 December 19th meeting of the Slack board to order at 7.02 a.m. just a couple of minutes behind schedule. Thank you very much. And as you see Mike is joining us virtually so I'll be sharing in his semi-adventure or virtual presence if you would. So our first item of the week is to approve the agenda. I'll make a motion to approve the agenda with a couple of minor model motions. I would add the minutes of the December 9th special meeting to the agenda. And then when C comes to the planning department budget and the manager agency also have to get approved to be on the parts plan and set up that. Also is the amendments. And second it for the discussion. All those in favor. Aye. So thank you. Consent agenda items we have a couple of amendments. I'll make a motion to approve. Any further discussion. All those in favor. Aye. Now's the time for the public to speak whether in person or via Zoom on something that's not on the agenda and would ask you to come up and state your name and then speak if you would like or if you're on the agenda you can do a hand raise. Anybody would like to speak. All right. Seeing none. We will move right on. Actually I would love to speak as a member of the public and like I didn't write down or forgotten. But we noted technically Bill this is your last meeting with us or you're critically retired so we just want to give a big thanks and glad to hear it and it feels like a moment just to give you some of the work parking. Thank you very much. I will not do this for you. Probably be the man. I'll walk you on it. And since we totally forgot all our colleagues I also want to give a shout out to Skip Planners and other folks who helped to organize the campaign breakfast for staff and volunteers and Tom and so yeah. But I'm not as organized as Skip. I don't have a card but do you want to work but in full work. We should get everything back. Your birthday fire. Hopefully we can move that. Another day next year. And then all of a sudden we did not get adequate breakfast. No. We're there. It was great. Fantastic. We will move on to our blackboard item. And first is Lieutenant White. Thank you. Thank you everyone. I apologize. My tire normally I don't show up in between this morning and a rather busy day for my other full time job so and it will continue right now tomorrow morning. So, yeah, busy. The end of 2022 is starting out to be an active one. So as long as we're echoing our appreciation for bill. Thank you for the four and a half years of us working together to make this Sydney pilot I would say it was moved beyond just a pilot project but from its beginning in 2018 to where we are now I think we've done a lot for hopefully we've done a lot for the entire town of Waterbury. Certainly it's always a work in progress just to make sure that we're tending to the needs of individual municipality and especially for you guys this one since obviously we have a lot of talent for what we have and what we continue to build on. Just in terms of the last year kind of broadly speaking, state police, middle sex now Berlin. As soon as we move into our new office in Berlin, the definitely a much nicer space more up to date than middle sex which is a good thing to have nice place for all the troopers including the Waterbury troopers to call home when they need to be there. Certainly it does when they have to come to Berlin, it definitely takes them a little bit further away from the town of Waterbury but I'll do what we can to limit the amount of time that they are in town. Certainly speaking with Bill over the over the year, speeding until a concern for the town. It's been a delicate balance for us coming out of COVID, trying to get back into the traffic side of things simply because we were restricted on what we were allowing the troopers to do to limit their contact with individuals and certainly as old habits. Once you get out of the habit. It's a little bit more difficult to get back in. I think in the last, at least several several months gotten back into that a little bit better. More on, because like I said just people go on a regular basis that seems to be one of the chief concerns for the town is just speedy complaints. There's no trends of criminal stuff outside of the, some of the drug stuff that we got with earlier on in the year there's no real trends or over over arching problems. We're deal with we deal with the things as they come kind of one day Tuesdays here and there, there's no being like that sort of large needs are stuff like that going on. It's quite an issue with two miles at the parking right for quite a while. That seemed to calm down in the last several months so we do our best to address the needs when when they get brought to our attention. And now we're going to help to continue to foster this relationship with the town. I believe there was a situation and maybe I don't know if you can talk about it, but did you make an arrangement with your character? We had, and I'm not sure exactly how much water very was involved but there was a much larger scale investigation that went into that kind of over arching central Vermont problem that we were able to kind of one of the arrests was by just by sheer luck, one of the troopers doing doing good work, seeing something suspicious, pulling in checking it out and as it would be there are people on the car. It's a key channel that can work as well. Yeah, sometimes we just get, we just get that lucky to just have a long and see something that looks at a place. I think I've started since you've been here last, you've kind of a list of Johnson, and the larger part of the board. And here. Thank one of your officers for catching my son's feeding a stone. We're talking about good lesson of repression of LH and you know I really do think it's a good thing for him. It wasn't good thing for us, generally, but we're making the best of it and now I'm glad to hear that. Another question. Before you start quickly with that, and I don't have every monthly report that we've been appointed since this year I was just in April. The last one I have is October. But our four hours. For nine months, all in check with the number of calls. It's a different time of calls is what I called up. So, and are totally 18 traffic stops and that's significant. And almost not really was from April of 2020. And I'm sure there were things that they had stops for somebody would have agreed to this violation but probably won't stop. And also I'm sure is the last few weekends. And I do do some very rough snapping conditions and and Berlin that for the water very super for this and that a little bit more than actually more than we ever have. And four and a half years. And it continues to be a struggle that we face. 14 people that we're supposed to have working at the very current six they can do, which means that just about every single shift we are at our bare minimum staffing. And certainly it's not unique to just Berlin the entire state is facing unprecedented vacancies. I think we're at between our actual big news firm illness sickness injuries. Things like that were somewhere around 60 days for the entire apartment. And I think that if one merits is it's very not much the entire state is, we actually have a system of mandatory overtime for everyone started and below every two months. And all the ranks is required to work at least one shift coverage over time, somewhere in the state. And if you do not fulfill that then when the vacancy shifts come open, then you will be actually ordered to work. Anywhere in the state where the needs are so I've been doing this for just shy of 20 years now, never have we ever thought we would have to be in a situation to work shifts so it's a pretty bad state of affairs right now. We're not, you know, certainly Vermont, Berlin isn't unique. The state is unique in the entire fashion. Interesting. We had the same officers. No. No. We had to each. No, three, three, three days. Danny, my guess is, my. Thank you. I assume I'm unmuted. Lieutenant White, sorry, I can't be there. I kind of have a family kind of issue that I'm pending to, but I want to thank you and all the troopers for everything that you do for both Waterbury and the state of Vermont as a whole. I just want to ask you more something in regards to trends in in policing. I know with all everything the state police you hear about Burlington they're all down in staff numbers compared to where they probably should be. Do you see, I know we can't expect the state police to do a lot of the quality of life the you know traffic stops and that type of stuff with probably what are more urgent type matters in the state. Do you see that letting up and or or it's going to just get worse with the staffing levels and just as a note, I don't know if other people, the audio is not very good out here in zoom land. Thanks. In terms of, you know, law enforcement in general, especially for the state police. Yeah, that's certainly not anything that's going to change for us. Okay, yeah, that's certainly not nothing that I see changing in the foreseeable future with our with our staff and the way they are. Mike, is the audience quiet or is it breaking up? No, it's just a little more muffled than anything else. And I have my speaker up to maximum and it's just a little. I don't know if it's an owl problem or what. It's an owl. It's definitely the owl. It sounds better now. I got a lot of voice. So I asked. Have you here I think maybe that's why you're here. I've got some concerns for our community along with many others in the state. The state is a whole. I just had a cousin of mine very close cousin like that. I am now doing the impact financial impacts of his death because I stepped in and help develop with something. Some financial issues that I thought were caused from something other than a drug problem. So I'm feeling the impacts small portion of the impact along with his death of what some people are going through as a result of the drug problem. So one of the questions, you know, I have some bigger concerns because of my fear of what's happening at this other border. It's all infusion and along with other drugs. And criminals coming into the country. Got a ways and, you know, we just don't. I don't even know this. It's not a project. And just. Yes. So anyway, I'm looking forward to the future of our communities and the impact on the type of what's coming. I'm curious to know why are losing like I'm not really curious, but I think I know some of the reasons why we're losing police officers. Not only here across the country. Los Angeles is about to lose 300 more for total 800 this year. The policies are going to be put in place are making it front reading for police officers to do their jobs. You know, under the public safety department. There are divisions in there other than state police officers that are in that public safety umbrella, or is it basically officers and I don't know if there's detectives included in that department. I guess my question is, I've heard some things about states attorneys. The fact that we're losing them in Washington County, I'm understanding that we are going to be down to one here shortly. I don't know if you can verify that or not. And my concern is that police officers have an hard time arresting criminals. It seems like the next step is prosecuting them. And if that's that was possibly for because of changes in policy or, you know, judges, you know, what the sentences they're handing down. I don't know where the link the broken link in the chain is. I don't know if you can shed light on that at all. And I'm just wondering. So my biggest concern was as a board member to continue to let this go on and not speak up about it. I just to be too concerned for people in my communities. Just stay, stay silent right so if you can shed any light on that. Okay, well, first of all, sorry. In terms of the public safety umbrella the Department of Public Safety, it actually includes fire service includes emergency management, and then Vermont State Police covers all of the detectives all the specialized units. So they, all of that falls under the actual Vermont State Police which is under the Department of Public Safety umbrella. So it's the Department of Public Safety is a very large entity, and in and of itself, the SP is only one portion of that we are the larger part of that, but we're just one portion of public safety. In terms of, are there other people losing or other departments losing people yet it's it's across the board. And the reasonings anywhere from just natural attrition for for retirements to things like the legislation that that were played by a lot of younger people that have gotten into it. They're leaving because they don't agree with some of this legislation. They're going a lot of our people that go to the federal agencies. What I can say is many of the people who have left Vermont State Police for other law enforcement agency, whether they be mass state police, New York State Police. We had some folks leave for like the air marshals. They're all coming back. So they actually see the value and what we have in Vermont. And they're coming back and state police. And a lot of that is goes to say that, you know, the way overall the way Vermont State Police treats their people. This is what I'm hearing from the people that have left. They get treated. Like, it's not just a number like in New York State Police. It's just a number. Whereas, I mean, we, we know all of our people, we have, we don't have, we're going to be fire stations department. So, so that's one credit to us for state police. Like I said, most people that are leaving state police and not going back to some federal department or some federal agency, whether the grass screener or they like to return that benefits stuff like that. But that's, that's where a lot of our people are going that are not returning. In terms of just the overall drug issue. We have probably four, I think we have four drug detectives and then over half of the state. And the biggest majority of their time has been spent. They've been detailed to deal with where I am. Issues going on in which, but naturally, everything else is growing, which is why I'm just like this and I've been busy for all day today. Probably all day. Probably the better part of this week. Because we've recognized that we safely said recognize that and they decided, okay, there's only so much we can do for growing until growing and start doing something. We can start doing something for themselves. And we are reallocating those assets back into the state police areas where where they shouldn't. So there, there is a bit of a turn and like I said, we are. It would be the busiest week I've had and 12 years to the state was that having multiple missions, dealing with everything from drugs to the homicide. It's, it's, we're playing catch up without, we're playing catch up now because, again, we decided, we decided that we're going to try and help Burlington as much as we could and got to do a fault of our own. And our own communities that we should be spending. Unfortunately, I would have said the birds and you made your bed. They're getting exactly what they asked for. So my concern is for the future impacts of what I don't know if this has been talked about in public safety about possible floods of yet additional drugs into our communities. Many others in the country. Is there any proactive humanist is low status you are in any preparation or consideration for deal with that proactive before. And I think that's, that's what we're doing by picking off some of these. Some of these networks that that we're dealing with currently, we're, I don't have the right access to that information, but it's my understanding that there are some ties into those, those bigger things, everything that we get up here from, when the drugs comes out of Springfield or Holyoke or Hartford get, you know, so everyone's tripping up here because they can they can sell the product or so much more. Which has always been the case. That's why the law has had the issues that it's had any efforts in the school system and trying to convince. What else. What this can mean for their life. Just really, really ruining their lives. You know, I'm probably one. You need to get over that. Me understand that getting involved in any of that crap is a dead end road. I got four grand children. I'm deeply concerned about them and the other children of their age. We're dealing with what we imagine. If something isn't done. So what as a community member on the board. What can we do as community members whether we put pressure on the legislative representatives that we have to start paying attention more attention for this problem growing problem and start to. I think that's certainly a that's the best possible starting point because as a whole, certainly state government state entities we are driven by the legislatures and and what they're what they're pushing down so our hands are tied at times with what we cannot do. And what gets what gets passed. And any sessions is what we have to live. And, you know, to speak to your other point about the state's attorney for the judges. You know, again, we can go out and and arrest everyone, but we can't arrest our way out of this problem. It's it is far above just putting people giving people a piece of paper and put them in front of the judge. This, there's no possible way to arrest early. We can, we can only do so much from this side. It's just a bigger picture that that you've spoken of that that is the issue as a whole. I, I, this is a much speculation that the drug cartels will become so strong along the southern border that the only, the only way to curtail it will be military action. They're getting so powerful. It was three to $10,000 per person across the border. Yes. But anyway, I appreciate your time tonight. We can talk for hours. And, you know, if I were in your shoes, I'm so passionate and so upset about this. If I were you, I would say to the rest of all the members of the state, we're not getting any change made, maybe it's time to lay our eyes down and say to you guys, turn things around. Start to help us out. That's just the type of person I am. I don't, I don't deal with these types of things very well. Awesome. Thank you very much for your time, especially