 So I was just leading off by saying that we're here today to listen, to write down questions or thoughts, concerns, do some research, and get back to everybody please. And Bill would like to go first, or you certainly can. I've seen that goings on in front porch form, you talk to some of the guys. You mean talk to some of the guys? You mean the crew? Yes, I've had a lender work for us. Since 2011, ten people have left the Grittown Garage. Seven, three free it for retirement and one came back, that's Eddie. But you know, seven in ten years, that's a lot of people. I'm not sure of the reasons, but I matched some of its money. And what these guys go through with working on our roads, being on call in the winter, it's plowing at two o'clock in the morning. And just the skills that they have, the excavator, the grater, and they've got to drive trucks all day now because we have to go all the way out of the way to get dirt or gravel or whatever you want to call it. And I understand the argument about benefits, but when it comes down to money in their pocket and they see that not going up or going down, that's what they need to do. I can't talk about that, I can't talk about that for them, but for me, that would bother me as well. The union negotiation thing, I don't know much about it, it's just that it's a shame that it had to come that far because we couldn't figure it out without it. I finally say that I respect these guys greatly and what they do. Okay, thank you Bill. Who wants to go next? Hi, my name is Don Singleton. I used to be a road foreman here a good many years ago. I remember that. And I don't think you'd idea what's going on now. You guys, they've got about six months that is really rough on them. They're starting November right here, the first of May. It's not a picnic. It's not an ideal, it's a sacrifice a lot. You give up birthday parties, you give up a lot of things. Thanksgiving, possibly Christmas, New Year's, Easter, the list goes on. You've got kids, you've missed out on a lot of school functions. And they think they give away, they give away a lot. It's not like the best job in the world and I think they should be rewarded for what they're doing. And I don't think they've been rewarded financially. I think they've got some benefits here, but you can't eat the benefits. It's pretty hard to live on benefits. But I'd like to see a select board so that I can really lift things over to five people on the select board. And that's pretty much what a select board should be. And I think it can be worked out in my deal with these people here instead of having them leave and going to Barrie Town or City of Barrie or City of Montpellier with benefits. I'd like to see them stay here. I think it'd be really important to keep everyone here just as long as we can. I was lucky when I was here, probably seven years after I lost one guy and I would do the retirement. And that was a big deal. I didn't have to train anybody. I think we'd make things better if we wanted to do it just a little bit more money. And I don't think money is a big deal. I think they will have worked keeping these guys alive for as long as we could possibly keep them. They wouldn't have been out looking for a union if everything was all rosy and hunky-dory and it weren't. So they went for a union, which I don't blame them a bit for doing this. I'm glad they did it. I don't have much else to say. I don't bring anybody any questions. They're welcome to ask me. Okay. Thank you, Don. Richard, do you want to go next? I'm here to support the life of that individual. Okay. Okay. Let's start with Jacob. So I did my two weeks notice last Thursday. I was offered another position somewhere else, not for the group. And it's more like a housing opportunity for me, too. So it's not, you know, I'd love to stay here, but it's not with family stuff and kids. It's just not working out. Did you say housing, like you're going to build a house or housing for you? I'm not really sure yet. Oh, okay. Because I did see a post on the front porch forum from, is it Ashley? Yeah. It said you were looking for housing. Yeah. Okay. Is that it? Well, yeah, I actually, I hope that's not it. Jacob, is there, so just the reason we're here is to hear from the crew. I know that you're leaving, but if you could maybe just put yourself back in the shoes, you're still in the shoes of being a callous road crew and speak to us from that perspective. That would be great. Yep. So when I started here, I had no experience doing anything. Bruce, Alvi, Ed, they all trained me on everything. I mean, that's where I got all of myself from. And for them to be at the low wages they are, it's kind of not fair to them. Bruce has been doing it his whole life pretty much. Alvi has, too. I know you're pretty good on machines. I hope to see how it works where I'm getting right now. I really don't know what to say about it. Okay. Bruce? Yeah. I've done this type of work all my life, 40 something years of it. I should be judged on quality work I do, my work ethics. I mean, go out and look at roads and roads that I've created. Since frost went out, it hasn't been needed to be retouched. Open Marshall road, look at the ditching. And I like even the job looking good. And I do it efficiently. And I cannot stand to leave it looking ratty. I do a good job, I think. These surrounding towns are paying much better. And I asked you to see what the difference was between our health insurance and the next one down, which other towns are providing. You mean when you say health insurance and the next one down, you mean the... Our health insurance plan. And the goal compared to platinum, the difference annually per person is very minimal compared to the wage difference is great. And most of the other insurances that the towns are providing elsewhere are comparable to ours. It's the health insurance that we keep riding about and what is it, $1,500 difference? I don't know. But anyway, per person. So that's not enough to support us. And you know that the town has an HSA so that there's no out of pocket expense to an employee for medications, hospital visits, any of that. So regardless of what plan you have, the HSA covers anything out of pocket. So you never have to have anything out of pocket. Did you know that? Yes, I