 Recording in progress. All right, I'll call the Wednesday, February 14th, 2020 for Valentine's Day edition of the City Council meeting for the City of Ascension to order. I just want to read this before we get going. The City Council previously had a meeting disrupted by anti-Semitic and racist hate speech. The City Council does not tolerate such actions and strongly condemns them. While it may not always be possible to prevent hate speech from occurring during public comments, the Council will continue to take measures to make it more difficult to express such views. Are there any agenda additions or changes? Yes. I would like to have it noted in the agenda that tonight my Valentine is at home. She's allowed me to be here with you. It's going to be a long night. 8.30. I appreciate how your voice broke while I did that. Her voice is breaking at home right now. Clearly the actor in the room here. I have an actual change to the agenda. I'm like Marcus. I would ask to remove the meeting minutes from January 17th and January 19th from the consent agenda and place them as agenda item 5F. Great. I have one. I don't know that we need to remove this from consent, but within your packet, the Little League Opening Parade Day is listed as May 1st, which is actually Wednesday. The correct date is May 4th. We have confirmation from everybody that approves these that May 4th is fine. I just want to correct the date for the record. You could approve the consent agenda as amended, right? So we'll just do that at the time. Okay. Do I have a... Is that all? And if so, do I have a motion to approve the agenda as amended? So... Second. Great. Without further discussion, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. I suppose nay. Motion passes. Great. On to 4A, public to be heard. This is a portion of the meeting where we take comment from members of the public on items that are on and not on the agenda. If these items are on the agenda, you also will have an opportunity to address them when we discuss them later in the evening. Is there anyone in the room that would like to make any comments about anything specific? It doesn't appear so. I don't see Zoom here. Hold on. I don't see any hands on Zoom. Give it a second. Are there people on Zoom? There are a few. Okay. All right. We'll not see anyone. We'll move on to Business Item 5A, Fire Department Conversation with the Council and Chief Corial. You get to sit next to the chocolate and nobody's gonna judge. Thank you. So give me a second here, Chris. I'll get your presentation up and running. We'll go right into the chart. I mean, in this package, I just included a couple of charts that I ran. Again, just taking a look at our call volume. This is for 2023. Just kind of interesting. By day of the week, you know, it's just kind of interesting how all our calls just kind of even out year by year. No specific one day or days of the week that are busier than others. They all average around that 70 to 80 calls per day over the period of a year. Next chart was just a call volume by time of day. Again, just taking a look at our 553 calls, breaking them out to how we respond. And again, we've looked at this in the past and it's just funny how history repeats itself. So it's a little bit slower in the early morning hours. Gets busier during the daytime hours and then tends to slow off later in the evening. Next slide, call breakout for 2023. This is just a breakdown of fire and EMS. You know, one thing to note that our EMS volume is definitely picking up. It used to be about a third of our calls. Now it's approaching a little bit higher. So we do back up Essex Rescue fair amount, either with first response and with the call volume where the fire department is actually dispatched. So if we have an individual that is reported to be unresponsive, it's an automatic dispatch for the fire department. So we don't limit it to just our first response EMTs. We dispatch the full fire department because if it gets into performing CPR, we want the resources there to assist rescue with that. Moving on to the next slide, just a breakdown of our EMS call volume. So as far as first response goes, and again, they're calling for our paramedics, we get dispatch first response when Essex Rescue is not available from quarters. So we do get dispatch to more calls than we actually respond to for first response. So as you can see there, we were dispatched to just over 300. We responded to about half of those calls. And then the neighbor response is, we have an open agreement so that if anybody happens to be in the neighborhood, if you're an EMT rescues coming three houses down, sounds like it could be something serious. They encourage our EMTs to respond without being requested. So some of that is what we refer to as a neighborhood response. So we've got about 45 of those calls that people actually took it upon themselves to go over and assist or see if assistance was needed. We'll move on. Accomplishments, one of the things that we've been working on for probably the last three years now is to transition a lot of our tools over to battery operated tools. This does a couple of things. Number one, I think it makes us a bit more efficient on a fire scene when you're not having to deal with two cylinder, four cylinder engines that you've got to start. Battery operated tools, you turn them on, you hit the button and you're operating. So we've changed over just about all of our gas-powered equipment over there to battery operated tools. Again, just makes us more efficient. It's easier to train, it's easier to teach. And again, just the whole objective here is to get on scene, get the job done, get home and get people back home as quickly and efficiently as we can. A lot of this was pulled for out of the budget. One item that was not was our positive pressure fans. We purchased a total of four fans and that was funded by the Firefighters Association. So that was to the tune of almost $25,000. So we have a nonprofit organization made up of the fire department members that do some fundraising, raise funds to assist when we want to make purchases and we just don't have the room for them in our budget. So definitely want to acknowledge that group. That was a big lift for us and getting all of our PPV fans switched over. Looking ahead. So some of the things we're looking for probably in the end of this budget year into the early part of FY25, replacing our fire helmets. So these are some of the things we need to juggle as far as the supply officer. Typically we replace three to four sets of fire gear every year. This year happens to be one I think we're only doing one or two. So in doing that, we're going to take a look at replacing all of our fire helmets. So it's one of those things where every, and I can't remember what the life cycle is on them but we're approaching the end. So we want to make that sweep, go out and purchase the 25 or 30 helmets that we need. It looks like that will be able to be done in this current budget year. If not, if things, again, as we approach the end if things get busy and we need to kind of allocate what we typically try and do is fit half of them in this budget year and put the other half into the FY25 budget year and get them all done this summer. We're updating iPads on the apparatus. Our mounts are all done. We have the iPads in place. Right now we're just looking at incorporating those. Mobile radios were updating to dual bands. So again, just looking for our mobile radios are definitely dated. If something were to happen to them, they would not be repairable. So we're putting brand new dual band radios in the apparatus. And what we try and do is when we try and make these changes we try and make them the same across the board. Don't want to do one at a time so that when you get into one apparatus you're dealing with this. When I'm over here, it's something different. So we do try and make sure that when we do this we're going to roll this out to all three. So once you become familiar with one you can expect the same in the other two. Radios are purchased right now. We're just waiting for our installs. So that'll be done again this year. Extra gas meters. Again, we go into these to check for CO and it's always just good to have that backup. Typically we've taken one from the apparatus. We'll take another from the second. What we've done is we've purchased those extra gas meters to make sure that there's two on every apparatus. So if you don't have that second piece that's on the call you've got two meters available to you. Those are all purchased, mounted, actually online now. We're executing the frame replacement to ladder three. So right now we've discussed that. That looks like we're trying to get that executed this year. We've talked to Allegiance who then works with Pierce. What we've heard so far is that if we could get a contract with them, looks like the turnaround and they've told us would be 12 months. Looks like they're saying they could probably do it in less than six. So- Does the truck have to be there? Oh yeah. Yes, the whole six months the truck has to be there. Absolutely. Part of the contract, they would come and get the truck, take it to Wisconsin, test it, repair it, test it, and bring it back to us. And this is in the FY25 rolling stock that's in your budget now. So if the budget goes through and is passed, will April 10th give the go account to move forward? Okay. And then we'll just rely on mutual aid to replace that point. Correct. And lastly, just implement a new accountability system. We meet with the county chiefs four to six times a year and what we're doing is basically moving our accountability system, putting it in line. It's called a passport system and it's basically what most of the other departments within the county are using. So we've actually got all that. We're right now taking a look at our standard operating guidelines. Once we have that in place, we've got the hardware available and then we'll roll that system out. What does that do? It's just, it's an accountability for all your firefighters on the scene. So if you respond mutual aid to Winniski for our last call, it's a nice little velcroed pack. It's got tags for everybody identifying them. The officer would simply take that tag, walk over to the command post. We're here, here's our crew. That would go on their accountability board. They would know exactly who came and who's on scene. And that's it for me. Anybody have any questions for Chris? Go for it. Talking about just for clarity, so that we understand. So the looking at the EMS call volume, for instance, that you've shown us. Those that are missed, what generally does that mean? Cause if I'm calling and I need EMS support and it's been missed, how is that fit? I mean, has it been picked up somewhere else? I guess I wanna. Yep. So what happens, we get dispatched again if Essex Rescue's tied up. That would get any available EMT within the city that would respond to your residence. In fact, if you're making the call. If no one's available, what's happening automatically is a second ambulance is being dispatched. So Essex Dispatched, they have a whole matrix. Typically at St. Mike's Rescue, they'll reach out to St. Mike's. St. Mike's will get dispatched. The only difference there is you will have no immediate medical care from the time an EMT would have responded to your