 Okay. Okay. We are back and out of executive session at 7 0 8. We'll continue with the agenda. The next item on the agenda are minutes. We have two sets, one from December 5th and one from December 9th. Chair would be looking for a motion. The approval of the minutes of December 5th, 2023. Page three. Hearing no requested modification. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. The ayes have it. Moving on to the minutes of December 9th. Move the approval of the minutes of December 9th if there are any necessary corrections. Seconded. Page one. Hearing no modifications. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed nay. The ayes have it. Next on the agenda, public comment. This is a time when anybody in the audience are participating remotely is free to make any comment basically about anything. We are going to be having a public hearing on the budget. So if that's one of the topics, you do not have to wait for the hearing, but you might want to consider that. But is there anybody who wishes to use this time to make a comment during public comment? You can if you want to, but we are going to have a public hearing coming up where we'll probably have more back and forth, but it's up to you. I mean, if you. Yeah, oh yeah. The boy. Okay. Thank you. Eric, is there anybody online? Nope, no one online. So next town meeting TV update. Hi, we're sort of juggling things today because we have Scott is not here with us and Jordan is presenting this is actually running your meeting at the same time as we are here with you. We can talk about we can. Well, we will talk about Scott because we appreciate him a lot and you get to spend a lot of time with him but. So I'm here with Jordan Mitchell who's behind the camera is going to come over I'm Megan or okay. My name is Megan work and I had been the channel director of town meeting television and I'm now working as the projects director at CCTV. Our former executive director Lauren Glenn Davidian has stepped down and we are doing a co director model so we have a couple of tears in the organization CCTV is the parent organization that runs town meeting TV. The Vermont language justice project CCTV productions and manages the CCTV archives. And so Jordan Mitchell who is our town meeting TV director is going to do the presentation on tonight's budget request. Thanks. Thank you everyone. Yeah, so thank you for having us. My name is Jordan Mitchell. I'm the co director of operations for time TV and this is Megan as she introduced herself. So we're here to present what is our fiscal year 24 your fiscal year 25 budget and give a little bit of an overview of last fiscal year. So last year can meeting TV produced and supported 1386 programs for our member communities and 362 of these programs was municipal coverage for Williston we produced 45 select board and dRB meetings. The contract stipulates production of three meetings a month or 36 meetings per year. And so we covered 125% of the budgeted number of missable programs covering 45 out of 36 expected meetings. We didn't really cover much general programming last year it was mostly well it was entirely municipal content. Sorry, sorry, Jordan. Oh, it came back. There we go. Give me one second. I think it's coming back. I just came back on my screen. Did it drop. Yeah, it dropped for a second, but I think it just came back. I think we went through that. Yeah, it's back. Oh, perfect. There we go. The ultimate multitasking. Yes, I appreciate it. A little bit of multitasking tonight. Yeah, so we covered a lot of municipal program stuff last year with your select board and dRB meetings, but not much of anything else. So we would encourage you as there's other things going on in the community. That's also something time eating TV is available to cover. We did just cover was the last holiday Memorial Day Veterans Veterans Day we covered the Veterans Day event that was just outside town hall. That was in this fiscal year, but as there's other things happening that aren't necessarily meetings, but you think, oh, that would be great. You get one of those a month. So please let us know or your town meeting TV trustee is Helen Morgan Parmet. You can if you don't want to directly contact me, you can through her, you know, let her know of things that are happening that might be interesting and she'll coordinate with me. So municipal coverage. Great. We're doing a lot of it. We would also encourage you to cover some other things. So time eating TV is funded in large part by the cable subscribers of Comcast and Burlington telecom. Municipal contributions help to cover other operating costs. This year we are requesting an FY 25 Williston municipal contribution of $13,891 for general operating funds. This is a 5% increase from last year's contribution and you can see this history in your packet or on the website. Secondly, we have an exciting update from the legislature that we're looking for your support to help get over the finish line. So CCTV is part of a statewide organization known as the Vermont Access Network. We've been working for the past several years to find a stable and permanent funding source for community media, community media centers across the state. We've been successful in receiving one-time bridge funding for the last few years while some research was happening and now we're ready to bring a proposal for a permanent solution to the legislature. So to show support for the request, we're asking for organizations and municipalities to sign on to a letter of support which would then be shared with legislators during the 2024 session. And this is not in tonight's packet, but if this is something of interest to you that you want to add to another select board agenda, I'd be happy to share it. Lastly, I want to thank our field producers. Scott Moody is not here tonight, but he's usually your field producer, so him for all of his hard work. Luna, who you don't see, but is controlling things virtually right now so that I can sit here. Thank you Luna. Who's also town meeting TV staff as well as your trustee, Helen Morgan, Parmet, just for you know, their continued support. So thank you again for the continued partnership and the opportunity to present. Are there any questions? Questions from the board. I think in the budget, you're requesting a 5% increase by the towns and that amounts to how much for us? So for you all this year, it'd be $13,891. Well worth it. Thank you. Thank you. I'll add that that legislative bill now has a number h 575 and it will be introduced I think in the Senate and the House at the same time it's called the Community Media Public Benefit. Bill and as Jordan said, it's looking to find a different way. You know, as you know right now, cable subscribers pay for this coverage. The meeting coverage, the election coverage we do the internship support and the other kinds of community coverage and programming the channel and other various ways that we distribute the content. So beyond the cable channels that we know we used to just record your meetings and put them on cable TV and now, like so many places where, you know, doing what we can to promote to stream those meetings in various other locations, archive them, etc. So questions or comments. It is an invaluable service. So thank you for everything you do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's on the agenda police services report. Eric lead us into that. So the select board received and reviewed a report by Jim Baker for police services. It was first presented at last November, the 7th and further discussion last December, the 5th by the select board. Following that second discussion. This agenda items to follow up to consider action to accept the report and task the town manager. The drafting a five year community public safety enhancement implementation plan for consideration by the select board during this calendar year. My thought is the initial step of that process would be for me to prepare draft outline for what that would encompass. I know last discussion we talked about that what the scope would be where wants to consider action tonight that would be my thought to get things started. I would prepare the outline to then inform the rest of the plan. We thought about this plan as not only least component of it as, but also looking at other aspects of community safety, including fire departments and thinking about kind of community justice center as well and overall social services and assistance in the community. Number of those things were covered by Jim and his report as well, but I think we're finding we have a good report with a framework that he's developed, but working on an implementation plan would be, you know, the next step for the town and think about. The factors that include the fiscal impact and how to phase that over a period of time and where the town wants to get from an operational standpoint. So, that's my suggestion for the board to consider possible action tonight. There's nothing that needs to happen right away. Any other discussion or questions for staff and thoughts about the structure. Questions. I have a lot to learn about the community justice center. You know, it'd be interesting that we could have a discussion with Crystal Lee and Chief Bowie sometime about how this, you know, is very, you know, sent to the community justice center and just the whole process how it works. I think it's going to become a big issue in the town or going to be. They were getting more and more into it, spending more money on it. I think we need to, you know, be nicer people understood more about it. I was looking to see if it was on the, on the ARPA list, but the concept of having a public safety impact fee assess going forward. Yeah, we has one of the projects in there in exploring that viability for a fee as part of a future capital facilities discussion. So you're creating a fine kind of like five year plan. This is not necessarily to do with the consultants or with something we're doing. Yeah, I would, my thought would be I would take the lead of putting it together, but we need to call on a number of staff members and resources. I may need to look externally for some, for some thoughts. I need to engage the consultant to a limited basis. There's some questions there. Kind of, I think first identifying what we want the scope to be and how it will be encompassed, what those main aspects are going to be. And if I get, because that's just from the board on what that looks like, then really flushing it at a great level of detail, something back to you. So, look to formally adopt as, as the plan and understanding that plans are plans and plans can change over time and especially a multi year plan, but trying to get a roadmap in place that I think you can send them. Let the community know to that, you know, what the planning efforts are. And I think it dovetails to the comp plan work that's going, you're going to be reviewing with the planning commission over the next year and a half as well at public safety as a component and chapter of that, that this can help help those discussions along and think about the immediacy of some things to do the coming fiscal year and then next four to five years after that. And I think all this is important to build a feedback loop into this, you know, we think five years in the future, but after that, you know, what's the process to refresh that and think about the following five or 10 years after that. It's not a, okay, we made this plan, we did this plan and now we don't do anything else. It's just getting the town as it continues to expand its services and capacity and what that looks like for a planning standpoint for public safety in years to come. How long would it take to get implementation plan drafted and before the board question. You know, it's January 2nd, so I set a goal for 2024 but I think realistically, I think I could get something to the board down by late summer. Initial timeline. You're not. There's no attached budgetary costs for, I mean, because it's, do you, you know, are they doing this or not. Yep, no additional budgetary component. I think I'll have a better sense once I get going if we need to draw some other resources, but probably if they're on limited basis. I think it would be helpful to have this in place and get this to the board preceding your FY26 budget discussions, because if we're talking about a plan and any additional staff in the coming years so the board can make some of those initial decisions and I can build that into the draft budget for FY26 or FY25 discussions right now, but so that kind of goes along with my late summer early fall timeline to precede your budget discussions for FY26 that we get to a year from now. Sure. So how does that plan and, you know, hardly the report talk about staffing the people. I mean, I would hope that the town isn't going to wait, you know, to implement whatever five year plan comes in to address what seems to be really urgent needs now. Especially when you look at the observer or a couple weeks ago. That's not taking very good picture right now. Yeah, in terms of the shoplifting and that. Yeah. Well, the part of that will actually be in the budget that we're going to be talking about, but I would say that that it's certainly not going to be we're not going to wait for a report to start trying to recruit and make sure that we have full staffing levels and try to address what we can already. Yeah. Further questions or comments from the board. You want a motion. Yeah, that's going to say if not just have one. Let's see. Move to accept the police services analysis report as transmitted by consultant Jim Baker dated November 2023. And further move to task town manager with drafting a five year community public safety enhancement implementation plan for consideration by the select board during calendar year 2024. We have a second. Further. We do. Is there a further motion? Mike second. It did. Yes. Okay. All those in favor. Say aye. Aye. All those opposed. No. The AIs have it. The town manager is thus directed. So. Let's start. Thank you. So. Next on the agenda. Actually, we are a couple of minutes ahead of schedule. I'm going to actually ask the chair emeritus. Is that does that make the hearing completely illegal if we started early? I think it does not because if you're going to start it and have a short presentation before we could actually into the public's comments. You could do number 10. Don't we have a appointment or something? Yeah, actually, let's let's let's jump ahead to that. Eric, can you talk about Mr. Vance? Yep. So the town's a member of the Chittin County communications union district. Recall, I served as an initial representative for the town and then Michael Vance was appointed. He's, he works in the field of telecommunication myself and Aaron Dickinson. I've served as the alternates. I was reminded by Mr. Vance in December that the bylaws are one year term for each representative that runs on a calendar. So, hence the board seeming to consider his reappointment for a year. I know he's currently serving as chair as the CUD. He's doing a great job. I chatted with