 except we should wait for the order to sign an amendment or agree to get that amendment to come back to us. Then we have to go that way. Right now I'll take a motion to come out of executive session. Absolutely. Okay. Do we have a second? Second. All in favor? All right. All right. We're back in public session again. At this point, we're not going to report anything, but we will be taking action a little bit later. When we get to hiring and recruitment at 6.20. Do we have any additions or changes to the agenda? Anybody want to make any changes? Okay. Minutes of December 11th and continue to December 18th. Any changes to those? I don't have any changes. I'd make a motion to accept the minutes. Okay. It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Okay. Board orders. You all got the preliminary stuff at least without the actual check, checkstubs in your Google Docs. They're going around. You have them, Jordan, right now. But we discovered we were actually supposed to be voting to accept them before we signed them. Would somebody like to vote to approve the board orders? Let me see. What would we say of the week? The past four weeks, I guess? For the past month. Yeah. Okay. It's been moved. Do we have a second? Second. We have a second. Any discussion? Everybody's okay? All in favor? Aye. Okay. They'll come around. There's a lot to sign there, guys. It's a lot. It's easy. Are you accepting the board orders? Are you approving them for payment? We're approving them for payment and we're going to sign them. Approving for payment is better than... Yeah. Approving for payment is better than accepting anything. And each... Kari's got them organized so that the document that you sign is the first or second page in each packet there. So you don't have to paw through everything to make sure you missed something. So full month's worth. It's got the social service appropriation that's been passed down the meeting. And we're going to be going to buy weekly payroll. So this will be the most warrants you see at one time, maybe ever. Yeah. Okay. The select board report to the town for the town report. Have you all had a chance to look at the latest draft of that which was labeled... Number three? Yeah, I think it was number three. Since then I found a few typos, mostly commas and things. But I didn't change anything substantive. Does anybody have any comments on that? Cal's warning March 2024. No, that's the warning. This is not the warning. This is the report that goes into the book that says, hey, this year we did wonderful stuff. It was good. I know I did a thing with clarifying a couple of things for Barbara, which I don't know if they're part of that. Sorry, you had a couple of things for Barbara? Just as far as like the address for the trash depot, like little things. Oh, that you wanted in the report? I think it might be separate in the does it go in the book somewhere else? I thought it was part of the town report. Okay, I think it's part of the town report, but it's not part of the slide board report. It's not part of the slide board report. Got it. Okay. No, I thought it was good. There's, you know, I... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That didn't structure anything. I think you did a very nice job. Oh, that's cute. And I did a very nice job. I enjoyed the love of the job of it too. So it was a group effort. Yeah. I think we actually have to approve it, although I'm willing to do that if you want to, but we have to agree that this is ready for publication. Yeah, that's great. Okay. Then... Ready for publication. Ready for publication. Thanks. Yay, that's done. Barbara points out that in the beginning we did not want to list our phone numbers. We got scared, I think. Or emails. Or emails. We got scared off by being told by the last select board that you were going to get absolutely inundated, but it doesn't seem to have happened that way. Yeah, because we kept them all ourselves. So it worked famously. Actually, I mean, folks were probably you, but I mean, a lot of folks have my number now. I don't know if I would want my personal number published. Obviously, our personal email is my personal email. It's kind of given out like over the, I think, pride. Yeah. Of the town has my phone number. No, what she's... Pretty easily accessible. You're easy to find. What she's suggesting is that we just publish our select board emails. Yes. And that we put our phone numbers in if we're willing to be contacted. And I said I was. I said I was. I, looking at the contact sheet, I mean, everybody else who does anything in town from cemetery commission to zoning to, you know, they all have their phone numbers in the report. There might be a difference between like a home phone and cell phone too. Like I feel more comfortable looking at my home phone because it's in a phone book and I don't feel it's compelled to be on top of that. But a cell phone feels a little more personal. So you can choose which one. She also wanted me to make sure we... For those who still haven't been online. I love online. She also wanted clarification on the town report and the website where you wanted both of these types of contact information. Okay. So I guess I was wondering if it may be worth discussing. Like, so that I'd maybe feel differently if I had more phone numbers. And, you know, the other element, which is just the thing is like anytime you have anything on a website, it will be subject to getting grabbed off of there. There's programs that are doing that. And I don't feel as strongly about the email being on there at this point because now, especially with the new email system, like there are ways for filtering that stuff out and there are some prefilters for spammy kind of malware type stuff. But I wonder if there's like a third avenue for cell phone numbers where like if anybody needs to get in touch with a select board number like to call the town office to get a phone number. That way if that information is accessible, we're not withholding it. But like for me, like I'm happy to have people call. And if somebody does say, hey, what's your cell phone number? I'll give it to them. But it's nice to not have to necessarily have that right on the website. Excuse me. Would you sign in please? I've done that very, very selectively. Like if it is an emergency or something super pressing, we have on occasion given out some of your phone numbers in that case. But not usually. I usually hesitate unless someone is giving me specific advice. Well, I think that we're taking it a step further by actually making a statement on the website that says if you would like to get in touch by phone with one of the select board numbers, please call the office and you'll be provided their preferred phone number for contact. So you want that on the website? And or the town or? I'm putting it up for discussion. I guess, yeah. I'd like to hear how, I kind of know how both of you feel now. How do you guys feel? I don't, I agree with Jordan with that possibility of getting my phone number up there. There are people like, don't you call me? So you'd rather not have your number public? I mean, pragmatically, anyone who wanted it could get it. You know what I mean? Because people were contacting me through the summer that they just all share with each other. So I think everyone asked if I'd never. But on the website, man, but if you were to give it out, I'm okay with that. How about town report? We could also put the same message. I don't mind it being in the town report. I mean, that's generally circulated in hard copies, right? And it's not published on. Is it published in form or anything? So we put it on our website and then there's a state website that has all the town reports for all the accounts. But it's in the PDF form. Right. It's definitely a degree of removal. I don't have a strong objection to it, to the phone numbers being posted in the town reports and then posted wherever those go. But now, especially, you know, with Karategan and Barbara in the office, you know, they're apprised of enough of the issues that are coming up. It's just like an extra little degree of filtering. And just to make sure somebody gets directed to somebody who, you know, they might be calling to look for somebody, but somebody else is actually handling that particular business item. Anne, do you feel the same way? Anne. Me? Yeah. Having it published in the town report but not on the website. Yeah, I think I'd be okay with that. Okay. And I think, like filtering, like Jordan's saying, it's nice because there are certain areas that we tend to move in. And, you know, someone calling me about demo questions. I've got them on. You know what I mean? I think they would know to call you. But. Okay. Donnie, you don't have a landline. I don't. What do you feel? I don't care. No. So you're willing to be published both places? Yeah. Let them all call you. I mean, I like Jordan's idea, but it doesn't matter to me. You'll talk to anybody anytime. Pretty much. Wow. I wouldn't say anything. We're going to sell phones on. Yeah. So does it make sense to do it with three of us having our numbers published and two not in the town report? I mean, in the other website, I'm fine with that. Does anybody see a downside to that? Okay. So then if you all want to break down the number you want published and where do you feel comfortable being published or email Barbara in your call. Somehow contact us and let us know which numbers are being posted, where do you hear that? Well, why don't we get them right now because people aren't going to remember. Oh, we can arrest you. Barbara and I are going to get them. Well, you can do that. So, Jamie. I'm fine. Select board email, cell phone number. You and Barbara have it probably. Yeah. Both places. That's right. You only have the one. I only have the one. Phone. So they can be in both places, you said? Yeah. Okay. We're going to put this in the phone house. Yeah, I guess I've had rather been in the report but maybe not on the website. Just with the email address on the website. And you just have the one phone number? I don't know. Okay, so. You already. It's probably the only one out of state as well. So it's totally fine. No, it's out of state. Arizona. Yeah. You already have one. It's my new one. It's my new one. It's my new one. It's my new one. I have all it in this spreadsheet. You've got landlines, work phones, phone calls. Everybody I just need to know where to go. I would like to do with my landline. Okay. And you said both places. You thought you were comfortable. I'm fine with both. I'm definitely on my N4 digital license plate. I guess. I mean, I live for digital license plates. I mean, it's a lot. It's a lot. Guys, let's hear what Donnie put. Donnie said both places are fine. Do you have a phone? Yeah. It's the only phone I have. And your cell phone in the town report? Town report. Is it still on the website? It was on the website for a while. It might not be on the website now. I will double check. Great. We both have our things. We both, yeah. Because I was gone. I think that's probably changed the card. Well, should be, but I'll probably double check the road to get to make sure that it's