house until that ambulance gets here. I mean, for the most part, we're extremely lucky in that if St. Mike's is available, the difference in response time is basically that that gap from the time dispatch has to call. They're, again, they're in quarters and they respond pretty quickly. So even if we have EMTs available, if St. Mike's is coming into backup Essex Rescue, it's likely that that EMT's gonna be by themselves or providing that care for, I would say less than five minutes before advanced care arrives on scene. So generally speaking, Essex Rescue is seen as our primary EMS service. Correct. St. Mike's is the backup to that. Correct. But Essex Rescue serves many communities, not just our own, including all the way out under Hill and Jericho, from my understanding. Yes. So they're out there, St. Mike's is backing us up. God forbid there's more than two things going on. I mean, how deep does this go in order to cover? I don't know if we end up with enough events that we need to go very deep, but I guess I want to better understand this relationship between Essex Rescue, ourselves, St. Mike's, and again, that depth for services here. So you're getting into the EMS side of things. Again, they have a whole matrix. So it would go to, I believe, and don't quote me, but I know it goes to St. Mike's first. If they're unavailable, I think that might've changed and they may be going to Williston Fire. If they're unavailable, go to Colchester Rescue. So it's, again, it's a matrix that the dispatchers have and they simply will go down till they get the next available ambulance and they'll get dispatched to that location. So let me bring it back to fire then, because I am curious, again, about our volunteer fire department, which is amazing. But I also think about talking about response times. I'm curious about your thoughts on this, because what I have heard anecdotally is a need or necessity, you know, especially coverage during the week, during daytime hours. That can be troublesome for a volunteer fire department. One, is that true? Two, if it is, then I'm curious about, again, response times from the standpoint of, and Tim is here, who's a neighbor of mine. I always appreciate when I see his flashing lights coming down my road, because I know he's doing some good. But I'm always curious about whether or not you can save money, let alone, it's really about the response time. Having somebody who's at the station versus having a volunteer who needs to get to the station, get the apparatus and then show up on scene. I mean, if I'm having a heart attack, I'd love to get somebody there as soon as possible. Right, so let's back up. So some of our EMS members, not all, do carry jump kits in their personal vehicles. So those individuals do not come to the station. For EMS first response, they go directly to the scene. So I apologize for using the heart attack, because that's EMS, there's a fire in my house. But I mean, so from a response time standpoint, would it save us time? Would we save more property? Because I, you know, being a fire call, I assume that's really the primary thing then, we're talking about property. Would it save more property if we had a full-time fire department, or we had some full-time staff versus all volunteer? I think if you were to look at your property loss on an annual basis, it would be very small. So the gains to have somebody here would literally probably be pushing out that first truck, maybe three minutes to four minutes ahead of what you're receiving right now. Okay, there. And to the cost of, you know, again, you figure 100,000 for each individual there for salary and benefits. So you could easily, easily run into, you know, a half a million to a million dollars just for minimal staffing to get a truck out three to four minutes ahead of time. For one shift. For one, yeah. One day, one shift. Yeah, covering Monday through Friday. So we're very lucky in that we've got a very diverse department with people that don't have a number of people that don't have that Monday through Friday, nine to five job. You know, we have Tim Miller's here. You know, again, his schedule is wildly different than most. So, you know, we're likely to see him during the day, less at night. Again, we have people pulling 12-hour shifts at various businesses. So we're extremely lucky in that during the day into the evening, we are assured to get at least one fully staffed piece on the road. With your outlook to the future and knowing some of the conversations the community has had, obviously, we're still limited in any potential growth because of the size of our community, the nature of it. But do you see a point where we need to change the discussion from volunteer to full-time or do you think this is sustainable for the long term? I would say that if you start to see, if we start to see that call volume, you know, we did 553 calls. I would say if we were to see that call volume increase to 650 or higher, then I think you're approaching that volume where you're gonna get burnout. There's gonna be too many calls. There's gonna be too much of a demand on the individuals serving the department. So I think as long as that call volume stays, you know, in a reasonable level, I think we'll be fine. We don't have any opportunities for reimbursement for first response to medical calls, right? No. Just the ambulance system. Is there been any discussion that's been up there around, you know, there's all kinds of ongoing conversations about rescue services on the brink right now? That was very much a part of last term. It's still being overshadowed by other things, but still an issue. Have they heard from communities who are doing what we do saying, you know, there's a significant expense to providing this first response that's not being reversed? So not only are we paying for the ambulance service and the reduced reimbursement if they get it, but not that I have a problem with our response. I'm just wondering, you know, it only increases. So it only gets more expensive. So I'm just wondering if there's any effort, like statewide and the fire department side to lobby on that. I have not heard of any. How much does the foundation raise roughly every year? Do you think? We probably raise $10,000 to $15,000 a year. Great. I think Marcus answered, asked a couple of, close enough to a couple of my other questions. Amber did have her hand up earlier. Amber's on screen. Hey. Marcus asked my question. So I'm all set. Thanks guys. I think that's it. I'm relieved to hear latter trucks not going to be as long as we thought it might. Yeah, that was encouraging news. But they're not covering it still. No, of course not. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. All right. By B review of, oh, you know what we didn't do? Is there anyone, is Chris is still here? Anyone online or in the room that have any questions on this topic? Let's see anybody online. All right. Thanks, Chris. Sorry. All right. By B review of preliminary FY25 enterprise and EGRP program budgets. Hi, Jess. Brett's here. Hey. So in your packet, you have, as Raj said, preliminary enterprise budgets and EGRP program budget. The water wastewater and sanitation rates are proposed right now to have about a six and a half percent increase combined to the rates, which would mean about $43 per year on an average property. Yep. Yeah. These buttons keep moving around on me. Sorry. I mean, I can read it. Yeah, cool. FY25, we, I did take a look at the admin fee calculation that we has been in place for several years and made a couple of changes to it this coming year to account just for some changes within the city after being fully separated from the town. So we have an admin fee increase of about three, just over three and a half percent for FY25 projected. And some of the additional costs that are factored into this calculation this year are a share of the clerk and IT expenses from the general fund. And reasoning for that, this was never included. I'm not sure why. The clerk's office processes all of the payments, deals with the delinquent collections for utility accounts. So they do spend a fair amount of time on utility work. And then IT, we basically just kind of took a best guess at 25% of our overall IT managed services contract being attributable to the enterprise funds. And then we have a device replacement, which is also in the IT budget for FY25, does not include enterprise funds. The enterprise funds cover the cost of their device replacements within their own budgets. So those are not factored in here. And we did make one change to reduce the admin department. Previously, this was covered at 50% in the enterprise budgets. We reduced that down to 25%. So this basically is the administrative office. So city manager, assistant, the HR director and the communications director. So if you scroll down, we can take fund by fund, the water fund as of right now. So the reason why these are such preliminary numbers is that we only have six months of data right now for water purchase from Champlain Water District and six months worth of flow data through the wastewater treatment facility. And this can tend to be a very seasonal fluctuation. So we expect this to definitely change over the next three to four months when we'll revise these budgets again and bring them to you. So in the water fund, we are projecting about a 6% increase to the operating budget, which translates to just under a 6% increase in the user fees for that fund. This fee primarily, or sorry, this increase is primarily driven by the Champlain Water District's proposed rate increase and then also for the increase in capital of $50,000. The wastewater fund, we have the operating budget increase of just over 1% with rates increasing at about 11.5%. This one's a little tricky because the wastewater treatment facility has a couple rates that get calculated based on flow. So as most of you are aware, that our facility is a tri-town facility. So it's basically everything coming from our community, the town of Essex and the town of Williston flows through our facility. And the way that the flow is calculated is that the town of Essex and the town of Williston, their flow through the facility is metered and essentially Essex Junction gets whatever's leftover of the total. And Chelsea might be able to talk a little bit more about we're having some stormwater infiltration that we're finding in the system. And we do have a meeting with tri-town tomorrow to discuss that and kind of just come up with hopefully some future plans on how to address that. So that's really what the driving factor for the increase is in this fund. And then we also have the $20,000 increase for capital. Chelsea, did you wanna say anything else about the stormwater infiltration now or? I think you've covered it pretty well. Yeah, we just need to have a greater conversation with the tri-town. Definitely seemed something changed in the collection system after that December storm and our flow has been up significantly for the past two months. I just got the town report yesterday. The town has had an issue with their flow meter, but that doesn't tie into the total flow of the facility because the total flow leaving the pipe is the total flow leaving the pipe of the facility. So even though they're having issues with their flow meter or one of their flow meters to us because they