him. They've got an RFP out right now for assistance and kind of working to implement it and implement the work of the CUD plan to have him. Visit the board probably in February to give a more in-depth update. So that would be a good time after that RFP is rewarded. I recommend he's willing and interested in another year recommendation for the board to consider it appointed him for a year term and along with Aaron and myself as the alternates to carry on. Questions for Eric? No questions that we'd be looking for a motion. I'd like to re-appoint Michael Vance as Williston's representative to the Chittin County Communications Union District for an unexplored one-year term through December 31st, 2024. Further move to reappoint Eric Wells here in Dickinson as alternate representatives to the district for an unexplored one-year term through December 31st, 2024. Is there a second? Second. Further discussion on the motion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, nay. So if there's no objection, I think we will go into the public hearing. So I believe I have to read at least a little bit of the notice which goes on for five paragraphs. I'm only going to read one. So notice is hereby given that the Williston Select Board will hold a public hearing on Tuesday, January 2, 2024 at 7.30 p.m. in the Beckett McGuire meeting rooms at Williston Town Hall to receive comments on the proposed operating budget for fiscal year 2025 and capital budget and program for fiscal years 2025 through 2030. A remote option to participate is available if people are on and we can get them as well. And so that opens the meeting, that opens the hearing and I will ask Eric if you could just give a brief overview of the budget before we open up to comment. Yep. Thank you and for everyone watching, these materials are also available on the town website under the homepage. And we also, if you go to the town website address slash budget, we're putting all budget materials there as well. There's the transmitted proposals by the manager and we'll have additional proposals and a rather recordings of all discussions and meetings and materials over the next month as well. So, I'll just briefly, I gave an overview presentation with my friends middle in December on this budget proposal. So endeavors to deliver the same level of municipal services as currently provided. And as always, as we put the budget together each summer into fall, it's a multi month team effort. Couldn't do this work about our without our great team of department heads and our finance director Shirley to work through the details of this budget. So the main themes this year, we're seeing increased operational costs, mainly driven by wages and benefits, professional services costs and capital equipment. The overall budget proposal now is a 1.2 million increase or about 8.7%. On the revenue side, we've increased our local option tax receipts revenue forecast by looking at prior year experience and seeing what our potential future revenue from that source may look like. The tax rate has an initial 3.5 cents higher, higher rate estimated with a flat grand list projected by our assessor to balance the budget. That means about $34 per 100,000 of value for a property or just under $9 per month for a median homeowner with an assessment of $300,000. This is the median home assessment of Williston also mentioned in the manager's budget, but not initially included our high priority staff position to consider adding to this. On the show proposal. These include as identified in Jim Baker's police services report. A police detective that would be initially filled by an incumbent staff member, but the budget amount would backfill that incumbent patrol officer going into a bill bureau criminal investigation. So it's growing fast there and adding a second police lieutenant position that would oversee the build out of a second unit within the department focus on community outreach and an engagement among other other aspects, including BCI supervision and dispatch supervision as well. Also includes the addition of human resources director for the town and elevating a currently part time buildings and grounds position the full time. And this along with the capital budget proposal by detailed line items and including a more comprehensive presentation I gave are included on the board materials or any of the members of the community can certainly email me or stop by. They'd like a copy of these materials as well. Thank you. So, this is a public hearing so anybody who has input questions, comments or concerns, please, we very much want to hear from you. I would ask if you come up to the table. Just identify yourself. It's not a terribly formal thing. It's not like you get sworn in or you have to remember your lines in a school day or something. So, but yeah. I don't have to be sworn in. Okay. So, my name is Linda Clinton talk. I'm a resident of Williston. And before I begin, I want to thank you for your time. It is a huge sacrifice on your part to give to the town of Williston and I appreciate what you're doing. I'm coming here tonight because I had the good fortune of being on the steering committee for the recreation and community center and I really having been through this process. Three times previous with the same outcome three times. I'm kind of hoping that we take the information we've been given and make finally and move forward where we're getting our hands dirty rather than continuing to ask about it. I know that funds are tight. I do understand that and I think that you are creative the town of Williston is creative that we can find a way to make this community center work. It's, it's a place that is not going to affect one person or one group of people. This is the center that benefits all of Williston and it is so necessary. So I'm just coming to please ask that we continue moving forward on it. Not a financial person and will never pretend to be but you know I'm going to do whatever I can to help make this work. And in with that probably you've been aware that we're in troubling times and there's a lot of talk about mental health. And so I now want to also support the recreation department which also serves every facet of our community. And is with it's a well more than a two person but Alex and Todd have done a tremendous job increasing and trying to meet the needs of Williston. To me being able to recreate and do something in my form of recreation may be very different than yours Jean but we all need to recreate and that is part of our mental health. So I want to just also support the recreation department and what it has been doing for Williston and what it continues to do when it really works to be creative. Starting little just with the rec zone trying to find a place that we know we can't depend on the school like we have in the past but to provide alternatives. So I just wanted to that's what I want to say and thank you for your time. I just know that the budget is going to be tight but these are two areas which I think benefits Williston and helps Williston move forward. I mean I think it's a real vital part and that's that's all I got to say but thank you. Thanks so much for your time and I appreciate your time so much. Thank you. Thank you for coming forward to speak. Welcome. It didn't even hurt. I swear. Other other folks with input questions comments concerns. Just on that point we the only place that I saw the these the library and the community center coming forward in the budget is as part of our our decisions. Right. Yeah, that's correct to advance that to the next phase. Right. Is the next phase to get it all the way to a vote or is it. Nope. No, good question. I think it's to look more detailed design and costs that would come from that design for the library component for an addition. And for the community center to explore potential sites within the growth center as initially recommended by the steering committee and also the schematic design for for that for what it would need for a site so it as a long process with any with a capital project for both of these it's continue to advance to the next the next phase. Hi everyone. I am Eric how so you know me I'm the chair of the conservation commission I've been a member of the commission. 14 years since 2010. And I've been serving as chair for the past two years. I'd like to speak a little bit about the memo that's in front of you from the conservation commission regarding the environmental reserve fund. You'll see in that memo that the conservation commission is again requesting an earf appropriation of $150,000 for the next town budget. The earf is the town's savings account to have cash on hand when a desirable parcel becomes available for conservation whether whether that's acquisition or in the form of some some form of. Last month, we invited people from the town to come learn about and celebrate the lands that have been conserved in town, most of which were supported with at least in part part with your funds contributing to those acquisitions or the easements. This room was packed. Right. Yes. Where Aaron Aaron Dickinson was here and she had to sit in her office back there because there was enough room for her to sit out here. She had to listen from back there. Setting aside saving funds into a savings account to conserve land is it's not as flashy or immediately immediately rewarding as buying a new fire truck or hiring new police officers or buying snow plows. It's not going to save lives. It's not preventing a crime. It's not going to reduce car crashes. But conserving town lands and protecting priority parcels from development is important. The packed house in here last month was just a small demonstration of the value. Conservation of lands has to the residents of Willis and as our population grows more and more pressure will be placed on our existing conserve spaces. As more people want to step outside to recreate or just enjoy some quiet time in the woods. The town needs to be able to plan and act strategically to provide more spaces like I should with Mike's been able to provide his his farm like Suckerbrook hollow and five tree hill in that memo. You all have the memo. Great. So on the second page you'll see a figure in there with that figure illustrates how the assessed value of lands which is the green line has increased over the past 30 years. And that also illustrates the figure also illustrates how town contributions to the RF have decreased over that same period that orange line or yellow line. This means that when we do access the RF account for a project, it takes longer to replenish the account to a meaningful value that an actionable value. It means that there is more time before the town is able to respond to projects come up in between budget cycles. It also means that we have fewer funds available to leverage grant funding. So it's hard to put a real value on our conserve lands. But I can say that our trails as you know our trails are free and open to anyone as they should be at the current assessed values. The average property as Eric just reported is is at $300,000 is assessed at $300,000 an RF allocation of $150,000 would mean an average $20 per average household. The town contributed $50,000 to the RF last year. So really this is an $15 per average household increase over last year or an extra five bucks per tax payment to go toward future land conservation projects here in town. The context they use admittance for adults to Vermont State Parks is currently five bucks a day or $30 for an annual pass. Increasing the RF contribution to $150,000 is less than 1% of the current proposed budget, which seems like an appropriate expenditure to justify conserving these lands for future wills and residents. Thanks for considering our request to the town. Happy to take questions. Questions for Eric. Yes, I'm all in. I'm all in at 30%. But I just in this maybe not a fair question for you. I've never been involved among these negotiations, but if you have a really healthy fund balance by land, doesn't that put you at a bit of a disadvantage when you're negotiating how much to pay for the land? I don't know. I guess is that like akin to the strategy some people take with saving for college funds for their kids? Well, you know what? That's not public information. This is public information. I don't know. I've never thought of it that way. All I can say is that when I love the way you laid it out, this is what we want to buy. This is how much I need to save it. I love the way laid out and it totally makes sense. But then I was like, well, I was wondering about it. I mean, it's in, so I've been, as I mentioned with the commission for 14 years, we've, in my time, the town has acquired, I don't know, half a dozen or more parcels. And I don't think that has ever come up. I haven't been involved with the actual landowner negotiation. So I guess maybe I can't speak to that intelligently. Usually it's the conservation value is based on an appraisal that's done by whoever is going to end up holding the title either for the easement or the acquisition of the parcel itself. Usually, in my experience, it's been with the Vermont Land Trust or another land trust. And so they handle most of that. And I think that, you know, it's on them and the town to make sure that we're paying a fair value. So I don't know that necessarily that someone would look at what we have available in the ERF and say, oh, you've got $5 million. I'd like $5 million of my 100 acres, please. Well, in the town might say, well, you know what, maybe it's not that valuable. But it does, you know, having a balance, I didn't mention this in my remarks, but our goal is to have a, have and maintain, achieve and maintain a balance of about $800,000 in the ERF. We have never been, in my experience anyway, never been anywhere close to that. We used to have a goal of around 400 or 450,000 when I first started working on this issue with the Commission about 10 or 11 years ago. And then we realized that property values have gone up a lot. And the amount that we're paying per acre of land has more than double, maybe almost tripled for conservation parcels here in town. And that's why we're realizing that if we really want to be able to work on more than one project or have a shorter recovery period from an acquisition, we need to have a larger balance. And that's why we're, we'd like to see a balance of 800,000 in there. I could ask for 800,000. More than 1%. And it'd be more than $20 bucks at an average household too. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is Danielle Doucette, and I am on the Parks and Rec Committee. And I'm the member that serves on the Catamount Community Forest Management Committee for the town. So I feel like, thank you. I need to follow up after Lynn and Eric because of what they're saying. Like I see at the meetings and I also would like to ditto, Lynn, thank you. So my meetings take like, I don't know, an hour and a half a month. And I feel like you may be our way, way, way past that. So thank you for all your work. And I would just like to really quickly say, I support what they, what they recommend, a recreation center and putting more money into the ERF fund just goes to improve our, I don't know how Williston views itself as a community, a place that supports mental health and the well-being of all our residents. And that will just, it's a great step forward. Thank you. Jim Morton from the Williston Community Food Shelf. When I was here for the ARPA fund allocation meeting, I mentioned adding a line item for the food shelf to the town annual budget. And Eric told me this is the best place to come to talk about it. The town budget's money for lots of obvious things. Police, fire and rescue, administration, parks and rec library. It also contributes to some other more indirect things. Land conservation, energy conservation initiatives, Green Mountain transit, Winooski Valley Park, community justice, affordable housing, to name a few. The food shelf board thinks that the food shelf also belongs on that list. We do get a grant annually from the town social organization committee, but we do have to apply for it, and it is never guaranteed. As the Select Board and Planning Commission approve more affordable, elderly and transitional housing, the need for police, fire, rescue and community justice arise in direct proportion. I know that Chiefs Foley and Colette and Crystal Lee have all had dialogue with you about exactly that. What you might not consider, though, is the food shelf is significantly impacted by those kinds of approvals. We are also impacted by the high cost of living here and the fact that prices have been raising at a really rapid rate. The transitional housing that is now across from Guy's Farming Yard, where the town place suites was, has brought us over 50 new clients a month. That's a lot of people. The chart I passed out to you shows that in the first 11 months of 2023, the food shelf saw 883 more families than it did in all of 2022. And I know from being there, many, many, many hours in December, that it was the same. We are now seeing 300 families a month, which is 100 more than we were seeing in 2022. As some of you know, the Williston Community Food Shelf is a 100% volunteer organization, and we have no guaranteed source of funding. We spend $7,500 a month in rent and utilities and $10,000 a month in food. It is a complete fallacy that food shelves don't have to pay rent and that they get all their food donated. We are not lucky enough in Williston to be in some church basement or a public hall, so therefore we pay market value and rent. The great landlord, he doesn't raise our rent to the extent he raises the other people in the building, but we pay rent and we pay for our food. The food shelf board would really like to be able to start a dialogue about how we could get some much needed funding help from the town. We're not asking that you pay 100% of our budget. We realize that. I mean, it just isn't feasible. It would be awesome though to have dialogue about how we could maybe get a little bit of contribution towards rent and maybe some food costs just so that we knew we had a cushion for a couple of months every year. Thank you again for your time and I'll be happy to answer any questions if you have any. How many people a month do you have volunteering now? We have about 30 volunteers a week to cover the three shifts that we are open and all of the schlepping that we do of food. What we get for donations, what we buy, what we have to deliver at the end of every shift, we take our leftover food to another food shelf so that nothing is wasted. So we have about at least 30 volunteers a week. I'd like to thank those 30 volunteers every week. They do a hell of a job. Is it 10,000 dollars a month? The additional from the family is this year that we're feeding. Does that 10,000 dollars we're spending a month remain the same and you're just having to stretch it farther or is that an increase? The 10,000 dollars is what we are up to. Thankfully over the holiday time people give us a lot of food. I don't know what's gonna happen. If we come July, the food shelf shelves are bare. So it'll be way more than that. Right now that's what we were spending, which is higher than we were before, obviously. What do you have for capital last month? Monthly overhead stuff. Do you have like a electricity budget because there's a freezer? We have lots of refrigerators and freezers and we do pay our own utilities. So yes, we have electric for that. We have electric keep the lights on. We only open three shifts a week so that the lights aren't on, you know, 40 hours a week or anything like that. The freezers and refrigerators do take electricity. We were given a huge anonymous grant during COVID and we purchased all commercial grade refrigerators and freezers, which upped our capacity and decreased our energy consumption, believe it or not, because we weren't dealing with 25 year old refrigerators and freezers. So that was great. So we didn't have to pay any of our own capital money for that. Somebody else paid for it, which was a huge gift. Yeah, it was really great. Thank you. Thank you. Other folks with questions, comments or concerns for the budget during the public hearing. Well, Kevin Thorley, Wilson resident and energy committee member, speaking for myself, not on behalf of energy committee. I am, I did not make the December 9th meeting I have read through the capital proposed capital budget. I am encouraged to see every department head saying they're considering electric vehicles for the replacement of the vehicles when the time comes. I'm less encouraged because I've heard those four words, those words four years in a row. And I'm wondering what the select board can do or what we can ask of the department heads to help us understand how they were thinking of that. It's, it's easy to say we're considering an electric vehicle option. But as these come up, we're in a, the budget cycle tends to be kind of tight, right? So if they haven't done the work and we're about to replace one and it's not funded as such, then that opportunity is lost for the next life cycle of that vehicle. I think the only one that I saw outside of the grounds care equipment. The only thing I saw was the 2019 Tahoe. I think it is from the fire department that might be up for replacement this year. They're considering electric vehicles for that. But I'd like to encourage the select board to encourage the department departments to be a little more share a little bit more information, but what they've considered and where they're finding opportunities, where they're finding that they might have some shortcomings with what's available to them today. And also we're going to inevitably, inevitably be in a situation where if the fire department were to buy a new say F-150 electric vehicle to replace the Tahoe they have today. Have they, you know, are they going to be behind the eight ball in terms of not having done the work to install the charging stations at the fire station. Same with the police department, same with the town hall. So again, I encourage to see everyone's thinking about it, but I know they've been quote thinking about it for about four years now. Since I've been attending these meetings, I'd love to see a little bit more information from them about what they plan to do and what the energy committee can do to assist them in that. Thank you. Thank you. Other folks with questions, comments or concerns? Eric, is there anybody on? Nope. No one online. That is the case. Then we need a motion to close the public hearing. I'd move to close the public hearing. Elaine Schrafer, fiscal year operating in a capital budget. Is there a second of the money? Further discussion on the motion. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed make the ayes have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Elaine. So next item of tax increment finance. District. I was feeling a bit. Lynn's coming back. Lynn, you're back for the tax increment finance. I'll put this in slide form today to make it a little more visual. Just give me a moment and I just texted Matt. He's going to come over and be part of this discussion. Just bear with me for a minute here. It is more. I guess if you want a quiet tax. Hearing you just have to announce a six story building in tax quarter. It's the same week. We can pick the heat down to everybody. Yep. Charlie, would you mind putting the heat down just a couple of degrees. So Matt, we're actually ready for the tax increment finance. So I'll, I'll kind of go through the nuts and bolts of my memo here and I asked Matt to join the discussion to talk about kind of the nexus of the town plan and the vision plan for top corners as we think about this, this concept here. This is one of the potential. Arpa projects and I know I brought it up to you in December, but didn't really give it its due diligence for such a huge topic area. So we made some time tonight to go over this in a little more depth. It's informational. The board is going to make a decision on this tonight. It's going to be part of your discussions ongoing, but want to get the dialogue started on this concept for the board this evening. So to tax increment financing tips and impactful economic development tool allowed by the state of Vermont to leverage public infrastructure investment with development potential for an area under a tiff incremental tax revenues generated by private investment within the district. It's set aside for a period of pay down debt incurred public infrastructure improvements. These improvements could be things like streets, water, sewer, stormwater facilities. Tiff districts that you might be familiar with in the area or South growing to the city center when you ski downtown in St. Albans downtown. I pulled for the graphic, just a visual of South Burlington's tip center from a rendering back in 2015 and it's built out a little bit different than this, but give you an idea of where we're talking about their city center area. So the process to establish a tiff district begins with approval by the elected body, the select board and then applications to the remote economic progress council or VEPC, which manages the program, which is part of state government. I'm going to stop you from it because I'm really from the room I wrap my head around this so I just want I don't want to start off wrong. Yeah, so this in this situation, we apply and everything if you can establish a tiff district. The town invests in say infrastructure, private builders and stuff come in to build there, and then the taxes that they would pay for property taxes can be used to pay for the debt that the town incurred to put the infrastructure in. Yep. And the big thing is that school taxes count there. Yep. Okay, I'm good. I'm going to picture to show that. The only downside that I saw was that if that invest tax investment isn't enough to pay the debt, the town is still on the hood for the debt. Yep. Okay. So this process is governed by the state and there's only so many districts that are allowed. There's, there's a cap on the number of new districts allowed statewide. There's a cap for no more than two new ones per county. Matt and I chatted with the staff of that. See to kind of get a read of where things are. You may see the news. This is tips are certainly a hot button is discussion and legislature in the state auditor's office as well. We believe there's a window right now for Wilson to explore this. The cap is not in that statewide. There's additional new districts available and we don't have a read that any additional Chittin County communities are currently looking at either from our discussion right now. So we have a window to think about this. I think we have an opportunity to take a look at it. Why is this, why is the state doing this? What's their motivation for giving up all that tax revenue? Ultimately, it becomes an economic development stimulant tool. I think you from where you're able to help move along new development by the public infrastructure investment. That takes that away from the private sector to have to make that investment or the town to come up with it through other means. So it's been proven as powerful economic development tool for communities. The state looks to get involved. The helps for that for. So I can certainly see the town line to that for. Parts of the state that need help. Developing economically. I don't give a look at tax corners and say, wow, we need to help most and invest in growth tax corners. We'll get into that little bit. It's this, it's this nexus with the application called the, if not then. Argument and there's different ways that town's going to approach that. We'll get it. Very excited. I couldn't believe. We discussed this earlier, like several months ago about Jeff Davis, right? That, you know, that portion of the road, you know, over there behind Hanover. It's correct. Yes. So that's, um, we could hold that too. I'll get to that too. If I could just lay the groundwork here for another slide or two. Pick it up, Eric. It's good to be excited because. Yeah, it's critical if the town pursues us like we're used to be behind it because it's a long, it's a multi decade commitment to a district here. Um, so what we're looking at is if we, the pre step here is to do this five billion analysis to answer some of these questions will dig into a little bit more here. Then the board would need to make a decision doesn't want to apply for the application and call the TIF master plan to that. See, they have a board that we need to approve it. Um, to get that district created. Um, ultimately the districts created any debt incurred within the district also be approved by the voters through a bond vote. And then with public infrastructure improvements, they must be funded to form bonded debt. The first debt must be incurred within five years of the district's creation. So your first bond needs to be gone. The bond sale within five years. You have 10 years to incur all the debt for the district. Once the districts created and the district only exists for 20 years. So we'll get into this without about tearing different projects and viability and analysis for development as part of the consultants potential work. But this was my chart. I tried to visualize this. So how does it work here? We're talking about a complex economic development tool. Well, I'll try to walk through the, you know, the shading I did here at its heart. It's a public private partnership. You take the original taxable values established for the parcels that encompass the district. So think here's the South growing 10s. They decided to draw their line around all these parcels. When they establish a district, the grand list value as of April 1st of that year, the district was established as the original value for the district. So that's this green box here. So as the district, the intentions to simulate this economic development with the construction and public infrastructure, for example, the street sewer line, water line, those type of things. This, the private property owner then develops the property adjacent to the new infrastructure think vacant parcel. A street is built. And