on a busy night to just point out that relates to Chris said one, our next visitors I'm sure can speak to education and what may or may not be happening so glad they're also on the agenda tonight. Two, by virtue of us being in the Vermont League of cities and towns, the Vermont League of cities and towns has a legislative platform informed by communities across the state. Bill was our proxy and voted on it, but I just want to state that the lead project and have two full time advocates for municipalities. There was something I mean it's probably want to do and it's naming that those are platforms. Black question is from a local perspective, I know we haven't agreed that for a couple of years, clearly you're feeling it and staffing in terms of long term visibility for the town do you have any concern for things in terms of what proactive down the road thinking about making the contrast, you know, these both days. Yeah, I don't. It's, it's my priority to ensure that we are fulfilling our, our folks being in the town, and it is, is only on an emergent basis that we pull them out. So, that is, that is, is my dedication to this. No, I got into this position at the very beginning of this contract. And again, I think that it's been good for for the state police. I know that there's, there's people all across there's municipalities all across the state that are dissolving their, their police apartments, and it is falling on to the state police, just to soak those those towns up. And I think having, having this in place, certainly shows that water very is is concerned enough about the public, their community to enter into something like this because the level of service that the Berlin barracks could give to the town of water very is a lot different than the two water very troopers could could provide. You know, we have not including water there we have 18 pounds that that we provide full on for the coverage for right now is very second. Three troopers are covering 18 pounds. So, your staff issues. A lot of it. Yes. Yeah. I mean, if just on any given Monday, if we were at full staff, we would have a minimum of four to five. So that's just our, our bare minimum staffing is, is that three, three people on on a Monday, three Thursday, and then we up to for Friday, Saturday and Sundays because you know, the population will have central for my double triple quadruple on any given weekend day. I would like to just also point out that, wow, might as correct that maybe we don't get the retail type of service that people were used to when we have a village of largest recently, but I would like to just acknowledge the two troopers that we do have. And the fact that they do step up to try to become helpful in this community, both of them were here for the river of light for a just a week or so ago. When we have enough place independent state event for that. They do try to object. Even the as best we can. It's, it's not the same as it was when we have a local police force that could get into the businesses every day. I mean, Scott is good care about the community and they try to interact with people here. Whenever I have a patient to call, I'm pretty much a chain of command person. So if there's a need, I contact a point and then he tells the truth. They've been very responsive throughout the whole course of this contact. Clearly, I think I've committed. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you for your services. In regard to Chris's concerns. Is there anything that select one can do to try to alleviate the problem doesn't exist. Certainly any, any concern they get get brought to you just make sure they get forwarded. Either myself or either one of the troopers that way that they can at least know what's going on, spend some extra time and whatever area that might be. I know there's, there's always people talking in town. And probably some of the drama less than encounters that we dealt with earlier in the year are proof that just a little bit of word of mouth. You know, unfortunately, so many people say, Oh, well, if I know what's going on, you know, the stable is happening. We're using the people that no one wants to know what they're doing. So people go to great lengths to make sure that we're not. We can, we can suspect in some eyes that things are happening, but just just a little bit of information to kind of point us in the right direction we might have until on a certain neighborhood and, you know, I think that people here could get us to this corner. And for my perspective, I think that this arrangement is working well for the town. I don't believe that we can afford to set up our own private police force. Even if we could, I don't believe that the personnel are available to hire. So I appreciate what you've done. One more, one more question. I did the first one. Roger's point. Yeah. The system guys. So I was a big proponent of hiring just to see police officers and not create our own town and see how that went. That's successful in my eyes and others. And I was wondering if this rubbed off, I mean, how come it hasn't rubbed off this model? I think when it first picked off a lot of talent, we're very interested in it. And for one reason or the other, I think the other being I'm a blonde person, so I'm just going to say that they didn't care about their community enough to invest in the resource. Because like I said, if we go to something right now in more town, you're not going to get the same response that we were from the local troopers that are here. And it's, and in my eyes, that's all that comes to mind. A community that had some sort of department that dissolved that department and doesn't put the effort into doing something else, whether it be just a long term contract, not a, not a 80 hour a week contract, you know, even even a local contract for service, 10, 12 hours a week, they're doing something to invest in their community to help get that law in order to store. Even if it's not the level of the whole time police department, they just don't have enough volume to appreciate the status that law court is in. I think the other thing too, not the, you know, fashion municipalities, but I also think an issue has to be the vacancy level that the city release has right now. I mean, they, they can't commit all of their resources for these types of contract because there are a lot of people who can't have those. You know, I think we got in at the right time, having my deal was helpful to, you know, pave the way with his, his ties with the state police. And, you know, it worked. And I know when we entered the agreement, the state kind of made it clear because I know a lot of municipalities that asked that we're going to see how it works. However, he told me think about what I said, you know, so. I have one question. I won't believe the issue. Looking at it. I think the larger communities across the state have. They've either created positions I think we're going to involve some community health workers, whether they've done partnerships with mental health providers to, when you get those calls where it's a mental health issue and not a police issue that you can hand that off to a professional. Yes. Is there a substantial need for that in Waterbury is that something we should be thinking about. Well, so, I don't know that the level of calls would necessarily support an independent person just for Waterbury. What I can tell you is we have a position for them Berlin. We had a bill for about a four months and moved on. Just last week, we did some interviews for the fill that position again, I feel we have a very strong candidate. So, things cross because this is the third round something like, you know, mental health services, the mental health workers that we're trying to put into every very specific not unlike any other profession to include law enforcement, getting people to do the work is the most difficult thing. So, if we can build this position that would be something where if one of those calls were in Waterbury, you would come out with the truth and respond to those scenes, and you would have that that person. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. It's helpful and enlightening for everybody here, both the board and the public, so we really appreciate it. Hope you get some rest. If there's any further than we. We have another guest. Thank you for having me. I look later in the new superintendent coming up on my six month anniversary of the district. One of the things I wanted to do as part of our entry plan and the board is a number of activities with us since July, to reach out to each of the select boards and have an opportunity to sit down and share what's going on in our schools and see if there's anything that you have questions with and just open the door that there's ever any time if you'd like to hear something I'm always welcome to attend the meeting and I'm always happy to do that and reach out and have conversations. So since I've been here, I'll give you a little bit of an update on the entry plan. It started with some opportunities to meet various communities. I'm not going to go through this whole piece and take a look at it on your own, but it's part of my entry. I did a survey, a community survey that went to students, faculty, parents, community members with 660 responses, which is an excellent, excellent response. I categorized, I must reach one individually. I categorized the addition of parents, community members, boys, anything from positives to negatives. So I went through that listed in there the number of responses we received for strikes at the school district as far as needs as well. And then part of that information as well as my observations in the schools I try to be in a school every day. Generally in our high school, at least three times a week and propose four goals to the board. Four goals that we start working on from a little late. We've been told from October to November, the goals around academics, improving academics, budget, for your budget plan, improving community relations and information we get to the public. And then also taking a look at the issues with part of a high school and proposal for a new bond process for community engagement to form that finalization for that bond. So that's where we are right now. We have a board meeting on Wednesday and we talked about the milestones for the rest of the year with the goals, and look forward to continuing to meet members of the community, very impressed with the schools and communities that children. My wife and I live in South Luxbury right next to Harvard High School, and we've been enjoying getting to know and very happy for snow this weekend as well. But I'm happy to take any questions. I mentioned school climate. Yes. Could you explain more about that? Sure. And school climate, the definition of climate is how students and faculty feel a part of the community. You know, last year there were a number of issues that were voiced from students and faculty about climate, particularly at this high school, or any other place. And I think there were multiple reasons for that. I think there are some areas of improvement that we can make as a school district that I thought the board about. But I also think the last two years in school districts, not just in this district, not just in the state but around the country have been incredibly challenging. I was a superintendent for the last 13 years in another district in another state. And I can tell you that those two years were the hardest in my 32 years in public education. We saw issues around school climate. There were a lot of concerns last year with vandalism, vaping. Again, they were not just hardwood issues, they were issues that I experienced 450 miles away that schools experienced around the country. I think we're making some progress and going to our students and faculty, they're feeling much better about that plan this year. So there are areas that we need to continue to work on in a very focused way. Another question. I have a question. How about that school calendar to get closed on voting day. There was one parent who was. What I can share with you is that we did have, as soon as through Waterbury, a Washington County Sheriff. Yes, the polling place. And the two principals. We're not having any concerns with that with the public there. They thought that was well, simple separated. We had a sheriff who was on duty. So from the principals and the teachers, we did not hear concerns, although one parent did bring up that concern. So I'd be happy to have conversations with the slide board. Having a district wide day off on a Tuesday when this is about the only polling place we use would be challenging. Well, it was a district wide. It just seems to me that that could have been seen in two years ago. They have general election day. I think last year's found that even though it wasn't election day, they had it off this year when it's election day. And, you know, I understand that the other communities. Don't use the tools necessarily for voting like spray. I guess, I don't know if they're going to stay with drive through voting, but when they go to use the school. There's no other place to go. And from the perspective of school safety, I'm glad that the principals didn't feel that there was an issue. But just in terms of the logistics of finding places to public funding ability to get in and out of the building. It seems one day every two years. And I'm not sure I'll be back into the schedule this year. I didn't create the calendar for this year. All right, I'm not trying to come out as, you know, this is the biggest deal that there is, but I think that, you know, we did hear from a number of people. And when I say another, you know, handful of people, but there were some people that were very upset that their kids have to go to school when there was. You know, I understand the knowledge issues with regard to school safety. But we have a couple of people who suggested that we could use this room. Well, there's not enough space to park here. This room looks big, but it has capacity of 85. And I think how many voting stations. There are seven voting stations. And I think we're good for three. There's just no other place. Yeah, I'm actually surprised, sir, to hear you say that the principals were okay with it because there were, there was hostility that day. There was teachers that were very anxious. There were voters that were very anxious. And so I'm surprised to hear that that was described to you as like a working situation. It was, it was not a great situation. I think that actually it's not too close to a conversation yet. I think, yeah, a lot of folks, we did hear from a handful of parents as well. I had that conversation look at it again what I can share. I had experience with closing on that Tuesday and there is a split between parents who will say, I'd rather have this been closed and safety and other parents who will say it's having going to school on a Monday, having off on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is educationally challenging and sometimes we hear that from parents as well in the middle of the day. In the middle of the week. Yeah, yeah, well I'd be happy to take the, take the blame for that and you can tell those parents that it's for the safety of their children that this was not open that day but but yeah I'd like to continue that conversation. Absolutely. Another question from the board. What's your timeline on this developing three year budget. Right now we're in the middle of our budget for next year. So part of the milestone will be finished that piece up and then we also have a new director of finance, our previous director of finance. We're retired after 25 years, Lisa Esler is came on board with me. So she's also learning the system as well. Lisa has been coming to Vermont her whole life. They had a home in Warren for for many years, but she was a vice president for finance at Rutgers University so she had a long experience, pretty much. So we'll be working on that if you're looking at projections and getting more information to help project out some of our expenses. So it was three year plans. Yeah, but have, have something in place by the end of the year, based on assumptions and information that we have at the time, but it's helpful something that I was done as a superintendent my finance director we're going to either a three year or five year budget project out for initiatives. Danny Mike's hand is raised. Thanks Mike. Yep, thanks Danny. Hi Mike. Sorry, I couldn't be. Sorry I couldn't be with you in person. Definitely welcome this is a long overdue meeting and I'm glad we could have you at the select board meeting. One comment I just want to make. I know, whether you know, you've been on a little bit, but Waterbury has had a hard time retaining our representatives to select board. Is there anything that you. The retention of, you know, Waterbury's members. Well, and that was a question when I went to the interview process I had for the board because we do have in general, pretty sizable turnover not just for Waterbury. The, when I was hired in February, seven of those board members turned over by the time I started in July. And conversations I had with the board and Kelly who's our waste chairs here so she may have some as well, but I do think that we're a small district and we expect a lot from our school board members. I came from a district that was three times the size and we had nine board members. A lot more stability but I think they've also been a lot of challenges with the communication process for the board over the last six years. And that's one of our goals to create an environment for one that representatives from each of the towns voices can be heard but at the same time that board members want to stay and want to have some longevity in their seats because the current turnover is is is challenging for school district and challenging for a superintendent and it's something that I want to do everything I can as a superintendent to encourage board members to stay for their, at least for the three year terms. Yeah, I just, I wanted to touch base on your meeting last. Last week or in December, can we just review our garden. So, thank you for having us. And, you know, just to touch base on the, the