 So I'll call this hearing to order and good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the second year of a non-town meeting But a town informational hearing I'm Terry mcagg select board chair and the other members of the select board President tonight are to my right Ted Kenny the vice chair to his right and Jeff fares To my left Gordon St. Hilaire and our newest member to his left Greta da Agostino This year the aim report dedication is for the second consecutive year the Williston select board has Dedicated the angel report to the people of Williston due to everyone's collective effort and resolve To support our community during the pandemic I thank you all. I thank you all to all for your time and talent To support others through your profession Volunteer roles and as neighbors and friends. We are fortunate to live in this special community And this year we have an in-memoriam page that is very short And we have just one person who we will recognize In the town report and that's dick Bell Who was a longtime teacher at the CVU and a select board member from 1977 to 1986 If you've not already done so, please read the many reports in the town annual report and that's available on the website and a hard copy at Town Hall and the library So I'll now turn the hearing over to the town manager Eric Wells and his staff for the ex budget explanation Erton Thanks, Terry and welcome everyone joining us. I think we've got about 50 folks watching us on zoom this evening So welcome everyone Hopefully this is the final evening before town meeting that will meet only over zoom and we'll be back at Wilson Central School next year So we've got a number of things to go through this evening and in articles to review and anticipation of town meeting tomorrow So I'm going to share my screen. We have a presentation prepared and we'll go over some some zoom Aspects here first and we'll certainly have time for for questions as the evening goes on here. See I got my Screen I'll sit here So it's a couple zoom housekeeping Instructions so we get started here. You'll see there's a Q&A box. We use the zoom webinar feature Please you can type your questions there and we'll get to them at the Q&A part at the end of the presentation Could also use the raise hand feature on zoom to virtually raise your hand And I'll be able to get to those questions as well Um, we get to the Q&A portion the chat feature is just set up to speak with me as the host And if you could use that if you're having zoom issues technical issues, I will work to get those resolved with you I'll juggling a few things as we go here from presenter and switchboard operator. So I'll get I'll get to you as soon as I can So let's go to the town meeting if you're tuned in for the public information here You're you're in the right place. That'll be our our topic here for the next hour or so. It's Monday February 28 There's no in-person meeting due to COVID-19 this year as we set the onset will be voting will be available by Australian ballot tomorrow If you haven't already voted March 1st from 7 a.m. The 7 p.m. At the armory just one door down from the town hall annex here in the village So tonight we're here to talk about the articles for consideration at town meeting There's 10 articles on the warning numbers 1 through 4 are for town business that appear on the ballot and numbers 5 through 10 Are for local elections. We'll go into detail on items 1 through 4 this evening So article 1 reads shall the voters authorize that current taxes be paid to the town treasurer and three equal installments with due dates of August 15 November 15 and February 15 This is an article is typically voted on from the floor a town meeting and and since we're not meeting in person like last year This is why this article appears on Australian ballot this year again Article 2 asks so that shall the voters of the town of Wilson accept reports the town officials as presented in the town report As Terry mentioned, we have the town report available online on the town website and also some hard copies available at town hall And as we usually do I'd like to highlight some Achievements and a look back in the past year that's reflected in our town report. It's the last year in review So we've endured two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and it continues to affect each of our lives Along the way, I've continued to see the strength of our community as we navigate this time Fiscal year 21 marked my first as your town manager It is a pleasure to serve the wonderful community of Williston in this role And I cannot thank our town staff enough for their hard work and dedication to Williston and this evening during my presentation I'd like to take a moment to highlight their work from the past year I want to start by recognizing our emergency services in town our police Officers and firefighters EMT's answer the call for emergency assistance with COVID-19 Continuing to be the collective backdrop on each call Our police department has experienced open positions throughout the past year in an ongoing staffing shortage The collective resolve and dedication of our officers is highly commendable as I deliver community policing services to Williston Our fire department has faced an increased pressure place on the capacity of the current staffing model We'll look at this a bit more this evening as we get into the budget discussion I also want to commend each of our career and call members for their service and dedication And what continues to be an ongoing challenging time for first response Our critical infrastructure in town is maintained by your public works department And here's a photo we took last summer of our department Members of public work staff keep our critical infrastructure functioning