now that once vacant parcel can then develop filling in those gaps there. So once that parcel develops, it's going to have an added value post development. So that's the increment we're talking about here. It's original value from the districts created to the cumulative value of these parcels as the life of the district when you start to add improvements to them by making investment in public infrastructure to stimulate these improvements coming along. So that increment here, the blue box is created. So that's where the power of the tool exists here when you get to tax revenue. So you can take that increment and you can use that increment created through tax revenue to pay down the debt for that public infrastructure that was built the street that was built the waterline that was put in. The real, the real power here is the up to 70% of the education tax increment revenue and at least 85% of the municipal tax increment revenue can be used for the purpose of paying the bonded debt projects. So, you know, usually the education fund is tax at the education tax rate for each parcel and that goes to the mob pillar to manage for the parcels here in the district. The added, the added value post development that education tax is going to be retained locally at 70% of the tax assessment in order to pay down that debt service like the district. And they continue to get 100% of its education tax dollars. Correct. Correct. So, so it's using, and I bring that because the education tax rate is in Wilson here is much higher than the municipal rates of the yield from that tax revenue is significant that would be retained locally for the public infrastructure projects here. The town would also retain a portion of that increment, but it's it's much lower. It's about 15%. I think there's some room to decide where these numbers land but the education tax numbers is a number that it used to be higher. I think it was up to 75%. Now it's 70%. So that's what this little triangle represents. The state still gets its piece of that increment and the general fund gets a piece. The big part of it here is this blue shading. It's that incremental. So I have a parcel that happens to follow on the tip district conservation fund doesn't want to give me $5 million for it. So I have to develop it myself. So I have a parcel that's, I don't know, say it's worth a million dollars just a vacant lot. Town puts water sewer and a road through it. And then I build buildings and now it's worth $15 million. That's so the blue box is the difference between my vacant lot with nothing on it. That's correct. So the new value so of that increment of that say $12 million increase in valuation at the current at whatever the tax rate is for the education fund and in the town general funds that percentage proportion of that would then be used to pay down the debt service. So the critical exercise here is to make sure you're not getting in front of your skis that you're going to bond for these public infrastructure improvements and that you're you're confident that the district can yield enough revenue over the 20 year lifespan to repand structure improvements that were put in place. So it takes coordination with the property owners to get a sense of, you know, your first debt that you take out is critical within that first five years, you want to be able to be yielding increment there. So you want to make sure we build X grid street that we're going to have potential development along that street so we can start getting that revenue to pay down the bond the debt service shortly after it's built. What we think about is different tiers of these projects to it's probably identifying six to eight key public infrastructure projects down things would move this along. And then being confident that we could we could hit that tiered approach over time by by thinking about what what's the overall debt burden is going to be because ultimately we need to create the revenue through the increment to pay it back. So, so that's the real heavy lift and why we're recommending a consultant do this work with the town because they're they're proven in most districts in the state to be the architects of designing these financial analysis to say what's the viability scope here. Let's go back here. Yeah, you've got 20 years for for the district after its sunsets, the new value is going to be think of this as all green after 20 years and it goes back to the town's grand list is going to increase by that value for when taxes but then the Education Fund is going to get everything from from the district again at that point. So try to think of another way to look at it. Kind of what we were just talking about undeveloped parcels in the ditch district call that x the original value a street built using bonded debt to connect the parcels added at the debt cost that's why the variable term here the parcels develop stimuli by that street connection that's created the parcels collectively assessed added value in the tiffin increment the blue from the example call that z taxes are then assessed municipal education that original value x or the green box is taxed as usual 100% to the education in town general funds. The z value that's that blue box the added increment that's tax with 70% of the education tax revenue being used to pay off the why variable the debt along with 80 up to 85% of the general fund revenue from that increment. So our current tax rates this year the education rate in Wilson's $1.67 per 100 of assessed value municipal is 33 and a half cents. Those will be likely going up in the coming years. So once part of the math year two is to think about that, you know what could you yield from this increment and understanding how much of these projects going to cost as well factoring inflation. So it's a, it's a very powerful tool that municipalities have at their availability to look at here. And this is where I'll kind of turn things more to map but you know possible benefit here. There's been extensive focus on tap corners last couple years for the advent of our form based code it came from this vision document helps spur along the writing of the code. It's tool to leverage and assist with moving forward a vision for the growth center is a defined funding mechanism for infrastructure improvements. I have a question, Mike with with trader Lane as a initial grid street. It's been something the towns trying to build it for about 15 years. And we feel like we're getting the ball, you know, close to the end zone is a football analogy but we've had to do the funding through state grants through lots of impact fees we've saved for years, and then working on a pre payment of future impact fees to close the gap. I estimate from the engineers this month to see what that number looks like. But, you know, if the town wants to continue to build out grid streets and infrastructure in the growth center. That model is long and arduous one with lots of unknowns, a potential TIF district if it works creates a stable funding mechanism, I'll say stable depending on how it's structured, as opposed to looking to piecemeal additional projects over time or just rely on private investment for them. As the town thinks about its goals and its growth and its growth center. How does it want to invest in infrastructure for the future and doesn't want to look at this as as tool to do so here. I'll turn it to Matt. Sure. Well, Eric, I'm glad you used the picture of the cover of the vision plan. That's sort of my part to talk about, which is, you know, the form based code project was really about creating a set of development standards. What are the rules, and what is the rule book we're going to hand to the private sector and say, This is what we want you to do if you would like to build in Taft Corner so we talked a lot about architectural design we talked a lot about where buildings go on sites. We also mapped out a complete filling in of that that grid street pattern in Taft corners and talked about why having interconnected grid streets with sidewalks is important to making Taft corners into a more cohesive and livable place. So, we handed that rule book to the private sector but knowing that it calls for a really significant investment in infrastructure, much of which would become public infrastructure. So, the process that Eric is talking about making a preliminary assessment of what sorts of infrastructure projects would be necessary in Taft corners and what sort of development might they encourage, you know, that would come in and meet those standards. It's a really great planning process to figure out if this particular fiscal tool makes sense for the town to pursue further. It's also a really great planning exercise to start thinking about well gosh all that stuff we put on the map back in 2020 and 2021. What's that all going to cost and what are some of the upsides and risks associated with going in and partnering with the private sector to construct it. So, we've talked a lot about streets and sidewalks. Folks may remember part of the form based code was adopting an official map we created parks and green spaces on there because our planning commissions that hey if a whole lot of people are going to live in Taft corners it needs to be the kind of place. We want somebody to live that would include public amenities. We also acknowledged in the vision plan document. What we called in a section called overarching issues, what are some of the factors that play into whether this vision can be achieved. A significant one was stormwater treatment and water supply and wastewater treatment so there's infrastructure like the streets we drive on but there's also those critical utilities that we all need or that our development needs and particularly when you think about stormwater physically there are good places for stormwater treatment to go in Taft corners or adjacent to it and there are not so good places for it to go and we think about that as we're working on that trader lane design. Where's all this new stormwater going to go and how are we going to handle that. So going through that project planning exercise of what physically are the kinds of projects that might be necessary for that vision to be achieved. And then would the creation of those things allow the kind of new development to come in that the town envisioned in that vision document and ultimately what would that do with the grand list and therefore would it would it be self sustaining financially so. You know there's a there's a far out goal of a tip which is if it's if it's something that people feel they want to take on. Would it achieve this vision. There's also a really nice intermediate goal that's achieved through that planning process which is we start actually putting down. Names of projects and map locations of projects and potential price tags on them and thinking through all of that. You know I I talk a lot about it because it's in my backyard I can see the South Burlington City Center tip from my backyard in South Burlington. Encourage folks to take a look at the the site the city has put up there because it talks about what the projects are that they have funded with that. District and how that interplays with what the private sector is bringing to the table and how that's all kind of working out it's a really good living example of that. I know about as a citizen because I see those bond votes for each of those projects come across so whether it's finding a portion of the pedestrian passage over interstate 89 to UVM campus. Market Street itself the public park that's part of the Market Street build out portion of City Hall in the library. Some reworking of Williston roads frontage that will actually be forthcoming in the next couple years. There's a whole variety of projects there and you know similar to tap corners in some ways you're looking at a piece of land where. Maybe was the question is it ever going to get developed not necessarily but it is it going to be developed to the city's vision but for the city's participation in creating all of that framework that's necessary for it to happen. So it's a it's a way for the town to think about how far does it want to lean into what's going to happen at tap corners. I think we have reached close to the end of what we can demand through our regulatory system. It's it's pretty darn exacting it's it's pretty significant requirements the transportation impact the I think is as large as it will be palatable to have it be you know $2,000 a trip almost for some time. It takes a long time to accumulate that money. You're only allowed to accumulate that money for so long under statute which is a challenge. And you know literally the timeframe of accumulating money and achieving permits can start to come out of alignment. So part of this is about money but part of it is also about timing and you know this is a really good opportunity to get some of those preliminary questions answered and even if the answer is no Tiff doesn't make sense in Williston. We would have a really nice, you know, set of projects that we would understand, you know, menu that we could use in our future planning coming out of this process. Just to wrap things up here. The ARPA proposals to work with the firm Whiting Burke out of Burlington that they've worked with most Tiff districts in the state. Matt and I chatted with their, their staff about our potential and our thoughts here and they certainly see a potential viability to explore. And as I said, it's finding what the right size approaches and it's trying to work with someone to understand the economic aspects of this and really needing to have support from the select board level to move forward obviously and also it's a vision for the future of the community. So the scope of their work would be this kind of pre application work. Determine the feasibility of the district. Reviewing the private development projects related public infrastructure investments that are necessary to incentivize the private private projects to evaluate the possible boundaries of the district and do the preliminary financial viability assessment. That's what I put originally. And as I over the holidays my hope that service is $30,000. The time and materials base so could fluctuate some. But then to think about if the board wants to report with this through your ARPA discussions, and it's determined that the town's a good candidate for a Tiff district. The select board wants to say let's go ahead and apply together that to master plan application. We can engage them again for that work to help us craft that master plan and involves preparation and adoption of that written Tiff plan and analysis. A lot of work on that into and that's that's likely in the $30,000 range as well. I didn't have these both numbers and what I put there in December. So, you know, it's as you think about it, you could think about funding the initial evaluation of it, but just know if it turns out that's something you want to pursue further. Staff would likely recommend working with a consultant to make sure we get that master plan put together well to manage this. So my my suggestion is