 All the meeting to order I guess for January 13th, 2020, first thing that we always do is approve the agenda and if there's any add-ons or changes from the rest of the board if you hear now, if not I actually do have an add-on that I'd like to put on there and it's to have a brief discussion about Harwood Union's proposed budget for 2020. We can get into the details on that. I'd like to do it before we get into managers items because I think it's kind of important that it we do discuss it before the managers items because it may have pertain to what we're talking about tonight. So with that change if there's no others I take a motion to approve the agenda. This thing working? No. Try that now, yeah. Make a motion to approve the agenda with the addition of the discussion of the Harwood School budget. I'll second. Okay. Next thing to do is to approve the consent agenda items. For some reason this doesn't want to stay on. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda items. Okay. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Public. Is there anybody from the public here who wishes to speak? I don't see anybody so we can scratch that off the list and on to the Harwood Union district budget discussion. So this weekend I was contacted by two of the Waterbury School Board representatives. We spent some time together on Sunday after brief emails and texts back and forth on Saturday. They came and met with me in reference to the difficulties that they're having trying to get a resolution on a budget proposal at Harwood Union. There's a big concern right now that that the decision will be made based on what their board is going through to kind of stick with no changes to the budget as presented on the sheet you see in front of you. You've got six options there. It looks like they're having difficulty number one selecting any one of these six options and of the six it seems as though there a lot of the school board members are pushing hard to stick with status quo which basically means little to no change which would be the base budget the typical number one line item base budget here with a total reduction and you'll look down there where it says total reductions under each option of a minimal 195,150 and you can see up top there some of the changes that they're proposing to make to get that deduction which are basically minimal changes. They did explain to me some what of what these changes were. I had difficulties with some of the abbreviations and still now even then I can't quite remember what some of the abbreviations are but the long and the short of the conversation was that they're having difficulty coming to a conclusion as to which one of these six options to choose. I've been told that if you look on well if you look on the back of your sheet down at the bottom you will see the common level of appraisal percentages water berries is you know up there substantially I mean there's a few others that are this you know a little bit higher but below that the increase in our current rate under the five six different choices water berries tax rate if they go with the status quo budget our tax rate would raise somewhere in the 7.1 percent range and down through the five different six different choices the last choice being the 2.8 percent increase is of the six choices is the cheapest cheapest for basically everybody and what that consists of is the closing of the faced in school that that saves the district one point four million dollars and their concern is that right now they're the Waitfield Warren district area over there though the schools faced in Warren Waitfield they're pushing hard to have no changes at all to stick with the first option which our taxes would increase seven point one percent and then on top of that try to come to us at some point down the road here and ask for a bond of thirty to thirty five million for upgrades and so there's a huge concern for us to try to stop that from happening I have talked to other people I did talk to one resident of faced in this weekend and asked them without any conversation about this ask them what choice they would like to see and that particular resident said I want to see faced and closed so I guess I'm here tonight in part to ask for you know the taxpayers of waterberry and for the board that represent the school board that represents waterberry at least the two that I met with to see if the board would agree to have a letter drafted in support of the option six of the one point four seven two million dollar savings and encourage the school board to go with that option in order to obviously try to decrease our tax burden but if they're going to be asking for a bond of 30 to 35 million on top of that it could be very detrimental to our tax rate in our in the towns our municipal ability to to do anything on our own and I don't know I thought a little bit about how this letter should be drafted I guess I'd first like to hear from the rest of the board as to how they feel about this maybe some of if you got any questions if I can answer them I will Chris do you know can you run down those discretionary reductions that are in option six do you know exactly what those mean talking about the reductions identified that yeah they're all options difference it's like five and six seems to be those like five reductions what I understand the sustainability ad at CrossFit Brook eliminated that is apparently a teacher's position apparently they have a program over there that has to do with basically self sustainability in other words learning how to take you yourself at your home growing a garden and raising livestock other aspects of self sustainability whether it be learning how to put up put up crops for the winter but I meant the section below because all of those are the same no matter what option right on that section it's that reductions to meet board directive section one down okay boy that's where I'm gonna have some difficulty they told me what the reduction of district-wide curriculum PD expense that had a difficult time explaining that one to me Bill do you know what PD would be I was hoping I should I should have asked one of the board members to come tonight they could have helped us through this little bit reduction of $50,000 added for HHB legal to 20,000 that's not I'm really struggling with these abbreviations obviously there's you know the one that's obvious is music teacher ad at cross a book would be eliminated nurse at 50 yeah but the music teacher in option 6 looks like it's it's not that option isn't executed what I'm reading it looks like let me see you in some of the options they eliminated and some of them they don't I know that they pertain to well what they did tell me was that all the options 5 and 6 doesn't eliminate any teachers or programs so these other items have got to be programs or teachers positions if I can text one of the board members and see if they'll call in and for us over the phone it looks like option 5 is basically the elimination of face in but no programs are affected in the lower section is that the difference between 5 and 6 has those 5 options that are can I ask a question what what is the deadline or the time frame by which kind of commentary would be ideal because I think it would be good to have somebody come here and talk to us about this you are I know at crunch time here Wednesday night is I don't know how likely it is for us to give good information just saying choose six because that's the lowest tax rate for everybody you know on the on the bond and I'm not I'm not here speaking in favor of the bond but if you have a $35 million bond James appreciate you calling James Grace so we're going through the list here of the two sheets that you gave me I don't know if you have those available or whether you can answer the questions over the phone here yeah yeah so the column where you have the six options listed and you have the reductions to meet boards directive there's a fairly substantial list on column two the first one is eliminate placeholder for hearing project now that I ask you that I remember that that's a program for hearing impaired correct okay yes okay great thanks bye Bill do you know have you seen this yet before the meeting only what I've read the paper those percentage increases are those percentage increases on the the school portion of the tax bill yeah I believe they are so in the back of the page you see the current tax rate for water break is so you'd have to increase it so $1.68 if it went up this 7.1% it will go up to $1.80 and if it went up the 2.8% it would go up to $1.73 I guess I think you were what yeah what I was going to say about the bond and you know I don't know what they're talking about but I've heard the same number so a $35 million bond if you if that's over 30 years that's 1.1 million 1.16 million of principal and if it's a 5% rate you would double that so you'd have a bond payment of 2.33 million if it were a 33 a 30 year bond in the in the most expensive year would be 2.33 million and 2.33 million on their on their base budget of 40 million is it's a 5% increase and if you divide it into the minus the revenues you know the revenue it's like 32 million 948 down at the bottom in the worst case scenario so if you divide it into that that's about a 7% increase so you know it's I'm not saying 5% 7% is nothing but it's you know it's that service over a period of time and whether it needs to be a $35 million bond or a $15 million bond is maybe the baitable question but the school's Harwood was built in what opened in 1964 something like that so you know it's pushing 50 years over here and you're going to have to spend something on infrastructure they don't last forever but the school board's concern is that to try to accept both of these current budget and what it is without any deductions their their goal was to offset the impact of the bond right by the closure of the school so that there would be less of an impact overall to the to the tax rate I understand what what their concern is I'm not I'm not trying to say don't worry about it all I'm trying to do is give you some parameters in terms of understanding what a $35 million bond means you know the closing of the schools I've attended some of the public hearings and I you know what's the number of students in the district looks like it's about 17 or 1800 students all together right so it's I think it's like $18,000 per student isn't it yeah it's up top it's 18 to 19,000 depending on budget right so but it's interesting when you look at these numbers here you're going from 40 million 472 to 39 195 yeah you can sit right there it's fine do you need a copy or you got one me too yet another meeting right I had asked the question maybe you could just quickly run down the reductions to meet board directive and explain what what each I was specifically asking what option six but since we're here maybe you could just explain that list if you don't think it would take too long all right so that first one you want me to start with the stuff that's included in all options or just the discretionary stuff I think just because the all options one there's really isn't it any choice there right yep all right so the hearing project if any of you have kids in the school system you may have seen the teachers wearing the stuff around their neck there's a receiver and when they talk it goes into a system where if there's hearing impaired kids they have headphones they can put on and hear that they found that it's super helpful also for kids with attention issues and so there's a program at Thatcher Brooks it's been in use for a while they're getting a lot of good use out of it they want to expand that across the district and so that was a proposal to the tune of 40 grand that we'd of course like to do but it's it's on that list and that 40 40,000 would expand it into the other schools yes that curriculum professional development so there's a line item for professional development for the teachers in the curriculum area obviously a great thing to have our teachers getting professional development experience but that's on the list for reduction the next one is legal expenses we've been encountering more and more legal expenses with respect to bullying and freedom of information act requests and so that's not something we previously budgeted for and we are trying to budget for it this year we've been paying for that out of other areas so the admin team originally was looking for 50 grand and they're willing to reduce it to 20 again that's like to not get suit or get involved in those things but we do so we're budgeting for that you know where that's landed the last couple years in terms of where it's how it's been paid for well just what that expense was because you said that you typically don't budget for it but you're having expenses yeah it's been increasing so you know there's a the superintendent was talking about a specific situation recently where it was a bullying situation and both sides ended up getting counsel and so we had to get counsel and I think that one situation about five or six thousand dollars so you know this is budgeting for you know a couple of instances a year the wellness center at Harwood is a program that was initiated by the students it's for people struggling with various mental health related stuff for what it means to go to school it's really important to a lot of the a lot of the students which means it's pretty important to a lot of board members we really like to keep that one that went in but it is a new initiative that was being added to staff that at high school so what is the delay of point five oh like that I think what they're trying to say with delay is you know that they won't do it this year but we'd like to do it in a future year so that's a half a half a position half a guidance officer and there's no staff for that right now I believe it's not but it's not there now yes it's a new program so John just to I mean James just to help me as we're going down through this the first column the base budget that's the base last year's budget with increases and these things added into it right yes that was the original proposal from from the admin team when we started this process so that's a foreign 4.85 percent increase on the expenditures right yes and then the next column over is all those things get taken out that we're talking about now right yeah we had a long meeting where we had a bunch of discussions about what we were willing to tolerate we ultimately passed a motion saying we only want a 2.2 percent increase and ask the the budget that complies with that directive okay so when you say 2.2 it says 2.9 in that same column down at the bottom yes so is it 2.2 because you