did. Okay. Just wanted to be sure. As for these other numbers, I made $23,000 last year. The lowest paid regular worker in Eastmont Player made $48,600. Sid, who was the place I took, I came and he went to have it. He made $57,300. Okay, so the lowest paid in Eastmont Player is how much did you say, $48,000? $48,600. But it says in the county report. Okay. And what was the other one? Sid. Oh, Sid. Yeah, I remember Sid. Yeah, he made $57,300. Okay. And he, you know, made $14,000 under that. And he's where? Cabot. Cabot? Yeah. Canister would be higher anyway because of the creamery, but still. Yeah. It's a big, big... And they're much larger... And they're much larger sized towns than Calais. Well, we have tougher roads up too. I'm talking about people. The number of people. That's a set up, but the miles of roads, we don't know where it's going to go far. There's not many Calais stuff. Right. No, I know that. Yeah. So you said the roads were really bad. So any more tougher roads to do? Mostly, I think you should be looking at my skills. But I do think this town is above average. This guy in the small car that I was talking about, 848-6, he doesn't have a run greater. He doesn't have a run greater. Okay. It's a huge difference. So he has no, no greater? I think that's right. Yeah, welcome. Welcome to be a bunch of guys. The experience level is... Did you do this type of work before you came here? Wait, yes or no? I missed it. That was a no. No. Okay. No, he grew up on a farmer, and I always said that farmers should be, once the higher they do this kind of work, because they run equipment, they run mechanics. Yeah, it's a great experience. They fit right in easy. Yeah, yeah, because your dad did. Well, this is to address the concerns of the crew, basically. Yeah. Well, I haven't been a crew here, and I've brought many good crews together here. You can ask any one person that's left in this building why they left. It's not because Alfie is a bad manager, because Alfie is a bad person, because Alfie, they're not leaving because of Alfie. They're leaving most of them because of money. Okay. A couple, yes, have left because of, because of retirement, and just moving on into future things in their life. But the majority of the people that have left here is because of money. Jim, which was a very close friend of mine, worked for me both in my private world and in here. He left for very town, and he was getting two or three dollars more an hour when he left. Very similar benefit package. He just couldn't stand to stay here anymore. He was driving. He had a three-minute drive to get to here. He chose to go 15 minutes to get to very town. So it's just, it's always comes back to money. And I have to say, I've been asking the select board to give some more money to these guys. So they can keep up. I'll go back to what Junior said. It's a lot of work to train people. It's not just, okay, let's start, and let's, you know, put your boots on, let's go. You've got to teach them how to do the machines, how to work on the machines, how to go up a hill when it's slippery, icy, stormy, how to take care of your chains. There's a lot going on here for somebody that hasn't done it. And it always comes back to Elsie, because I'm the one that's been in charge here. So I'm just going to say that it's a lot of work to train people, and I'm getting tired of it. I'm just getting tired of it. It's just you guys don't see it because you don't do it. You don't see what it takes to train these young guys, these young people, these not even necessarily young guys, people that just haven't done this line of work. And I need you guys to know how difficult that is. It's not easy. So if it's money, if it's newer equipment, whatever it is, we've got to do something to keep more help here. We're down one right now. You guys keep talking about a fifth guy. That makes us down two guys. Well, we did the fifth person based on hearing the need for more help. Absolutely. And that, well, actually it takes in tomorrow. Tomorrow's July 1st. Right. But there's another problem I have. I get no communication with the select board. Zero. You're asking me to manage this place and you don't talk to me. You guys said that you put money into the budget. Shouldn't we be advertising for that fifth person before now? Well, that's your role. You have to tell me that that's going to happen. All you've said to me is, yep, we put money in the budget for the fifth person. Yeah, and it does. Let's not... My recollection is we did have a conversation about this at a select board meeting and that we did authorize you and tell you that it was coming and authorize you to post the position. I'll go back and find the minutes. I would love to see those minutes because it was either it was a Zoom meeting which is then very difficult for not only me, but somehow I missed that. Okay. Well, we can go back and find it in the minutes. I mean, if it's posted, that fifth person is supposed to start tomorrow, we should have been advertising a month ago or more. Well, I mean, you knew that the fifth person was authorized by the board, by the budget and the budget passed and I will go back and find the minutes where we talked about the fifth person. I don't think this meeting is about it's not giving me the opportunity to vent on everything because I have a lot and I don't want to waste everybody's time. Well, maybe there's a meeting that you should have with the select board. Yeah. And Denise, I tried setting that up. You and Cliff came here a couple of times, a couple of meetings, and I just felt a little waste of it. Well, we try and my recollection from my side of things is we tried to schedule some additional meetings and people weren't available. I walk in this building every day. I'm available. If the weather, if the roads are need of help, Elfie's here. So it's not that Elfie was available. So don't begin to say that. I make myself available. Alfred, I'm going to stop you. A, we're a volunteer board. B, Denise and Cliff are just two people. We're not the whole board. Over and over and over. We have asked you to come to select board regularly. We've asked you to let us know when you have items that you want to bring before the board. I'm just going to come right back at you. There are times when