as you think about this as an ARPA project to think about maybe a $70,000 number or so to build in just a buffer space. In this with the two steps you could allocate the original the first step and then maybe hold back some money to have if you want to report to step two. They're likely would deliver this in the second quarter of the year so we would probably see it by early summer. So if we gave them the go ahead in the next month or so just to supply the time we're looking at here. So that is Tiff in a nutshell. I know there's many questions likely. The thing I'm kind of bumping on and it's probably just because I was not involved in this vision work, but the town is discussing spending $70,000 in order to put a program in place to take a risk. Fairly large sizable risk to put an infrastructure to encourage growth and taps corners. And I think like them when you're going through the South Burlington one there's a lot of things that South Burlington could say hey we finally get in our library we're finally getting a park you know there's a lot of things that I could see people South Burlington saying I'm going to support this because there's a lot of it from me. I would need to think a little bit about how do I wrap my own head around. Do I does the town need to take risk in order to help develop task corners. It seems like it's, you know, growing pretty fast as it is so I'm not saying there isn't one and I'm not asking you to answer that, but I would need to be able to articulate that better than I can do today. Yeah, part of it could just be like one thing that I think people don't get when they post them from force forum is that it could just be this is how we manage so that it grows the way we want it to grow. Right. It's not grow or not grow. I really want to answer your question. I would need to be able to articulate that better. In a really short way just to say that once you start as a public entity investing in the place, you get to make a lot more decisions about where and how you invest so another element of the vision plan was a concern that the form based code area is over 800 acres in size, and there could be sort of this unfocused growth that doesn't really gel together as one central place over, you know, even 20 or 30 years. And one of the tools that's identified in that overarching issue section as a way to bring some focus to tap corners is through directed investment and sequence of investment by the town, which is something the town can control. So, that's one thing and the other thing is depending on how you manage infrastructure projects, you you're managing the completeness of the street network so you can think through, you know, some of the dead ends we have in tap corners right now and things that you know just kind of, you know, there's a great plan there but it's not done yet and it might not be for a long time. You can start to pick and choose which of those you want to see all the way through first. And lastly, that infrastructure investment can lead to better compactness of the development that does happen, particularly around things like utilities and stormwater that might otherwise have to be managed on site. So if you start to have a more coordinated plan around some of those things, the site that develops can develop in a more compact way which actually lets it provide more of its private open space for residents if it's a residential project, because some of the infrastructural stuff is actually happening off site in a place that is more economical or makes more sense so it's a little bit more about control. Okay. As I'm getting older I've seen a lot of growth, you know. I remember hearing my dad talk about having to stop across from the Staples Plaza coming out of Burlington and let the cows cross the road. I think growth is inevitable. We need, you know, the roads, the water, stormwater wastewater. We also need to fire the police, the food shelf and the related services that go with the growth. I think, you know, as we are becoming a suburb of Burlington, which is what we are, you know, you could call us East Burlington now. I think, you know, I mean, it's inevitable it's going to happen, we're going to have Burlington's problems. I think, you know, that the ARPA funds would be better spent just supporting the existing services that we have here in town rather than using ARPA funds to push growth. In town money to push growth. Let's use the ARPA funds to support our existing services like the food shelf, the conservation committee. And, you know, we have a lot of services in town that need the money. I hate to see this ARPA money that is only here for a short period of time be used for long term growth. It's just something to think about. Not against growth. Discussion for the board. My question is, do you have a particular, I mean, it's too soon to do a particular area that you feel is likely to be designated or worried that the entire, like, form-based code that you're thinking will be used? I think it's probably premature. On the record, I think part of it is, it's the work to analyze the impact of the district because you don't necessarily have to, yeah, it's scaling it too and deciding to draw the line. So part of that would be the analysis the consultant would help us with. But I've seen, there's districts of many different shapes and sizes and, you know, part of it on the other side, too, is you are committing that grand list growth to the district over time, too. So that's not growing the town's brand list during that period of time. It's in the future, but you're achieving infrastructure debt service that you would, you know, conceivably using tax, the tax levy to pay down otherwise. But there's, you know, there's arguments for and against that, you know, that's certainly something to be aware of as well and how you draw the lineate, which parcels for it. But I guess, because I don't want to say exactly, it'd be speculative on my part without having the better eyes on that kind of support before. So then my other question is really related to like facing the other exam tips. Are they, one, successfully paying that debt service through the tip revenue without, you know, having to, you know, utilize their capital? Can that debt service be fully covered by that? Is there an example of that happening? And then after that 20-year period, we have, you know, 10 years within the one to establish to incur the debt service and the 10 to 10 more years of the tip being operational. Are there examples of tips having to pay off that debt service within that period entirely? Like, is that possible? I think we can look at some tip audits. The state auditor's office audits all the tip districts. I know they just did South Burlington. They had done the newskees recently. You know, I think, you know, otherwise in the news too, there was a Burlington with some adverse findings that they need to correct. And a lot of that's just staff capacity and overall management and the reporting component of it. But that's the critical point in making sure you don't take on more than you can pay. And part of that is some of those larger projects in the earlier iteration of the district. You kind of think of those different tiers within that 10-year period. You likely want to bring on some larger, more expensive projects early on so you can stretch the debt further over the window of the district as well. So, you know, maybe you think a larger trader lane type street, that would be an early project, for example, just to throw something out there. I think we, apparently, wouldn't be part of this because we have it on its own trajectory right now. But those are just the questions that we would need to get some guidance on and answers of how to shape it. Good questions or comments. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Thanks, Mike. Matt, it's been a happy week. This is the longest time I haven't seen you since I started on this board. You know, I was just thinking, I spend a lot of my time telling you and the planning commission what each other is up to. Thanks, Mike. Thanks. Thanks, Mike. But the deliberations are for the planning commission. On this, no rules, and certainly the chair has no authority to dictate what these discussions are. A couple of things. We need to wrap our heads around one of the things, including the bottom line, budget number of the dollar figure that we're talking about, the ultimate tax rate, tax rate and tax increase, things to consider. Our fund use, obviously, reserve fund use. Specifically, staff requests that are in the budget, whether it's consensus on that and basically thoughts on the budget. So what I would like to do is open it up just to a general discussion of the budget. That's possible thoughts, but not mandatory. And that's our people's general thoughts on the budget. I have a question for surely or Eric or both. And my annual question is for a one cent increase in the tax rate. What does that bring in? What does that cost? Roughly. It's been around 180,000 in the past. What additional set will raise in tax revenue? For additional tax revenue. Yeah, about 215,000. 215. 215, okay. So tracking about what we've had in the past. So I had a couple of suggestions to have staff take a look at between now and next week or two. And that is how it would affect the budget that we have in my estimation to critical new positions to create. And so I would propose that what they, that the HR director and the detectives for the police department be funded for a half a year. Each. And we've been notorious for underfunding the ARF fund over the number of years, but I'm not prepared to recommend $150,000. But at 10,000, I think that's a little light. I propose to add $30,000 to the RF request to make it a total of 40 and funding. Let's see what happens with the tax rate, but also we can think about ARPA funding on that. I know we talked about it before. And the ARPA funds for the ARF, right? Because it's really, really substantive, right? Yeah. That deadline. Yeah. But we could give our service because they spend a lot. Yep. Right. Surely if we allocate it via grant, that is our obligation. So, yeah, it's a little more quicker to do the rule change. So let's just use the food shelf as an example. Sorry, Shirley, would you mind coming up to me? Just so folks out. So if we use the food shelf as an example and think of what obligated means now. So let's just say we wanted to put a line item in the FY 25 budget for the food shelf. We would have to make sure that we actually gave them that money before December 31st of 24. Because by that point, we have to have a commitment, which means PO, a contract, an agreement to spend that money. Even though it doesn't have to be spent, we have to have one of those things that documents that we have obligated that fund. And that's not obligating it through the voters approve it in the budget. So that's just the timeline. And that's definitely a doable timeline is to fund them or make a payment to them before December 31st of 24. Does that answer your question? Yeah. This is picky, but this is me. The third building in grounds Park FTE at $37, $38,000. That's a half the narrative says that's a half time, like taking a half time position to a full time position. I think it's 27 hours a week. Yeah. So it would be an error in the narrative. I couldn't find it in the FY 24 budget. The other half like shouldn't there have been an increase? See, I'm trying to think how we pulled that out. That's why I'm trying to surely because there's trading between. And some of these things I'm just going to send you an email because I have a couple of questions along the lines of Terry's that are just me being curious about numbers. But that one I just couldn't see where it like it went from the buildings and ground staffing is like $5,000 going to a different number. So that's, but that's okay. You don't need to answer. I was just curious about that. Are you sure I can? Well, long as you're sure that it was in for budget somewhere. So in FY 24, we have two full time buildings and grounds and the part time position. But in FY 24, the second building and grounds position was going to become full time in November. We move that forward because we have never been able to fill the 27 hour a week position. And then those buildings and grounds people, their wages got allocated out to all the departments. So that's why it changes so drastically when you look and we just removed all of that allocation. So they are there. They're just spread differently. And then one of the full times buildings ground people goes to the parks. So May to October. So those wages are moved allocated to the park parks for the summer time period. So they're, they're spread out through the budget. And that's still true. Jean in the FY 25 budget that that part is still true. Yeah. Yeah, I'm kind of maybe with Terry on the, I understand the buildings and grounds FTE add, but I can't quite prioritize it given how high the numbers are right now. I was just wondering if they could go back and see if they could figure out this is just a tough year with no increase in the grand list and all of these, I mean 13% increase in salary average. That's a big increase across all of our staff. And so this is a tough year to be adding another position, but if they could find it somewhere, I just noticed a lot of little, you know, little things you don't really worry about that much $2,000 for paper or whatever. A lot of them just got increased for inflation and maybe they could go back and scrub and say, well, I didn't really spend it all last year or maybe I could do without this whatever for, but I won't replace the computer for another year. Just if there's something that they could do to maybe offset that position I could see adding it, but because I understand my understanding is it's hard to fill a part time position so that's, but that's hard to justify. I'm having trouble staffing it therefore I need another $40,000. Yeah, the I'll say to for buildings and grounds and parks there there's a lot of potential work out there that we just can't accomplish with the staff even with the part time person. So it's thinking over time here that there's in talking with Bruce there's additional need to complete some some of the need we have today and we make it work but there's there's additional things we could be doing in our buildings for for maintenance and upkeep. I think as we think looked at janitorial that we contract out the library and the police department at a certain point if we have more staffing capacity, we can bring that house and offset those contracts as well, but we're not there right now. But see, but that's the kind of thing that I obviously like great now you just offset it right, but instead we're adding and we're not taking away to contract. They're both in the budget. So that might be something if they say, well, maybe, you know, I'm willing to take that if we can get this full time position. I can cut the cleaning at the library or whatever so I can talk to Bruce more about it. Our initial discussion was, if they've got four person crew that would be something they could take on I can I can talk with them and see if there's any different avenues to look at. I was going to say the other piece there is sorry. You must come and sit up here. That we also have in the budget a 30 hour a week position for parks as well and we didn't fill that either because it's impossible to hire part time so Todd was out doing it this past summer. So that purse that position would also help in the parks in the summer as well and do a lot of deferred maintenance in the winter time that isn't happening. My question, you know, and I agree and agree on the budget and then of the four, chiefly, but of the positions, you know, I cut this off in their work that you're not doing that. So if we're not doing it now, because we don't have the staff like is, you know, the investment in this staff right now ultimately going to cost us a lot less than whatever the work is that we're not doing. And it could be problematic in five years, whatever because we didn't do the work. Well, and that's why you know I'm not going to sit here and say you should cut here you should cut here that's not that's not my job. It's you guys got to figure it out but it's easy to justify adding and it's hard to justify not but I mean this is going to put us wouldn't it put us over like a 10% increase if we added all these positions. We're at eight something now. It seems like we just run run it to be sure. Yeah, so you know what, I think that would be a tough sell so it's just my thought is that if they really want it maybe they could be a more creative about figuring out a way it's not it's not like it's not. It's not a second lieutenant where they could have had $160,000 they've defined $40,000 where so if they could make it work without a budget increase that would be great is there a way to potentially have these positions and keep it in early. 