the revenues drop it to 2.2 tax increase or what does the my understanding is that that's as close as they could get to 2.2 okay okay but the column number five and six is 2.14 1.54 yeah so this is you know as you guys are we're in budget season right so we've been in a bunch of different discussions that second column was something that was presented at a moment in time right there was then another meeting where you know we weren't happy with where we were that produced the next four columns of of information so this particular summary sheet is just summarizing the various things we reviewed at various points in the process okay so I think what Mark was asking for earlier were sliding over to columns five and six column five doesn't have any of those reductions except it has a million dollar reduction for operational savings and then the column to the right of that has the million dollar operational savings plus some of the savings for the programs that are listed above right yes is the operational savings closing a school is that what the big deal is that what the big difference is what's that one million dollars in those two last columns not closing a school so we have adopted a plan by a narrow margin as a district and by narrow margin I mean on the board that includes a bunch of things but I always summarize it with three major things so first is closing face in elementary school second is moving all fifth and sixth graders from more town elementary school to CrossFit Brook so they follow a similar pattern that we do at Thatcher Brook and third is combining all the seventh and eighth graders at CrossFit Brook so this particular budget line item reflects implementation of the second two of those so it's moving the fifth and sixth graders to CrossFit Brook and combining all of our seventh and eighth graders at CrossFit Brook the faced in topic would be additional savings to the tune of about another half a million dollars a year but there are a lot of reasons I'm not going to go into unless you want me to about why we that's not in the table no I I'm just trying to understand so that the million forty five thousand in the two right hand columns just shuffles the deck in terms of where students are going but it doesn't close a school correct okay so so on the table right now from the board's perspective at least today faced and isn't scheduled to close on any of these scenarios correct yeah I was I guess I was had misunderstood that yesterday's conversation easy to understand there's a lot of moving parts so the reason that those final two so if you've paid any attention to the press you know that we've discussed this merging of the middle school's topic about a thousand times and voted various ways the reason it's back on the table yet again is because when we finally got to this point in seeing these numbers we were faced with you know a two point nine percent increase with a bunch of really painful programming cuts or a one and a half percent increase with implementing a plan that we had already agreed to implement anyway and so there are certainly many board members that don't agree with my point of view but my point of view is we've already agreed we're planning to make those changes the admin team says they can do it for next year we can get all of those and the other big differences in column two all of these savings are one year we'll be having the same discussion next year about all the program versus making these other changes as operational savings that we get every year from now on so on Wednesday this week is your expectation the board is going to choose one of these scenarios one of these six that's what we've said so by law we need to you know the exact date doesn't happen to fall on the board meeting date but we need to have the final warning done by next not two days from now but the following Wednesday and so if we don't leave Wednesday's meeting with a single direction we're gonna have a special yeah and and I know I'm dominating the conversation I apologize but and I acknowledge that I live in Waterbury and not in one of the Valley towns or more town it seems that if these programs that are listed in the second column the hearing program the wellness that you've already described can be all kept in place in the fifth column and and keep all the schools open at least for now and to save a million dollars which would be a 2.14 percent increase that seems like you know kind of splitting the baby so to speak I agree with you Mark do you want to have a definition of the rest of those white items or you content so far with what you're hearing I mean I think maybe we we can get into a little bit more because I'm not sure I mean I think I understood what your goal was Chris tonight was for us to draft a letter stating our support of us maybe a specific option and I guess Bill I'd ask I turn to you and say has the board done it in the past is that something that you would suggest we consider and then my personal question be could we instead of necessarily picking an option which you know I think I think I understand what the scenario and I think I personally just in a quick glance would lean towards five just because I don't see a reduction of of programs but more of maybe a letter stating that we would ask that the board consider the options that would lower the increase and then hope that they would land on five I don't I don't know if it's better to say you know we would support an option that doesn't go higher than 3% and then hope that they kind of fall into place but I don't know if the board stuff is in the past or I can't remember the select board weighing in specifically about a budget or writing a letter to the school boards you know there's always been the conversation about well if the school goes up X percent it's all in the same tax bill we have to collect it and you know it limits us or it it could be perceived to limit us I don't necessarily agree with that but I understand the sentiment you know the select board has they've had members attend the board meetings back in the day when the budgets were all voted from on the floor a number of the select board members and myself went I still try to go to the annual meeting even though the budgets are all voted on by Australian ballot I'm not saying that you should or shouldn't do it it's I think from the if I were on the board it's a little hard based on 10 minutes of information to make a good letter that represents the the board in your representation of the community I'm sure James and others would love to hear from you especially you know individually but I think it's a hard thing to do to come up with a cogent policy that you can defend you know in a letter at this late day but that's just my opinion that's pretty much how I was feeling I come and I'll make it I am not going to try to sway you guys one way or the other we we have heard from a couple of the other select boards of part of this process I agree that to the extent that I have experience living and participating in this town I would say it's not common for letters to fly back and forth between the boards but I think in this particular juncture that we're at we've certainly been hearing the ones I'm aware of are from more town and faced and so it would not be unprecedented to hear from the select boards of part of this process but I'm also sensitive to the fact that I drove down here on five minutes notice and gave you five minutes of information so how many children would be involved in the moving of the seventh and eighth graders okay that was the movie in a fifth and sixth rate and that's only an option to right those last two options with the significant savings both combination of the seventh and eighth graders and moving again just speaking for me and I know there's petitions out in the community in the like I think we have to make decisions as a district for the benefit of the district as a whole and again I acknowledge that I'm in Waterbury which is the biggest town and is one of the towns and the state that's been growing a little bit and that your book has more students and everything else but I think that I'd like you to hear from me anyway that the idea that the voters should support any move to make decisions bound by votes of individual towns is a bad thing from my perspective so I'm just talking to you and I was going to ask you to clarify it with that a little more so we voted we voted I don't know four or five years ago whatever it is to become a consolidated district in advance of well act 46 was passed by the legislature which basically said we should consolidate school districts the Harwood Union district was a district that decided on its own to do it we voted to do it as opposed to some school districts who are still stewing the state and trying to get judges now to overturn you know mandated consolidations and when we voted to consolidate the articles of consolidation basically said you know for the purposes of schools we're one district we're going to have one board there'll be representatives from each town on the board but that board will make decisions for the district and I I'm sure it's because of the issues of closing schools and and I appreciate that I understand why people are concerned about the closure of schools but there's a movement now out in the community and you may see a petition and if you sign the petition and if the petition gets on the ballot and then that ballot that question passes what it would say is even though we're a consolidated district and we have a unified board the board can't choose to make a decision to close a school unless that individual town votes to close the school yeah I think I have that right so yeah we'll see where that that bag of crap lands well but just so you understand what what's being talked about from some people who are circulating the petition I think is that they want to have local control and for them local control is having an individual town vote on their school closure or not and the local control that we've adopted under this form of government that we all voted to adopt is a unified you know so it's like in the old days if you remember your US history you know there was nullification and ratification that that certain state you know you could say well we don't agree without law so we're gonna nullify it and that was found to be unconstitutional so so for for me after meeting with the board members my bigger concern is potential likely potential from what I understand of of the budget of these changes not being made a possible you know first scenario here of basically no no little to no reduction at all and then a possible bond vote for the addition to the school systems upgrades afterwards is gonna you know the burden of that will drastically hamper our ability to try to take care of some of the problems that we're faced with in our own town and I know other towns are too I spoke with the chair of the Ducksbury select board tonight before coming to this meeting and they're up in arms at their current you know circumstance on you know and then having to look at substantial increase in the education tax let alone dealing with their own problems they're beside themselves right now as to what to do so I just thought that a letter of of support of either option 5 or option 6 and an explanation as to why we support those the fact that the impact of any of the other options may drastically reduce our ability to take care of some of our own things that's always been one of the crippling forces in the past I believe that's why you know we're in the condition we're in with our infrastructure and other issues some people don't think that we're you know we're having a difficult time funding all the things that we're trying to fund but you know I I guess I see it differently so it's my pitch and Mike you're kind of coming in half halfway through the game here um those two the million 45 option is it fair to say that that is a consolidation effort is that how you would kind of define that as if we came out and said we're in support of any effort to consolidate and not reduce programming would that basically say and like how our other towns that the letters that you've received are they actually doing maybe what was kind of being presented which is like literally an option verse if we spoke in the broader picture of we support efforts of reducing expense through consolidation which would start to like say we are supporting five and six without necessarily saying we choose option five and you know like yeah fair enough so a couple things I think using the phrase we're in support of options that choose consolidation versus limiting programs we've been just using the phrase consolidation yes I think that would be interpreted the way you want it to be interpreted second when I was referring to previous communications from the select boards far earlier in this process so I don't know that it's productive to go into those in detail but faced in and more town and both of those communities have felt strongly about the process we've been through and we've heard from their select board as part of that so not specific to this this budget stuff my point earlier was simply that it's not unprecedented for us to get input from the select boards this year in particular as we're making some of these difficult decisions so I don't I think the way you you phrase that would would be well understood by the board you know I do want to comment one thing further if we and again and we I could talk for an hour and a half about education funding and you'd still not you know you leave with your head spun spinning in terms of how we do it in the state but I think it's important to notice or to note that if we look the the percent increase that you're seeing here is not going to translate one for one to a tax increase that we see if we look at the first column that 4.85 percent again I could open my laptop and give you specific numbers but in watery that translates to about 8% increase in in taxes in Ducksbury I think was eight or nine and so you know even if we do adopt five or six where we see those lower percentage increases the actual impact the taxes is going to be higher than that that's on the back yeah it is thank you so the the driving reason behind that is this thing called the common level appraisal which I will vastly oversimplify by saying that they the state looks at the past three years of sales and how home sales in a particular town and compares that to the grand list value and if your home sale average is higher than your grand list value you pay more tax and the opposite otherwise why do they do that they're trying to make sure that for towns where prosperity is increasing and they measure