 provisions of title one sections three one three a one a and f of the Vermont statutes and invite public works director Bruce or town attorney Joe McLean and town manager Eric Wells to join a second discussion if not all those in favor of the motion say aye any opposed to no extensions so we'll get downstairs then move we accept the minutes subject to modification. Is there a second? Second. Page one. Page two. This is the most minute correction but item number six it's just missing a closed parentheses at the end of the sentence. How my brain works though. Very good. And page three. Hearing no other corrections then all those in favor of approving the minutes of February 1, 2022 say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed to no extensions? Alright. Move on then to public comment if there's anyone in the room or on the the Zoom wishes to make any public comment this is your opportunity anybody in the room? Anybody on Zoom? Just give them a moment Terry. I just think in the chat. And for folks so watching at home we've made a recent change to the chat where the chat will just go to me as the meeting host so if you'd like to speak if you could let me know in the chat here. I'm not seeing anyone like the make public comment. Okay. Move on to interviews and appointments. And the first interview we'll have is for the Planning Commission, L.A. Beckett who I think probably grew up in this building with her mother as town clerk is here for the Planning Commission. So L.A. I want you to go up to the table and feel free to unask us so we can hear you better and we'll do likewise. So we have your application in front of us and just if you'd like to briefly give us a and the minutes people who are watching on Zoom indication of some of your background and why you'd like to be on the Planning Commission. Sure. Thank you everyone for meeting for me today. It's great to see you all. I know a couple of you. So I grew up in Williston and I've recently moved back about a year and a half ago and now that I'm back and settled I really want to be more engaged with the community. Yeah that's just really important to me to to be part of part of the action and and to help try to build the town that we all want to live in. My past experience I worked in DC for three and a half years in policy and communications for a organization that does economic development work on behalf of Native American tribal governments. I'm not sure if that's particularly relevant to the Williston Planning Commission but I'm sure that some of that experience will come in handy. I mostly want to do this because again I love this town. I'm from here. I want to stay here and I want to be part of that growth and that planning and building a great community for everyone. Thank you. Questions for the board? Hi, how are you? Actually I have three questions for you and I'll try to be brief. The first is have you had a chance to look at the town plan and if you have, do you have thoughts on it? What do you like? What don't you like? What maybe you think we should, you know, sounds great in the plan but we really aren't achieving that type of thing. I haven't looked at the town plan comprehensively but I have been looking at the form-based code in that process and I'm really I'm really excited about that. I really like the idea of having a cohesive vision into the future, how we want, how what we want today, how we can grow and develop like the town in a way that kind of reflects our goals and has is going all in the same direction. So I really like that and I know from talking to Matt that the commission is going to take on the village next and kind of discuss more of a cohesive way to plan through that. So I am really encouraged about, again, the Taft Corners code base code and the village project coming up. You actually got into my second question. Good job. So I'm going to alter it slightly. The observer ran an article about there's some resistance to the form-based code from developers and so I'm just curious what your thought is about that kind of balance between what the town wants or needs and versus what the developer needs in terms of their staying in business and doing what they do. Right. Yeah, so I tuned into that hearing two weeks ago and I really did empathize with, I think it was Al was the developer who he owns a huge portion of land that according to this code won't be able to be developed without the town buying it back. And like you said, there's always going to be a waiting process, but it sounded like from that article and from the hearing itself, it sounded like the code isn't necessarily set in stone in every single way. It sounds like there is leeway for the developers to work with the town. And so I'd be hopeful that through that process, they'd be able to come up with a solution that makes the developer feel all right and then also kind of adheres to what, here's what the town's vision going forward. Okay. In my third question, before I ask it, I'm going to explain a little bit. I, for some reason, get to ask it of everyone who's applying for position such as you are applying, applying for, which is a conflict of interest question. And it's, how would you recognize a conflict of interest and what would you do about it? I'm not saying you will have a conflict of interest or there's any potential that you will, but we still ask this of all people applying for, let's say, like a planning commission, whatever, appointment, there's the word. Well, with committee work I've done in the past, it's fairly sure it's pretty standard to disclose early on if you do have a conflict of interest. So I'm pretty sure just require some reflection and then signing something and then notifying committee members that you don't have a conflict or that you disclose what may be or appear to be. All right, good. Thank you. Really? Questions. I have a stupid question. Great. And there are some. I say this as a former Santa Claus at the University Mall. When I was on the rotary, we had our Easter egg hunt. Were you, were you involved in that? Yeah, I was, I was involved in the Easter egg hunt of many, many years. And there may have even been one where I dressed up as a bunny. Yes, I think that's what. Well, that was critical, honestly, that was the job I had to be done. I know that as a, as a mall Santa. Yeah, I'm willing to, I'm willing to pitch in wherever I can. Yeah. Anyway, okay, I just, I was trying to make the connection and I'm sorry if that was, I know I already know it was stupid, but I'm sorry if that was embarrassing. Good memories. Thanks. Yeah, you may regret saying you jumped in because the rotary is doing the Easter egg hunt again this year and we're looking for an Easter egg hunt. Don't, I hope you're not looking around the room here. Another question. You mentioned in your application just that, you know, you, you're, you're a young person kind of, and you're hoping to bring that kind of perspective, you know, coming back into the town to the, to the planning commission. What do you foresee as, you know, the challenges in retaining and attracting younger professionals, younger families to our town? And do you have any thoughts about how we might, you know, change policy to change, you know, things work with, with folks to get them into town? Well, I think, which is no surprise to anyone, one of the biggest issues is housing and affordability. And that's not even just Williston. It's Chinn and it's the state. So I think the first step to increasing affordable housing is increasing housing in general. So I think we all know that a lot of building will likely have to occur, probably within Williston. And again, I think this is a good reason why we, like, it's good that we're implementing the form-based code so that this growth can happen, you know, intelligently, like with a, with a plan. But yeah, I know right now in Williston, there are not that many one-bedroom apartments, or apartments in general. I could not live in this town had it been, like, three years ago before that the whole area in Tafts Corners was built. So I think it's just going to be really critical to get a range of housing options. And I know from talking with Matt at the planner, he was telling me how the building that I live in now was only really able to be built because of a change in the bylaws that allowed a change in the number, what counted as a dwelling and for whom. So I think it's going to be things like that. They're going to, you know, help in Williston is trying to figure out creative ways to build different types of housing options that are accessible and affordable to, to people with different incomes and different living situations because right now it is very difficult to live in this town as a, you know, younger person, early in my career and single. It's not the, yeah, it's a challenge. So it's something that I very much want to dig into and want to try to figure out solution because I think Williston is a great town. And I think that if it were just a little bit easier to live here, I think we would, it wouldn't take much else to attract a lot of younger talent and, and enthusiastic new residents. Other questions? Yes, not. And if we're ready for a motion, I'll move to appoint Ellie Beckett to the planning commission for an unexpired four year term through June 30th, 2023. Second. Second. And in terms of discussion on the motion. Very good. I'll also figure out the motion to say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you, sir. Congratulations for the floor to work in with you. