 So we call this meeting to order and we have, let's see. We're gonna start talking to Toby about the mower. Yes. And how that will fit into the budget. Toby, are you gonna meet us to actually take a vote tonight? Because. No, so the mower is still available and they're holding it for us. So if you guys can officially vote, we're gonna make a motion to pursue it. And essentially it's no one's buying it right now. So it's okay. I don't know if you have it. It's not an agenda item. It's not an agenda item. We said we were just, for a special meeting you kind of have to have it for a special reason and so the reason is to do the budget but this is part of the budget. So we can talk about it. What we can't do is make the actual formal decision but we could vote to tell you to go forward and then ratify the vote at the next meeting. If that's what you need. Well, it's more because that's what you need because somebody may snatch it out of thin air without making it look like they don't want it. Well, why don't you walk us through it? You send us a whole bunch of stuff on it. Right. So I sent you the. Yeah. So I sent you this specification. It has 400 and some odd hours. They all want details of what it is. It's a asking price of $130,000. And this is the one that Dana was using and it's very well cared for because they have released it. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna give you a warrantee for this. It's a number 25. That's included. I don't know the exact thing, but I think it says in the note that I sent you, it's the details. It says the warranty until it doesn't say what to complete. I don't recall seeing anything about the warranty, Toby. It's June 25th. Yeah, so it's good until June 25th. Yeah, but it didn't say what it covers. Yeah. Oh, here it is. What year is it anyway? It's just a year old. Yeah, so it should be a full coverage warranty, I would think. I guess I can get you a particular spot. So if you're happy with the hours and the equipment, which the broker was happy about the equipment, the hours are not excessive for a one year old equipment. Then the question is how do you pay for it? So currently there's $63,500 in the equipment account. And if you look at the budget sheet that I sent you, FY24, there's 42,000 for the Western Star, which didn't get purchased on that line item. And there's 30,000 for the Ford F600 that never got purchased, so there's roughly $72,000 unspoken for in the capital account. Can I ask about that? Don't we eventually want to purchase those pieces of equipment that they were set aside for? Well, so one is just that there's a double listing. So if you look, there's 2023 Western Star, it's just that they put it in the wrong place. So they put the money aside, but it doesn't come into effect until the next fiscal year of 25 because it was a late delivery and we bought it in a rear. So that 42,000 that was put aside to go for the first payment didn't need to be used. And you're putting it already into the 25, FY25 on that truck. So instead of the 42 that's there, you have 33,000 that's coming up next year that's going to be in the capital budget. So that 42,000 is just under. Spent. Unspent. And the forward again, if you, that's the forward F600 is to replace the CV into the final look. And that still has not moved forward as far as getting a price and a door moving ahead. So that again is not on the table at this point. So that $30,000 was put aside for that purpose that will not be used until they move ahead in next year's budget or maybe in the year after that. So help me understand the capital fund though. Don't we keep the capital fund for future expenditures? Don't we try to build that up? Well, you can. So the reason to have a surplus is if you all of a sudden end up with three or four of the vehicles that cost you money all at once, you want to use some of that to lower what those payments are in a year so that you don't have this yo-yo effect of okay, they're paying for one truck and I didn't put enough money away. And all of a sudden they have four trucks on pay for it. And that capital line out and gets tripled by Drupal and then you gotta put that in the taxpayer bucket because that comes, those bills that become due. And so if you say, well, let's put $50,000 down on this next truck and that will keep us from then getting this big, at least for a year, you will keep it from skyrocketing up and down. So the smart move is to have somebody's there where you can actually, you're essentially going to now purchase a radiator, but that's going to be a 10-year as opposed to a five-year one. So you can spread that out just means it takes longer to get through that purchase. So essentially you can spend it all now and say we're fine, there'll be no interest costs because you paid cash for it. So essentially you're gonna save $20,000 in interest over five years. That's one reason to do that. Or you can take some of those monies that are either in the savings account, the truck account or the monies that were put in the budget that didn't get spent and put a combination of the full lease purchase for the full amount or half of the amount or whatever. And you can decide whether you wanna do it in when you take the loan or whether you wanna do it in a rear. So right now I've got two scenarios. One is to full $130,000, first thing you do when you take the loan and then five years, but that's like $20,000 in interest over time. So the next one was to just take $100,000 alone. That almost cuts the interest to about $14,000. And that would use $100,000, that would use $30,000 plus the $20,000 of the first payment. So you're literally for $50,000, you get $100,000 alone for five years and only $14,000. Now you can do $70,000 or... Yeah, so my suggestion is probably a target to make a $50,000 down payment and a $20,000 worth of interest in the first payment. So that would be the $70,000 that was sitting there that hasn't been used. That would leave the heavy equipment fund at $63,000 and it would just use up that money that was not applied to an ounce. And so again, you're now going to be taking a loan out for about $70,000 for five years. And that would probably be less than $20,000 a year, close to 20 a year. I didn't want to put this document to figure out what that is. We've got to work with this and produce whatever combination we want. So that's probably the smartest thing to do is to put $50,000 down and pay the $20,000. That will then use up, it's already unused in the budget sitting there. And I think that's the most economical way to deal with it. And it leaves the other $20,000 or so. No, it leaves $63,000 untouched on capital. It leaves $63,000. So the $72,000 that's sitting there now that we didn't use would be $50,000 plus $20,000 and that would then give us a $70,000 carry forward. Now the other thing is you already, in your next year's budget, you already had $28,000 in mowing. Now you can move that to capital and take the $23,000 out of there and reduce it to 20 or whatever into the next year's capital budget because you'll have to pick up that next payment in 25. What are we looking at buying in the next fiscal year? What's due to be replaced? So we've already committed to ordering a new 10-wheel truck and that's already in the next, but that again, that again is one year in the rears. So at least in 26 before the first payment. Truck would show up, but the first payment would be in a rear so that would be FY26. For that first payment, you have time to plan on that. But we're gonna need to get a grader. Right. And another truck. No, that's what's next. Okay, yeah, are you getting a handle on this stuff? Yeah, we sat down and had the conversation card Toby and I, the other day. I mean, I called around, I haven't heard back up a grader part yet. Right. I have a buddy that works at John Deere. So I called them just to see what they had and what was available at the pricing. So the thing that always happens is towns that are about to buy a brand new grader or trade in their old one, you don't know that that's happened until after they go to tell me. So sometimes there is an opportunity that things are coming in on a trade and you might get a 10-year-old one instead of a 28-year-old one that we have. So again, it would be talking to the, you're coming from reading books, whether or not people are planning to trade in or get rid of their less ancient equipment. Yep, I agree. And then again, so that would be a savings. I mean, you still have to take attention. Well, it would have to be a loan and it would have to be approved by the town because it's more than five years. But we'd have to do the research and go talk to salesmen and vendors and say, okay, what do you think you've got coming and what is it? And again, so the problem is, as everything starts to add up, they get too close together and then you're paying a lot every year. That's the problem. The only other thing, again, the only other possibility is in order to shift how many trucks are in equipment is that each year you might want to trade one in earlier and change that frequency. We literally have four trucks. We really want to deal with three, but then we have the spare that we've always had. But now we've got five people plowing in wintertime so we need that truck. And we don't need it in the summer as much, but we still need that piece of equipment. And so if we're trading in the 2014 to the new 2020, four, five plow truck, in the 2017 is going to be the spare. So essentially it's a little bit more, at least. Yep. So again, I can get the loan, the lease agreement any way you guys want and just put whatever you decide. Other questions for Toby? Jordan, you go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, all right. I mean, I'm just like it to be the most economical choice. So we only have our capital, the extra money we have. It's only that 68,000 right now. 72. 72, okay. So you think it would be better to do the, the more such a tax, the better we just interest it. You have to set aside that he's not going anywhere. It's going to carry forward. So essentially this is your opportunity to take care of it. I mean, you can also put it in rears for another year, but that's going to put it in the next year and make the number one in the market. No, I was leaning towards outright, but I wouldn't want to drink a capital one. So, Jamie, you've got questions? Mark, but I think I'm up to speed and nothing specific right now. Okay. Yes, if you guys do make permission to hold it together, then we can work on the process of where you want it. And I'll put together the $70,000 down payment. I mean, the $70,000 leave. With the five year loan, at the first payment and then the five year loan for the rest. Right. So sound good to everybody? And we need it. Remember, we have 28 in the budget. We do have 28 in the budget, so this will save on that. Right, but the second year of the payment will have to be whatever comes out to be it. So it might be... 20. 