reserve fund and using it for purchases would be to more fully fund the staff. Is that my understanding? Yeah, but we don't have to do it that way. We can just say, let's fund the staff over three years, incrementally raise the money, whatever it takes and keep the capital reserve right where it is. We don't have to do anything with the capital reserve. Just leave it. We just accept the capital reserve. And just keep putting ambulance revenue into it? Yeah. And that's how the whole thing started. That's a cleaner. That's a cleaner? It's a very easy option. Doesn't roughly replace feathers. Yeah. Well, I don't mind ruffling people's feathers. I don't either. How about five years instead of three? Five years is a long time and inflation rate is gonna kick you on that. The world changes. Yeah. Well, and the problem is just like everywhere else, the fire department people are getting older. No, we're talking about emails now. Yeah, right. That's still a tie-in later. That's still a tie-in later. That's still a tie-in later. That's still a tie-in later. That's still a tie-in later. That's still a tie-in later. They have some new members for the fire department and I don't think that's part of our discussion at the moment. We're not talking about that. No, we're not. That's why we're talking about that. But because even the volunteers. The demographic makes it hard to find. Volunteers are still some of the older people on the fire department. Yeah. Okay. For the ambulance. Okay. For the fire, then the volunteers will be less than lunch. Oh, for the fire department? No, for the ambulance piece. If... I just don't see the people coming along for the ambulance. And they're not, they don't say they have anybody younger coming along. No, and I think the per diem people, from what I've heard from the fire department folks, is that seems to have worked out pretty well. Yeah. And I'll tell you one other thing about the ambulance service. And everybody I've talked to, they don't mind that it costs more money. Everybody I've talked to in Eastmont, they always say, you know, the ambulance service, it's gonna cost more money. That's okay. We have an ambulance right here. We like that. So I think that you would have the support of the taxpayers if you did that, if you went to... Over a three-year period. Yeah, we're gonna increase as we age. Right. And everyone I've talked to is in full support. If we're gonna sit here and argue about it, why are we arguing about it when we have the support of the... I don't think we're arguing. I think we're discussing. No, no, it's fine. But I'm just saying, if we're gonna beat ourselves up, oh my God, we can't raise the tax rate and we can't give them more money for staffing, I think that's not a representation of the people, the taxpayers. You know, one good thing is, is that as we age, our needs are gonna increase. The demands of the ambulance service are gonna increase. Very good. But as we retire, our incomes drop and we have income sensitized property tax. So a lot more is gonna be shifting to the taxpayers out of town. Oh, okay. So I'll figure it out later. Well, what I hear from people is, yes, we need the ambulance, but I'm not gonna be able to afford to stay in my house if the taxes keep going up. I understand. You know, and that's something it's... No, I know, I know, I know. I know. So it makes it... Everyone I've talked to about the ambulance service and its costful money, they're like, we're happy we have it, at least one thing. Well, I know, you know, when you need it, you need it. And I've had it show up at my house plenty of times when my special needs people. And it's, you know, it's there to save lives. So you want to raise it over three years? What do you want? I don't know, Calisle Left Board, what do you have? What would that look like? Yeah, I guess we don't know what it would look like. What do you mean what would it look like? Like for us it's roughly one cent. Yeah, it's roughly one cent for us. We did it over three years, right? Yeah, you're looking at raising our 165 for this year up to something like 198. Yeah. So you jump up to close to 100. From 82. Right. What's the mechanism though, just like we were talking about with the trucks, what's the mechanism for putting a check on making sure that the money, this money, going back to where we were, can it still accomplishes? What are the policies? Yeah, I mean, what are their policies? Can, what authority, if any, do we have to expect policies or view policies, to hold them accountable for what they've already said? You know, what kind of, what kind of guarantee do we have? Well, how the money will be used? Well, and what kind, yeah, what kind of, what kind of discretion do we have to put strings or accountability on it? Well, Bruce and I talked about that today, but didn't sound like we had very many. So this is when you come back to the fact you're dealing with an independent organization. Right, they're independent. Right, right. You have to take them on base value. Well, you're throwing an awful lot more money at them that when we discussed the chart that Sharon's got right in front of her, the blue and the pink one, Toby wasn't really very clear as to how many more of those pink spots he could fill even if he had more money. It sure sounded like he was filling them, he was