that by the comparison between sale home sales and grand list value that we get assessed additional taxes in this particular year both waterbury and Ducksbury are seeing a larger impact of that particular equation which from my point of view as a waterbury resident even acknowledging my role to be you know a steward of the entire district is increasingly problematic yeah but the I mean it's not intended to penalize towns for prosperity the law says that you're supposed to pay for your education taxes based on fair market value and fair market value is a hundred percent so if you have a piece of property if you have property that's worth a million dollars and somebody's paying you know 1.1 million for it then that means your grand list is 10 percent lower than it should be so your common level of appraisal is going to be 90 percent and it basically equalizes the payment across the district and across the state and it's a it's a little bit complicated but it's not intended to punish anybody it's just to try to put everyone on the footing because if you could pay only on the grand list of your property that your local listers put into the grand list well then they could say well we want to depress our taxes so we're going to list everything at 10 percent lower than it should be and if there was no means to equalize they'd be an incentive to to list your property at a at an improper value so it's just it's part of the formula but that's why four percent increase translates into a seven percent tax increase it's one of the reasons the other reason has to do with the state aid per student and all that kind of stuff the only reason I chose to bring that up right now as you guys were contemplating this decision is I wouldn't want you to leave this meeting thinking that you know the tax bills are going to correspond to the number that's at the bottom of that I think they already looked at the other side of the paper before you yeah I mean I guess I'll keep talking I personally think that I would be in support of forming some kind of letter expressing our concerns as a board of increased costs and affordability and and saying that we would support efforts to retain for me personally I would be to retain programming but to consider options of consolidation which I think basically directs towards option five if if you go off of that letter which hopefully would be an option that the school board would consider that would be what seems to be one of the most or least impactful budgets to the current rate without necessarily picking an option and maybe that can live on and tell us a board decides that they don't want to support that kind of thought process but that's kind of where I would lean towards verse if we come out with a letter and says we support option five of whatever we've been presented with the next meeting that things change doesn't really live on is what I kind of I'm thinking but I don't know exactly how to approach should there be any wording in there and then this is just a question as to the difficulties that higher taxes have on the municipality and its inability to even catch up with some of the issues that you know we're having difficulty financing now or is that I mean I'd like to make this letter at least somewhat descriptive to how it's going to impact us I mean obviously we're going through a budget season right now obviously we know you know we won't know until bills completely done but I'm surmising that if we're going to try to accomplish anything at all in this town beyond you know just basic meeting basic budget needs to do it to do with our infrastructure it's going to be difficult if we're faced with pretty substantial increase from the from the education level so I don't know how to put anything in writing or if we even if you even think that we should that would kind of lean in that direction you know I think Mark's statement about commenting on affordability kind of says what you need to say about that I think you need to be careful about how you couch things when you say well if you do something it's going to prevent us from doing something that we need to do because you know we just voted to spend a billion dollars to buy two firetrucks and maybe people on the school board were saying for crying out loud why don't we you know they went out they they're going to spend a million dollars and they're talking about paving and and that's going to impact how people vote on our budget I think you have to be careful about that it would be nice if we lived in a place and I've suggested this in the past that you know if you if you were starting over you would create a government that had the responsibility for everything that the government is asked to do on the local level you'd have schools fire police recreation all in one budget and then people get to kind of balance it and say this is what we want to do but we live in a place in a time where the school has their own elected officials they worry about school stuff and then we have to worry about everything else so I think it's a little bit problematic to to say you shouldn't do something because it's going to affect us I think you want to talk about affordability talk about consolidation seems like a good way to get there that's fine but it's your letter I mean I don't know who's gonna know and to your comments I'll just say this that I had expressed that's one of my big concerns about you know how our governments laid out we're a select board for the municipality you got the school board for the school board and everybody from what I've experienced and witnessed for the most part everybody's under the mindset that that's their problem this is our problem and there's no broader scope vision as to how all those things once they come together you know impact everybody and that has always bothered me to your point I mean like you said if everything was under one roof and of course we eliminated act 60 the the in-sync come sensitivity rebate process everybody would get the full taste of the impact and probably things would be a lot different but here we are in the circumstance that we're in and right because we're living in a state that's a couple hundred years old that has a constitution and a body of laws that grew up over the past couple hundred years and back when you know we first started doing things it was all one there might have been two boards but it was a library school or the library select board and a Duxbury school in a Duxbury select board and over time because of population and size and we're in a modern 21st century now as opposed to a really you know agrarian 19th century when a lot of this stuff came forward we're still living with the structures of you know the 1870s and 80s and it's the 2000 twice and and that's the hand we're playing we're dealt with and we've got to play well unfortunately if I could put together if if somebody had the wherewithal to put together an algorithm back years ago that would do the calculation on how this would all end out it would have had the end result would have had catastrophe written all over it and maybe we would have changed our minds there but my concern is this the economics being what they are in the country which are you know suggested to be at their highest peak they've been in history the town's ability right now whether you can argue the point whether we're doing financially better than we have been in the past my goal as a board member when I got on here was to try to catch up from all the backlog of things that I felt the municipality was behind on and again he keep beating this horse but infrastructure was one of those big items you know we've made huge accomplishments with the building here the new fire departments and slowly we've been over the last 15 years we've been making some substantial headway and I'm just afraid of you know this boulder rolling in front of us and stopping or slowing us down from from that progress because I think once that happens we're going to lose a lot of headwind and we're going to you know fall back behind even further because if the economy starts to tank and the next you know this can't go on forever we all know that the economy just cannot continue its upsurge like it is and whether it's two years from now four years from now I'm really pushing out you know at some point we're going to start to go the other way so for the ability for us to try to make headway then it's going to be even way tougher than it is now and this issue here couldn't have a big impact in that in that ability so that's where I'm coming from. If it's alright with you I'm going to excuse myself and go back home to my kids. If you have any other questions or anything let me know. I'm curious as to where you land on this but by way of boundaries I'm going to go home. Thank you for coming in. Thanks for calling James and she's so excited. Oh you know Carl if I fall and hurt myself when I can go to the hospital instead of the board meeting. Careful what you wish for. Thanks again James. No problem at all I'm happy to help you. Bill back to your comment on who would pen this letter. I know we've had you pen other letters for other so is this something that if I made a motion along the lines of basically that we as a town have concerns surrounding affordability and would hope that the board consider options that limit or limit increase on expenditure increases or tax increases. However I don't know which one would be better and then the comment on considering options surrounding consolidation should be should be considered. Is that something that you think you could pen. Yeah I can probably do that. So their meeting is Wednesday night. Right. It's Monday night now. So that means I got to do this tomorrow or Wednesday. Yeah I apologize. You have to come back in and sign. So well there's two choices and it's up to you. I can write the letter and email it to you all. And I really don't want you know five emails back with a whole list of corrections from everybody. It's basically yeah this is something I can support or no it isn't. And we could either you could either make a motion what you just said and authorize me to send a letter to the board and I'll send it to you first and you can say thumbs up or thumbs down. Or I'll send a letter to all of you and if the majority say yeah thumbs up then you can come in on Wednesday sometime and sign it and I'll get it to them before they're meeting Wednesday night. Not all at once. We can just come in throughout the day. Yeah just throughout the day. I'll make that motion. For which option then. Well basically the option is that Bill pen the letter as long as we all approve it I guess via email we all come in on Wednesday. So you'll sign the board. So I'll write a letter for the board to sign. Right. You say all. You mean the majority or all. You don't need everybody to sign it. Just a quorum. Right. Three people. I guess that's what I'm asking you Bill. What would you rather see. I mean to send a better message. Exactly. If all of you sign it it says more than if one of you signs it. You know. Three of you sign it. I mean if three sign it will people over there say well only three fifths of the board supports it. So if you can't all sign you know that's that's your choice. I just didn't know how the availability for everybody to. I can email it and if you want you can all print it off and sign it and then you have to pack to me if you want. And then it can go over there with each individual if you can't all sign it but that's less of a. I'll just to be technical. I'll second the motion because we probably should discuss without a second. But I do want to add my two cents. School budgets are always a tough issue. With me and I kind of a little bit agree with Chris I think we have a lot of things that we have to deal with locally as. I'm very pro education. But I'm also I come from an era where school budgets were a little more manageable. People did. I think more with less and sometimes I think we need to go back to basics and some of that is partially. Can we afford the number of schools that we have now you know they've talked about closures. Can we afford all I don't know if we can provide all the services that everyone wants. I think that it's a tough choice. Everyone will everyone wants services for their kids and I always think I want to see kids have a great education. But also I say sometimes you can't afford everything you want because you're going to put a lot of people into. Very hard situations that they just can't afford their taxes. I'm going to have to leave. I've seen a lot of my friends leave out of the state because of that reason. And I think part of maybe that's something I think part of the reason that we need to in this letter draft. Something that saying yes we're concerned about affordability here with them down. And you know the school board has to look at what the expenditures are and be considerate of that. And I think I think of a well crafted letter and I do agree. I think it should be unanimous because I think we should be going as a full board with five people. You know or either saying either that or not do it at all. That's why I think we should focus on affordability and consolidation as long as maybe we're all in agreement on those two topics. I think if we say anything I don't I wouldn't support personally anything in the letter stating including programs for considering cuts on that. I just don't know enough about this to consider myself knowledgeable on it. And I feel like the school board hopefully has enough people that can make those considerations. But if we're just trying to at least direct them down to at least the fiscally responsible option of five or something like five. That's where maybe just those two topics are enough to at least maybe move the needle a little bit. Those are the big things. But to your point about you know people leaving and everything else. I mean people need to remember that the people who show up are the ones who decide. And I just asked Carl I said at normal town meeting you know what percentage of the checklist folks on between 30 and 40%. Well probably far less. But if there's something like a presidential presidential I would say maybe that. So you have that this year. So you know for the people who can't afford it if they really can't afford it they should come out and vote no. I agree. No and that's the difficult part because you know well this is an Australian ballot vote for school budget. So you don't even have to you know get up and tell somebody that you're right. They get to the point where they're so frustrated they packed their bags and leave and they're so pissed off at everybody because they were forced to have to do that when they