19 instead of 28. So you might be able to save a few thousand dollars on that one right now. Yeah, okay. So what would happen is you'd come back to us with a contract? Well, what I'll do is I'll contact the lease company that's such a cop is up and having to review it so essentially have the whole... Okay. The whole... And we'll have to sign it, right? Yeah, so we could do that at the next meeting. Okay. But just one question. What's the rule for when we have to put it before the voters? And when we can just decide to do a major capital expenditure? So anything... So you can, within a five year period, you can do whatever you want. The swipe order is... Oh, yeah. It's a five year limit. Okay. The reason we're going to the greater for the 10 years, it has to go to the town to be approved. So you can make motions and take care of things up to five years. That's right, thank you. Okay. And there's no cap on how much. You can still go out there and ask them to approve it, but... Yeah. As long as we... I think the last two or three trucks, we've just had the swipe order decided that's what we needed and it has a good ability to push back on it. Okay. I think you've got what you need then. Okay. To go forward and I'll put it on the next agenda that will allow... And I'll get a copy of the total warranty as well as if you guys still get it. Okay. Great. Thanks for all that work, Toby. Of course. Sorry about that. Toby, do the phone calls. Okay. Are you sticking around or are you... Do you have anything else particularly for me? No, no. I mean, I expect, I hope we'll get to the highway budget, but I don't know how far we'll get today, but it will be fine. All right. Thanks. Thanks for letting me. Thanks. Have a good evening. Have fun. Thank you. Oh, that's right. You're going away tomorrow too. Yeah. Yeah. I'll get a run before the snow gets in. I think you're late already. So, Kari, help me out here. I think what we should do is take the budget that was in your folders and start, let's just take it section by section and take a good look at each section. Or actually, no, I'm gonna take that back. Kari, we should talk about your wage proposal first. Okay. And two, we did have, we had been talking, you think there might be a place to squeeze some money out of the highway budget too. Really? Well, we can use our segment grant this year and then we have money for next year, but it's 34,000 and then we kind of focused our energies on fixing those roads so we can get that reimbursement back. So, let's do the work of this and then we'll go to that, Ann, and then we'll start through this and thank you for doing this. Yes, absolutely. So, Kari, send us a memo. So, yeah, so obviously as we talked about last time, most of the increases in a lot of the budget overalls is with people, right? So we took a real hard look at office staffing. We can discuss. Good news, you look there, I don't know what's up. Oh no, what happened? But I just wanna, before we move on. No, that's just my mouse. All right, just taking a joke. We can talk about staff of the Highway Department next, but focusing on the office staff. I think the key change that's in this memo, this scenario that I wanted to share with you is to have the town administrator serve as the trader and then support that to the part-time bookkeeper. And I think that that's workable. I had a good conversation on Friday with Sandra about that. She believes that can be done. Part of it is that things happen, of course, and like the year that happened just this past year was very different for the treasurer, just as it was for everybody else. So when there are unique things that come up and research needs to be done, that places an extra burden on the treasurer role that you wouldn't ask a bookkeeper to do. Bookkeeper is just gonna be doing data entry and certain routine tasks over and over again. And so anyway, those are just some concerns because I really, I don't know if I'm recommending, I guess I'm recommending this, but I'm just being transparent. I don't fully understand the ramifications of it. But what it does is it reduces what's in there in the full-time position to a part-time position. The savings on that is partially in wages. What I didn't for this memo breakdown is the savings on the benefits side. And that's significant because I want Sandra to verify this, but all of the benefits that we offer are cost money, but the medical insurance is a really big chunk. And I believe in our budget is that treasurer role is in on the family plan for medical. And so the combination of the town thing, 90% of the premium, which is like $25,000, plus the HRA contribution that we make. Because if you don't know, we have this high deductible, not even that high, but we have a, basically the town contributes the full amount of the health reimbursement account. So you put those two things together, we're talking around $28,000. It's just a medical portion of what the town pays. For one person. For one person. For one person on the family plan. So long story short, I think that the number that I presented in terms of wages will actually be quite a bit bigger, more. And there's some other line items on there. But by next week, we can lay that out in more detail. So that's sort of the big piece of that. As I laid out, we're trying to get a cost of living increase, at least a little cost of living increase for every position, including town clerk. We're also working with Barbara, frankly, on what her preference is for full time. She wants to retain 40 hours a week. And I'll be honest, I think if we were designing it from scratch, you wouldn't necessarily go that route. But Barbara is so capable and knows so much about how this town operates. We might well take full advantage of what she brings to the table and set it up that way, that's my opinion. Do you think that would free up some of your town administrator duties so you could do more of the treasurer work? It would have to. It would have to. So for example, I think she would continue to play a pretty big role with the select board doing, for example, all the follow up that happens after these meetings. She is, even the same night, she's emailing people. And here's what the decision was, we need this and that, and you can do this. All those sorts of things, because I would be focused on road commissioner and treasurer to a large extent. And one of the notes you might notice in there is this model does require a foreman and someone who's capable of performing in that role. So I'll stop there, see what thoughts you have, concerns, if you want me to. Okay. Continue. Well, that's it. Anybody? Well, that's the decrease in 16,000 projected. Let me. Let's see. In my memo, I think it says 28,000. Okay. Is that what you're saying? Increase, increase, yeah. Treasurer went from, you had 49, 250 to a bookkeeper at 31, 200. Right. And again, that is just for wages. It does not factor in any of the benefits or payroll taxes or that sort of thing. Which is almost equal. Yeah. To that. Yeah, it is equal. Yeah. So. Jamie, you got any questions here? Are you with us? I have any questions. I think it looks like the good path forward in this section. Thanks. Okay. I guess the only question I really have about the bookkeeper position is I think you'd mentioned that you'd spent time talking to Sandra about it and the $30 an hour is attractive enough to get somebody to. That was her opinion. She suggested that number. I already had it in mind. Yeah. Just based on previous conversations but she thought that that would, she's also clear that that's, I mean, the labor market is what it is. Yeah. Bookkeepers are as hard to come by as anyone. Yeah. So I don't know how far to go down this next thread but she did start thinking and she has been thinking about her transition quite a bit and can that be as a transition or as a permanent arrangement? Could that be contracted out at something that's affordable? Yeah. So that's something I would like to explore as well. Yeah. I guess that's kind of where I was heading. Seems like Sandra's the only one with intimate knowledge of town finances and it's bookkeeping that's in arms reach. And I'm just curious about what's realistic. You know, what will we actually realize? I mean, we can talk about trying to find somebody for the position or creating the position but will we actually find it? And then what does it look like if we really do need somebody to perform those services to make sure that the town administrator and everybody else can serve their roles and what does it look like if we have to go to professional services or accounting firm to fulfill that? But I guess that if everybody's comfortable with that dialogue and the numbers associated with it and provides enough room to seek out those services in the future if we need to. Yeah. It is what it is. So something I'd like to explore more. I'll say two things about it. One is I have the concern about falling position whether it's full time, part time. Just as a concern. And the other thing is the Sandra's recommendation was to explore it with NEMRIC. Wendy Wilton specifically. Because she believes there's an efficiency to be had there. I mean, Wendy did it for us. Wendy works with the NEMRIC system every day. You know, it's a hard particular situation. And Sandra's opinion was she could, if she's available to do it on a transition or a more regular basis, we'd be much faster, much more efficient than anyone we could hire and train up. So it would be something worth exploring. So will you be doing that before the next meeting? So we'll have those then in the future? I'm gonna try. Wendy's I guess a wave or part of the week, although. So we're gonna talk to her in the morning when we get payroll. Yeah. Then she's gonna get it done in the afternoon. Yeah, and part of what she's gonna be is training them attending on Wednesdays. If I need to, I'll call her. Anyway, I'm gonna do my best to nail as much of this down as I can, or at least take the next steps. Other questions about this piece of it? Okay, do you have more to say, right? About this? That was all on the office staffing side. Oh, well then let me ask you about delinquent tax collector. How are you envisioning that piece? Go ahead. So I didn't realize at the same point in this house that my statute, this is a separate function and that's why it always shows up on the budget. That was a separate item. And on the financial statements as a separate item because it is something separate. It's often combined with the bookkeeper function and sort of round out the hours. But if we're thinking of it as part time, then we will need to figure out how to get that work done. I will say that Sarah volunteered, this is something that she would continue to do for some period of time. She would not, if we wanted her to, she could continue. So that would be helpful. It's also, I mean, it's budgeted at eight hours a week, or yeah, eight hours a week and that's what we've been paying. However, my understanding is it's, the work is really condensed or it's seasonal. And so there may be alternative arrangements that we could recruit somebody from our town and say. Yeah, I noticed you knocked $1,000 off of it. And that was her recommendation that would probably be attractive enough to somebody. And it doesn't sound like it requires someone with intimate knowledge of how to do bookkeeping or financial work. They need to be organized, they need to be diligent, then you'd have a, then you'd be persuasive, I guess. They need to be good for a people person. Yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, so that was the intro. What was, did you have a specific question about it? That was, I just wasn't sure who you were envisioning would do that. So that would be looking for somebody else to be determined. Yeah, I think, could be Sandra, could be Wendy, no, Wendy couldn't do that. No, Wendy could not do that. No, okay. It would have to be someone here in the town, I think. And I think we would have some time to figure that out was my sense between March being sort of slow season for this work, although there's some and Sandra would be willing to stay on to do that portion. But it would be something we need to figure out. And what's the bottom line? How much money do we save? Did you calculate it with the payroll and all that if we went with this scheme? I kind of hate to put it out there, but without Sandra verifying it, but somewhere around 64. Okay. So 3% of the fund, which, it's a good shot. I can't stand to a 10% increase. That's not nothing. It's not nothing. Yeah. Okay. So I don't think we need to act on this tonight. We'll talk about it at the next meeting. Are we ready to move on? Okay. Did you want to talk about the road position? Well, so I don't want to go into too much detail because it's very preliminary. This is actually something that Jamie and I talked about on our way back from the Dan meeting on Friday. But we are operating on the assumption that we need five drivers on our highway department and we need a four. And so we have five currently, two or part time, but we don't have a four-man. Well, and then backing up, Donnie and Toby and I met on Thursday and Donnie confirmed what we had been thinking. This is based on part of the research that I did with neighboring towns. And we really ought to be thinking about the four-man position that's $30 an hour, probably as a minimum, in order to attract someone that can do it. And so that was okay to start putting the word out. And so we were preparing to advertise. I let the current road crew know that we were doing that and one of the employees that might change things for them that they're interested in discussing it more. So they were going to explore it with them. If there were a way to hire internally for the four-man position and we could have a flexible arrangement with the two-part timers so that in the winter hours, that winter season they would be flexible enough that all five of them can drive on a snowy day when we really needed them. Then, from a budget point of view, we could eliminate an entire position, which would really be a big deal because then we're talking about hours, we're talking about a significant amount of overtime, the medical insurance and all the rest. And so I'm gonna do my best to explore that, but I think it's gonna take more than a week to kind of nail that down, partly because Toby's away for the next two weeks. But that's sort of the germ of it. And it kind of relates to what we talked about and it relates to what Jamie and I talked about as well. And I'm sure other people have thought about it. I don't know if that's been part of your discussions at all with the crew over the last year, but. Oh, as far as internally? Yeah. Yeah, and the part timers and how long will the, I think