overspending his budget, so he was filling them as best he could. Right, because they did overspend the budget. So if we hand them another 50, 75,000 and they don't use it, where's it going? Well, is that worth more discussion? Well, I say, we can give you the money, but we want to guarantee it gets better. I don't think we can do that this year, because it's too far down the path. I think maybe we look at... Well, we're looking at 2021. I think we need, I think we need to have... Yeah, but it's gotta go on the budget and the warning for town meeting in March to approve the budget for 2021. I don't think, I can't as a Cal Select Board member decide tonight without knowing what, how we're gonna track this money, how we're gonna know where this money gets spent. Well, maybe that's where we come back to the idea of incremental increases. And maybe it's not a third or third, maybe it's 25% in year one in good faith to work on a model that hits some of the other points, have the conversation, we're looking at 25, 25, I'm making this up, 25, 25, 50, to see how it gets implemented in a way that responds to what you promise, because we don't want it just to... Well, you know what, I'm looking at what they spent so far, they're over budget already. Yeah, yeah. So if they're already over budget, that means they're spending it on that. Well, but I think... It doesn't mean that they're squirreling the money away. No, but I think it's hard to get a clear understanding from them of budget stuff, depending on what you talk to. I think we have to have something in writing, somehow of what our expectation is for them to report back to us of how this money's getting spent. What were you gonna say? I was just gonna say that if you want to raise the budget, which I think you should, because I think we all are getting tired of this discussion, and we need to send back the budget numbers with a letter saying we wanna reopen the agreement. Remember, there's a notice area. Right, that's right. So just get both at the same time. Well, I think that's what we need to do is we need to reopen the talks with them because we haven't done that in a few years. And something that the Cal is select where to look at anyways as the farm gets paid down, what do we have, what equity do we have when the bond's paid off? You wanna open that up? Maybe. You know, we're putting a lot of money into this. Yeah, you are. And what do we, yes, we get the services of ambulance and fire. What do we have when it's all paid for? We only have a third of the payment. We need to look at the agreement again. Well, no, the agreement says it's assessed value. Right. Yeah. But anyways, I think that I would be okay to maybe, so you, we're gonna be having a further budget meeting Thursday night this Cal's select board. So if you wanna think about it and not have to act tonight on something that we've just kind of hashing out, we can talk about it some more Thursday night and then get back to you. That's fair. I mean, you guys have obviously had some discussion. No, we haven't had any discussions of it. That's all you, you're the troublemaker. There's another new one to us. Another new one. I mean, I was having the same thoughts earlier today. Well, we have to remember, we're only funding for one year. We might have a plan for three or five, whatever we come up with. It's good to have a plan. And that is a test run. And in the meantime, we could be open to contract and say this was our intent in terms of our funding, whether it contract gets finalized in June, this is our intent for this year's funding and going forward, this is the path where we'd like to see you on. And we get it in writing. We have to remember that the ambulance requests currently without increasing it is a 10% increase. Right. I'll read it. I'll read it. It already is. Right. So I didn't, like I said, I don't know what I did with my papers from the other night, but does anybody remember how much they were already over budget? Why am I thinking 90,000? Was that going to be like that? 90,000 was what they had expended in the first four months on salary with a budget line of less than 240. Right. So the multilinear budget. Yeah, we figured it out. They're going to be over budget at the end of this. Yes, that's definitely true. Because they're already spent more than, like halfway through the- How much are they anticipating at this rate? Being over budget? They were going to be over about 40,000. They kept at the same rate. And that's on the salary line? Yeah. The salary sounds like the wrong term, because we're talking about per diems. Right. Well, it's- It's mostly- It's mostly- It's mostly- Yeah, no, I just thought we should say that out loud. Yeah. Yeah. So, they didn't, I'm trying to remember, what they were going to do to try to cover that overage. Well, they still got the contingency, the 15,000. That's all he said. Toby said he was just going to slow down. Yeah, yeah. More volunteers. More volunteers. That just can't- Which beats up on the volunteers. Right, I mean- We've got to remember, I don't know, anybody hear a volunteer on that? No, I don't. I've heard of it, so- I mean, it's- No, I- There's a reason I'm not a volunteer. It's a huge commitment. I understand. I'm not beating up on them. I just- This is much for me. I don't think that they should