at a high level and safe for the community This essential service is done through our highway, water, sewer and stormwater divisions They also experienced some staffing shortages and open positions over the past year We had two major infrastructure projects that were completed The lamplight water line replacement project and the muddybrook culvert replacement I've got some photos I want to share from the muddybrook project next The temporary bridge was in place manning the muddybrook connecting us to south burlington After damage to the culvert there was discovered in the spring of 2017 preliminary design was completed and the preferred alternative was selected in fall of 2018 As I'm sure many folks recall the halloween storm we had in 2019 created extensive additional damage to The culvert and the temporary bridge. You'll see a photo right here of the damage after that storm The town voters approved a $900,000 bond at town meeting 2020 to replace this crossing to south burlington And the cost for this project spent split with the city of south burlington So here's a good look at the construction from last summer as the culvert was formed with the precast pieces here here's a look Now how it looks downstream when the precast culvert was completed last october And here's the additional work to backfill and get the head walls in place for this new crossing into south burlington And it was repaved in november and reopened for Traffic last december. I'm sure everyone was happy to say goodbye to the temporary bridge that was there And it's been a a great new structure to serve the town for for decades ahead There'll be a couple small items to finish up this spring But I'm sure many folks have taken a ride over this new crossing since it's been open I also wanted to highlight our ice rink that we have up in the village community park in the winter months This was added last winter and it was added to provide another outdoor amenity to the members of our community It's been getting a lot of use Oops And I wanted to close by thanking our recreation and parks director tog goodwin for his ongoing management of the rank He'll see him out there shoveling and working on it to and updating the community of how the ice conditions are News from our planning department. The planning department in conjunction with the planning commission has been undertaking a comprehensive project Draft form-based code for the town's growth center Sure, many folks have heard of the mytap corners project hearings on the code will be occurring this winter and spring And also want to recognize two of our planning staff members melinda scott and emily hayman Who've received their american institute of certified planners certifications over the past year So it was another busy year at the dorthy allen memorial library in may 2021 Returned in-person browsing visits in the library in july 2021 regular hours resumed Our resilience staff put together a curbside pickup service for folks when the library wasn't open for patrons for browsing And that pickup service served over 8600 patrons over that time The bookmobile dotty continued to be a very active during covid-19 Completing 34 evening visits to neighborhoods And we've got a couple photos the library shared one one is multi generations from a family Playing a checkers game in the library and next is dotty with a four-legged friend Who is waiting for their owner to finish picking out a book last summer? And speaking of four-legged friends, I want to update on our canine duke program for our police comfort dog The first of its kind in vermont You may have heard duke is turning two next month in march and i'm gearing up for for his birthday celebration This has just been an immensely successful program And I want to recognize officer matt cohen duke's handler for all his work in building this program for the community Duke and matt were deployed 119 times during fiscally year 2021 You can follow duke's um many Many pieces of work that he completes on social media. Um, he's on twitter instagram and nf facebook page, so I know a lot of people uh pay attention to what duke's up to We had a new fire apparatus arrived for service. Um last calendar year We had uh the pumper truck engine three arrived in july of 2021 this um apparatus can carry up to 1500 gallons of water Also had a 105 foot rear mount aerial ladder truck ladder four arrived last september This carries 500 gallons of water and 200 feet of complimentary ground ladders And this purchase was from a 1.4 million dollar bond that was approved at town meeting 2019 To purchase these two new pieces of apparatus for the department They also want to recognize our general administration a town administrative staff and our finance assessor treasurer clerk and human resources officers keep our government operations moving each day Each office has confronted the challenges of the pandemic has continued to work to support and deliver community services through the management The town's finances and vital records and importantly supporting all of our town staff So the town cannot provide the services it does without our great staff We have working for the town and each year we like to recognize milestones and new members that joined our team I've got these listed on on the screen now for everyone to take a look at and these are also listed in our annual reports But we certainly welcome new members to our team and really like to recognize the service milestones of members of our community Um, I would just like to highlight that we had one staff member reach 15 years of services past year That's assistant highway foreman rick wixon So now we'll get into the town budget article three of the warning And I think we'll spend the most time on on this part of town meeting