have a couple, I still think there's a larger problem. So we'll explore that tomorrow as a tri-town and we can report back after our discussion. So just to be clear, thanks, Chelsea. To be clear, because it did seem really odd that all of a sudden the city would, without anything new really coming online, would be having more, especially as it compares to Williston with everything they've had coming online. So do we really think that this is more of an infiltration thing that will hopefully get spread out amongst the community or are we thinking we can, we're just kind of stuck with it, with that calculation formula? Well, that's what we need to approach tri-town with because it's so significant, the change that we've seen. I do think we have an issue with our high school pump station collection system and I have, I worked with Jess to put money in the sanitation capital plan for after July one, I can get that TVed and try to find where some issues are because we do have a lot of pipes that go along Indianbrook there or under Indianbrook. And that pump station could not keep up for the flows on December 15th, like it ran nonstop, which shouldn't have been the case. The pumps just wouldn't turn off and usually they do cycle on and off every 20 minutes or so. So we have some work to do. And hopefully we can discuss that as a tri-town, something that's equitable because right now with the quantity that we're seeing, like 20 million gallons more than normal, which is pretty significant. And you could see that how it's impacting our rate when I didn't propose a real increase in the budget. So. All right, thanks. All right. And then in the sanitation fund, we have about a 6.8% increase in the operating budget with just under a 2% increase in user fees in this fund. Primarily here, we have an increase to the capital transfer. And then as Chelsea just referenced, we have an increase in the technical services line to TV those sewer lines that she was talking about. Does anybody have questions on operating budgets before we move to the enterprise capital? I mean, I'm just sort of left wondering if maybe, I mean, how much was the TVing of those? I mean, I'm just wondering. 5,800 is what we have in the budget. We're talking about waiting five months, four or five months or would we do it if the budget's approved and just do it early? That's a lot of months of extra flow I thinking if we can find a problem because then once we find a problem then we got to figure out how to fix the problem and schedule to get the problem fixed and so on and so forth. And we could be, I'm just thinking out loud like it's $5,800 should we find $5,800 and not wait? Yep, that's definitely doable I think. Not necessarily proposing that right now just asking a question. Yep. So just leave that there, I don't know. We can definitely take a look at that. Just a process question for me. From when will we talk about the rates themselves and approve the rates? When is the timing of that kind of discussion? I know this is just a discussion about the enterprise budget but when are we gonna re-approach that? So that's at the end of this memo Marcus. We have one more meeting where we'll in April where we'll actually approve the budgets and the budgets and the rates kind of go hand in hand so you're sort of doing both at the same time but we do have to have a public hearing to set the large user rate for the water fund. So essentially by May 22nd after that public hearing that is when the rates will be set. So, okay with that then in mind maybe I'll ask this question now. This would be a very broad question and I don't expect an answer but a certain amount of the department, generally speaking, is in the general fund. Why could we not change these rates in order to cover the entire department? The department, the wastewater is totally covered by enterprise, the only distinction is that some of the public work staff are partially covered in the public works fund because they do things like road maintenance and some of the, you know, it's like percentages of their budgets are covered underwater and sanitation because it's what they're actually doing when they're helping fix the pipes under the grant that are associated with these funds. Okay. So the, but the administration of that department is that not in the general fund? Who are the, sorry. That's also allocated. So basically all of the staff that works in public works there's, I think there are two staff that are allocated 100% to the water fund and then there are two staff that are strictly public works streets. So in the general fund and then the remaining staff is split in some way between streets, which is the general fund. Yuck. Water, sanitation and storm water which is also the general fund. So every within those, within the public works department at least those positions are looked at at an annual basis and basically like determine how much time do they spend doing the work that's directly related to each of the enterprise funds and their annual salary and benefits is allocated based on that. So then the only thing here then in the general fund then is storm water. Yep. Okay. And we will be addressing that through the process of creating a utility. Correct. Yep. Thank you. Is there any other? All right. So yeah, sorry. Any other questions for Jess on this part? Amber, I can't see you but you would have jumped in. No. Great. All right. So the enterprise funds capital so what I did was the capital budgets themselves all live in one file just to keep easier track of everything what I did was I included just the enterprise funds within this packet and then you'll see in the general fund budget packet it includes the information on just the general fund related capital and rolling stock. So in the information that's contained in this packet specifically like with the general fund, the capital committee went through the process of working with the engineer to update cost estimates and also identify some changes to projects that were partially complete. So the capital ranking file has been updated and incorporated into the capital budget file. And as you can see from the information that's in this packet, the water and wastewater capital funds both have sufficient funding for several years projected out at this point. The sanitation capital reserve with the pump station upgrades incorporated. So both the cost of the full engineering funds and construction of those projects along with the bonding that would potentially come we threw in some estimates there so that you can see the impact of that on the sanitation fund as far as the payment the annual payments go. And that's ultimately what's putting the sanitation fund into the negative at this point beginning in FY 28. So we are still working on ways to find other funding sources and working with the bond bank, working with the state to just see if there are ways that we can get some other money in to help cover the costs of these projects. And you'll see that in the spreadsheet that's in here the 50% contribution from the town of Essex is also factored in for the West street pump station. Any questions on enterprise fund capital? Well, I guess I have one. We're increasing, sorry, the sanitation budget in this scenario is in the red and four fiscal years, three fiscal years after this budget we're talking about. And we're going from 95,000 we're going up 20,000 a year projected out. So the differences get very large very quickly. And I'm wondering if we shouldn't try to take the edge off by increasing the transfer to capital now because I'm not sure how we, everyone's very creative and good at finding money in terms of grants and other things but these numbers get big very quickly over the next number of years. So I don't necessarily have a proposed number instead of 20 like 40, but I am wondering it's not a great year to have that conversation but this does go to a rate as opposed to the general fund. So I'm just putting that out there. We don't have to decide obviously anything tonight but that did occur to me when I was looking through this that maybe 20 is not the proper allocation. And if 20 is not the proper allocation is it simply putting more is it looking at the other two aspects and saying are those too much for now? Like really kind of how do those project out? Can we pull some out of those to put in the sanitation so that, so again, just throwing that out there I don't know what the answers are there but. Yeah and we can definitely add that to the list to factor in when we revisit these budgets once we have more flow data and water usage data that will definitely be on the list to look at. Thanks. No other questions guys? All right. Doesn't think Amber's got any. All right. So we have the EGRP programs fund is we have incorporated the admin fee allocation that was discussed at a couple meetings prior similar to the enterprise fund admin fee allocation that we do. So Brad and I worked through an exercise to just kind of come up with a reasonable share of costs for the general fund administrative expenses that do sort of cover some of the EGRP programs fund work. So that calculation is attached and basically it's resulting in a $45,000 transfer from the EGRP program fund into the general fund. And Jess, just so you know, Brad is here. So. Okay, cool. Good, cause I will turn over the EGRP programs fund. That was not the deal. I'm sitting by the chocolate bread. And whoever sits there has to eat a chocolate bread. I was told to just come if you had questions. Appreciate you coming. Yeah, no problem. I mean, I think just generally that it's in the narrative there. The program fund represents everything outside of the general fund that EGRP does. It's an enterprise fund where the money is reinvested and stays in that account and is spent on things in our community. And so staff put this together each year based on the programs, events, activities, childcare opportunities we plan to offer. We estimate the number of participants, what we're gonna charge, what we're gonna, how many employees we're gonna have, what we're gonna pay them and it all combines into this program fund. And so this program fund this year is projected to have a net loss. We have a healthy fund balance at the moment. So you can think of normally where you would use fund balance to fulfill a budget. That's kind of what we're doing. We also have a few unknowns this year that are pretty significant that we think may alleviate this loss and it may not come to fruition. One is we're opening the 2-3 classroom over at Park Street School and that's not starting until September. So it is two months loss of revenue. We won't really lose two months of expenses. We'll have to bring staff on board and that kind of stuff. So that revenue will help in next year's budget and also there's been significant changes I think as all you are all aware in the funding of childcare. And two things are happening in April of this year and October. The thresholds for which families qualify to get reimbursed or to get subsidy for childcare are increasing drastically. And so many, many more families should qualify and that will help those families and also the reimbursement rates are increasing drastically. So that should help as well. So while we're proposing a net $98,000 loss I don't think that's where we'll end up. So we're comfortable