depend on volunteers. Don't volunteers cost a lot to train anyway? I mean, is that- Well, they're already trained. So, they come like- I thought that there was something- No, no, no, no, no. They have to have training. Yeah. So, they come pre-trained. The per diem people come pre-trained. Oh, okay. All right. The volunteers have to keep going through trainings. And they, and in their support, they put in a tremendous amount of time into this training. They're very proud of the trainings that they do and have. Yeah. And, you know, imagine, you know, three nights out of the week, you get a call at two o'clock in the morning. Yeah, imagine that. And then you have to go to your regular job after that to make your income. Once a week. Regular fire department meeting or- Right. Yeah. So, I mean, it's brutal. It's brutal, the amount of time and commitment that they make. And it's- Well, and also, the Ambulance Service is a lot more active. There used to be, they got two ambulances. Right. And they're also- And they're serving more area. I wouldn't say they're serving. And the training is a lot more rigorous than it used to be. The expectation is a lot higher. So part of what we could talk about in figuring out this step increase is would we ask Plainfield and Marshfield to contribute more to help cover the cost? I don't know that we can't. All right, that's fine. I know. But we could ask them- Yeah, the fire department should be- So often their rates- The Ambulance Service needs- Yeah. Yeah. They should be moving contracts- I'll step with that. Yes, exactly. So the way they've priced it before is they've done incremental increases to the town. And it's based upon services that have been provided by other towns. First, it's Berrytown was doing Plainfield. And they based it upon that amount. And so it's not a, it's not a very organized way to do it. But it's probably the only tools they had to come up with those figures. So, you know, also what will the market bear type of thing? So I mean, Toby's here and he could probably speak to that. But I'm not thinking that you're going to be able to raise a lot more money that way. No, but I think that we need to have that discussion. You know, what can we do if we're willing to start incrementally increasing the funding to help cover the costs of finding staff for this ambulance, which was what we're talking about? Would that also benefit the other two towns, Marshfield and Plainfield, because there'd be more better staff? Well, not very much. I don't think that's a huge amount. Yeah, but it's a necessity to run the operation. And so because they're part of it, they bought into this service, it's a part of the increasing cost of the service. I don't think you're talking a lot about money, but whatever you want. Whether you look at it as a per call or per capita thing. Yeah, it's two different things. Right, they're two different things. Whether you figure it on a per call basis or a per capita basis, the contract service towns should pay something on a par. Should be equitable. Equitable, at least, with the towns that are supporting it. We shouldn't be sitting here increasing the funding so that we can subsidize ambulance service for Plainfield and Marshfield. I think you're always going to be subsidizing, to some extent, because you've got the ambulance service in this town, just like Kellogg-Hartburg Library. Believe me, they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to have that library there, and we're paying $42,000. So yeah, you can only charge those member towns so much money. And I don't know what that amount is. I'm sure Toby knows a lot more than I do, but you cannot price yourself out of the game because you need those towns to subsidize. They help us pay for this ambulance service. But they also want the ambulance service. They want the ambulance service. There's probably other vendors around that can give them service. I don't know. So you can have that discussion, but I'm not a fan. Not the same service we can. I'm not thinking you're going to gain a lot of revenue that way, but whatever. Well, you know what? Every little bit helps. Sure, but I don't know what we're going through. I'll just stick to what I said originally, was you've got to get full-time staff. Well, and I don't think anybody disagrees that we need to have a better way of staffing it. There needs to be more money. We need to not expect the volunteers to just keep volunteering at all hours of the day and night. That's not fair. That's not sustainable. But I think we need to have a good plan. Going forward, if we're going to do this, what accountability do we want from EMFD? Now that money is spent, we want to ask them to look at the calls and how much Plainfield and Marshfield is already paying. And maybe what, if our increase is 3% or 4%, couldn't we ask them for a 1% or 2%? And I can see Toby's face to think it. I can speak when you ask me to. Go ahead, speak. OK, no. It's just like it done. Speak. Please speak. Did you bring Annie with you? I did not. So currently, the contracts of Plainfield and Marshfield include a 3% increase each year. So they're already coming up 3% each year. And when we signed the last contract with Marshfield, they said, is this going to be like this forever? And we're nodding our heads saying yes, because we're not