this evening So before we jump into the fine details, I always find it's good to take a step back and look at what a budget is So a budget's a plan to deliver services to the community Including what level of services to be provided the cost of those services and the revenue sources to pay for those services A budget is the best revenue and spending model with information available Development for the town budget begins with town staff eventually in mid august or so and it culminates in march tomorrow on town meeting day It's a multi month process to to work to put this budget together So a few budget objectives entering f y 23 We we looked at effective delivery of municipal services to the community addressing staff and capacity of the fire department And working through the effects of the kovat 19 pandemic including inflation that we're seeing So this evening we'll discuss some highlights from the budget But I encourage everyone if you'd like to learn more to visit the town website We have a page with a number of documents including a line item listing of the entire operating and capital budget And a number of other resources you can also review So we'll get into the numbers a bit now This operating budget proposal is just over 13.1 million This represents an increase of just over one and a half million from the current f y 22 budget It's just over 13 and a half percent in operating expenses So looking at potential property tax impact The estimated property tax rate has a 0.0383 cent increase So this is about $38 per $100,000 of assessed property value For a median homeowner in wilson with an assessment of just over $300,000 The increase of would be an increase of $115 for the year or about 958 per month So reminder the final tax rate is set in in late spring after the grand list is finalized This estimated tax rate increase was reduced during the budget development process using fund balance and ARPA funds Oh Folks now got for a second All right. Sorry everyone about that. We just ran into a little bit of a glitch there. I'll back up I'm not sure when I got cut off exactly. So I'll just back up a slide as we're going to the numbers for the budget proposal So we're looking at an operating budget of just over 13.1 million this year This represents an increase of just over one and a half million from the f y 22 budget And that's just over 13 and a half percent So the potential impact on property taxes has an estimated property tax rate for next year of 0.0383 cent increase It's about $38 per $100,000 of assessed property value For a median homeowner in wilson with an assessed value of just over $300,000 That represents an increase of $115 for the year or just over 950 per month As a reminder, the final tax rate is set after the grand list is finalized in June The estimated tax rate in the budget was reduced during the budget development process using fund balance and arpa funds Now let's take a closer look at The expense side of the budget and the story behind the budget this year So I'd like to examine this increase in in two parts Half of the one and a half million Dollar proposed increase is for the addition of career firefighters to provide fire and emergency medical services to the community The town engaged the independent consultant ap Triton last year After a national search for a firm to evaluate how the fire department delivers services and the community's risk We did this to have an independent lens look at our department to evaluate concerns. We were seeing operationally ap Triton took a data-driven approach using a team that undertook hundreds of hours of data analysis and evaluation To arrive at conclusions about our service delivery But we're concluded stakeholder interviews with 30 members of the fire department and our community This budget proposal adds three firefighter EMTs per 24 hour shift a total of nine A recommendation from the ap Triton report that was identified as the most urgent to consider The recommended timeline was immediate when the report was delivered to us last October Driving this proposed change is a sharp decline in fire call staff members their availability to respond over the past five years This is a challenge combination departments like ours of career and call staff are facing across the country And it predates the onset of the pandemic in williston I'll say this is a significant investment in added career fire department personnel To transition and reconfigure a system that is not sustainable the level of reliance placed on call staff members today To balance the resources necessary to meet the needs of our community The call staff division remains an important part of the department and the town greatly appreciates any time Members of our call staff can give as they balance commitments at home and at work with their service Chief Colette is here this evening. He's worked to grow our call staff program in the last year Last summer's membership drive led to three new members who are now enrolled in training courses this year But we have to be realistic We're not going to have a call staff roster with the depth of training per EMS and fire calls Importantly the availability to respond the calls that can fully offset the need for additional career staff to respond to the type and frequency emergency calls We see for our 24 7 service department Some additional stressors putting factors that are putting stress on the department Window willson continues to see an increase in population We've added about 100 people each of the last 20 years consistent and we anticipate that will continue Moving forward in the years to come here in at least the next five to 10 years We see our daytime population increase to over 20,000 people And also our population willson is aging which can