open seats and stuff to start there. I know that the last one for Waterbury was because the person who was on on the board had moved out of the district, and it's against the state law for someone to be on the board, who is not living in the district so there was that and then I think there are a couple other things but as Mike said we have appointed a lot of people and it's across the entire board, not just Waterbury. We do a lot of work. And that's the importance, you know, it was frustrating to hear that folks wouldn't give a recommendation for somebody who was coming forward to volunteer their time on elected board, because it's really important to have everybody at the table representing their goals and then to share the workload. You know, there's a lot of committees and a lot of, I had no idea how much work there was being quite shared when I took the seat so, you know, there's that you know and talking about also what are we doing at the board, and it has been last year. What's the year that we set the goals and it was really a transition year coming of a new CFO and having a new superintendent it was really important to have a seamless smooth entrance for both of those people and to bring them up to speed on where our district is. Mike was from Pennsylvania or and Lisa was working outside of the state so she was not current in what was happening in our district. We have also been really working hard to change the policy on restraint and seclusion, which has been a process, and we're not wanting to make those changes quickly it takes a lot of people who are part of that process and to make sure that the things are safe the schools are safe. Everyone needs are being that it's not a look of a switch to make things happen. So, and then, you know, we're still dealing with COVID as well in our district we're dealing with the guidance, the funds and how to execute services to students in our district. So, I know that also at the December 5th meeting the the weights for this kitchen had come up and we know as a district have been talking about upgrades to that kitchen for a number of years, and I think years past it was in a bond that didn't pass. And I know that it's just it's come up again and again more even before my three returned so it seemed really modest to do it now when our breakfast and lunches have been increasing and hoping that it will continue to increase. Our even the vote passed a 12 to one, and not only will it bring fresh lunches for the students but it will increase the value of the school eventually. So, I think also it's important as a unified board to ensure that we're listening to all of the communities and all of the towns and not just the largest town of the district. So, I guess, you know, that's really what I wanted to share. It felt I felt a little taken back with hearing a public meeting, and I guess that's one of the things that we've had a lot of conversation around. You know, people see you first as a select board member versus an individual and then to have that open discussion and you're sharing your own opinions at a meeting that you're representing the town felt a little just grunge me along like this. I think that, you know, I welcome you to come to our school board meeting. We have one this week. We have one place a month at Harwood. So, I can also speak to, you know, the climate at the schools. I have a student in elementary in the middle school and one at the school, and I think the fun that there is really, really healthy now. It's in a better place than where it was last year and two years ago. So, I think a lot has to do with Dr. Mike being present in the schools. You know, he is visiting one school every single day, and has an office at high school. So all the students, a lot of the students know who he is. He walks in and I hear from my second grader, oh, so what after month today. So, Thank you for having us. Yeah. Two quick things. So, from the board's perspective, you feel like you've rectified the situation. I probably get some of the issues wrong, but we're not a woman elected from water already. I think it was just last year who resigned almost immediately because she didn't have computer access to be a board member. And it was a little disconcerting to me that somebody who was willing to step up and be a board member, but because they couldn't accommodate the board because I have everything electronic. She doesn't click. And that doesn't seem like it's as inclusive as we could be. Yeah. Well, you know, and I think that the same thing goes, it takes a responsibility to be a board member, you know, I mean, saying that I were a single parents and I couldn't find coverage to watch my children or be at home with them, then I might not be able to volunteer for something. I think there's that. I think also, you know, talking with our administrative team at the time, you know, she wanted things to be copied and handed to her and we get inundated so much with so much information that it just wouldn't. And some of the stuff is confidential. And I'd have to reread some of my emails to refresh my memory about the computer voting. And who knows, maybe it would be different. Maybe, maybe it would be different under different administrative. Well, I do know there are some municipalities out there want to read about one of them that actually spied their board members to work on. And we're seeing that if somebody wants to serve, then a computer shouldn't be a barrier. I want to recall, you know, I've just said it's been a while, I know I read a lot of what was happening. She was offered a rental or a loan, one of her own books, and it wasn't like not to be forever, it was like for certain. And so I think that I heard there were offers and negotiation, but it just wasn't to everybody's liking. So, you know, and maybe it won't be different, but yeah. So that was just one question. The second one goes back to our product conversation. And I hope this does not, it's not going to be, I don't know what the situation is, you know, I've been a municipal manager for almost 35 years. And until 2018, December 24, 2017, there was a local police practice. And when I first came out, the police were walking in the schools and they were walking in the schools. The day of program. And we also even though Crossford was in Brexbury, their village trustee is allowed this officer to work in the next school. Before the village police department was the standard. We were told by the schools, we don't want police officers in the streets, not only programmatically, but really don't come. The message I'm trying to be with administrators with police chief to talk about school issues that involve class, the school administrators didn't want to have any conversations. So I don't know what the client is now. I know it may be a total statement, but it was reported in the paper a couple of weeks ago that the paupillian police chief brought his child to school in uniform and he was told don't come on the school grounds in uniform. And he's subsequently has resigned his position and I'm not suggesting that's the reason why he's not. And globally, police have been a flashpoint in our society since the George Floyd incident in particular, but it goes back to that. My concern is that if these attitudes really aren't the attitudes that are being transmitted by the schools, and if it's allowed to go that way, it just isn't the police at the end. And I think that's a bad message. So I'm not suggesting that I was doing it and they are very long and won't know what the circumstances are. We don't have any local police in any of the six thousand longer so it might not be as easy, but if that is kind of a message that's being sent by the educational community. And I can't. I've not had extensive conversations and I've not sensed of any kind of animosity towards police. I'm the son of a police officer. So, in my last school we had a school resource officer in the school. It's been a useful place and we're also serviced by state police and I was two weeks ago actually met with Lieutenant White and some of the sergeants. So, so I also want to have a positive relationship because I think it can be a proactive piece as well. But I'm not sure. I'm not sure the history but I can tell you that the current administrators are working in high schools and certainly open to working a positive way. So I encourage you to find ways to invite the true person you're calling to get it. We had a good meeting. Thanks. Yeah, I just want to say thank you for both the Thank you. Thank you for the important part of our community. I think you're a whatever you're so fortunate, our communities. Because we've worked together with Ducksburg for so long, we have fairly stable school environment. It's challenging for some of the other smaller communities that may be losing or the threat of losing their elementary and primary school, which really does define the community in many ways. Yeah, it's getting together. It's like kids get together and a lot of schools feel like that sets their identity and so I recognize that it's been done. It's been so welcoming since I've come in. I've just enjoyed visiting all the communities and water barrier drive through on on a daily basis, but while I'm new to the community, I'm visiting here for close to 30 years. So, and a dollar graduate from the University of Vermont, which is what correct us here in that this phase of our life. So, thank everyone for your outreach and hospitality. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yes. I appreciate you here. So the last meeting. I will probably walk with others with my comments about the handful of times I went to the school board meetings. I found very dysfunctional. I was back there in the last session or timeframe where they were trying to put another bond both together and switch the school system around and eliminate another school was that the other thing I apologize if I made people feel uncomfortable and perhaps slated some people. Probably shouldn't use such a fresh word. I apologize to that. Maybe one of the great word would be unproductive. I couldn't think I stopped going because I couldn't subject myself to what I was seeing. That was probably well before you were on the board carry. And probably some others now I have spoken with several people who were honest with word on phone. The information from the courses now per se. And that coincided with what I experienced myself. I had spoken earlier for a grandchild. I'm concerned about my grandchild. Other people have young people in this community as well. And you're being faced with typically six to 10% year over year, but it increases. That starts to frustrate people. One of the things that I did witness, and it would take some doing figure out and then there's going to be a lot of pushback as well. Anytime it comes to things like this is is is delving into each one of the budget. There's a list one, you know, the long year on budget items in the heart of the school budget. Three quarters of the budget costs is sad. Your three year proposal. I'll be curious to see what that produces and whether or not we're going to be any substantial. Bring in. Consider runway costs and what bothers me the most is that adults now are making choices that are increasing the costs, not only. Remember if I got this board, we try to keep those offering and still produce the same goals. Okay, the jobs in Vermont don't pay the price of wages. That typically keep up with the pace that we're exceedingly getting, but you know, over the top of the cost of living. If you look at what's going on right now in so many different sectors of the cost of education, health care, affordable housing. It seems like everything that we do now, we're having to throw substance into that. That in itself says, says long. We subsidize everybody. Mathematics or normal case. We lost. I've been in the training industry before. We're losing people out of the trees. That's part of the reason that housing costs are being driven up. So, I would play around trying to attend more school board meetings, maybe now that the garden has changed, things will hopefully turn in a different direction. And I know that there is a lot involved in that because I've looked through the argument. There's a lot there to try to keep the flow up. But we have to start being concerned for the future of young people, a lot of people that have been struggling. And I went to one school board meeting here a while back. I went to get rid of a couple of teachers and it's almost a protest that wanted to keep those teachers on because they're going to school. You know, when I, when I first started one of my jobs, I was getting paid right out of high school, I was getting paid specifically an hour. When you started that wage level or even today's current wage level is the people that are in these rooms that are making wages younger people. When they get to retirement age, I suspect they're going to be outpaced by, by the people that are coming after that. We are well beyond their start and to try to put away money to compete with that when you get to retirement age is almost impossible. It's just, you know, the older you get, the harder it is to earn the money, you can't run faster. Getting sick of money faster to try to keep up. And that's what's going on there. And somehow we're going to get more money because it impacts a lot of people. So one of the things that I issue that I did have to be was that you hear from the public in the beginning of the board meeting, okay, before any discussions taking place about any. And I really think you're losing out on a lot of perspective, a lot of valuable information, because as you're going through these agenda items, there may be input from the public that is invaluable to you that something you didn't think about. That's why I enjoy hearing from our public when they're here, because they might bring something to people that none of us ever thought about. And that's probably why all the materials are available online. Any of the issues that you might ask. And I think we have the same challenge as has been acknowledged we've had folks who don't agree with this, which is the sport had me come to meetings to voice their opinions about it. I just want to think about how you proactively gain information in the same way this survey was gaining information about the schools, we just put out a survey about our money looking to gain money so I would say, thank you very much for your time. Thank you for coming in. Thank you for serving on the people board. I really appreciated that you did the meeting. I wasn't able to make them but if you even just coming to our meeting and mentioning that they were happening and when the dates were. I think I found really useful. I think there's been a lot of discussion, and if we both items as far with a lot of individual and I just think that knowing that both boards are having meetings and that those are an opportunity for dialogue is really appreciated. And again, I think we have raised voting and that's the data parents with Tom Clark. So that's why she's speaking to that. We hope to stay in communication. One very quick issue. So we're part of the Vermont we can see some pounds, and it has a whole legislative platform. And maybe this is the way well, because come up for a long time. The LCT for winners in the platform has one of two people for the homestead tax exemption, which most amounters get to a pure income tax from us out of means the front schools. I don't know. There's a VLCT for school districts. It would just be curious to talk sometime and see their legislative platform for schools is the same as legal cities and house. And it's not nice to know why. I do have a conversation with the school board side of Vermont school board association and we have a Vermont super tennis association as well so that's one of those areas that generally, I have not looked recently with BSBA statement is that generally school boards like that mix that balance between the two. We'll see what their platform is. I'm really excited to see the goal. I, it's really helpful. It's just like one actual level of transparency that I was like, particularly I was very excited to see, and then as an example of just more communication. We struggle with one as well. So, I'm excited to see your work there and maybe yes. We are the first point bill of communication. We do have a partnership with the technical center in Barry, and we have this year about 30 students attend one of our school board members, Jonathan is from Warren is on that board as well so that's an area of technical education that I think is very important. We don't have programs in the schools in fact my my neighbor and landlord was our last trade building trades teacher, but I think it's an important area and we've seen the big drop in the number of students are going into technical education and it's impacting us in a negative way as a society so that's something that's on my radar, and something that's on all of our radar. So, the one school board, meaning that I didn't go to the protest. I got this phone. Who blamed about several different things. And after that, you know, history teacher. And then the city. Because he, I think that if I remember right, it was the history. And then the city's teacher came up to me and said, this would you consider. And then to this day. I think I remember that meeting I think right after that is more than the code. So that is the background. I'm happy to share that information. Yeah, absolutely. I think I find their email. What I do, I think all the teacher. Well, I'm not really. Thank you bill for all of your services. Thank you. Our next slide board and we'll actually do relatively. It's just to less, less review and death and more just sort of a now that we have finished taking input on our survey. It has been compiled a big thing to Tom Burby and such spreadsheet. And we have 11 minutes. And so it was published with the media agenda. I think it would be great to have a policy limit. And then in the world when I didn't email you in advance, talk about getting it on the website. I don't. So follow up with you, but I would love for people to be able to see. I put it on the website. I put it on the home. I feel like, I have