you don't show up. There are times you come up with things that you haven't briefed us on ahead of time. We have no material. There's a lot that is broken and it is not just on the select board side. It is something we need to work on together. But I don't want to just let the record sit that there's only one side of the sun. That is absolutely not the case. I'm not saying that it is. I'm just saying that there is a problem with communication. With your tone. I'm sorry. I get worked up. But just remember. So you need to work on that. And I've always said if you have something for the agenda, let me know by Thursday. I rarely hear anything that you have. Sometimes I ask, should this be on the agenda? Should this curb cut, have you looked at this curb cut? I mean whatever it is, communication works both ways and I will try to do better from me on communication. But as I said, it works both ways. And a respectful conversation, a respectful tone of voice is really helpful. Yep. I am working hard on that. Okay. Good. Thank you. So one more thing that I want to get off of my chest is this whole union thing. I had absolutely nothing to do with it. Start to finish. And for a year and a half, I was in the office in the dark. Couldn't talk to my guys because the select board told me not to talk to my guys about benefits, about wages, about any of that stuff. I honored that. I couldn't talk. But how can I operate this place? Not knowing what side I'm on. I can't be on my guy's side. The select board kept me in the dark. Never once invited me to a meeting to talk about union. What's going on with the union, where we are. These guys were trying to decide on different things that's going to affect this building and what goes on in this building. But I was never invited once. Never once invited to any of those union meetings. Now I get there's laws about that. I understand that. But me as a manager, I need to be on one side or the other. That's not the whole story. That's not the whole story. You were involved in the beginning. You then took a three or four month leave which the board approved. And then you came back and a lot of things had happened with the union to that point. I still carried my position. I still should have been into the conversation. You could have three pages. You could have caught me right up on what happened while I was gone. But I was in the dark. And I'm still in the dark. So if you wanted to manage this, you better let me on one side or the other. You're in the dark any more than we are. We were surprised when we found out the union chose to decertify. We didn't know. We didn't see it coming. We were ready to sign the contract. Well, yeah, again, that's that. I wasn't involved in that. But I'm talking about the whole time, the year and a half that meetings were taking place. Alfie was not involved in it. Alfie was told that he couldn't talk to those guys. Sorry, that puts me in a difficult situation. That's not true. Let's stop this right now. It is true. You guys told me at several meetings that I couldn't talk to my guys about this stuff. So I don't think today we want to get into our argument and back and forth. But there's another whole side to the story, which unfortunately people don't hear. Because we as a board are not able to post things and respond to criticisms and things like that that anybody else can really do on front porch forum. We operate as a board. We have to make decisions as a board. Not just make decisions. We don't just make decisions as a board. We communicate as a board. The select board is elected five of us individually to work together. The only authority we have is together. One of us as a voice has no authority unless the board has specifically authorized that communication. So even that I think is not very well understood. If somebody sends an email to one of us and you get a response that feels weak, it's because one of us is not authorized to say anything on behalf of the board. It is a board issue. The other thing is, I think Denise just said that, there's other sides to the story and there are also other points of view in town. We are here to hear you guys and one of the things I want to urge us to do is I think it is important for people to air what's on their minds. But it's more important that we consider how to move forward productively. And that's some of the going back and trying to exchange what happened when and who said what, really not productive. And another thing too is the volunteer board meets twice a month normally unless there's some issue like today where we do a special meeting and we have a very full agenda every single time we meet. And I've always given operations manager and the road crew and the road commissioner time at the beginning of the agenda so that you don't have to stay late. Sometimes you choose to stay on your own time. And that's fine. It's a public meeting. If there's an issue, you have to bring it to the attention of the board so we can put it on the agenda. We cannot have a communication on email and make decisions. We can't do that. That's illegal. That violates the open meeting law. Yeah, I'm not asking you to do that. Okay. Prussia, that's something else? As long as I have been here, the select board has never asked us how we think about any issue at all. You have always imposed this I mean, the rate of we pay for health insurance, the wages, anything that the select board has always imposed them on us without asking us. We have no communication with the select board at all. It's never happened. As long as I've been here, except for your meeting to tell us how good we've got it, obviously, we didn't need the meeting to tell us if we had it bad. We tried to tell us if we had it good and obviously, we don't need it at the meeting. But if we had it good, we'd know it already. All these things just throw it at us without talking. Okay, that's fair. We can do a better job. Of having regular meetings with you. That's fair. Anything else? Anybody wants to comment on it? So when you say... I think at much of the time, you ought to get these guys together with the select board and kind of have a nice talk with each other. Keep it civil and see what they need and get some communication going back and forth. I think that would help a