there. We're not at the point where we are sustainable with the town contributions to staff fully. We're $100,000 away from that, at least, in order to have a fully paid staff. And what's their response when you say that? Well, we haven't approached them yet. But essentially, we have a three-year contract with both towns. And each year, there's a 3% increase on their assessments. So they're already in for 3% for the near future until a year or three from now. So you just barely renewed the contracts with this 3%? Yeah. So the figures that are here reflect that 3%? That's correct each year, actually. That's just nickel and dime. I mean, I understood. Nickel and dime helps when? Yeah, but when you're talking $100,000, $150,000, when you're talking $1,500, OK. OK, whatever. You can be off a lot more than that when you're estimating a budget. You sure can. No, but a response to the point Denise was raising earlier. No, no, I understand. Fully responds. And actually, it does more than that. It gives us a perspective against which to look at the increase that we're being asked for. But we're actually testing ourselves with a bigger increase. I understand that. And that's a part of what the question is. Do you have the? And then, but we don't have this proposal because we don't we haven't even nailed down that path yet. Right? So you're suggesting that FY 21, we do an incremental increase of, did you say, $25,000? $25,000. I was saying, three years, get to the 450%? What's that percent? Yeah, I'd rather have 30% because they're already short. Yeah, you're already short. Yeah, you're already at $90,000 or something. Right, so if we keep the staffing at the level we're at now, we'll be about $20,000 over budgeting in this fiscal year because of the per diem costs. I mean, I have people to fill the shifts. I just don't have the revenue. See, that was the answer. Right, that was the answer. And these are per diems. These are all per diems. So right now, the model is about 35% of our coverage is all in here. So I guess at that point, we're going to essentially be close to $20,000 to $25,000 over. If we maintain that 35%, we'll take that percentage of per diems to volunteer. So you're looking at increasing the number of per diems, not having full-time, salaried employees with benefits. Because the model works for us. We have a lot of people that want an extra day here, an extra day there, they're all skilled. The problem with trying to hire somebody in is I can't pay them enough. Every fire department, annual services, looking for these people, and they have. So it's easier to find per diems than it is. It's a scheduling issue. I spend a lot of time balancing everybody. So you're off this day. I have to do that every month. And there are some days where I only have one person that shows up. So the concern you missed was that, well, one concern that was raised is that if we start heading in this direction where we see a shift from per diems to permanent staff, and then we lose, then the things start spiraling because of benefits, and then we have a commitment in terms of a staff person beyond each budget year. So if it's per diems, I think that elays some of our concerns. So the only other issue would be, can I, if we go to paid staff 40 hours a week, plus vacation, plus benefits, plus whatever, whatever we can attract. I have a small pool, and it comes and goes, and who knows if they're gonna stay. I have a lot of people that come in and go out and come and stay as a per diem for six months and then they get a better offer or whatever. So with paid staff, that would be the same issue. And it would be harder to replace a paid staff than it would be five per diems to cover five days a week. So there's a hedge against going with paid staff is what you're gonna do. It's not a hedge, but I mean, it may turn out that if you had complete staffing by per diems, it might cost you as much as having complete staffing with benefits. How so? Why would that be? Well, with, essentially, depending on who we get, I mean, would we have to offer health care? We can offer the job without health care. Well, you can't, yeah, it's up to so many, what is it, 15 employees or something, you don't have to offer health care. So I'd pay a penalty if you don't offer health care. If you have less than 50. Yes. Well, I mean, we can look at that and it would probably be a higher number if we did that, but then you'd have to have more paid staff because you have vacation and holidays and sick days. Right, and then you have to have somebody to run the payroll. Then you have to have somebody to run the payroll that can account for all of those things and keep track of all of that. You can't hire a person. You have, what I'm hearing is that's a different person. We have that now because... Different aims. Well, but Toby's doing all of that. Well, we volunteer all the administrative work. Right, exactly. Payroll schedule and all that stuff is voluntary. And the more staff you have, especially if they're full-time paid staff, the more administrative costs it's gonna be. And it's gonna be hard to volunteer. Well, so I think what we want to be really clear that we've documented and we heard from Toby is that he doesn't see a particular even advantage, neither an advantage or an imperative to shift to full-time paid employees. I