won't take the five minutes to get off their ass and come down and vote. You know it's they kind of get what's coming to them and but unfortunately probably not going to change that anytime soon. So a motion has been made and seconded. Obviously we've had plenty of discussion if there's no more. I take a vote on all those in favor of bill drafting a letter. Say aye please. Aye. Aye. Aye. And again I apologize Bill for this coming about all of a sudden but it was kind of. Throwing my lap over the weekend. I'm not going to be available on Wednesday and I don't think I'm going to be able to sign the letter. So you know I think if you want to send a letter. That's that was one of my concerns. That's what I recommend. Where will you be anywhere around? No. Oh go say I could bring the letter to you. Well I'm working and then I'm traveling. All right. So enough of that. That's taken up a fair amount of our time. I guess we'll jump into manager's items and the first thing on that list is revitalizing Waterbury's funding request. Karen please. And sorry for the delay. Reading pleasure. You do not need to read it now. It is in almost finalized form as the board will approve it tomorrow. You don't have that. It was written today. And I also have a quick little graphic that sort of summarizes our past three years of our income. Revenue streams so that you can see how your support relates to the rest of what R.W. does. So as in my letter R.W. is here to request basically level funding from our from really the past seven years of support. You've supported revitalizing Waterbury with a contribution in the general funds of $17,000. That consists of $12,000. $1,000 payment to R.W. for general operating dollars. And $5,000 for marketing and emotional and branding support for the town of Waterbury. You also have supported us with an economic development services. That's $53,160. That has been to higher and economic development director. And you know her, Alyssa Johnson. And the work she's done is beginning to see some fruition of having her and Zoe before her. The work that they've done. And the request to make sure that you continue to fund the $5,000 in the planning department beautification budget. There's speed right there. It was awesome when it comes to supporting R.W. in the better. I can answer questions. I can give you some highlights from our annual report. I can discuss how our budget relates to previous years. It looks like your membership is going down a little bit. Would you want to talk about that? Yes, it has. And we find that that's something that the board has expressly decided to really focus on. With the higher and economic development director, our focus has been very much in towards businesses. And we find that local residents don't necessarily feel as connected to R.W. So they have in the past and we're working to change that. At the same time, business memberships have been decreasing a little bit. But we see that as a direct relation to the impact of Main Street reconstruction on their businesses. And therefore, for example, this past year, I saw a major donation from J. McDonald. I'm asking them, can you support us so we can support our businesses? Because they're not going to be able to come up with their own business membership dollars. And with that money, we were able to support R.W. in the normally due course. So we see that if Clayton Hurd will check out once the construction is done, we do see us coming here just going to talk for a lot of businesses. So one of the reasons our 2020 budget is, I've made a note here. It's an amazingly conservative budget. The board really doesn't want to budget for things we don't have. We don't want a budget. Chris, this is right up your line. We don't want to spend money we don't have on projects until we know we can do it. We don't take out a budget. We don't take out a project without a funding source and no one can communicate for it. So we feel that this is a really strong budget. One we absolutely can live within. And the reason I gave you these numbers of a budget versus actually, you can see how we truly, every year we budget conservatively. And the last two years, we bought and made 15 to $20,000 to manage projects and activities that we were doing. And that money comes from over and over and arrives at sources. It's one of the things that I do. It's money and action with different businesses, foundations, organizations. So the individual line item, is that like a J. McDonald contribution? That's a good question. So actually individuals is a misnomer. Maybe we should change it, but that's how my budget is built. Individuals are vendor fees. It's raffle sales. It's all the little bitty things that come in for anything else that's not a membership. Is that like the, excuse me, the admission to the Stowe Arts? Yes. So that's the top. Ten bucks each. A lot of party gate comes in under there. It might come in as a cash. I don't actually identify it as a single person. Or any silent auction sales or raffle tickets. But also vendor fees when we have for the Arts Fest, costs a vendor $75 to be at the Arts Fest. If they're not a corporate business, often it's just a person that falls there. So is the, excuse me, is the membership money then either from businesses or individuals? Yes. So the membership dollars are both individuals and business. So up at the top is corporations. Corporations are also businesses, but they pay me for cooperative fees or those are sponsorships. Different kinds of money that has come in. For example, J.A. McDonald's donation to us in 2019 would show up under corporations. Whereas the, for example, in 2019 foundations, that consists of two grants that we sought. Actually they both came from national life. They were different revenue streams. I plan on applying for the grant again to national life. So we've gotten money from the Arts Council or from my community foundation. Or actually like Albertson's. That's Shaw's. They'll give me money. And that shows up under as a foundation. Question, your government line item. I'm assuming that's the whole town contribution. So do you ever go after other governmentals? Like grants and stuff like that? The fact is, not generally, we will work in concert with Barb to support grants from the town that will benefit us in a different way. So for example, what's not included in here is the main street money that is coming from the state of Vermont through Waterloo. It's funding, it's a different project. That's sort of, it's a project that money comes in and the money goes out. It's a zero sum game for revitalizing Waterbury. So we don't, it's not listed in here. This is our general operating dollars. Thank you. I mean, I'll just come in and raving support over you guys and feeling that I think the money we spend as a town goes a long way just through your volunteer network. And I think that I really enjoy this partnership. And I think it's something that we're seeing the real fruits of on a daily basis. So I just want to say thank you for all the work you guys do. I appreciate it. And I will say that it's a we, every team of people who are employed by revitalizing Waterbury at this time. Erin Evans, Executive Director, Alyssa Johnson, the Economic Development Director. And we have hired a part-time marketing assistant, Aria Almanla. All three of us work together in conjunction with volunteers again in this room. There are one, two, three, four volunteers. We're revitalizing Waterbury volunteers. Hello. And that makes a real difference because we can't do it by ourselves. I've said it a hundred times before. Thank God for the volunteerism that the town has had over the years. I don't know where we'd be without it. So Alyssa's portion of this budget looks like you may be taking that position and putting it into a full-time position. So $116 pays for her salary. It pays for the taxes, you know, those kind of things. It also pays for her rent, her telephone, and she has a small budget of expenses that are associated with the Waterbury Area Development Committee. She gets some professional development dollars, about $500 on that. We attend conferences. Her budget is here as money to support. We do a second job care, Central for My Job Fair, and a money forwarding of business consultants into doing workshops for businesses. So the $53,160 isn't just her salary. It is her salary plus some additional expenses that are associated with the Economic Development Committee. But it is a full-time job, and it has been for way back before Alyssa was here. Zoe was first. She was hired as a full-time employee. Also maybe I was just misunderstanding because it says for the final nine months of the year. So, you know, that's in my, it's in my memo. So in 2019, we paid $4,300 a month for January, February, and March. If you notice on Karen's request, her request is for $53,160 for the period April 1st through March 31st. And basically last year we went from $4,300 to $4,430 I think. And now the request is level funded. So there's no increase. We've been paying $4,430 since April. And the increase this year is flat. It's just that it's 12 months this year at $4,430 as opposed to last year. So last year it was three months at $4,300 and nine months at $4,430. A small increase to give salary increases last year. Because here we're level funded. Now speaking of that, I got to tell you the other, the last meeting we had there when John Malter was here. And he talked about what took place with his wage increase. And then a cut in hours, which the end result was he was earning less. That just, that hit me too hard to see that there's people out there that those types of things are happening to. And then they have to go on continuing to try to make a living here and stay here. That was pretty tough to swallow there last week. So everything looks great. I appreciate all your efforts. If I had more time in my life, I might be a member as well. They'll take your money. Well, I just became. So every dollar is all it takes to be a member of revitalizing Waterburn. I'll think about it. I just became a member of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce here a little while, a week ago. You'll get more out of revitalizing Waterburn. And the truth is, a lot of times businesses will wave between Vermont Chamber of Commerce, Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce from revitalizing Waterbury. And they join RW because they get, you know, first of all, they can walk in the door and find us. And we answer questions and we do like work and work for you. And the town is, and we're launching an amazing program to support Main Street this year. Please read the report. I think the report is, once we put it all together, it's like, whoa, we really did all that. And I'm pretty proud of the work we do. Well, I mentioned earlier there to you guys that maybe this next year, like in participate in some form of incentive to give people to come into town there. So we're still looking to talk to you about that. Yes. Okay. Any more questions? Well done. Thank you very much. Thank you, Karen. Thank you, Karen. Thanks. Sorry to keep you waiting. Mr. Dillon. You didn't say you could be in here yet? You've been here in the last few years. I'm not sure all these years. Yeah, right. Yeah. Just another night. Okay. So again, you know, fire department budget, I sent it out to you over the weekend. There's a 5% increase in spending proposed right now. And I sent you kind of the details of Gary's budget. I think Gary, you certainly can say whatever you need to say. I was hoping that you would talk a little bit about what you talked with me concerning the new equipment a couple of weeks ago, the SCBA stuff and like. So prior to, really prior to the merger of the two departments. And I can't speak for what the town did because I'm really not sure. But in the village, we purchased so many air packs each year to replace them because they have to be inspected. They have to pass. And there's an expiration date. Doesn't mean that they won't work. Doesn't mean that they're really not safe. But the people that are doing the inspections say we're not certifying. So then if there's an issue, Nia or whoever's going to come in and say, boy, this wasn't inspected or didn't pass inspection because there's no sticker on it. So we had a process to turn those over. Same with air bottles. The difference between the air packs and the air bottles is the air bottles, once they expire, they dead end expire. You can't fill that purely. So even though they might be good for the next 20 years, you don't know that because you just can't fill them. So when we merged, prior to the merger, I guess, the town got a grant and they purchased a fire truck. They purchased a number of air packs and a lot of air bottles. And over the last four, five years, we kind of realized that we're coming up to a huge expense to replace those air bottles because they're over $2,000 a piece. And the problem was that we had to play catch up to replace those bottles. Even though our packs technically didn't pass inspection, I talked with the people that were checking them. They said that they're fine. They work. They're safe. But we can't put a sticker on them. But if you choose to use them, you can use them. Bottles, on the other hand, when they expire, they just expire. Period. There is no, let's fill them anyways. You can't. So we have been scrounging over the last four or five years to replace those 45 bottles. And we didn't get that many because we don't necessarily need that many on top of the ones that we had in the village. So we did cut back, but we also had to replace a big chunk of them. So we didn't buy any air packs. And we finally got to the point this past year where we're good with air bottles. We're going to get those into a rotation like we do with our gear and everything else so that we have a smoother transition year to year of replacing air packs, replacing bottles, replacing gear, replacing everything else that we have so that it's, I guess, at least predictable. And a fairly consistent expenditure level. How long do the bottles last? Well, it depends on what you get. But for the most part, they're either 14 years or 20 years. Some of the high-end ones that we don't get are significantly less, but they're smaller and they're much lighter. We could, although I would never, at this point I would not recommend it, we could get a steel bottle that, as long as it passes hypo-tests every few years, it's good forever. The problem is that it's a steel bottle and it is heavy. And we don't use those. We have a couple that we use for airbags, one for lifting, but nobody's got to wear that on their back. And they're, I don't say twice as heavy, but they're