lot. You guys have been getting any good feedback from the select board. Good or not good? It's not going to hurt anything. That's for sure. You can get a budget every year. You can come up with a budget. Well, and to be clear, we always ask Toby and Alfred about budget every year. And I figure, and I think Alfred is the manager. Yeah, I suppose you could work that way, but I think it would work better if we got everybody involved with it. I'm not pointing finger at Alfred for not communicating with him. I think he's been trying, but I'm not sure how much he's been communicating with Alfred. I think it would be good to get them all together. No, I said that's fair. Yeah, that's fair. I think that's fair. But to, you know, just to be clear, the select board doesn't, on its own, develop the highway budget. It comes from Alfred and Toby. Right. And then, you know... There's probably like a figure of seven people running tonight. So, is that correct? Seven? Seven. Alfred and Toby. Five people on the select board. That would be three. Because the board does a budget together and agrees and votes on a budget. So that's one. It's five persons, but one voice. One decision, one voice. Yeah. I'm told not to put anything in the salary line by the select board. So essentially, any recommendations I might have had for the budget and for salary for the road crew is not coming from me or Alfred. Okay. We were told not to put a number in the budget that we submitted to the select board. That is correct. And when we were developing the budget, we were still in union negotiations. Right. So we didn't know. Yep, so Toby is right. It didn't come from Toby and Alfred because we were negotiating with the union. Yep. That's true. We were negotiating and we didn't know at the time. Okay. All right. Apparently there's a problem here, right? I mean, did we all think that? I think that... I did put this petition out. I did nothing to do with that. That's the reason why we're sitting in this room right now is the petition. No, it's not. And the reason that that was brought up is concerns. The reason we're sitting in this room right now is because we sent a memo to the road crew. And to the road crew about their retroactive pay that we gave them. And we said in that memo that we wanted to come up with a time to meet with the crew. And I don't know if they passed in the night or what, but we had already put out the memo saying we wanted to meet with the crew before the petition went out. Right. So about that memo, this is another thing that bugs me. I didn't get that memo. I never got that memo until one of the guys showed me bears. That's fair. That was two or three weeks away later. Now, why can't I get that any sort of document like that the day after the meeting or the day at least the same day that my guys get it? That's fair. That is absolutely fair. That is fair. And if you didn't get it, I apologize. Well, I didn't get it. You could have sent me a very nice email. I said, hey, Denise, did you send me the memo? That was the only thing. That would have been fine, but it's not. It's been two years going on. I am talking about this one specific issue where you said you didn't get the memo. You could have very nicely called me, sent me an email and said, hey, did I get a copy of the memo? And I would have said, jeez, sure. I'm sorry. I forgot to send it to you. The other thing that I think is brought up. So I'm saying I just didn't get it for like three weeks and I said I apologize. And then she put an email on me. And I would have said, jeez, I'm sorry. You're not hearing me. So the memo that we're talking about, and I think this is a good thing to illuminate, it's in recent select board minutes. But during the union negotiation, and a lot of you have, if you've ever been in any negotiation, you know that there is kind of constantly the sense that you're almost done. You're almost done. And there's a lot of rules that we learned, but we didn't understand walking in. One of which is, and I'm not even going to try to recite why, but it is true that we did not, last year, award. On July 1st. On July 1, at the beginning of the fiscal year, we did not give a salary increase to the road crew because we were in negotiations about what the 2020-2021 fiscal year rate would be. So, and because the negotiations kept going and going and going, they didn't get an increase that otherwise, without those negotiations, they would have had beginning July 1 a year ago. So as soon as we learned that the union was decertified, which is another way of saying they withdrew from representing in Calis, we, the select board, met and awarded retroactively an increase effective July 1, that is the same as everybody else got, everybody else being a very small group of people, but still. The road commissioner and the office staff. Yeah. So, when Bruce says he hadn't had an increase, that is true and that is why. And now it has been made retroactively and we're heading into July 1 of a new fiscal year and so we met recently again to talk about what is the increase that we are offering to staff effective July 1 of this year. And just to be clear, we were advised by our consultant to withhold the increase to increase last July 1 as part of the negotiations because we had no, I've never done negotiations before ever. So I think it was new to almost everybody on the board how negotiations worked. So we're talking three years, I can show you a paycheck from three years ago that's higher than my paycheck before he made it to 46 cents which was just a slap in the face because 46 cents is to make up for three years. It's nothing, it doesn't even, the higher than I was, that's what I thought was three years. I'd be curious to see why that is. And you brought me up to 2020, that's nothing compared to what I should be making. What do you think you should be making? Well, the union told you initially that I should be making 24, 95 an hour with my 40 hours of experience. And like I said again, go look at the work that I do, look, it's high quality work. And immediately, the first meeting, you bumped it down at 23 and I didn't argue. But that never changed. All civilian union negotiations, it never changed. It was always at 23 that you kept adding on your little fall season and proposed