9% because they're cut to be made like where could we really trim something and keep it. Say under nine to even just to add the two positions or two could we run scenarios where we do that. We can certainly look at it I can say I have to do a dollar amount of point three I think it's 8.7 right now. But a lot of this is driven by the by ways of benefits. So we run that risk of large significant amounts to decrease the budget are likely a staffing discussion or deferring capital equipment purchase discussion. We can certainly run any scenarios the board like this. I just don't work with these numbers those are the right not staffing is not I mean we're trying to add staffing and I want to increase staffing you know but but yeah I mean if there were capital projects that we could be deferring I think that that's something we've done in the past, potentially even to put off you know for another year or we're still talking about our funding so if there are. You know, some of these kind of capital expenses that we could. But towards ARPA. I mean now's the time to consider it. Yeah, we're just deferring the problem to next year but at least next year we may not have this grand list. Right. Sort of what we're talking about a second ago I was just, I had a curiosity about the amount of overtime that's in our budget and I got lost when because I know some of its contractual. This seems that way. But anyways I'm just wondering like one to maybe go back and are we planning. I know it's tricky one if you have a lot of overtime in a year because you're not staffed, right, but then in the budget, you assume you're going to be fully staffed. Did we take down the overtime assumption? Does that make sense? Are you talking police fire? Everybody. There's overtime everywhere. Yeah, surely some people have overtime. I think Trill, you're probably. Yeah, so we did decrease the PD we had that about 150 hours overtime to down to 100. That's good. Now I just want to make sure someone took a good account. It's really easy to say this is my salary increase and this is my overtime increase and you don't. Right. And fire we also took down, I can't remember the exact numbers, Jean, but we also, Chief, ran some numbers. I did a lot of digging and looking at some numbers as well for the overtime. But data wise, our systems don't allow us right now like Chief was like, OK, how much overtime comes from training? How much overtime comes from having to carry over from a shift? How much comes from shift fill because we don't have the minimum that we're required to have. We don't have that data, which would be more helpful to determine the budget. But we brought down fire as well. I just don't remember how much we brought them down. So we sort of shave that where we could as well. And how much do you guys scrub revenue? Because everybody seemed to be a little down on their revenue. Are people being conservative on like, like we're spending $40,000 on the rec zone, but there's only $10,000 in revenue for the rec zone? I don't know if that's what you're playing or is that being conservative that, you know, is there. I'm going to grab my book. Yeah. Don't be really serious ways if we just bump revenue up. Yeah. Historically, we've been conservative department. And this is the more the revenue based on town sources as opposed to the side of it. Right. I was going to say and Charlie runs most of those. And Todd really looks at his numbers, but with the I'll say with the rec zone fees, a lot of what Todd has in there, he just tries to make the program pay for the contracted person so that we can have as many residents participate as possible at the lowest cost. So we aren't, I mean, that's been on the list for a while. We don't look at recreation as making money or breaking even at this point because it's that balance. But is it in line with like the revenue from the camps, things like that? Yeah, the camps make more revenue and Todd increased those a little bit, but where he doesn't tries not to increase fees much. And he does use donations to for scholarships for people who who can't afford them otherwise, but His dilemma for the camps is really staffing. He had a very difficult time getting staffing this year. And of course, he's limited to the size as well. So you don't see a huge increase in revenue and the day camp programs because of the limitations that are there. Contracted camps just see more revenue and essentially I think it's Todd builds in $10 or $50. I forget what it is per camper per camper. Because we're just essentially organizing the camp, paying the contractor, and we just keep a, I'll say administrative fee for putting the camp together and doing the enrollment and then pay them out. So it's $10 or $50 per person we make from those. So Todd doesn't essentially, since I've been here, there aren't a whole lot of, you know, it's getting more people who want to do those. We call them contracted camps, getting more people to do those and in the space we have because a lot of those happen again at the school in the summertime. Some of them are off site, but the majority of them are happening in the school space. Like what I said, I can't, I have no way to judge what you're saying. I just happen to notice that like even the highway department revenue was down the after I adjusted for the grant. So it's like, you know, is everybody being 5% conservative on their revenue and would that make up a difference? Yeah. Would that allow us to buy a lieutenant? You know, that's all I wanted to say. Just something to think about. I'm not asking you to do it on your list. Do the first number carries. The HR director. Yep, I can run that scenario along with the ERF. I just didn't ask for the math for the operating costs proposals for the four positions. It's about an additional $450,000. So I was, I was trying to figure out the percentage increase here. If anyone's quick here, it makes the total bomb line about 15,650,000. And that was 30,000. I wrote notes Terry, did you say 30,000 to the ERF? Yeah. Additional. So 40 and all. Yep. So there was, so the maximum number they're possibly looking at is 15,650. If you funded all four of these positions plus what was proposed in the manager's budget. Yeah, that would be the additional operating costs increase. And that would, again, not tonight, but maybe next week. The answer of what percentage increase that would be to the budget to the, I'm sorry, the tax rate. Where's your calculator? You're about last week. Yeah. Mike, it's not right here. I was going to reach over and use it. So right now the tax rate with the tax increase. I get 11.4%. Okay. 11.4. All I did was 15.6 over 14. Yep. What is the 11.4? 11.4. Thank you. What is that? That's the tax increase. If you added all four positions in the month. Yeah. That's the tax increase percentage. Oh, that was the general fund increase. Sorry. Oh, that's what I thought you said. So yeah. So that would be 11.4%. We're at 8.7%. So just think back to your question, Brett, to get up to 9%. We're even like 9.5%. That's also saying four positions, that's including there. Like, I think we've talked about maybe not the lieutenant this year. So that's one less. And, you know, what if we were to take, if we were to not fully, you know, to have the building getting grounds, like, and live to see different scenarios so we can, you know, provide the best service when we know, we know that some of these positions are really integral for moving our time forward and for continued growth and for meeting the growth that we already, you know, have. So, you know, I think that, you know, the HR director in the detective position really feel imperative at this point. But, but again, as Jean said, you know, it's hard to justify adding anything if we're not also kind of, you know, looking at things that maybe can, can wait a year or can, you know, something and 11.4%, that feels really, that's a lot. So, so essentially, I can tell you a rough math if we're talking, you know, all four of those traditional 450,000, one cent on the rate yields about 215,000, talking a little bit over two additional cents there on the tax rate. I couldn't put this together more detailed on memo for all of you, but you know, one part of the exercise could be, do you want to have kind of a target bottom line percentage and then we can work through the positions question and the possible expense reduction question to try to arrive at that, or maybe it's a range you want to fall within and these are your goals to get within that range. Nine point five. Nine point five. That's my range. Less up to, but not to exceed. Firstly, I think public safety at least the lieutenant would be always important. Yeah. I mean, she fully identified detective of the two positions, but the detective was the number one priority for the police department. So, you know, and I like when he said that, that, you know, the work that that person that person would be doing would allow some more patrol officers to be on patrol. So that, that is really important to me. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the HR position, the way I see it at least is, is, you know, we, we have a lot of staff. We've grown a lot of staff within the past three years even. And I know it takes a significant chunk of your time. And we do think things like overtime in your department and other departments and having an HR person to take on some of these roles that some of our staff members are taking on would potentially free up some things like overtime and things like that because they're taking pieces from other people's jobs that, you know, Yeah. I would certainly advocate for that as a, you know, central administrative staff and, you know, freeing up Shirley's time to focus on finance, freeing up the town manager's office and staff time to focus on some of these big initiatives we have coming forward. The HR component is huge on a day-to-day operation standpoint here. And there's, there's things that come up where you can stop everything and work through it. And there's no towns that have, I mean, that's, we have how many employees? 80. 80 full-time. And I think over a hundred when you factor in time. Yeah. Not too big a problem for HR, but so, so 80 employees, a full-time HR director for 80 employees. I know you're not going to get a half-time HR director and you need the person here, but I just didn't know if there's other towns have figured out how to manage around that. I would say that municipal HR has been kind of an ongoing discussion for years amongst municipalities. Some, some that try kind of a part-time or a shared position role that have part-times filling in or it evolves over time. Towns I'm connected with, they tend to have different HR professionals, the Essex South Burlington, Essex Junction, Stowe, Colchester. And they have comparable staff. Yeah. Yeah. And Haycock Gordman, when they did their report, right? They said that we were kind of already past the threshold for requiring an HR director. We had surpassed that a while ago. Yeah. That was their assessment. And, you know, we have two unions as well. So that's other complexities and just overall staff management as well. I need a 9-1-1. I need a police officer. That's priceless. True. Police are priceless when they're needed. You can't put a cost on a weight when you need them. But I guess you could, one could argue that if you had an HR director, you might have more luck in keeping those police officers so they're there to answer the call. So do we want, do we want to give, but actually, do we need to give you a range or do you have enough information to craft up stuff for the next meeting? Or maybe another scenario. So you have real numbers in front of you? Yeah. So right now the only scenario we have is the HR director and a detective for half the year and add 30,000 to ERF. Another scenario that you would like us to run? I actually don't have a scenario as much as I think my target would be, well, actually the rate of inflation now is down to three, something percent. But that doesn't, that doesn't really drive our budget because our budget is staff, which has, you know, had increases this year again. But I'm still thinking like something close to the average rate of inflation for 2023. It's probably arbitrary. But in terms of understandability, I think it's at least a concept and which is it too much to ask for like a menu and a checklist to think. Are you thinking like seven or 8% number? Yeah. But that, I don't think we're going to get that. But I want to, I think what's going to be hired, that's my, that's my thought. It's not really even full, so curiosity. How close can we become to that? I don't, and again, I think that the needs that we have seen that are addressed in this budget are real needs and we're not going to be able to get around them. But we're not going to meet the needs that the town has to face. And I think that's going to be the biggest challenge. If we, if we make the budget not increase to the amount that it should increase. I don't think that's going to be just the rate of the average rate of inflation in 2023. It's just kind of a thumbnail measuring things. Yeah. I mean, I would. Assuming it and I spent, it's been some time going through the numbers assuming that there's just not a lot of fluff in the budget. That means cutting positions and it's going to come out of that it's worth. The effort. The effort. You guys have a light week though. We're always. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Don't spend too much time. To my biggest, my biggest one is just really being able to explain the salary increase of that bigger number. And, and I know. Yeah. We certainly talked about having to keep. I mean, I think this town knows that we had struggled to keep our police department intact. Right. And, you know, so I think there's, there's a narrative that people would understand that. Yes, we had to do this and now we're paying the paper for those decisions, but yes, we have public safety in this town where some town. Don't. So public safety. Providers, I guess. We're not really adding things. There's, there's a little bit of, there seems like those little bit of creep in each department, maybe, but a little more overtime or a little more of this or a little more, but, but I don't think that. I just think that people will understand and increase, but yeah, if we start getting into double digits, I think that it, that just starts to look reckless and then not caring about people's. So I agree with all. What about using ARPA money for quality of life services? Right now, instead of growth. What? You know, like the tip. What quality of life stuff? You know, you know, like police services and, you know, the services that the town needs to provide. Well, we are doing that a little bit. There's 75 police. In the proposal, there's $75,000 of ARPA money going as revenue, which is the same thing. That's what you're saying. The problem we have that is that what do you do next year? Right. I mean, that's the point we've always, yeah, is that if we, if we use it to hire a lieutenant this year next year, we don't have ARPA money and we have to pay that ARPA, that lieutenant salary out of next year's budget, which means that automatically bumps up next year's budget on top of any other bumps that are going to happen. So we're just deferring that tax increase. Talking about role, like the community center, you know, instead of, you know, the tip, you know, instead of, you know, putting money towards growing the town, taking the ARPA money, putting it towards growing the town, making the town bigger, taking that money and using it for the, you know, the fund there, you know, Eric was talking about. We can't use it for his fund. Yeah. Yeah. Conservation or use it for, you know, Yeah. Yeah. Eric's fund. Use it for quality of life. New name. Well. That won't look good. It is the ERF. I don't know. Technically, money is fungible. So yes, you could bump that $75,000 up to, you know, 200 and put the whole difference in, in the ERF if you wanted to. Not with our, not, you don't, you don't take the check and put it in there. You break, you increase it in your operating expenses and you increase it in your revenue. Yeah. You know, so yes, you could get away with that if you needed to. But, the tip, you know, growing, you know, the downtown's important, but maybe right now instead of growing the downtown, we take that money, you know, that's $70,000 and put it towards, you know, the revenue, there's $70,000 there, you know. We, we, we'll, we'll a little away on that, find out where we can take money from that. Yeah. It's one, one-time money. Yeah, that's my concern. One-time money. You can't spend it on something. Right. But spending it on growth is one time too. Well, but it's, it's not, it doesn't, the, the ideas that the ARPA is being floated for, for the one-time, the growth-related stuff is, as we're calling it. It's, it is really just a one-time expense. It's not like we're hiring a planning director with our money, and then we're going to have to pay him another year and another year, another year. There was, there was a, a historical precedent where the fire department, way before Chief Collette had a proposal to increase the number of firefighters. And there was a grant of some kind that, and the idea was that it would pay full, full freight for something like six firefighters, then the next year, five, and it went all the way to zero. So that at the end of like five or six years, the, the cost of those firefighters was entirely being borne by the taxpayers. But we kind of like added them on with money that wasn't really ours. It was a grant. And the board basically rejected that because it was, you know, we're committing to overhead that we're going to have to keep paying year after year, but the source that we're paying, paying it with is not going to be there year after year. And I look at ARPA the same way that I don't want to use ARPA for just some, some revenue to cushion the shock a little bit with what we're going through. Yes, but not, not much. My, my thought. Was it up there just to at least knock our, you know, increase, you know, a little bit. Yes. Yes. When we talk about ARPA, we could discuss it. There's more revenue we want to apply, but I'm just really afraid that that number goes to zero next year. We have a huge revenue hole next year that. Right. That's one of the things we had done was last year we used 150 from ARPA to reduce the tax. I can't remember the exact number. Last year meaning 23 here. Well, FY24, this current, this current year. 125,000. It was 125. Thank you. This year this year. We're currently in there. So FY24, we, yeah, we used 125 an hour, stepping it down to 75 in the year before that. 300,000. 300,000. So we've stepped it down. We've been using ARPA funds for the past. Now this will be our, we're going into our third fiscal year using them to, you know, help decrease that tax burden. But next year there will be zero whether or not we do. If we do 150,000 this year, 200,000, that's going to be felt again, that much more next year. And I think we've been tried, tried to, you know, be mindful of that, you know, in budgets at, in decreasing it so that there isn't a budget where it feels like, wow, all of a sudden we're feeling the full effect of all of these decisions we've made over the past few years. How much are we putting into the community center next year? Well, right now it's just ARPA funding that would be proposed for it. So it's 150,000, they're estimating on our ARPA funding. So there's 150,000 and 70,000 on the tip. There's 220,000. That's over one cent. Well, it's, it's, that's ARPA money. Right. Yeah. You could apply. Oh, we could apply. Yeah. And next year if that two cents comes due, right? So next year you start out with two cents, even if you don't give anybody a raise. Right. Nobody's going to get additional services for that or anything. No, it's just. But it's still money at which we've gotten the vein. This year. This year. It is. Not next year. So this year we do 12% increase. We'll see how that goes. That's all. We're just trying to figure out how long the increase. That's all. Yeah. You know. So do you have. Enough of the explanation for your homework assignment? I think so. I think, you know, the board's target is not to exceed a nine and a half percent. Right. Bottom line increase. What I'm hearing is running a scenario with half a year for the second police lieutenant, the HR director and some additional ERF money. We can see kind of what the, you know, what the dollar amount looks like to get to that, not to exceed nine and a half percent number. I'll pass department heads at our staff being tomorrow. We're doing a final scrub to present to me by. I'll see how quick they can scrub, but I'll ask them to do it by next Monday at the latest. You know, if, if we, we typically do this every year, we do a fun look and we, you know, come up, we cut some and we can reassess some revenue projections to yield something there. Yeah. We'll promise six digits, but maybe we can get, we'll see how the exercise goes. So let's be realistic with the board of what we can, what we can look at there. One, one thing there's nobody's talked about. And I know that, I know Shirley and Eric are well aware of your, it makes your skin crawl to think about the reserve fund being used to as just regular revenue. But I'm wondering if that is something that we might want to at least have as a. Thought to increase the amount that we're taking out of that, given the. Fiscal situation we're in, but. Hoping we're not going to be. Yeah. Right now it's pretty decent right now. So you wouldn't necessarily be putting yourself in a bigger hole. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a policy decision for the board. My. I say this every year. It won't be there forever. Yeah. Taxes. You know, it's a lot of it is excess local option tax revenue year. We're giving back to the taxpayers to offset the property tax rate. But if we get in a situation where we needed to use a big chunk of that money, or, you know, it's going to dip below your 10% bottom range in your policy. Yeah. It's, it's again, filling that revenue gap in it in a year. So I think we built it in a way where we wanted to bring it in with a decreased amount. We originally had it lower, but we left it at a spot where the board could have a discussion that we'd be comfortable if you decide to increase it. Right now, isn't the amount in the fund at the higher level of the policy? It's, um, it's in the upper teens, 16.5% or so. It's supposed to be in the corner. No more than 20%. Right. Yeah. Your range in your policy is 10 to 20% as your benchmark. You can always deviate from your policy. It's a board policy, but that was kind of your benchmark. I feel like the way you do about our wastewater capacity, the way you do about half of it, I get really nervous. It's going to run out. Yeah. It keeps you up at night. That's what I think about, guys. So we will come up with what that additional increase looks like to get us to the 9.5% and then we'll see what that looks like from to fund those positions. And then we'll see how we can, if we're not there, regardless, we'll do the scrub, the final scrub for expensive revenue, but we'll kind of see what those numbers look like. We'll get you some materials Friday for your discussion next Tuesday. I know that it's probably a lot of work, but like could we do like a leveled approach to like look at it, like if we added just the HR director, we added, I mean, I don't know what the salary difference is between the HR director and say like a detective, but if we added just the HR director, we added the detective. I get what you're saying. I would say that if you had an HR director, not at least detective, that would not. Well, I actually, in my head, I was thinking the other way around ultimately, but yes, like if we just added, we just added one over the other, you know, what the difference is there being just to see, I mean. Yeah. I think it's, especially for doing a half a year, that's one position. Yeah. I'd kind of be okay with just that. I mean, if we get at that point, I would say add those two positions for half a year. That's kind of cheating, adding a half a year, but it would add those two for half a year. And then beyond that, I probably didn't be more comfortable with the revenue. Yeah. As opposed to taking one or the other out. If those are our two top priorities. Yeah. I know I agree. I mean, I think ultimately I think both are pretty necessary. I mean, but. I wish it was a way to get a cheaper HR director, but if there's not, I want a good one that could cause a lot of havoc. Yeah. I think that's realistic with the market. And that's salary and benefits on the sheet, right? Yeah, that's salary and benefits, and it's also a little bit for like professional services. But I think a salary, we're probably talking in the 90 to 110 range, probably roughly for, for a person with the credentials for, for this type of role. Do we need to do, I mean, we, you know, we have the art boat worksheet and we've talked about it and different things. I mean, obviously it's nine 15 now. I'm guessing that was not the time for a deep dive into our workshops, but. A little bit of a proposal on that though, because. Yeah. The ones that Eric has already included in the budget, you know, I mean, are we, are there any, maybe we just talk about those ones to make sure the only one that I was kind of on the fence about, Fred is something you said about paying for the first lease payment on something at least, which seemed like it was an ongoing cost tasers. The tasers. Yeah. Not the tasers. Oh, with the body cameras, the body, right? Okay, today in that camera. Yeah. That one a little bit kind of broke the rule of one. Yes. Bending, but other than that, or do we all kind of agree that though, I mean, because that takes most half the money away. Yeah. It takes it. And you're looking at just so everyone's looking, you're looking under capital on page nine. If you look at that spreadsheet that summarizes all the capital. You. Oh, there it is. Surely you're welcome. So I'm looking at the spreadsheet that looks like this. I think that's what you're getting at. Jean. Well, and there's a few other things that are not capital, but yeah. Yeah. All the capital budgets. Yeah. The dated, the December 8th sheet that I highlighted, I think that is some that are baked into the capital budget than others that are. But as you pointed out, Jean, that takes half of our. Yes. I think that's a good balance of a. Jean, did you want. The staff. No, I was just thinking that so we were taught, we had talked about how we were all going to like do our. Yeah. Prioritize or how we would come up with the money. And then we put them all together and kind of see like, cause I think that. I assume that a lot of them would line up pretty easily. And then you just have to have a harder conversation about. Maybe five as opposed to 25. But. But just looking at this, it's like, well, I think the ones that have already been, if there's anything on the baked into the operating budget that we disagree with, we need to know that so that they can bake it in to the operating budget, not offer money. Right. Right. Yeah. So I can't remember. I'm. I'll tell you, I put it in Excel, so mine would add up. I don't have the highlights, but. Anyone's looking at it or which ones were on the operating side of things. I'm not the person to be doing this math. My head, by the way. You can just read what they were, what they are. Yep. So the, it's the community spaces. Like the next phase, the, the actual design and all of that. That's 150. The brick church fire suppression system, which is at 300. Plus or minus. And everything. Obviously. Plus or minus. But that won't be a bond if it wasn't. I don't know. I think, is that what you said, Eric? I think it said in the, in the narrative. A good thing. It might be helpful. If you look at page nine, that column. Yeah. Everything that's highlighted. Okay. To that. Okay. The numbers too. Yeah. Yeah. The parking lot. That's hard decision here. So. Right. We were thinking of using part of our, then the balance with debt. We're also going to apply for a $200,000 grant from the state this month, but we don't know if we'll get that till after town