 All right, so let's get started. Is there any public comment for agenda, my item's not on the agenda. It's historic preservation grant again, and the historic renovation commission is looking into doing, for a 2019 grant, into putting, to nominating, doing the process to nominate Adamant as a National Historic District. Where Scalice is going. It's very, it's really going over very well in Scalice. Great. The people that know about it are up for it, and excited about it. Did you have a good turnout that meeting? We did. I didn't think we'd get very much. 25 people. That's a good turnout. Yeah. That doesn't exclude. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. They're just rocking it all and all these. Yeah, and Adamant will be very different, but I think we're almost sure we're gonna apply it, but we have to do Adamant. Yeah, Jeremy sent out an email with something about Adamant with the co-op. Yeah. It was like the first one in the country or something? It was a leader in the co-op movement. It was one of the first credit unions ever from that week from the co-op. But guess what else grew from the co-op? Washington Electric Co-op. That came from Adamant, the first three directors were also directors of the Adamant consumer co-op. Wow. It was a great history. Bunch of socialists. Yeah, they had lobbers. Lobbers. Yeah. Grand Roses. Well, it'll be interesting to find out about Adamant, because it's the music school on the old granite place, so there's a lot of really good stuff there. It needs to be written down in one place, and that's what this... The grant does? Excellent. All right. Anything else, anybody? Any additions or changes to the agenda? I'm thinking that given what we have on the agenda, we may not get to the road naming and credit card policy. We'll see. But I'm thinking we may have to push that to another meeting. All right, so we're gonna do a little bit of moving things around, because Ernie has to get home to Kid Father Duty or whatever. So we're gonna swap things around and do the renovation Green Line Builders presentation first. John, Scott or, I mean, John or Ernie or Scott, who wants to lead the way? Thanks for coming, Ernie, we appreciate it. No problem. Do you know everybody? No. Okay, why don't we go around the room? Rose. Yeah, I'm Rose Palscha. Nice to meet you. Cliff Evans. Yeah, I've met you. Yeah, you know me. John and John, I just met you out in my friend's room. And then Mrs. Katie, I'm your prime secretary. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. All right. So we put together quite a detailed proposal, a very detailed, thank you very much for doing that. Yeah. I know you spent a lot of time doing it. It's a bit of a work in progress. Just in terms of, there are some unknowns, there's some allowances, things to be worked out. But the most recent version that we had submitted took out some of those allowances. I tried to indicate on there what was removed just for clarity purposes. Yeah, the changes are on the second page and then the stuff you removed are on the second page. Yeah, and then the biggest stuff was the change, the insulation, the spray foam to cellos, changing the framing for the stick framing the roof system to trusses, tightening up the price for the front stairs. Initially, we held an allowance because it was not settled on the historic, if it was going to be historically different or the cable rails that we went with. And in that time, it was decided to go with the cable rails or the stainless steel. Where are those going? It's the front stairs and the balustrade on top. So it would be pressure-treated null posts to match what was originally there. And then there would be the cable ties every four inches. And then there's drawn metal handrails up there as well. We weren't sure initially if there was going to be balusters or if it was going to be tried to look historical. But that was approved by the historic preservation committee. Why are things like that? Are they safer or something? Why do they? They're preferred in historic preservation because they simply don't draw your attention to something that is driven by code. So we must have the four inches between the balusters that would never look historic because there would be much bigger gaps. So the cables are a quiet way of satisfying code without drawing undue attention. So they're frequently used now in applications like this to prevent children from thrusting themselves between the balusters. It's used to happen on awful island in the 18th century. And we yell from our senators. I don't want to form my nine. Pick rocks, I know. And also we had a big savings on the fireproof doors, right, John, or the doors? There's a savings stair, yeah. Initially, when we first met, we just priced out the fireproof doors, the 90 minute version, and just used that pricing across the board. And then when we met, further visions realized the bathroom doors didn't need to be fire code. So we said quite a bit of money on the doors. Yeah. And that's, I think, part of the challenge is some of the decisions and some of the choices. I mean, if we tighten those things up, then we can be more accurate. And do we have any contingency money? Basically, myself, if I can speak to this, I don't think we're going to spend the money we have on it. So we're going to keep, especially early on, looking for the most economical way to approach it when the project's done. Right. So a contingency is not a money to set aside just to deal with unforeseen things that come up. And if unforeseen things don't come up, you kind of expect that contingency to be there. At the end of the project, there's not going to be a way. Right. I mean, Donnie did a pretty good estimate that's one of these documents of how much money we had to start with, how much we spent, your quote. And does this include the septic? Yeah, septic. So can we go back to that document you were just on? I wanted to ask Ernie about the part of what you've done. It looks like it's kind of, thank you, is refined, which is good. I mean, you still want a contingency if one were there, but the budget is getting more refined. Am I right about that? Yeah. But I'm wondering about these items that were just removed because we don't have the detail yet. So that seems like that becomes unbudgeted stuff that we're going to have to deal with later. It might be phase three. So we're absolutely, there's no way we can deal with it when it'll be part of phase three. The building will be functioning. Right. Yeah. And phase three might be where we really go out to foundations and do some fundraising. That's sort of the plan as far as I remember from the building committee meetings. Phase three, what would be phase three? Basically, stripping the upstairs. I believe it would have to be stripped to be radically insulated. We'll look into that as we get there. But the electrical certainly will be. So phase three is not just a little thing. Right. Exterior painting, interior painting of the upstairs space, insulation and wiring of the upstairs space. It's a big piece of work. And I believe too, and John, you would correct me if I'm wrong, but as I recall from some of the discussions in the committee meetings through Town Hall that other opportunities for savings were looked at where it might be possible to bring in volunteers to do some of this work. Yeah, some of the painting. Specifically the painting. Yeah, because we typically pre-prime and one coat paint everything on the exterior. So all the clavards, all the exterior trim. We can have a special select where we need to be painted. We carried a bunch before that because typically, oftentimes clients suggest that they'll do that or take it on. And it sometimes happens, sometimes doesn't happen. So we wanted to make sure we're budgeting for that. But if we can get volunteers to jump in and be a part of that, we're up right. We've also said that the downstairs, because it's going to be done first, that's the main focus because that's going to be used for municipal space. And we've been telling folks that don't be planning a musical or a play or anything for upstairs anytime soon. So we're just trying to get that word out so people aren't disappointed that they can't be using it as a performance space as soon as we thought we might be able to. We might have to bring in a small one. But the upstairs will be usable. And to be dressed, it will be safe. Yeah, and the stage will be set up right. We might also have the bars right. That kind of stuff. The doors will have the appropriate piano hardware. So there's stuff going on right now, which will make the upstairs more useful. We also have to apply to the DRV in a timely fashion to do a change of use permit. So that's something we can work on through the winter when Ernie's working on the building. Yeah, I mean, we included the structural modifications to the stage because that has to happen for the doorway to be located. But we removed anything in terms of finishing. There was talk about the facade using the old pews and the butternut to create a facade around the stage. But those are the details that we didn't have. And so that's why we just pulled that out. But there is the double entry doors would be removed, scraped, primed, painted, weather stripped, the new panic hardware, the downstairs historical door, same treatment. That's actually getting removed and raised. And so that would have a new jam constructed, but the door would be salvaged. We decided that the lower entry roof, the roofing is in decent condition. And so we didn't see any reason to change that now. The front porch roof would get new roofing. And then obviously all the new work would get new roofing, that's what we got. Also the change that we talked about before, and you were using trust this? Yes, yeah. I'll have us to recognize the same. Yeah, and that, again, it's