to write. I didn't want to tell the public that I'm on the website. It wasn't on our part. Oh, it's like. And that's just a spreadsheet, right? It doesn't have all the. I don't know. I don't know. We will need to have next steps as we move forward with budget. The announcement they can be seen. And thank you to the public for your. Fabulous. Okay. We will move to managers items. And the first is the capital fire mutual aid. Does the communication. Okay. Yeah. Yes, sir. Okay. Right. Actually, I'm the interim chief right now. Sorry. No, not at all. Deputy chief what I last talked to, I think. Yes, sir. Okay. So. I'm not sure how much the select board knows, but one of the members of the capital fire mutual aid system. Which was established decades ago. To help municipalities and volunteer fire departments. At the time, many fire departments were and some still are. But they need to assist each other. Especially if they have large structure of buyers and you're outside of. Even those cities. Need help in time to time. So that's where the capital fire mutual aid system first came in play. And then since then. For our fire department. Or our ambulance. Why? This year it was about $85,000. I think. Capital fire mutual aid. Or this option. It was. This bad she was. 600 in the budget. Next year is probably going to be a little over $100,000. And. In the news. Once in a while. Read something about. Grants. From the Department of Public Safety. Dispatch communication. You may have heard that. The state police is. Troubled to. Some of the dispatching of the fire departments that we do. In communities that the state police has historically done. And. Yeah. And general is here to talk about the mutual aid system communications in particular. So I don't know which one of you wants to go first, but I was right. Yeah. So. Just the front piece before Joe gets into it, because he can articulate the whole grant piece. And the communications piece a lot better than I can. Waterbury has been a member of capital fire mutual aid. Going back many, many years, many generations of fire chiefs. And I think it's been a long time since we've had a mutual aid organization to. Ornate. And. Then a near. We've, I made the comment that our, I think our last meeting. But I think in the last couple of years, our mutual aid association has been stronger than it's ever been. And I've been going to him for 20 years. So we're moving in the right direction. We have some antiquated equipment. And. For us. To have a mutual aid organization to. Upgrade it. We would never be able to raise them. On our own, because it would all be. Be based. So Joe did a tremendous amount of work. In helping. Raise the funds. Or. Bobby's for the funds. We'll let Joe speak to the grant itself. But part of what. Is required in this grant express to have. A means to. Maintain the infrastructure after the grant. They don't want to give us the grant and then have us fix the. Equipment. And then a few years down the road, not have any money to maintain it. We've talked about it in this board, whether it's current members or past members. That. Sometimes we don't do a great job of maintaining our infrastructure. And a little bit of money down then saves money down a road. So I think that's what Joe is really going to talk about. It's going to cost us money as a. As a mutual aid organization or member of the organization, but it's money will spend. Because someday we're going to have to pay for it either way. So Joe is the deputy chief, but I think I couldn't cheat in very city. And I'll let him have that. Yeah. Sure. So when you talk about upgrades or you talk about. Actually upbringing, what you have are completely replacing it. I think Joe's going to explain. All right. Thank you, chief. And thank you. Select board. I appreciate your time. My name is Joe Osworth. I'm the interim chief of city of Barry. I'm also the vice president for Kappa five mutual aid. The original communication system is about 32 years old. It's originally received as a earmark grant from Senator Patrick Leahy from the federal government where it was put in place. It had nine towers. And then as we went through the years, we were unable, unsuccessful in trying to secure funds to upgrade it. With that said, we've been trying to figure out how we're going to do this. Economically and pass the straight face test. We've been trying to figure out how we're going to do this. Luckily, and actually, unlawfully the state heads to come into a position where they're no longer able to provide dispatching services. For free. Due to some shedding of their employees at between 60 and 80% attrition rate. So they are going to be shedding about 110 agencies. The city of Barry and city of Montpelier provide primary dispatching services. The city of Barry and city of Montpelier. The city of Montpelier is about 700 square miles. And about 75,000 people in central Vermont. So basically what we have been working with, with the state is how can we assist them? And how can they assist us in upgrading our system before become more resilient. Redundant and embrace technology. And also at the end of the year, we've been working with the center of law public safety authority, which they had some money involved there. And the center of Vermont public safety authority paid. $36,000 roughly to do a. Study of the current communication system and offer some. Upgrade. Perspectives for that. of what to target and to replace. The first one was the LMR, land mobile radio system that is currently on the nine towers throughout the area. One thing that we were having a problem was because of federal narrowbanding, we actually saw a decrease in the radio coverage in central Vermont, which directly impacted some of the rural communities and they were not able to communicate with each other. This in turn created a huge problem. Radio systems are affected by three major things. Mass, glass and distance. Mass are the buildings and mountains. Glass are the buildings inside, like into the basements and distance between the towers. So that directly affects and we have all that here in central Vermont. With the study, we're able to determine to create a more balanced system. We added three more towers to balance out the system so that the smaller towns had actually received a better increase in their communications, but it also helped the larger communities like yourself and Waterbury with their in-building coverage. So we looked at that. We looked at some public-private partnerships with CV Fiber, Velco, Consolidated, AT&T and Verizon in conjunction with the state. The City of Barry and City Montpelier decided that since the customers that we were servicing should not have to pay for the upgrade of the consoles and the equipment in the dispatch centers that they took on the $800,000 to do so. With that aspect, we actually became redundant with each other or in the process of that, creating a bridge between each other. So if one dispatch center went down, then the other one can take over immediately and provide a redundancy, which really didn't have anything in the state, including the state police. So with that said, we offered the state police that it would go both ways. So if we had a catastrophic failure in both of Barry Montpelier, the state police could take over for us in an emergency or if the state police had an issue, we could take over for them. That created a triple redundancy, which was not heard of in the state of Vermont. So that really made us quite resilient back up. The other thing that we embraced is right now that the LTE, the cellular coverage in the area is not optimal. Everybody knows if you get outside of the major areas, you can't use a cell phone. So what we designed the system is, is that as cell phone towers emerge and come online, we can integrate, embrace the future technology into the LMR and really blossom it out. So we looked at how do we balance, how do we do the straight face test and make an economical system, but also improve the safety of our first responders. So that's what we did is we came up with a televate study. As the state was shedding some of their dispatch agencies, they came to us and asked, how can we help them out? So as we went through, we said, listen, we have an aging infrastructure that's unreliable. How can you help us so that we can help you? So they created S273. It's a bill at the state house that they went through about how to help fund dispatching agencies to get back on their feet to absorb the 110 agencies. With that said, we actually, Capital Fire Mutual Aid played an intricate role in assisting the Commission of Public Safety and the led jobs with creating a government request for funding for the state. And we actually were help develop the the application process. When doing so, there were communities that didn't have what we had in place. So we had good solid contracts with the city of area City Montpelier. We had good redundancy that was already starting to play out. We had training, we had full staff dispatch agencies, and then a number of other things came to light from the governor. One was, okay, we need to have a continuity operations, which we developed. Two, how do you do your redundancy, which we developed? Three, they wanted to know that how are we going to pay for this system once it ages out in 10 years? So with that said, we actually had the help of your manager, manager, Chef Black, and we developed the spreadsheet that you folks have today. And basically, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Bill loves spreadsheets. We apologize. It's just very, you know, calm. It was. Well, and God bless the manager. You guys are very fortunate. He's quite the genius with that. And I'm telling you, you guys gonna miss out. Hopefully you got big shoes to fill there. So what he did is said, okay, how do we make a fair and equalized proportion over 10 years to help upgrade our system for the direction of the governor? And that's how we came up with that percentage off the equalized grand list. And then he actually went through and says, okay, this is how I would invest it. This is where I invest it the whole nine yards. So just to be prudent, I took it to a third party vendor and asked them to review that sheet. And they gave it like five stars. It was amazing. So that's how we came up with that. That is a separate charge from your current $86,000 a year that you pay for dispatch. That is solely going to be for the upgrade and upkeep of the dispatch, radio towers and infrastructure over the next 10 years. So hopefully we never have to come back say, oh, we have to bond again, or we have to increase your rates to that point. Hopefully that this will identify for the long term. It's like saving for a fire truck or a highway plow. We're trying to pay for it in front of it instead of asking for a huge bond voter or, you know, increase into the annual allotment. So I think I've talked quite a bit in the last 15 minutes. I'm gonna if I missed anything, Chief, Dylan's going to be able to let me know. And if not, I can answer questions. I think if you want to ask questions now is great. If you come up with questions later, you can get them to me. Basically, what you're telling us is that you're trying to get out over the next 10 years. Well, we're getting the grant and the fund will allow us and bill will be able to more articulately explain his spreadsheet. But essentially, we're saving money to maintain it. So we don't have to go back and try and find another grant. It probably won't be there. Or have a big increase to pay for a million dollars one year for all the towns. Although water is larger, it's still an increase in cost. But it's the same increase to the small towns as well. So this will save the lump sum monies or bigger lump sum monies down the road. Wasn't this a prerequisite to get the grant? Yeah, I was tasked with creating a spreadsheet. My my simple math was take the million dollars divided by 10 years divided by the municipal by the fire department. There's how much you pay. And bill took it in completely reworked. And we're going to pay actually less but make money at the same time on different bonds, as well as spending money that after 10 years, we still have more than what we would have used my spreadsheet. That's called magic. So, you know, and I'm sure there are other managers that could do that. I am not a spreadsheet guy. So, Chris, does that mean that we won't see any more costs increases? No, I don't promise anything. Correct. Right. Correct. I mean, there will be normal increases, like we have with the town contracts. But this will prevent the, hey, we need to come up with a million dollars for next year. That's a huge increase. But so we shouldn't see that. But we'll see, you know, essentially cost of living increases, maintenance, because we're paying this batch in service from a Montpelier police department. They provide, New York City does a great job. They have some of them and Montpelier has the others. And I don't think for the money that we're spending, we're going to get any better. In fact, I know we can't get any better, even if we pay more money. And in the final analysis, the way I think of this is, if you look at our 2023 number in the fire budget, 1750 per person, water, burglary, play across, or so I think of the phone when you dial 911. Somebody's going to be there. One question I have, I don't know if this is a question for you or a question for Joe. He talked about Scarlet's coverage. I know when I met with Lossy, they showed me some things called a mountain rescue team. I'm probably going to train that. No, yeah. If you've got cell coverage and you're on the mountain, can that call be regulated so the mountain rescue team can find those books? So when somebody calls 911, the 911 call paper can actually get the GPS location. They pass it on to the mountain rescue crew and they have GPS's and they can actually talk to the person as well. So all of that happens some days. So that is the one good thing about it. They did put up a temporary tower here in Watering down the complex. And you know, I was talking with because we had problems at a fire station. We did not have cell coverage or internet services. So they have boosters in our stations so that we could actually have unlimited access to our reporting system and other emergency information. But the maintenance guy that came here to install this, reluctantly acknowledged that the problem is Verizon, which is your power right here, contracted out space on their tower to other cell companies. That's why we miss here. So it is a problem. Nobody wants to see a power every bushelstack. Chief of IMA. So just to add up to that, we've actually built our system to embrace the build out of LTE technology, which currently is not in place right now, but down the road as it improves, we were to be able to embrace that and interface it with our LMR radios. The problem is, is that they don't make a cell phone that is fireman friendly. So as you know, if you drop your your phone into water, you either have to put it in some rice for a couple of weeks or get a new phone. And so that coupled with the heat that's involved and then the low level of light, it's not really conducive to the firefighters use. So where affordable radio is an immediate looking to the dispatcher saying, I need some help or I need this happening. So that's why we're looking to improve the LMR system. So there are companies out there that will say that they have cell phones that can actually work as portable radios, if you will. But when you start talking to them about accessing them when you're inside a building, when there's when you can't see, we've got a bundle for it out of a pocket and or it gets wet. They kind of change the subject and come background saying that we use our phones as a portable radio, which is unrealistic at this point. Questions. So, you know, does this mean that in addition to the six or seven thousand dollars each year we're going to be paying an additional eleven thousand six hundred and fifty nine, you know, not a little video. Jim, you know, so I'm going to take a little by usually said that they need to have a million dollars available in the bank after ten years to be able to satisfy the state and what that is going. So they already took a stab at it and he lying at the bottom in the middle of his page and sitting with a loud bill where it starts at ninety thousand four twenty five and he goes to one twenty one twenty two. Gary had a hundred thousand dollars every year divided a hundred thousand dollars by however many communities there are. And if there are twenty three, it was five thousand dollars a piece for each community. And I'm wondering that it was a good deal. But when you look at the size of these towns and their departments and the grand list, it's like put it on the grand list. So the first column basically says will raise ninety thousand four hundred and twenty five dollars. There's a tax rate for two thousand twenty one per list and it generates a hundred thousand dollars for one of them. Now just make sure you look at that left hand column. Library is an equalized grand list of kind of going four away, but that includes seventy six percent of the tax freeze land there and more towns, twenty four percent of the tax freeze land area. Eastmont County has fifty percent of Calis and Woodbury has fifty percent of Calis. So even though a lot of these costs to capital fire and interlaying is eleven six to sixty. We have a contract with Dexbury and Dexbury is paying us over one hundred and twelve thousand dollars this last year. So they will pay their fair share of our communities. And if you go down below, below the Christmas tree columns, which, you know, says it's in white, what I basically got, I say, well, you're not going to just stick to ninety thousand four hundred twenty five dollars on the backers. Well, that's invested in something to use, grow some interest. These interest rates for T bills, I did this back in May, the interest rates much higher now. So over time, you might get some benefit there. But what this shows is that only one hundred and fifty six thousand dollars taken in and I show somewhere in here and a long time since I've worked with this spreadsheet. But I'm also factoring in. We got a bell in the in the in the bottom there. It says start now. You see in red, it says cost of maintenance. I put in in a couple of different years that you're not just going to have a system that requires any maintenance. So I got a I got twenty five thousand dollars in there. And, you know, this is a spreadsheet to move these things back and forth. So in yellow, what it shows is if all this works out that the ending balance after two thousand thirty two would be an onion dollars, which is what the state was looking for, but sure, they have a million dollars and we've actually raised nine hundred and fifty six thousand dollars nine hundred and fifty seven in taxes. So I think it works well, but to your question, yes, we just got a our work for it's a second quarter bill from capital left or first quarter bill, I guess it's our it's our last bill this year. And on the finish, they had a inflation factor that brought out about eighty eight thousand. But then they added about eleven. So it's our part of the budget this year is when they have a hundred thousand dollars. Of course, it doesn't matter. And Mike, that's his hand. So I don't know. Like, I don't know if you want to. My good. So any questions or questions that are in favor of this book, the old letter, if any members. Can I just start picking up maybe talk a little bit more slowly or turn your video off? Is that OK? Give it a shot. Much better. Is that is the audio better? Yes. No. Yeah. Yeah, my best. Just, you know, again, I'm all for this. But say if members of the Capitol District don't approve this or any or any of the members going to be shut off from the system. No, but I'll let Joe answer that and the success rate that we've had in other towns. So as of now, we have 100% buy in to support this project. We actually have a MOU drafted by the Capitol Fire lawyers that will have each community pledge into the system that they're going to they're going to stay for the 10 years. So you know, this all this part is this system is partly Waterbury. So you're a part owner now versus having just strictly your customer. Your eighty six thousand dollars pays to keep the lights on. The dispatcher behind the mic 24 seven. But this is actually paying for your infrastructure across the seven hundred square miles for the seventy five thousand in central Vermont. So this is actually partly your system. That makes sense. Yep, thanks, Joe. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it's 35,000, you know. And is that 35,000 spread throughout all the district? Well, you're clear by the maintenance. Yeah, it seems to you. Well, I don't know. It's a number I threw there. These folks looked at it. So the answer is I don't know. I think what there's a couple things to remember. One, I did put a inflation factor or multiply a factor into the into the grand list. You can see it's going up every year. The equalized grand list, but it's one percent. I think that's a low estimate. So if it increases more than one percent, the taxes will be down a little bit. And if we earn more money in interest, then, you know, you don't have to earn the taxes. So everything on this sheet, Chris, is just an estimate. It was probably something of a million dollars after 10 years. So what they have before, I didn't have any money. We just on the phone about the 10 years now it's a million dollars. So this is a little bit more fine too than not. But it's all just an estimate. I think the only thing I want to make sure you know, maybe you talked about this when I was on the road a little bit and maybe you just alluded to it like that. There has been a lot of press and there is one guy that grows a lot of rocks at Capital Fire Mutual Aid and at the City of Barrie and the City of Montpelier. And I do think it would be who moved the district job and maybe you said something about lawyers. I really think that it would be a good idea if all the members of Capital Fire Mutual Aid system kind of signed a new agreement. The agreement that put this organization together probably was established in the 50s or 60s. And I think it would be just good to have Capital Fire Mutual Aid having good organizational structure in a contract. And then there should be a really clean good contract between Capital Fire Mutual Aid and the City of Montpelier and Barrie and what it does with dispatch. And I think the second one, we have an existing contract that's better. But the whole organizational structure needs to be brought up to the 21st century, I think. Yep. So just to expand on that. So we have been in contact with our lawyer from Capital Fire Mutual Aid. And we're in the process of doing that very such thing. We also have a MOU drafted that will for each community to pledge towards this project, kind of locking them in for the duration so that keep it as Bill has put out there. We have taken steps of that. That will be coming out at the January meeting. Chief Dillon will have that back to everybody so that we have. But we do have that in draft form now and we're working towards it. Good. Thank you. So who takes care of all the towers? So Burlington Communication is who we work with. So they do the regular maintenance. There's a tower here in Waterbury that. I don't think it's well, it hasn't been moved, but it's it's due to be moved literally any time and they do that. So they're moving at one location to the WDEV tower on Blush Hill. So there's a minor cost to that. So there are ongoing annual costs, but you know, and is that in our typical dispatch meeting? So that's paid. That's paid for with the money that you're paying. Capital fire. We pay that afterwards. You're paying so that we can pay for it. We pay this for the service. It's us as Joseph said, somebody behind the console and then they take care of all the operational costs. But just to put it in perspective, you know, if you could get somebody to be in this facture and only pay him $20 an hour to do it, there's 24 hours a day, there's 365 days a year. That's that's a hundred and seventy five thousand two hundred dollars just for that. And there's no benefits. There's no employment for this car. No, you know, no money to take over when you're on vacation. So this batching for our fire department is we have to do it ourselves. It would be a half a million dollars, right there. So this is a bargain in any way that you slice it. And I think it will be a better bargain once all these upgrades are made that you can provide redundancy, as Joe said, and provide coverage. You have pretty good coverage in the library. I don't know. There's too many places in town that they go. But this will also be protection for the firefighters. Do I assume this is a huge increase in personal safety for those folks that do this job? So there are a couple. What we refer to as dead spots, unless all of our people are there, if it's a couple of one spot on a couple of roads that truck tries to call another truck on the way to a call, you can't hear them. It's a dead spot. But if we're all there, we can talk if you talk on our portal radio. So it's not a big issue. The other dead spot is the state office complex. It's a big dead spot. And this system will facilitate our ability to communicate inside that building. So it's inside the building. It's inside the building. Yeah, it's a lot of work, absolutely concrete. And fortunately, we haven't had anything serious here. We've put some motor burnout and stuff and their maintenance crew has an antenna there. So usually they're with us. We'd be safe enough for them to be with us. So they can actually help communicate. But this system will help with that. It's just a problem down there. And in any other town that has mountainous areas, there's some dead spots. Thank you. Do we need to do a real safe action? I think it would be good if you took the action to at least support this direction that we're going. In terms of some point, you'll have a number of years to consider it and maybe a new new sign that you will be able to file a new delay. But I think you should at least make a motion tonight to include the funding for all those walls with the fire budget, which would include this. It's not. I'll move the this report support to this plan to support capital fire mutual aid, the new infrastructure capital replacement plan. You know, a second second motion on a second. Any further discussion? All in favor. Fantastic. Thank you. Thanks for your time. I'll take them on again. Thank you, Joe. No, thank you. Oh, yeah. I was just just like to say thank you very much on behalf of the capital fire and also to reminder to the manager that the annual appointment to the capital fire mutual aid should be made in January. That would be your chief. Thank you. I just want to say quickly, if capital fire is going to go around to get 20 something pounds the sign that I'm on you. We need to arrange this batch is going to pay for it. And this is the grand list. Some small towns will love that. Sometimes they'll want to pack it up. Sometimes say per capita doesn't make sense if I'm going to go to the spare community because somebody called the generator by that. So there's no perfect way to do it. You just have to keep your plane. I think it's pretty fair. If I may, every town I've been to, I've been to all 20 all supported this funding mechanism. That's great. There's nothing very loose. Yeah, yeah. That's fantastic. Thanks for all your work on this, Joe. And just to see on front what Tom said about the 88,000 dollars that we will pay just for this batch. This plan is for the maintenance of the new system. The 88,000 is a combination of falls and conditions. So it's used to try to balance out all the issues that we do. It's all going to lose. Water ran out. Right, yeah. And we're conscious to pay a lot of money. And it's just pretty good. Anyway, it's well-covered. It's a whole funding world without money. It's really, you know, funding. That's it. OK, Tom's actually going to lead to this one. Jeremy, can you focus on the new Joe as far as finished work on it? And you've gotten the detail of the data, the detail on the equipment? Yes, I won't have it from me because I left the house and needed to get a fire station or something. And I didn't bring them. I didn't. Pretty much, no one's on it. Yes. Before I interrupt your end of detail, the bottom line has, after the revenues have been left changed, rejected right now, leveled over $8,000 to the town. So about $1,000 and $1,000 underpass rate. We'll come to that. And there will be some adjustments to the final. But the first note is the $125,000 to the fire contact is a little high. I went and we emailed them today. And that's the rate of that number. We don't have a final number. Based on last year's costs and then the relative percentage of the grand list. But we have last year's cost pretty close. And I emailed that. And emailed that to them. We don't have the EQI's grand list. But to the extent our grand list changed, there's likely changed to the same proportions. So that number is closer to 120. So that's probably a little bit high in the revenue side. But you've got the number you're talking about more town. More towns probably a little bit low. So no significant change. I just want to note on the pay side, who are saying it's simply determined based on calls and what happens in the field. But we are assuming that there's a 5% pay increase historically that occurs in April 1st, or the pay increase in Coast and April 1st. So for now, I've got a 5% plug-in inflation over the past year. It's been closer to eight. It's coming down a bit. 8xB has a really tough number. I know the folks in the fire department don't do it for the money. But I still think you've got to pay your mom here to get more each year and then show up. I think it's fair. So 5% is the number I've plugged in. Happen to have for the conversation about that. But I think that's a really good place to start. The big number is a dispatching number. And then we can tweak that. But the reason it's lowering on what you saw before is because it's a fiscal year issue, I believe. So I think that's the right number. Yeah, the magnitude of the 60s, we're on a calendar year by the time the financial aid is on July 1st, June 3rd, and 20th. So we will pay the first two quarters of all the 2023 after the 20th, the last four years of 2023. So this play doesn't get into those jobs. I don't know, this plan, right, this plan picks in children. So it could be actually a little lower than that. I'm not sure exactly when there's going to drill the $11,000, whether it's going to be quarterly or whatever. I believe this number will be full and accurate. So it's a little lower than we thought about a million dollars because we're two quarters and point down and point. Then going forward, will our budget plan item match that large graph that we looked at? No. OK. Because of the fiscal year. OK. I'd like to go down a little bit to vehicle maintenance, which is an increase. And I just want to talk about that a little bit. Part of that is plan service and the testing of the vehicles. We have a vacant mechanics position at Public Works. I'm trying to talk to the Hyrule Department about that. They don't open up and talk to me. They're thinking that the guild drivers were kind of agnostic about whether we build that as a driver or whether we build it as a tax. Celia in the Highway Department was pretty young and that she wanted a mechanic in there. She thought that it had a lot of value. And we were leaning that direction. And then talking to Gary, Gary educated me on the value of the mechanic in his department. I didn't think he'd love it as a Public Works position. Gary talked about all the preventive maintenance, the inspections, and all those trips to Park Truck Center that are saved, well, it's not Park anymore, whatever it's called. Colleges. So the job at the mechanic will go out over tomorrow. I think it's on the website already. I'm trying to artfully advertise it as saying that we want someone full time, but we'll take what we get. So we get someone half-time when we're pretty happy with that. So hopefully we can control those costs over time. But Gary made it pretty fair that we don't have an in-house mechanic that there's a cycle office. And it's going to go out on the other side of the shop. So we don't have a shop. We don't have paid people. And it's nothing them versus us. But say the Highway Department, their workers could grease their own trucks. They have the equipment there. They can do some oil changes if they needed to. But we don't have that. So that means it's $200 just to drive it in the back door and under it. So that's the increased cost for me on our budget. And it's interesting that we can do the maintenance of the fire. We already did it. Already did it. Well, when we have a mechanic here, and just so everybody knows, the vehicle maintenance line here, we think we're going to spend about $24,000 who's on this year. Some of that money is actually paid to the Highway Department. So what we're saying is paying the Highway Department for the town of Highway Mechanics is a lot of people that's on their own. Right, thanks. And that means that I'm not fully confident that we can find my money. It's a hard job to advertise for. If you look at the job that mechanic, they range from $18 an hour to $120 per year for any son. So we'll hope we get some good applicants to be able to go from there. Well, let me ask a question now. Who's going to be able to double duty position in other words? And it's our point of view. So in their off time, they're most job community who require full loans. Yeah, so in the job description, if we can find someone full-time who are looking for a mechanic who's also got at least a class B and CBL, so they can help out the highway crew. So Eric Gostin was our last mechanic. Eric had a CBL. He's a member of the Highland Group, he's a B-Flood. And then he did a mechanical work for the Highland Department part of the Department of the Department of the Department to the Department of the B-Flood and even further recreation of the B-Flood Fair. So the mechanic position services all the vehicles in the town and all those components pay for revenue to the public to do it. And I think that my conversations or listening to the poem and the woodwork talk and silly is that that would be the idea to get somebody who's going to work full-time and do that full job, which will not be important for not $40 a week of mechanic work, because you don't have full-time. The next step that would be, well, if you find somebody that's a good mechanic and says, I'm willing to work three days a week as a mechanic, I don't want to drive on a snow cloud, that might be something we have to do because it's going to be a part-time job. It would be a part-time job. Ideally, for me, it could be a future. Somebody I would be really happy if it were for this mechanic. Yeah, this mechanic is actually in all these pumps, because we currently have a vendor that comes out and he's actually, his company's the one that sold us the last five trucks, but he has a couple of mechanics that work for him. So when we have a pump-related issue or an electronics issue with the fire trucks beyond regular mechanical, electronics meaning raiding the starting systems, they will send them down. But Eric used to build fire trucks. So for him to dig into a pump was second nature. A lot of mechanics aren't going to be able to do that. You've got to pick up the water pumps, the water fire trucks. The water trucks. So you blow some gas, a little gasket on all those pumps. It's out of service. So then we got just a big paperweight sitting in the building until we get that fixed. Eric, we climb in there and it's a quick regular mechanic. The problem won't be able to do that without a lot of work. Yeah. So what you're telling me is that this position may not even cover all aspects of that. Well, I think initially, if the person doesn't know, fire trucks, sorry, but that doesn't mean that that person can't learn. We've got a couple of people on our department. One of them now works for the town we've been happy about. He really, although he's not a classified mechanic, he knows pumps and he knows how to work on pumps. So that is something, and I don't want to get into who