one part timer is, I don't know how long he's gonna stay on and then the other part timer, I don't think. I think he would stay with us, but I think he'd also be, Bokidoki to move with Mozi somewhere else, having a full time and two part time, but then that would create a winner problem. Yeah. I think it's a good idea, starting with that. I mean, you lose help, which is kind of one of the things that happens, but I think the idea of it, especially hiring somebody that's already functioning in the position, not the foreman position, but as a crew member, I think they are gonna know what they need more than somebody outside necessarily. So I think that's a good idea. Okay. We'll explore it and report back as quickly as we can. Yeah, I think that if I could add to that, you know, I think we briefly kind of had some conversations about hiring internally, and there's no real objection other than we need to make sure that whoever's gonna be in that position is gonna be able to direct the crew and handle the nuance that comes with that, and it just doesn't turn into various forms of triangulation and disengagement and that sort of thing. I mean, it's a small crew we can all afford to lose and try to find other folks. So I think I share the kind of observation, you know, there's an obvious need for kind of somebody to take the leadership role around scheduling and prioritizing of work and that sort of thing, and it's great to have somebody in-house who knows where everything is in town and the more nuanced stuff, but with the workload that the town administrator has and all of the other kind of soft management stuff that's gonna come with the grants and finances and capital planning and that sort of thing, great that we can kind of take that off the plate of a road foreman, but it really puts a lot of emphasis on making sure that person can kind of lead the crew and do the work. Yeah, and part of... Sorry, Jamie. That Donnie and I had talked about and I thank you and Donnie and Toby have, but working with either the crew or whatever identified people between now and like March, and really coming up, which is something that we had hoped to do this summer before the floods on a comprehensive plan. Like these other roads we're gonna hit. We've got the grant from this year that we got a waiver to do it next year so we can resubmit it in May. The guy will come out or not. We can do that work. We get the reimbursement. We can submit the second grant, but having, you know, because I think that's one of the areas that was challenging for them is there's 80 something miles a road. And like, what do we, and if we have like a clear cut, it makes it easier on you. It makes it easier on the foreman to be like, hey guys, this is the plan that we came up with way back when, and this is what we gotta knock out this week next week and so on. So that would provide some structure to a foreman to be able to implement, you know, be less kind of willy nilly in trying to do this or do that. Jamie, you had something? Well, support, I, you know, I was chatting with Kari Friday and looking at the budget picking, wow, we're adding the foreman as a whole new position, but we already have five drivers in the winter. So I mean, I think this is something we've talked about for a while and the logical direction to go. Okay, all right. Well, Kari, you said you may not have this information next week, but we are looking at finalizing the budget. I guess we'll have that conversation next week. We'll just have to, you'll have to give us your best whatever projection. I will do that. Yeah. Okay. This is hard because there's a number of moving pieces here. I know. Well, can Donnie help you with things that with Toby gone? I mean, I don't really know. Potentially, do you wanna do a job interview? Sure. As long as it sounds good. You enjoy those, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, I'll be in touch. Yeah. Okay. Let me know. Anne, you had some things? Oh, with those grants. What grants? So these are the municipal, oh, the grant for road, whatever. I can't, I'm not good with that. The ones that we have to put in every year for state assistance. So we had 20,000 for this year, which we weren't able to use. And there was a waiver, so we can use it again next fall or next summer between like May and September, October. And then we've also been granted 14,000. So it's 34,000 total, which in theory, I would think we could kind of reduce a mere perhaps material cost because there would be some reimbursement and focus on the segments. They don't, the areas that get worked on include sections of the road that aren't directly connected to a watershed. But the overall, you get a reimbursement for each section. So that would be a way to pull in 34,000 that we don't. Right. But don't we get another grant next year? So we have the 20,000 from this year. We get to use next year and we have 14,000 for next year. Because we didn't use them this year, correct? Yes. Oh, I see. So the 20,000 rolls over and then we have an additional 14. 14, okay. And then as I had talked to you about for the year following, the next year that we can be looking at submitting for structures, grants and things to do some of the larger culverts, not next year, but the year after. So would you then reduce something in this budget? Yes, that I would think that we might be able to like reduce some of the material costs. That's what you were saying, like the sand or something. Yes, that, you know, the things that we would typically use because we'd be getting that reimbursement back and then just really focusing, I mean a priority we're gonna have to probably have in this summer is really gonna have to start removing ash trees that are along the roadway because they're gonna start falling soon and that's a huge, huge project too. So we had talked about getting together with all the, and the guys and really kind of coming up with the plan for the summer now, picking out those road segments, getting, you know, the current grant can probably, he had already looked at it and it looked good so we can resume it for those same roads but we can pick the additional roads and kind of map out what this summer is going to look like including lake tree removal and those things. Carrie, if we were to do that rather than reducing line items in the budget would we add something on the income side? That sounds like it. Yeah. Yeah, we're in the net now but if we would spend the money we're just. So it would be 20,000 more than we were expecting in income. It's the way we were. 34,000. Well, but we're getting the 14 next year and I mean that is expected. That is expected. So it's 20,000 unexpected that we would get. I'm going to need to go over with you exactly where it is. Okay. Where it is. But we can do that after. Yes. You're saying it's 20? So I guess that brings up another thing for me as we're going through the budget with what hasn't been transparent to me like through this process is we've got lump sums for material and we don't generally have things broken out relative to like capital improvements because for lack of a better term to the roads that things are project based or would otherwise be like special grants that are coming in that are outside the scope of our general permit grant that we get from the states like just based on whatever mileage we have. And I think that's an area where it'd be nice to kind of start to see some of these things broken out. I don't know if we have the ability to do that because of the way that we have things structured in like numeric. I know sometimes we can't really push. We can't just like create more line items because we have specific accounts for things or coding for things essentially in the budget. But if there were like a supplemental document that's tracking what the projects are what the estimated material costs are and what percentage of that it is of the overall material budget. I think the tree removal is a good example. I have a hard time saying, okay, well this is what we're gonna budget for tree removal without looking at like what are the estimated hours for something like that and does it make sense? You know, there's a whole bunch of roadside maintenance that didn't get done this year because of the weather and because of the mower situation and the mower only covers a portion of it. So if we're looking at a massive tree removal campaign and the backlog of work, does it make sense to lump that all together and contract it out to a service that could likely go through it much more efficiently, deal with the ash trees but then also deal with a backlog in tree maintenance or roadside tree maintenance that likely needs to be done too. So, you know, making those discretionary decisions is hard when it's just big chunks of money towards materials. So it sounds like that's a job. I was gonna say Sandra I think can pull out specific, I think she could pull out how much we spent on sand, how much we spent on culverts, how much we spent on fuel, how much we spent, I think she could tease out those things and I think it would be helpful because it is kind of unclear, you know, you have like this big root stake and it's like things are even internal mechanisms within, I mean, there was, you know, they always kept track of what they were doing but like the FEMA level of documentation, I put this length of this culvert that was purchased at this place and this section of road at this location, you know, like having very clear documentation of what happens where, because then you can know what you need. Yeah, so that's a longer project. It is a longer project. So you were sitting down with maybe Sandra, maybe Kari and maybe the foreman. But I think now, I don't know, did you start that? I think they're keeping track of how much sand they're taking out now. So actually, I talked to them the other day about, I think that's a pretty good idea to keep track. They actually said it to me, but I think they need to start keeping track of what goes out and what comes in. You know, cause just saying, okay, we need 3,000 yards. Well, there's a lot more than 3,000 yards sitting there. You know, some winners you're going to use 5,000. Some winners you're going to use 1,000. You know, it really depends, but I think keeping track of that so you have a better understanding of, okay, well, we need this amount going forward and have something to kind of base it off, not just saying, well, we need 3,000 more yards. Yeah, and it's going to be weather dependent. You know, years are going to be very different material consumption wise. And that's why, you know, I think it's going to be helpful for us to have that information. You know, sand's an easy one in winter times and easy time to think about it, but like gravel's a way squishier situation. And you know, we're never going to be able to budget for a summer like we had this year, but there's, you know, it's pretty easy to say that like these are your five projects for the next five years and the amount of money that needs to be set aside for materials and culverts, you know, that I would think that we would have, I would put culverts in a different category than just your general grading material that you're going to have for road maintenance through mud season or something like that. And it'd be nice to see like what those caches are, you know, separately. And I think it's going to come down to hours too. You know, we're going to have to decide like what we want, what we want them to spend time doing relative to the scope of those projects. Okay, you ready to move on to the budget itself and take it section by section and talk about things we might change. So let's start with the select board section. Donnie, do you have a copy of your budget? No, I'm just reading, I'm going off the ends. Oh, all right. Oh yeah, cause you don't, this won't be sure. I think if I like it too much, paper I might fall asleep. So I'm going to go back. All right. I'm not sure about the best way to do it. Shall I just open it up? Does anybody have any comments on that section or questions or observations? Okay, let me take it like this. Select board stipends. Now that was raised, it was supposed to be $1,000 each. It was raised at town meeting on the floor, as you recall. It was actually removed originally. Well, yes, there was that too. Thanks Barbara. No, Barbara McAndrews, I think is the one who added it back in during the meeting. Yeah, and then Barry Bernstein. That was Barry Bernstein, yeah. Do you want to leave that where it is? You guys think that's a fair thing to do? Sometimes I'm a hired woman, but it's... Whoa, let's not worry about that right now. I think it's fair to leave it where it is. I mean, I appreciate kind of the altruistic approach, but I know I've certainly sacrificed priorities this year. And those priorities have costs, and that's a pretty incremental dent in the costs. Okay. And if you want to give it to the dam fund, you can. Okay. Okay, recording secretary, I notice has been reduced. And I'm not sure who did that or exactly why. Maybe based on the number of hours Rose is actually spending. I don't understand this right now. Okay. Credit card fees, we can't do much about. Professional fees, I still don't know what this is. I emailed Sandra today, I haven't heard back. You haven't heard back. So I'd like to hear from Sandra because legal fees is the next line, so it's not the lawyer. I don't know what that is, and I notice it's not in this budget because we don't know what it is. The audit, we can't do much about. The website is what it is. I will note that education and training is $800 just for us. There's another line item for education and training for staff, and then probably another one, I'm not sure about this in the highway budget for the road crew and the road fore. So I'm thinking we could probably knock that down quite a bit. I know I've taken a couple of classes with VLCT and they cost $10 each, and I did it over the internet. So I didn't even have to travel. Maybe some of you want to go to some things, I don't know. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think it's good to have a budget in there. I don't know how many things actually cost substantial money. It seems like most of the trainings or courses are things that I've done are either free or low charge. Yeah, well, what would it cost? Do you remember the one that was this fall where all the select boards go and they all meet each other and none of us went to it because we were all exhausted? And also employed full-time doing other things. I mean, that's one of my biggest gripes about the VLTC. I don't have a better recommendation, but like. Did everything's at night? Well, everything's just during the day, during the work week, and I mean. How are we supposed to get to those? Even when they're on Zoom, I mean, hide in the closet and book myself out, but it's, again, I don't like bringing up problems without solutions, but that's a real problem. But they're also very inexpensive. So yeah, the $800, unless we're trying to compensate for mileage for an entire group. But even then. Yeah, I noticed this year we've used $170 in education and training, and I don't have any clue how we got that high, having spent $20 myself. Has anybody else done anything? I went to the emergency management conference. I don't know how much that cost. Barbara took care of it. Okay, so maybe it was some things you did. Okay. And I've done road things, but they're all free online. So that hasn't cost. The VLCT town fair looks like it's 100-ish for a day or 200 for two days. Yeah, so if we all went to that, that's easily our 800. Well, and I don't know that maybe we all need to go to them. So I think if we drop that to 300 bucks or... No, I just thought of something else though. That's where Kari would get his, wasn't it? Or no. No, he has the staff. You would be in staff, okay? I think these guys are thinking of Kari. That's why I'm doing them. So if you want to add a new person to that. I think that's fine. Jordan, knock it to 300, your thinking and see what happens. Yeah. You guys okay with that? Okay. You got that, Kari? So I forward to training and decrease by 500. Yep. I think I had aspirations to do more, but just, yeah, time-wise. I think that's happened to all of us, yeah. Looks like the way. Yeah. Copy or, these other things, mileage reimbursement. I think that's probably about right. Judging from expenditures. It doesn't look like we can do much about the other things. So mileage reimbursement is what, exactly? Well, if Barbara goes to the bank, I suppose, she can get her mileage reimbursed. And are there select for it though, or is this for overall? I don't know why it's in the select for account. Okay. So under that are things like, like John's group, sometimes we'll put that mileage out. Toby has done mileage reimbursement. Barbara did it for something she had throughout the department. Okay. Interesting, that should probably be moved to general office. There is not a mileage thing there. In the select for it, because, yeah, I was told there wasn't one for, because I've driven around for animals. And I've put up any mileage on my car. Yeah, but that's past and done, but. It might not be a bad thing at some point to decide what counts for mileage reimbursement and what doesn't and how we decide. Sounds like we do need a discussion for that. I don't think the animal control officer gets, I'm not sure. I don't think that, I don't think that Wilson never did, but we should, because it can be a substantial amount of driving and. Well, he's got a thousand dollars for expenses. So I don't think that's okay. Yeah. But I know that Wilson never did, but it is, it can be a lot of driving around. Well, maybe we just leave that as is, and that's something to be researched a little bit. For the $300. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I didn't catch whether or not. So if anybody else submits mileage as office staff, does it come out of that budget or do we need to have one added to. No, office, I think that it should be, because I didn't think like select work members got reimbursed. So it seems like it should be added to general. Oh, no, they don't have that. We would need to determine. Okay. If we, yeah, you know, driving to Lindenville for whatever road training thing that we did or. Yeah, it seems most appropriate to move it into the general town. Okay. Move to office staff. But shall we just level fund it for now? Looks like there's been nothing. I'm looking at the report as of October. Nothing had been spent out of that budget this year. But that. I think I did, but I don't know why it's nothing there. I thought I did it in October. Hmm. Okay, well. Okay. Anything else on select board? All right, let's look at town clerk. Am I looking at the wrong one here? Oh, no. Okay. So town clerk really should be 5728 for her cola. Yeah, we'll get that changed. Okay. And same with the assistant town clerk. She should be at 55723. Oh, she's assistant town clerk slash administrative assistant. Right. So this is that. Yeah. Anything else? Or do you want to question that one? The other one's okay. It's like the land record books. Yeah, I think. Yeah. And you thought about that number. And it makes sense to you. Given the last couple of years, I think that's a solid estimate. Okay. All right. Can we move on to Listers? Again, there's not much, not much we can do there. That pretty much is what it is. Are you making noises like just to make something to say or? Maybe. One thing, I mean the significant is the professional assessor and I appreciate that we've got it in there as a partial because it'll ease the blow if we go to full time for the following year. So just pointing that out. Thank you. You're right. Yeah. It won't be quite the sticker shot next budget. And we don't know whether somebody will run to fill Wilson's slot. If nobody does, then we may have to hire somebody sooner rather than later. Well too if you write those to you. Grant Ornstein. Yeah, so. So maybe. But was that relative to changing in the certification? I know that Jan and John were both saying that one of the big changes is that state requirements for being certified as a Lister is going up. So we likely will either need to consider compensating people for maintaining the state required training or do what everybody else is doing and hire it out to a professional appraiser. Yeah, I think, I think, Jan was suggesting we might want to hire somebody toward the end of next year. I don't concern, weren't they talking about taking it over? Taking Lister's Lister's, I don't really know. What's the state does such a great job. Fabulous. Yeah, okay. So you okay with meeting the 6000 in there? Everybody else, we don't know what a lot could be changing in the next year with that whole thing. Okay. All right, town administrator. Let me see. And then we have the 20, wait a minute. How does this mesh with a town administrator assistant? That line would go away altogether. Yeah, okay, that's what I thought. The treasurer section would change. Since we're lumping her job together. Yeah, so the next version of this, you will see people look more like them. And we'll have a lot of savings in there. Okay. So that is what it is. Then the town treasurer will drop down to 31,200. Right. An assistant town, oh yeah, okay. So there's a little bit of, that'll be fine. Moving along, auditor and town report. Tegan and I looked at that a bit again today and that seems to be about right. There, the link when tax collector may drop by 1000. Postage, everybody go buy your forever stamps now because they're going up when? Next week, two weeks. 68, so it's not horrific. What does it grow on? 66. That's a lot when you're mailing something to the whole town. Yeah. When it just went up, yeah. For the next year. Didn't go up earlier this year too. Yes, in June or July. Yeah, cause we're gonna have a couple of elections, right? We have three elections and it costs about 1000 bucks to mail things to all the voters in town. Yeah, why are we having three? It's the. The presidential primary. Oh, the primary. The state primary. Yeah. Okay. All right, let's take a look at general office then. Tegan, you and I talked about some of these things today too. And this might change if we go to New York for more, again? So this might go up. It could go up. But that would be taken out of the book here. The state from the treasurer salary spot for the associate treasurer type salary. Okay. What about NEMRIC support disaster? Well, this is basically doing the job. So usually contract services, this is what we agree upon. Ahead of time they'll do and support disaster recovery is anytime there are other issues. Wait, could we stop for a sec? Donnie, you're not up to speed on this. I hear you guys whispering about this. Maybe we should explain to Donnie what NEMRIC is. Yeah. She, yeah. Did you hear those commercials on WDTB? They had commercials on. Unfortunately, it didn't. When we did have Treasurer, we contracted with them. They helped municipalities do all sorts of things, including financial stuff. And we have someone who worked with Wendy, who even now has done our payroll all the time. I've been hearing, even though Sandra's been back, she said she was not to payroll, so Wendy is payroll. She was basically our treasurer last year. She knows our budget as well as any non-calice person can know it. But NEMRIC offers all sorts of other services and stuff to the towns. They offer all kinds of accounting and financial services. Yeah, and they develop the accounting system that we use. And their vision is to serve us, that's what I'm going to tell you. So all the programs we use with calculating taxes, with doing dogs, with doing our grid lists, with all the office stuff, it's all in software that they have created for them on towns. So Wendy Wilton, you keep hearing us mention her. She's our NEMRIC person who's been helping us. So in other words, every year there's some level of support that they're offering. It's not always a disaster. Yeah, and the costs are the online land records. So that's the thing that allows people to look at their deed from their living room if they want to, or if you think it's a safe place to have it in case anything happens with physical records. IT support in consulting is Arbitech. They help us with a lot of tech decisions. You talked to Holland, and I said, that's them. OK. Doing my email there. Doing your email, yeah. Maybe we'll all want to just email, but I feel like this year has been a lot of email. So, Tegan, you really bumped up the education and training thing here. You think Kari's going to come? Well, if I go to one or two conferences, which I'm still wondering a lot, I was planning to, Barbara has never been to the Clarkson Treasures Conference, and I thought she ought to go. In fact, I've almost made her go this year. We're both in, though. It's going to be popular. We're going to have to pay for a hotel, and we're both going to go. And then the hotel will pay with no longer payment. But I figure if Kari goes to one, and Barbara goes to one, and I go to one, I don't know who will use it. And you can probably lump it down to $980,000 if you wanted to. And that's a small change, but if you can do that. Can we back up to the IT support contract and the consultant? Oh, sure. Yeah. What's the difference between the consulting and the support contract? The support contract is just like their annual contracted amount for a certain amount of support relative to our existing infrastructure, right? And then. So Sandra split all these out, and she crunched numbers her way. And I haven't had a chance to talk to her about how she landed on each of these. So that's what I'm assuming. It's one is what we agree on at a