increasing the open shirts, employee pay and all these things that kept adding on to your end and there was no compromise. It was always you were adding your things on and there's no difference in your meeting. But that 46 cents was another slap in the face and now on your last meeting, you're talking about consumer price index and that's 2.1% and 2.1% of a low wage is always going to be a low wage. You need a base figure that's comparable and then annually it's 2.1%. That's how that works. If you go 2.1% off a low wage, always a low wage. It'll never work. So you're talking about now. It's just nowhere near what we should be doing. Well, you know, negotiations from what I learned is nobody ever gets anything, everything that they want. We compromised as well. You can go back and look at all the various phases of that document to see where we compromised, where the union compromised, to try to come to an agreement that was workable for both parties. But there was no compromise. The worker who never got any more benefits than the price that you had cut down on the first meeting, that stayed the same and then every time you kept adding a little more. That is just not true Bruce. That is just not true. Well, I've got one of the contracts at home that say it remains at 10% the employee pay. Next time it was said 15%. And the union agreed to that. But Bruce, let me... Tim was not, we get great trust. I know that, I'll admit that. But let me say, so on behalf of the town, what we were looking at, sometimes you're looking at each person or the salary weight line or the healthcare line, so we were looking at the global budget. Like add it all into the pot, all the money, the healthcare money, the retirement money, the dental, the salary, put all the money in the pot. Retirement. Right, this is what it costs the town now. And there was absolutely a significant increase on that total pot in play. It is simply not true that the town was just moving things around and not putting more in the pot. That is absolutely just not true. It is not true. And as Sharon said, we looked at the whole pot of money and what that meant to the town, to the taxpayers. Right. Because we also hear from the taxpayers about they can't afford their property taxes. I can't tell you how many people say they can't afford their property taxes and they probably do have a really hard time. The raises from this crew would be pennies on the thousands of dollars compared to what you're spending. You get $50,000 from number 10 and you get all this money. Wait a minute. No, no, no. All right. I want to be clear. No town money has gone to whatever you're talking about with number 10. There was money that was put aside in a fund called the Conservation Commission Fund. That was money that was set aside for those types of projects. There is not any. Okay. Okay. So I want to make, when you're making misstatements and misrepresentations, that does not help our communication. Okay. Okay. To be clear. But my point is, to pay this go-to additional money is very small change to the whole budget. I mean, we're talking, okay, let's not buy 10 loads of brows this year and give that money to a room crew. And how would that work out? We're talking a very small part of the budget to get this room crew. I think the town tries. It's a dollar an hour per man and $2,000 per man. Great. Yeah. Bill has had his hand up for a while. Honestly, if you guys go back and forth and there definitely is a communication problem, I can see it, I can hear it. And what these guys are talking about, what I hear is they want parity with other towns. They're asking for their 2.1% increase. They're asking to be bumped up so there's parity so they don't have to go somewhere else to get another job. That's what I think. We have failed them for a number of years and now we need to get, we need to bring it up so that we're level with other towns or a little bit above me so we don't lose anybody. And then we can have the annual men increase whatever the CPI is or whatever. But that's where I think we've fallen behind as a town. We've got to work on the communication because there's definitely a problem here. I've never seen it this bad. We've got to respond. I want to respond to you. In the longest roads, and the road crew isn't any bigger than other towns, but we've got the most roads. We should be paying more than other towns, right? I want to respond to Bill. We have done some research, Bill, and put together and looked at different towns. It's not always apples to apples. Sometimes it's hard to come up with a comparison that's something that makes sense. So we, just so you know, we have done that research. I understand. What about juniors? They can't eat that. They can't eat that. But would you rather not have benefits? Well, then that's a conversation. If you want to honor that petition, I will step down on my health to compare with that. Well, I think we have to. The town, I believe, has to offer some type of coverage. If somebody, I'm just remembering my days in the state government, if somebody didn't take the state's insurance plan, there was a form you have to sign to prove that you have insurance through another. I don't want to lose insurance. I'm just saying, step it down to the next plan. Instead of go to butt. That's a conversation, though. I'm going to just say I'm not really comfortable having that conversation here. We are right in the weeds on, you know, a personnel issue. And we came to have this conversation, but not to negotiate to a conclusion because it really does involve really clear benchmarking of what are the other towns? What does it look like to add a fifth person to the crew? And what's, I personally, I'm not a knee jerk person. I'm a what's the big picture person? What path are we on? Where is this going to take us? And let's have a plan that's not just knee jerk, but is something that we can sustain over time and explain to the taxpayers and defend, you know, against the very clear facts and data that we have that is, you know, right there in front of us. And that's really important to me. Yeah, and I want to echo what Sharon just said. We can't just sit here today and come up with something. That's why I said today is really a listening, learning perspective on things. So