set to date. Okay. Then shall we move on? Public comment. Anybody wish to make a public statement on an issue that's not on the agenda? I have some stuff. Barbara needs to give you all of this. I found this public comment. Sure. May as well do it here. Yeah. Go ahead. This is the town audit. There are a few copies. Anyone who is interested in the copy may take one. There is also the one at the office for public use or for us to use. But if anyone wants a physical copy of the audit for next year, there's a couple. Is this different from the draft that we got and approved? No. It's the same one. This one's final. This one's final. This is final. But it's the same one we approved. I don't know. I haven't. Oh, but it's nicely approved. It's accepted. Okay. Thank you. Good night. Good night. An excavator company gave us calendars. If anyone would like a calendar, you guys can make a recycle. These are free for anyone who is like one. Yeah, I do. Do you guys need to work down the second floor? I'm sure they already have one. Yeah, are you serious? Yeah. Jordan wants two. I do need two. Oh, great. Yeah. They're good for you. I'll put it on to you. That's great. I think that's all the stuff she needs. What's this? This is... Oh, goodness. This is all on the website. I'll take out your copy of that. Yeah. Sevens want an auto copy. And again, there's the PDF, and there's the copy at the office. I don't get any time eating. That's all. Okay. Thanks, Tegan. Now, Larry isn't here. So maybe what we could do, we'll go to hiring and recruitment and we'll talk about town treasurer, assistant treasurer. Right. So the model that we have included in next year's budget, which would take effect in March would be, the point to be is the treasurer and hire a part-time assistant, which we call the assistant treasurer. And since we're only a couple months out, we've already gone ahead and posted that position with a draft job description. But now I'm asking for approval of that draft. And you should know it was reviewed by our staff, including Sandra and Wendy Wilton. We've performed that role. And then just from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. So that's our best thinking at this point. So you posted it where? In the normal freeze places, which includes the website from the Forge Forum, Vermont League of Cities and Towns website. We posted it around town. So it's up at the store. And it goes down there. The Muni Net? Put it on the Muni Net. Yeah, I'm a listserv. And we've got no applications. And I know Barbara's working and getting it up to the colleges. I don't know how far. Oh, that's right. She was able to post it. Oh, they're sending it to local CPAs. You know, they may have interns or something. Yes. People would be really excited to know. She was helping the colleges. She found a thing where you can post jobs to all the local colleges. So she was excited about that. I can reach out to someone who had actually applied, I think, for the treasure position. So would anybody like to comment on the draft itself? No, I really like that you added so many things that we add these days into our job applications. Like you will be doing the following things and looking at things and looking at things. And your fingers have to be nimble. It follows the template that Leake recommends. Yeah, no, and that's very solid. I'll mention federal job descriptions look a lot like that. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Anybody want to offer any changes? I guess the one question that popped into my head is when it took part-time 20 hours a week occasionally up to 25, is that going to be more fluctuating based on time of year and tax? That's exactly what we have in mind. Is it going to be 15 sometimes and 40 sometimes? It's really hard to say. I think it will work with a person, but we know that tax season is the crunch. We wanted to have some flex in there because we've got to take those payments and process them. I mean, I think that's fine for... Yeah, and then keep in mind there's also the delinquent tax collector which by statute is a separate function that must be kept separate. Traditionally, I think it's been done by the Chargers. Andrew's doing it this year. And we have budgeted for it for next year. It's possible that this person could also do that, but it could be somebody else. Sandra actually said that she'd be going to hang on to that portion of the reward. That'd be nice to have said. So that could provide a little stability as we transition. That's the part of the job that really flexes because it's actually not much to do parts of the year. Would somebody like to move approval of this draft? Yeah, I'll make a mention to accept the draft of the job petition presented by Cary for assistant treasurer. Do we have a second? Second. All right. Thank you, Cary. Larry's still not here. Shall we skip over it? He said he was coming for sure. Yeah, we shouldn't do it without him. We shouldn't even hire John without him. Well, I think we have to ask if we need any input, I guess procedurally, right? We both have to sign an addendum to our contract before we can actually hire him. The position doesn't exist. Well, as you said. Maybe you could approve it provisionally because I suggest that we could do the signing remotely. Why don't we just jump over to the boom mower for a minute and maybe he'll show up. So that's up next. We're going to look at a resolution for the boom mower. We're going to talk about that. So you approved the purchase and financing of this piece of equipment last time in that, or in December anyway. And part of the financing package is a resolution, which basically states that the town has a need for this piece of equipment. And actually you're going to need to do this again for the greater to warrant the bond vote on the greater. So I guess this is standard fair. The board has to say there is a definite need for this piece of equipment for the mower money. And that's it. The rest of the financing application is in the packet. It's quite extensive. It is quite extensive. And we have to give you approval to sign it on our behalf. Do we need to do that tonight as well? Or is that part of what it is we're going to do here, this statement that we're going to do? It's a good question. I think that would be good form to get that in there just so there's no question at all. And where's the language that we're... It's in the memo. Oh, yeah. It's in the memo. Yeah, the memo has the resolution. So does that mean you adopt this resolution and maybe after that authorize the card up? Well, yeah. The language says down the second paragraph and hereby designates and authorizes the following person. So we need to put your name in there. Yeah. Okay. So I would say hereby designates and authorizes Kari Bradley to execute and deliver. Okay. Any questions or discussions on that resolution? Would somebody like to move it? Some moved. Second. Okay. It's been moved and seconded. Rose, you're set. Okay. All in favor? All right. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And now the truck payment. You have a new payment plan for us. I'm not sure how much this for the memo is about this truck. There's a description here. It came from Sandra, actually. She wasn't even fully aware of all of this because it kind of happened during the tail end of the last select board year in January and February. But after the budget was finalized, the select board approved the purchase of a new truck. And that truck didn't arrive until July. So in that transition, I think it just got lost. It did not appear in the budget. Sandra was completely unaware that we were going to be on the hook for a payment. And then, you know, the flood and all that. So the leasing company, KS State Bank, is willing to defer the principal payments until July of 25. And that will help with cash flow since we didn't budget for it for this year. So that does add some interest. And the new payment plan is on this document in the packet. And I'm just asking approval of that. Title exhibit B2 payment schedule. Yeah. Yeah. And it looks like it was signed, signed by Denise. I guess that needs to be changed. It says... Well, they put her type her name in there. I just crossed it out on my copy of your name. Oh, OK. So what we need is a motion to authorize me to sign this on behalf of the select board. OK. And this increases our payment from something like 40-something. Increases it by about $1,000 a year. Yeah. Almost $900. A year. A year. For a couple of years. Yeah. OK. All right. Everybody OK with this? Yeah. OK. I'll take a motion to authorize me to sign this payment schedule on behalf of the board. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. You have a copy that I could sign. I do. My copy has Denise in here still. I do. So... I'll pass that. OK. All right. Thanks. And still no Larry. OK. Why don't we move to the Municipal Climate Relief Fund? You want to explain that? Yeah. Just action packed tonight. So remember we are anticipating running out cash because of all the FEMA expenses that haven't been reimbursed and won't be reimbursed for quite some time. Just an update on that. Topi has now submitted at least two of the worksheets. He did the callus dam was the first one because it fit into some specific category. And then he did the largest one, which is Moscow Woods, was over $400,000. So that's those two and maybe one or two others have been submitted for the first layer of review. So we're working with a, basically an account manager who's been assigned to us in a few other towns. And she goes through everything in detail, asked for questions, asked for more information. And then she sends those applications to the next layers. And actually it spreads out. There's historic, there's environmental review. There's multiple layers. And so my point is it's going to be some time until we actually see any payments. I just want to give a shout out to Scott and Charlotte too. I mean, they've been doing, you see them at the town office for hours doing the tedious work of organizing all this and putting it into the computer. The pictures and the documents. It's incredible the work they've been doing on our behalf. So anticipating this, the town established a line of credit with our primary bank, Community National, last summer. It was 1.7 million, up to 1.7 million dollars. That's about 4%. And the timing of that is actually, we didn't know when we were going to need to borrow so we set it up to go through the year ending on August 30th. Which doesn't, that would really work for us even if that were the case, because we won't have tax payments to repay that until at least September. However, the state has set up this alternative, which they're calling the Municipal Climate Recovery Fund. It's a partnership between the Bond Bank and the Treasury Department where they're just basically going to loan municipalities money at a very low rate, 1.3%, interest only the first two years, no penalty for early repayment. So it's a loan, but it's essentially a line of credit. And the application, the first round of application is due Wednesday. So meeting approval to, or authorization to make the application. Sandra and I looking at the budget, the financial report halfway through this year that we're going to talk about later and then anticipating what are the expenses remaining in this fiscal year plus the first part of fiscal 25. We think $500,000 should be plenty to get us through. And if we borrow a little more than we needed, that's no problem. We'll just pay it back quickly. So that's the ask, is the authorization to apply this Wednesday for $500,000 from the Municipal Climate Recovery Fund. It's really a welcome thing. Can we want to get into this first round of applications because there's only $50,000,000 in there? We're asking for a $30,000 back. So is there a drawdown period, or is it actually a loan? So it's a loan that you can repay at any point? Yes. We haven't drawn anything against the 1.7 that we approved? No, we have not at all, right? And they plan to distribute the funds in either late February or early March. So that turned out to be all for us. Other questions? Everybody understand? So what we need is a motion to authorize Kari and Sandra to proceed with the application. Is that right? Rose, is that enough for you to put something together with somebody like to move that? Some moves. Okay, Jordan's moved. Is there a second? And seconds. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for staying on top of that, Kari. Not a lot of advance notice on that at all. Good fun. Well, let's move on to ARPA funds then. So we actually have a really good summary, finally, of what's going on with the ARPA funds. And you all got that and studied it carefully, I'm sure. Kari, walk us through what's going on with the Clawback and why we have to act and so on. Yeah, so the American Rescue Plan Act, the funds made available to us, the previous board had allocated funds to various places. Much of that has been spent at this point. So it has been partially spent. So Sandra, did the accounting to see where we stand. Almost everything has been distributed, spent or sent out. We've got the $60,000 that was allocated for the East Calis Fire District that we haven't expended yet. And then we've got $37,180 that has not been allocated to anything, which is good news. And then we have another $1901 that was appropriated for the Emergency Management Equipment Fund, but it hasn't been spent. So that's what's remaining. The League of Cities and Towns is recommending that their goal is that none of this money goes back to the fence. It all stays here in Vermont and spent by the towns. And they have some concerns that if the money is not expended this year, expended being spent or sent distributed to a beneficiary that the fence may want to claw back. I'm not exactly sure why they're concerned about that, but they're concerned enough that they're taking an official position that by March 1st we should do our best to expend remaining funds. They don't actually have to be spent, but they have to be out of our budget and into somebody else's. So that's where we are. We don't necessarily have to make those decisions tonight, although if you want to make decisions that impact next year's budget, then you need to do that tonight because we have finalized the budget tonight. So for example, one thing you could do is allocate some portion of that $39,000 to the Highway Capital Equipment Fund and thereby lower that budget line-up that's in next year's budget. And remember $20,000 is about one percentage of the budget. I thought you were talking about using it to pay down the first payment on the boomer. But that'd be perfect. You've already allocated what was it, $50,000 for the boomer. If you put it in the Equipment Fund, it can be used for the next boomer payment. It could be used for the truck payment. The ARPA rules don't require that it be very specific as to what it's being used for. You can actually use ARPA for almost anything. You can pay wages with ARPA. Free money. I'll just mention that Nick needs a little bit more than the 1900 in there. There's a memo. Clary, do you remember what it is? It's something about hooking up the generator. I think it's the... They thought they could run the wire from the antenna to the radio themselves. But because of the nature of the building and it's got to go through a couple of walls, they want to hire an electrician to do it. And there was one other thing, too. A total came to $1955. Maybe. He wasn't sure about one of them, but he may need a little bit more than that. So we might want to save out a little bit to help them. And we'll be working with them to see if we can figure out how to give them the money if they can't spend it by March. Good. $1955, it was his last estimate. Again, you don't have to make that decision tonight if you hang onto at least that amount of money. The decision I would encourage you to think about is if you want any of this money to go towards... to bring down next year's budget tonight tonight to think about that. I think it would be good to use the bulk of it in that way. And I was thinking exactly highway equipment and some of that down. We might also look... and I didn't get a chance to look and bring specific ideas, but there were a number of relatively small items that we cut from next year's budget throughout the process that we might go back and look at some of those cuts we made and say, well, you know, we wanted $5,000, we gave them $3,000, let's give them another $1,000 of this ARPA money. So we might do the bulk of it to the highway and then save $10,000 or $12,000 to fill some of those needs that we felt the need to cut from next year's budget. Yeah, I guess one that stands out to me is the dock. Yeah. replacement, which was kind of a painful one to have to cut out. Yeah. But if it's a matter of allocate, I guess... That was $2,500. I think it was $5,500. $5,500. So you'd be taking $2,500 if you wanted $4,500. Right. I had the same thought in my memo. What I did was try to pair... or how do you think about one-time uses? Right. Because this is a one-time source. We do it together, really well. So what have you talked about this one-time use is the dock, the town office air conditioner, the interactive map program, and we never put any money to it, but something for the acoustics in this room? Right. So maybe we do something like... if what we have available is the 37, we could say, okay, let's take 20 of it, which is 1%, and use that to reduce next year's budget and save the remaining... Right. Whatever that is, 17. Let's gather all the thoughts and then we'll talk about it. I would prefer to put it all towards offsetting our costs. Fully from the east side of town, CP5 or $200,000 has totally helped hook up over here. The east side isn't going to see any kind of benefit from that. But a lot of money towards the Curtis Pond Association through the ARPA money. I know it's really important. I know they can do their swimming program this year, but there is... I know there's folks that have the resources that can help offset the dock and just be personally thinking about trying to pay my property taxes this coming year. It was incredibly challenging this year to muddle through anything we can do to reduce it and spend it on concrete things like our roads is important. So, Kari, if we put the... Let's just suppose we put the entire money in. That reduces the increase from what to what on a percentage basis. It is like 7. Yeah, I mean, somewhere in the neighborhood of 7%. And currently we have it at 8 something. Yeah, 8.7, I think it was. 8.73. 30,000 that would bring it down to 7.21. I calculated 5,000 on top of that because that's what was in the middle about the ambulance. These are my favorite ambulance. Which brought it down to 6.9 something. However, we may entertain increasing the licensing, software licensing by $900 which is bringing it back up. I'm going to throw out a third option which I was thinking more of the future. We've been talking about the need to look at the town garage which is in abysmal shape. We're outgrowing our town office. Maybe instead we want to consider putting the money toward making a plan, towards hiring somebody to help develop a plan. The question is whether or not we can create a dedicated account much like we've done with other allocations and creating a new account where we throw it into that for future planning. We have three options on the table. We've got one person who feels, at least one, who feels very strongly the entire amount should go to reduced taxes. We have a town program. Many towns put their entire urban funds into their road program. Sorry, Donnie, go ahead. I would go along with that as well. With what you have suggested. Even the 1% or so that Jamie suggested for funding other items. I think with the flood this year, there are people that are having a hard time living in their home right now. And I think the last thing that we need to do is add more taxes to that. But we are adding more. We're trying to at least limit that. And I think that's really important right now because there's more people living on the side of their road and tents and things like that. I think right now I think it's just important to kind of keep that cost out. If you don't know, the common level of appraisal numbers came out in the past 10 days. And it's a disaster. And so what we've seen, just preliminary numbers for the school budget is that Calis is going to have something like $300 of additional property tax per $100,000 value. That's a lot. All right. Further discussion? I think we've done some really good, painful work, weighing things when it came to some of the extracurriculars this year. And I think that was a pretty healthy exercise. So I think to both Anne and Donnie's point, keeping them cut for a year, particularly in a challenging year was a good exercise to go through. And then we have another opportunity to do it. All over again next year. So I do think that any kind of sum of money like that needs to either go towards offsetting taxes or put towards one-time planning expenses. I think it's really hard for a town of our size to invest in planning resources and set aside the money for that. And I think we need it more than ever. And, yeah, it's going to be a painful tax year. So we've got some pretty big, pretty big ticket items. It'd be nice to see it allocated to something specific as opposed to just going into a highway, you know, capital equipment fund. But if we can apply it to something very specific, that would be great. Or to offset some of the other expenses that are going to be rolling in. I would be open to supporting, creating the kind of account you're talking about in a year. I mean, I think that even just this year being able to see how that town highway budget shakes out with the meticulous detailing of how it's going, spending some time exploring what financial opportunities I know we're looking at grants and things but even to help work on the garage, which is like a total dump. But maybe it's going to collapse in on itself or whatever. And kind of thinking about and having those discussions and then moving on it maybe next year because we are going to, we are going to go to the town office, the garage is yet a mess, but it's already carrying a