does what within the town. It's not my thing. But if the town hired a mechanic and something needed to be done on a pump, Kyle can go down and show him this is what you need to do. Assuming everybody is OK with that. Doesn't mean that Kyle would do the work, but he could guide that person through it. And that would save us from having to have Guy come down from St. Alps and charge us a lot more. Not from St. Alps, he's my chief. The other thing I want to add is when you're volunteers, the quality means the equipment really impacts this re-decor. I've heard that from a thousand firefighters and when you do that, eventually you impact your numbers. And that's what you can't afford to do. When you're getting paid, you can drive a thousand trucks for a while and you're still getting to make sure. But it's a little different than the firewall. Well, we've done a good job of keeping up with our courses and doing the same thing. We've been doing a lot of stuff. We've done a lot of stuff. We've done it. So yeah, we do maintenance at each truck once a month. So the first Tuesday of the month, maintenance is at Main Street. That means that the truck is pulled out. Everything is checked. Everything is started. Anything that will start or gets plugged in, gets plugged in or started. The load levels on the trucks are all checked. Everything is done that night on that truck. I then sent, when we had a mechanic, send Eric and Celia an email saying, here's what happened at Maintenance Night. Nothing that's a priority. Here are a couple of things that, when you have two or three more things at Main Street, add this on. If there is a priority, then I put that as a priority. And Celia worked there and you can get right on it. If it meant the truck was down, the truck was down. And that's a problem. And then on the third Tuesday, we have Maintenance at Maple Street. So we have very in-depth maintenance once a month. You could say, well, it should be done every week. But you're dealing with volunteers that aren't getting paid necessarily to go down once a week and not do all this work. A lot of work is being done by the members. And nobody really pushes back. Somebody might make a comment while they're working on a saw. I'm the mechanic for today. It's like-hearted stuff. But that's what they do. And you're not paying them to do that. But we want to make sure that that saw works. You have to turn out the maintenance movies. Yeah, so it's broken down. We have two training companies. So on a training night, we have officers and firefighters that are company one and company two. And they train on their own things on that night. And about quarterly, they work together on a bigger training event. So those companies, so say training company one on the first Tuesday of the month, which maintenance would be down here. Half of that company does maintenance down here. The first half of company two does maintenance at Maple Street. Later that month, company one second rule does maintenance the next time down here. So we split it up. Everybody's encouraged to go, especially new people, because that's how important what stuff is. Because when we're at a fire scene or a crash and I ask somebody to go get me something, my expectation is I get it. Sometimes I don't take into consideration that they're brand new. They just started last week. And they don't have a clue what a windshield size. So by one there, they get paid for one maintenance a month. So if they go to both, they're only getting paid for one. But it helps them learn the equipment, know where it is, and how to learn it. How to start it. On the equipment side, there's the bottom of the first page. If you can find one of the new equipment. Gary, do you want to walk them through? Someone I can go to the rest of the page? I got it right here. So yeah, one of this is same stuff that we have every year. Hopefully, we anticipate that we are going to lose some holes at the right time for inspection. So we have a company come in out of Connecticut. They come in. And in one day, they test every piece of hose where we have thousands of feet. And we anticipate that we will use a certain number of lengths of holes, 50-foot lengths of holes, during that inspection. We also anticipate that at a fire, we may lose some because it's getting dried through a house and it gets run over now. And we haven't had a working-fire water after three years until two weekends ago. And we had a big barge fire. But we didn't lose anything. But we could go to a shed fire and lose two lint holes because it ruptures. So we put in a budget of roughly $5,000 each year. Now, that buys less and less holes. But we have lost less and less holes during the inspection process. SCDAs, those are airpacks that the firefighters wear. They're pricey. But they allow us to go into building hazardous environments. How long do they last? So they will last 15 years. But they get inspected every year. That's part of the NFPA requirement, inspect the airpacks. So we have a company that comes in and they literally pull one truck out and we have somebody with them that's literally just running airpacks back and forth. They run the pack and all the masks through their testing system to make sure that they're functional. A number of years ago, before we merged, the town of Waterbury Fire Department got a grant. And they got rid of one truck that was just a nightmare, as well as a mini-cumper. And they bought a new mini-cumper. And they bought a bunch of airpacks. And the one that really hurt us the last few years was the number of air bottles they bought. The problem with air bottles is they get out. It doesn't matter how well you're taking care of them. You could have a brand new one in a box. 10 years later, it is no good. So when you buy 35 bottles at one time, 35 bottles are no good at one time. So for the last few years, we had been, last couple of years, we actually made a strategy getting the airpacks back. But we sacrificed the newness of airpacks, even though NFPA said they're aged out, but we still tested them and the company said they were still safe. So we used them because we had to buy bottles, because we can't use them. Once they age out, it just cannot be used. So we were able to restock our air bottles over the course of about four years. And that puts us in a better cycle down the road, replacing them as opposed to trying to replace 35 bottles. So that's that piece. Are they the associated equipment? That is the equipment is the masks, the voice amps, so that we're all on the pulse here. That's so fun. Yeah, it's so much fun. Did I step up? Yeah. It's a little, it's like a microphone. That puts onto the side of the mask, it gets turned on. And then you can actually have an intelligent conversation with somebody, maybe inside of hope. I was just saying, you're saying that airpacks suit that in here. I just wanted to know where. I'm sorry. These air bottles that you can now give you, are they here? What line are they? So they would come out of the SCBA. Oh, all in that. So the air pack unit and the bottles come out of there. And the masks, they're expensive. The voice amps are actually, aside from the air pack itself, are the most expensive piece. And then there's webbing because people put them on and they get wet and they get frozen and they wear out. And it might only be $20 a set, but that adds up. So there's the gear. Again, the fire gear ages out. Some members, it wears out. Members that are around a little more often and are actually more active in going in and working fires. And the Kyle Gaya, the Stan Morris, the Sally Dillon, that they're there most of those fires and they wear their gear out to the point that it's really not financially smart to keep fixing it. Because you end up with patches all over it. And eventually the company will say, no, we can't put any more patches on it. So their gear might get turned over quicker than, say, mine. Mine goes 10 years. For the most part, don't get dirty. Unless I have to, because you're real good or... Because my role is a little different. But I tend to wear air packs only when we have a fire and stuff because I don't have to go up and be in charge of anything. So I can go up and I can play, as we say. But that's a rare event. My people don't let me do that. But Bob Grace is a great pump operator. He's very involved and he's great at running the pump. His gear will not get worn out. It will age out. So each year we buy a certain number of pants, a certain number of coats, a certain number of boots. We have another spreadsheet guy. He's one of my officers, Brian Foster. He literally has every piece of gear on a spreadsheet and with the dates and the serviceability of it. And the year before it's due to get replaced, his spreadsheet for that section turns yellow. And the first of the year it turns red. That person's getting that new coat that year, even if it's a little serviceable. We don't throw them out. We keep that serviceable gear for brand new people that join because they're not going into a burning building. They're not wearing from hazardous environment. So they can wear this gear that NFDA says you can't wear into a building because they're not going in. They're expensive. A coat is a little over $1,600. Pants are somewhere around 8, 850. Boots are 450. Helmets are over 300. So gloves are $85 for a pair. So this is not like it was when I started. You bought a pair of your own gloves that you might want to wear because the gloves that the department issued you were those orange rubber-coated gloves. And if you went to a chimney fire, the chain eventually starts sliding through your gloves because it's not going to run out of stuff. We've come a long ways. We have really good gear. I have great people that take care of this stuff for me. My equipment officer, Ryan, will come to me at the birth of the year and say, here's my proposal for what we need this year. And I essentially just go through it real quick, look at it, talk with him, say, all right, we've got a little bit more money left over. So who's on the bubble for next year? Let's maybe get rid of, get them new gear, and then we can use their current gear that is still good as backup in the event that something happens. So we try and do that if somebody's close to a year or two of getting meeting here, but it's still serviceable. If something goes to a fire and they're here just totally trashed, not destroyed, but trashed, they can't wear that to the next call. So they will put on a set of youth gear. It might not fit. And it's amazing when you get these new people in here. This is big, not long enough. My pants are a little short. It's like, you know what? I didn't have pants when I started. So I don't want to hear complaints. Fine. The engine command boards. It's, we have those in our two newest engines. And what we're finding and what it is, is when you power the truck up, takes about three seconds until people get in, push the button to turn the power on then hook up your seatbelt by then the power is up and running and you can now start the truck. And it has the entire command system up that what's on that truck. The seatbelt connections tells you what seatbelt is, tells you what lights are on. What we are finding because of technology, it used to be the driver would just get in, click a switch, lights came on, you hit a button, the siren came on. That's not the case in the morning. There's a board. And what I found, what I've been seeing over the last couple of years is the drivers are now looking at this board. And because we're going to be in the left hand lane of the interstate, so they want to put the airport, that car is going to the right hand lane. And that's not what they should be doing. They shouldn't be looking at a panel. They should be looking at the windshield and at the mirrors. So we're, we're getting secondary control panels for the officer's side of each of those two trucks. And it's then that officer's responsibility to run that whole truck and the driver just drives. It's, there's $6,000 a piece, but what's a truck going to cost us? Well, what's a person going to cost us? This steps out because the driver's looking down. Miscellaneous items literally could be anything. It could be little straps for the gloves and could be anything. Flashlights, believe it or not, the flashlights are about 75, 85 dollars. But they're intrinsically safe. You go to the hardware store and get a flashlight and you turn it on in a gas environment and you're going to realize real soon that you made a mistake. So our flashlights, our radios are intrinsically safe. We can actually communicate, not have to worry about it. Nozzles, we haven't bought any nozzles for a while. We've had it on the budget a few times, but they've always, we've always been able to fix them and maintain them, but we have some that are getting old and we have to fix them on a more regular basis. So we're going to start replacing nozzles this year. Maple Street computer, the one that is up there is probably 10 years old, very slow. Super Mac, V3 hard scroll ventilation saw. It's a chainsaw on sterols. It's for vending books and live stuff. So that's really the new equipment, communications. We always have portables on there, pagers, I don't say throw away items, but eventually when they start getting old and we are using them a little bit less than what we used to because everybody has iPhones or smartphones and we all have two apps on our phone. They aren't as quick and they don't report what the incident is as quickly. But I also, for the most part, I carry a pager when I'm snobling your lawn along because it actually vibrates better than my phone. Batteries are a problem that we have to replace the radio batteries. I don't know how far you want me to go down this list, but I'm certainly going to answer a group. Any questions? No. For now, but I've got a question about any of the items. No, I appreciate the detail on the items. So just noting, we've got the $18,500 here on equipment, the $85,000 for planned capital expenses. And that's a different item. So is there a budget? So we transferred the budget we had in here, $26,000 including the capital fund. In that fund, we showed capital expenses. One of those items would be Harry's, the scuba cascade system. So the difference between those two would be taken. If you've heard of this. So the cascade system that we have actually, we started getting parts of work at a place called GE and they had a compressor that they didn't use anymore and the management there asked one of our officers, we worked there at the time, someone's father, if our fire department could use that, and because at the time, we had to bring our air bottles to the Montpelier. So if we had a fire at night, we actually had to go to Montpelier to throw our bottles. We'd wait somebody up, always made a message. So they would let us in the building so we could go down and throw our bottles. So 30 years ago, we started putting that together and spent piecemeal for a number of years and it's just not feasible to keep piecemealing in. Yeah, so it is expensive, but we'll be able to fill up two bottles at once and a lot of work. So just on that note, I should conclude, tonight we're just working at the operations budget for the fire department and the operations budget for the fire department. One of your meetings in January, there'll be discussion about the capital, except just what the thing to remember now is that this operations budget has staff transfer found back about the grocery counter and then from there, we pay the account for that. All right. And then I think the other important thing tonight is the total expenses of 830,000. I think on the weekday, that number might change a little bit. You know, we get numbers from the week of cities and towns about our workers' comp costs and insurance costs and when they allocate those to the fire department, so that we can fix their demands. But I'm going to impact on the budget by more change in one department. I mentioned the revenue. I don't think it's going to change if we actually bring it all in. It's going to be fine. So we're going to go through the first report on fire contracts that we have from the talks about last week. Did I send this? Is that a report on? Yes. So at the right point, it's either you don't do well playing and you're doing good, or you can sell it on the dollar, if you don't, you get... I'll contact the chief over there and ask him what their plan is. I've been waiting. I knew that they gave you this and that they had it, but I don't know if they've made it in the city. The select board was very happy with the proposal. I think it was really... I'll work out. Steffan is who you're going to work out with. He was just sort of about, I guess, middle sex doesn't count, but middle sex... He's worried about playing nice. Those are things that we're not going to be able to talk about in life. So I presume everybody knows we're lovers, Linus. Really? Yes, it was so much. Yeah, so we used to cover that long before we had agreements. And then when we had these agreements and then middle sex said that they wanted to be able to cover that and cause it to landfill, which we were happy to give them because at two o'clock in the morning, somebody driving down the interstate sees that gas is alive. We have to go. Now, we know what it is, but the one time that you don't go, it isn't. So two o'clock in the morning, we're going down to make sure that it's a methane gas problem. So we're happy to give that in middle sex, but then they'd stop going since we're going again anyways. And so Steffan, the fire chief asked me if we would cover it to Lovers Lane. More towns fire chief in more town. I said that we would. He's just got to be able to go to the middle sex fire chief and their department literally is around the corner. But they're going to and I don't begrudge them at all. They have what they have, but they're going to show up with a person in a personal vehicle and then maybe a fire truck with one person. And in that same amount of time, we're going to show up with six people ready to go in the first truck. And then we're going to have a tank truck and then another tank truck, then another engine coming down through and then a rescue truck. We're going to clog the road