close to heavy as the composite bottles that we use. Did the airpacks last about as long as the bottles? The airpacks, well, again, it depends on whether or not you're going to stop using it when it expires. So, but there is an exploration. No, they last less than some of the bottles. So, that's where we got to. For the last few years, we've been replacing bottles and not replacing packs like we used to do prior to the merger. The merger was the best thing that we could have done, but we paid for that. So now, I've met with Bill and said, you know, we're behind Apo. Now that we've got the bottles taken care of, we need to start focusing on the packs. And I'm sensitive to the fact that we just approve two trucks, although we got trucks, the highway department, if you're buying a new grader, that doesn't mean that they still don't have the other things that they've got to do to work as well. But I am sensitive to that. And I'm sensitive to the taxpayers who say, just spend all this money on trucks, why are you asking for additional funds? If you look at it, it's really not a huge jump. And there are also other things in the budget that add to this cost, like, let's see it in there, there's a gear extractor. It's $5,000. Now what is it? It's a very high efficient washing machine, not efficient in that it uses less water. It's efficient in that it truly extracts all the carbons and craft that's in the gear that really are known to cause cancer. And so we bought one last year that you can essentially wash after gear, one person's gear in that, and it really extracts all the bad stuff that's in it. So that if I were to wash my gear after a building fire and I put it in a regular washing machine, it doesn't extract all the bad stuff that's in it. But we know that the stuff that's in our gear literally does cause cancer. So on top of the air patch, you'll see that that is another high priced item. It's $5,000 for gear, something that we replace every year. Actually, I dropped that amount this year a little bit. That's on a rotating cycle. So it's a third or a quarter or whatever it is. Right. So the gear is good for 10 years. You might have Stan Morris who goes to more fires because of the time that he's allowed, and he's a very active interior firefighter and a couple others, that we replace their gear before it expires because of the wear and tear. So it's not just the gear and how old it is, it's the condition that it's in. And I've got an equipment officer that is a spreadsheet guru. So all of our gear is on his spreadsheet, and as soon as it hits 2020, some of the line items on those members go red, which means they have to be replaced. Others go yellow, and then he takes a look at it with our vendor at everybody's gear and says, okay, this is how much this is going to cost to fix this coat. But it's only going to be good for one more year. So it makes sense to just replace it a year earlier and not fix it and then have to throw it away the following year. So there's quite a process in doing that. I'm glad that he's the one that's doing it because I could never figure out how to do a spreadsheet like that. So I'm aware that it's an increase, but it's not a foolish increase. It's stuff that is going to make the firefighters safer. I certainly wouldn't stand here and say that none of our members, by using this new machine, this extractor, are going to get cancer because I can't say that. It's always out there. There's a presumptive act. The career firefighters have been pushing for it for a long time. I think it's passed in Vermont. It says that they get certain types of cancer. It's presumed that it was on the job. Some departments have gone so far saying when they get done at a fire, their gear has to come off them. They put it in a bag and they write back on the truck with the clothing that they had underneath them. We just don't have that luxury. There are departments around that have two complete sets of gear. So every individual member has two sets of gear. We don't. Would I like to be in that position? Yes. But when you're paying over $600 for a pair of pants, $1200 for a coat, I don't think you want to see what that bill would cost because it would be significant. Gary? I don't know if there's any money left in that month, but lately money, there was grant money for first responder equipment like the packs and stuff like that. I don't know if we're eligible or not for that, but it seems like some of this kind of extractor, especially the packs would be something that would be eligible for that lately grant money. I've not heard of lately grant money. I would look good to it. I get emails from Ms. Pirro from Senator Sanders' office, and she also works for Senator Leahy, and she's never mentioned any Leahy grant money. She always refers to the other grant money, which we're really... Most of it... We're eligible for anything that we're eligible for, but the challenge is that there are so many volunteer fire departments that have zero budgets that we look at Gwaderie's budget at close to $750,000 a year, and we don't score high on the list. We can try, and there's no other way to try. That's what I'm saying. It doesn't hurt to ask. Well, no, it doesn't hurt to ask, but it hurts to do the good work. Yeah, I know grant writing is no fun. Well, but we also don't have a town that has a grant writer, so that means people have to sit down and try and write these grants and you're competing against grant writers. I understand. I'm just sitting down with a book in a manual and going through it and people icing people who are not professional grant writers get grants as much as the professionals. Sure, sure. And again, it's a lot of time. Yeah. And, you know, how much time do you ask of your volunteers? And, you know... Quite a lot of volunteers. What's that? That's why people are volunteers. Well... They're willing to roll their sleeves. They already do. You know, we're not talking about volunteering on a Saturday to go around and I'm not minimizing anything that anybody else does. I think the library looks great with Garland and stuff, but they're volunteering to go out there and hang that. And our volunteers are getting up at 2 o'clock in the morning and going to fires or other incidents. More dangerous, I think, is going up on the interstate during the winter. So they're already putting in time. And I had one member who's very bright came to me and he wanted to put in work on a brand. And he came down... I think he might have talked to Steve or Bill. John Chowsky. And he was getting information and he realized that it was literally hours and hours. We're talking not 10 or 20 hours, but we're talking 80, 120 hours of work. And I think it's unreasonable to have volunteers sitting down and we've put in for grants. We've had committees. I've been on committees and we've gotten grants. But they're harder and harder now. 9-11 is long over and unfortunately people have forgotten. And back then the money was... They were literally just giving it out and some departments were taking money that they should not have been taking. Waterbury got money, but it was money well spent, even though we paid the price and had to catch up on the air bottles and now the air packs. But it's not as simple as just saying, hey, there's grandmoney, let's just get it. It's sitting down and... I understand it's a competitive process. Yeah. And again, there are volunteers and a lot of those volunteer departments have people out in the communities that write grants that sit down for them. I don't know anybody in Waterbury... In fact, I know nobody in Waterbury who is a grant writer has not come to me and said, hey, I'd like to write grants for you. So... I certainly understand, but when you're competing against the likes of Burlington and Rutland and St. John'sbury and Brattleboro and throughout Burlington and Montpelier and Barry, and they have people... That's what they do is write grants. It's a challenge. For some reason, maybe she's limited in that capacity, but I thought that's kind of what Barb did, no? She's done some grant writing, yeah. But that's not her... That wouldn't be something that she... she has either the timer or it would be unreasonable to even walk that path. Well, I'm not sure at this point... You know, she has... We pay her for 24 hours a week, and she gave me a budget today that tells me what she's going to do for whatever that equals, 1,260 hours in the year. And if there's 80 more hours, we're going to have to pay her 80 more hours. So, you know, how much are you going to get? Let me at least make a few calls for you to see if one money is directly available and what the process would be and I'd be willing to help. You know, I know something about grant. I'm not opposed to anybody helping. I'm just... I'm trying to be very careful about volunteering volunteers to sit down and spend a lot of time writing grants. That's it. Unfortunately, in some cases, our tax dollars are a lot easier taken from us than they're given back to us, you know. And there's reasons for it. Yeah, and, you know, part of me is, you know, what are we applying for and, you know, I try and be a little sensitive to the departments out here. If I go mutually with the owners coming Wednesday, their department's in our own mutually meeting to have virtually nothing squat. And they've put it for grants. And I don't know that I could go to the next mutually meeting and look him in the eye and say, yeah, we get $50,000 for this and they didn't get any money and they need it. So, good for water, I get it. But, you know, there are departments out there that are really hurting. So, as I said, right at the start, you know, that's the big ticket item really in this budget in terms of an increase. You can see on what I sent out the other day, it's highlighted in yellow down at the bottom. It's a 50% increase over what we budgeted last year. And it's even a higher percentage of what we spent. Gary, have you, do you know if you've turned in all your bills yet? No, I just got the last two bills emailed to me today, about three o'clock. It's, I wrote them emails down. So, it's $4,000, just over $5,000 for... Together? Total. Together, okay. For co-signants. So, that'll push the 729 up to about 735. There's a few other small putbacks that we may get yet. But right now, from a budget to budget basis, this is a 5% increase. There's also the adds to the bottom line is the building maintenance contract with Heinleau. Yeah, I was going to ask, I saw that jump. Yeah, the 70% increase, I'm sorry. And yeah, Bill Woodworth, the Public Works Director, came to me, talked with Gary. And there's a contract with Heinleau to do some of the, you know, general mechanical maintenance that needs to be done. It's something I think that it makes good sense for us to do, to have it on a regularly scheduled maintenance, rather than wait until there's a problem. So, it's a $14,000 budget for that for a year. Honeywell, are we talking like HVACs? Yeah, HVACs, yeah. Like stuff. Correct. So, a very timely thing this morning. One of our members works at this fire station on Mondays and Fridays, so he doesn't have to commute to work. And he got there this morning and the heat was off and it was 50 degrees in there. So, contacted the Honeywell rep. And fortunately for us, he's also one of our firefighters. But there's a process. I mean, not anybody can just call him. Otherwise, everybody would call him. So, at 5.30 this morning, we were doing, you know, texting to have him stop there first on his way out of town to fix the heating system, which was easy for him. Maybe not so easy for me. But it's also replacing filters. The air purifying filters we have, six of them are mainstream, three of them in Maple Street. It filters out the carcinogens and carbon monoxide when we start the trucks and pull them out. They kick on. They're both designed a little bit different. They kick on and purify the air. Those filters are expensive. They're a few thousand dollars when you buy those. There's three stages. So, Nat kind of grumbled about it there earlier and I'll ask about it now. The dispatching there jumped a little bit. Is that... I don't recall what it was. Well, we're going to have it here somewhere right from last year. It was 73 thousand dollars last year. 79.6 this year. And the number that Gary had on his... on his sheet, if you look at it, he had 81.860. But I think what Gary did was multiply the new rate times four quarters. So we have two quarters at the current rate and on July 1st it goes up. And the 79.610. I know it sounds like a lot of money, but if we tried to have our own dispatching, you know, it's 24-7. You'd need four people anyway to be dispatchers and, you know, to cover vacations and off... I mean, you need three people for three shifts a day for eight hours. Or two people if you have 12-hour shifts and you're paying a lot of voter time for that. So, you know, it looks like a lot of money but if we tried to pay for it ourselves, we'd be paying $200,000 for it. Yeah, I was just trying to get an idea of a sense of whether that was a typical increase year-to-year. Is that a private entity? It's the city of Montpelier basically. So this... there's capital west of neutral aid district. Gary can get the name better than I can. And that's the organization of the fire departments in central and broad ambulance squads and the like. And then that organization contracts with the city of Montpelier, I believe, to provide this dispatch. So Montpelier dispatches for their own firing police and ambulance and then they also dispatch for capital west. So Montpelier police is the... is the dispatch location and the dispatchers are paid by the police department. Montpelier fire and ambulance are part of the capital mutual aid system. So they actually... They're paying... They're paying through the mutual aid system for the dispatching service. The equipment that's there is co-owned by Montpelier police and the capital fire mutual aid system. And on top of paying for the dispatching, the capital fire mutual aid pays to maintain and change towers around. So that's a lengthy process in itself because you've got to get FAA and then Canada pipes up and says no because they have the right to restrict what we do over our air. But there's a lot involved in... It's not just paying for the dispatching. There's maintaining the towers that cost money each year. It's moving towers. The one in Waterbury is going to get moved. It also needs to be pointed out that 79,610 for 2020 includes the dispatching for WASI as well. Years back, we put it all in the fire budget just so we could all see it and WASI paid the town money for dispatching. So it was like a $40,000 dispatching bill and WASI was