bring increased needs for emergency medical services About 17 of our population is over the age of 65 And I'll toss the chief in just a couple minutes here to provide a more extensive overview of additional components of this proposal But first I just want to touch on the other half of the increase in the budget Is from a number of factors for service delivery These include additional new staff positions of energy and community services planner And we added a police dispatcher position in fy 22 We the town reached new collective bargaining agreements with our police and fire unions in the last year We have capital budget expenditure increases and new debt service from the muddy brook culvert bond The project we shared a bit early this evening We're also seeing inflation affecting our cost of living increase and affecting materials and services throughout the budget And I received a few questions about the proposal with the energy and community services planner position So I thought I'd share a little bit more about that this evening for folks This is a proposed full-time position in the planning department Its responsibilities would include implementation of the town's energy plan and support the town's newly formed energy committee advancing comprehensive goals for the betterment of the community and Serving as a staff member to focus on these goals including increasing affordable housing in Yellowstone The position would also provide staff support for development project applications like any member of the department It would also receive any general planning department duties as assigned by the director So a quick visual here of where the where the expense funds would go outside the budget And then looking at how services are paid for to balance the revenue side of the budget There's a variety of revenue sources used user fees state and federal grants host down fees our local options tax property taxes and then Our reserves and our Here's how this budget proposal would balance the budget on the revenue side about half the revenue coming from property taxes A quarter from our local options tax and a quarter from all the other sources of revenue that I previously mentioned here Going to look in chitin county. How our tax rate compares to other communities This proposed budget will soon remain among the lowest tax rate in chitin county at just over 31 cents of assessment So i'm going to pause here and toss it over to chief collett We'll go into a little more detail on the fire department staffing piece and I just want to pause for a second and make sure our And we're not having any more technical things going on. Okay, scott. I'm just going to check the chat here Um Looks like looks like the presentation is working fine. It's just it's just the camera isn't showing up right now Okay, perfect Thanks, everyone. Um, so I think we're all set and I'll toss it over to you now chief Great scott. I don't see it either All right, we'll say thank you manager wells for the opportunity to address Our community again this evening. Many of you have been here in the forum through the select board and the process that's been ongoing since As the late summer and certainly in october when we came in front of the board with our concerns For those of you that don't know me. My name is Aaron collett. I've served as your fire chief since september of 2020 Next slide When I came into the organization I did so with the understanding that I was going to learn and I continue to learn every day I sat and watched and listened and kept my eyes and ears open And noticed a couple of operational challenges within the organization that caused me pause those challenges included The limited number of career staff that we had The decline in our call staff personnel and decline in call staff personnel availability and participation An increased dms call volume an increased community risk It appeared that we have had the potential for not meeting the demand for service And an increase with this resulted in increased risk to our public and our firefighters as such brought these concerns forward and Collectively the town manager Supported a request to have an independent consultant come in to conduct an evaluation of the way that we deliver fire services across the community Next slide, please For those that are not aware the the current staffing model of the organization Looks like this that we are minimum staffing for career firefighters is three personnel That means that every day we have two of our career staff serving on rescue one Which is our ambulance and a single firefighter working a 24 hour shift on an engine that can Increase if we're at full staffing so you'll have two personnel working the engine if we're fully staff But that is the full staff of career personnel would be four persons We frequently will staff the These apparatus with three personnel on a routine basis Our second and third engine the are not staffed We rely on call staff to be able to operate these pieces And ladder four is additionally not staffed So while you may drive through by the firehouse and see bays full of apparatus, unfortunately, we have very limited Personnel to in order to be able to staff these in fact right now and our call staff as I sit in front of you tonight We only have one member of the call staff. That's actually trained That can operate engine two engine three or ladder four Next slide, please The current call staff challenges. We have low numbers on the roster This saw a low of eight personnel in June of 2021 We've increased that today to 10 personnel I Sit in front of you with the hope that that will continue to increase but right now we're not seeing Numbers coming forward There's been an overall decline in participation and this is a national