we will go back to the full board and try to digest this, see what we can do to have a different comparison and have a plan. We can't just sit here today and say, we're going to give you this, and we're going to take off that. We can't do that. Well, I've got to say that above and beyond, I'm getting 90% of the people who go into that door to sign that petition. I've got overwhelming support, overwhelming support. You can't ignore that. Well, and I go back to, that's one side of the story. And so many of you say, if you've got a CDL and you get called out of 3AM, you should be starting at $25 an hour. And so many people say that. And I'm not asking that much, but I am asking for fair. We really should. We're way, way underpaid, way underpaid for what we do with our technical roles I think we hear you, but when you're going door to door, remember we can't go door to door and give the other side of the story. So you have an advantage. That's good politics, Bruce. It's excellent politics. Good for you. Richard, you wanted to say something? No. Okay, so I think we have enough information for right now. We had one other thing to do. Yeah, Denise, we are... Well, we're supposed to be able to approve and sign the NEMRIC. We can't do it. But we can't do it because we don't have a quorum. So we can't do that. So, all right, and... Can we, can we tentatively set another date for another meeting so that we can talk about... I'll have to check with the board. It's really, as other people have jobs and couldn't be here today, it's Monday, you know, any Monday evenings are generally what people have on their calendar, so I don't know how the crew feels about doing a meeting after four o'clock. Because it might have to, it might, that might be how we can get the full board. Yeah. Because like, for instance, today, Rick got found out yesterday, he had to be in Springfield to do a move for BGS. And he called me late last night to say that, I'm sorry, I can't be there. Because I have my job responsibilities as you can appreciate. Yeah, I'm just wondering if we can start that process of trying to create that would work. Yes, absolutely. Because obviously we need to get this... Yeah, but we can't do it without the... We can't set a date without the full... I understand, but we can start thinking about a date to get the whole board and all of us together. Absolutely. And start trying to iron this out. Yes, absolutely. And so I'm gonna, I'm going, and we, I'm gonna repeat something you guys have heard before, but maybe it's worth reminding you. Feel, be proactive with the board, right? I mean, you guys know that we meet Monday nights, we are working really hard to have concise meetings. But let us know. If you'd like half an hour with the select board on Monday night X, all of us can be there at 7 o'clock. And here's great. And here's a document to help, to help us all. This is what we know about what's comparable in other towns. Do some research as we will. I did. So put it on it, you know, put it... But the whole thing grows. Put it in writing so that we have it, select board can review it individually at home, prior to the meeting. And then we can have a good conversation if you're just throwing these numbers out at us and saying that this town gets this much and this town has that insurance. Show us. We're willing to work with you. And, and... Well, and I want to repeat Bruce. Bruce, the whole story is and what is the health benefit package? What is the HSA? You can even find out what the health benefit package is and not learn about the HSA. So you could have the exact same package. And what Denise mentioned, where Calis pays every out-of-pocket expense that you have on top of the... Yeah, that's 90-10 right now. The town pays 90, you pay 10. But then we pay the deductibles. We pay the, the co-insurance. We, you know, so, we pay the 10% but we pay everything else. That, you wouldn't even find out with another town without asking the questions. And there's a budget that goes with that. So that's what I'm talking about when I say the whole, the whole picture is, you know, the whole story, not just the salary number. Right. All right. So, Jacob mentioned to me in the day, if you were offering $20 an hour, you would have to pay a stay. But he's only got a week left. So you will have to act on that immediately if you want to keep it. Okay. But... Well, we're going to be having an exit interview with Jacob as soon as we're done with this. Yep. Richard? You said you wanted numbers. So does that mean a study that you, that you did already, that's a public document that... The one that we publicized? That, that's helpful, but that was... That's not valid? Is that Richard? No, no, no. That was part of the negotiations. It's... Well... It's part of the numbers valid. Yes. Are you accepting the numbers? Richard, let me, let me, let me say what I was trying to say about that. So in the context of negotiations, we gathered that information because it's other union towns. So, so we wanted to understand, even before we got numbers from the union, what does it look like to them? Kind of where are we headed? Which in my mind is honestly very... And it's just some numbers. It's just salary numbers. It's not even necessarily a whole picture. Let me finish, please. And then the other... So if we were gathering what I'll call benchmark data, it would be... You know, we're going to have to have that conversation. What is the right benchmark? And by that I mean which towns? Which towns are the right towns? What are the pieces of data we need? And the reason it's important to have that conversation, and I think that's a good one to have with the crew, because when somebody's unhappy, you can go shopping for the right numbers. So if we haven't agreed in advance, okay, here's the right towns to compare ourselves to, and here's the whole lineup of benefits, and we lock that in and say over time, this is who we check in to see what's going on. Otherwise, Bruce is going out shopping for numbers. I'm going out shopping for numbers. Everybody's got the story they like. So instead we have to start with what is the right benchmark? What are the right towns? What's the list of benefits? Lock that in, write it down, and keep that moving forward as kind of our, you know, line in the middle, if that makes any sense. Makes sense to me. Yeah. So those are union towns, and some of them are very far away. So I don't think of them as good benchmarking. Your document says some of them are not unionized. I'm having a hard time hearing it. Your document says some of the towns in the survey were not unionized. Right, some are not. Some are not. But that's a different question than whether we say, okay, is this it? Are these our benchmark numbers that we're going to keep and stay focused on moving forward? And at this point it doesn't matter if they're union or not. We should be looking at surrounding comparable towns. Right. But agree on what they are, because again, you can always go shopping for the numbers you want. So if we're looking at Cabot, Woodbury, Marshfield, Plainfield, then that's the same town we should all agree on to be looking at. Does that make sense? Right. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense to me. Makes sense to me too. There's many other factors. Right. They have shorter roads. Maybe a small group or larger group. There's many, many factors. Right. But we're also looking, as you heard earlier, for a fifth person to cut down on the, what do you guys call them, rodeos I learned? Yeah. Learned so many new terms. Right. Cut down on the rodeos. Is that right? Cut down on the time it takes to do a rodeo. Right. So that the time out on the road is not as long, because we have a policy where you're, you know, you need to get so much sleep. I'm glad you said rodeo. This is what Taken for the night won at the, 2019. 2019. A snowplow rodeo. Is that what's really called? Best in the state right here. Snowplow rodeo. Cool. Yeah. Congratulations. Yeah. That's very impressive. Yep. Thank you for showing it to us. Yep. But the point that you just made about the, you know, how many miles of road, I think it would be a really good conversation to ask ourselves, where does that fit in how we kind of set up a formula for what we pay you, because you're, I agree that skill should be considered and we pay you by the hour, but miles of road drives how many hours, and probably how many people. Right. But maybe not necessarily having a lot of influence on what we pay you. So that's a conversation that I really look forward to having with you guys. And then the other, one minute first, because part of what we've been hearing for a while, and is why we put in the extra, in the budget, the extra money for a fifth person, was exactly what you're saying, that the rodeos are too long. So we heard you. Yes. And put that in the budget. The other things that bothers me is, besides the low wages, is the other things that you were going to impose on the contractors. You talked about sending this home after plowing, means we lose our OT, which is not to raise it down. You talked about party coverage, which is really unnecessary, because we get more done in four day work week. And I don't know how many times have we had to get called out, since I've been here on Friday, because of trees down. I mean, it's very, very, very rare. So, party coverage is not a good thing. I mean, and of course, you talked about that being, because of a fifth employee, that we lose party coverage. It'd still be a hassle for you, because then you'd have a crew of two one day, and a crew of two one day, or other day, or whatever. And all these other things that you want to impose, going from 10% to 15% of co-pay, all these things that you won't want to do and impose on us, that I think you still will, but that's your intent. So that's going to kind of do it too. And these are all things that I don't agree with. We've got a good plan right here. It's working. There's no reason to change it. I mean, and you've got support here, but we also hear from members of the town that may not see things the same way as these folks do. So we have to look at both sides. I believe that a good share of the people would agree with me, and obviously we're going to work Fridays and the winter, because it's necessary. And I also asked for a couple more holidays. President's Day and Mercury's a king day, and you wouldn't go more or less. I forget how many paid holidays, do we give you now 10? 13. 13 paid holidays. And the day after Thanksgiving, there's nothing to do with it, so we can exchange that. So this year, both President's Day and Martin Luther King Day, there was no small, we never had a rest. So it's not going to cost the town a great deal. Yes, of course it's going to happen some years, but this year it was a good reference. So Bruce says we're gathering data and building a benchmark. We should include that. Number of paid holidays. And we should also find out how many towns when somebody takes sick leave pay overtime. Oh, good one, yeah. Right, so so all of these things become part of some of them are clear benefits, you know, dental coverage. Some of them are benefits that have particular value to you perhaps, having a four-day work week in the summer, having Friday off after Thanksgiving, not of value. 13 paid holidays a year, maybe not enough. I think all of these things can come into the discussion, but know that as one member of the Select Board I'm always going to be looking at what's the big picture, what's the cost of the town, what can the town afford and absorb in terms of a market adjustment so that you're getting an hourly rate that's more, but how does that fit against all the other things that we're talking about? It really has to be a whole picture not solving for just one little piece. And I think when we meet we need to identify those pieces. All these things. All these things, well, that's how you don't like that idea? I've been asking for those two holidays for three years now. Bruce, I'm not talking about that specifically. I'm talking about looking at comparable data so that we have a basis to say when we raise people's taxes to pay the road crew more we raise people's taxes to add a fifth person, we can justify it and we have information that we can say, well, here, it's right here. Other towns give their road crew 15 paid holidays. That's why we're doing it and we're doing it in the context of other things that are also in alignment. If that's true, we don't have those facts. And as the Select