lot. If we're going to do something to reduce taxes, we have to decide tonight. So would somebody like to make a motion? Can I ask one more question? Of course. There's been a lot of conversation about the highway capital equipment funding and the flexibility of said funds. Is there an account that we've determined that is sufficient flexibility that if we fund it now and decide we want to reallocate those funds in the future, it provides enough flexibility? I'm guessing that it's not going to look good if we just create an account that says left over R for a slush fund. But if we have an account that is sufficiently flexible that can help offset costs in the short term but then create a surplus in the future that we can then draw from to fund future. So is the question if there's a fund balance in the equipment fund that you ran, can that be reallocated to something else? You know, at the risk of being wrong? Well, we went pay for those. No, I think when we create a reserve fund we say the money, it's usually done by a strain and ballot. We usually put money into the equipment fund by a strain and ballot and it is to be used for this. You can't use it for anything else. And it's pretty strict. That's the definition of a reserve fund. But then how did we, what did it fall under when we put those signs that we originally paid for under ARPA? Well, that wasn't it. That wasn't it. That was under general budget. That was just general budget on the rating expenses. And like the green up tires and that, okay. Yeah, that was the opposite direction. It does strike me that the need for highway equipment is so ever present that you're actually putting in a general fund. Yeah, exactly. Because it's a little less than you have to put something. Yeah. You know, it gives something else. Right. Would somebody like to make a motion that we can begin, even if it's not one we're ready to vote on yet, just so we have something to respond to? Would you like to frame a motion? For whether we vote, I mean, are we in censor of consensus or are we still? I don't know, yes. State of not, there ain't nobody. Can you speak to whether or not if we put it in that way? Can I answer Anne's question first? All I wanted you to do was put it in words and then if we can get a motion on the table, then we can start discussing and wordsmithing it. So I wanted you to give me something that we could start reacting to. But let's pause and let Jordan ask this question. Okay. If we put it into the Highway Capital Equipment Fund, is there a particular expenditure that we can apply it to that would have a direct impact on next year's budget? Or are there other items on the budget that we would need to apply it to specifically? Well, I think it will be, if it goes in there, most likely will be used for the truck payment, the boom mower or the freighter. Well, I think that's it because the shipper is coming off this year. It might be a piece of equipment that's in the pipeline, but this year we're basically going for three big pieces of equipment that are going to be with us for a number of years. So I don't think you need to specify any one thing. It's sure to be spent. That drives the point. Well, wait a minute. Wouldn't the idea be, I mean, in our budget we've allocated 50,000 for Highway Capital Equipment. If we put 30,000 in, doesn't that reduce it by 20,000, down to 20,000? Right. That's what I was asking. We would ask the town for less. Yeah. That's what you meant. Yeah. Okay. All right. I'd like to just get a motion on the table so we can react to it. Would somebody like to frame one? I would like to make a motion to apply the balance, allocate balance of the output funds toward the currently budgeted $50,000 of capital equipment in the FY25 budget. Right. You don't need to put it in the budget. You're just putting it in the reserve fund. Okay. And then drawing down, reducing the budget accordingly by the 70,000. Yep. Okay. So all 39,000, whatever it is. Well, it's called what Nick needs. Minus what, well, we don't actually know Nick was guessing, but we'll, so the current amount is, where's my arpillist? Just, just hold back a little bit of money. Right. Right. I think the total is 37,180 dollars and 16 cents minus shall we hold out a hundred or so for Nick? I think it was more than that because, I mean, I was a day of electrical work. So it's probably going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of like, no, no, he's already got 1900. He really only needs another 50 or so. I was just giving him a little extra. Does that have any material and stuff? Oh yeah. Yeah, he's all set. No, it's just a couple of things that came up. He's already got, spent most of the money he got. Okay. We originally gave him 45,000 of that. Is that what I'm, no, I'm looking at the wrong one. It's in here. Anyway, what we originally gave him, how much he spent and then how much is left. It's all in here. Here it is. 16,092 dollars. See below for accounting. So that's all below here. Carrier, are you able to do this more quickly? Here it is. Okay. We gave him of the 32,247 dollars. He spent 20,000. No, and 11,000. And, man. He, so what? What has he done? What I'm seeing from his email from December 1st is that he needs, well he's estimated $500 for the sell signal booster and communication radio. And then $1,455 for radio communication. That's what you're talking about, right? That's what he's... Well, I'm pointing out, we actually gave him, he's actually spent 21,464 dollars. Total ARPA funds used appropriate, plus another 19,000 of the amount we allocated. And what's left is 1,975 cents, $900 and 75 cents that he has not yet spent. So he's still gotten that. He's asking for another 50 or so. $55. Yeah. But that's nested. Right. So I feel like every, almost every meeting, somebody comes with some little need that's come up that's pretty necessary. I would offer an amendment to Jordan's motion that we transfer $35,000 of the remaining ARPA funds to the highway department and we leave a balance of $2,180 or whatever as... I like that. And then if we need to, we'll do something with it. We can put it there later. Yeah. It just gives us a little bit of a buffer. I like that. What do you think, man? Man being accepted. I can live with that. I just want to... I don't know. It's not like I'm a big meaty bag. I mean, I literally... I mean, things do come up and the emergency things that we're doing are going to benefit the whole town and the greater community with improving our communication, which are horrible because we're going to arrest cell towers. And so there was a friendly amendment to the accident. We put $35,000 into the highway fund and then leave that $2,100 just to deal with anything. Just in case. Margarine machine. Probably not. Don't you think we might go for that? I wouldn't try that. You've got to get the ice. There's the salt. Don't you say something like, I've got a baby machine in the town office and I don't know if it hits the board. A rubber machine? Creamy. Creamy machine. It's supposed to be down at this door. All right. So we have a motion on the table to allocate $35,000 into the highway equipment fund and to reduce the appropriation by that amount and just to hold on to the remaining amount for now. Do we have a second? Second. Okay. Is there any further discussion? All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Great. Thank you. And we still have no Larry Mokin. Do you think he thought he was supposed to come at 7? I don't know. He texted him. He did? He could. He might be on the road. He might not have any self-reception. You already tell us. Well, then... He was here today. He was in the... He was supposed to be. He was coming to the garage at 3.30. How about if we... Don't we get into the budget then? Because that's going to take a little time. We can talk quickly about the East Montpelier Fire Department. And if he isn't here by then, I think we better go back and just do it without him. Yeah. So... Okay. So, East Montpelier Fire Department. Seth Bongarts. I keep calling him that. Seth, he's a legislator. Seth Gardner, who is the chair of the East Montpelier Select Board, called me the other day with a suggestion that we take... That we require that the fire department allocate 15,000 more than they've already allocated toward operating expenses. And I sent you all a memo about that. But Rose, I especially would like to hear what you have to say about it. He said that when we originally had this agreement, they were supposed to give all their ambulance revenues toward operating expenses. But then they stopped doing that and started putting it into their highway equipment funds. He thinks that that fund is pretty flush now, and he did talk them into using 1,500 of it for operating expenses this year, which means that we... That reduces our share by 500 and East Montpelier's share by 1,000 because we're one-third, two-thirds. He wants to have a meeting next Monday at which the two boards agree to order them, he said, to put 30,000 in instead of 15, which would reduce our budget by another 5,000. So is that clear what Seth is proposing? Okay. Since then, I've taken a good look at the interlocal agreement, and I left that file at home too. But number seven on the interlocal agreement, clearly to me, states that the East Montpelier Fire Department has complete control over all their ambulance revenues. Is that your understanding, Rose? But I didn't know enough to bring that up to Seth when he talked to me. So I don't know how the discussion would go Monday night, but he would like us to have a joint meeting Monday night over there in East Montpelier and talk about the possibility of doing this. Personally, I... As we spoke, would not be saying that we agree or necessarily... No, no, no. He'll make his case. For sure, the fire department's going to be there because they know about this now. They're going to have something to say about it. I think it would be a good idea for us just to meet with them anyway. It would be a good idea for us to meet with them and have a conversation with them. So my first question is, can we all go to this meeting at 6.30 next Monday? Or can at least most of us? I can make it. Yeah, I don't blame you, Donnie. I may be in Charleston. Well, that's a pretty good excuse. North Carolina? South Carolina. I also would like to talk about another issue with them when we get there, and that's the provision of the interlocal agreement. As I read the interlocal agreement very carefully, I realized what happened was the provision used to say that if you want to get out of this three-way agreement at any time, you can do it every... There's an opportunity to do it once every five years, provided you give at least one year's notice. So everybody has a chance to think about it. For some reason, and Rose, maybe you know about this, they blew it up and they changed it with this thing that I can't even understand. And when I talk about it with Seth, his interpretation is completely different from mine. And they seem to be trying to use it as the way to amend the document, which I don't think is what was ever intended. So I'm going to propose that we go back to the original