meeting day. Right. So part of the decision here is on. If you want to bond for bond, bond authority for an amount of money or something. We need to build that first debt payments. Just an interest payment to the budget. It's a, it's a minor increase, but it isn't. We can defer the first principle payments. And we can also add that. And we can also add that to that. We can also add that to the debt. We can add that to the debt we want to have. Or we could make a principle payment and FY 25 that. Deciding whether to ask the voters to approve that bond for the parking lot is going to add something at that service. And we can, we'll run those numbers to the next. Looks like based on our. On our seven years. Right. So the ARPA use towards that project gives the debt a haircut one that I mean I know it's necessary and I very much see the value of it but you know thinking about on town meeting day you know having a bond vote for the town hall parking lot. I don't know because I kind of feel the same way about the well actually I kind of felt like the brick church fire suppression should be debt as well those those two in one bond it's kind of like village improvement. We talked about that yeah as we put this together we talked about that as well that's certainly a question for you. You do have a presidential election this year so you could potentially defer a bond vote to hold a special meeting in November too if you wanted to look at this project. We don't have to do the parking lot construction this calendar year we could do it in 25 but that's an option as well you have a couple opportunities to ask the voters for this calendar here. It puts the onus on the voters not us yep like everything. It's hard with the parking lot at least I the way I see it is like if we commit to giving the $200,000 of ARFA towards it then we're also you know committing towards I mean obviously the voters will decide on the bond but it's you know committing this money for something that they then also like. Right but if the bond doesn't pass then you still have time to spend the money right that's true right yeah but I think it does lower the number to something it's not like jaw dropping yeah yeah like how much are you paying for pavement. And a big driver you know towards the cost here is to put the conduit in the ground for charging stations for both the town right behind here and for the police station for future electrification of those vehicles that that is significant cost to the to the project. And that that furthers you know we had talked about like a lot of these things too with ARPA money like what does it tick off for our town like land goals and things and you know it may seem like the town hall parking lot does but that really does because of that reason then like talking about EVs and like this makes that feasibility going forward for our town right so yeah that was a big sale yeah for me yeah um okay so I've got I've I've troubled page nine sort of is going to explain to me at some point but so like the community spaces if we don't fund that with ARPA it just doesn't happen right right because it's not in the operating budget so or you make a decision to put it in our operating budget and still yeah 9.5 yeah you're in positions of that yeah yeah exactly yeah um the uh okay so what you're telling me over here where it says ARPA capital projects or equipment funds is that when I was looking at page nine yep actually the operating budget was the one I was immediately worried about right these are the yeah so so everything on on page nine that is reflected in that um the table that's highlighted essentially right so the things oh there's so there's the tasers I see it now so the column and the operating budget so that is being funded with tax revenues or ambulance revenues however you want to think about that right the fund balance column yeah is not in the budget at all because that's fund balance and it's it's you making an allocation to use the fund balance so we used to put it in the budget is revenue and put it in the budget is expensive after talking with the authors that oh you don't need to do that got it just just you could make a decision to use the fund balance for those projects impact fees is outside of the budget um and then um ARPA is ARPA and debt is just that yeah and it shows all ARPA all ARPA we've identified our capital except for the 75,000 that is operating right so those are those are staffs okay what we've baked into those two budget proposals and that she has other projects that you think about the total the total amount so jean I was going to this page because of your comment right if we don't use ARPA it comes back to operating so hence your discussion if we don't want to use ARPA rating or ARPA money and you want us to go back to operating then we should know that to run our scenarios okay so back where it was 15 minutes ago and I was still trying to find the right page the only the only one I had a problem with was the body camera tasers felt like a ongoing expense yeah it is it's a five-year program and technically it's really a lease and I probably want to have more conversation around the brick church fire protection in the town hall parking lot but I don't think that impacts the that's not going to go into the operating budget so we can kind of right except for the debt yeah that would go to that would go to bond or right right although it does still have an impact right so if we are going to not use ARPA for those then it'll go to debt and then we'll need to include the interest expense and make a decision about principle putting on or you could do it later so it doesn't hit next year's right right defer principle we can't defer the first interest payment right right much different it's different right 800 if it's $800,000 one first year of interest isn't gonna probably break the bank no so I'm missing something you said 800,000 so I'm looking at the 660 in the debt column plus the 300 plus the 200 well I saw in the town hall parking lot that there was maybe 200k from a grant for the downtown program so that 860 is that in the debt 200 minus 200 yeah I didn't include the grant in the budget this was from the ARPA file if we receive it as a grant we can decide to either you know replace the ARPA money with that or decrease what we borrow yeah so I was kind of hoping that would like happen and so there'd be 400 ish on the parking lot and 300 ish on the and I gave you an extra 100 yeah so anyways I guess on the rest of the ARPA I don't know that to your point Greta is late and I don't know that we need to decide tonight if it's not if the other ones were if you're good and you don't want us to switch anything else to operating right yeah yeah and I'll I'll plug the body cameras or for the discussion so that was yeah discussion yeah we are coming back next week yeah was there I um uh I just remember it could talk to some talk about the leasing the space in tax corners next year to get started with our so I did get a number while I was out I saw today so the lease for the space is $25 a square foot for spaces we are looking at the annual lease is about $40,000 or so part of thinking I this kind of I think plays into the public safety planning you know Jim's recommendation and getting the second lieutenant position established would help to build out that unit right so I might suggest you know deferring that space until we have the staff infrastructure to manage the bill oh absolutely yeah so that just to give you a rough idea numbers wise that's kind of what that lease payment would look like and they're certainly going to be a bit of a cost to to that space as well whatever space is town if we want to afford that way though there'll be some cost and I guess a little bit like the rec zone which didn't look like it was in the budget we just did it because you had it was right thing to do when you had the revenue right so I mean could end up that we have another Christmas is really good this year maybe that the taxes can be a little bit higher and we can decide to pull it in but we don't have to budget for it you know don't raise taxes to do it could do it opportunistically yes what I'm looking for is the rec zone usually used in the evenings or is it during the day both I think we have some outside groups using it as well um did ask Todd's looking into just potentially if there was some room to use more space in the building I don't know if there will be or not but just for you know iterative planning here whether you know if the town moves ahead with the community center at some point it's still multiple years off to to build something so just gotta remind Todd that the more less revenue it gives us the you know this community page for the school too so if you're not going to pay the school you paid twice for it and it has been in our tax rate so I've just been there twice I've been meaning to stop by there more often got an awful echo in it yeah the DRB had a meeting there well the board had a meeting in December they're not going to go back there just to find echo but we don't want to invest in the sound there right now because we don't know what a long term future is we can only get a one year visa at a time there from the landlord because I know someone that was looking for you know space to rent we went we went by went by and looked at it because of the echo it wasn't feasible yeah so the hour is late so I'm wondering if we can move on from the budget discussion if people are comfortable with that yeah thank you and we are coming back next week and we also have a possible meeting that we had scheduled on the 23rd of June so that being said if we can move on the managed report is there a manager yep it's basically schedule so next week on the 9th we have it planned as a work session on a budget what staff will do is take your feedback this evening run these numbers and scenarios and get that information to you to continue your discussion you could decide if you want to depending how that goes you could chat about ARPA that night or not but you know beyond what you mentioned tonight that's in this operating budget you can you can decide on ARPA more in February or early March if you want to we have the deadline end of the year so probably sooner rather than later is probably a good course to think about here we need to warn town meeting we need to get the annual reports the printer I think by the 25th of January so ideally if you need an extra meeting to finalize the warning about the 23rd for that so just for the new board members after the work session if the board as you know is pretty much there on the bottom line I'll have a draft warning together probably for next Tuesday for you to have and then we need to just plug in a number essentially and plug in the bottom line and what to raise with taxes into the warning so once we have all that set you just have to formally take some legal action for the motions and then sign the warning and that could happen on the 16th and if we need more time we would convene to do that on the 23rd along with if you're deciding before with a bond there'll be legal documents that you have to sign a resolution for for the bonding authority and that type of thing so that could you be ready for for us to warn about the bond for these two projects yep I've I previewed it with the town attorney back in December as they get busy with these things so you're supposed to get me those documents by the middle of the month I told them so I was hoping to have those for the 16th so the board's ready to go that night we can we can do all the motions to get set for town meeting and if that we can the board can can meet the next week to wrap that up needed that's the I'm just I'm sorry but the the brick church you're saying brick church fire suppression and okay but the brick church fire suppression would only be if we didn't use our funds right okay yeah so I think it's pretty popular though I think that would I think people would support that yes so certainly I guess yeah with the timelines here just thinking about it I suggest you make that decision at your next meeting so the town attorney can prepare the appropriate bond authority documents for you to adopt on the 16th or shortly after what that would encompass so something to think about between now and then does I think that's not a good idea I think it's a good idea okay we can um get into budget mode I didn't start thinking about it yeah so it's three mountain transit's gonna come that night too I've asked them to come because they have a larger increase the shooting typically of the board and update the meeting scheduled for seven we could start earlier if the board would like I can just make sure to remount and transit could come but um that was the one thing I was thinking about this evening if you wanted to start that meeting earlier it's up to you that might make sense but what do people think yeah I think so it's dark earlier we um we had some questions for green mountain transit last time about their like point-to-point cost analysis and you do remember yeah they were straight yeah so just just if you could remind them that like we wanted to know about how that yeah that's some questions I had was would they had like a 50 increase in their senior transportation line it was huge like I don't where'd that come from yeah I'll um I'll make sure they address those points um yeah I want to get them to the board during your review process without as the larger increase in the in the budget yeah line here yeah so is is there a time the board like to start 6 6 30 I mean I don't really I'm not going to sit here with 50 questions for Shirley in a public meeting I will probably send her an email so she can explain to me why they make sense so I don't know that I'm gonna need you know three hours of budget it's um I don't know how this process usually works for you though this is about how usually work yeah I mean I think I think as a board you know it's not our job to go through line items so it's it's um I need I have questions because I need to understand it but I don't think I need to grill you on you know so you think I'm seven I think seven's fine but that's just me let's stick with that because it'll be the only thing on the agenda right yeah green mountain transit that might take 20 minutes or half an hour then just budget to liberation yeah I'm like grinding them into the ground so yeah that's that 18 grand is pushing me over the edge okay then my only other thing we're gonna do a staff holiday lunch on Friday from 12 to 1 so I'm going to um probably temporarily just close some departments of the staff can come over for lunch you know you missed the holidays already we haven't been able to do this since 2019 so we're bringing it I didn't hear that part it was just gonna give you where the building's gonna be closed happy uh happy peace of the wise man what the wise man called epiphany epiphany happy epiphany that's all I have to see okay um any other uh actually other business no other business final thoughts on agenda items from this meeting and hearing nothing we are adjourned