approaching this year in such fashion. Next year we'll have a better handle on preschool, a better handle on how those increased childcare subsidies are affecting us and also be prepared to administer or to input that admin fee as well as the cleaning fees for Park Street School those came off and went into the program fund. These came out of the general fund and I was to the tune of another $37,000. So I think we'll be able to plan for all those things next year and we usually present a budget that is pretty close to break even. Sure. Brett, can you talk a little bit? I watched the co-director's testimony before the joint healthcare and education committee. It was really interesting insight but so two things if you don't mind talking about. So first off, can you talk about the afterschool program a little bit from the aspect of from what I heard from the co-director there's 70 kids waiting on the waiting list. We're also serving not just Essex Junction we're serving the three communities of the Essex Westford School District. And then can you talk a little bit about one of the reasons why I believe that she was testifying was because of the fact that right now the way it's laid out the afterschool funding is tied to the education fund which puts a potential risk on whether or not we as a municipality will be able to get reimbursed, correct? That's a pretty good summary. Yeah, it's a complicated and controversial issue but that's a pretty accurate summary, yeah. So with in this particular budget as it stands is this assuming that those funds are coming? Is there a possibility that that could- No, okay. Yeah, we've made no assumptions about any grants or any other monies that will become available. The childcare team's been very successful over the past couple of years through COVID and the follow up of getting many grants well over a million dollars, if not over a million five. Maureen Gillard, one of our co-directors, as you said testified recently and just offered basically to inform the legislature on how things work here that we work as partners to the municipality with the school district in the delivery of afterschool licensed childcare programming and that this funding opportunity that's current they're debating, as you said would go into the ed, well the money is coming into the ed fund from the sales tax on cannabis and money in the ed fund can only go to local education agencies and we obviously are not one and so we were explaining how that would limit, potentially limit, LEAs would have the opportunity to sub-grant that money out potentially to municipalities or others but there wouldn't be a guarantee and so we were just advocating that we as an entity would appreciate the opportunity to vie for that money on our own without having to go through somebody else. Of the 70 kids that are on the waiting list how many of them are Essex Junction kids? I don't have that number in front of me. I would say without knowing the exact numbers the majority are in the town schools the town schools are larger and so they have a larger demand for afterschool care and there are two challenges to fitting those kids in. One is physical space. So through licensed child care there are certain derivations of how you get to how many kids you can have based on square foot number of toilets and number of sinks and all of those things and so there's a number there but there's also a realistic number of how can you provide a quality program in the spaces that we are allowed to be in and it gets a little bit complicated because the spaces that we license have to be exclusive to afterschool so this is a really tricky area that obviously schools are our most important partner and being in there and working with them and we have a great relationship but at the end of the school day we need complete access to those spaces to call them licensed spaces and so that's really tricky for them to provide assuring that nobody else will be in those spaces from dismissal until 6 p.m. So there's the actual footage that you want there's the actual program that you wanna run and have it high quality you know our preschool is licensed to have up to 20 kids in the classroom we don't put 20 kids in our preschool classrooms we put 16 we feel that's a better number so there's those kinds of things that we're factoring in but the third thing and the biggest thing is staffing and to be honest it's dismissal staffing with the changes in the school's end times and start times this year and the high school getting out far later than the elementary schools it's really really really challenging for us to staff after school programs at dismissal by the time we get to about 3.45 or four o'clock we could have, we have almost too many staff and that's a good thing right? Again we go back to quality program and you need to have enough staff there to be able to do things but at dismissal it's really really hard for us to find people that can get there at 2.45 or on Wednesdays 1.45 which is the hardest day for us so all of those factors are contributing and I just wanna make sure we're clear that our decision of when we cap things and put people on a wait list is a school by school decision so if we were not providing care in the town or Westford it would have zero impact on what happens at Hiawatha Summit or Fleming the city kids are being served based on the schools the spaces that we have available in those schools and so that wouldn't change based on where we were providing those services. So would you say that we need more support from the other municipalities in order to get this done or is this schooled because you identified space as well as staff and such and I'm wondering from a space standpoint I assume we're doing it at the schools I'm not sure why it would be more difficult at the other schools than it would be here unless it was a staffing issue but I wonder if the other municipalities just aren't participating in a way that would help support their own kids. Well it comes down to staff and space so if I knew that we could have three more staff at each after school site at dismissal every single day all school year long I think we might reevaluate how many kids we would accept at each of those schools but we would also then need to look at what spaces are available and can we fit another 10 kids in the spaces that we're currently using or would we need to ask the school for an additional space and take the first graders and move them to an art or a music room and leave the second and third graders in the cafeteria to do something like that to free up more space. I don't think it has any connection or relationship to the other municipalities this is really a partnership with the school district and it's really a childcare issue and not a government municipal to municipality issue. Okay, thank you. Amber, do you have anything? No, sorry, go ahead. All good, thanks. We'll pull up. Anything else, nothing? All right, okay. All right, thank you. Great, no problem. Thanks Brad. Thanks Brad. No problem. Brad, before you go. Yes. This is my favorite thing to forget. Don't go anywhere. Is there anyone in the room or online that has any questions about the program funds, the enterprise funds, anything we were just discussing related to wastewater or e-JRP? Not seeing anybody in the room. Not seeing any hands online, so. Jester, do you want to just do, quick do the senior center, there's just one more. Oh, sorry. Yeah, sorry. So the, we do have a separate fund on the books with cash, cash balance in the, it's called the senior center fund. And what we're doing for FY25 is sort of putting a pause on that fund or and using any of those funds in the budget next year. So everything will be run out of the general fund for adult programming. And the balance that's in that fund currently is just under $17,000. So that money will stay there. And the intention is to see, once we get through FY25 or into FY25, just see what the future needs of that space and the programming are, once the renovations are complete and then determine how and if we're going to use those funds going forward. And then the last two things on here are just the next dates. So April 10th we'll finalize the budgets, approve the warning for the rate setting public hearing and then May 22nd we'll have our public hearing and hopefully approve all of the enterprise fund rates that night. Great. I guess Brad, I do have a question for you. The fund balance that you mentioned, and you probably got to go back over there, sorry. The fund balance that you mentioned and all the challenges that you also described is unknowns for the coming year. How much, what are your predictions based on the past number of years and what you see coming with the childcare reimbursements and everything included in that? What do you think that's going to do to that balance over the course of the next budget? Well, how we got to that balance is twofold. One is through a lot of COVID grants, basically supplanting money and paying for staff and things, we were able to save money and so build up that budget. But also outside of the COVID grants, we tend to perform fairly well in terms of bringing in revenues and reducing expenses. And so generally speaking, I think if you look over the course of time, you know, we're typically bringing in more and spending less than we anticipated in building up that budget. Our next significant need, and I know you have other physical plant needs is really about our own indoor space. And so I'm hoping that we can continue to build that fund and that at some point when we get to a real discussion about building space that we'll be able to contribute to that and borrow less in order to build something that we will accommodate our needs. And those needs being gymnasium space and we're more and more getting squeezed by the schools because they have their own things they need to take care of within schools and within their budgets to make them work efficiently and childcare. And as I spoke to you before, you know, we don't fully control the spaces that we're operating our childcare in and nor most of our recreation programs. And that makes it a really challenging thing when changes are made at schools and spaces aren't available or calls come in and so and so needs space tonight that we were anticipating running a recreation program and we're kicked out rightfully so because it's school space but it does hinder our program participants, right? And so those are the folks who are directly affected. I don't know if I answered your question. Yeah, I think it's fine. I mean, most of it's coming it sounds like it's coming from a combination of excess revenue grants and not spending the full budget. So it's a mix, not just from fee-based things. Yeah, and I again, I feel pretty comfortable that if we're when we're sitting here next year that that balance is gonna be there or if not better, even though we're proposing losing 92 on the books or 98 on the books. All right. Thanks. Hi, Dottie. Yes, come up to the table please. And for the person that does the minutes please say your name again. I'm Dorothy Burgundahl. I just wanted to make a short comment about $17,000 in the senior citizens fund that was projected not to be spent in this year. That money was raised by the senior citizens with in-person fundraising. And I don't know what the procedure