language, and if we need a process for amendment, let's just put in another paragraph that says if we want to amend the document, here's the process. And I've written up some proposed language. So I would also like to ask Seth to put that on the agenda for the two boards to discuss Monday night. Is that okay with everybody? Yeah, I think that'd be great if you could piggyback that. I'll do all this up and get documents to everybody exactly what I'm talking about. Okay. I'm sure that it was Sharon Lynn Fan who came over that language. I know her for a fact, because I was there. What were they trying to accomplish? I think so. And it's the same thing about, you know, fire departments have always been in the slept board budget, and she, you know, was chair of the slept board. She wanted to get it out and have it a separate standalone item. But I feel that it's a town's responsibility to provide for emergency services, fire and ambulance, that's kind of a municipality's responsibility. And so by taking it out of the slept board budget, making it a standalone thing, sure, maybe there's more transparency, but if everybody at town meeting wants to say, you know, vote it down, well, you know, I guess you just won't have an ambulance come to your house the next time you need one. But I don't see how that language change accomplishes that. Right, right, right. So it must have been part of that. Yeah. The other thing about the operating, about the money, so when the ambulance revenue comes in and it's approved, say the month and then the board meets on the last Wednesday of the month, they look at all the ambulance revenue and it used to be that a certain amount was taken off the top of the total amount of revenue and that was for paramedic intercepts and it used to be either $250 or $500 if you need a paramedic from Berry City to come, so they would subtract that. And then the cost of billing, certified billing clerk was someone that we used in Berry City. They're the ones who submit all the claims to all the insurance companies. So that came off and then a certain amount was put into the contingency fund and the contingency fund and heard the interlocal agreement is capped at $40,000. So they have that. And then the rest goes to Highway Equipment. Yeah, the Equipment Fund, so that's what they do with a monthly revenue. Yeah, I understand. Clearly worth having a meeting and talking about it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Good. I'm glad I can all do that. Can you say the time one more time? 6.30. It shouldn't be very long. It'll just be those two items. And it's at the fire station? No. It's the fire town office. Yeah. Because it's just a select board meeting. It's just the two boards. It's not officially the fire department. Although. Do we have to warn it? Yes. Yes, we're going to have to warn that, so don't let me forget. Is it a normal meeting for them or is it a regular meeting for them? It's a special meeting. They're meeting tonight also to talk about this. Do we want Orca there? Oh. Golly, I don't know. I thought they meet on the first and third Mondays. Well, Seth told me they were meeting tonight and they would discuss this and that this would be a special meeting for them. So. Oh, I don't know. Do we want Orca there? I'll let the staff figure that out. Nick, you're here for the ARPA discussion and I'm sorry this was bad but we already had it. I'll tell you what happened. We've crunched the numbers and you've got 1900 left. Remaining. Remaining. What you gave us was an estimate of $1955. Yes. So we're going to hold back a little. We're going to expand most of the ARPA funds on something else, but we're going to hold back a little so that we can pay for the extra. So you're all set. Go ahead and try to... Either you've got to expend them by the end of March. You can do that. And if you can't, we at least have to get them out of our fund and into one of yours. We expect to have everything done certainly in February. Great. And you'll just submit the bills then and we'll pay them out of the ARPA funds. Well, thank you for making that happen. Well, thank you for all the hard work. All right. Let's go back to hiring and recruitment. I think they give up. They're not coming. So what I would say is you can agree as proposed. I mean, this was their draft. You'll probably sign it. And then you can do the hiring and continue it on them. Reaching agreement. Reaching agreement. Okay. That's pretty straightforward. Would somebody like to make a motion? I would sign on behalf of the select board to sign the addendum to the union agreement. I would make a motion to authorize you to sign the addendum to the union agreement. Well said, Jing. I will second that motion. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Eight. Twenty-twenty-three. Okay. Good. I usually come on three to five to six. Okay. So we'll just send that then we need to... Thanks, Nick. Sorry. You're doing great, Nick. Many of us can just walk into it. I get it. $1,000. Three minutes. Would you like to hire John Stafford as road foreman? Contingent. Contingent. Me? Sure. Why don't you make a motion? It's this answer. It's never my turn. I make a motion to... I spend like thousands of dollars today with all the money. I make a motion to hire John Stafford as the callous road foreman. Contingent. Contingent on the union agreement. Great job, Johnny. Okay. And seconded. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Now if we could just get an assistant treasurer. That's done. Okay. That brings us to the budget. We'll let it to the budget. Okay. Can I just say a few... Please. So one thing that I pointed out. There's quite a few notes in the budget that have not been updated really in some cases since the beginning. And that's just a function of the fact that Sanger and I have both been working on this and neither of us have taken full ownership, I would say. So rest assured, most... I think almost all of those items have been resolved no matter what the notes say. And the things that haven't been resolved, well, you just resolved one which was the... No, you didn't. What has not been resolved is the software licenses and that just took a little bit of extra work Tegan and Jordan and I and we believe that what we really need to fully fund the Microsoft licenses Adobe and Zoom is 24.02 which would be an increase. Oh, I'm sorry. That's just fine that here. That's under general office on the second page What was the number that we came up with? I came up with it, I don't remember. I thought the number that you put in the beginning. So currently it's 27.02, sorry. So we're going from 1,600 to 2,702? So that's an increase of 1,100 and $2. And I'll say that's because Arbitec pointed out that we need backups for all these accounts as far as access to this information if somebody leaves and tries to take their account taken away, everything is available for legal purposes. They thought that this was an important thing for us to do. And we asked if we could do a piecemeal just for some accounts and they said no. Oh, really? No, I know. Do you have guys who can go talk to you? No, they're not. So there's that. We still don't have a firm number from the county. We estimated a 5% increase based on conservatively, in the past it's been more like 3%. We saw the proposal we're going to settle their proposed budget later this month, but it doesn't show our portion of it. And I've asked what we haven't gotten a response about where our portion is. So we're just going to go. We have an estimate in the budget for that. We're just going to go with that. I think that's as reasonable as anything. Who can use the ARPA funds to pick those up? The total they gave was not that different from the total last year. The identical email last year had a very similar dollar amount. Well, I'm concerned though the county courthouse got flooded. They've had to rent other spaces. They may decide that they need to increase it quite a bit. I'm just saying based on the numbers and the different emails, it was the same. And then the third item would be the ambulance in East Montpelier. Yeah, which I'm not counting on now that I've actually read the inter-local agreement. So I would say you can approve whatever you approve tonight. If somehow there are savings there, it's easy enough to plug in because it's a separate awarding. So what we would approve tonight as you've given it to us with the change for the IT and the Highway Equipment Fund and we could amend that next time if we do something with the East Montpelier Fire Department. We don't have to leave that open. Everybody understand where we are? Questions, thoughts, discussion? I have a couple of little questions. The job description that we approved earlier in this meeting was for an assistant treasurer. In this budget, we've limited assistant treasurer and added bookkeeper. Do we want to align those? It's an assistant treasurer. That's the same thing. That was actually a recommendation from Jill at the lead saying you should come up with a title that's a little less in this job market even if it's not a different job. It's the same function, it's the same dollar. So I'm just saying we should in the final published budget draft align those. Yes, we'll clean those. Well, she's suggesting where it says bookkeeper undertone administrative. Yeah, okay. Other thing that popped out at me is related to the next agenda item of the delinquent tax penalty rate. I see that we reduced the delinquent tax collector wages here by a thousand. And I planning on speaking to this more on the next agenda item, but I don't like the steep jump proposed to the tax penalty. I would prefer to have a little bit more in here. I think steep penalties on delinquent taxes is depressing. Let's have that discussion now. You want to explain? Yeah, so kind of laid it out in the memo, the town has the ability voted on to have town meeting to set the delinquent tax penalty up to 8% and we currently are at 3% and have been there since 2020 although I guess there's quite a history with this. This number is fluctuated a fair amount. I think it was even at 8% at one time. You probably know much of this history. So whatever we propose is likely to be a discussion, right? In March. The staff is recommending to increase it to 8. There are three main reasons. One is that we're not covering our costs and I have the data in here, but we're generating about $6,000 and we budgeted this year $11,000. That's where we're paying Sandra to just a straight wage not including benefits and overhead. We're losing money to late tax collection if you want to think about it that way. Even $10,000, we'll lose money. So there's that. There's also a sense I haven't actually experienced this but there is a sense that there are people in town that can afford to pay the bill but just for whatever reason not motivated enough and perhaps a steeper penalty would be more of a motivator. And one of the points about that is that you can basically pay it would be easier to pay the delinquent tax penalty than to pay clinic art financing. Right? So if you were to choose one or the other you would. In other words they're sort of borrowing money from us