still sort of a work in progress. John just mentioned that he's been able to come up with a design, a scissor trust design. And so I think with that, we can send that out and get that quoted as well. And if that's a cost savings option, the big thing with the trust is to make sure there's a room for the elevator. And so assuming the scissor trust could work and was cheaper. That's something you'd build on site? Or you would send it out to? I'd probably send it out. Send it out to Canada? Yeah. So just to kind of find what I read somewhere, there was gonna be, in addition to the cellulose foam board on the inside, I can't remember if it was a wall or a ceiling. I think it was the walls, right? It's the walls. And why isn't it going on the ceiling? Well, it actually would on the slopes as well. The insulator I spoke to said it's not necessary on the flats because we're putting in so much cellulose on the flats. On the slope, you're restricted depth of the rafter. But on the trust drawing that they came up with, John noted that it looked like it was wider than the two by 12 rafters. And so if we can get away without it there. But it's nice because it gives you that thermal break on the inside. It's got the reflectivity. And then when the joints are all taped, it gives you a really good air seal. And so there's definitely a benefit to that. That's why I was wondering if we can just wrap it on board. Yeah. Didn't see it like that. I'm budgeted for that. So it would be walls. So in the existing space, it would be all three exterior walls, not the wall where the addition meets. And then in the addition, it would be all the exterior walls all the way up and then under side of the roof system as well. Is cellulose the same thing as rock salt? Cellulose is like a recycled newspaper where they chop up the newspapers and then blow it into the wall. Rock salt is like the mineral. It's a spun mineral wall. So it's like fiberglass insulation. It's like rock wool. Yeah, wool. Yeah. So rock salt installs like fiberglass. And it's comparable to fiberglass. We were having a discussion about that. Yeah, of course. I'm trying to explain why. It used to be pretty nasty to handle, as I recall. Yeah. It's not bad now, the rock salt. And predates the fiberglass that was came out after. Panther? Yeah. The cellulose is nice. Basically, either you nap the walls and then blow it in there, or you use this foam board. But basically, you install it with the tube and blow it in, and it fills up the whole cavity. So you would get somebody to do that part of it? Yeah, I have two quotes on that. So this wouldn't be dense packed, this would be dense packed? This would be dense packed. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a little wet going in. Not wet spray. So there's damp spray, cellulose. There's dense packed cellulose. And then open blow. And open blow is usually on your flats, where they'll just fill it up. Dense pack is when you're in that restricted space. And so you have to achieve a certain density to get the R values that we're going for. So you don't need to use the damp stuff because it's already going to have a board? We would either be netted and then put the rigid foam over it or install the rigid foam. You would then have to still do some type of backer to resist that pressure when it's dense packed. And so I would defer the insulator and how they want to do that. So I guess the goal tonight to the board is to approve or not to go with Green Line Builder's estimate. So you approve that? Do you approve the estimate as provided? It's a date on this, baby. 926, 2018, and that's amended by Penn and Income, assuming by the contra. Oh, Donna? Right. 260,000. 266,000. Between our last meeting and then getting the actual pricing of the trust isn't the trust in figures, right? So that's an increase in trust costs. Did you say that part one more time? So there's an estimate by Green Line Builders dated September 26, 2018. Some total estimate amount is $266,000. And I'm moving that we approve the financing of that project. With the change in the estimate reflected, as of October 18, from 264, 309, 50 to 266. Right. It's written in pink. Yeah. OK, I'll second that motion. And is there further discussion? Yes. I would like to amend to say, as informed by Donna's summary of where we are on the budget. That's the October 18 memo. Is that what you were, I thought we thought you were talking about the trust issue. No. In general, she had this memo that she put out. Yeah, we thought you were referring to the trust when you said the honest thing. Right, yeah. Just making sure that. Yeah, it's this memo here. As informed by Donna's, and I'll think of the numbers where she specifically laid it all out. Right, well, that's included in the budget. Yeah, October 18, 2018. Right, and then the estimated expenses as of October 1918. That's that layout. Yeah, yeah. So we had worked there. Yeah, just Katie, if you could drop that so that the motion includes that we're still within the budget, what would then make sense is that we have or that we have? I'll second the amended motion. Any further discussion, comments, questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, thank you so, so much. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Hi, John. Thank you. Look at all the work John's done for free. That means just I'm vandal to show something. Home alone. Yeah, well, it's a scene for the record, it should be noted that some of the savings that we're realized on this quote is due to John continuing in his voluntary capacity and he will be straw bossing for the plumbing and electricity. Right. And I want to say we're talking about for a road crew. And we really wouldn't do the project. Awesome. Yes. Thank you. So true. We want to put a picture in the town report of the road crew working on the town hall building. I think it really serves. Are there five of us out there or something? I think it speaks volumes to the amount of team effort that has gone into this project. This really is a huge team effort with a lot of volunteer time. And labor, it's pretty amazing. I have to say. Remember the children's book about the new town hall? Where the excavator got the stuff? Yes. We were just talking about that the other day. The steam shovel. Steam shovel. Steam shovel. He dug the holes to the steam shovel. And then he can get out. So they built the building around the steam shovel. Can't remember. Right. Was that correct? Yes. We should get a copy of that. Yeah, that's what we should do. I don't look like Goody. I was one of my favorite books. Oh, yeah, I loved that. Oh, you poor thing. You have so little. I predate steam shovel. No, you don't. You don't. You just don't know the book. That was a legal legal job. You were a child that explained it. That was a little bit of damage. All right, anything else on town hall? When can you start? We'll start as soon as we can. As soon as things are ready. I know you said you had a project in Greensboro or something. That's wrapping up. And I have the kitchen wrapping up. But basically, as soon as the foundations are done, which I think they're more on track for. Perry's ready to come back with the nitchock burn. Well, I'll be a night with talk about stuff. Got a piece of condor to put in that back. I think of it a lot, so just pour it in the reductable. The one that goes all the way up the pedestal. And then that can be my slouch and purish. Yeah, most of it's ready for back to open. Wow, very good. Put the underground power in. There's a bunch of dirt that's going to stop following. Like that dirt on hand to do it quickly once you're ready. Which we need to be doing in this ground, so it's going to be nice to get that slowly up and shaped and get it to the water once it's away before it works. Right, yes, that would be very good. All right, well, thank you so much. All right, thank you. You get to go home and do kid-doodling. All right. Last spot of the game in the season. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you, David. Thank you. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. There's a lot. There's a lot of stuff to sign, so we need to check the report. Perfect. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Join us, Alphan. Hi, coach. Good night. Hi, thank you. Good night. All right, so Toby's not available to join us. He provided this preliminary plan. Did you work on this preliminary budget with me? He put it together, and then I went through. We went through it, piece by piece. And we made some progress. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Alphan. Yeah, that's the first one, the second one dad. What we jump into we've made some changes, and that's where the second one came from. Maybe you only got the one after. somewhere. Yeah. This is ground one, something. Yeah, we're getting a good jump start on it. Yeah, most times it's January before we're starting this, and it's good to have it. Yeah. And he, Toby said he was looking at a 2% cola, and then I had sent him a couple of questions. I forgot to print off the email. When you say cola, you're talking specifically about cost of living? Yeah, just the wages. And the wage thing from last year, Toby prepared that, right? You have it? He did the initial cut, then we created a new spreadsheet that we were able to utilize to do the calculations with, and we do have that. So, are we just going down line by line? Yeah, let's just go down line by line over to the, maybe we can, is there a way Cliff to do FY19 and FY20? Yeah. Can you, like maybe shrink it or something? Cliff maybe hide a few cloud columns. And he did a five-year average, which just because, so we have those figures. And that's the, that's the, just another way to figure it out. Is that the average of 14 through 18 actual? Yes. Right, it doesn't include the budget for 2019? No, because we're not through it yet. Right, right, just want to show you what we're averaging. And we don't have definite figures on health insurance and things like that. We're in the process of looking at some health insurance options. And there might be another plan out there that might save some money, but we're not sure. Yeah, we got, we got a notice from them saying that there was, the LCT. Yeah, well, completely across the field. Yeah. And so that drummed up some questions from the guys and I told them that we'll be talking about it. Right, well, we missed our meeting with the road crew beginning of October. And I had sent you an email seeing if we could do a date. And I didn't hear back from you. So we should set that up because it would be good to see what their questions are. Yeah, yeah. Well, I've been a little busy. Yeah, I know. It's not because I was blowing you off. No, I didn't think so. I just want to make sure that we finish up these last five minutes or something. Yeah, I just want to make sure we keep to our word and, you know, and meet and see what questions they have. Yeah. Just let me know when things are better. Yeah, well, once that town hall's done, things will be better. Unless it snows a lot. Well, yeah, that too. So some of the, tell it, point out to us some of the items that you think are significant changes or, I mean, he's added a couple of new line items like the municipal roads general permit, which we hadn't had to do before. Yeah, erosion stone, that's new. Yeah, I was thinking, I suggested that we should break down and break that down into its own line item because it's something new that we're being forced to do with the general permit and whatnot. Okay, so that's part of the general permit. Okay. Yeah, maybe we did stone before, but now it's like every project we do, we have the stone line because of the general permit. Oh, that's a condition of the general. Yeah, anything that's over 5% grade, it's got to be stone line and every culvert needs to be stone line in and out with it. So I just thought maybe we should just add a line item for that. Okay. In the past, we've already just taken it out of the travel budget and it might just be a better way to track some of the expenses that we're forced to do. Okay, bridges and culverts, that's down a little bit. I mean, nothing really jumps out at me as a huge change. No, nothing's really a huge change. We'll accept the bottom line. Right. So that, yeah, so if we could break down where that 40... Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit some pieces here and there because we talked about this year, we didn't budget, we did budget for two cuts, two roadside mowing. Right. That's in there now. Where is that? Like it's about three quarters of the way down. It's five, zero, three, seven roadside mowing. Okay, so it's its own line. Yeah. And then... So guard rails, I suggested we beef that up a little bit. Right, that's $3,000 more. But we also can see the five-year average to guard rails, which is... 504. Oh, yeah. No, 5061. Oh, 504. It's line number, not the number. Right. So you can see the average has been about 6,000. And so we're proposing 6,118, is that right? The average is 6,118. And the main reason why I thought that was a good idea is because most of the grants that we do now don't cover the guard rail that we prefer. Right, right. So, you know, we've got to put that bill. Right. When you say that, you're talking about, like, the conversation you had out at North talents, the weather steal, the aesthetic... Right. The state doesn't recognize it as a feasible product, so they won't pay for it in the grants. No, John, you had a conversation with the talents. Do they... Do they... Whether they can cover the galvanized... But do they do the difference? Do they like... That's what I asked them. They said they're looking for it. Right. It's a statement. It's a policy that didn't go through rulemaking. They just made it up. I mean, it's based on... Right. We know the report, but it's still... It's in-house guidance that they're applying to us. What's the... Can we go back... I don't want to go back up to... We could go back up to the top and just go line by line. Yeah, I... So for the insurances, we don't really have a lot of information yet, so that's subject to change. Hang on. Can we go... Can we start with the way you just start right at the top? Yeah. So we have 204 is... 208... What did you say that? Is that exactly two and a half or two percent? Two percent. Okay. All right. That's exactly where that increase comes in. Okay. And that's a budgeted increase for the crew we're going to raise. Right. Now, what that doesn't include, which I asked Toby, is whether or not there would be any kind of merit increases, because if we're going to budget, we should budget for those as well. Right. So maybe the next time we talk about it, you can have some idea of what you're looking at. And you said CPI is 2.7, so that's about two percent is good. That's long. That's long. So if we're going to look at merit increases on top of it, then it's not so bad. Right. Well, as far as the merits go, we've got to finish up with evaluation. Yeah. I mean, I don't anticipate a huge merit raises. We did pretty well with Paul. I think he's satisfied now. Good. And I don't think that the others are... I'll let this satisfy. So I think... I mean, certainly we can look at that some more, but... Yeah. I don't think it's going to be a huge hike that we need to think about as far as budget goes. Okay. Unless you think I'm going to not stand and go. We're always thankful for that. You did lose the scheme show outside of town, huh? I just want to say as kind of a placeholder that I think we should think about merit increase outside of whether people are, you know, yacking and yanking on a chain for it. It should be something we look at and have a budget for each year so that you're not running into that, you know, it's to stabilize. Stabilize both the budget and the expectations. Very correct. And that's why we're going to really keep track of the evaluations. I've got the form done now because we did one already. So it's pretty easy now for me to go in and just check the boxes and write in some comments. Right. And I typed it for you so that any of the comments you had I can put in there. And then I think we have to have a system. That's why I'm looking to get some better figures for the budget. Yeah. So that the merit budget is not a discussion about how are the guys doing. It's just a budget discussion of what we can afford to put into a merit pool. And the highway wages do not include the operations manager. And the operations manager seems like you should be part of the highway budget. Yeah. Yeah, why wouldn't it be? It's not on here. So that was one thing I noticed that we should add. Well, except the operations manager has project duties, am I right? No. Not time. That's not. You thought that's the case. We had thought that was the case but it appeared. Anyway, that's a different discussion. But I think the operations manager because it's been mainly highway should be part of the highway budget and not be part of the office budget. So we'll need to add that in there. Okay. All right. So going back down through, let's really can't talk a lot about the insurance because we don't know what about gas and, that's a big jump. Fuel, you think, yeah, because I think fuel is going to go up, don't you? It's already going up. You go to the gallon, you go to the gas station. Yeah. I think the Bones saw a guarantee that it's going to go up. Yeah, I mean, it's more about just being prepared. Right. I mean, it's only a budget and if we don't use it, it's still there. Right. But if we don't budget, then we're in more trouble. Right. So, you know, it's hard to know what fuel prices are going to do, but we've seen it in the past. Right. Where we're paying $4, $5 a gallon for it. You know, I don't want to be in that position where we can't run our trucks because there you have to, you know, stamp on the fuel usage. Right. All the more reason than a local pit. Right? And our fuel costs and wear and tear costs down. Yeah. Okay. Fuel, gas, diesel. Can I add a little bit more of that? Yeah. These newer trucks now, we have to buy in this Urea, which is, it's just an added thing that makes them more, more economical and cleaner, burning. You put it right in the gas tank? It's a separate tank. It's a separate tank. And we, so we buy it by the 55 gallon drum. It's 200 bucks or so for a drum. And now we're adding another truck to that. Can we add this? Can we add that to the fuel oil, diesel, limiter? Yeah, that's where I take it out when I buy that. How do you take it out? Urea. Urea. Do you, and so $200 a drum, how many drums a season a year? I'm going to say probably five, but that's going to change. And it costs $200 a drum. I just want to, I mean, it's included in your price. I just want to add it to the text. People know, I was just explaining why the fuel, that's part of the reason why I decided to put the fuel budget up some. Right. That's an added expense to us that we haven't had in the past five years. I just want to add the text. You're going to acknowledge that. She's going to add the word urea here. I said it. Sure. Okay. Sure. All right. Equipment repairs and maintenance, that's pretty much where it was. Equipment hired. Which is the long, this isn't, this is including the lease. That includes the payment. Yes, that will include the new payment. Includes the payment. The Western Star. Okay. That's the treasure point that's showing up in the column that's here. That's for her to give us a number. Okay. Because that's all the stuff that she deals with. And that's why the health insurance and stuff like that, we're still working on that. We talked about it last Wednesday a little bit. Yep. We got rid of that truck yet? They just called and said it's ready to come back. The auctioneer or whoever is going to buy it. I haven't got ahold of them yet, but I will. We don't want it back. We really don't want it back. That's right. All right. Just leave it there. I need to get ahold of the wholesaler and get that process started. It's run when it leaves their shop. Right. I mean, it would be best if we just, you know, put this in the candle at all. Okay. Okay. So we're at gravel? Gravel. Okay. That's a little bit more than what I was going to say. Sand. A little bit more. Erosion stone. We already talked about chloride. Salt. Is it pretty? Five thousand or seven dollar jump? Yeah. Wow. Is it surprised Donna? We decided that because of the new salt solution that we're using. Oh, on the county road? The stuff for the county road. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Actually, the salt was two twenty thousand and nineteen. I see. Five year average. And that, and that stuff. It was fifteen, seven, thirty. Yeah. Nineteen is twenty thousand. That stuff is more expensive? Well, it's just it's an added expense to us that we haven't had before. It's additional, right? It's an additional product. And it's the magic salt. They're called magic salt. Magic salt, yeah. Yeah. But we're not using less of the regular salt because of it? I haven't experienced that yet. We didn't buy this new product until late in the year, like in the spring. Right. So I only got to use it once, so I can't really. So we might discover. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. You know, giving that we're going to be buying this product more throughout this winter. And we have the machine to put it on with? We, I mix it right in the salt shed. So I bought a pump. Mm-hmm. So I just pump it and I spray it right on the salt. And then I usually load it on the truck. It's all treated before it goes onto the truck. I see. Okay. I thought I had to tell them to kind of spray or something. It's something I made up. So I had to buy a pump for the hose and for the wand and I would spray it. And they'll go. Okay. Bridges and culverts. That's about the same amount. That's about the same amount. Garage maintenance, same. Now there's supplies. We didn't budget anything for supplies. And that one? No. No, I don't. It's fine. It's fine. I don't know if that was. I don't know what exactly that means. I don't know what that would buy, what is supplies by. I mean, like most of the stuff that I bought at the shop would be. Garbage, garbage bags and paper cattle and pencils. What? Paper for the pressure. Yeah. I mean, I think we should have something in there. I don't know for sure why that's why that's flying stuff. Yeah. I mean, I think we should. We don't have anything according to this. 500 in there. I don't even see it. Well, that's what I'm wondering, did it kind of get taken up in other ways? I'm sure it went into another world. Let's make a note that we have a question on whether or not we should be having some kind of an amount in supplies. You're getting this all for the minutes right, Kate. Yeah. So I'm going to put a question mark by supplies. Sure. Utilities. That's about the same. Yeah. Communications. Utilities are going to go on for an increase, by the way. Are they? Computer expenses. How's your computer holding up? The actual laptop is, it's not good. So what are you using? The tablet. Like that. Because I've got that one at home and I keep going to bring in that the town bought for me to use, but I use my own. And it's, I don't know, discussed in here? Oh, there you are. Remember that computer that you got me that you ordered? Right, I wonder. Okay. I keep going to bring that in to use for something in the office. So maybe that would work. It's hard to do everything on a tablet. It is hard. And I've actually lost a lot of my, not lost, but I don't have a lot of the stuff that I was using before. The weather channels. You can have that stuff transferred. Right. And Toby's got it. And he was going to take it somewhere to do. Tom Frost. Yeah, Tom Frost right again. Yeah. I know he's good. He's done my home computers. But Toby took it. So he's driving it. I'm waiting to see what happens. I don't want to lose that. But in the meantime, I'm using the iPad. So let's, so I want to make a note then to ask Toby about the laptop because maybe Toby can get that computer to Tom and we can get that other one set up for you. Because I know it's a pain. It was a little tiny. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it works, but it's just, it's a different format and it's just, you know, all this is new to me to begin with. Right. The laptop and then all of a sudden now I got a tablet. It's like I'm wearing. Again, you toss that out there. I'll feel like it was no big thing. Tablet. Yep. Yeah. But I'm making it work. I'm making it work. You guys are really good. Yeah. You're smart. Yeah. Similar vein. We're updating computers in the office. So I want to. For ways to deploy these. Yeah. Rotate them out. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The computer expenses. I mean, that's only in for 200 is that. That's not much. That's what we were just saying. If we're looking at new equipment in some other areas. I think it should be higher. I think it should be a thousand there. And then supplies. What did you say? 800? 800 or 1000. Uniforms. That's a set price. And that's why it says treasure trash removal. You take it up to the school mill. Yes. For the most part, like the shop trash goes. I share the dumpster with them as a trade off for the salt that they come and get. Oh, right. That's been a deal I've made with them for years. Right. Plus we've got all the driveway and stuff. So that's a trade off too. Well, we've seen it in the driveway. Right. They've got somebody else to plow it. Okay. Okay. I thought we knew what town was doing it. Okay. But that's been, that works fine. And tire, tire recycle, are we done with that? Well, I was just going to say that there are times that we do have trash that we pick up beside the road. Somebody throws a couch out or tires. Right. And then we have to take it to the dump. So that's, I think that we should have something in there for that. For, you mean more than? For the trash. No, I think the number's fine. Oh, okay. No, actually he's. You have to blank. You have to blank. Yeah, so I think we should have something in there. I know. Yeah, I do. Because you ought to do the, you know, the scope. Right. The green up, we get a grant for every year so that kind of washes. Okay. But, I mean, it's just throughout the year, sometimes we do stuff that we have to take to the dump. Right. It's off the side of the road. So you think 200? I don't know. I think it's been five in the past, but I don't see it here as that. They had a trash removal in FY 17. We had $25. Yeah, but in 16, we had 375. Pick up truck load at CNA. Used to be 125, I think it's more than that. Yeah, and there's a minimum. Yeah, it's like a $130 minimum. That's crazy. 500. 500. I would be comfortable with that. All right. Recycling. And that, is that for our tires, or is that the one that includes the ones that people throw on the side of the road? That's some of both. Like I said, the grant pays for the tires from Greenup. Yeah. And when we do Greenup Day, we count the tires. So they'll pay, the grant will pay for that much. But there are tires that we generate also. Yeah. So we have to pay for those ourselves. And that's where the $150 comes from, I believe. Okay. Well, I put in 500, so we'll see. Okay. Now here, there's welding, shop supplies, and tools. No, I don't know if maybe that's why this supply line item is blank, but when I think of shop supplies and other supplies, to me, they're different. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, now that we've got the brake, brake weld and, you know, it's a different facility. So we've got, we're constantly buying stuff. Paper towels. Paper towels. Right. Okay. Some roadside mowing. Now we had talked a few times about what would it cost to buy a mower thing. So would you want one? The sider. Yeah. A used one. Do you have any idea? He's not really just bought one, brand new one. Right. Where do I? 120 grand. For a brand new one? Brand new one. For a brand new one. Right. Top, top, top. Well, it's an N series, John Deere. But tractors, you can get a good deal used on a tractor and buy the mowers separately. Right. Well, plus there are companies that rent those mowers that after so many years, they sell them. Right. Yeah. So you probably get a break there. If you want me to look into them, I certainly can. Yeah, that would be good. Maybe you could do that before we meet them this time. Right. 60,000. That would have to be a, well that would be a, well that would be a warned item. That would be a warned item. Okay. And that would, you know, you know, you figured out payment on that, what are we paying for outside of the line? Tender in a year. Yeah. Cover up your payment. Six years you're paid for. Yeah. And then we could, because of the invasives and all looking at the control of that and putting up signs that it's not being mowed and somebody mad because their Verdox didn't get mowed. Right. And, you know, then we could do it, you know, more often. Continually. Right. More often. I see. We gave a higher part-time kid summer, you know, summer job. To keep driving around. Yeah. And keep that separate from, you know, from the world cruise. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. So we don't interfere with that schedule. You get the right mower. You can brush that's creeping at height over the road. Careful. Careful. I'm talking to you. I'm talking to you for permission. It sounds like. I'm talking about the limbs that are doing that. Sure. Yeah. The hands. The hands. The hands. The ones that keep falling down the bay. Those mowers can be articulated so they're vertical. You can basically mow down the wall. Well, there's one. Right. And get that, you know, the tree limbs back. No. Right. All right, Alfred. Yeah. Woo. Well, I know Big Lily Road has had all the limbs down. All the limbs. All summer. Yeah. You've been balling limbs. So that's what he's talking about. Right. Right. So I'm suggesting the road crew in the off-season or whatever, they can use that on projects too. They can. Right. And they're doing work ditching. They can also do that. So that would be an article though, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. I can get some numbers. So before we. That'd be great. Before we lock that in. Let me get numbers to see what's out there. Well, we're going to be working on the warned items, you know, and budget stuff kind of all at the same time. So. Yeah. So I bought, I bought a 100 horse, 110 horse tractor. It's 600 hours, 690 hours on it. It was like branded on a mark on it until I got it. And that was $37,000. And that's a $6,500 tractor. Where did you get it? It was Craigslist. Craigslist. There's one there right now. It was the same price almost the same time as the tractor. A little newer, $39,000. But you could probably get it. Can you send a link to Alford for that? Because you don't get it? All right. Let's finish up this roadside modeling. We kind of talked about that. The roadside. If somebody asked me, or if you know who it was, that the roadside in E911 roadside in the East Montpelier seem to be smaller, is there, are they just not keeping up with making the change out and following the regs? Or is there. If they're smaller than the regs, then they're not following the regs. Okay. No, I can't remember who asked me that. Their 12-inch sign was the regulation sign. Yeah. 9-inch letters. Pavement, crack and seal. Oh, that one down. Yeah. Passive. That's the ergonomic things like that, right? Right, right. That's the grants that we get. Right. Safety stuff. Um. Salaneous. I don't know. Do you know what we've used that one before? Uh, use it for like water. So the water that we have at the shop. Yes. You know, to me that should be supplies. Supplies. Probably. Yeah. It's more than we've ever gotten. Yeah. Okay. Um, education and training. Do you, do we ever use all that? I mean, I'd like to see you guys go to, you know, give everybody a chance to go kind of thing. It's the last. I mean, it says five-year average $482. Yeah. Maybe up to $500. Down to $500. Yeah. Well, except for I don't want to do that if you, but. No, we're going to them. Um, the guys all want to go to them. That's good. I want them to go. Everybody should get a turn to go. So yeah, I would think that we'd want to leave that as it is. Yeah. Okay. So I have this. Those changes that we just made, you'll, you'll print that up into a new. Right. I have the spreadsheet Toby sent us that I can make changes to. Um, and I'll try to make a notation and Katie's got stuff in the minutes. So we're not proving this. No, no. This is preliminary preliminary. Right. Right. Yeah. When we, when we think we're, we're, you know, getting closer. Well, that's when we have to slash and burn. Now we look and say, okay, good. Yeah. We're at 15%. That's not going to work. Right. This is the wish list. Right. Okay. All right. Anything else? I actually want to ask kind of on highway. I got a question too. The guard, the, uh, hatchwork quilt of guard rail. I understand. Toby about it up on. Jack Hill. Yeah. Jack Hill. Yeah. They're coming back. I think we're going to change them out. The new rail is in. I just haven't had a chance. Why aren't they doing it? We paid them for a certain spec. Well, they, they, we've paid them for the aluminum radiuses or the galvanized radiuses. What is that? No, but when we, when we, did we get an estimate on the guard rail part of that job? I thought we picked them. Yeah. And what was, yeah, we were finding materials and they were installing. What was the deal? No, they came and put them in, but they didn't have the, the port 10. Port 10 radiuses. Right. And stop. So I needed to have some sort of rail up there. Yeah. So they brought us used galvanized rail. So now the new rail is in. And the way I understand it is that we're going to replace it and we'll still have the radiuses. You know, the problem with them, and maybe this is what has to happen, but the problem with that is we paid for the labor. They didn't have the materials. They understood, did they understand we were looking for this rail when they did on it? We told them we needed this stuff, right? Well, I didn't have the, when I got that quote, I didn't have the design, the engineer design. So they didn't know that we needed radiuses. Okay. Oh, okay. You know, so I told them it was 400 feet of, and so they assumed that it was a straight run. Oh, okay. So that's why I'm okay with eating that. Okay. We can do it. It's half a day's work to change out those. There's like four or five radiuses. And then you said we get to keep the. We will keep the other pieces. The galvanized radiuses, and there's enough to use. Yeah, we've got enough rails in town that, you know, gets smashed up. Cars hit them, trains run. You've got to hit them. I mean, we'll use them. And they're good to have on hand because it's, there's always that accident in the wintertime or something. So, okay. So it's, I think it's money well spent. It's not, you know, it's just like an investment. They charge you to use price on those. We use, you say, you know. The other question I had, I've seen this riches tree. Shipping thing. Is that clear? So that must be the electric. They're working for a co-op. And they're, they're taking it out. I don't know. They must be, I mean, they got all the right because they're working in the right way. Right. They don't know that. Yeah. So it must be Washington Electric. I believe so. Yeah. I didn't know. I didn't think it was us. The town, but they had a couple of people ask me, but they won't know what happens to the chips. I know better than to do that. I think you just ask them and they'll give you the chips. Really? Yeah. Ask them. Call Washington. Anything else on the road so we can move on? Anything else for you? Sorry about that. Okay. I'll try to get this revised by the end of the week. Okay. Okay. And then if you could let us know when you're ready for us to come to the, to the garage. Yeah. You're going to town, between town, town hall and snow. Right. Well, I mean town hall, I'm going to talk to John tomorrow about what next steps need to be, but I really want to move on getting that dirt put in the proper place and getting leveled up. It's going to look so much better when that dirt's leveled out and then it was shaped the way it's supposed to be. Yep. And I can put it out of my head right now. It's just like. Right. Juggling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we can get you better set up. Yeah. I mean it's working. I'm not able to respond. I know you are. I'm so impressed. You respond to emails. I, I even do text and I do cell phones. So if you guys need to reach me there. Oh. If there's service. If there's service. All right. Are you going to want to have a town cell phone? The other guys don't have a cell phone. That's correct. They have their own personnel. Right. So we got rid of the pagers? I'm wondering maybe you don't even really need a town cell phone. I don't know. Yeah. Well I think in the wintertime it'll be more useful. Because if I'm out checking the roads in the morning I can just call them from, call the guys from the road and stuff. I thought we didn't have to have any cell coverage. There's some spots. Some spots on the high spots. Jack Hills. Or else you can text them. Can you text them if there's no cell service? Take less. Take less service. So you go through. I don't trust you. I don't have to. I don't do text. You should. It's pretty. It's pretty simple. Yeah. It's real easy. I'll teach you. Yeah. Oliver can teach me, right? Yeah. That'll be something, right? I can text from my house and I don't have cell service. Really? Right. As long as I'm texting them an iPhone. I have been avoiding getting an iPhone. It may come to that. I was the same way, but I kind of like it. Yeah. Ooh. You like it. Wow. Well, it's just like anything. It's just like, you know, learning how to drive a grader. I want you to know that you like it. Right. And I didn't try to imagine going back. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay, then. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Alfred. Thanks, Alfred. I sent out the letter that Jim Barlow sent around. Our legal fees have been very manageable and he has not even been billing us the quarters because we haven't used enough of his time. So he would like to go back down and just do an hourly rate. He refunded the town $1,300 because he didn't feel right taking it from us. Just really, really nice. I need to have. Yeah. I mean, how many attorneys do you ever hear refund money? Not many. So he sent us this revised letter of engagement and it's been in the Google folder. I found one typo. But I'd like to know if you'll authorize me to sign this renewed letter of engagement with Jim Barlow. So, David, October 18th, 2018. Yeah. Second. Any further discussion? None. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No, none. It's always good when we say money, right? Most attorneys would return money that's not due. But they would they, well that's a different discussion, but I don't know that they would say that they're not earning all of their keep, can't we say. All right. Just a couple items on the town budget and town report. You remember we met with popular cemetery folks on October 1st. And they have been doing some work on the cemetery. And they're meeting with Eastmont Piliar and I can't remember now which Monday night it is, but they're meeting with Eastmont Piliar Select Board to kind of do the same thing we did. And I still have yet to contact Eastmont Piliar, but I will, to see if they're willing to put up a warned item. Remember we talked about the maintenance for next year. And we could ask them to fill out the form for a social service agency thing, blah, blah, blah. And then you got to get a certain percentage of registered voters. I believe when we met with them we talked about just putting in on the town meeting warning like $1,200 or $1,500. So they don't have to go through that. I already got enough on their plate to worry about. Does anybody else remember that differently? No. Okay. So what, because we're starting to work on a draft warning, what, for some reason I seem to remember like $1,500. I think it was $1,500 because they anticipate they spend about $3,000 annually on mowing and that's their expense. So we chipped in $1,500. Eastmont Piliar did. That's what I was remembering too. Okay. So I'll put this in on our draft warning. Next Monday night, the 29th, we have coming. So related to Popwood Hill? Yeah. There's a meeting tomorrow at the Army Court at 10 a.m. Anybody interested? I'll be going. Yeah. I had that down. Oh, sorry. Yeah, but thank you for agreeing to go that, but you understand more about that than I do. I'm just engrossed in that. Yeah. On me. Yeah. So our next select board meeting, we have coming Woodbridge Fire Department, Stark Preservation Commission, hopefully the Cemetery Commission, and hopefully we'll have the first draft of an office budget. And yeah, we're trying to keep the warning and the budget stuff moving so we don't get in a tight spot. All right. Anything else? Are you ready for Act 46? Act 46 update. Who would like to be first? Todd? I guess. I don't know. Oh, so is Rick. Right. Well, we have two committees now going, one working on articles of agreement as you may have read in the paper. It looks like we are going to be forced to merge. It's kind of a complicated thing we have to do in a very short amount of time, which is bizarre because any other combinations of dealing with school districts changing usually go through a couple of budget cycles before they have to be imposed, but we're going to have to be up and running with the budget and everything done and all our district board members elected by July 2019. So you have to have a special town meeting or something? Well, there will be a special meeting somewhere along the way. After town meeting? No. Most of it will happen before town meeting. That's what I'm saying. I was just at the meeting where we were trying to figure out the timeline. So you have so many days at your parties? Yes, you have to have things so many days after, but then you have to warn it so many days ahead of time. Which we're just going to get on paper soon. But the point is that we probably, unless things change, and at some point if this lawsuit that we're part of gets filed, that could stop everything from happening by having some sort of injunction. So we really don't know, but we have to prepare, because doing the Articles of Agreement and getting everything in line is really kind of complicated. I mean you have to really think calendars and figure it out. But you've got to do that because if we go forward, we don't want to be left in a bad position. Now, will you get some administrative help with that from the superintendent's office? Well, yes, of course. Kind of long and long. Well, I know that they said, you know, various other things that they wouldn't help with yet. No, well, you know, the superintendent is very less at meeting. And they're very happy to help us merge. Very, very happy to do that. Now, is that a public meeting? Well, the newspaper was there. I just wondered if any representatives should have been. Well, we have a representative from each. No, I mean, elected representatives. Oh, no. It would have been okay if they came, but it really wasn't any, it was really a calendar conversation. Even with the draft was, we have to go with, it was hard enough. I don't think they needed to be there. So that's what we're, so that's the committee I was on. And Rick and Scott are on the debt committee, I guess, trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Yeah. Basically in that, we just had the first meeting tonight. I mean, it's got to correct me if I'm wrong, but I mean, it sounds, I mean, from what I've been able to figure out there, the only way to really do this effectively is to really assess all the schools. You have a good capital assessment, so you can actually calculate all the asset liability, the physical asset liability, and then project that forward 17 years to balance that across the schools. But when I said that two years ago, plus the semesters B, but we don't have that data. They don't have the assessments in place to actually do that. So I think what they're talking about doing is, you know, just using averages and national averages, which I don't think will work. These are too small a scale and they don't account for, you know, the differences in things that's on these schools. Bill Kimmel says that they're all in good shape, but a few months ago, Bill Kimmel said the catalyst was in bad shape when it was convenient to him. So I was, you know, I don't know. I mean, there's no way to really tell compared with all the schools. I mean, I think with Charlie Baker tonight, you know, kind of made the... Yeah, who's he? Will Baker. Will Baker. I'm sorry, not Charlie. I still don't know who he is. He's the chairman. He's the chairman. Whatever his name is. Whatever his name is. I'm sorry, Charlie. I'm sorry. I mean, for a different meaning. No, that day, I mean, there was a lot of discussion about what Act 46 would allow. I mean, I made the point, no, no, no, no. If we're going to deal with develop equitable debt, a solution, we should develop an equitable debt solution or not come up with anything at all. Don't sit here and rubber-sam something that won't work with Act 46, but then just basically be bullshit. So Rick, all you're saying, telling us is premised upon all the school boards against the overarching board, whatever it is, all the towns agreeing to equilibrate the responsibility and make it equitable. Do you sense that when it comes down to the vote, that's what will happen? Well, I would oppose. I mean, because the representative from East Montpelier said, he didn't see this as being a big deal. You don't understand the pushback. And he thought it was kind of divisive. And I understand that perspective. So the reason I asked, he said we worked well together thus far on all sorts of other school issues. We've never come to brinksmanship before. And he didn't see why that relationship would change going forward, dealing with this. And so I was wondering if that then, you know, was messaging us that they would be amenable to fair distribution of the debt. Well, I got out of that meeting and said, well, the I-46 won't allow us to do fair distribution of that debt. Are we talking about the bonded debt? Are we talking about the school board? We're talking about the bonded debt. Okay, because in pulling that piece out, the equity issue based on the kind of debt that we spot earlier in Berlin debt a little bit in the middle sex, which is going to be, I mean, Scott's got the numbers on that, but I mean, what is it? About a 5, 1.15%, I mean, 1.15 cents on the dollar. On the cash rate. On the cash rate. The right for difference between these popular, we rise by 7.5 cents just based on that debt. Well, we take on 2.5 million dollars worth of debt that we don't currently have, correct? Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. There are some numbers that the Vermont Board of Education represented Peter Kalis from Woodbury. I think we line up Oliver Olson's calculations or we arrive at them. I believe he said that Kalis would be assuming like a 4% increase. Yeah, he was. Is that an accurate number? It's all... This is taken from Agency of Education analysis. The percentage thing is sort of a way of making it look less than it actually is. Yeah. Because what basically happens compared to where we are now, Kalis would be paying 7.5 cents more, register 7.9 cents more, and instrument failure 7.4 cents less. So the 4% amount is going to pay for it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So register. Basically a 15-cent gap. And that gap will where no matter what happens with the budget, no matter what cost savings or revenue increases or whatever else, or, you know, cost rises, whatever else happens, Kalis and Worcester will for 14 more years be paying roughly 15 cents more on their tax rate than East Montpelier than would have been the case with that arrangement. And when this was the State Board of Education when you guys went to that last meeting, whatever, they didn't think that was an issue that was worthy of it. Yeah, but they actually didn't need to really understand it. And they talked with the kinds of things they said, for example, oh, maybe cost savings will smooth out the inequities. No. The inequities are built in from, you know, the initial conditions cost savings wouldn't affect that, right? Yeah. And the chair of that committee, had the audacity to say, well, if you'd agreed to merge, you would have gotten the incentives, and that would have taken it away. You know, I don't think any one of that school board ever took Algebra 1. Never mind, passed. Right. They don't get it either. They don't get it. Number, you can't change numbers. You just can't do it. Well, in this, will this lawsuit include this issue? Yes. Because I think Washington County's Washington Supervisor Union is kind of, this is kind of unique. But I wonder how many other other schools... Rather, there's another big one. I know that. I don't know. I'm sure there are others. Because this is a really big issue. I mean, I know everybody says, well, you're not thinking about the kids. All's you're thinking about is the money. That's just bullshit. I know it is. It's good for kids to have their parents' taxes go up by a differential of 15%. It's good for children. Right. But that's what they throw in our face every time they raise an issue. I haven't heard to say one single word about the kids. Yeah. That's how you know they're pushing. Whatever they're pushing. What really bothered me was, I think it was, Halch said that U32 was a really good school, had a great place. And, you know, so, they obviously worked together for that. And so why can't that board, you know, work for the five towns? And I kind of say, I want to say, you know, the reason U32 was good is because they've got good elementary schools. Right. You know, why fix, why try to fix what isn't broken? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And, oh, yeah. And somehow this construct, the old construct, they're trying to move us away from, is appropriate for Burlington and Montpelier, when the legislature specifically exempted them from this process. Yeah. Right. Somehow that's different. Those children are different. You know, some of them. Yeah. Well, they don't have, those decrepit schools. They don't represent the community the way ours do. I mean, it's just... Well, it's written in a legislature. Right. Oh, yeah. It goes their will on rural Vermont like they do on everything. And I don't know if in the lawsuit it's going to bring up the fact that, and I think it was Irisburg, I was reading something Irisburg put out, and it sounded like the callous select put it out. Oh, the select board. They're select board. Right. And in order to go somewhere along the way, somebody said, well, the select board shouldn't be getting involved in the school board stuff, which... Well, our town representative to the legislature, Janet Ansel, responded by email and said it was inappropriate. I'm misrepresenting. She didn't think that was... Well, basically she said it was inappropriate. But she insinuated that she's supposed to be up to the school board, which insinuated to me that the school board was supporting merger. Right. Well, and... The way she said it is that... I'm not going to get all the other details, but she also represented that it was her approach... If she didn't support Act 46, she wouldn't be able to come back two years later to amend Act 46. Well, why would you support a law that's problematic? It made no sense as if she was prognosticating going forward I'm going to amend this problem law that I'm supporting. So anyways, I just want to make sure that, you know, and like you said, I read the Irisburg letter that they did and it could have been us saying the exact same thing. I will say this, and some of the same other things. I was going through the... As I put out... Transport Forum, there's a GoFundMe fund to raise $10,000 for the... The Alliance for Vermont School Board members to run this lawsuit because they don't want to use any taxpayer money, but at one point, almost a third of the... of the people who gave were from Calis. And that was, you know, 7 out of 22. But I only think one other town from the district I'm going to leave names out of it, but I called two of the Board of Education members and had long discussions with both. And the second one I spoke with who was more inclined toward us, I'll leave it at that, indicated that he thought that this pushback would result in reforms with the legislature. This isn't going to be forced on anybody. And he said he just... He thought it was really unfortunate in the end that this is going on. He thought it's going to split communities apart. It's going to really destroy the fabric of Vermont. He was holding out his position on how we voted and asked him to do that, but he did not offer that either. What bothers me is that the legislature doesn't meet a genuine rate. Even if they have bills ready to go, we are still stuck having to do all this horrible work in order to protect ourselves. Unless when the lawsuit gets filed, they can get a hold on anything else moving forward until after... Let's hope that happens, because I personally think that the legislature is going to try to get beyond this vote and push this behind them, hoping that it will just blow away. They have not been supportive up to now. There's no reason that they're going to do it. They're going to say, let's hope this just blows over now, but it's a done deal. So I think it's going to take a few years. Our representatives still defended it. In the end. One of the arguments that they have is, well, if we let people not merge now, the people who already merged will be mad at us and it won't be fair. Well, they didn't have to do it. Nobody made them do it. They made them do it silently. And the law allowed for the alternative governor to start just to believe... Yes, but some of the people... You just chose a different path. Some of the people that you hear from on that listserv thing, they might not have merged, but they were afraid of the consequences. So they did it, because they didn't know that they could fight it. Well, I think the legislature should correct that too. That's right. So they could volunteer and then they started backing out the ability mechanism to back out of it. So I had initially thought that we were going to ask the town for a minimal donation, but based on further information, we're trying to do this without any school or town tax dollars. At this point. At this point. And I believe David Kelly said that there's probably some kind of a draft or a template that we can use. So what we need for the board to do tonight, if you want to go forward, is to vote to send a letter of support, and then we'll get some kind of a template back from David Kelly. We'll vote to support joining in on a lawsuit. Right, but then... And then we can sign a letter down the road. That's what I'm just trying to say. Well, you said vote for a letter of support, which means we're not going to do it until we get the letter. Oh, no, that's not what I meant. You're right. It just needs to be in our minutes. So we want to take a vote. If there's no further questions or discussion. Anybody? Anybody in the audience? Anything further to say? So I would ask the call of select board to vote in favor of supporting the lawsuit. I don't know what to add to it, Tom. Joining... The statewide effort? You guys help us out here with this... Becoming a party? Plaintiff. Right, Plaintiff. Plaintiff in this... And does this go to the Supreme Court, or is it going to the Supreme Court? Which one? I don't know. It's the only one they should... They can pick any court in any county. So they'll probably pick the one that's much friendlier to us. Don't go to Chippincown. Right. Well, that's a lot of magic in Washington. That's where the agency of education is. Yeah. Is that enough to get us on one do? Anybody? I'll second the line. I started it. You've finished it. You want to read it back, Katie? Yeah. Denise Wheeler made a motion for the select board to vote in favor of becoming a plaintiff in the class action lawsuit in Superior Court. Do we have to say... Yes, there you go. Opposing forced school mergers by the Vermont Board of Education. Does that get us where we want to be? I think so. We're meeting at weakness. Right. All right, you ready to vote? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Did everybody vote in favor? Yeah. So I just want to inform the select board, the way I read the deed, it's in the town's name, the school. So if we get forced and we lose this in court, the state's going to then compel us to sign away our school for free, despite its value. I don't want to see how we can lose on that issue, but who knows from this crazy day and age? I have a judge. I'm not signing that. Somebody asked me today if we voted down... Somebody asked me today if we voted down the school budget at town meeting, and I said, well, first of all, since the state is a spigot for our money anyway, the spigot would get turned off, but it also would send a message that we don't want a school in our town. And that may not be a good message to send. That may give us the opposite. Yeah. So it might have, you know, be careful what you wish for. How about turning down the central budget? Yeah. Can you do that separately? No, we can't vote on that separately. That's what I've been complaining about all my life. You know, we should be able to vote on that separately. Well, I've been working with the state law. That's the way it should sound. Another school state law doesn't make any sense. Yeah, state law. So just so you know that when Katie gets the minutes done, David Kelly asked me to send him a copy of the minutes to show that we voted to support, and when they're ready to do letters, he'll send us a template. That reminds me I've got to send him my own minutes. So, and I invited all of the, just saying I invited all the school board members from Calis to come tonight, so I don't know. If you want to update them, we can send them the minutes when they're done. Just, yeah, just send them the minutes. That's great. Can we just send it to them in a minute? Yeah. Thank you guys. Yeah, thanks for sending it. You guys have been great. You guys have been great. I feel so proud to be part of Calis. Really, everybody, wherever we go, Calis, Washington Central, you guys are great. And we hear that on every front, on environmental protection and everything else. Yeah. Yeah. All sides of the town. And Hardwood Gazette reported that we're ahead of the mainstream because we now have it so people can see documents just by going to our website of meetings. They printed it in the Hardwood Gazette that Cabot was interested in what Calis was doing to include or to