for people to live there. So we can provide better protection than what middle sex can, just because of our numbers that you put into the tank. So I think what we'll do then until Gary tells us different. Try and get that tomorrow. On the revenue side, we'll use the 35.25 from Wartown until Gary tells us we've got on the plan. So it's possible that 35.25 goes into budget as revenue and then we'll get the 700. But I think we should know what they're going to find out tomorrow hopefully. Gary, can you see that changing now or if you're going to be able to handle more of Wartown? I don't know that we would handle more of Wartown. We cover Cough Hill, which the majority of that is Wartown and we cover Route 2. Duxbury goes all the way to Wartown the other side of Harvard. Yeah, Wartown is one way across the bridge that Lover's laying and then you're in middle sex for a point of ways and by the time you go down to 100 billion, get back to the post amount to the four-hour fire station. We do go just because of the cost of the building. We are, Wartown is now the primary response to Harvard but Wartown and Waitsville also gets called. A number of years ago, there was an actual fire there and Wartown went and got there and then called for help and it's a long ride over there. So now, Waterbury is the primary with Wartown and Waitsville being secondary so that we can all go at the same time. Typically when we get there, we take over and take command. There's nothing against anybody there but we have an established structure that we use and there's use nationwide and that's what we do. So thank you. Sure. And I'll open it up that if anybody wants to come to our stations, you know how I feel. Thank you. Lots of good questions. Well, Chief. Not really Chief. For whatever administrative officer and I just regret asking this now, I'm quoting out of 20 minutes that W. Shepulox suggested line items in the conduct of each of the income received and it's kind of sure it's from the CC picture phone. Is that it's out of the bucket? Good. Thank you. Take care, be sure. Thank you very much. You're welcome. All right. So, the CC picture phone is not what we have in front of you tonight. Oh, okay. It is not. It is. It is here so. Right, but my question is just for the, so it's not relevant to the budget or something like this. Well, any expenditure from the CC fish upon has a code on the revenue from somewhere else. So it doesn't invite the fact that all in the general ledger, the CC fish upon is listed here. I'm just going to put it on his sheet. So this will be updated and it will be. Right. But in 2022, there's about $2,200 spent for the CC fish upon that will show up in the budget. And that will be something that that's great. You know, it's part of our forward expenditure. Well, we have a revenue coming from the CC fish upon that will offset our expense. So. Right. Right. My question was just, I thought the goal was to have it reflected. Did I? I think we'll do. Yeah, right. Thank you so much. Playing the part of the budget. It's true to me. Okay. Well, that's a great question. That's it. Yes, that's a good question for the meeting. And I think we agree to get here at 7.30. That's fine. You know, it's all a good education all by two hours. Yeah. Don't get involved from time to time. So, everybody have the hands here that give you a minute for finding the planning department budget. And there should be a done vacation, which is. Well, three page document that goes through but in more detail. And so I think being as late as it is, I think I'll work off the spreadsheet. And then there's also a work plan. And this is something that this last year due to COVID wasn't included in the package, but we've included again. And it's CC Neil as well. So my colleague and I'm going to reflect with you as well. So we're making sure to keep him in the loop. So I don't think the presentation doesn't suit you. Yeah, but then we have a work plan. That's what I think that could allow you to start. Okay. So I want to plug this to the queue. I've given you some elements that we had in the room. So it's in there. Okay. What does it look like? It says planning department budget. Justifications on your life. I thought I paper clipped it to everybody. So if you're missing it. All I have here is fire protection contracts. I don't know if we want to do that. We have to adjust the work plan. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. With the companion to the budget. These were here and I put them in there. Because I've given you time. Which I thought I found them. Here's the judge going in. Bill, this is for you. You go, you go. You need a copy? I'll look under. It's only five minutes. It's only five minutes. Great, thanks. Okay, good. So let's go ahead and get started on this mic. And so that will help me hear a bit with the main item. We want to start from the top. Sure, let me just go ahead. Do you want to do it? Sure. So on the revenue side, we're going to see initiatives. The bylaw modernization grants. So we're budgeting assuming that the grant is awarded. So it's a $25,000 grant. There's a 10%, $25,000 local max. So down below there's $27,000, $500 in expenses. Just not a more corporate budget. All of all the offenses and revenues, or it's just in that. The regular pay is a pretty reasonable estimate. We're assuming a backfill is depositioned at a little bit of a salary reduction. And then we've got a zoning administrator. And we essentially, we have one backfill at a minimum and potentially two, and then we'll be back to it. So there's some changes there. So the regular pay and zoning administrator are going to be subject to some change. I don't think change between necessarily now and how we, but the situation on the ground like this one, what occurs there? What is it like when we return? In March, the middle of March? And will we be planning any overlap? We've had a little conversation about that. And it depends on Steve, to some extent. Yeah, and I've offered to stay on part time. We don't fill a second as a transition. So that's another option going to be built. Thank you. And so for the health insurance, for example, we assume the new hire would take a two-person plan, which is essentially the average cost plan. We just leave it at families, private chapters, and things, a single plan. There would be exemptions depending on the plan. There's kind of such a good deal. We'll just have to take it there and work with it as the year goes on. Otherwise, there's nothing major being planned in terms of changes in this finance. It's very much a very similar part of the year. And the net cost, the net impact on property taxes is actually down a bit. I believe that's because in prior years, there were some special funds appropriated under the Parks Planning Study that were strictly talent funds. Correct. So in essence, we're returning to a bit of a long year of that old fund trajectory. The other piece that I just mentioned currently is at the very bottom, we have a revitalizing water very. Yeah, we end here on our own for a touch of noon. But they have told us they're not going to request an increase in funding to share. Do you want to talk about specific line-ups? Yeah, I would, I would. So there's not a lot of change from last year. We'll start with professional services. This is the item that we use for paying the secretarial services. And you'll see the change from 20.2 of 1,450. That's for the first edition historic survey. This is the project that was initiated by the way down. We had Bill and trustee, but the E5. And so we're working trying to get that project finished. We've had some issues with the consultant. And so we added that 1,450 back in to the budget because we're really doing, we're probably going to have to get into some legal action on that. We have a contract amendment that allows us to follow up through with some legal action that we need to. So that's a heads up on that. Would you like to respond? OK, so we're starting with the potential service. Can you act on one? Well, so sorry. So we're doing, we had a consultant study that started back in 2019 with 106 associates to do a historic district survey of the farth edition out beyond transfer of beverage in the post office set for our area. We're staying here through the follow-up from the presentation. And then we're going to move on. Basically, we dropped the ball on finishing a project. So we had retained 1,450 out of a 10,000 plus contract. But we don't have the final product. The project's not complete. So we have a contract amendment that was signed by all parties this past summer to finish the project. And so it allows us to get follow-up through with legal action, which we may very well do. So the project was supposed to be completed after this amendment on December 14. And now it's December 19, and we don't have the interval. So we're going to follow it up, calling our attorney. And we'll have to start taking some action. It shouldn't be hard. He's got all the information. He's presented just about everything. It's just that we need the final report. And something needs to be submitted to the decision of the historical integration. Go to the state to get approval potentially for national properties. So it was the same consultant who did the update to our water availability structure, who did the next one. All right. So the next project, Tom had mentioned, is a grant-funded project. And this has to do with the bylaw can write. So the planning commission is working on the unified development bylaw of the first phase. And we applied, as they recall, for a bylaw modernization grant, $25,000 grant request. We have not received word yet. We should here in January. So hopefully in time to know what we're actually putting into the budget for sure. But I does have a $2,500 cash local match, which you approve. So that's that project. And then the special project reservoir is the path through that we do each year with friends of Waterbury Reservoir. This is the eighth year we've done it. So we applied for the funding. And hopefully we'll get a grant there. Then the trees, we don't have anything yet. So we were not applying for grant. We were a few on that. We ended up applying for grant last year with a $6,500 project. We don't see pretty substantial amounts for trees. So we'll move on to replacing the public works budget. Yeah, that's usually where we consider it. We have a placeholder here. The Green Mountain Byway, we contribute $500 each year that's with the Orwell County Towns. That's an annual amount part of that project. If you have questions, I'll go through this pretty quickly because I know it's late. So then we've got our legal service. We have one appeal now with plans to appeal a free life subdivision across Sweet Road. So that's an ongoing legal rating on a division on that. But we've had legal expenses there. We have to take some continuing legal expense and then we also use the services of a civil page and Fletcher for more routine planning participants. And they do an excellent job. And it's very helpful when you can get advice and help keep us out of appeals to be honest with you to make sure we're on the solid ground. The phone cost has gone up somewhat. So that is reflected. They are advertising. We now advertise in a time's artist with the Waterbury reader, the Waterbury existence. So we're re-budgeting that $2,000 amount. Just so no one knows, they do advertise in the electronic what we're talking about. But there are still laws on the books that require us to publish it. And values are only option. So let's see, printing, that's primarily when we need to get things scanned and go on over a pack and send that large format to make the projects. Office supplies, we buy a lot of paper still. We still have a very paper-rated environment for better reporting. And beautification, this item is reduced from what it once was because revitalizing Waterbury has taken over a lot of the beautification project. And we'll talk about that. We should probably talk about it a lot more, but I'll just give you a nutshell when we get to that item. We'll meet with Aaron. Training and tuition, that's for a proper decision workshop. Manual three-take offer to be online that is up over in Maine. So it's being captured next year. Mapping. So this line pays for services related to our parcel mapping and our online mapping that's on the page on our website. So we split two different expenses. One is for the update of our parcel map done annually by a woman named Christine Chamberlain. So we split this with the assessor's office. So it's 1,200. Goes out of our budget for payroll services. And then there's an additional 1,200 that goes to the company that maintains our online parcel mapping system. It's a great tool. We use it virtually every day in the planning office. We teach them to the public, the real estate community, the adults, the students sheet. It's a great tool. So we pay half of the DAI's cost, which is 1,200 of us budget. Then there's an additional 400. If we need geographic information services with essential online regional planning mission. And then they provide 12 hours of free, if you will, comes from our new statement of budget that we have an additional 400 to help with services they provide for the national and the bylaw update or other projects. Then we're down to the due to the regional planning mission. That's going to be the same as it was last year for half of the basis based on the 2020 census. But then change central money economic development appropriation bill. It's never changed since you started. Which is quite remarkable. But they provide the same services. So they find a perfect thing, something like zero free staff and provide, I think, excellent services to the region. So this dues from my community development association also includes the staff dues for Vermont planer association and our Ringwood chapter and also Hays for membership in the association of floodplain managers. Neil simply fit in by becoming a certified floodplain manager at some point and that gives us access. Let's see, we've got travel, it's that mileage reimbursement. We do a lot less travel these days. So we do some. So we may need to get some funds in there. I think that's left out first out. So we'll get probably $500 back in here. Here, computers are in good shape. So we're not working for a performance agreement. Then on the website, the conservation committee, they may work with Bill and Tom on some additional funding. But that meeting hasn't occurred yet. So that $700 figure may change a bit by the time this is finalized. Revitalizing Waterbury, I won't go into a lot of detail. There's the amount in here that was $17,000 that's continued. And then there's also additional amount that covers services for beautification of the downtown. They pay Mike Flosciado, the gardener that does the building area and the route about hanging our flower baskets or hanging garland, the number of other projects that's taken, we load off the volunteers. These projects have become very large. And so there's more money that goes into getting paid help just so volunteers don't get burned out. And they still support me, I should say. We still volunteer a lot of time on those projects as well. So I think that's pretty much the end of it. Probably the best thing to open up the questions. The justification gives more background on each of these items. I've pretty much given you the nutshell version. But there are some grant projects that are at the end of the justification, a little more detail. I know, Melissa, you were interested in a quick update on the park's study and map plan. Yeah, I just want to say what you said in your email really quickly, but I know where it makes the difference, folks. So we had a meeting of our hearing committee. And that was last week. There were concept plans that were presented. There was one concept for Hope Daisy talk. It can be implemented in basis. There are actually four concepts or they are around the ice center of working on getting that narrow down to, yeah, getting that narrow down to probably two concepts. One, keeping the entrance road where it is. And one, moving the entrance road to the north. That's the property along the railroad tracks where the road holds are. So the goal here is to have the hearing committee review some refined concepts in January. And then they'll make recommendations that will go to a public meeting that will have you folks and the commissioners involved with. It'll be in February and we'll get final input and final direct education in the study and the map plan. So I think we're making good progress. I think we've got consensus around some items at any rate. And we'll obviously have options, especially relating to the ice center, but hopefully have a plan that can be implemented in basis for both areas. From the dating part, we're recommending it's up to the Disc Golf Force to respect more of the natural resources of the wetlands, the flood plain, right here in the area along Patrick Rock, and just try to really improve that reshadow of the nature trail to provide more ADA access to the shelter and to the playground and eventually to the ballfield. So I think there's a real effort to try to make that part more open and accessible and more respectful of the natural resources. So is this specific feedback that you're looking for on those plans that it's now, or just opening it for questions? Yeah, the reason why we gave some extra time is because the concept plans came from the consultant like a day before the meeting. So we really want to have an opportunity for the slot board, the E-Fight commissioners, the steering committee members, family to public, provide comment. And this is not the last bite of the hour of the week. It's just at this stage, there's going to be another opportunity in January, and then there'll be a public meeting in February. So it's really meant to be a progressive process. I'm compiling the comments that will come in by the end of the day Wednesday for those of the consultant and steering committee. And then that will get incorporated into the refining of the different parts from a different angle. And I apologize for the left edge one of 47 on my desk. We may have moved it short. I believe the planning