at a very cheap rate. And to that point in the history the delinquent tax rate was 1% more than our borrowing rate to ensure that whatever we would have to borrow against them they would have to pay us a little bit more. But that's a little more complicated than anyone's to engage in. And then the third point is we're relatively low. We didn't do a comprehensive analysis but Wooster, Marshall, Plainfield, Cavities monthly are all at 8%. Very seasoned 3% and they have a sort of progressive policy that goes up each month. Thereafter, I guess it goes to 8% after 30 days. Sandra warned us about doing anything complex like that. Really? I like that idea. Why? Just because it requires more calculations and more people if somebody pays their tax bill right after the percentage goes up it's just the more complication we have the more work it's going to take. We're very average of that too. They start at half a percent the first month and increase by half percent each month thereafter up to 6%. Do I remember Sandra presenting the tax collector role properly when she said that there's a certain amount of kind of discretion around setting up payment plans and the application of an interest rate for late payment? Most of that goes to the board of abatement. The trader can't wiggle around with these fees and things. The only thing that can happen is that someone can apply to the board of abatement and the board of abatement can decide whether the fees were an appropriate board to team it up. You'd have to talk to her about payment plans and things. I don't know the procedure there. How many people are we talking about on a typical year? 3 or 4 people? It's a 2 pager. Sandra's very clear that most of the people who struggle to pay come and talk to us instead of a plan really early on. People who are not struggling to pay just sit there until they decide it's time to write. Interesting. There is a way that I would have wanted to be regressive and I feel like Sandra has something to work with folks that know it's going to be problematic because it is challenging if just all of a sudden you have to come up with, especially since it keeps climbing and climbing. Sure, I'll find that money. I don't have that right now. I don't pay anything else. Versus the people that are just slacking because I know too there's a lot of people that just wait until they have to fix it because there's no reason they couldn't be paying on time. Currently, the liquid taxes for this past fall is a 4 page document. That's a list of names. Some of them though are like 1 cent or 10 cents. All of the 1 cent people paid theirs, thank you. Oh my god. I was 15 to 20 people per page on here and some of them are smaller, some of them are just interest fees and some of them are taxes. I could do a more detailed analysis of you. I know one piece of the discussion was that this is likely to be debated on the floor and could be negotiated down as a compromise. I think it's important that we cover our costs for tax collection and so if there needs to be a conversation at town meeting which then likely will be great and we have room for having the conversation about what we want the rate to be but maybe with the increase in property values and with the increase in what the outstanding taxes for delinquent will be moving into the new fiscal years we're looking at something more like a 6 per cent but with Sandra's recommendation that we should at least propose the 8 per cent to cover costs. That's a great place to start the conversation and if we want to roll it back from there at town meeting that's what we do. That would be my piece. Since we just had this discussion shall we go ahead and vote on that item even though it's not yet which is increasing the delinquent tax rate and putting it on the morning as such. Do you want to move that one specifically or do you want to incorporate that into the oh you're right that's how we're going to do them all. Okay never mind I think does anybody want to continue this discussion I think okay let's go back to the budget anything else on the budget? Does that change how you feel about the budget for delinquent tax collection? It was for the salary that you were talking about making the salary better and reducing the penalty. No I think that's fine. If it was all people that were just unable to pay their taxes I would totally be like yeah. It would be interesting to have some better to be able to speak to that more clearly I do remember that like most of the folks who need to set up a payment and have the opportunity to do that and what might that look like of the 200,000 in delinquent taxes x percent come from the upper quartile of property valuation something like that? Yeah. There's going to be very little sympathy for that. Could be broken down by some property value or something be an interesting way to present it because it definitely looks like carries on it. Okay. It was the credit card argument that swayed me when I was having this discussion. Any other items here you want to talk about are we ready to move the budget? This is a big step. We've been working on this since September when we've been squeezing and squeezing. So, I think Okay. So the motion would be to move the budget as presented with the three changes. Three changes, is it? I wanted to share a little bit of context. This is really anecdotal. I was on a VLCT legislative call today and when town representatives spoke up they were talking about how bad their budgets were and 20% increases. Oh my gosh. And Cabin said 10. So I actually felt better about our situation. Especially after tonight. Yeah, and we're buying all this equipment. We're doing great. Fix all our programs. Okay. I think that's pretty impressive. Would somebody like to move this? Move to accept the budget as refined and presented tonight with the amendments that we've discussed. Rose, do you need more than that? I don't think so. There's three of them, right? It's the Highway Equipment Fund. Highway Equipment, the addition of the application of $35,000 to the Highway Equipment Fund. Software licensing increase. Increase of software licensing to $2,700 for code 2. And the changing of the name of the bookkeeper, assistant treasurer. That's all I got. Okay, three changes. Do we have a second for Jordan's motion? All right, second. All right. That's been that one. Well, that one would be that. Okay. Any further discussion? All in favor? Okay. Whoa. You have a sense of what that gives us is that increase that you need to do. That's what you're doing. That's great. You didn't do it much better than that. No, it's, we did. Fairly over half where we started. I hope the town feels the same way. Well, we negotiated we negotiated a contract that gives benefits to the road crew and the rest of the stats. There's, there's significant payment. Well, this is we are moving into the next item, which is budget communications. Discussion of how to communicate the budget decision to the voters. I'd be willing to write something up with Kari's help for front porch forum explaining this. What you wrote in the slip order report is this is really the foundation of it is that we're investing in people and equipment to get the work done. And then I think this, the larger context, right, this is is not, what we're experiencing is not at all unique. This is happening in other towns. It has to do with the labor market has to do with inflation in general. And then, and then so I think to, like the the messages and then how do we want to communicate? I don't need to grab that. I just usually tend to do those things. Is there somebody else who would like to work on that? I was so happy to know that. Like what Kari said, what you've already articulated because that we're investing in our, our staff and our, you know, we're trying to focus on the most important things. Okay. So why don't we work on that and we should probably post a couple of times in front porch more perhaps. Anywhere else I think we should probably have at least one hearing in which we invite people to kind of discuss the budget with us. And it's been warned about six months nobody ever pays any attention to then they say until town meeting and then we'll sit there and argue about it at town meeting. Well when we do public notices of the town meeting warning at the stores and what not we might leave a copy of the memo about the warning just so people can. Good idea. Yeah. 7.01% Gas 7.01% Can we knock it down? $5 Get back my stipend Hey knock our stipends each down by $55 Erosion stones looking serene. You may know this Rose, you may know this. Do we have to have an informational hearing on all the items that we're going to vote on Australian ballot anyway at some point don't we? Say it again. Where was I reading this? For the bond okay but not for all Australian ballot items We don't have that many Australian ballot items. Well the zoning regs which we just did right and then the select board. Well and there are a few other things the Woodbury fire department budget for example. That's the floor vote. Oh you're right that is a floor vote. Yeah okay. So we're going to have to do that anyway and it's supposed to be no more. The greater bond has to be within 10 days within 10 days. So February 26 would be a good day to do that and we could we could tack on the budget for a good practice. That's what I was saying. February 26. What day of the week is that? That's your meeting. Oh it is. Okay. Did you just make that up? You back next week? Okay. So we'll add public hearing on the budget and Australian ballot issues at that time. We just read the warning. So now we're to the warning itself and you have all these things here. Is that right Kari? You have the budget in here. Yeah we just have to plug the numbers into the budget one. Teagan do you want to speak to this one at all? Which one am I speaking? The warning. The draft warning. I can. Are there questions about the warning? It's stuff we already talked about. It's all just consolidated in one spot. What we're looking for tonight is formal approval but direction so we can send this off to the attorney. Have them look over and make sure the language is proper. And then you would see this again in two weeks and finalize it. At that time in two weeks Gus wants to come and talk to us about the process we're going to go through at town meeting. What we're going to have to do is figure out who the normal way is one of us who moves each item. And whoever moves that item speaks to the item. So we're going to you should be looking at this over the next two weeks and thinking about which items you'd like to move and speak to. And we should all at least take one and maybe you know more. I don't know how many there's 20 items so yeah. We did this morning add a line into the header about being able to observe the meeting by Zoom and put the link in there so to be aware of that. I think it's fine but they can't participate. All they can do is watch. And they can't vote. Yeah they can't vote. And Sarah the webmaster has already agreed to run the Zoom. Wonderful. Of course. Okay thanks. I was just looking at the Digger article from a year ago that was talking about you know in