improve community engagement by doing what we're doing. So we need to give you a bunch of... This chair deserves a lot of credit right here. It's a 60-hour-a-week chair. Yeah. But I can't even... I'm glad you're retired. Yeah. We are. But you guys go to these meetings that have to just make your head want to explode and, oh, my goodness. You've learned to kind of not listen. It's so weird. Just as me would spend hours on Toronto but they'll push off anything of any kind. Right, yeah. You know, it's like unbelievable. Unbelievable. That's what I wanted to ask Scott because I don't know what your kids might be involved but there was a letter to the editor the other night from the seniors at U32 complain... Or I guess they were seniors. It was the student council that were complaining that the way they don't get grades now, the way they... Well, the proficiency... Oh, yeah. And so what I was wondering is had somebody got forced, thought enough to ask them to come to the meeting Wednesday night which has to do with board monitoring of student projects? I don't know. I... Did you know any of the kids who were involved in that? I wasn't even aware that that happened. Oh, okay. I'll send it to you and... That's how included I am. Yeah. I was going to ask... That's what I was on my mind to ask you. Yeah. But still... But still... I was going to say as you were talking about having to learn those meetings and explode by saying that at least we have each other. This is... Thank goodness, right? We do. I mean, my daughter-in-law has to go to meetings where the people from Putney are totally against them and they're in the same group. I mean, they've had really bad times where signs have been taken off lawns and various things like that. You know, we haven't had any signs or any hopes, but... I was going to say, we haven't had any signs yet. Yeah, we haven't had any signs. I had to have any signs. All right. But... Well, at the meetings, at least, at least they're subjected to me so you can exact that. No, no, no, no. I'm sorry. Bravo. There you go. And, boy, we get ready to go to every place that we can. The one time you'll see a smile on Bill Kimball's face as if Rick isn't there. And you've got that on tape. And as a result of this merger, I will see an assistant superintendent in schools because there's more work loads. Of course. Of course. Two or three. We all already have. I'm smelling a request for an increase in pay. Yeah. And I'm smelling an assistant superintendent. So I'm seeing this as a cost increase. Well, I'm also seeing a bunch of teachers lose their jobs. Yeah. It's just like healthcare. I said that when we met as a big group. It's just like healthcare. Where the more you consolidate, the higher education too. Yeah. The more money the federal government puts into higher education to subsidize tuition, what actually happens is the administration's slowed. Right. How do they build gymnasiums? Right. All of those. Yeah. And then they've achieved all of these great successes and they've become more important in the... When they get more money. Marketplace. Yeah. Higher education for sure. Higher education and healthcare as well. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Good point. There isn't any. Yeah. There is. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you guys. Thank you. Let us know what we can do. There is one. Thank you. We don't have that. Would you make sure... Every voice counts and we have a lot of them. Right. Even though I was told it's a minority of voices, they're just loud. That's okay. We've heard that before. All right. You know what? Yes. Denise, if it's any consolation, there's an oath saying that one person who cares is a social power equal to 99 who don't. There you go. There you go. We have an issue here. It's sensitive. It's still sensitive to some people. I'll put the tapes on. Yeah, the tapes on. We were told we were a vocal minority and it was a two-to-one vote in support of the position of the select board. So I think we have a pretty good finger on the pulse. Yeah. And we call people. We think we're off base. We come back and we fix it, and turn to our position. It's been helpful on this because there's been a huge amount of effort to keep this under the rug for the past three years. You know, it's true. to get this through before anybody really knows. Right. Matt, you guys are brave, thank you. You guys are brave, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Man, thank you. Alrighty, I just want to do a couple of updates if we have just a couple of minutes. Judy said that the absentee ballots and early voting is brisk. The 11-15 tax deadline check, tax deadline, the checks are continuing to come in on a steady stream. And Olivia Gay has been working on the November 6 election day coverage of the polls. So does Judy ascribe the brisk return of absentee ballots to the get-up-to-vote effort? Do you think that there are more people engaged, or is it the same people that just get their stuff? She didn't really say. She didn't really say. I know we had the primary, and it was a, you know, the primary was just a small primary. We had a really good turnout on Calus. I think it was like three quarters of the voters on the primary. I mean, Calus Rocks really does. Then a couple other things, which one of them John already mentioned. There's this site visit by the Army Corps of Engineers tomorrow at 10 AM at Poplar, if anybody wants to go. The office staff, we've been working on the town reports, stuff like that. Barbara Butler sent out requests for quotes from different printers for the printing of the town report. And Jet Service, who is located in Berlin, came back with the best price. They can do the graphic design at $35 an hour, as opposed to what was it, $75 or something. An hour at other places. We've looked at some of their work, very well done. I've got a whole bunch of Jet Service at Vermont Company. Yes, in Berlin, Vermont. I don't want to support Walmart big companies. Oh, it's just a service envelope. Right, it's got blows to it. Yeah, just blow. So we think, and we saved like $1,000 on the cost for printing. So we're pretty happy about that. And thank goodness we have Cliff. He's been looking at phone systems to change over the town office phone system. Where'd you come up with? In a multi-line system, we should be able to come in for less than $7 million for the system, including installation. We may have to activate additional lines, but we already have the lines coming into the building. John McCulloch confirmed that. So we just have to turn them on. And the system will also let the town office staff transfer calls to the town garage. Correct. So now somebody calls here, and it's a garage question. They say, oh, just a minute. Let me put you through to the town garage. Awesome. Yeah. And they're going to have a business night service. No one's available right now. Type element built into the system that they could also access it remotely if the town office is closed. But they know there's calls coming in. They can monitor those remotely. They can also have the follow me option where calls can get forwarded automatically by the system. Yeah, because they'll also be able to get forwarded to the town hall when it's renovated. They'll be able to check messages from home if they're open at home. And it will offer compatibility with headsets so that people can engage in more intense conversations, even though they're an invisible person with other people. Right. The Listers will have their own voicemail extension. So the staff are really, really excited about this because it's been a little crazy. But the phones, when you're here, they're running around with portable phones in their hands. And then they put it on the table. Forget to take it back in the office. The phone rings. They have to run back up to the table. So it's a little crazy. So this is going to be really good. They're really excited. And it's not that big of an expense to make their lives easier. So is it already in the works? It's going to happen? It's supposed to be installation. And people will be able to get this up and running by the end of the month. Oh, wow. But there is a scheduling conflict. The tech people are coming in and doing some stuff, some testing with regards to the numeric modules and whatnot. So we may have to wait until the first week in November, but it's at hand. Awesome. That would be a lot of change. Yeah, it will be. I mean, a small thing like that for that price, it's well worth it. What is the price? About $700. I'm thinking I can do it for less than $700. I'd be at $5,000. Oh, OK. But once it's done, then it's great. Yeah, they only have the potential expenses, like I say, if we decide to turn on some of these other lines. But these multi-line systems that we're looking at actually do a dividing. So you can take a single line coming in and divide it. And it mimics having four separate lines. Wow. But there's trade off there. There's limitations in some of the other features. So if we decide down the road, we really need this other feature. We could still turn on the other lines. Yeah, because it's done an extensive amount of research. He's put a lot of time and effort into it. So we owe him a huge thanks. Yeah, we're welcome. We're happy to help out. Kalisrocks. Yes, there you go. We're glad you're here. We need to get T-shirts made. Kalisrocks. We love those so big. So many purposes in T-shirts. It says Kalisrocks. All right. So I'd like the board to go into executive session per one DSA 313A2 for negotiating or securing a real estate purchase or lease option discussion. And I'd like to invite Scott Vassage and Greg Peltchuk to join us. Let's move up. Scott and Aaron. You're up here. Did you make the motion? Yes. Let's go. All right. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. We'll have a wait.