should be to decide how to spend that money. And that's all I want to say about it. Okay, thanks. All right, is that, is there anything else on that topic? Nothing else? Any action items or anything on that? Okay, great. So 5C discussion consideration of River Street, Maple Street and West Street pump station improvement projects. So we've got Chelsea on to give an intro to this one. Yep. So long story short is our pump stations have not received as much love as the Wayspotter facility over the years. And it's starting to show we have eight pump stations that some have had more recent upgrades but the three that I'm bringing to your attention have not, two of them of which were installed in the 70s. And then West Street is our biggest pump station, as Jess already mentioned, is cost shared with the town. And that was last retrofitted in 1983. And we are going to need more capacity at that pump station because it does serve a lot of Pearl Street. And there's going to be, there's still potential to be more redevelopment there. And then it does get a significant amount of flow from the town of Essex. I do have Hamlin Engineering right now doing a capacity study for West Street and its collection system. But we already know the need is there and we're planning for it. So these three pump stations, the reason why these need to be full reconstruction projects is for two of them. The style of station that they are is not something that's used anymore really. And so it's becoming, it's hard to troubleshoot. Anyways, it's not as simple of a system as some of the other pump stations. And so we would prefer just to, since those are over 40 years old, to install something that is more common and in line with our other pump stations and easier to get parts, et cetera. And West Street, it's really due to the increased capacity that we do need to more completely rebuild that system compared to some of the other stations that I mentioned below where I feel like we could do something like we did with South Street pump station this past year where we just, like the bones of that station were great. So we could just replace the pumps inside and it had significant cost savings. And so I think we can do that with some of the other stations in the future. So we've already had Aldrich and Elliot do a preliminary study on these three stations. And so they put together a cost proposal due to the fund balance and the sanitation fund. And in general, I was just suggested to try to consider going through the Clean Water Evolving Fund with a stay of a month. I've already had discussions with the town of Essex about West Street pump station and that that needs to be retrofitted in the future and they are on board with that. Right now we were suggesting a bond about potentially in November, but I do know that needs to be further discussed. So the recommendation at the end, I do want to change them. And it's more at this time, just looking to hire Aldrich and Elliot to get these three pump stations to final design stage. While we figure out other funding sources and see where the rates come in later in the year and then decide what's the best path forward. Okay. So I think I'll leave that for questions now. And are there any questions for Chelsea on this? I think most of the information that I needed was provided. So thank you for that. Regina, do you have any? That was all Jess. Those questions are earlier today. Do you have anything to add to this or anything? No, just wondering if Jess, if Jess, you can provide a little bit of information on how the engineering funds can get wrapped into the loan if we move forward with that. Sure. So with any of the state revolving loan funds, they're kind of a phased approach to a full project. So this initial 12,900 that is in the memo is basically for the engineering, it's a separate loan all on its own. If we don't move forward within, I think it's three years, two or three years. If we don't move forward with a full bond vote for the entire construction of the project, we would have to pay back that initial 12, nine. But if we do move forward with a bond vote, that initial loan of 12, nine can get rolled into the construction bonding, essentially. One of the advantages to doing this kind of stepped approach is that it does give us a little bit more time. So if we're not comfortable going to a bond vote this November, we still have another year or maybe two to kind of work through this. It puts us on, we're already, I think on the priority list for this project. So we're already scored, we're already approved. We will move much faster through the revolving fund process. And then also this might, because we've done these steps already, this might open up other opportunities for us to seek other funding from the revolving funds or from other sources at the state or even the federal level sometimes. Okay, great. Oh, go ahead, sorry, I guess. No, sorry. So I do have an email out to Michael who's the president at the Vermont Bond Bank to see if he or Ken, who is kind of their loan guy would be willing to come to a council meeting and kind of explain not so much the revolving loan funds but just debt and sort of how these programs work. And we might be able to get someone from the state to come to talk about the revolving loan funds at the same time just so that I think it's a really good education for all of us. And Regina and I had talked about doing it in tandem with the council orientation in May. So that also will be in time for us to kind of be making these decisions about going to a bond vote this fall. Great idea. Yeah, cool. And Alder-Ginelli did offer to come to a meeting if you have further questions since they do do a lot of pump stations through the program. And I do wanna point out they know that these need to be separate projects meaning River and Maple Street pump stations need to be one, like being counting and West Street needs to be another because it is shared with the town. So I think they did split it out a little bit in their application to the state. Great. Sounds like a great way to welcome a new council member or two. Absolutely. See, we've got a talk of evolving loan funds for two hours. I was like, this might be good or terrible. Trying to be positive. There's a lot of chocolate. Search, we need to modify this motion. Yes, please. So take off the last sentence potentially, is that? And I think Amber, you had something you wanted to add pending legal review but do we need that at this point I guess we still need that because we're applying for... Yeah. Yes. Yeah, Amber, you want the legal review of the funding application, right? Uh-uh, whatever this 800 piece of document was in here. The agreement for engineering. The agreements, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Can I just make a comment before we move any further on the motion? Yes. I had questions earlier before the meeting about the bond vote and what the cost would be, how it would add to our debt load and in looking at the... And thank you, Jess, for pointing out where that information was in the packet. It's a significant increase in what we're paying in debt and having that vote in November is a big investment outside of the context of the budget process. And so I'm just a little concerned about we're having a very deep discussion about the budget now and then we will have another deep discussion next year prior to our town meeting to vote next year but in the middle of that, we're asking the voters, we might be asking the voters to take on this very, a big bond. I would rather have that conversation in the context of the budget for next year and give the voters a chance to see the overall impact of both the bond and the FY26 budget together. I just feel like, while I understand the timing is important, I did hear Jess say that there might be additional time, maybe another year as opposed to six months or nine months to November. I'm not in favor of doing a bond vote in November outside of the context of the budget process. Do we have that kind of time wiggle room in there to push it to... Yeah, I think it's rolling application but the money is allocated by fiscal year to the state. So we're already in the queue by that priority list filing. Not queue, like they know that it helps them plan for how much funding they want to request. I realize that a delay, delays everything especially on Chelsea's part. I'm just concerned about making an investment this big without seeing it in the context of all the other obligations we have. I don't disagree with you. As long as it works for the timing and we're not putting ourselves back at construction season or two or hamstringing ourselves for something that might break later. Right. Those, we have plenty of time to have that conversation. This is only allocating 12-9, right? For the engineering for the beginning. So even doing this doesn't lock us into a timeline for November versus March or April. So we're not doing the last sentence of that recommendation, you're okay. Yeah, it would have been different if Chelsea didn't say let's take off that last bit. Thank you. Any comments from members of the public in the room or on Zoom about this? Any questions about it? I don't see anyone online. See any of the pans raised in the room? So we'll come back to the board. I think I re-typed this motion. I will give it a shot since I tried it. I'll make the motion that the city council authorize the city manager to sign the agreement with Aldrich and Elliot for engineering services, submit the funding application to the Clean Water State Revolving Loan Program for three pump station improvement, pending legal review of the engineering agreement. Did I get everything in there? I don't like it. Okay. I'll second it. Great. Motion second in any discussion, hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed nay. Motion passes. Thank you, Jess. Thank you, Chelsea. Thank you. Awesome. All right. 