income was, oh, here it is. We budgeted $22,000 that year. We've taken in $26,000 as of December 8. And we might get another $500 to come in. Do you think we'll win the last time planning piece for the justice? It's been a while. It's been probably at least a while. I've been close to 10 years. It's been quite a long time. So the reason I ask is, hey, it's just to see how long in the time it's been. And clearly, really, since we're planning to be here, but especially now with the deal, I think we kind of amped up our hours. We used to have a planning department that had a $20,000, $25,000, and we didn't decide if I think she was starting out. Yeah, the zoning administrator was. Well, we have two full-time planning staff members. And I don't think that's going to change. Once you hire, I think we're going to stay at that level. I think the workload is certainly there at that hour, especially with the real line to get up to speed on the fourth flight and all the rest of it. So we might not be able to implement it for this by the year, but I think I would suggest that we work with Steve and whoever to look at planning trees going forward and go to the doctor, which a lot of folks are talking about like that. But I think we're providing the public much more and more of the planning budget is being covered by the parks and we're going to be close to people who are submitting documents. So this is who we are. Yeah, I think it's an excellent idea, Bill. And you know, I can certainly work with you, Tom, on a proposal and look, because our fees are quite reasonable. We have no impact fees. And not that we would recommend impact fees, but we can certainly look at some reasonable increase in design fees. Just inflationary, inflation was for the last three years really well. So probably we haven't had that big of a deal, but now we're going to multiply it. But I think just at a service level, it's significantly closer to the hours that we should think about it. And impact fees, you really have to make sure on impact fees, if you're going to really follow the law, you have to spend the impact fee money within a certain period of time and you have to allow the public to spend a lot of time. And it has to be for something new that you wouldn't need otherwise. Not really supposed to use impact fees just to take the things that you want to pay for. The roundabout, we could have set money aside for that, but most of that was paid for by state federal money, same thing with Main Street. The roundabout was a big thing that could have qualified Main Street would have spent a section. So in fact, these are a little bit of a challenge. Yeah, and the other thing I'll mention too, you mentioned that we got a whole play management program and we're a member of the community rating system. And that requires maintenance, requires outreach. That's one of the reasons that the zoning administrator position went to a full-time position now as the system planning or zoning administrator with a much more of a floodplain management component to it. So I think there's additional services that membership in the community rating system provides a 10% discount to the landowners who pay flood insurance. So that's townwide. And we moved from a level nine to a level eight, which is a higher level, when we did our five-year recertification in 2020. So that provides a benefit to people who play flood insurance in areas like Grand Street and other areas around town that are in flood plain. That's false. Looks good. The other question I had, and I just want to make it a good question and answer as well, was going through some things in favor of page scale that a different component of water up there costs out so much. Yeah, Neal declined. So Neal Soutzman covers there, he's a school teacher. He covers there, and he's not planning on coming here. So that's the reason that we would have to stay on a new hire report. OK, I'm just going to get to what you said, Neal. Yeah, no, that's a current situation. So we hope that it's right at least. Any other questions? Just one question. Steve, are you anticipating any new funding requests based on the recommendations in these studies? Yeah, not at this time. There is going to be some cost estimating that's going to be done part of the study. There are going to be all-part cost estimate, things like potentially relocating the road back to the building. Yeah, so one of the things that I've mentioned, Tom, is potentially that could be an output funder project relocating the road. It's a fairly large ticket item. The estimate's probably in the $450,000 range based on a think-tory estimate from 2020. So it's not an inexpensive project. But with part projects, there are funding sources. There's the BORAC program now. And that might be a good source. Again, I know you're familiar with that program. That may be a source where we can use the study as basis for a substantial request. And some of the private, general profit funding for, let's say, a skate park or a soccer field or some other privately funded project could be potentially used for that for a project without a big app for 10 funds. But there may be a pump on it. But there's nothing proposed in the budget this time. We really need to get through the study, get consensus around what the community wants to see. And then once we have a clear way forward, we can look at it. We'll have some budget figures and what things are. So anyway, if you're taking on the timeline of it, I'm wondering if this consensus will be achieved before this year's community day. But I want to. Yeah, the study, the final recommendation of the study will go to public meeting probably in February. So yeah, the timing to do something that quickly is not, I don't think it's part of the project, the projects that we want to run. We want to make sure we've got solid agreement about, especially in the network and staff and also from a broader public support side of things. Mike has a question also. Mike, when you're ready, we're ready for you. I'm unmuted. Just a quick comment and maybe just, I think like you see like special projects, especially like we have the recreation study, should that not maybe be kind of put into like a separate bucket? So the rest of the budget shows the cost of operating, you know, the planning division. And that's almost like kind of a, you know, like it's not a capital expense, but it's a separate outside expense. I would like to hear the two town managers and Steve's comment on that. Well, that's really driven by the park study. I guess I think Mike, it does belong here because within the confines open department, you're routinely going to have special projects that are grant funded. And so if you just try to break out base operations, you can do that, but these sort of special projects are really base operations in a way. And you know, in the end, you know, that second page, the impacts and property taxes, that's the number to look at in the market in the end. Right. So I would argue it's in the appropriate place. Yeah, I agree. I think for the purposes of planning, that's what we're doing right now. The park study is a plan. Once the plan is finalized, Mike, and there's an implementation budget bill, I believe the implementation budget will probably be in the reclamation, capital improvement budget. So for planning purposes, while we're paying the SEC group this year and to finish out next year, I think it should be right where it is. But for implementation, it will probably be in the planning budget. Thank you both. Steve, Steve, do you agree? I assume you agree with both of them. Yeah, I do, Mike. I think every year we've had grant funded projects. We've been very successful getting grant funded projects for a host of different projects. So it does, it makes the budget fluctuate some, and then we have a revenue side, which we have to account for as well for the grant group we're coming in. But I agree with Tom and Bill. I think, yeah, I think the planning side needs to be kept here so we can back it here the year and same with, well, the trees, we do put that into the Highway Department Cemetery budget typically, so it's more of a placeholder here. But depending on whether the trees are going to go out. That's true, that's a good point. And what we're doing with that, what we do, what we do in the toys and things like that, we take that out of the planning system. Yeah, the moral of the planning function. And then I will implement this project. Thanks so much. I just, you know, on behalf of, you know, like a layman looking at this, you know, we have like maybe these bumps and stuff like that that kind of occur. But I agree with all of you. I think it probably, yeah. Thanks. OK. Thank you so much. Good. Yeah, the work plan went around too. So feel free to read through that. It gets into more of the detail on any pretty on different projects. So just let me know if we have a presence. We don't need to take a lot of time here to go through it. I don't think it's late. So, but let me know if you have questions about that. Just shoot me an email or anything. I don't think I just want to know someone that marks planning, special committee, finishes its work essentially. To some extent, the Recreation Board will take over some of the work as you approach on meeting day 2024. So I went to a rec meeting a couple of weeks ago. They mentioned they were authorized for 11 members, which I don't know if the bylaws or how it was created. I believe now they're at five. That strikes me as a very healthy number for a committee that's in a nice number to work with. But that strikes me as the committee is going to be very impactful next year. So if you're, you might want to get an undergraduate to consider the numbers of that committee. Not more than additional. Yeah. Good idea. Thank you. OK, very welcome. We did study quickly before we made budget stuff. I'm not pretty sure if you have anything else. I do. You know, quick, quick balance today, we'll look at where we stand on the pre-operating funds. I think we will end up with five new fund balances in all three of the funds. Tell me, I talked about the $95,000 in from our butt in the highway fund. And we both really believe that that $95,000 should show us revenue moving from the top of the into the highway fund. And it was budgeted that way. If you didn't have it right now, there's still there's going to be some changes to the actual of the budgets really right through the end of January, because we're going to get power bills, fuel bills, salt bills, things like that, that were not paying until 2020 truly that will be posted out. But even today with the numbers that I've projected, we would have a slight deficit about a $50,000 deficit in the highway fund if you didn't. We are up for money, maybe $40,000. If we move it, we have about a $50,000 surplus. But the other thing that moving with us is it moves it into the general fund. And if you remember back, I think it was probably by April with what made a motion that it was wanting to use output funds to replace lot revenue. And that was something that makes it really easy to track it out for the spending. And we thought we have $695,000 that move the general fund this year, but we kind of foiled that. We did give $50,000 to see the final. So there'll be $95,000 plus 50,000, so there'll be $145,000 of the output that will move the general fund to this year. But because we wanted to show it as a general fund, we had to make a different expense because we thought it was going to be $95,000 a year to move it. So the United College of Education is about $600,000. So if I didn't take it, Collins' feeling is that if I didn't take it, since it was budgeted first, it's a big thing, let's just leave it. But I think probably what we're going to do about the spending is more time than we need. But I think we'll probably buy the move as much of the art of money into the general fund revenue since 2023 to just get it all in the general fund. And then you can appropriately fund out because you'll have a high fund. We'll be able to do everything that you were planning to do, but getting it moved over there will be who things for the talent and the quality of what you're going to use. So anyway, the general fund right now, I left the first page out and still got some going from taxes or taxes that haven't been in yet. But I'm suggesting that we can have the fund balance in the general fund. It will be helpful when it comes to taxation. I think $50,000 fund balance in the highway and about a general fund balance in the light. So I think we got a good budget here. Some over expenditures. We're going to this at your next meeting, whether it's May or fall, but we'll try to have as final numbers as we can. I think it's going to be in January with the understanding that there's going to be some that comes in after that that have to be posted. But we'll have a really good number of things that can be needed for you. But right now, we're good in terms of where 2022 is ending. I'm going to try to explain it to you. Since the 2023, no, I'll see you in a second. Thank you. And on the topic of ARPA funds, I thought you had some emails with Downstream, Nicola Anderson. They have a request for ARPA funds. And so I told her I pencil her in for the January 16th meeting. And my advice to her was, in that case, the grant application, give us your sorts of communities for the project and let us know what's different. If you receive ARPA funds or if you receive ARPA funds, just design changes. If the timeline change, collaborate on some of those issues. So she'll be before you. Is that a moment? Are we meeting on the 16th or are we shifting to the 18th? I was going to ask. So the third was the Tuesday. So right now, I know that there is not a holiday for us, but something that the town like one should be considering. And then the other compensation is not going to be included in the budget. The budget is going to be included now. So I'm going to tell you how I feel about that. And if something goes down, then it's still going to be. Now it will be great. But only because I can tell you how it will go off. If there's a limitation. And then I don't know what the policy is. It varies. But I got a reference here. I don't think I got a reference there. I don't think it's going to be more of a difference. I think a lot of these building's explainer suggests that we move to the Tuesday? Let's move. Would agree. I'm sorry. We're. All right, I thought you meant the top quality lots of that. Yeah. That's I know. I was the same as you did. I thought I was. I think everyone is okay. Mike, would you be able to do Tuesday, January 17th? I'm done on Monday the 16th. You're there. I'm here just looking for my unmute button. I, I could go. Anyway, I'm available, you know, with the Martin Luther King day, you know, whether we want to move it because it's a holiday. I know it's not, you know, a town holiday, but we could move it to Tuesday. I could go either either direction. You're available Tuesday. Yeah. Well, then let's, if Tom, if that's okay with you, let's move it and then see if that works for me. Okay. There's been some references about us needing to meet to additional official meetings because of the budget season. Yeah. Yeah. It's every week. If you're watching, you won't have to be the 31st. Yeah. But Tuesday the third. Monday. This room is rented that day. This room is rented on the 17th. Oh, until 530 this meeting starts at seven. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. I'm sorry. I feel like I've been here since four. Is there a gender as well as we do? The 17th, the 23rd, the 23rd. Okay. So market calendar for every Monday except the sort of the 17th. 317. Three nine. Two nine. Nope. I have to get that. I'm not sure if I'm going to get that. I don't know. I'm not sure if I'm going to get that. Oh, God. 9. Not 17. 23. The nine. Not March. I just, I get that. Okay, let's continue on the agenda. So we will go on to rail. Transfer of property. So, after the meeting last week, there were four properties that the lawyer presented to the default commission to want to be turned over by the small properties to account. The default commission was approved. The transfer of the rest department by the. The. And. And the reference. So. I've got three that I just mentioned to you now. So. Part of the skips. We thought it was not really appropriate for this board to approve it. When he found it, they haven't moved it yet. Well, three that they did approve. Yeah. Yeah. Motion and second. All those in favor. Okay. I did not get a verbal microphone. I'm saying because I do technology. Let's go. Yeah. That's okay. Not an emotion. All right. Lastly. That's very important. Yeah. Just to know I voted in favor of my. So you have. The reference. And I. Sorry. Sorry for Dr. And I'm giving you the budget estimate and I've been in contact with Dr. Barry. So. I think we'll have a final contract before you. I. So you have to. You know, I know I've been in contact with you for a long time. I've been in contact with you for a long time. And I think I've been in contact with you for a long time. I think we'll have a final contract this year. You know, when we're in contact with you, we'll have a final contract. You know, We'll have a final contract this year. On January the final. When? The final. Equalization. No. It's $2,500 in 2010 and I went to the board council like board that said 50 and that's why we're here. And we're going to be able to go up to $30,000 to $65,000 for what we're probably trying to do. If we break the plan for what we're planning, we'll go up to $50,000 to $700,000. And it would be that whatever those prices for two years, $23,000 and $24,000 and then $25,000. Some of these, you know, it's just a little parrot. If you've been two years at the same price and then say, you know, they're not going to argue that it's better to get it. And in the past, we offered a contract with Dexbury at this meeting, and we told them if the numbers work out, their favor will lower if the numbers work out and should be a little higher. But we're missing the equalization so it's not quite pretty straight. So we're going to have to wait until the final contract. Fantastic. Okay. I'll motion you to adjourn. Sally. Yeah, sorry. I'm a favor.