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks, Ellie. Good to have Beckett back in town. We're working. And we'll move on then to the interviews for the recreation and parks committee. We do have two candidates. We have Daniel Bolger and David Kenamella, who are interested in the, in the appointment. And one of you are in the room, but I'm not sure where it's. They have no chance. And I've got David. I'll connect. And David is on the Zoom. So, Dan, I want you to come up to the table. Hello, everybody. As soon as we get the other candidate on, we can start the process. Welcome, David. Can you hear us? Yes, I can. Thank you very much. That's good. And so what I'll do is ask you both to give us a brief introduction to yourself, your background, and why you wish to be on the recreation and parks committee. So we'll start with Dan Bolger here in the, in the room and then go to you, David. Everybody, my name is Dan Bolger. I'm a Will's resident, obviously. My parents grew up here. My parents are from here. I just moved back about a year and a half ago during the pandemic. And, you know, me and my wife bought a house here. And I agree we should do some more low housing options, low income housing options. It's very hard to live here. But I'm very interested in this position because I grew up using the, the rec leagues. I played Will's and literally I did, I did it all basically. I did the basketball, you know, green team per se, well, I don't know what color, but I'm planning to have a family soon. And I would just, I couldn't imagine a town that I live in not having a top tier parks and rec system. Like I just want that for the future. And that's, that's why I'm applying for this spot. Thank you. David. Yes, thank you very much. It's a thank you for meeting. My background is in nonprofit administration for the past 18 years. I've been serving as a director of a Medicaid funded program that provides home and community supports for people with development of disabilities. I think my core competencies probably lie in operational planning, project management, employee development. Part of my work in disability services, I was more involved in the recreational planning. I have a master's degree in recreation administration. I worked for a short while as a marketing director for Park District and also did some recreational and after school programming for various nonprofits in, in Connecticut. Regarding my volunteer experience, I moved here from Underhill. When I was in Underhill was on the Mills River Park Board of Directors and more recently on a credit union board. My family and I moved to Wilson about six years ago. I have a son who's in fourth grade at Wilson Central. We very much utilize and appreciate the recreational opportunities here in Wilson and I saw the ad in the front porch forum and thought this would be a good way to get more connected with my community. So I sent it an application. Good, thank you. We'll move on now to questions from the board. I'll start. Question for both of you, which is, I don't know exactly how to ask it, but it's along the lines of what is Wilson doing right and what are we doing or maybe not doing or doing wrong in terms of our programs and our approach to programs. Sir, David. I can't think of anything that things are doing wrong. I think one of the benefits of the recreational programs is continuing to have affordable programming for families, specifically summer programming as a, as a, as a parent in the community. We're always striving and looking for additional summer programming for our kids. And I think it's been outstanding in the years that we've been here. And I think that that's an area that could be further developed. You know, the recreational opportunities and the way facilities are managed are just wonderful. I mean, every year we always notice the improvement, especially with the ice rink this year and as far as the previous years and the way we've redone the shed and the rink and the facility. So I see continual improvement with the amenities here. And I, I, I can't think of a specific area which other than continuing to prove what's already happening. Yeah, yeah, I would have to agree. I grew up using, you know, all the parks. I, me and my wife take walks behind Wilson Central all the time, all the fields, all the facilities are Medicare grade. Everything's pretty good and it looks like it's moving forward well. I don't foresee, I don't see anything that's going wrong per se. I see some opportunities where we could develop or improve. I have a dog. I would love to see a fenced in dog park or something of that nature. And it brings a lot of, you know, maybe some legal something or other. But I'm willing to look into that. But that's something I see we can maybe do. But other than that though, it's not really about what we're doing wrong. I mean, we can always find something you're doing wrong, but continuing to improve on a beautiful system that everyone uses up. And the summer, the summer stuff for kids is great. I went to summer camp also and it was fantastic. So highlights of my summer, highlights of my summer. Other questions. So I will, you probably, well, not both of you. My next question is, and we asked this of all candidates who are applying for positions. Dan, you've already heard me ask Elliott, but it's the conflict of interest question. Yeah. And how would you recognize it? What would you do about it? Sure. Example, I have a dog. A dog park would be great. I wouldn't do it for me. I would do it for the town. You know, it's not, if I, you know, get elected to this position, it's not about me. It's about what's the best option for the future of the parks and rec department, the fields, the programs like, you know, you already know I have a dog. So it's not just disclosing stuff like that. But yeah, you know, you don't use these positions for your own benefit. Use them to benefit your community. So. Yeah, I mean conflict of interest is a major issue everywhere. I certainly in my field as well, you know, I constantly update our conflict of interest policy and my board with a, excuse me, I work with my board. I think disclosure upfront, but also recusal. If there is a potential conflict of interest that I feel impede upon my duties, I would either disclose that information and or recuse myself from any voting opportunities or meeting discussions. That's how I would sort of handle that. Thank you. Other questions. Fine. I'm just a softball question, but what's your favorite, you know, park or parks and rec program offering. Sure. Well, I, my son is heavily involved in the soccer program. So I have to say for him and for I it's been, it's been soccer. As far as amenities, we both love getting on the ice. So I've really enjoyed over the past couple of years how the, the ice has been available for our town. So as far as the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the surroundings and the grounds. Back there, we often, I try to get him out there outside and, and exercise as much as possible. So we'll, we'll be around the track or on the field. So, I mean, I can't think of anyone specific, but that's, those are the major. Amenities and programs that we utilize. Yeah. I used the little league system growing up. I was on all stars. They did all that stuff. kind of like the prime example of why I would like to join this committee was Rosignal Park. It was upgraded that you could actually play like real little league games there instead of just being like a fenced in field. So it has good basketball hoops. There's a new tennis court in there. My parents play racket or pickle ball there all the time. I just you know I love that park and that yeah that's my favorite one. I do a lot of stuff there still other question. Well, thank you both for coming tonight. As our customers when we have more than one candidate, we was pulling the agony of making an appointment. So later on the meeting and so you're certainly welcome to stay here, stay on zoom or rejoin us. Not sure what time I can tell you that will be doing that probably between a 30 and 9. I'm hoping but that's my guess at the moment. So thank you both for coming tonight. We'll certainly let you know the outcome of our deliberations later on. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. Thank you very much. Moving then to the audit report and I'll ask Eric to lead off this and eventually we'll be talking to our representative from Sullivan and Powers and with surely who's been instrumental in putting this together. Getting right. I think this is you how I'm getting you connected here to join us. So let's have a brief introduction. Want to want to thank surely again for her leadership in the audit report. It's quite the quite the endeavor every year for us here at. So it's been wrapped up with our with our arting firm Sullivan Powers here just in the last few days. We received the report and I passed under the board yesterday. It's available online and I've printed out some power copies for members who usually get hard copies. We'll have some bound copies the next week or so as well. So I was my brief introduction. I'll turn over to surely and Fred Diplisus who's a partner at Sullivan Powers who will be providing an overview for the board this evening. So welcome Fred. Thank you. Fred, I'm really going to let you do most of the talking but I just want to acknowledge what a partner Sullivan and Powers has been in the audit process. I'm very appreciative of their help and their guidance when I have questions. So they're they're a good team. So I appreciate it. Surely I appreciate that. So I hope you can all hear me. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Great. So there is a lot of information here and I'll try to give you a quick overview if you'd like and then we can open it up to see if there's any questions. I know you haven't had it long. So if there are further questions after tonight, most of which I think surely would be able to answer but we'd be happy to do this again or answer questions through surely if that's necessary. So this this is an audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards, which is the standards that would be followed in any audit of any entity under Vermont statute. It also has to be in accordance with government auditing standards which are stricter. They require specific experience and training in order to do them. And it also requires a report on compliance with laws and regulations and internal control to be bound as part of the audit. That's different than in a regular financial statement audit. There will be a third component of this audit called a single audit in accordance with uniform guidance because you expended more than $750,000 in federal funds this year. The feds have been because of a lot of factors late in getting that guidance out. Normally that audit would have been due March 31st, but because they were late in getting the information out to us, they've extended that due date to September 30th. So they've extended it six months. We're not going to wait six months. My partner has started gathering the information working with Shirley to get that going. So we will proceed with that. And that will add on a schedule of all the federal funds you've spent and an additional letter that is going to be specifically compliance and control on what are called the major tested programs. And I'm not sure that's been determined yet, but that will be based on the risk, the dollars. Because you haven't been audited in the last year, we'll have to cover at least 40% of your federal dollars. And so we're starting that process. So there will be an add on to this. It won't change anything you're seeing here tonight. There will just simply be a schedule and a letter added to this that will then get transmitted to the federal government where it'll be available for public inspection. In terms of this audit, our responsibility is to provide the opinion on the financial statement. And then the report that I alluded to in the back, but I'll go to the opinion first. That's on page two. And what that tells you is that you present and prepare your financial statements in full conformance with generally accepted accounting principles for governments. And they're unique. So this is a clean, unmodified opinion. We do note below that that you've combined some of your capital funds, capital funding, with a capital projects fund. And so now you will see that as a major fund, because all of those activities have been added into a new specific fund. And lastly, all governments now have to show the money that they handle for other governments. And so there's a new statement, and I'll go through that real quickly. But basically what it shows is the money that you collect for the state and school district, both taxes and impact fees. So you're responsible for the billing of that money. But it's not your money. It's it's either a state a state tax or its impact fees that you work to the school. So that's that's never really showed up before. But but now they want to see how much the total dollars are. And we'll see that as we look in further in the report. When I'm looking at a town report or a for profit or an SEC report, what I typically look at starts on page four, it's called Management's Discussion and Analysis. And in you know, seven or eight pages, you get a real good summary of what happened during the year. It's written by management. Our responsibility is to make sure that includes all of the required information. And that the information that's in there is consistent with the audit report that follows and it and it does. So it's it's narrative. There's some summary financial information, there's some explanation of the budget variances. And so you can get quite a good understanding of what happened in a relatively short number of pages without having to go into the detail. If you then want the detail, it's there behind it. But it is a good summary and it is more discussion and analysis rather than just the pure numbers. The starting on page 12 are the traditional financial statements. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the combined statements on page 12 and 13. These are really combined condensed financial statements. All of your governmental activities show up in one fund that your general fund and your grant funds, your capital project funds, and then your business type activities show up in a second column, and that's your water, sewer and storm water. But it's easier to see those activities later on in more detail. But this is a required statement. What probably is the one that people look at the most is page 14 and on. So this is where you're going to see your general fund, your new capital fund, and then all the other funds combined. But even those funds have the detail in the back. So you'll individually see every fund that the that the town maintains in the report somewhere. But this is at a high level. So these are the most active funds, the funds of size. So the general fund is really the critical fund in terms of the raising of taxes and what's left over for future years. And you're going to see down at the bottom of the first column that you had a total unassigned fund balance at the end of 21 of little over $3.2 million. And that's compared to $2.8 million. So you budgeted and you'll see that when you look at your budget statement, you actually budgeted to reduce that fund balance significantly. You actually budgeted to give back about 780,000, almost 781,000. But because you had more revenue, primarily, I believe, surely the local option tax was one of the big drivers of the revenue coming in more than what the anticipation was. And then in anticipation of COVID and some planned and unplanned, there were reduced expenditures, some vacancies, which caused you to have a surplus on the expenditure side. So you took in more than you planned, you spent less than you planned and in total, rather than using up that $780,000, you actually increased your total fund balance by a little over 600,000. So it didn't happen. So you have a policy typically of maintaining about 10 to 20% of operating expenses in that unrestricted unassigned fund balance. It's because of that is much higher now. It's about 28% of the budgeted expenditures. Had you given back that 780 as planned, you would have been closer to like 22%. So the plan was to get closer to your goal. And in the budget that you're living in right now, you've you've also given back, I think about 675,000. So they're even in the budget that you're, you know, three quarters or almost a little more than halfway through, there's money in there that's been returned to the taxpayers through a reduction rates, getting that fund balance down. So, you know, there's, you know, the question is what's an appropriate fund balance? The GFOA government finance officer starts with about 20%. But then says you really got to evaluate it based on, you know, what your needs are, what your cash flow is. Your first tax payment date is like August 15. So that that's, you know, 46 days, that's about 13% of the year. So, you know, kind of that's that to me is a minimum, you need to at least have that to get to the next cycle of when money comes in. And then probably more importantly, it's important to have some level of reasonable fund balance so that you can mitigate the tax rate so that you have the ability in times where, you know, we're facing inflation and we don't know what's going to happen in terms of fuel and healthcare and, you know, a lot of different expenses. And so, you know, if we get into a period where we have rising prices with fixed budgets, then having a reasonable fund balance will allow you to again, to return some of that money to taxpayers and mitigate rate increases. So, you know, there's a variety of reasons you're in good shape. Not all towns are, you know, have this luxury, but you at least have the ability now to plan to utilize that fund balance. And as I said, you've already given some back, but you're going into the year with a very healthy fund balance. Your enterprise funds are on page 17. That's your water, your sewer fund, your stormwater fund, all of those have their, they've basically stayed, they've all gone up a little bit, but they're about where they were about a year ago. All of them have very healthy, extremely well funded net positions, unrestricted net positions. So, those are all in good shape. I know there's lots of unmet needs in water, sewer and stormwater, particularly stormwater. And so, this, this having this level will again be able to mitigate rates, but also be able to use for capital planning. So, you know, we think there'll be lots of infrastructure money coming in. There may be a need to match some of that. So, it's a good time to have that ability to be able to have these funds available. I mentioned that custodial fund on page 21, you'll see that you handled about almost $31 million of money. That was basically the school of the states. This never showed up before. It was just came in and out. This new statement is required to show that that there's a lot of money that you have to handle that's not yours under current statute or the current methodology. The state has talked about collecting the Ed money. I hope they don't. I think it will create complexities in terms of title searches and collecting taxes. But this is a recognition that you handle a lot more money than just the town tax money. Starting on page 22, there's a lot of footnotes that it just explained who you are, what accounting policies gives you more information on your assets and liabilities, your debt. It talks about the state pension that you're involved in. Just a lot of information in terms of all your various fund balances, what they're restricted or assigned for. That's on page 41 and 42. Just a lot of information in there. And then as we move back in the report on schedule one, starting on page 51, is a very detailed report that shows the budget that was approved by the board and then the voters compared to what actually happened. And so again, you'll see on page 52, we already talked about it that you budgeted to take in a little over almost $11 million. You actually took an 11 million 148. So you did about 258,000 better than budgeted on the revenue side. And there are things that are up and down. But the local option money was about 280 in total. And then all the other areas offset each other. But that was the big driver of the surplus there. And then there's lots of pages that go on and on by showing what you did in each department. And there's going to be variances positive and negative. But in total, on page 63, you're going to see that you use plan to spend 11,671,000, which would have used up that 780,000 of fund balance. But you actually spend about a million dollars less. And a lot of it was capital projects. A lot of it was salaries on unfilled position. And and plan savings because of the, you know, the pandemic. So a lot of factors, a lot of detail. If anyone has questions, and I'm sure you've been seeing these reports all year. So you probably know what those where those savings are probably better than I