5D working session on the FY25 proposed general funding capital program budgets. Okay. So you've got in your packet a narrative that goes with version four of the budget. Essentially, what you've got in your packet is the same budget that was presented for the January 27th open house presentation. So this section, the general fund file changes, these were already incorporated from your January 24th meeting and are included with what you've got now. So outstanding items. So this is confusing, apologies. So we have been discussing the potential of a rental registry program. We will be continuing to have a thorough conversation in terms of answering questions that we received from the public, answering questions that we've received from the council, thinking about this from the fire department perspective versus the community development program on February 28th. That will be on your agenda before you finalize the budget, the FY25 budget on February 28th. What we needed to understand on the staff level side is if the rental registry program doesn't happen in any way, shape or form, does the FY25 budget have enough to deal with the health officer position and the council goals of code enforcement? What we have looked at from a staff perspective and recommended here in this memo is that we think as it stands, assuming we don't do the rental registry program as contemplated, we think we can cover the minimum of those two programs as you may recall, the fire department increased their pay line because they are moving to a system for helping to pay the volunteers for their training time as opposed to just call time and contemplated a little bit of an extra call volume in there. So the fire chief is pretty confident that with that increase in the FY25 budget, they also could do the health officer role. Just know for yourselves that the health officer appointment is a recommendation from the council. So you would know who we're looking at for that and then that recommendation goes to the state. Also in terms of code enforcement, we have at least the benefit now of a three person, three staff in the community development department whereas prior you only had two staff in the community development department. So to be clear, if we weren't faced with a 6% increase right now with FY25 as it exists now, I would probably say we still would want more to really achieve code enforcement as we're still trying to figure out what exactly what that looks like but I think it would be okay for an additional year if again, we don't do rental registry and the program as we've contemplated it that we can continue for another year to work on code enforcement and see what that looks like. Not a long-term solution but can get there. Yeah, okay. So that's kind of the first item and hopefully that makes sense for tonight. And so, and again, just on the rental registry program as it's contemplated, it is in the FY25 budget and it's in there as a cost-future program. So it does nothing if we don't, it does nothing to reduce the tax rate because if we pull the program out, we're pulling just as much revenue out as we're pulling expenses out. So, but staff can be prepared on the 28th with a number of what the budget looks like if that is removed so that, because that night we also need to sign the warning that has the final budget amount in it. So for tonight's purposes, really what we're talking about is leaving that whole aspect alone until the 28th, not touching that and understanding that that conversation will continue with its natural pace that night. Yeah. And we can wrestle with that question of leaving it or taking it out. Assuming we're not finished with the conversation either. Yes. And all we need from you folks tonight is if you, if that recommendation from staff that we, you feel satisfied that we can do health officer and code enforcement work by not adding anything in if rental registry doesn't happen. So we have backup basically. Yeah. Okay. This packet also includes the Brown L scenarios that you asked for because this memo came to you just prior to the January 24th meeting. So I wanted to include it in here for you today because you haven't actually had a chance to discuss it if you have any questions there. Then capital and rolling stock, this information is just in here. So you know that we have gone through and updated those. Jess, anything you want to add on this particular section? Do we, do you want me to talk about the lot funding and how it ties into the capital plan or is everyone good with that? You could do that. Okay. If you're prepared for that, it'd be great. Sure. So the capital plan as it's proposed includes a transfer from the lot fund revenue. And my understanding as we kind of worked through implementing the lot fund and the intentions of that money on the council level anyway was that per the policy it is to offset capital or to fund capital projects with 25% going to sidewalks. So what I did was I just mocked up the capital plan to have that transfer directly into the capital fund which then allowed us to take a look at the general fund transfer into capital which initially we had reduced but that got brought back up. So right now the capital reserve fund on the general fund only has lot revenue funding. Those purchases as well as a general fund transfer in. So any changes to that funding mechanism where the where the dollars are coming from would mean that we would need to either look at increasing the general fund transfer to keep the plan going as described right now or we would need to look at moving projects further out pushing them further out again. Thanks for that. Was that clear it makes sense for everybody? Yeah, cool, all right. Okay, then so sorry. So the other points in this memo just to point out January 27th discussions didn't see anything clear to follow up on with you folks. But so again, next steps from here really staff is looking for guidance if you've got any that you want to do for the FY 25 proposed budget. So on in your packet for February 28th we can include that. So you'll be ready to go to approve it for the voters. All right, any questions, comments? Two big things sort of left out in the end. Let's start with the rental registry leaving whether that backup plan is sufficient for now until we have a chance to actually as you know, we had the public hearing and then we haven't had a chance to actually regroup after that message 28. So my personal opinion is that we leave that in there for now as it can just be yanked back out for the final and all the future presentations that we do. And better folks comfortable with the backup plan with the health officer at the fire department and then sort of correct, great. And that leaves good. I'm not sure why we're waiting until the 28th tonight that decision. Do we need to talk more about it or? Well, I think if there's a couple of scenarios, right? If we're going to keep talking about it, we haven't had a chance to have a follow up conversation about what we heard then that may mean we're still pursuing it. We haven't had any answers back from staff. We haven't really had a chance to talk about it as a group and ask more questions and hear more feedback based on what the answers we get back. Right. So it could go into effect at some point over the next fiscal year. We could always pull it out and start it up when we're ready, if we're ready at any point during the next year or we could leave it in as we intentionally go through this process and decide later on, either before the end of FY24 or early in FY25, that yeah, we're ready. Here's the program. I think it's more about messaging. Gina pointed this out to me. I think it's more about messaging to the community, what our intentions are. If we're still talking about it past our deadline for the budget, I mean, honestly, I could go either way. Because if we're still talking about it, I'll be loud and clear that we're still talking about it just because it's not in the budget doesn't mean it's not coming in one way or another. People could take its inclusion as a negative towards the budget, but they could take its removal as de facto we're never talking about it again. But we're not really talking about rental registries tonight because it's not on the agenda. So taking that part out is sort of, let's wait until the time when it's on the agenda we can actually talk about because it doesn't really matter for tonight. That's kind of I think the point if I understand quickly because it's taken a few. Jen has had a few goals. It's taken a few. Yeah, for me it is just a transparency issue. It seems like, I think, and to be clear, I'm not suggesting that we're gonna get to a final decision on whether we're doing this or not doing this on the 28th. I don't, it's still a big question and I can anticipate that we may, you folks might not be able to get to a solid yes or a solid no. But it, I think it does take some thinking in terms of what is the right approach if it still remains a remote possibility. Is the right thing to sort of keep it in the budget or is it okay that it comes out and we re-think about it later? And totally just two completely different ways of thinking about it because if it's in the budget and we don't do it, that also seems like we're falling short on a, you know, keep on doing something, you know. So it's, I can totally see it both ways. I just think in terms of making any level of decision about it should come after a, we have it officially on the agenda. We're able to answer questions and just have more input for you folks to think about it. The other was we asked the library for scenarios. We had actually asked for two, we got three. I don't know if folks have had a chance to review those and any thoughts on them. Are there any further questions? I would simply like to say that I wish that I, I wish that it felt more creative in coming up with a solution to try to ask our, to answer our question. It felt very blunt. Maybe that's the case, but I feel like with this, we need to have some potentially a trustee and council joint discussion to talk about the library moving forward and work together. Cause again, obviously we're seeing a pattern of increases. We're going to see that across the city, not just in this one department, so we're going to see this everywhere, but how do we work together to look at this future for this department along with all the rest? And I think it's going to require some joint conversation potentially. Thank you for providing the answer to our questions. I appreciate it. Anyone else? Anyone who wanted, we're just going to be good with the budget as proposed then. We're not going to have anybody who want to entertain one of the options or not. So I do want to ask a question in regards to our conversation that will come up on the 28th because we are going to talk about the rental registry in detail there. It feels like to me, just generally speaking, again, that's the night that we're going to, what our final stamp on this budget to go before the voters. And we're going to have this big conversation about the rental registry. Is there anything else that's going to come up tonight? Cause it feels like there's a lot of potential change that's going to happen on this one night. And, so I'm not, but I'm not feeling it right now that I'm sitting in a place where I feel competent that at the next meeting I'm going to have a decision concerning the rental registry moving forward. I think there's some big structural things that we need to talk about. And I think it also plays into a conversation about code enforcement in general, but I don't know that I'm convinced that I can. Yeah, I don't know that we really, we're probably going too far down that one topic right now as it is. So again, that decision as it stands now will be largely a neutral decision. And I don't want to say semantic because it's not, it's more almost a philosophical decision. We likely will not be ready to approve or disprove for good last next week. So are really the conversation will get some answers. We'll probably ask more questions, try not to spend an entire four hour meeting on it. We'll take some feedback and we'll probably come back again in a month and keep going in the conversation. I guess it could go a lot of ways, but then there will have to be this philosophical question about what's the right approach? And frankly, we should do that as we've discussed. So this question is more about an amount. Do we want to change any of the department amounts, any of the line items, any of that on any of the department budgets or ask any further questions so that on the 28, that's the number period. We can make changes on the 28, but it will be tricky and require running out to print stuff in the other room and bringing it back into