would like full-time employees. Sorry, sorry. I'm sorry. I guess I'm just gonna volunteer. All right, all right. I mean, I guess I get the need to have an increase in the amount of money for staffing. And I would support that knowing that it's per diems. Right. But I think that we need to, as at least I think the Cal Select Board needs to look at the impact of this upage every year for two or three years or whatever we decide. On your tax rate. Right. Okay, so one thing I want to say though, there is a disincentive to move to full-time staffing. That's over here. Right, and there is also on the budget side. Because you do control the per strength to some extent. And the reason that I would like, and I think we would like to go to full-time help, full-time staffing, is that we feel bad for the volunteers. With the per diem staffing. Staffing full-time. Staffing full-time. Okay, with per diems. Right. We feel bad for the volunteers. Yeah, absolutely. But we're not gonna feel bad for the per diem people. Right? No, no, they get paid. So we have less being phoned at us as far as leverage. Okay? So they won't have the same leverage. No disrespect to your Toby. When they say, we really want to go to full-time staff because we really feel bad for per diem. No, that won't work. But if we feel really bad for the volunteers, and that's working. It's working. When Toby sits there and Ty, you know, we're exhausted and we can't do this anymore. Look at Larry, he's eight years old and he's still doing it. Okay, that won't be the same argument. It'll be a different argument. We can stay here and say, no, you're not getting more money. And you know what? The per diem works. Okay? But we can't do that when it's volunteers and they're all sitting there looking exhausted and overworked. We're like, oh my God, those poor guys. Yeah, I don't disagree with you. Okay, I'm gonna cry. I don't want to cry. So I'm saying it's gonna be a different discussion. I hope we can remember that intention when that's exactly what we're hearing. Okay, but I'm just saying it's a different discussion. And you do control it. And you do control it. All the way from the same scene that they're responding to and retrollate ambulance. So I'm just saying that if we're not comparing apples to apples in the future, you know, it's gonna be a different discussion. Right, and I think we need to have these discussions well documented. We might want to, you know, think about what we might want to put in writing, if anything. I just want us to be clear, think it through. So we know what we're gonna do going forward. Yeah, I'm not saying you shouldn't. Well, I'm just putting that out there. That it's gonna be a different discussion. If you're gonna go to full-time staff, and it won't be that emotional blackmail right now when you're looking at the poor volunteer that's a hundred years old and you kick it out of bed and you're getting out of bed. No, I'm just saying. No, I'm just saying this, but the reason I was late to the meeting was not in the ambulance. Yeah, there you go. See, but that won't happen. Were you the oldest? She'd buy a long shot. Okay. Yeah, see. That's actually good. So did you have, So I'm just telling him. Oh, yeah. I had her do it. Yeah. But I'd respond too. That's a good point, too. Don't run for office. That's a good point. But, okay, so then here's another question, Koby. If you had more money for proteomes, would you or Larry or Ty or somebody still have to continue to respond? What we make it so that you didn't have to do that? If it weren't complete two people on 24-7, there would be some time for an ambulance call to come in and only one per diem or no per diems would be around. Right. Because of the availability of per diems. I don't have 100 people waiting in line to take a shift from me. Okay. So that's probably 15 to 20 people most. Right. And you said the ambulance can't go out with just one person, obviously. Well, who's gonna hold the other end of the cotton? Well, yeah. That thing's heavy. Okay. We should have broken your taping staff. Well, what you're doing when you fund per diems is you have more people available. Right, that's what I'm saying. And so once in a while they have to go on a volunteer call or Toby has to go with a guy or Ty has to get out of bed. That's okay because it's not, it lightens the load a lot. Seth, you didn't listen to what I said. Yeah, I listened to all the time. You know you don't. If you had more money for per diems, then you and Larry and the folks that are always volunteering might not have to do so much. Is that correct? It is correct. Okay. That's what I wanted to hear. That's what he just said. So right now sort of the biggest void is from mid-1978. We saw that. Are you gonna fill that? Well, for one of the shifts, I filled 50% of those night shifts with one person, so. So that means like you have to go. Somebody has to go, right? But if you had the money, you could fill it too. If we had the money, I could possibly. Yeah, people love to sleep in the paid. Yeah, right? Because that's what they said. That's it. Hey, I'll sleep at your house instead of mine and make money. No, you won't. Okay. Okay. So you got the least amount of calls over between midnight, seven and more. It's hard to say. Sometimes there's all the calls. I was gonna say, that can be