do, because you've been seeing it all year. Then in the back, there's a lot of schedules. Page 64 is a required schedules that shows it's this is ultimately going to be a 10 year schedule showing how Vemors is doing. And your share of it, you're paying exactly what you need to pay for Vemors. This is a liability that that is will never will won't come do as long as you keep paying your required payments. And you have been and that's what schedule three shows. This is going to go up and down over the years. But it actually is one of the better funded plans in the nation. And it's a year behind. And so I suspect with what the stock market's done at the end of 21 that it will go up a bit in terms of funding level. And the actuaries and consultants for this program have indicated that just with minor tweaks, really minor tweaks, that there's enough money to pay all benefits to all municipal workers for the foreseeable future. So unlike, unfortunately, unlike the teachers system and the state system, this is a well funded program. Starting on page 65 are all of those other funds I talked about the there, they're all other funds of the of the town, a lot of the various non major funds, your special revenue funds. You'll see all of those special revenue on page 67 and 68. All of your existing capital projects are on 69, either projects themselves are reserve funds for projects. And then lastly is the required report on compliance and internal control. And for this year, we had no compliance findings, no material weaknesses and no significant deficiencies. We do have a few other recommendations. But I do want to remind you that a year ago, we had five material weaknesses and five significant deficiencies. And I kind of did a double take from going through this, getting ready for this because to clean up all of that, that's a lot. But it was all cleaned up this year. All of the issues we raised in this report a year ago, have been addressed and fixed. So this, this is a clean report in terms of compliance and control. What that means is that it should give you confidence that the reports you get all the year, because of the good controls should be be able to be relied on, that the issues we raised last year have been dealt with. So there are some minor things that we remind you that that need to be done. And I know that they're on the list of things to be taken care of. But to have to have addressed all of those major things in one year is frankly pretty remarkable. So it's nice to be able to issue that clean report. And that was not true a year ago. I don't know. That's a lot of information real quick. I don't know if there's anything specific I can answer. And as I said, if not tonight, I'd be happy to, you know, get answers to you anytime. Questions from the board? I'll just ask one. First of all, I'm going to admit that finances absolutely elude me in how to understand them. But if I heard what you just said, and I tried to boil it down to how would we rate what the town has done and the town really is the town staff has done in terms of you use the word cleaning up the, I don't know, cleaning up the finances, they would get an outstanding. Is that a fair, accurate statement? Yeah, I mean, it because we don't even issue an audit until, you know, partway through the year, the fact that they were able to get all of these issues. I mean, that having that many points, when I look back at them, a lot of them were very unique issues to governments because of some very unique accounting in governments and what, what, when we went through the audit a full year ago, we spent time with your staff explaining these going through with them and everything we asked them to do they did. And so we were able to issue a clean report. As I said, it really is the fact that there were 10 issues all resolved. And those were the high level issues is frankly remarkable. Well, thank you. And thank you Shirley and Eric and whoever else helped do this. It takes a team. What's that? It takes a team. Other questions? Does this mean we don't have to do an audit next year? I'm going to take that as a no. So we will be expecting the other audit on the federal fund sometime the next six months or so. Yeah, we'll try to get it done well before that. We're not going to, you know, we've got a start on it now. They've issued their guidebook, the guides within the last two or three weeks. So we now have the information we need to get going. Now it's just a matter of, you know, getting back in and picking samples and working with Shirley to get all of that done. So yes, I expect, I expect we'll have it done within a couple of months. We're not going to wait till September. We want to get it done. Fred, I think it'd be a fair statement to say that we're probably going to see a single audit for the next several years as well with all the ARPA money. Yeah, we're particularly a ton of your size. Yes. And we're not sure how that revenue will come in. It's going to depend on, you know, if you choose the one time, you know, lost revenue and but even at that point then you still decide how you're going to spend it. And so, you know, taking that option doesn't mean that you can't spend it on things other than general government. You can, but spending it on general government will provide you the most flexibility to then use the money that you don't spend because you've taken care of those things on other things and can even reduce some of the federal compliance issues. So, there's some real planning that can be done around this to best use that money but nevertheless, regardless of how you spend it, yes, it will add to your existing federal money and probably will require single audits at least for a few years. Do you really have anything to add to the report? Well, I will say that in your packages or if you're looking electronically, Fred was very kind to talk about the findings that were cleaned up but they do have a list of recommendations. So, those are and they were most of them there last year. So, while we have the other ones taking care of, there are still a list that are mostly policy related things. So, I hope to get a lot of those done before the end of the year. So, those will go away next year as well. So, you'll see some revised policies coming along but yeah, I felt much better about the audit process. As I said, it was nice to have auditors. As Fred said, we spent a lot of time last year sitting and talking because government auditing was new for me. I come from the, this is GASB, Government Accounting Standards. I came from GASB, completely different. These I think are the most complicated financial statements that I have ever prepared. So, it's taken a while. So, I hope next year to be a little faster and a few less questions for Jordan, but it was quite a difference as I've mentioned to Eric between this year and last year for me personally and for the staff in terms of really understanding how they all wrap together and having a lot less questions for them because of the last year during the audit and producing the financial statements last year. So, the last thing we need to do as far as the audit goes is to accept it. We have a motion to that effect. I had moved to accept to see your 2021 audit report from the town auditing firm following the powers as presented. Is there a second? A second. Is there any discussion on that motion? If not, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Well, thank you very much for the presentation tonight. It was very clear, I believe, which is hard for people who are not used to working with numbers. All right, good. We'll have a good rest of the meeting. Thank you. Okay. So, I'll move on to the page covering rule and Eric will tell us what we're covering tonight. It's similar to what we did a month ago. Yep. So, just a recap of the legislation the board considers this evening the enabling legislation for face covering rules. Last December, the seventh the board adopted a face covering rule for indoor public spaces in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This is under the authority of Act 1 passed by the legislature last November. Act 1 dictates that should a municipal governing body enact a face covering rule, it's initially in effect for 45 days, then the governing body shall meet prior to the end of that period and vote either to rescind or extend it. The board met in late January and had a 30-day extension put in place and that will run through February 20th. The law requires the board to meet every 30 days to consider whether to extend for another 30-day period or to extend the rule. All rules will sunset on April 30th of this year under the authority of Act 1 by passed by the legislature. So, the question for the board tonight is whether you want to extend the rule and if so, if there's any changes you want to make to it in that extension or if the board wants to rescind the rule. This extension, your current extension runs through February the 20th. This would extend it another 30 days, which would be to March 22nd, 2022 and it would be back on your agenda on March 15th for at least one more or more consideration. Before we get, when is our next meeting, our next select move? March 15th. March 15th. Yeah, get a whole month off. Not gonna know what to do with this. Is there anyone on the Zoom who wishes to make brief comments? I'll just give it a moment, Terry. I haven't seen anyone raise their hand or in the chat, but we may have to someone because if anyone's listening wants to speak on this topic, please let me know in the chat. I'm not seeing any comments. Okay, members of the board, unless you wish. So just some food for thought, just to add to the discussion, the agency of education, the governor today did recommend that schools and universal mask recommendations as of February 28th and so that would be for schools who have a vaccination rate higher than 80% of students would have the option to to not require masks. So that's just, you know, what are the things that are other things that are happening around our state in terms of masking policy. So So my question is, is what has changed and and in two of the benchmark criteria I use for evaluating whether we should have the mask ordinance or not, is what is