sign and all of those things. So library specifically, are we okay with their revised, the original proposal revised with the correct salary figures? Do we want any of the three scenarios or which is it, I guess from folks? For the voters. Amber, you're okay with us, original. I didn't hear, I didn't, sorry. I'm not sure who just spoke, was it Marcus or somebody? I said I was prepared to put it before the voters. As is right now. Yeah. Yep, I agree. Andrew? I'm not, but I'll be the minority there. Which did you have a, we don't have to go down. We don't need to go down the path. I'm the minority here, it's fine. I think we, like as Marcus said, I think we need to figure out how to better engage over the next year. I think that, honestly, I think that 3%, the third option they provided would be just fine for the year, especially considering what the community's dealing with and every day it seems to get a little more dire, especially from the school district. I don't necessarily see that support here, and that's fine. I also don't love how it came about and how it all played out. So I do think though that the next year, in many different areas, not just with Brown Hill, we're gonna have some challenges. Brown Hill just happens to be an entity with a whole nother board, so we'll have to just, just how we work with them and try to figure out a way to have that conversation started early and be creative. So I guess we're leaving it at five, or as proposed with the corrected salary figures, so as it appears in this budget. And I guess there's not really anything else here, unless anyone had any specific questions about capital and rolling stock doesn't appear. One quick question, Jess, did we get the final county figure? I'm probably gonna get the name wrong, but you know, the Superior Court stuff, the court stuff. Yep, I have it right here, actually. So you know the last meeting, it was still tentative. Yep. Yeah, I will double check the heat. So the amount right now is, according to this memo, it was 58,604. Let me just look at what we have in our county budget. So the county tax in the budget is at 56.2, and like I said, this came in at 58.6, so we're a couple thousand under budget. I don't know if it's worth making that adjustment or I mean, it's not gonna have a significant impact on the tax rate by doing a $2,000 adjustment to the budget. But, oh, should be accurate. Yeah, let's just, I don't know what is it to do. Let's just make it accurate. Okay, perfect, I will do that. Dottie, did you wanna come back up and say anything? It looked like you were starting to raise your hand earlier and I didn't want to not provide an opportunity. Well, that sleeps the dogs a lot. Okay. What you are, I'm warning you. Thank you. All right, well, looking for a. Are you shifting to public comment because Risa has her hand up? Yeah, I'm just looking to see if I'm, there's anything else and no motions or anything. All right. Yeah, no actual motion. It's just, again, if there's gonna be anything major. Yeah. And that would be great to know. It's Friday at three, yeah. Do public comment now. Basically, you seem to have your hand up. Wanna join us? I don't wanna interrupt you, but we're having a really hard time understanding you, both in volume and you seem muffled. That's a little better, whatever you just did. I don't know if you meant to turn towards the. I'll try again. Oh, that's, there you go. That's good. I realized that $2,000 here, $2,000 there, all of these relatively small names don't make a big difference to the bottom line of the budget. But the city residents this year, which is the still budget and the city budget are gonna be facing increases of over 30%. That's over $200 per month. So I know that the bulk of that is the spoils and there's nothing that you can do about it, but anything that you know about it, people are gonna lose their houses over this. It's such an astronomical amount of money. Again, I really do understand that the treatment as a human lawyer doesn't seem to allow that everything you can do to try and put it down, is gonna be greatly appreciated and stand a better chance of people looking at you separately from the still budget. Because as I told to people in the neighborhood, I live in countryside, you know, they're just barely above the average $200,000, $280,000. Most it's always referred to, people are talking about putting your houses on the market and you know what they're doing too. So please, please, again, I really do understand the bulk of it is the stills, but whatever you can do, please do. Thank you. I didn't, I'm not gonna lie, I didn't get most of that. I did get the tone. I think you started off by talking about the $2,000 we were referencing a few minutes ago and how everything does matter, but if I'm off, just let me know, but I definitely got your tone, unlike what I think what you were trying to say. But it was very difficult to understand, so I'm sorry about that. My tone is taking a little bit of everything you can do, everything that I do, the amount of money that you can try and when you're in the budget, your constituents, your city, is currently $200 a month. Additional taxes is overwhelming for too many people. Thank you. Did that change anything for anyone? I don't mean that in the way it sounds, I mean, does anybody have anything further they wanna, I think we've been through this. It's very frustrating. It's frustrating not knowing what the school district conduct is going to be, for sure. Would be helpful in the Montpelier conversation if they were considering pushing back when schools had to vote, if there were some kind of an allowance for municipalities as well. Yeah. Especially for those of us who try to align our votings. Right. But we're not being thought in that conversation. Yes it is. Okay. Well, I would go back to highlighting something you said more eloquently than I can, Raj, but again, we've had this discussion now a number of times. And I know I've spoken out very strongly about wanting to get this. I'd love to see this gap to zero, but I know that that's gonna be impossible based on the conversations we've had so far. But it's a matter of what are those specifics? What are those things that wild general thoughts about, sure, let's take this out. I don't remember your exact words, but it was like, what could you ask your neighbor to live without? Okay. Your priority may be, your lack of priority may be your neighbor's priority. Right. You know, so. And that's, you know, the thing with this board, you know, all of these departments we have to consider together. And then we have to go and ask the voters to support all of them. And so we have to weigh all of them together. You know, there is room, it just doesn't really provide that big of a savings that does. Well, based on what we just heard, that's not necessarily how folks think about it. So $28,000 is, brings it down to what, six, three, eight? No, math, yeah. Six, four? Close enough, six, three, one. Wow, close enough. It's not even eight, 12. The thing that's still sticking with me from our conversation earlier is about EJRP's fund balance. And whether or not I totally understand the objective, I totally understand being prepared for future capital projects and things of that nature. But I wonder if that would not be better served or in helping our overall community by contributing to removing some of this burden. We have a, you know, I know there's a desire in the longterm for upgrading the facilities or updating the facilities because the need is greater than the facilities that we currently have. I totally understand that, but at the same time, that's still a future project and this is an immediate need. So. My only general caution, if I may, about using fund balance is that then isn't there the next year. And so then it just delays the inevitable. So if the bigger conversations about what are the quote, right sizing, which is a different conversation for every human, my right size is different than yours and everybody else is here, until that conversation is done. I think that's really the conversation that needs to be had. Otherwise, it's just the delay until it goes on to explain inevitable. That and we only have, we've already discussed our overall fund balance is about half of what is recommended or comfortable. And while that is in EJRP, it's still available, should something happen. And that helps the city overall stay above any issues we have. So yeah, probably good. It just seems to delay. Reducing the capital allocation could help. But again, just puts us further back. So. But the comment that was made was the fact that it would contribute to reducing the potential load balance on future capital project that is anticipated. And that's different than if it's really paying for itself. I mean, again, off the top of my head because I don't have it in front of me right now, but I don't remember how much that offset, but if we're talking about, we're going to be putting, is it going to help offset, let's say a $2 million bond, I don't know what the number will be, or is it going to help us offset the tax burden now, but we'll have to ask for the full 2 million later versus a 1.8 or something. But I understand you're here. Yeah. Feels like a philosophical conversation I don't necessarily want to have under the gun. I just alluded to it a few meetings ago, thinking about things, paying for things with cash as opposed to debt. You know, we really haven't had a chance to really dive into that conversation much or at all, really. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, the 200,000 would bring us down to 4.6, but would leave us a full year of contribution behind. And we're already behind, you know, these enterprise funds for wastewater sanitation and all of that, they still hit the same taxpayers and they've been going up significantly every year. And the sanitation fund needs some kind of attention for the pump stations. So I just feel like every time we turn around and say we can change a capital allocation, we're really shooting ourselves at the foot. It also has to be affordable to be here, so. Well, at the same time, it's correct me if I'm mistaken, but we talked about, and we are eliminating the economic development fund or departments. So the $40,000 being taken out, I believe we received an email about how this is a point in time or shouldn't we be focusing on economic development. And so just going back to that earlier part, we need to make tough decisions and not everybody is going to be thrilled with it because some people are going to be harmed by it. So trying to find those things that we can then come to at least a majority agreement on is not an easy thing. So back to the question, any other changes that folks want to make to this or? Harlan does have his hand up, just so you know, Raj. Yeah, I got it. Raj, can I just point out one clarification on that EJRP program fund balance? Sure. I want people to understand that that is a fund balance that belongs, that is EJRP, it is assigned to EJRP program fund. It is not something that the general fund can just take and use without doing like inter fund borrowing. So it's not, I just want to be clear for the general public that that 600,000 that's identified in the memo is not available for any city use. It is assigned to the EJRP program fund. But could it reduce