trend. This is not something that's unique here to the town of williston and if you Have seen this as recently as a few a month ago or so and senator sanders Hosted a national or a town hall meeting on the crisis of staffing and fire departments across the state We have limited Shift coverage participation. So our call staff we have two models. We have the ability for call staff to Respond from home if they live within 10 minutes of the fire station Or they can sign up and ride in the station on 12 hour shifts We have limited shift participation With most the most significant reason being is that they our members have other family obligations That they need to attend to and can't commit that level of time in a part-time capacity to the organization Our ability to staff Have call staff respond is unpredictable We don't know whether our call staff members are Out of town available to respond if they're committed because it's their child's birthday their child's parent teacher conference, maybe it's their A family gathering we have limited numbers. So routinely We will see Maybe a single person a single call firefighter or maybe two call firefighters respond to our emergencies But that's not the operational norm Certainly you realize that personnel that are responding from their homes have a delayed response time Up to a greater than 10 minutes, which isn't practical to have them staff the first two apparatus We also have limited assurance of response on a recall. So we have an incident that requires Additional personnel. We have no idea how many of our staff will actually show up And unfortunately many of our call staff have limited EMS certifications Next slide, please This graphic shows you the decline of call staff from July of 2016 to the June of 2021 where you saw a high of Almost 30 persons on the call staff payroll and that decreased down to June as I said before to eight personnel Next slide, please I think more telling than that is the number of call staff hours that we see and this is really an indicative of call staff participation So in 2016 you saw the peak of well over 1200 hours that our call staff was serving in your community In we saw an all-time low of June and uh, July of 2021 where we saw less than 200 hours that our call staff was available These are cosmic pause and uh, really backed up the need to have an independent consultant come in To take a look at the way we operate next slide, please We've also seen a trend in EMS incidents this is a graphic that shows the number of EMS calls we respond to in the organization this excludes motor vehicle crashes So this is simply the demand for EMS and you see as that trend continues to grow In 2022 we predicted this call number will be in excess of 1300 calls per year Next slide, please So in the ambulance is at the hospital So a 1300 times is the number of EMS calls that we respond to If those result in transports to the hospital That means the two of the three firefighters that we have on our staff Will be off at the hospital and unavailable to respond to an emergency. That means you have a single firefighter and the actual the The Actual number is it turns out to be like 1.3 firefighters and we know that 0.3 firefighter doesn't count Unfortunately, so you have a single firefighter on a fire engine protecting the community This is just unsafe And it's almost a false sense of security across the community Next slide, please We look at critical tasking as a benchmark for firefighters to perform on emergency incident scenes These are all a task that must be conducted in order for us to Successfully mitigate in a medical or fire-based emergency So when we look at critical tasking, we're going to look at these jobs in the next slides will help break that down as some examples In a cardiac arrest, we have about five roles that need to be fulfilled in a cardiac arrest We have a lead EMS provider, which is usually our paramedic Who will deliver advanced life support medications and defibrillation to a patient in need It will have another advanced provider that will provide for airway and ventilation And a BLS provider who will be Performing chest compressions that leaves No one to either drive the ambulance or to operate as the incident commander who provides psychological first aid for family members To try to explain what's going on with the treatment of their loved one or foreseen safety So it shows that we have gaps and We have been forced to solicit that the assistance from Other people including our law enforcement partners where police officers will end up either in the back helping us with chest compressions Or they've actually been driving the ambulance on cardiac arrest because all three of our on-duty staff are working to manage the patient Next slide please Another example is a motor vehicle crash Here we have a photo of a simulated emergency where the engine officer is operating as the incident commander and seeing safety The extrication specialist is working with a hydraulic rescue tool to access the patient who's trapped in the back of the vehicle The second extrication specialist is working with another tool and providing support with The stabilization of the vehicle that leads us to say who is going to provide patient care Who is going to drive the ambulance Who is going to provide fire suppression who's going to be the person that Has a hose lying down and driving the engine to run the pump of the fire engine and More often than not our motor vehicle crashes involve a second vehicle So we need a second patient care attendant to assess and render medical aid to the other patient of the other vehicle You can see here that three people are being committed With simply the the basic task of gaining entry to the to the vehicle to initiate the care