recommended by the CDC and the Vermont Department of Health. And when I checked their websites earlier today, I could find no evidence that they are relaxing or rescinding that recommendation, that mask be worn indoors. So again, the concept of recent, I will be, we will all rejoice when we get to rescind this mask ordinance. Now is not the time. Other thoughts? I agree. The reason I was asking the next board meeting date is because I was thinking that if the if the cases continue to go down and if the end number of people who get infected continues to go in the right direction, then I'd be open to the thought of getting rid of it less than just 30 days from now, but we don't meet for another 30 days. So I don't think that's viable and I'm not saying I would have definitely voted two weeks from now to get rid of it anyway. So I think we have to err on the side of caution, keep it in place. I'm on a hold where I was last time. I haven't seen anything that's notable that lets me know that this is to go away. I share the same sentiment. I dislike these as much as anybody else, but looking at our next meeting date, you know, I was thinking kind of the same thing to have, you know, maybe modifying the number of days, but we don't meet in that time frame. So I would I would be on the side of caution as well. The numbers that, you know, the things that always stick with me in considering this are, you know, certainly looking at, you know, the case dashboard for the state, and rather than the specific number of new cases per day, I tend to look at the number of hospitalizations and the number, especially the number of folks in the ICU, and it has remained pretty consistently in the high teens and low 20s over the past couple months of folks in the ICU. And to me, that's very high. And if there are continue to be things that we can mitigate, do to mitigate, you know, exposure to our vulnerable populations, folks who are, you know, compromised, and things like that, and then I feel like we need to continue to do that at this time. And so, yeah, I support continuing the mask mandate for another month. Terry, I do have a comment online if I could share. Sure. Just a comment from Devin Penney is asking the board if it would consider making changes to the gym exercise facilities component. That's a question we've been asked at least a couple of times at this point, and certainly feeling on the behalf of the board to do that. I went down four to one when I proposed that last time. And we chose not to even discuss it I think at the last meeting. So, so I'd be looking for a motion and based on what I've heard so far. I'll move under the authority of act one to extend the town of Williston's face covering rule in response to the COVID-19 pandemic 30 days until March 22nd, 2022. Is there a discussion around the motion? Very none. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And there's no abstentions. I don't know, that's all. We'll go on to the next item, which is the Champlain Water District annual update. We have Joe Duncan on our general manager of CWD. And Liz Royer, who is our elected town representative to CWD. So I think they're both going to be on the Zoom broadcast. So if they're ready to go, we are too. Yep. And I'm connected right now, Terry. And I'm going to circulate the mass covered rule for boards. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, Joe, it was on your end. I just muted you. Very interesting. Let's be a microphone thing. Please, battle startler. Maybe we'll try it again here. Let's start. I think more mic. Do you want me to start maybe? I'm Liz Royer. I am the elected commissioner to the Champlain Water District in my sixth year in this position. And here to answer any questions, just give you a brief summary of the past year for Champlain Water District. Things are pretty much status quo, which these days is a really good thing. Similar rate increase to past years, even with increasing costs and pretty much everything these days. Champlain Water District has been planning projects to be able to take advantage of the IJA, the Infrastructure Act funding that should be coming our way in the next few months. And I think they're definitely poised to really receive a lot of that grant funding to help put some of these projects into action. And one of the new projects that's on the list in your packet is the Waterline Replacement Project on 2A in Williston. So that's one of those projects that just has to be done. It may not be a priority, but it's going to have to be done. So Joe can fill you in more on that one. And I think I'll let him review everything that's in the packet if his microphone's sounding better now. We'll see. I'll mute myself. I feel like we're signaling some sort of aliens. I know, I know. Joe's going to rejoin that might pipeline here somewhere. Somehow, yeah, two years in and we still go problems every single meeting I'm in. Liz lives right next door to me and an update for you, Liz. The tree removal was scheduled right now for Friday, March 4th. Okay, great. Oh, that's my son's birthday. So that's perfect. Present. The interesting project to watch. Yes. Yeah, we're excited. Thanks. Let's wait for Joe to get back on here. There he is. Have on now, Eric. All right. Much better. We can hear you, Joe. Yeah, I'll have to take my laptop in. Something's fooey there. So hey, a little better than the garbling, huh? So yeah, thank you for your patience. So as Liz said, we are similar to the town where we work through our budget process this time every year and and we move forward towards we're on a July 1 to June 30 fiscal year. So we're prepping for our FY 22-23 budget. So there's a bunch of information in the packet that we sent over, but currently we sell all of our wholesale water to our 12 systems in eight communities in Chittenden County, including including the town of Williston. Our current wholesale rate is 2.392 per thousand gallons. Based on the 22-23 budget, we're going up to $2.49.4 per You're frozen up, Joe. I think it might catch up on a second. I tried to get his attention here. I think that might be on our end, Scott. I feel like I'm at a hockey game, you know, where they do that, where they have a commercial, they say I should stop playing to have a commercial. I feel like it's been like really program and some entertainment. It's cold out, the water froze. Are you able to rejoin it all, Scott? Okay, let's watch for you here. Now the sound doesn't work, so glad I have a phone. I was going to get a new laptop in the next month and I keep putting it off because it's just, yes, there's something, it's just never the same as what you're used to, even if it doesn't work. You're like, man, it's slow, the old one was slow, but it worked and you're like, yeah, I'm good with that. Something's coming back here. I didn't see anything about it. I hear things. There we go. We can see you. Can you hear us? Sorry about that. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be right back on here in a moment. There we go. I'm glad it wasn't me on that one. Maybe it was, I don't know. I don't know where I left off or where I got cut off or if you just started to talk about it, the increase in rate. Oh, well, there we go. So yeah, so for FY 2223, we are going from 2.392 per 1,000 gallons to 2.494 per 1,000 gallons. That's a 10.2 cents per 1,000 gallon increase, which basically for a typical home means about a $6.70 increase or 56 cents a month. So $6.70 a year, 56 cents a month, and that's on our wholesale rate. So what the town does with the wholesale rate, some pass the wholesale purchase directly along in their rates, others do markups, but just the solely our rate, that is the impact. For anybody interested in coming to the annual meeting where we act on the budget, that's held Tuesday, April 5th, at 7 o'clock at Champlain Water District it'll be in person, but we also will have virtual attendance available for those that want to attend that way. You know, for us, we look at our wholesale budget as an opportunity to do, to make the water, treat the water, get it out to our to our service systems, but also to reinvest in our infrastructure. We put money into supporting pumps, pipes, valves, all the meters, everything within our operating budget, but those very large expenses, we wind up doing them through our capital budget. And our capital budget includes items that are, that are able to be done out of the capital, but also sometimes we do look at bonding. All in all, we're in a very good financial situation. We've had a couple years of high water sales. And this year seems to be trending back towards the norm. The high water sales tend to be based off of either a hot summer or a cold winter where there's a ton of leaks and we're unfortunately losing water to the service systems are using, losing water that we're supplying. So, but this year seems to be a typical year wasn't as hot in the end of the season. You can remember where July won through June 30th. So it wasn't a hot fall and knock on wood. It's been a pretty decent winter as far as taking a toll on piping. So for us, we are, you know, we're going to be moving forward with some projects as Liz said. What you'll see is that for us, we try to reinvest in our infrastructure through funding opportunities. And those funding opportunities, we try and take advantage of as we have debt fall off. We try and backfill it with an equivalent amount of annual payment debt. And with the IIJA, the Infrastructure Act money that's coming down the line, CWD is trying to position itself by putting a bunch of projects in a shovel ready position. So that when that money does become available, we can do some things. We have been fortunate that we've been able to construct some projects over the years using the state revolving fund. Most recently in Williston was the Williston North Tank. We did get 10% subsidy on that, basically loan forgiveness, a grant. The monies have become more favorable as time is going on. And we just did a project out in Colchester for a loop up to our Colchester South Tank. It was a million dollar project in which we got 88% subsidy on that. And we're doing a pump station in Essex. Both of those were on the bond a couple of years ago. And that