and understood, but could it reduce the EJRP general fund budget, which there is general fund budget for EJRP? No, because the general fund is separate from the program fund. So the only thing that could happen which Brad and I, Brad has talked about tonight, the other admin allocation that we're talking about doing for next year is allocating some of the EJRP admin expense to the programs as well, like we did for the other general fund departments. That's really the only thing that we can do. We can't touch that EJRP program fund money to offset the tax rate. And to make capital contract. Directly. It can contribute to capital though, can't it? It can contribute to, it can contribute to capital. I don't know about general fund capital. It may still need to be related to EJRP in some way to their programs. That's fine. And again, I don't think I'm not, I'm not suggesting we do anything with it. I'm suggesting it's probably more useful and it's limited. So leaving it as is. Yeah. I just wanted to provide clarification because I know it can be super confusing to the average listener that, how all these different pots of money exist, but can't kind of be commingled. That's very important. And in terms of just thinking about a healthy percentage of what a fund balance looks like, 600,000 is very little in comparison to what the EJRP program fund is. So. All right, is there anything else from the board? Arlen, did you have anything you wanted to say? Yeah, I'm assuming you can hear me. Yes. I originally just wanted to comment after the last resident that spoke. And I just want to commend the board. I feel like, maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like you guys have done a really good job at looking at the budget this year and really trying to find some funds. And I feel like you have found some funds and it's kind of interesting. I've been following the budget process and I know some of the funds that you've found and you've made adjustments. And I don't know if this is something that we do, but it might be nice to see a memo or some type of detail as to the process that you've gone through in this budget and where you did find some additional funds and you did try to reduce the budget and some of the things that you really took a hard look at. That was going to be my original comment and you guys kept talking and started talking about the EJRP and unfortunately, as you all know, I worked for EJRP. Yes, I'm passionate about it, but even if the library was sitting on $600,000 or the fire department was sitting on it or whatever the case may be. And we were looking at the conversation of looking at reducing the need now. I think you would also have to take a look at the LOT, right? And part of the reason that we don't look at the LOT is because you've allocated it for capital projects that we know that we're kicking down the road. Not enough space for childcare has been identified, so then you would be kicking that down the road. So just to be fair, as we start to look at these other types of monies and trying to make a reduction now to reduce what we're looking at, which again, I feel like this is the most I've ever seen. A city council look heard at the budget and maybe I just haven't followed the process of insulting anybody sitting at the table. That's not my intention. I feel like you guys have done a really good job and on asking a lot of questions, I would love to see all of the numbers and the things that you've done, put in some type of a bullet in some place. But I did wanna bring up that other point when you were starting to look at EGRP's fund balance. I think if you were gonna look at an immediate need, you'd have to look at the LOT and I know that we've got big plans for that as well. So those were just some of the other comments I wanted to make and I wanted to thank you for the work that you're doing and the questions that you're asking. I think it's been great. Thanks for having me. Carl and I would just point out those adjustments. I believe all of them have been reflected. You'll find them in either green or red text in the summaries in the pass packets. But just one. I'm a simple man. It would be a whole lot easier if you just put it on one piece of paper that I could see it on. So create an independent webpage just for you. Just gonna take that. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, I think we're at the point now where if anything else, if we touch anything else, we're dealing significantly with service level and we're cutting services period. Not hearing a great outcry for people asking to have services versus the 6.6 increase, unfortunately. Not unfortunately, but just, that doesn't seem to be coming together. All right, so Regina, do you have guidance? Do you have everything you need for that? I do. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. 5e, discussion of initial draft of annual meeting ballot questions. So you've got a draft warning just to get this in front of you before it needs to be finalized next week. And so there are a few discussion points on here. One is when you'd like to have your informational meeting. So as a reminder, that's a meeting that has to happen within 10 days of the actual annual meeting itself. So our suggestion here is, we have two options. One is Monday, April 1st, just suggesting that because it comes sooner than Wednesday, April 3rd. But really depends on availability because those are off days from your regular meeting schedule. Based on our learnings from today, do we really want to do that on April Fool's Day? Yes. Yes, we do. Absolutely. I mean, some little grandma is going to leave gifts all over the place. Okay. I said little. Gifts or tricks. What can't be. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of choice, unless we... Yep. Which day are we staying? April 1st. I'm teaching classes that evening, so I won't be here, but you got this. You don't want to miss your last, literally the last meeting. We, yeah, we have to have you. No, he has to, he stays through all of April. Yeah. That's true. Yes. All April. Yeah. First meeting after. You promised you would do the last run-through. I didn't. As a parting gift. That's... You saw it. All right. Nobody consulting Andrew. Okay. So I'm here in April 1st? Sure. Okay. So also, do we want to do it hybrid? Do we want to do it virtual? Either way for me, last year worked well as virtual completely, because we're sort of like, the format worked well, that we're providing out information and then can ask the Q and A in one format, as opposed to a full Q and A in a hybrid situation can be a little trickier, but not impossible. And there's one topic. Just, just the ballot items in the budget. Correct. Yes. One topic. Sorry. Just the ballot items of budget, not a meeting. Right. Thoughts on that? Oops. My vote is virtual only. I just, you know, the technical difficulties that we had, even just with like the community dinner and the budget conversation, I'd prefer to just try to do it as easy as possible. I would concur with my virtual colleague. So surprised. Yeah. What else? I think it's fun. All right. Okay, virtual. Okay. So then second item is we do have on here the reauthorization for the Economic Development Fund tax. The language that's on there is mimics. The last time you asked this question, which was in 2021 and it puts in a three year timeframe, which is the same way that again, the question was asked in 2021. If that's what you folks want to do, we will run the whole warning by legal to make sure we've got everything in there correctly, but we do have an outstanding question about whether asking a special tax has to be done on an annual basis or whether we can continue doing it on a longer time period than a year. You interesting to see the answer since we've had the same attorney for that entire period. Yeah. So, place your bets. The attorney of the room was laughing. You did. In the room. I'm going to leave it at that. I'll think Claudia does not watch it. I should explain that we have found this direction from VLCT because we were actually asking, do we have to set a time period at all? Interesting. As opposed to just making it something we do. Yeah. Gotcha. I have a question about Article 5. It just seems like it's worded strangely, like an incomplete sentence. All the other articles say, shall the voters and this one just says to elect city officers. Yeah, that's a good question. I think I think that's because for the warning, you don't actually include the actual ballot questions because we don't have the members yet. That we're voting on. But I can double check that with Susan to make sure that's right. And this is still a draft because we could still receive petitions up until the 22nd and we'll have the final one sign I'm assuming 28th. Yes. And now that we know what date you want your informational meeting and if the language so far is what you want to see for the Economic Development Fund, then we can move forward and get that reviewed. Right. So, Economic Development Fund, people okay with the one pending on the tax, pending on a dollar or same amount, three years. Okay, great. Everything else looks good to me. Okay. It's good to everybody else, yep. Okay, awesome. Excellent. Five, yeah, we're gonna edit minutes from January 17th and January 19th. Who had? Okay, so January 17th, I would edit lines 84, 85, 89, 92, 94, 96, to replace plates, P-L-A-T-E with Blake, B-L-A-K-E, which is the dog owner's name. And how about the 19th? The 19th would be just to add the order from the city council. Right, okay. And that's the final disposition of the dog hearing to include that in the match. For. All right, with that, any further discretion? All those in favor, say, are we gonna have a motion to approve the minutes as amended? So moved. Second. Second. Great. Motion is made and seconded. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended? So moved. Second. Great. The amendment was the change of date for the Little League opening day parade to May 4th. Great discussion. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. I suppose nay. Motion passes. Council member comments and city manager reports. So my report is just to indicate that we have now identified the presence of the Emerald Ash borer in the city. This is an invasive bug that impacts ash trees. The Tree Advisory Committee has been prepared for this in very likely inevitable, truly now inevitable situation. And we have received that tree grant that we applied for to help us do the work to take those trees down and help replant those trees with non-ash trees. So we are working on that, getting the proper communications out to folks where they will see that happening to be clear this grant and the work that we do in the city does this on our public properties, not on private properties. We also will be working on getting some resources up on our website for folks who have ash trees on private property. Is there any state funding for them? Do we know? Probably don't know. And I don't know off the top of my head. Okay. Expensive to take three. It's very expensive. Okay. I don't have anything myself. Anyone else have anything? You're not? All right. Well, entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Second. Good for you. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Let's vote. Aye. Or adjourned. Thank you.