the most active time. It's like if anything is gonna happen, that's when it's gonna happen. I can pull numbers, but there's times when I think Ty and Larry didn't have a night's sleep all week. That's not good. No. No, and that's what, I did bring that up earlier. Thank you. Are you working on being more sensitive, Sammy? I'm trying to make the point that the discussion would be different. Yeah, yeah. No, I hear that. Okay. Yeah. And I think it's an important point. I got that before you had it though. Yeah. Very good. You probably should have said that. Well, you're clear. Yeah. Good point. Okay. Anything else? Okay. So Cal is selected. I'm not ready to make any decisions tonight. I don't know about anybody else who's tired. So we're gonna have to talk about this further. When do we meet? Thursday night. Thursday night. That's good. It makes sense just generally, you know. I mean, I've just been a concern of all hours for years. So you know, we're just trying to make sure we know what the heck we're doing. And we need to digest these numbers. But I know we've all been concerned about the level of volunteer effort and the exhausting level. Yep. And I was just... And Toby hasn't hid that from us. I was just trying to address the concern that's been happening over the last few years. I didn't want to keep Nick on dying. I just don't think it makes sense. Yeah, no. We were aware of that. That's why I came up with it. Yeah, no. And I'm definitely not trying to step on anybody's toes if anybody has better ideas to go for it. I just haven't seen those happen and I've been proud of this for a while. There's only so many options. Right. And when you talk to you about money. So the Cal's... I don't mean to do that at nothing. The Cal's look, we're just meeting Thursday night. Do budget stuff some more. We're gonna have to meet again after the holidays. So we need to have a date by which we all need to make this decision. And I have to put it... We gotta go to printer date. What is that? I didn't bring it with me, but I can find that out. Because we need to have a... Is it the end of January or is that the mid? It's like mid January. So we may need to have another joint meeting. So they can inform us. So we'll let you know if we need... If we think we would like to get back together and talk some more. Do we want to... Do we want to go back to kind of the strong model of what we're gonna take back for discussion? Do we want to leave that kind of unsaid so we can play with numbers and circle back? I think we should play with numbers to see what percentage we might really be able to afford. So I really think those one, I think one third, one third is the way I'd like to approach it. But you can do whatever you want and no one else has really thought about that either. But the one third, two thirds. Three years. Oh, the 25 years. I'd like to do a... Because these guys are already over budget. Yeah. So we're looking at $150,000 over three years. A third of a hundred. For us it's a third. A third of 150 over three years. Right. But then you get the third of 150. Kalluson shares one third of whatever that amount is. 50 pounds. 50 pounds. Over three years. We're only really committing to one year's budget. So I don't... Whatever form it is. I'd like to do the one third. It's not like... Yeah. Yeah. A 16 grand. At very least it's a test one. But we'll see how it works, you know? Right. We're not committing for three years. Is it a penny or a tax rate? I don't know. We have to figure it out. No, that's the useful. Right. So that's what we have. I think that's what we need to do and talk about it further. I think a penny on Kalluson is $19,000. So it talks less than a penny on it. Depending on what the latest grant list finds with these others. All right. They're definitely, their impact will be less than it will be on East Montpelier. Right. So one third, two thirds is always skewed. We know that. You can do that. We can do that, man. You can do that. I'm just making sure that he can do that. I can do that, Matt. Okay, anything else to... As far as north, every penny goes. Right, anything else to talk about with us? We do. Anything else to talk about with us? We all go out. It's funny. No, I just think... You know what? There's a lot of times it happens to mine. I like the idea. Okay, one last. Any problem? It needs to happen. It's a reality. And relying so heavily on the volunteers. Okay. And the volunteers aren't getting any younger. Are you? I'd like to think that. I'm just going to do it in Paris. Do we have to do it in Paris? We'll have to do it in Paris. We'll have to do it in Paris. We'll have to do it in Paris. Oh yeah, the spoiler thing. Right. We want to... Why didn't you do that? Talk about this $837. No, just do it. It's more than you'll die. Come on, really. You don't have to do anything. We don't have one thing you want to say to set that you're comfortable with it. We're good with the $837. Oh, good. For the boiler. Did you do that? All right. I signed it. Yeah, okay. That part is perfect. Okay. Anything else? Can I just select one? The signs will be there. All right. What are you paying for pallets these days? I'm just curious. Some of... A ton. 30 seconds. So go for... All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. John, say aye. Aye. Aye-aye, Captain. Warms.