preparation of town meeting the state of Calis and I feel like there's so much to celebrate at town meeting based on you here in the room and all the hard work that everybody has done this year of repair and like moving forward and I know there's a lot to that but I would love to just as a resident recommend that there be set aside some time or the select for you Kari I don't know who it is somebody else be able to publicly talk about all of the achievements of the community from the past year so that people who are not paying close attention and don't understand all the work that you've done have some sense of morale in terms of where we are the budget issues are going to be real but the accomplishments of one year and all this work I just hope that that won't go unnoticed if that makes sense so I just want to recommend that the select were considered just publicly making sure that there's all that shared that's being done if there's a way to do that do you think people will read the select board report you know there's always the reports from each one because that's what we've done I just think it's different from community having someone like I'm saying like the right person and I don't know who that is who has the respect of the community and also is a good communicator be able to really just think about how far this job has come in one year and just be able to at some point just set that tone because I do think that it's just really remarkable how much has happened this year in the town of Kalos government so but yeah I think people will read that but also some people are just not readers you know it's not there so yeah that's my two cents okay thank you I can talk to Gus about that I was thinking it might be something Gus would do as part of an introduction he might he might I saw him at the state at the state address last week and we talked a little bit about this too oh you did it's the sort of thing he'd be excellent at one thing I always worry about though when you try to thank everybody is you'll forget well I don't mean thanking everyone it just means someone who can make a picture and give a sense of things yeah this works out and the wheels did not come off well not only did the wheels not really come off there is pretty significant existential flood to happen in the middle of it so come on yeah I think that's great I think it would be great to press him to say something like that I think the town report does a pretty good job articulating some of the things that he thought were pretty serious to take advantage or take the opportunity to address this year but Gus is going to come to our next meeting so we can talk to him together and I'll talk to him beforehand Karim what do you need in terms of this warning you said you need us to formally I don't think you need to formally approve it we need if you have anything different in mind from these words we want to know it now and then we'll bring it back for formal approval that's right you're going to run it by the attorney I forgot alright good wow do we actually go through this and it's only 8.30 7.30 we started at 5 so it's still been a long time we're already down to 8.20 reports Tegan you got anything you want to say to us just a few things I just got an email that our female person is so the meeting is not happening tomorrow fun thing Eric to have and talk to most of you I think for her town report she says that Tobin is almost done writing it he's just putting polish on touches and she's pitching it to Vermont public also as a radio so she will be contacting you all again to make sure you're okay with being on the radio I thought that was a cool thing she sounded very excited when I talked to her on the phone today the plow has been named the callus smurf cat smurf is blue and they're hardworking just like our group the explanation I was giving the scoop dog did not make the cut to the surprise of all the adults because the children don't know who the scoop dog is but that had to be a cat soon enough he doesn't have to be a cat so that is going to be painted or stenciled or something on the truck John Stafford said he knew what was going to do and then once that's done they're going to take all the trucks on some beautiful day in the next month or two to the school where the kids to see the trucks so that's been really good and our job application for three years or exactly for three years other than that we close the dog here we are going to be sending out renewal noses in the next couple weeks you close the dog here you close the dog the dog licenses have to be closed every year and reopened it's a process and so Barbara and I are going to start working on sending out renewal noses I did learn that there's an online module for dogs right now we use the desktop module we're not going to switch now it's now a bad time and Nemerc doesn't have time to do it with us but probably next year so it doesn't cost any more money there's no it's not a big change it won't be anything dramatic so we're going to be sending out renewal noses next year other than that I'm just trying to figure out ballots and things Melissa Tuller is running for clerk of the school district she runs the elections for the school district and she needs signatures on her petition like we all do when we're running for office so that's over in the town office if you're ever over there just give her a little signature she needs folks from all the towns to sign her petition so she can run and you're running again I don't need you to run again for two more years thank goodness so we're taking absentee ballot requests and getting set up in the recollection management system the checklist is going to go out to the printers this week for school ballots and local ballots so that's getting that all set up and I'm learning how all this stuff works it's good you've got a bar broke it's good to have a bar broke I hope you feel nice to do it okay thanks Kari you'll have a report yeah we covered a lot of what I've been working on tonight so do you want to give kudos to the road crew it's been an interesting last three weeks we've been in a lot of mud we are going to see quite a bill on gravel which we talked about earlier and just being fortunate the gravel has been available to us but basically we're doing month season operations for a couple weeks there and we're able to address most of the rooms but if you can brook this rough Jack Hill's got some rough spots Ken Hell Road we'd like to get back out there but we need proper conditions to do it and that's a question can you agree when the road is frozen you can't so when do you agree when it's month season and then it freezes but it's firm though because they were out then it started snowing there's not a ton of frost so you can but the more you travel it the worse it's going to get and that was part of the challenge yesterday and today was that they were plowing on fresh gravel basically hasn't been contacted at all so I think they can like lightly touch up but mostly what they've been doing is bringing fresh gravel to the worst spots and then smoothing that out and then only gets a certain amount of traffic over it yeah it's been rough and I hope this is nothing normal because this is immediately reminded me like when I went to Ireland and I noticed that every road is paved there even though it's not a wealthy place but they just don't have dirt roads I wonder now because I talk about equipment so much I get ads for all kinds of things but there are areas in more temperate climates that use just different equipment for maintaining their dirt roads there are milling machines which in North America are more commonly used for like foresting tracks and mulching it's a very heavy duty they're similar to the types of things that you use for asphalt stripping except they're used for processing gravel roads they're fairly common for rural areas in Europe and my guess is they're fairly expensive they're only a handful of manufacturers that make them but they generally get strapped onto the back of like a 160 horse tractor as we start weighing the conversation about graders how effective are our graders for the type of road maintenance we might need or do we supplement them so we have a grader and we have something else but I don't know if you've looked into the types of milling rigs done I haven't gotten too deep into that no but there's an outfit out of Canada that manufactures or at least resells them they use them a lot for maintaining like logging roads and what's nice about it is the milling it's a milling machine so it's the roads frozen dirt if it's whatever you can mill through it if there's lead underneath it they're required by teeth on it so it's processing the road-based plus mixing it and I think some places also work on putting it in like some sort of line so that you get like a Portland-based something so it firms up the road as well so does that mean you need less gravel because of the tube it's able to sort of recycle what's already there in the area it really depends a lot on what the sub-base is and everything else but potentially they could take a portion of it they could take a portion of it I think the bigger thing is if you run into a section of road where you have lead or something like that where you can't get good compaction and you're putting material on it but the material is downhill or on pillar cycles you can actually get a depth of compactable road surface that's a lot easier to maintain what was most appealing to me was that you can start mixing stuff in there so you're not talking about spraying you're not talking about as the roads start to get compacted like the fines move up to the top the other stuff gets dragged down to the bottom and then you have a dust issue and it just kind of keeps going but if you can process the material hmm I think so it's just the material that we use these days too yeah for my own business I prefer to use the ledge nothing packs like it there's no type of compaction but you have the flip side you have the crowns of flat tires and stuff like that even that's the kind of gravel you like what you call a ledge gravel it's a plant mix yeah the granite doesn't pack as well it packs better over time versus short term it'll pack really hard in two or three years you're not going to shovel it but for two months, six months eight months a year it's not going to firm up and you're going to blow out a lot of tires that's definitely downside yeah yeah and it just degrades over time just the nature the whole construction industry is going to go through a phase here where manufactured materials are going to be a lot harder to find we're running out of places so there is a financial report in the packet how can you get in there until today apologies for that Sandra did do her verbal or text summary so you can see we're halfway through the fiscal year and we have spent 72% of our budget but that's okay because it includes most of our one-time larger expenses like the social service appropriation not domestic FEMA expenses yeah and then there's the cash situation which we talked about earlier we're going to need to fully access that loan in February or March and