time for their monthly stuff, and that includes a certain number of hours of participation, and then the other one is when things arise, and we need trainings, and we have issues. OK. So consulting is, training is other kinds of training other than IT. Yeah. OK. It might be nice to see. Yeah, it might be nice. Well, if there's a way of breaking out, yeah, the support contract, that's their maintenance kind of contract with us, and it comes with a certain amount of hours, and I'm sure we blow through it, and things come up, and there are more acute needs. But with the added cost of the email services and that sort of thing, like if that were in a different bucket and other IT expenses, like if we have other software expenses that, even if we're going through that, it would be nice to kind of see those broken out separately. If they're being lumped into either of those, it would be nice to see them pulled out. And I realize that this year when I was looking at the software line on the budget, it had our old things on there. It didn't have any of the office stuff. The office stuff was, I think, still under every tax. So that finding a way to pull that out of here and making sure it was in the right spot. Yeah, that would be great. OK. Oh, for my edification with the IT consulting, is that when we get help with our email? Yeah. So Barbara and I turn it over. And how much does that cost her? I mean, I guess if it's going to be $200 for 15 minute, this is how you turn your outlook on Ann, then maybe I should ask someone else. So it's not cheap. And I do recommend if you have a thing that you think Jordan or I or anyone can help you with, try to do that first. But sometimes there are things like log on stuff that just isn't working. We have to go to them. We can't fix. Some was a lot of problems. But if you have a question about, how do I get this document to share with Jordan, then please call me or Jordan and don't call every tech. I don't call every tech. However, I think you had him calling that I finally could get the email to work. Because I was just being stubborn. And by no means a whiz. But one of the conversations that we were having in our last check-in was like, let's try to use them as efficiently as possible and train a trainer. So we have somebody or two people in-house who are proficient enough and understand the guts of things that they can help do some of that. One of the things that is still kind of a blind spot that we brought up is that we don't have back end admin privileges for the Microsoft accounts. And even for just housekeeping and triaging, just very basic level stuff, but none of the accounts have it. Part of the problem is it's also new. We don't really know who should have it. And at the time, we didn't have a town administrator or anybody who is familiar enough with that system. But at this point, I think it's reasonable to think that somebody should have the keys to that so that we don't have to make those phone calls every time. And it'd be, yeah. So I would hope that IT Consulting is a number for setting up those types of meetings where it's like, OK, we're going to have you guys help facilitate us for an in a queue period of time. And then out of that, we have a very specific objective of being able to do it ourselves. Who made the request to increase the consulting to nine? Anybody here? Have to increase the number. No, I think that's what Tegan was saying, that Sandra had recommended those numbers relative to what she saw as expenses again from IT. So we should probably go over this year's end of the year. I'm sure we are. Yeah, I'm pretty sure if you look at it, we've been going over what we expected. Let me try to find that here. But very next year, because everyone is going to be more knowledgeable in knowing how the things work that it shouldn't be. It's another thing we can drop down a little bit. And if we go over it, I'm going to see it next week. As of October, which is one quarter of the way through the year, we had spent 40% of this year's budget. Yeah, and it would be good to, again, look at that relative to what our subscription costs are for Microsoft. I think the Microsoft costs are coming out of it right now. We need to move that around. We either need to move it around. We could also look at reducing those. So we're coming up on, I guess that was April-ish of this? No, it was probably later. It was April. It was April? So those are annual. And you can walk them. You can walk the accesses back to the next step down, which is just a web-based one. And it's cheaper than the $24, $25 a month for the full subscriptions. So we should have a conversation about who's using what features and whether or not we're comfortable walking them back. That could be a significant savings. Will you remember to take us through that at some point? Well, I think it'll come up a little bit. We're planning on having a conversation with Kari, Tegan, and I are planning on having a preliminary conversation relative to the office staffing work and organization work that Kari and Tegan have been working on. And I think that will feed pretty naturally into a conversation about what resources should be available for whom and then also who has access to what shared resources. So before we finish rolling out a shared resource thing, we have a better idea of what subscription levels everybody needs. And then we can bring that back to RB and just tell them the next time we are up for subscriptions, we'd like to roll them back. Just going to put a little plug and say, thanks for the do-wee account. It's been very helpful. And I've been in a number of different ways. I'm very happy to have it. You're welcome, from all of us. Let's see. What else here? Most of these, Tegan developed. Under postage, I cannot for the life of me why I said to reduce that from 3,000 to 600. Sandra says I did on October 24th, but I don't remember why. And I'll have to ask her why that made sense to me at the time. It might have been something she recommended. And I said, sure, that sounds good. But I can't think why. Well, it looks like the actual was 500 out of a $3,000 budget the year before. But now I'm looking at this year out of the 3,000 by oct. How did we do this? To the end of October, we had spent 47% of that 3,000. Well, I think it's May. July. Yeah, but what? So that was money for stamps? I guess some of it. I'm not sure I'd have to look at it. So they're all sitting in the vault waiting for us to use them, you mean? Yeah, she keeps them in the vault because she got so many. Yeah, yeah. Oh, all right. Do we not have like a meter? Like a meter to count, like through? It would be cheaper not to call my office to close. But having a Pitney Bow meter saves you. Daddy gets notes, yeah? You and I can talk for a while. Pennies to, you know, but I mean to send out hundreds or thousands of letters, it's, yeah. And also time, I mean, you just print out. How do we do it? You have to lick all those stamps? No, you buy the rolls. So it's like a printed roll and you buy a printer and you purchase it through the software. So if you wanted to buy a bunch in advance, you could, you could do that. You just print it out, you do the same thing. But you save the time of having to drive down to the post office and. Sure, sure. No, I'm fine. In the whole, in the whole bit. And I, yeah, I think, dude, yeah, there must be negotiated pricing, I guess, right? Meters are cheaper. Yeah. Here's an assist. Yeah, like 50, 60 cents versus 66 or something. I'll come back to this one down and I'll. So that must be what I did. I looked at last year's and said, heck, put it at 600. OK. What do you think? I think it's because she bought a bunch of zero, we won't have to buy as much. Yeah. What do you guys think? Would you be comfortable knocking it down to that? I mean, the worst case scenario is it just blows through our posted budget. So, yeah. I think it's OK. I think. And I think Barbara is having a lot of space. Yeah, and we have 3,000 in the elections postage. So, yeah. Yeah, but that's, I mean, unless we. No, I mean, it's not going to be used for that. And it's what I'm saying. Yeah. OK, let's leave it at 600 then. Supplies, office equipment, these are the guests. It's the best receipts of all those things today. There was nothing for the lists or things like this. I know. I thought that wastebasket was for the trafficking. That was for me. That was for the trafficking. Maybe we just don't burn things in the parking lot. When Andy's been very good, I let him burn things in the car. OK. OK. Moving along. Anybody see anything there? You OK with buying an AC unit for 500 bucks so that our office staff can work comfortably in the summer? And the server can stay as cool as it needs to be. Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. It was for the server. I'm very right. We're at spend 2010 in the south. We can handle some heat, but archival records and servers don't appreciate the heat to the same extent. Well, now that we've hired a callous guy to hang out in the office, I don't know. I don't know that he can handle the heat. OK. Anybody want to comment on that piece at all? Payroll in Texas? I don't think there's a darn thing we can do about any of that. It is what it is. The best we can do is reduce the staff. I had a talk with, I'm now on zoning. Unless anybody, did I run over anybody wanting to comment on anything? No. OK. To talk with John McCulloch today, you'll remember, I'm not sure where I asked him where that increase in his salary came from, and he said, I don't know. I don't want it. Level fund me. Well, they were, was it Jan? It was Jan. Advocating for it very strongly. Yeah. John said he didn't care. He's fine with level funding. And he said it's fine to drop his expenses down to about $400. He said all he needs to buy, I forget, he threw some terms out, stakes to put his P's on when he stakes out places. So I was thinking, well, why don't we give him $5,000 for his stipend this year and drop zoning expenses down to $400, OK? Kara, you got all of that? So that actually gives us a decrease, a little bit of a decrease in that one. Yeah. Yeah. What's the big decrease in the assistant zoning? That was Jan. She said that she just really didn't do that much. She didn't think she was worth it. And she doesn't turn in hours to get paid now anyway. Conversation about police. You'll remember that when we took office, we got twice as many hours of police time for the amount that was budgeted, and then they doubled their salaries on us. So we're now getting half the police time that we've always gotten. It's been proposed at level funded here. I think we're getting away with half the police time. What do you guys have a thought about this? What do they do? Well, and it's complicated because so much of what they do ends up being meaningless. So they go and they pull over speakers, and this sign is tilted two degrees too far southwest. You know what I mean? The person gets off and judges expect them to knock tickets down. I think East Montpellier's pretty effective. Traffic tickets mostly. Yeah, that's what they do. Yeah, with their patrols. So East Montpellier does pretty good work too. But we could also call them if somebody was robbing the general store, right? Do we pay for that or is that state police? I guess that's- We would be calling the state police and they would say, we're very sorry but we're understaffed right now. So unless someone's been shot, we probably can't come out. So I called them when there's firearms and they don't come out unless someone's been shot. Okay, so it's mostly traffic stuff. It's mostly traffic stops and really they set themselves, their hands are very tied as far as, they could pull someone over for something egregious and the judge is gonna want them to knock it down. It's basically meaningless. So I think mostly what we do is- I mean, that's not a reason that they just don't pull people over. Oh no, they do pull people over, they come out, they do. If there's a spot where people are behaving badly and we put a cop out there for a week and they give out a few tickets, that usually slows the traffic down for a while. And that's, as far as I can tell, that's the main thing we use them for. Like Maple Corner, right down County Road, I know in our village, people can go through there 60, 70 miles an hour, if you'll please. Yeah, they've been on Peek and Brook to a couple of times. I've run into them over there as well. But I think there's been a lot of conversation, obviously, over the last year about speeding and I think if we're gonna do it the way that you're supposed to do it and make adjustments and that sort of thing, there's limited conversation that we have around there the bigger issue is paying for the time for these guys to be around in a very targeted fashion. And so, at this particular year, it seems hard to find more money to increase that. But