paying $22,000 for $24,000. And that continued until after the flood and then they came in and asked, could you please pay for all the dispatching? We did that. And now last year, they've asked us for almost $40,000 a year. But the per capita that we pay recognizes the fact that we're paying the dispatching for them already. Otherwise, our per capita with them would be almost twice as much as it is. Yeah. And they certainly have significantly more calls for service than we do in their probably averaging three to four days. They have a lot of incidents. So back to the building maintenance line item. Outside of the internal mechanics of the building, is there any portion of that? Or do you anticipate like exterior painting and other things like that having to be done? And is that building maintenance cover any portion of that issue? I mean, last time I was up there, which I think was last summer when I was looking at Thurston's drainage problem there, I was noticing that it looks like the exterior of the building is starting to wear a little bit. So no, right now it doesn't. The building maintenance is the fire alarm, the overhead door maintenance, the honey wall contract that we just talked about, building inspections, sprinkler inspections, elevator service, janitorial services, cascade system. You can tell me what that is. That's the system that fills. But you're right, Chris. It is starting to show signs. We've done it once about the midway point. We had it redone. We painted and re-launched. I don't know what it is you do with those buildings. I'm not a contractor. But probably next year or the year after, we'd probably get a quote to do that again. I was going to say we already did that one time, I believe. It's not like they're just collecting it. No, I just want to keep up with it. It is on the radar. The only thing that we probably do this coming summer is at Main Street. It's early enough that it won't really be a big deal that the metal door, a lot of the door in the front, and then the door going from that hallway into the apparatus bay has some surface rust. And we're going to try and find a portable sand blaster that can come there. Not just because I could sand it down, but it doesn't amount to squat. Have something come in and sandblast it, get it down, reprimand and repain it before we have to replace a whole lot of these. So anyway, I know that we're a long way yet from knowing how everything melts together, but I would recommend that we tentatively approve this budget tonight at this $780, $695 level. And if we have to come back, I did increase the money that we're sending to the Capital Reserve funds by 4%. We could trim that a little bit if we had to. Bill, can we focus on that real quick because you did mention that in your letter. You know, we make a decision to buy two trucks outside of the CIP. Those debt service payments, is that what's sitting there on the two lines above? So those principal and interest payments would increase based on those bonds associated, or not bonds, but the loans associated with? No. So the debt principal and interest that is here on the fire department budget is the principal and interest for the bond, for the fire station itself. The money that gets transferred to the Capital Improvement Plan, that funds, you know, towards trucks and pays the debt service on any trucks that we have purchased. Okay. Yeah, because that was my question of if we were going to see an increase because we took it on loan if it made sense to drop CIP, but if it's under CIP. Yeah, the loans for the vehicles are in the capital budget. So we've got to fund that. My other quick question is on the Duxbury contract. I think a couple weeks ago, or maybe even longer, is that when we basically told Duxbury what they needed to pay us? So at the last meeting when you were not here, the Board approved the contract, $114,100. And my recommendation to them was even though that contract amount was based on an estimated year-end number, and our year-end number is going to be slightly higher than the estimate, but even if we recalculated it based on the actual number, it looks like it might have been $800 higher, and for $800 and everything that they got going on over there, I'd rather not stir that pot. So I think it'd be fine. On the last page of the equipment, how do we come up with the $32,780 difference? I don't come up with that number. I think that's the difference between the two different grand totals, and then there was a, I was looking at that too, there was a $10,000 difference. The difference between those two numbers is $40,200. Right. That was, that's my error, but I didn't change that bottom number. So the Board, number 230, 665, 390, 370, I have automatically calculated in here, and that was just my own pushing of buttons. Okay. And then a couple of things were changed up above that I didn't adjust down there. And then I took Gary's numbers and they're different. The dispatching number is $4,000 less. So right now the budget to budget difference is $37,240. $37,240. That's probably just, what I was working on this. You said $37,240. Yep. Right now. Any more questions? The Board? You, so you need a motion? No, I don't need a motion. I was going to say, we don't want to do that right yet. I wouldn't believe that. No, it kind of flashlights. It's a placeholder for right now. Very intrinsically safe. You know, it's funny because I had a person ask me, the reporter asked me about pagers. He goes, aren't pagers like $25? It's like, that would be great. Yeah. They're not. Just like our gloves are like $78 a pair. You know, boots or, well. Almost like the federal government. And thank goodness they are Gary, right? Because when compared to the gloves that you had 30 years ago when I first got here, they're worth 78 bucks, right? Oh, there's no question. I literally remember when I was new at a chimney fire on Banchill Street and I was pulling the chain up, when I was young and didn't care about heights, pulling the chain up from the chimney. And the gloves that I was issued were the bright orange rubber coated gloves. And as I'm pulling it up, I'm realizing the chain is slipping back down because these gloves are melting on my hand. And I thought, well, I guess I gotta find a different pair of board gloves. But, you know, the helmets, you know, it's not a regular construction helmet. It's a ballistic line, Kevlar line, and they're betting on which style you get. We typically get ones that are around $350. We have some members, including myself, that I bought my own, but those are above $800. But I'm a traditionalist, and it's a traditional leather helmet. They look like they're cumbersome to wear, too. They're not comfortable at all. I don't go around versus them. But I would encourage any of you, that you really, you know, I'm sure at some point you've all been in one or both stations, but if you really want to get around and see what's in the stations and how they operate, you may comment. I can meet with you, or you can come on a training night. Call me if you want to come on a training night, because some of our training is sitting in a classroom and that would be quite problematic for you. Aren't the dangers becoming the thing of the past? Well, yeah, they're very close. We have apps that we have on our phones, but the pager will work or a phone won't work. Okay, so like if you're in a dead zone, I'll still work, right? So who has pagers? Everybody. Everyone, okay. I saw there's only three new ones. Three new ones, right, right. So, yeah. You know, I can be an island pawn if I forget to leave my pager home and sometimes if the air is right, my pager will go off and I'm an island bond and then I quickly shut it off. Thanks, Gary. Yeah, I think one thing on your comment, too, is I think after town meeting, I don't know if you've done it in the past, but I think it would be great if we tried to do it as a board and I don't know if it just has to be warned, but it would be nice that we're all there seeing the same things, discussing the same things instead of like on an individual. I think that's a great suggestion that we formalize that to a certain extent. I think I'd really enjoy that. I second that. I think it's a really good thing. I don't even know how many pump trucks you had in telecom. I think it would make all the discussion of you coming here with the details really come to life. Yeah, for sure. Be happy to do it. Just let me know. Thanks, Gary. Thanks, Gary. Long wait, Steve, but it's your turn. So again, in the information I sent out on Saturday, the planning budget is a very straightforward budget. Up 3.77% from last year, and I think most of the increase really is to be covered by grant funding anyway, but I'll let Steve talk about his budget. Okay. That's good. So Bill knows that you have the budget. He also sent out a justification which has changed somewhat because Bill always takes my numbers and tweaks and changes. I mean, the basic concept is there. So I think what I'd like to do is go through the budget itself. I won't really deal with the pay items other than to say that, as you know, Dina is now full-time, and I've formally become her supervisor for still in somewhat of a transition mode, but I think generally things are going well. It helps that we're not extremely busy right now, but so that transition I think is going on and we're working closely with Bill on that. We're both in the health insurance, so that's helpful, and obviously there's a cost there. So I think what I'd like to do is go through the non-pay items, and then if Bill wants to come back to any of those items, you're welcome to ask questions about that. So I'll start down with a professional service item, and this is actually a combination of two things. We pay for secretarial services for both the planning commission and the development review board, Patty Martin, formerly Patty Spence. She went back to her main name, and Patty does a great job, so we pay her $65 per meeting to do our minutes and keep up with that. And then we have another project, which is the survey of the proposed for ours edition historic district, and this is being done by Scott Newman, one of six associates. He did the survey of the expanded Waterbury Village Historic District over 2017-2018, and so he's partway through that project. We were hoping to do it all last year. He had some family circumstances come up, and so we're basically going to be splitting that project between the two fiscal years, fiscal 2019 and fiscal 2020. So that's the other part of that. The reason for the reduction is just that, that we ended up just charging a portion of his contract, about half of his contract, 2019 remaining will be done in 2020. He'll be bringing the survey to you for presentation, just like we did with the Waterbury Village Historic District survey. So I think you'll find that very interesting. It's not as large an area, but that's a very rich history. So that will be coming back to you probably in the spring. So moving right along, under the special projects, we still have a few projects. One is the Reservoir, which is the so-called Reader Program. It's funded by the state. It's a pass-through of state funds. It's officially the aquatic nuisance program, trying to prevent nuisance invasive weeds. The Reservoir has some invasives that are more or less controlled by dropping the Reservoir in the winter. So we'll see how that goes when they bring up the level year-round, which will happen once the dam improvements are all made. So that's a pass-through of funds, and this will be their, I believe their fifth year with that program. It's friends of Waterbury Reservoir. Yeah, and just on that note, if you look over at 2019, you see that the budget for that project was $2,500. We had $2,500 in the revenue portion of the budget as well. Steve said it's an offset in and out. The grant was only $2,080, so that's all we spent was $2,080. They're going to ask for a $2,500 grant this year, but also be aware from what I understand the friends of the Waterbury Reservoir are circulating petition and they're looking for money. Yes, but I think I understood from Chef that things might not happen. Oh, okay. Okay, so correct that. Maybe next year, we'll see. But they're very active, it's a good organization. So we run along. The next project is titled Trees, and we have one project that we're far away through, and this is the Emerald Ashgore Preparedness and Management Plan. We talked to you about this project a little bit before. We hired a natural resource forestry firm called Red Start, out of our Brentland, Bradford, and our tree committee has met with their two foresters that are working on this project. We completed our Roadside Ash Inventory. Now they're looking at how we can manage the ash. And one piece of good news is that the state is coming up with a fund to assist with removal of ash in the road sites. We want to get our management plan completed, work with you on a strategy of how to deal with the ash, especially ones that are showing signs of going into poor condition. There's no Emerald Ashgore that has appeared to date in Waterbury, but it's in Montpelier, Berrytown, Orange, up in the islands. So it's definitely a presence in many parts of the state. Eventually it's going to come to water. And it also could be here and just hasn't been detected yet. It's hard to detect because it starts up in the crowns of the trees. So this will be an ongoing project and we'll definitely keep you in the loop with the Management Plan and what's recommended. Treatment is an option for street trees or park trees. We don't have a lot of those, but we're already starting to treat. We treated one in the Cemetery, I hope cemetery this past year with a systemic insecticide. The Green Hill Byway is a project that has been ongoing. It was funded through a grant, a federal grant early on. And at this time there is no federal grant money. There's legislation to try to reestablish the program at the federal level. That will ultimately come with some grant funds. But Waterbury and Stowe, the original towns are working with or the Well County towns to our north and stretch from the forest town over to Cambridge. And we're working on redamping our website, expanding it to include those towns. So a request came through our Byway Committee that I co-chair for a thousand dollar contribution from each town, which is basically maintaining the website that we have. We'll also look at creating brochures. You may be familiar with the recreation guide at Stowe and Waterbury Cultural Facilities Guide. So we would like to create brochures for the four Well County towns. So it's a good partnership that's ongoing. Then moving into the other operational