Essex pump station is a $2.6 million project. We're getting 49% subsidy on that. So positioning ourselves for the IIJA money is important for us. The way ARPA is set up, we aren't able to take advantage of it. We, in order for us to access ARPA funds, we would have to have one of our service systems allocate their ARPA money and haven't found one that's been willing to do that for us just yet. But we'll look at other opportunities that are out there. And as Liz said, one of them is going to be, one of the projects we have to do is the Route 2A project. There's a widening project that's going along. You're probably more familiar with the widening portion than I am. But that extension of the CERC money is going into widening of the roads. And there's a 12-inch AC main that we own that runs along 2A from Tafts Corners up to River Cove. And part of the widening is going to require us to have to relocate that, which is because of stuff in conflict with the state's proposed stormwater. Because we are in there right away. They tell us we have to move and we have to move. So you'll probably see some bonds coming down the line. We have four big projects, including the Route 2A project, mostly at the plant for pump station, raw water pump station upgrades, a raw water transmission main, a second filter water tank, and a chemical building addition. We're moving forward with the designs on all those. Which ones wind up we pursue for funding? We don't know. But you'll probably be hearing that in the future. So happy to answer any questions. I did put some information in there about Wilson's water usage. CWD's water usage is still around the 9.7 mark on an average day, a million gallons per day usage. Of that, 3.3 is global foundry. So global is still about a third of our water sales and usage. But we pretty much kind of flatlined it around 6.3, 6 to 6.3 in non-global foundry usage. And what's interesting is that goes all the way back to the 90s when it was hovering around that number. And so even though there's growth in the system, I think water saving fixtures and conservation has kind of held the line for us somewhere along the line that may change. But if you look at Williston's numbers, there's some information in there on Williston's usage since 2002. And the average has been around 0.69 MgD over that period. Most recently, it's been last year was up around 0.738. But that I think was really kind of a reflection of some of the seasonal usage and the warmer start to the year specifically for Williston. But we'll see if that becomes a trend or not. I think you'll probably see stuff back down around the 0.7 mark depending upon how this year finishes. So it's trending in that direction. But there's growth in Williston that doesn't necessarily immediately correlate to growth in water sales predominantly because of the conservation and the water saving fixtures that go in. But happen to answer any questions you may have or if there's any additional information I can provide, I'm happy to get it. Questions for Joe or Liz? Hey, Joe, Jeff here. Hey, Jeff. How are you? Good, thanks. Joe, you or somebody from the district has probably explained this before. Could you explain the difference between wholesale and retail? It seems like there's two functions that the district does. Yep. Yes, so when we were created, we were created to primarily as a wholesale service. And that wholesale service is strictly selling water to municipalities. And there's 12 service systems that we sell them to. Town of Williston is one of them, their water system. Colchester has four water systems, fire districts that we sell water to. So that's what the wholesale is. It's getting water to our municipalities for their use to then sell within their distribution systems to the customers. And so the distribution to the customers might be on our end, Scott. He's still chatting. I didn't realize it was such a hard question. Point out of this is going to be, I just want to make sure that they, you know, kind of like we do with our enterprise funds, they keep the two separate. So the wholesale versus retail. And then the other interesting thing, if you look down under, I don't know if you have this in front of you, a packet they provided on page two under water treatment, it talks about corrosion control for zinc and perlite and copper. Just kind of interesting how we were talking about copper. Yeah. Copper that contains the drinking water system ends up, most of it, the vast majority of the treatment plant. So we cover it on solder? So I just want to ask, kind of, you know, is there an issue with copper? Why do they have to do that? Does the corrosion control effectively reduce copper that's leaking from the system? But that may not happen. Recap. So yeah, it'd be good. I would definitely mention that. So that's a good one. And, you know, maybe they, maybe it's still that way. Hopefully it is. Like V-cap, V-wrap, V-hop, and Y-wap. We're getting Scott back up here. It is, isn't it? Yeah. It's so many acronyms. It's hard to keep track of who's who and what's what. Yeah. You're back. There we go. Can you hear us? All right. Sorry about that. And just other folks are watching on Zoom too, not that you guys talked about anything you shouldn't be talking about. I would just let you know that the webinar is on when we, when we, if that happens again here. Okay, good to know. Thank you. Well, maybe they already heard some Elizabeth stuff then. But so I don't know where we left off yet, but wholesale is strictly selling to serve systems. And retail is we, we originally, I think in the 70s, South Burlington said, hey, how, how about since you're doing these wholesale functions, maybe you can also serve as our water department. So we started a retail division in the late 70s in primarily for South Burlington. We now do it for Village of Jericho, Colchester Fire 1, Colchester Town, Mallets Bay Water Company, and Colchester Fire 3. South Burlington, we do full on everything. We are there. We go out, we, we serve as hydrants, valves, install meters. We do everything and we do all the meter reading. We do all the billing. So everything that the town of Williston does, we do for those communities. So that's, that's what our retail arm is. And it, you know, it's pretty much been mostly South Burlington with a little bit of small systems here and there. But so that's the difference between wholesale and retail. Okay. And Joe, the reason for my question is, are the, are the, the budgets for the retail separate for the budgets from the wholesale stated differently? Do we, Williston, as somebody who is paying the wholesale rate pay for functions that happen on the retail side of things? No, you don't. They are completely separate budgets. The wholesale budget and the retail budget are completely different. Yeah. You know, I didn't present anything on the retail budget to you because Williston doesn't have a, doesn't have a role in it. So, so no, they're completely separate financial budgets. And then Joe, I'm on page two of the handout we got under water treatment. And it talks about corrosion control treatment to reduce lead and copper leaching from foam plumbing. And the question is, is, you know, is that a problem? Is what the, the district is doing in terms of adding corrosion prohibitors helping or is the problem basically going away? It stated differently is the water system a source of lead and copper that might be ending up either out of coming out of our taps or down at the wastewater treatment plant? Yep. So, so the answer is that we do not have any lead in our source water. So any potential lead that might be in somebody's drinking water at their tap would potentially come from their home. And so in order to combat that, the, and it's possible to their most of our service systems don't have it, but it's possible that some of the older ones might have, you know, leaded joints in their, in their cast iron mains, if you have any like that. But most of it is service lines and houses plumbing that have led lines potentially. So what the con, what the corrosion control does, it's an orthophosphate. That orthophosphate builds a coat between the water and the pipe. And so it basically, it winds up eliminating contact of the water as it comes into the pipe and into your home. And so there's a barrier that orthophosphate is a barrier between your drinking water and your service line and potential lead. So we actually have, and so we do lead testing. Annually, we also, you know, submit as required for the lead and copper rule. But in our facility, we have a system we call it Bill and Bob. And essentially what it is, is it's a sample line that has no orthophosphate treatment, before orthophosphate treatment and another line after orthophosphate treatment. We send that through lead lines and copper lines all individually. And so we send ortho through those lines. We send non-ortho through and we take samples to confirm that we are not getting any lead content on any of those as we manage our corrosion control. Because one of the things that happens is if you lose track of your ortho treatment and you're not dosing it correctly, the ortho, once the ortho treatment is not being put in, that layer goes away. And when that layer goes away, that's when any lead in the piping can make its way into the drinking water at your home. So we maintain a system to constantly check that, in case there's a hiccup in how we're doing our ortho treatment, we can catch it. So anyways, that might be more than you're asking for, but hopefully that got you what you're asking. You spoke mostly to lead. Is the same basically true about copper? Yes. Right now there's no real concerns about copper, but just the whole concept is what can we do, what kind of treatment can we put in there that creates a barrier for any of the typical service lines. So that's just a forward-thinking thought for us. All right, good. Thank you. That's it for me. Any other questions? No. Thank you again for you and Liz for being here and giving us your report. And thanks again. Thank you for having us. Appreciate it that you do this every year. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Thanks, everybody. So we'll move on then to the personal policy amendments, the pay bans that we talked about at our last meeting and Eric. Yep. This follows up on the discussion from Pickock and Borman last meeting. As a follow-up, I include in the packet our current pay grades for an illustration for the board for what Pickock and Borman would... It's proposing to have a revision with this grading system. You'll see it broadens it a bit and it gets removed some down the four grades as opposed to the number of grades that we had before. Certainly staff can answer any questions, reach out to the consultant more if there's questions from the board or if the board has a motion to consider if this is something you want to look at, Stephen. So we have the proposed the schedule and the existing pay schedule that for the town employees. The only difference and we can add about this, Asher, we talk about the... For the non-representative employees, the only two that are not on the pay grades, the new pay grades are the town manager and the town clerk. Can we want to put them unto a band and that we can talk about later on? Are the questions regarding the proposed pay grades? No. And we could use a motion. Move to adopt the amended pay bands for non-represented staff as an appendix to the town's personnel policy as presented. Mr. Rossega. Second. As your discussion of the motion. Hearing no discussion, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Any opposed? So any feeling about the pay grades or pay bands for town manager and town clerk? Let me ask kind of the obvious question, why? What? Didn't hear it. So those two positions, the town manager is the only position that's appointed by the select board. The town clerk is... Elected. Elected. Elected. I wasn't sure if that was one of the positions that moved from being elected to appointed. So the town clerk's elected. So my question becomes, why would we want to put them into this pay grade where these are folks that are hired into the town through our hiring process? We may not want to, but we might want to establish a paid band for themselves. For them as well outside of the ones that were recommended. Because that way it, what that would do, I'm sorry, this is kind of new to me, so I wasn't really prepared for this discussion. What that would do is it would take some of the every year with the town manager, which is the one person, well, both positions, I guess, in terms of their salary, we evaluate what that salary should be. This would set limits as long as we stayed within those limits. So it would take some of the effort we do when we do that off of us, in a sense. I don't know. You know, when we hire a town manager, we were sort of looking at the minimum and the maximums that we had established, and we came up with a negotiated agreement with the town manager at that time. And I believe the town manager and the town clerk get the step each year and cost of living, is that correct? Yep. The cost of living is included in the budget. Yeah, I'm just trying to see, you know, the pros and cons of doing this. Then we can think about it and there's no big hurry to implement it or not. Let me ask, now hopefully this is an appropriate question to ask. Is there frustration that the town manager and the town clerk are not subject to a pay grade? I don't know who to ask that though. I can just share, you know, in the current system, the former system, both of those had a great assigned to it. The consultants recommend suggestion for the board was because these two positions, one is sort of the pleasure, the manager serves the pleasure to select board to negotiate a contract and the clerk as elected can discuss that as part of the budget process. That was the consultants take similar structures they've seen in other organizations, but certainly at the board's purview, we could assign similar to what we had before a grade and then whoever's in the serving as manager as part of that process to be negotiating a contract and looking to what's established for the board, want to look at the market at that point with the manager. I'm just moving myself and just speaking out the position in general for the government structure here. Do we know what specific criteria the consultants use in determining the minimum, the maximum for the pay bans like and then, you know, which I mean, obviously, you know, the positions within certain of the old grades went into certain new grades, but could we potentially apply that same criteria that we're used to develop those bans to the two positions? That's something we want to do. I think that would be most likely what the consultant would do. They looked at comparable positions and data in the county and came up with a range, so that could be information that the board is provided to look at those positions. And it could be included in this pay grade schedule or could have a separate schedule or it could be an exercise when it needs to occur if the board is interested in that information. I'm not sure if ELCT still doesn't. They used to put out a yearly summary document with all the pay grades or pay that the town managers were paid in the state. Not sure if they did that with town clerks or not, but they did for the managers. And it's something we could take a look at if we wish to do that. You can get the latest information from them on towns that are comparable to us. Charlie, do you recall the, I know you've seen that. We did not participate in this year because a couple of years that I've looked at it, there are so few comparable entities to much that are participating, the data was very small. Okay. Kind of argues against doing it in my opinion. Yeah. So let's put that on pause and see if we have any thoughts in the next few meetings or whatever and then come back to that at some point. So let's go on to the energy and community development planner position. We have some new information from Eric on this. Not a whole lot from last meeting, but this was taking the board's feedback. I did a final pass at the draft job description. We really added much of anything here from the last version that you've seen. So this is a staff feels kind of a final draft for the board to consider. The board can consider kind of a formality of creating the position, accepting the job description. And I was discussed previously should the community support this position in the budget coming up in a couple of weeks of town meeting. This action then creates it and then we could fill it. This doesn't commit us to filling the position until it's budgeted, but this is a mechanical step for the board to consider at this point. Any questions for Eric on the new position description? I don't have the description. I'm good with this. Should the description or will the description? Include what pay grade it would fall into? Yep. I waited until knowing this was on the agenda. But it would be a planner level position. Okay. That would be a great seven. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Good. It would be classified now. Any other questions? There is a motion suggested. I'll move to create the position of energy and community development planner and approve the job description of the benefits. This is your second. I'll second. This is our discussion of the motion. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Any opposed? All right. Then we move into the appointment of the person for the recreation and parks committee. Yeah. That's a tough one. So what's your thoughts? I think they're both really great candidates and I think that they would both bring a lot of commitment and passion to this and unique perspectives. So I want to applaud them both for applying and for interviewing. It's exciting to see so many people interested in town committees and all of that lately. Yeah. I would say that I'm leaning towards, I feel like it's that from the old Olympics, Dan and Dave. You remember the Catalan? I can't remember. Keep them straight. Mr. Kanamella. Okay. He was on the street. Zoom. Yes. The gentleman on Zoom. Dan was in person. Okay. I agree. It's really hard decision because Dan's passion is great and much needed. It's just that David's experience is a little bit more in-depth and on point. But that, it's an extremely hard decision. I went back and forth on it because I was listening to both of them and as I've been sitting here. I share the same puzzlement. I do appreciate both if you spoke well of that, Greta. I do see David's experience but I also hear and applaud Dan's passion for kind of living and breathing the system as a willystonian that's the label it. I think either one would be a really good candidate. I honestly could flip a coin right now but I'm thinking. I don't know. I guess I would lean towards just maybe some use in this case over experience. I don't know if that's really the right way to put that. I don't know. Something's resonating there with me a little bit about that. If it was based on how they talked about how they would participate, why they want to be on this committee and how they would participate in the committee and that type of thing. To be honest with you, I think we should flip a coin. The only difference I saw between the two is how they answered the conflict of interest question. I don't know how much that should weigh on our decision but I did observe that they answered it quite differently. Very difficult decision because they're both very good candidates but I think I would go with the experience about it and not. Dan, I think it's got a good future looking at something to serve the town and maybe this committee if there's another vacancy on it. He'd be an excellent candidate. I think the acting health officer would like to give up that position. I'll second that actually. Looking for a motion. I'll move to appoint David Kanamella to the Recreation and Parks Committee for an unexpired term through June 30th, 2024. Sir, a second. Good second. One minute a second. We're discussing it on the motion. Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Any opposed? Better moving on to the manager's report. Thanks, Terry. And I'm going to circulate before I forget. There was a when the board accepted that tenth of a mile of new highway last meeting there was a forum that goes with it and Jeff caught it on the mailbox. I thought about forging all your names. I mean, actually I'll turn it to Shirley if she went mind just walking through the December financials. I've been prepared to give you half a year's look at the budget and then we actually received our local option tax report for quarter two this morning. All good news and provided the board with a copy of that. And surely that as well. Okay. Do you want me to review the couple of things in the folder for them to sign as well? Yes, please. Okay. So in the folder that Eric will send around for you to sign, there are two documents. One is audit engagement and letter for the year that we just heard the audit report, which is kind of funny, but it's because at the time they originally did the engagement letter. We didn't know we were going to have a single audit. So most of it's the same, except for they now included the single audit requirement in them. So on the last page, there is room for you to sign. The other document is for our Vermont municipal bond bank, the fire trucks. Since the fire trucks have been purchased and they are in service, there is a certificate of incompletion that needs to be uploaded to the bond bank. And that is going around to the documents for you to sign as well. So, as Eric just told me, the really good news is I have the, and you have it to the local options tax receipts. So for the first two quarters, we are $266,000 over our budget. And when we did the FY22 projection of where we thought our unassigned fund balance would be, we had $400,000. We had $442,000 as our projection. So we are probably on the road to meet that projection for the year. That's $442,000, I'm sorry, above the current FY22 budget. So some good news there. And if I could just add, Shirley, for our sales tax last quarter that the receipts of the town realized was our second highest quarter in the history of the sales tax. So we're doing some numbers today. Wow. Yeah. Quarter preceding it was the third highest quarter. So we're bringing some revenue there. Yeah. So the next one will be interesting because it's usually our lowest quarter of receipts. So the interesting to see what it is compared to the last two quarters. So the December financial statements were 50% of the way through the year. And again, on your reports, you'll have highlighted sections for the things that changed. Public safety revenue, not a big number in terms of our total revenue. But they are at 65% of the budget, mostly because they have been doing a volume of fingerprinting surfaces over at the police department because there haven't been very many entities open. So they have been very busy there. Highway revenue at 67% of their budget because they have received their first two class two in three road payments, as well as 9,500 in supplemental payments from the state, which we're receiving again this year, but is not customary. Miscellaneous income at 106% of budget. And the two things that that primarily represents, so there's three things, but one is minor, is the PORI fees that we get from Ms. Diaryland from their pit. And, you know, I lost my thought. The plowing contract revenue. So as you know, the town contracts with Isham to plow HOA's roads, so that revenue all goes into miscellaneous income next year in the FY23 budget that is gone because we won't be missed the pass-through for us. It's worked for the town, but they aren't town roads. So in the FY23 budget, that will be gone. And the last really small piece of what's in the highway of miscellaneous revenue is the fee that vendors pay to travel through the town of Williston roads. Host town fees is only at 40% of budget, but that's just a timing issue because they're a month or a quarter in arrears. Casella, we get monthly, but we get it monthly in arrears. And from the solid waste district, we have the MRF and the compost fees, but those are almost a quarter in arrears. They're paid quarterly in almost a quarter in arrears. Police expenditures at 43% of budget. That's primarily because they've been under budget and salaries and then the related benefits because of their positions that they fill and then open. And right now they have a few open. Another part of it is the way the pay periods fall. We have 26 pay periods in the year, but only 12 have been in this report. So there will be one additional pay period in the second half of the year. Let's see. Water and sewer, I just wanted to comment that it looks low because it's only at 40% of the year and we're halfway, I should say revenue, and we're halfway through the year. But the reason that is is because that very first billing, which is May 15th through August 15th, half of that goes back to the prior fiscal year. So you're only looking at one and a half billings, if you will, in this cycle, even though there have been two full billings in part of this back in last year. Stormwater interest earned is 4%. But the reason for that is that most of that interest is coming from the Stormwater HOA loan payments. And most of the payments, even though due January 1st, didn't come in until early January. So that is just reclassing their payment between principal and interest. So you'll see that in January catch back up again. They'll be back at 50% of budget. Stormwater project labor has a $45,000 budget and $13,000 in actuals. And the reason for that is we only have one quarter. So that is the highway department that performs stormwater work and that gets charged the stormwater. So we credit highway wages and charge the stormwater. They've been a little bit behind with Bruce's short staffing. So the report that I need to post that quarterly just isn't in these reports yet. So hopefully in February, it's in process. Water purchases at 44% of budget, again, it's just a timing issue. There's only five months and the five months paid because that is paid a month in arrears just because of the timing of the billing. And then the funding for the capital expenditures for water and sewer, those will be at actual come February. For water and sewer, we have different capital funds. So physically, I move the money over to those capital funds. And then these expenses get charged. So I just had Mary make those transfers in February. So those will be on budgets when you get everywhere reports. That is all I have unless you have questions. Questions for Daly? Thank you. You are welcome. I said a couple of quick items for this evening. A reminder of the public information hearing. It's coming up less than two weeks now or two weeks of the day at a town meeting. So on the 28th, we'll have a zoom public information hearing at 7pm. Don't need to answer tonight, but just logistically thinking through this, the board typically attends that night at the school. The board could join this zoom meeting all from home. We could have the or we can all gather in the room like we are right now with town meeting TV. Just the difference would be public participation would all be over zoom. So if the board wants to discuss this evening or to let me know, just need to let Scott know related to come here or not. So even if a couple of board members want to come here, we can make that happen. I can follow up with the board too. Last year we did it all from home. Seems like it would be nicer to have the board here, but it's up to each individual. I'm good with coming here. Yeah, I think. Yeah, it's my first one, but I mean, first one in this capacity, so. February 28th. It'd be a Monday. Monday. And then the question voting is the next day. Yeah, but my my thought would be similar to last year and other years I'll prepare a PowerPoint to go through. I'll probably ask the fire chief to join as well with any if there's any questions on on that part of the budget, budget especially. We've done a similar presentation is a couple of times the town meeting TV and the rotary club last week. So similar to those. And on this same note, the the black bit of words, the ad and the it's not an ad, but the information in the observer was was very good. And well, we well received. Good team working on that. Appreciate that. Yeah, that info graphic that you posted cannot be shared in other formats too. I think you emailed it to us as well at one point. But on the website, I'll also get we've got our social media working again for a couple challenges. So I was thinking of getting that on Facebook and Twitter and some other places this week have tried to make some front porch for post once a week to remind folks how to go to the town website to look at a number of resources as well. That's certainly any any ideas the board has for outreach. Just let me know and just try to get good information out to everybody. Then on fire department staffing, 47 applications were received and departments interviewing 24 candidates this week. Should the budget be supported town meeting we would then look to make additional offers shortly after. So I know it's good news to get that level of applicants done out of the chief as pleased with level of candidates they're considered. So kind of a good good process and a good pathway there to potentially go down the next month or so. And then I just want to publicly recognize our public work staff for that latest snow event, a more most significant one we've had this winter. But I also wanted to recognize Andrew Lubey on our buildings and ground staff. He gets the duties of our sidewalk plow operator. He spent most of his week in that sidewalk plow coming in at 5 a.m. some day of 12 hours. He did a lot of work and he's a we have a great staff but I see Andrew a lot coming in the morning and he is a great attitude day in and day out. So I just publicly thank him for his dedication. It's a lot of work and a lot of time in that sidewalk plow. Tough job. That's all I have to say. Thank you. So the other business that we need to take up tonight will be our last meeting as the official select board until we have a new election on March 1st and March 15th will be our next official meeting of the select board. We'll do the usual stuff and other stuff as well. I hope we're all back. Yes, I think unless there's a one heck of a write-in campaign. Hope we're all back. We have a budget intact. Yes, right. So if there's no other business then we are adjourned.