then the last thing is Sandra will stop being our treasurer in March and so one of my top priorities is getting up to speed on that function I know a fair amount but I don't know enough about the mechanics of the NEMRIC software accounting system and whether or not we are able to hire an assistant treasurer on that time I want to be proficient at least at basics and then we do have Wendy Wilton who works for NEMRIC who's served as the treasurer she's already performing payroll and some other financial functions for her she's going to continue and do even somewhat more but I want to make sure that makes the best use of her if that's the round we go she's expensive though but efficient is the other thing and we just switched to the bi-weekly payroll so she's on the other payroll every other week now which will cut down on hours so that the report is in our folders now there's a summer folder called financial work work okay great thank you July through December oh it's for the half-year point it's on the monthly wow cool okay Jamie you got anything to report as I was hoping to I have been having near daily conversations with historic preservation permitting people with the contractor with the NK the engineers there's still little hiccups and holdups with the design some of the math didn't work exactly how they thought with the new design they come up with it was perfectly adequate for summer conditions but had a weak spot with potential ice shifting so they're back changing things a little bit again we're down to the wire I have a couple of meetings scheduled for this week potential larger donors and we'll hopefully be learn more and be more confident after those happen but it's slow and nerve-wracking but we're plowing forward Larry Hebert still with us there's a deadline here as of now he's still with us he hasn't given us a firm date you have to decide by he's still working with us and he and Michael at D&K are in contact several times a week finalizing these details so he knows we can't do anything till that's done anyway so it's all just moving a lot slower than any of us would like but they still seem optimistic that it's all going to come together by the way I was cleaning out the closet after Christmas and I found these old Curtis Pont Dan documents dating back to 2003 that's how long we've been working and that wasn't even the beginning you have to box in the vault if anyone ever wants to dig into it with this kind of Curtis Pont Dan stuff yeah we have a ton of stuff too it's been yeah it's been a 20 plus year odyssey odyssey coming down to the wire I think if anything could happen to health field what would it be money about $300,000 is our current funding gap I don't know if you know when you opened the bids they were almost $500,000 over what our budget was and so we whittled that down but it's the funding gap the permitting stuff will come together the design will come together the time sensitive scary aspect is at some point in the near future we have to either contract with the contractor saying he's going to build it this summer or he'll fill the schedule with other jobs and that will be the moment of truth you know if we don't do it this year who knows what it costs so one of the conversations that's happening is there have been other dam projects in Vermont in the last 10 years that had permitting or funding or other similar delays where a contractor has agreed to honor our price the following year in the current climate I don't think that's likely right concrete right labor short materials yeah the fear always is it gets delayed a year because you're $300,000 short you spend that year you raise $300,000 when the price tag goes up $400,000 and you're in the same position every year it is critical the dam safety is saying it's not adequate and we're still when we had that flooding event what was that two weeks ago you know it was cold it was wet it was raining we were out there at night putting tarps over the dam and monitoring it and watching the water levels rise like it's and on the phone the dam safety and the engineers and it's a it's a thing it's just got to get done has anybody come up with a long-term cost of what it's going to cost and insurance and maintenance and all that over the next 100 years you know however long you know because that's something else that's going to go into it too like yeah initially here's your million dollar bill and then how much is it after that how much money Sandra spoke at one point about the insurance costs but I think it's not expected to be because I do know a little bit with the memorial hall part the swimming access there were talks that there was issues with the insurance because if somebody drowns right the town gets sued that's kind of a are we going to have lifeguards are we going to have people out there watching what's the plan once the dam is done we haven't heard anything past that point other than the dam I know I don't remember the details but I know in the original conversations with the previous select board there was a lot of discussion and research before the decision was made to transfer it to the town the hope was that the Curtis Pond Association could just sort of do it on their own and the do it you mean insurance yeah own it and the insurance for a private entity or a non-profit or LLC or something was a probably unavailable and if it was available it was astronomically expensive during construction we can't get insurance that's what we found so after it's built the VLCT insurance that we all belong to they will insure it and because I don't know I don't know I'll find out I just just curious because there's a lot of things I think because the town already owns two properties on the pond the pond access aspect of it doesn't change much of anything we already paid for coverage for the swim area and and I so we add this to it yeah I don't remember we had that meeting where they presented all the insurance insurance we also had a discussion about repairs once it wasn't much yeah it was expected to be minimal there was a block of cement there was an alternative design that we considered early on that was estimated to cost much to build up front but would have substantial annual maintenance expenses and so our decision was made pretty early on that it was better to have the up front cost get the stronger better dam and not have those ongoing maintenance expenses this town and village center money that's coming down from Senator Leahy now it hasn't been appropriated this amount of people our whole town we would fall under the cap that it's 2500 right or less and I'm just wondering because Ben Doyle was quoted saying that they have their swimming and money from this was already appropriated and it's going to be a competitive process now to take that money has anybody been in touch with Ben Doyle with some kind of angle about what we need to do and make full corner and get related money because they're trying to bring in economic development to town and village centers with this as a new program there at preservation trust so I'm just wondering if with some creativity and relationships there's a way to ask Mark and Holly and others to say could we bring Ben out because right now they're talking about adamant and I don't know that investing more money in adamant would be important in terms of viability downstream right now is fixing the dam has that been considered well how many times has that been watched out now well I just mean that there's not a lot of money running around but that is a pot of money right now that hasn't been allocated and it our population falls I'm not positive we've looked at a lot of different pools that are out right now I'm not positive off the top of my head but I'll email our grants to you we've searched it in touch with the delegation it's a great new thing well yeah we do have this grant application that's in that we think is very strong it's $500,000 we'll find out in March if we get all or some of it it is all reimbursable so we wouldn't get it until the project was done but it potentially could reimburs a lot of half the project at this point are any portions of the project broken out into segments so if we needed to contract the construction of it we could be able to pay for the majority of the construction costs without putting the balance of the project there are a few pieces of it that could theoretically be postponed a couple of years down the road but not $300,000 thanks Jamie Jordan would you like anything no not really the conversation about licensing that's already built into the budget I think I just took a fresh pass through what's included in those licenses and I think they've added some things to the basic levels so I think there's a chance that we could probably even when the opportunity arises to re-up those licenses we could probably reduce walk those back we tried to take a look at some today and we've had a little bit of progress but not a lot even at this life board level at this life board level at this point the SharePoint teams that could be walked back to those could be walked back to basics as opposed to their standards if everybody's comfortable with it it kind of depends so you'll keep working on that I guess the other thing that we've talked about just we're thinking a big component of it was going to be the file sharing and getting organized around that and migrating finishing the transition away from kind of a split between the Google Docs file that we're using for a lot of this life board stuff to one that's baked into the Microsoft suite that we're paying for and we're thinking I'll kind of keep working on organizing that so that I can be a resource that's in place for after-march when we have installation of new slide board and then we'll just run with it at that point we'll do an intro Ann or Jordan tell us about horses I don't think you have a lot to tell you about horses right now I don't have time for I think I'm going to tell you too it would be good to speak about the executive section I think that we've got one conversation about it you had a conversation that yeah I think it would be good just to check in on where we're at alright so I don't have anything else on the agenda because we're going to take a session but I guess we'll just tell everybody else so let's do the motion to go into an executive session why don't you make that motion under one BSA section 313A1E so moved and I'd like to add that we invite Harry into the session Rose you've got that and then when you do up to minutes bring us out in what do you think 15-20 minutes bring us out in 20 minutes and nothing to report yeah and then have us adjourn does anyone know if there's a trick to getting the fire door upstairs to close no I didn't it's supposed to be closed it's supposed to be closed all the time forever and ever and it was open before the meeting so I emailed Barbara to ask if there were some special reasons it's open for anyone who would know I would think I mean Andy's in here, Donna's in here, John's in here there's a lot of folks in and out but I'm going to close it I don't think there's any okay so thank you I think we're now going into executive session