I think if the town wants to have an honest conversation about changing the behavior of people's driving, then it's gonna come to funding more constable time. Or more sheriff's time. Well, and hopefully through the next year or two we can get our signs, especially on the back roads, they're really particularly restricted back there because our signs, so many of them aren't whatever is the current. You mean the flashing signs that say that the speed limit sign has to be a certain size and it has to be at a certain distance from the road and it has to be at a certain height. And if it's not exact, then them writing a ticket for the person going 70 down Peek and Brook is going out. They can still write them tickets for careless or reckless driving. That is true. I mean, they can find ways to make it a meaningful exchange. Okay, but I'm hearing that we're not gonna make any changes then too. How much time is that actually? Oh boy. It's like an hour or two. It's roughly an hour and a half. Yeah. Because they were no longer getting the contracts for this date. There was something that had shifted. So they basically had to fund themselves through doing the patrols. Like they were able to offset their costs by whatever gig they previously used to have. So it went up a lot. Yeah, and it averaged out. Cause it used to be like eight hours a week or something but it ended up being like an hour and a half or four hours. I know, I think it was half the amount because they doubled the sound. They were charging us $30 an hour for their services. And then they came to us after the budget had passed and said, oh, but we're gonna double your costs. And they started charging us $60 in an hour. So we said, okay, then we'll take half the amount of time. So there we are. All right, sounds like we're gonna continue that for another half. Animal control is level funded. Cole says that's okay with him. Everybody okay with that? Planning commission. I did not call Jan, but maybe we should have a quick conversation about that interactive map. So this is one of the items we adjusted based on last fund purchase that happens this year next. So yes, yeah. 3000 is for ongoing subscription. That's right. Okay. Do you guys wanna see the demo? Do you want me to try to schedule that for the next meeting or can we wait till the new year? I'm happy waiting till the new year. I would like to schedule a demo. I'd like to take a better look. Take a better look at that for sure. Just to see it, but we'll purchase it without waiting for the demo. I'm asking you, it says razzle dazzle as promised. Yeah, and I think it'd be worth probably bringing in the webmaster as well for that. I vaguely remember buying a GIS subscription this year to help facilitate some work during the disaster recovery. And it sounds like at the very least we would wanna move this stuff over into this resource and maybe either like make sure that we're heavily supplementing the GIS subscription or we might just be able to replace them entirely. Because part of the GIS is promised that conservation commission could use it for some of their stuff or really could use it for some of their stuff. So we are gonna get a different mapping system we should back up. Okay, so let's see. Their expenses went up and they want to $2,500 for their reserve fund. You guys okay with that? Do we have to put their current fund level is that? That's the column just before. They got 5,000 this year. Is that what you were asking? The reserve column is this year. That reserve fund is for expenses related to increase. Revising the town plan, right? And they're planning on getting into that this year. And so I guess my question is whether or not they have built up a balance. Oh. Sufficient to make a government revision. Well, yeah, Jen was saying it had been underfunded. And so she wanted us to give it more this year. Okay, that's funny. I don't see it here. I got conservation commission, reappraising, huh? I don't see it in the special funds. Am I looking right at it and not Curtis pond equipment town hall? That's odd. I don't know why it isn't showing up in our list of special funds. So they didn't get it this year? Yeah, they got 8,000. No, wait, am I looking at the right line? 5,000. Okay. So she's asking for half that this year. So the increase is coming pretty much entirely from the interactive mapping. Yeah. I don't know. That's a question for Sandra, where they help us the planning commission reserve fund. Really curious about that. Reappraisal fund? No, that's the blisters. I believe we've briefly touched on it four meetings ago, but yeah, I still don't know. That's okay. I'm fine with it as it is. Yeah, okay. Everybody else okay with that? Yep. Jamie, I can't see you, but I assume you'll let us know if you're not. Emergency management. Nick asked for $500 to buy perishable food. The stipend was something that somebody suggested and he said, well, you can do it, but I won't take it this year. Although if we get another one, another emergency management person, they might take it. So we could zero that one out if we needed to. You guys wanna buy $500 of canned goods for our emergency shelters? Well, I think they're looking at the long-term, the long-term foods that you can have in storage for a long time that- the MREs or whatever. Then if they got to a point where we did not have an emergency and did not eat them, then they could be donated back within to the community via the food shelf. But it would be good to have small amounts of things on hand for our shelters if we needed to deploy them because it can be hard in a crisis situation to go rob the Calla Store or East Calla Store. It's, if you have no means to get out of the community, it's good to have something, maybe we can do with less than 500, but, and there may be funding streams somewhere, but it's a good idea to have it. Other thoughts on that? I have mixed feelings. I, in some ways, I feel like with three stores in town, having a closet full of what, crackers and canned soup. Yeah, wouldn't be good. I don't know. Canned soup, but yeah. No, I just, I guess some stuff would make sense. They would just need to be managed. Yeah, where is it going to be stored, I guess, is the- Right. How often is it used? So we had, we had the shelter open last year at the elementary school. And I don't know if they tapped into what they had. I think the Red Cross brought food that time. I thought the local people all, I wasn't here. That was at Christmas and I was away, but I heard that people just made stuff and brought it in. If the Red Cross runs it, you have to use Red Cross stuff. You can't use outside things. So that's, it's a cost that, you know, they do all the work and to take care of things that you can't use your stuff. Including stuff that we bought? What if we- I'm not entirely sure the specifics. I just know that Katelyn told me a little bit about this, what had happened. What if we funded like an emergency town account for the stores? Now that we have like the East Cala store, and then we had, and we have Maple Corner. I mean, then the only other shelter that we're talking about that we would have a reserve stock would be here and then you're dealing with like inventory management and that sort of thing. But if we have, I mean, we had this kind of discussion with Nick when we were doing flood recovery stuff, you know, we deputized him with a certain amount of money that he could spend, you know, to, I think it's, it was part of, what was that part of? He could spend like $3,500 or something like that. But it seems to me like if we had a, if we split that $500 between the two stores, three, oh right, in the Adman Co-op. So if we split those between the tabs at the stores that could be used in an emergency, then we don't have to, it's not like a recurring, it's a, it only gets used if it's needed. And then we also don't have to do the inventory management and rollover part as well. I would suggest that they explore that and not trouble to do that. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's just considerably less cost effective. I don't know your prices, but our prices locally are really high. So, but I think the likelihood, I don't know, it seems like we're having more and more events, but as of now, we haven't had an event where the one event that we had, those of us in the other parts of town we do, and then, you know, they had the Red Cross was providing food up at the, the school. Down here, we have generators, we had a lot of places that didn't have generators, so it didn't matter if you came here or there, it was the same as at your house for us, now we have a lot of places that have generators, so that they are more vulnerable. Yeah, so we've got the Maple Corner Community Center, we've got here, and we've got the school that all have generators and can be used as emergency shelters and all have, you know, sort of kitchen facilities where we could feed people. But what happened at Christmas, I understand, is several people came to get warm and get a meal and then went home. I gather nobody spent the night. Oh, no, people did spend the night? My friend spent the night, he spent Christmas Eve with his two little girls and his ancient father at the home memories. Oh, okay, I'm missing from them. No, because a lot of times, in these situations, because people don't want to be away from their pets, so most shelters don't have places for pets, so people will go to get warm, maybe get something to eat and then go back to their cold house. Well, I don't think they had a lot of sleeping. Like, it wasn't the most comfortable sleeping accommodations at the school either. Like, I know what my friend said, his dad was on the nurse's office cot, and that was the nicest bed I've ever had. So I don't know if that was the long-term thing to think about. Well, no, the deploying of cots and those things, yeah, there was just, no one could get anywhere from anywhere, so I think that was a lot of it. Maybe we should be investing then in mattresses instead of food, if the Red Cross is gonna bring food. Anyway, what do we wanna do with this section, folks? We wanna, it sounds like maybe we wanna give Nick a little budget. Yeah, I think it's reasonable. But not tell him it has to be bought for food, it's... Yeah, I'd be comfortable funding the $500, but I think we should have another cover. Let's flag it for a conversation. I think there might be a more efficient way to apply, even if it's an agreement with each of the stores to buy things at cost, or you can even dictate what the things are that they wanna carry in inventory, but then they can sell it after a certain amount of time, but at least it's just money that's sitting in a reserve account that is easily accessed and then we don't... A lot of five-gallon bucket of dried pindobees. Yeah, that we have to then, we then have to refund. If we're not using it, if it doesn't end up getting... Sell this, it's a nice condition. Kari, you got that one? Okay. We're sticking with the amount that we're gonna make the suggestion about before using the stores. Yeah, okay. What do you wanna do about the stipend, guys? You wanna zero that out? He said he won't take it, but I think that another person, if they were to do it, if something came up, I mean, it can be a tremendous amount of work. I think it's a pretty token amount for the amount of work that goes into it and probably should be there. So you'd leave the thousand in, knowing that he's not gonna take it, but yeah. Probably. About 500. It's like 75% of the stipend for the select board. How much work does he actually do? How much work does he actually do? They said he didn't insane amount of work, but it's a fair amount of, there's monthly meetings and updating of the schedule pretty on top of the emergency plan. How often does that change? This year there's a big change. I don't think that it changes very frequently. The other part is that he ends up being, I think, the primary point of contact from the state when things. Like roads are closed. Not necessarily when roads are closed, but when there's a disaster, he ends up being one of the key coordinators with the state's emergency response team and kind of offloads or offsets the select board engagement at that level. So it depends. I would imagine that the administrative load is gonna not be as intense because he's done a lot of organizational work. But there's always the potential that there's a fair amount of hours that are gonna be put in. So what you're describing doesn't sound to me like any more than the Planning Commission or the Conservation Commission. They meet once a month and they do an enormous amount of work. Yeah. I think if we wanna pull it out for now and Nick is good for going on for another year, then we say great. Yeah, I mean, it's not that I'm against paying them. It's just that how can you, why would we decide to pay him