funds, legal service. This is really an item that fluctuates a fair bit year-to-year depending on the issues and whether we have appeals that are in court. This year, we only spent about half of our budget, but we like to keep a fairly robust budget just in case we need legal services. We work with Stippsville Page and Fletcher. We've worked with them for years on land use issues. They're very good. They give us good advice and so on. Their hourly rates are going up, too. I got a call the other day from Joe. Yeah, I'm not surprised. They've been one of the most reasonable for us in several years since they increased. So telephone services. We've got some economy because of the new internet-based system. So that item is coming down. This system, I think, is generally working well. Postage fluctuates a bit, so we're not doing as many mailings. So we're about to do a large mailing. I think you'd be interested in this relating to the historic overlay district. I lost that the Planning Commission presented to you. We've scheduled a public hearing for February 10th. We're going to make sure you're invited to this Planning Commission public hearing. We are going to be sending letters to all of the landowners involved to make sure they're informed. So Mark, you'll get a letter. Jane, you'll probably get a letter. But anyway, so that's on the horizon. Advertising. We advertise typically in the Waterbury record. That's worked well. It's pretty reasonable. I'm going to skip down beautification. This is the item that Karen mentioned that helps support revitalizing waterbury's program. The Garlands is one project. We help fund out of that. It also helps fund the flowers and the lighting for the snowflakes that are on right now and various items like that. So we'll work on Newton Baker Park doing some beautification there now that the interstate bridges are reconstructed. Jane is working with us on that. Then training tuition. This pays for D&E and board members to go to workshops. We encourage both the developer board members and the Planning Commission members to attend workshops they often do. And also I'm involved with our three states Northern New England chapter of the American Planning Association as a Treasurer for Modifiers Association. So I've been traveling over to New Hampshire. Some for retreats. We had a conference there last year. We're going to host it this coming year. So there's some reduction in training intuitions since we're hosting a three state conference. The mapping is one that increased last year. This is an item that covers two things. It covers the consultant cost for our online personal mapping system. This is access to the home page of our website. It's a very useful tool. We use it a lot. Nina and I use it a lot. We try to encourage citizens, realtors, developers to use that site. It has lots of great information on it. It's an online geographic information system type setup. So this item covers those cartographic associates which is our consultant for that site. And it also covers our personal mapping consultant work, RJ Turner. So we split those costs with the listener's office and with Ed Sweet, our assessor. And we split it 50-50 because both departments, if you will, benefit the other costs are covered under the general government lines that support the assessment work. Due to the Regional Planning Commission are going up gradually to support their services. We do get a lot of bang for the buck, if you will. They did the roadside ash inventory. It was about a $2,000 value that they provided free of charge to assist us with that inventory. They support us on transportation projects. Alec and Bill Woodruff and I work pretty closely on getting support on various transportation projects. Basically working with us around everything from doing scoping studies like the Stow Street Bridge over at Thatcher Rook. We're working on that right now. So they provide us a good level of support services that I feel is well worth the investment. That will be a little over $6,400. Central Bideconomic Development Court provides economic development services throughout the region. So we support that organization. They have a new executive director who I think very good does a lot with workforce training and also with job fairs that have been very popular. Aaron mentioned that. Alyssa's worked with them on a job fair in Waterbury that was supported through that organization. So that's as a result of our support investment here. Travel is pretty straightforward. It fluctuates year to year depending on how far I have to travel. Went to Maine a year before last so that added some. But again, it supports the work that we do. Paying mileage primarily for vehicle travel for both Dean and me. Then office equipment. We have two new computers. Dean and I both finally got new computers that replaced the ones we got right after Tropical Store Marine that we're getting very glitchy. And we just got those. And we have requested for the whole office to get a replacement laptop, our laptop that we use for taking minutes in meetings and projecting information. You got it. Thank you. We'll not project because it's not compatible with our system in this room anymore. So we're looking to replace that laptop and Bill's agreed that we'll try to do that through the general budget. You'll be in a different budget. Different budget than this one. That means more people besides the planning department can use it. We'll share it around. Carla can take it to meetings. Absolutely. Okay. Good. So Conservation Commission has requested $1,000 to support their various projects. They've been very active, as you know, in the Schutzfeld Wildlife Order. They're also very supportive of the work of the Planning Commission on the bylaw rewrite with the Unified Development Bylaws. And then Karen mentioned the Rebellion Waterbury support of $17,000, $12,000 supporting their payroll and office expenses, and then $5,000, but that goes towards marketing, as I understand it. Under the revenue, we talked about the Greeter Program with the reservoir. And again, the $2,500 is a placeholder. The grant they get will be a pass-through. With special projects with the trees, this is one that I've got another project that I'd like to go over with you once we've talked, finished talking about the budget, which is for a tree planting project for next year. So we had a $2,000 grant in 2019 for the Emerald Ashore Management Plan. That grant is being split between last year and this year because we hired Red Star a little late in the year. They'll be finishing that. We're also requesting another $2,000 grant from the state to do a tree planting project. So the match is 50-50. I would like to match that with cash. So if you go back up to the trees project, you'll see that there's an increase under that line that I think I may have skipped over. So the $73,80 is going to cover the rest of the Emerald Ashore Consultant Project. That is a $3,900 contract. We originally hoped to do it more recently. With Tom Sweet, we weren't able to do that because Dan's our assessor. Basically, this is federal money. So we ended up hiring Red Star at a somewhat higher rate for $3,900. So we have the remainder there, most of their contract. And then we'd also like to get your support and authorization to apply for a grant for tree planting, which would be a $2,000 grant request that would be matched with $2,000 in cash. So that's where that $73,80 up above. That's why that such a dramatic increase is because we've got those two projects that we'll continue through. So we would plan for $1,000 worth of trees and pay Red Star $33,80 for the balance of that contract. So that's the $73,80 and there would be $3,000 of grant money to support that $73,80. So Bill, do you have anything you wanted to add at this point before we go back to the tree planting? I don't. I think, you know, if there's no questions. I budgeted last year for Dina to be 30 hours a week for the first quarter of the year, but it was busy enough and she was already kind of behind schedule so that got increased really earlier than I anticipated it would. That's why the difference between the $4,815 that was budgeted and the $45,405. There's a little bit of over time in there, but it's really because the 40 hours had started earlier than I had. I didn't adjust the budget last year, but it turns out the grand scheme of things that we spent about $6,000 less in this planting budget anyway. So that's the only thing I wanted to point out. Okay. Do you get on the trees through the conservation district? These, the trees that we're anticipating would be larger trees. We do some Beirut planting. We've been planting some brokes, for instance, and we get those through the the foundation Intervail Right. And we've been pretty successful with that program. We get volunteer watering, we all chip in, but this project, this caring for canopy grant program, it's a minimum 2 inch caliber for shade trees. We usually contract with evergreen gardens because they're local. They do a good job. We like to support the local businesses. I guarantee a tree for period of time too, right? They're guaranteed, correct, yeah. So unless there are questions here, why don't we move on to the tree planting project. Jane has been helping me involve this. There's I'll just grab one. I'll just hang on the line. Do you like that one? So I'm passing out a couple planting plants. So I say Jane are both on the tree committee and Jane, why don't I introduce this and people like to add to it. So there are two different areas that we'd like to focus on. We're going to be somewhat limited. I've asked evergreen gardens to prepare a cost estimate. This grant is actually due this Friday, so it's moving fairly quickly. They've just gotten back from their post holiday vacation, so Mike's back in the office and he's going to work up a cost estimate. But I think the first area we'd like to focus on is Waduski street near the Waduski River. And we have an area that is the back of Datbro field and we'd like to plant some oaks that will tolerate flooding in Waduski and a few flowering crab. And then on the other side, on the community garden side, we've leased that parcel as you may know from Green Mountain Power. So we'd like to plant three of, it's a hybrid held called Acolyte that's very resistant to Dutch Elm. It's not a true American Elm, it's a hybrid. And then up along the Hope Cemetery we'd like to plant a few flowering crab apple and they'll let me know that the cemetery commissioners have decided to remove the big seed or hedge that's under the power lines along Waduski street, so ultimately we'll work with the cemetery commissioners. We're definitely going to touch base with them on the flowering crab, but ultimately we'll work with them on a planting that will replace that seed or hedge, which has gotten really scruffy. Let's go a lot of bog-billed interweaving so that we can start with scruff. Definitely. The other side is over at Poverton Industrial Park and I've been in communication with Wayne Lamberton with Severe Development and this is the piece that's in front of the Piltrum 5 building. It's across from where the old Greyhouse used to be, the old station lumber, and Wayne's very much in support of doing a street tree planting. When we did the planting along the section of Railroad Street which is a little further up towards Stowe Street and then going up to Hill and the piece that's what I call the upper section of Railroad Street. We waited on this because we didn't know what the plans were for future building and so I've talked to Wayne, he's fine doing a street tree planting, getting some trees started and basically completing the planting score for Railroad Street and so this may very well become a two-year project that's what I'm anticipating Wayne's willing to give us permission. We have a very narrow right-of-way for Railroad Street so we're going to have to obtain an agreement or right-of-way for that area. We should have it anyway because of the sidewalk and the street lights so we'll work with Evergreen Gardens but what we'd like to do first Jane I should ask you is there anything you want to add before we talk about the money No, I think that on Railroad Street it's something that's been talked about for a long time and as Steve noted you can see in the photograph there are some maples that were planted just to the upper left above where those oaks are shown and they've probably been there for ten years so it's kind of a continuation because it's sort of a gap and it's an important part of our time and it's really been greatly improved over the years since I've lived here for a very long time so there's trees planted at Pilgrim Park so I think it would be really a nice asset to that area and I think and we did a sidewalk and we looked at Winooski Street last June and we saw that there was an opportunity for some tree planting so trying to be resilient in case of planting things that are controllable so Great Those northern white oaks are they can they grow into like huge trees? The northern red oak do get large That says northern white oak Oh, the small white oak I'm sorry, I think it said northern white oak It says northern white oak on the railroad So right So railroad street would be northern white oak or native oak here The Winooski Street would be swamped Oh, I'm sorry That should be northern red oak We don't have any red oak here That's my mistake I just mislabeled it So this is just a standard This is a standard red oak So they can grow substantially large I guess my question was I was wondering if these were a genetically altered type tree that only grows to a certain height and just fills out more than your standard tree and my real question was Obviously is it Lamberton's responsibility to maintain that lawn area and I know at my house there are two big maples out in front of the house that completely contaminate my front yard with leaves to the point where it's a huge effort to remove them and I didn't know just how big these trees would get eventually Yeah, well sure, they'll get large just standard red oak Yeah, okay And to answer your maintenance question they pay to Brian's to maintain that area do the mowing, do the leaf pick up They planted some of the tree trees, they planted the red oak across the street with the parking lot So there was no concern from them No, Wayne was very much in support of it I think he sees it as part of the beautification for the industrial park And no, I think he thought that would be fun Yeah, good So what are we looking for this evening is an authorization to apply for a $2,000 caring canopy grant from the state of Vermont matched with a $2,000 local cash match for a total project