Board, that is our job to look at that. To look at all the data to look at all the issues to hear from both sides supportive or not supportive the people that complain about the roads and people are always going to complain nobody's ever going to be totally 100% happy. Trust me, I know that from being on the Select Board. But those are things the Select Board, we can't do it in a silo or in a vacuum. We have to look at this bigger picture. Or else we wouldn't be doing our volunteer jobs. So I want you to think about and maybe appreciate that as volunteers we are trying. We are really trying very hard. Like my petitioner asked is and he's got to say, we should be above average. When it all comes down to it, because of our roads, because of my skills, because of all these things, this crew ought to be paid above the average one. And that's what we will look at. Thank you. Bill? Bill, what's going to be first? Go ahead, Toby. His experience. And right now, there's no step for anybody to say in two years I'm going to get a raise because I've stayed here two years or I've been here five years or I've been here ten years. I know some places give longevity but it's not raises. It's like it's a reward for long service and experience doing the job that everybody expects to do. And I'm agreeing with you about longevity and the importance of that. And so you should consider setting up a schedule that says after five years you're going to get a $3 raise or whatever because you've earned enough in your experience with this town and its needs that Bruce is sitting here and he has not seen a penny raise other than the 2.1% cost of living increase so for him, he has actually not had a raise in three years. Wait, hang on. 2.1 is not cost of living. 1.1 was cost of living. The 1% between 1.1 and So then you gave him a 1% raise. Well, we have a formula that we have adopted as a board to respect the taxpayers' dollars that we will look at the CBI because that is we can't just, we don't want it, we can't just pull a number out of the air that is suitable to Bruce. Can I finish? We can't just pull a number out of the air. We have to have a formula and a way to explain and justify the raises that we are giving. We can't just pull a number out of the air. Well, it's not a number. You should sit down and say, so after 5 years, how much more is that person valuable to the town of Calhoun than he was 5 years before when he started? So Jacob has 2 years? 3 years now? 4 years. Okay, so if he were looking at my 5th year I'm going to get a $2 raise because the select board has set up this standard of experience and longevity. There's a reward system there. I wanted to look at other than what do I get July 1st? That needs to be an important part of why people stay at a certain job because there's a benefit in the future for them staying and having a reward. Has there ever been in Calhoun? I suggested one of those 7 or 8 years ago. Did you develop a model maybe that you have somewhere that you could pass along to us? Yeah, do you have something that you developed? I can give you a model, but I mean you need to accept that idea and say, hey, if you stay 5 or 10 years, look at that golden package out there to guarantee because we trust that you've experienced a good experience. It still has to fit. It still has to fit within benchmarking. You have to look at other towns how well they keep their employees. It's 10 or 15 years turnover and we're getting 3 years turnover. They keep their health. We will look into that. As I was saying when Toby was talking as one board member I will ask that we look at longevity because I know in other places they do that and it does give people something to look forward to. That has to be a board decision. There has to be a formula that works so that we can apply it to everybody. And it has to be clear that that's what we're doing. I think that sometimes like what Toby just said that we gave you CPI 2.1 see how very quickly the clarity of what's happening gets lost in translation. So it does. So having the framework and having a clear framework that's documented and predictable and applied consistently is really, really important. Yeah. Bill, and then we're going to wrap up. I have a question. Thank you both for coming. You're welcome. It's hard to hear sometimes when somebody is saying you guys got to be patient and they have work to do and come back to you. So there's going to be some back and forth but I know you guys want it right now it's probably not going to happen right now. We have to have time. But they need some time but you need to keep their feet to the fire too. So I know this needs to be more conversation. And my question was when do you guys go back to in person in the town hall? We are right now. We're going to come up with some technology so that we could still do zoom for some people that still want to do zoom and still do in person meetings but we've got to put some rugs and curtains and different things like that in the town hall because the acoustics are terrible. We had a really hard time hearing Monday night so we've got some work to do but I would also encourage you all to look at our agendas and see what is on there and the workload that this volunteer board does for the town. One of the things I want to say around that is some of this work doesn't have to be done by select board people. One of the things we're trying to do more of so that we can get more done is not diversify but divide and conquer. Delegate. So one possibility that the whole board will decide on is that one of us takes the lead on this information gathering and if that's the case there's a lot of opportunity for somebody who's not on the select board to partner and do a lot of work to support the board or we don't even have to have a board member. We would want to be monitoring and giving information about what we would like to see as comparable but there might be an opportunity for some of you supporters to help and we could get it done faster. So the board would have to decide that we're not going to do that today but that's an opportunity for people to get involved and to help. But we're going to wrap up now because we want to meet with Jacob. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thanks for showing us that.