and not pay the others who are doing the same kind of work? Well, it's like the constable or it's a higher burden. I mean, the Planning Commission doesn't have, I mean, the Planning Commission, it's an arduous and challenging job, but there's a lot of the decisions you make as the emergency coordinator. You know. Yeah, I need to be good if they're bad. I mean, it's a lot to be holding an emergency, but he said he was gonna take it. So I'm okay for this budget if you want it, Jess. I don't know. I'd say we pull it out and we put a permanent asterisk in there as soon as Nick's away from the, you know, ready to step away for it or transition away for it then we can add it back in. Well, or let's see what the bottom line is. We might even decide to add it back in this year. Okay, Kari, you wanna take it out for now? Well, we'll leave in the 500. Okay. How are we doing? Quarter to eight. I guess we can do a few more. Conservation Commission. So. I'm trying to get on this, but I can't clean it. Oh. I found it the other day hung up in this chair, right here. Yeah, you can't see it, I find it like that. Down just says if you ever see it like that, park it back in the kitchen corner. Oh, I put it over there. I thought that's where it was supposed to be. She said there's a docking sink. Oh, okay. Okay, so with the Conservation Commission, they haven't had one and they think they just, I'd gone to the meeting and they just kind of, someone takes notes like both of the groups do. You're talking about the secretary. Yes. Right. Do other commissions have paid recording secretaries? There was a paid one for the DRB. We took that out. That's the only one I can think of. Yeah, I think we can safely zero that out. Yeah. Yeah. $200 in training. I don't know if they've been, doesn't look like they've been using it. There's no actual there. It's zero. If it's in for training, they can't apply it to other expenses. It has to be used for training, right? It has to be coded. Oh, no. No. Oh, you mean, do they, well, they'd have to get our permission to use it for something else. And we are giving them, well, we do have $600 for equipment and $250 for other expenses. What about the green up? Jamie, doesn't the state pay for green up? Yeah. I have no idea why green up got put in there. We get a grant from the state that covers any expenses. And the conservation commission doesn't do it. You do it, right? Exactly. Okay. So we'll zero that one out. There's nothing. There's nothing. Yeah, okay. But with the conservation fund, what is that used for that to go? That's the main thing they do is that's what they were formed for, to use that money to purchase land or development rights on land in some cases. Well, I think they were largely formed because it's a statutory requirement relative to having a town plan, isn't it? I'm not sure about that, because I remember there was a fight over whether or not to form it. And I know, because my husband led it. I see. And we didn't have to at the time, certainly. And I think they got $2,000 or something. And the point was to be able to conserve land. But if you look at their statutory authority, that's their main function, is to... I see. And so do they go out yearly? I mean, do they have funds? Are they spending this about every year on... No, it's a matter of... I mean, Calis is so concerned. No, it's a fund that gets funded annually and amasses a value upon. And then when there's opportunity for buying land or buying development rights or something like that or offsetting development rights, it can be used for that. So it's a rolling balance. And then when a project manifests itself, that would be worthy of expending the funds, so it's basically like what the Land Trust would do or one of those. They usually partner with the Land Trust and other organizations that do that kind of thing. So when they do it, they need like $20,000. So they try to build it up slowly so that when an opportunity comes along, they can jump on it. Okay. And just looking at their report from last year, they were involved in establishing the Shade Tree Preservation Law in town. Ordinance, I guess. I don't think it's an ordinance. It is an ordinance. Change your ordinance? Yeah. Which was eventually the Calis Tree Ordinance. Is it an ordinance or is it a policy? I don't know. They call it an ordinance here. They were involved in helping us with the subdivision review. They gave us a little training in that. Some tree planting, they did a fall foliage walk. They helped a lot with the shoreland zoning. They developed a curb cut ordinance that got rejected. And they're working on surveying the blistered town forest. So they've expanded beyond what their statutory authority is, which is fine. There's nothing to prevent them from doing that. Right now a lot of what they're doing is invasives. And that's right. They don't even mention them. Yeah. They talk about managing town forests and invasives. But has any of that work come out of the conservation fund or been funded out of that? No. No. Right. No. The conservation fund is only for the land conservation projects. And one time for the morul? And the morul. Oh, that's right. They did. That was unusual. Yeah. There's 39,000 on the phone right now. Oh, yes. Thank you. OK. Thank you. So they do have resources? Yes. But that's not going to buy them much when it comes to land. If a project comes up, they've got what they've got. And that's what they have to use to jump on it. Given the type of year that we're having and needing to find places to save money and the pressures of other issues in town, I would say keeping that flat at $5,000. I mean, I have a hard time justifying a discretionary increase in funding of that budget to $8,000 if we're not adding a discretionary increase to the Planning Commission Reserve fund, which has been decreased from $5,000 to $2,500. I mean, I think there's a lot of programs that need to be funded around town that take a closer look at how conservation and development and all of these things play into each other. And I appreciate the presentation that Larry gave, but it definitely sounded like the increase to $8,000 was a discretionary request for this year. And I appreciate it, but I just don't think that this is the year probably to be throwing an extra $3,000 in there. I agree with that. I agree. OK. I mean, I do think the equipment that they have looked at is something that they can use and need. And I think having them over, it's going to help a lot being able to help with some of the roadside invasives in a timely manner. OK. So we're taking out the $600 for secretary. We're knocking the $8,000 to $5,000. What about the Lakes and Ponds newsletter? Now, I noticed again, I suggested dropping it. You remember we had a conversation about that. Larry's vision was we were going to print these things and mail them to every resident. Yes. And then collect them from the recycling bin at the post office. Send them back to Barbie. No. All the people, all the old people wanted the hard copy. And all the young people wanted the email version. That's how it works. But maybe it could be that if people wanted it, or there could be a certain, I don't know, Well, that's what we talked about. We talked about printing it, putting a few copies around town for those who want it. And have just papered it. So I had just dropped 500 out of it. But maybe I just made that number up. They asked for 1,500. I think in particular, I wanted to collect 2,500. That's right. 2,500 properties. So is it primarily for postage or also for the printing? Do they go to a special printer? OK, Schmancy, Schmancy. They had a grant to do it several years ago. You remember, he passed around samples. And it was very attractive. But I don't think another grant. I guess we know how Tegan feels. I don't know. I feel like you can ask Anna, throw away X and stuff. OK, what do you want to do, guys? Anybody have an opinion? I mean, I think it's nice. The people who appreciate them really appreciate them. I think we should leave it at either $750 or $1,000 and let them decide the best way to spend it, whether it's printing and having them available at stores or mailing to print from properties only. And putting it online combination? Yeah, yeah. OK, pick a number, somebody. Jamie, you mentioned $750. I think $750 is doable. I'm OK with $750. I think these failed to create and print even if it's glossy and Schmancy looking. Doesn't give them much postage. Do they send them out once a month or once a year? No, just once a year. Lauren, I think they just did one for the year. They used to do two a year. OK, good. Should we move on? We do the swim committee. Mark has managed to get the dock price down by, what, a couple hundred dollars because he found out that we don't have to pay the taxes as a municipality. It's not even a couple. It's about $200, I think. Yeah, it's $240. So I may have misunderstood, but I thought the discussion last week was we agreed to reduce the dock number to $2,500. It was $5,000 previously. Because I remember the discussion being around, well, it's asking the fund raise the balance. But I didn't remember it that way. Yeah, that was me. I was crushing. Well, because it's showing that there are, whether businesses or people of means that it seems like someone in the vicinity might be willing to purchase it or sponsor it. Donate. Donate. Maybe. We've been asking for a lot of donations lately for that. We've been raising money for the dam. We've been raising money. We raised money for the raft. And I'm feeling like this dock, it's a really important community resource. Yeah, I guess that was my impression from the presentation. As much as I'd like to find another way to do it more cheaply is that it sounds like the current state of the dock is like a safety issue for running the program from it. And so the program is already suffering from an existential issue of being able to find somebody to actually run it and then you have a secondary existential problem of having a dock that is in need of replacement. And if it has to be pulled out or can't go back in next year, then that makes it even more challenging to run a program. I appreciate it needs to be refurbished. But the town is, as we are with the interest for the bond that everyone voted to. It's close to $700,000. And in Curtis Pond, as much as we like to talk that it's a resource for the whole town, it's primarily a resource for the people that live in the area. So I don't know. My kids learned to swim there. They only swim lessons around here. Yeah. That doesn't have an instructor. Well, they haven't been having a hard time finding certified kids. I think this year they were barely able to get one in in time. They didn't. But that's because they didn't have a committee. So nobody had appointed the committee. I guess. So nobody was working on it. This year's committee started working on it, and they've not yet found an instructor. And the trainings happen like January or February, so if you don't have a person in February, they're all gone. And that's the doc's primary uses for the lessons? Well, I mean, I think it's a community access to it. It goes in right by the park area, the parking area there. It doesn't mean you can get in by the steps. It's just the doc makes the swimming lessons, and it's more fun. You can jump off. So it's by the swim area? By the swim area, it's fine. There's just those little steps you can go in. Yeah, the steps that we just put the railing. Because we just put the kilo railing on. Yeah, so it's $5,000. Anne, you're inclined to ask them to raise the entire amount? I just think there are, I think it might a business or someone, there might be a means to get it sponsored. It's just we're already, like every individual is already putting in with the bond, and we did the railing with the last thing. Yeah, that happened in town. And just being from the other side of town, it's not, people on my side of town don't get to use it. There's not parking. There's not, you know, so everyone goes to number 10. Well, why don't we leave it at $2,500? And they can choose to fundraise for the balance of it or carry it over for a replacement in the next year. You know, I would agree with one of the things that struck me about the staircase situation is there was being used, the rationale was, you know, accessibility, et cetera, et cetera, to the ponds. It's like there are other swimming areas. So why don't we look at a proposal for each of the swimming areas and consider equitability? And nobody seemed to bring anything up at the time, you know. I don't know why number 10 doesn't get more attention or have a dock or a raft or something like that, considering how many people use number 10. And, you know, maybe this is an opportunity to see $2,500 there and another conversation we had next year about having another infrastructure being placed at the other swimming areas. Now, we still have with Curtis Pond, the route crew is still gonna be putting in that floating, the swimming raft thing, yes? Did that ever get put in this summer? I don't think it did. Oh yeah, definitely. I thought it did. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, Mark has got the dock. He's ready to go buy it. But if we don't give him the money, he can't. But you wouldn't be getting the money until? Well, yes, but he could enter the contract if he knew that he had the money. So, personally, I'm inclined to give them the money. I do think it's an important community resource and I do believe a lot of people from East Calis go over there. But maybe not. I would say yes. Okay. That's where I would lean to, I think. And Jamie has, oh, go ahead. Oh, no, go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say, I tend to, I really do see both sides on this one. I see that Curtis has gotten a lot of attention recently. And, but I also do think that if you looked at the statistics of kids who have gone through the swim lessons over the last 20, 30 years, it's really kids from all over town. And spending a lot of time at the swim area, it's really a wide range of people who swim there. And I think that the dock makes the swim area safer and more appealing. And yeah, I support the full five, although I fully understand the hesitancy. Maybe twice, and I know a lot of stuff to go to summer, but we definitely went to number 10 a number of times and we didn't go to Curtis. And part of that was, because there were no swim lessons and part of the reason, you know, it's a... So they're sort of parked, it's very limited parking. So if you don't walk to it or live there, you know, the parking's very restrictive and so it's... During swim lesson time, it's usually okay. It's just later in the day when it warms up. Because if you're in swim lesson time, it's shady there and it's very cold. All right, I have an alternative proposal. It's $10,000, but it has to go in, or it's $5,000, but it has to go into number 10. I'd still say no. But at number 10, no one would want to because they think they like, you know, I mean, I take it. Number 10's great. Okay, so it sounds like we've got two who want to pay the $5,000, one who wants to split the difference and two who don't want to do it. Have I got that right? I'd be okay with leaving half and then let's see where we can go back. Let's see where we can squeeze everybody else. I mean, I don't want to squeeze everyone fairly. Okay, so now we've got two. Do you need to pay with that? I'm finally moving forward. I think that's definitely a place we could go back to. No, are you okay with leaving 2,500 in there? In that line item? Yeah. Okay. I think that's what we've, that's the sense then that we've got at this point. Okay, everybody? 2,500. Thank you. Are you guys okay to keep going? It's just an unusual meeting. We're gonna, we can go back, come back to it next week. Well, I guess Donnie, he's been up since midnight yesterday. Well, he's driving me home and I want him to not go off or we do not have him anywhere else. You know what, what I'd like to suggest, let's finish the general budget. We're pretty close to the end and not going to highway. All right. Okay. Okay, that takes us to Town Hall. Um, let me see here. What can we say about that? Yes. I've mentioned, oh, moving the generator. I will tell you that I had a conversation with John McCullough on the design advisory board. You know, the design advisory board wants the generator moved. Okay. It was a lot to put in there. It's a lot of work and expensive to move on. Well, not only that, they don't have regulatory authority. They're advisory only. But that's what they want. Um... I was worried it wasn't even like the requirement that we had to... They don't have that authority. Okay. They will if we pass the zoning as it is now. The zoning will be changed to give them that authority but currently they don't have it and they can't. So it's an advice to us and it's up to us to whether or not we want to do it. I discussed it with John who's on the design advisory board and we both agreed that it made sense to just ignore it for now and maybe do it in a year or so. Okay. The moving the generator would have cost, I think it was about $2,500. Hmm. So, I mean, well, maybe they'll build a cute little fence around it and everybody will be okay with that. Yeah, the privacy screen, their third. Well, John said it becomes a traffic hazard if they do that. I don't know. So if you're all right with it, we'll just put that one aside. It becomes a guard rail, which we need on this side. Okay. Yes. You notice we don't have anything for acoustic improvements in here and we do have something for picture frames. So John and I discussed the picture frames. John's got a bunch of maps. He says, ah, zero that one out. I can buy some frames at a second hand at an auction or something, we'll be fine. Can you say garage sale? Yeah, I did. You're right, at a garage sale. And even if we don't frame them, we can put them up like that and they'll still help with the acoustics. And in terms of acoustic improvements, I mean, I would love to buy the ceiling, but I don't think we're going to do it this year. Do you guys want to put something in there for acoustic improvements for this year? Do you want to put that one off? This adjustment was more chaired, I thought. He said, no, what he said was putting the chairs here had made the biggest difference, bringing these down instead of just all the wooden ones. And he's going to work, he and Toby are working at screwing the floor down. Apparently, I don't know. It doesn't bother me. So I don't, I'm not a person who can judge this. Same. Well, and I think this with the things that they've done with hanging things in the chairs and they've made a difference already. Yeah, I mean, I'd like to do some more, but I'm not sure this is the year. I think that's fair. I agree. Being on Zoom, I can attest to it's still being pretty echoey in there, but I think there's more incremental progress that can be made for your team that we can leave it blank. So should we take out the $300 picture frames then? Yeah. Per John's suggestion. Town Hall Reserve Fund. Do we want to put $10,000 in that? How much do they have in it now? Yeah. $500. Oh, that's what they're done. $500? No. So it's a audit sense and we're going to include this year's $10,000 that was budgeted. If you can, someone can refresh me because I can't remember the friends of the town hall when they make money from programs and plays and things that happen here is that does any of that come back to the town? Yes, but not until we use the Reserve Fund to... They haven't made much money this year. Yeah, because it's too cold. We have to insulate. And the Reserve Fund is being built up to toward fixing those things. So we can only use it in the summer right now. Now, is this one of the buildings that Scott had applied to do the energy audit on? So they might come in and do some insulating? No. Yeah. They might. We might be able to get some grant money for it. I'm not sure. So the $10,000 would go to... $5,500? Oh no, but what are they... It's going to be the guy that keeps coming in. They either for insulating or I mean, what does it go to? I was going to say to keep it the same. It's spent on... Yes. And Winchester and I didn't have a user today that was a friend to the town hall. Yeah. I'm saying it'll probably be spent on things like insulation and other projects to fix up the town hall. So it's sort of a chicken and egg thing until they fix up the upstairs, they're not going to get much income. They'll get it in the summer maybe. Yeah, maybe bring it back down to the $6,000. Okay. Six. Is that enough to do something? Jamie, okay with that? Yeah. Okay. Insurance, I don't think we can do anything about that. Long-term debt. I think that is what it is. Tax abatement. Why do we need money for tax abatement? Is that to replace what taxes are abated? It must be. It must be to make up when we tell somebody that they don't have to pay as much as they were assessed. And that only ends up being $500 a year. Oh, so I get what you're saying. I was just showing how these were down there. It was $2,100. This is going to go down a lot. It's going to be pretty hard. Actual for FY 2023 was $1,221, yeah. Well, we'll say no one at this point has requested abatement since it had been in office. We had one, but I guess she withdrew. Yeah, well it was, it didn't end up being an abatement. I think it was just a correction because there were two different parcels that needed to be adjusted for them. You know, there was that. There was somebody over on Worcester Road. Anyway, she's the one she inherited it and she couldn't afford to pay the taxes on it. Is that something we should be discussing in an open meeting? Yeah, that's a good point. In any case, should we just leave it at $500 then? And then if Sandra wants to tell us, maybe we can. That's a question for Sandra. Is there somebody's question? Yeah, I mean it looks like it wasn't budgeted for. And then we had the $2,100 in expense. And then maybe Sandra's recommending that we just put something in there to cover whatever expense may come off. But it seems reasonable to put $500 in there. Yeah, OK. All right, there's a Woodbury Fire Department meeting tomorrow night. Anybody planning to go? I was going to go. You're going to go? The roads are good. I don't have great tires. But if I can scoot down 14, I can go. OK. I was trying to figure out what the Eastmont failure meeting was. 14th. It's on the 14th. And they've sent us some documents. So I'm going to put on the next agenda that we need to talk about the interlocal agreement. Yeah. OK. Yeah, I probably will sleep tomorrow. So will all of you please look over that interlocal agreement, because it's time to renew it. And we need to think we're going to have to negotiate with them at the next meeting. And we'll talk about it at the next meeting. So are we all going to the one on the 14th then? Usually we all go. It's the big one. It's the one where they do the budget. And the Eastmont failure people all go. So yeah. I think it's been a pretty long standing. I mean, if you can't, you can't. It's on a Thursday night, and Jamie won't be able to go. But it would be good if the rest of us. I should be able to go to that one. I'm going to be traveling tomorrow. So I won't be around for the Woodbury one. I may go to the Woodbury one. Except I have to be at the airport at 9.30. So I don't need to go to that. I will not be at the Woodbury one. I might go for an hour. That's fine. Try to be self-taught. So with the interlocal, is it negotiating with Eastmont failure? No, it's a three-way agreement. With the fire department, Eastmont failure and us. We haven't had any indication or conversation with Eastmont failure select board about board numbers, about changes that they'd want to make or see. I mean, it got the impression that they, I think they were fine with it. I mean, I think they were talking like we could just. Yeah. You know, it's like the 1, 3, 2, 3, you know, if they dissolve, you know, how do they divvy up the assets? You know, what rights the fire department has to do with their own business? I think that's right. I think they were fine with it and ready to sign it. And we said, wait a minute. We just found out about this tonight. We need time to read it. So I mean, it seems pretty basic. And you know, it's, I think, been in place for a fairly long time without a lot of it. I think we had come back wanting to change things before us, which is why it was. OK. Well, we'll talk about this at the next meeting. And we'll go through the highway budget. And I don't know if we can finalize it at the next meeting. If we can't, we may have to have another meeting to finish it off because we've got to get it done. We've made a lot of progress, though. We've made a lot of progress. And when we see the bottom line, maybe we'll be happy. Do you have any sense, Kari? Are we getting down into the single digits? Yeah, I bet you we put it into the single digits. Yeah, I bet we're at 8 and 1 half percent, I think, after considering the, like, the, yeah. I think we found, I think we just probably went through in the general. I think we put, it was close to 40, 4,500, more than that. A little bit more than that. Yeah, I think more than that. Yeah, like 20,000 is 1%, so that'd be at 2%. I don't think we got you another 20,000, but it was. Yeah, I was hoping you would, but maybe not. Yeah, but I'm, we can probably defend 8%, so. But we're going to have to have a conversation about how we're going to do that, too. But that was all referring to schools. Yeah, so. OK, anything else? Well, there's always reserve funds that we can continue to chip away at. Yeah, take it out of the conservation. Oh, God. OK, anything else? All right, meeting adjourned.