of $4,000 I'll make that motion Your second I was going to say, I think Jane might have to recuse herself from that one, wouldn't she? Alright The motion has been made and seconded to authorize the extra spending for some tree beautification efforts here in the village If there's any more discussion all those in favor say aye Aye Thumbs up with the motion? Yeah Let me ask Mark Great, thank you very much Appreciate it Steve, thanks Before you go on Mike, if you have a slide into the mic and also don't put papers on out of the table, Mike There's nothing wrong with this one because it won't stay on and I don't think it matters It's not turning red so I don't know if it's Okay Bill, I guess we're going to move on to the next item Stay caring for canopy grant application for street I thought so Okay, then it's the next one Any other budget discussion? Yeah, so leave one of these for Matt and then just pass the rest of them down This won't take long at all So while we wait for that next week on Monday we'll go with Celia and perhaps Bill Woodruff the highway budget and the CIP budgets related to highway and we'll talk about the parks budget and probably the recreation CIP and my hope is that in addition to those specific budgets there will be some changes to those if you need to but I'm also hoping to give you a budget next week that says if you approve the budgets that I just talked about along with everything else that we've talked about last week and this week that this is where we'll be and then on the last Monday of the month show you the final after you make whatever changes you need to do last week so from my perspective Monday night next week is going to be the heavy lifting meeting that we've got to get through a couple of budgets that we haven't been through at all and then try to present everything as if you approve those budgets that I present to you next week for the first time on the final Monday I'll be able to come back and say okay these are the changes that you requested on the 20th and here we are I met with the library commissioners tonight they have approved their budget for all intents and purposes they will come next Monday as well to briefly present their budget and answer questions I'm happy to say that the library budget that tax Levy this year as they did last year so there's no increase in taxes which I view as a win because we're another year further down the line so that's a good thing so with what you have in front of you tonight when I just passed out we went through the revenues last week they're a little bit adjusted they're a little higher than they were a week ago so are the expenses but there's there's three or four small budgets that are in blue font starting on page 2 we talked about the general fund budget last week and by and large you approved that I'll fine tune that one but on page 2 is the public safety budget the budget that I'm proposing for 2020 2020 is the same exact budget as last year the state police contract runs through June of 2021 so we've got a year and a half left on that there's no increase in that contract and then the WASI budget is the same as it was last year and special events which pays for you know sheriff's department and the like for some of the parades that we have same $2,200 budget the unclassified I've highlighted that in yellow I don't know if any of you follow Front Porch form but there's been a little bit of uptick in the discussion about are we ever going to enforce parking regulations in this community we've talked about that in the past I don't have a proposal but if we're going to do that it would go in that I've created a new wine item but I just highlighted that budget to say that's where parking enforcement would go if we ever chose to do it I'll just go through all of these blue font budgets and then if you have questions and you want to come back to them we can if you flip over to page 3 the resource management budget John Malter was here last week we talked about that 35 for 50 for the dues to the mad river resource management alliance and then the green up budget so there's there's a change there it's about 11 and a three quarter percent increase that's all based on what Malter told us last week and Chris already indicated tonight that he's doing his part by cutting his hours so you know that would be higher otherwise the health and social services again it's slightly less than last year 16,405 so it's $15 less than last year again the highlights we do not have an animal control officer right now we had I thought we had what happened we had Zeb Town and when Zeb left we hired a woman up on Taylor's hump road and evidently she got in touch with Carla a couple of months ago now I think and she said Zeb misled me on the number of times I'd be called and she said I don't want to do this anymore so we don't have any animal control officer at the moment and I don't think you're going to get one for $500 a year nobody wants that job and if we really want an animal control officer probably have to pay somebody $250, $300 a month just to be willing to take the calls the former animal control officer talked to me about a month ago what's his name from Peter called me he said well I tried to do my part but there was a losing proposition for me in terms of money it would have to be a lot more money if I was going to be able to do it so I think if you want to get somebody we talked about the age of volunteerism but volunteering to do jobs like animal control officers just nobody wants to do that so we don't have one right now our phone isn't ringing off the hook do you get any calls? once a month maybe we did have a pretty serious dog bite a couple of weeks ago when a gentleman who delivers was delivering meals on wheels lunches and went to a particular house and got pretty badly bitten by a dog and the owner couldn't produce any rabies evidence of rabies shots so the individual ended up getting 20 different shots to make sure he didn't get rabies so that was bad because he didn't bring him food to did the town pay for the shots? did his insurance pay for the shots? I don't know any reprimand for the dog being out of control from whom? I don't know there's no way I'm a control officer there's no way I'm a control officer so anyway that's an issue we might it's not going to be a budget breaker but you might want to think about typically we seek these volunteers for these positions around the 1st of April I think it is if we decided that if we could get somebody and it was going to cost us five or six thousand dollars we could handle it without you know we don't have to put it in the budget is what I'm saying but I'm just letting you know we don't have an animal control officer right now and I don't think you're going to get one for the old fashioned price of five hundred dollars back to that comment though you're saying we get about a call a month but that was a higher call volume than what she was expecting or did she just have a bad run? I get a call now about once a month I think she was getting a higher because her number is out there as the yeah right so what do you do now if you get a call? I tell them I don't have an ACO there's nothing really that we do what if we offered a double ZEBS pay we never even put in for any pay I know I can go back and look we paid I think we were up in the three thousand dollar range maybe I mean it's not like it's been five hundred dollars forever when Peter Tramiel was the animal control officer I think we were paying probably you know twenty five hundred three thousand dollars I can look and bring that next week so I'll do that I'm just going to say he swung the pendulum the other way there for oh yeah you know and it has it he did a good job if it was there's just you know there's a little bit of bedside manner issue when it comes there but other than that yeah both with the public and with some members of the staff anyway on page five the debt management expenses this this principle and interest there is to pay the municipal government share of the debt service on this building so it's declining slightly every year so 10680 is our share the library share is a little bit higher than that I want to say it's probably about two hundred forty thousand dollars altogether something like that and really that's it for what I want to show you tonight as I said next week I will have everything as if you were going to approve the budget as I will show to you next week and I'm hoping that it's in a state that isn't far off from what you're willing to try to support so far I've been pleasantly surprised I haven't even yet tried to press the button and say what it is but just in terms of my plugging in the numbers in terms of the expenses and looking at where we are standing with fund balances and the like I'm reasonably optimistic right now one last thing that I'll leave you with we you know we decided in November that we would buy a roadside mower and we decided to buy fire trucks the second fire truck won't be paid for until well into this year probably June or so we have not borrowed any money as of yet because we have enough money in the bank to continue to pay our bills but I've been thinking a little bit and certainly for the roadside mower if we have to borrow for that that was $116,000 purchase you know we've got authority to borrow that over a five-year span we'll have the machine longer than five years I'm sure but what I'm thinking is that if we borrowed the $116,000 at the end of this year and then borrow for four years so instead of dividing 116 by five you'd divide it by four so the principal payment on that would be $29,000 a year so in effect we could pay our $29,000 of the first year in cash this year and then borrow you know pay for the $116,000 over four years as opposed to five and I think that we're in a position that we can probably borrow from ourselves for a lot of this and that's a good thing in that you know we'll pay interest but rather than paying the bank we can pay for us pay ourselves back so I've looked at a couple of different things the tax stabilization fund at the end of the year as of December 31st the tax stabilization fund has crested a million dollars now and we've got about 440,000 of that is invested and of the remainder we've got $667,000 lent to ourselves we're paying for the tower truck and for the rescue truck and for the grater the high watermark that we owed ourselves from the tax stabilization fund was 2017 so that was we borrowed from the tax stabilization fund for infrastructure for fire and highway vehicles we were at $853,300 owed to ourselves we've paid that down now by $186,000 so we owe ourselves $177,000 so clearly right there we've got enough capacity to borrow this $116,000 without really going significantly higher and we're borrowing it from ourselves in 2017 when we had $853,000 borrowed to ourselves the value of the fund was $972,000 $28,000 more value and we have $186,000 less lent to ourselves so that's a good situation in our Veterans Memorial fund we that is valued at $94,000 and we don't have enough to lend to buy the whole $116,000 worth of the machine but we've got some capacity there and then what I hadn't factored in before and I talked to the Cemetery commissioners just the other day we're in a fortunate position that our Cemetery fund has got a fund with a balance of $563,000 and they've got about $470,000 that is invested and the same thing I mentioned last week Mark when you weren't here on Tuesday last week I went to Edward Jones office and I sold securities from most all of these funds just because the stock market is at an all time high now took a little bit of money off the table and we'll be able to rather than just keep that in cash doing nothing we can pay for some of these things so I don't have all the details worked out but I think the more that we can use our own money to finance the things that we can't necessarily pay for I think it's a good thing one particular person in the community when I mentioned this to him this was a year or so ago I said well why don't you just leave the money borrow the money from the bank and pay them 3% or whatever it is and leave the money invested you might make 7% or 8% if you do that and you're going to be to the good 5% I said well when you look at how our portfolio is structured we really have more than our investment policy allows in securities right now we should put it in fixed income and it's hard to get fixed income bonds fixed income securities that pay the 4% that we're paying to ourselves so it's a way to diversify the portfolio so I'm going to be working on that as well if we don't have to send that 4% on a million dollars or half a million dollars to the bank and we can send it to ourselves we'll be in a better situation so the principal payment would be around 29,000 yeah and you could do it you could do it one of two ways Chris you could borrow the full 116 and pay it off over 4 years or you could just say take 29,000 dollars so take 116 and subtract 29,000 from it and you know that would be you know that well it would be 95,000 or something like that and then you could pay that 95,000 dollars back over a period of time but no I guess my goal when I asked that question was just to point out that of that 29,000 what portion of that just the money that we would have given to airfields every year for the rental of that oh yeah so really out of pocket additional out of pocket is half of that so there's two good sides to that anyway I'm working to try to meet your goal of no tax I'm not even close to promising that yet but if we can borrow what we need we might not have we've got authority for those three pieces of equipment to borrow 1.6 million dollars and I don't think we're going to have to borrow that even from ourselves in this first year probably a half a million or so but more to come next week but we're in a position right now I appreciate this last go through here it gives me hope too that we're going to somehow come out of this I think that's a good still some skin on our back here and again I haven't spent a lot of time yet with the highway budget clearly that's our single highest department Celia and Woody and I are meeting on Wednesday I've already you know given Celia's proposal to me a once over back in early December when she first got it to me and you know it's not going to be a huge increase it's probably going to be up some but anyway I didn't mean to cut you off I just think your strategy to borrow at least for the mower against ourselves is a very sound policy to support what you're doing okay that's all I got for tonight unless you have questions I'll make a motion to adjourn a motion to adjourn I'll suck at that all those in favor say aye aye