But four tasks remain unfulfilled Next slide please this simulation this graphic shows the critical tasking that must occur on a residential building fire Here the the roles include a fire attack crew an incident commander the pump operator A search and rescue team a ventilation team a crew to provide for a second hose line or in a backup crew position And a company we call the rapid intervention team. This rapid intervention team Is a requirement of osha 1910 134 which says for every For when you have personnel operating on the inside of immediately dangerous to life and health or an ideal h environment That you have to have at least two members trained and equipped on the outside to rescue the firefighters if they were to get themselves in danger or need assistance themselves Next slide please Unfortunately with our current staffing model We have the engine officer who operates as the incident commander The ambulance driver and the ambulance crew chief will operate on the attack line to get a hose line in operation To put water on the fire The other roles that you see here what we just reviewed all remain unfulfilled Next slide please Hiring nine or adding three firefighters per shift increase our minimum staffing will allow us to staff the rapid intervention crew as required for under osha It gives us the potential at full staffing to set staff a search and rescue team And the other positions that you see here the backup line the ventilation group safety officer EMS Even if we do increase staffing these will all have to be fulfilled either through call staff or automatic mutual aid responses from neighboring fire departments Next slide please The problem with the challenges that we see with mutual aid is that we have a prolonged response time Which means a decreased potential for survival of the patient as you all know Patients in cardiac arrest need immediately Need immediate aid including cpr oxygenation and transport to the hospital We have limited responder availability with no predicted Assurance of staffing to allow for responders from our neighboring communities to respond The call volume for our mutual aid partners is also increasing And it's really our responsibility as a local municipality to provide public safety to our citizenry Thank you chief. I think it's back to me for a few slides here So to round things out on on the warning And we're looking at article four and this article asks Shall the voters authorize the purchase of an ambulance for an amount not to exceed two hundred and eighty thousand dollars Over a term not to exceed seven years This is to replace the 2014 ambulance, which has reached the end of its useful life with the town This question would authorize the town to take out a short term Note to borrow the funds for the purchase and pay it back over the term of seven years So I'll stop sharing my screen now. We'll get into questions folks may have And I just want to remind everyone if you would use the q&a feature or raise your virtual hand What we'll get to work to make sure all your questions are answered here the best we can And the chat feature, please use that if there's some technical issues Going on with zoom here And we have chief collett here We also have our finance director shirley goodell lackey to assist with answering any questions that folks may have so Terry, I'll open it up if Folks watching have any questions for us All right, I see a hand raised scott wittier scott. I'm going to allow you to talk just a moment here. You'll be on Hi scott. Are you there? Yeah, can you hear me? Yep, we can hear you Okay, great. Hey Aaron. It's been a long time. I'm definitely in support of the increased services obviously town has grown greatly and on the 23 operating Budget proposal for a town meeting Third paragraph says we are a growing community now of over 10,000 residents Our daytime population exceeds 20,000 people as well as the student continues to be a regional hub for commerce So my question is not necessarily with you. It's with finance um, my understanding is the local sales option tax, uh, which was adopted in 2003 and I think was made Made possible by the state legislator some 20 years ago now Is we're only getting 70 of that revenue Which means 30 is going to administration fees is my understanding Now in new york city to run a business the mafia charges 30 percent administration fees You know, it's been 20 years. There is no way an administration fee should be 30 percent We need to go and re-examine this go to the state legislator to town maybe even suing the state To see if we can get more of that money back If we were just to get if we were to get 80 instead of 70 percent that would increase 500 thousand dollars if we got 90 percent and still gave a 10 percent administration fee to the state That's a million dollars That would help go a long ways if if we're quote the business or the regional hub There is no support coming from my pillar on that You know, just because we're running the sales tax and we got that local option tax We don't get any increased services to support from from the state Basically, it's they're allowing us to raise revenue. But like I said, they're pulling off the new york mafia and collecting 30 off of the money and sacrifices that this town has made with its planning to create a A business section of the of the town and a residential section. So i'm in full Favor of increasing the services because they are certainly needed But we need to get some support back from my pillar and one way without raising revenues On the back of the taxpayers to reexamine the proportion of the local sales tax option that we that the towns get And that's all I wanted to bring up that this may be a time that should be brought up for for thought down the road, but uh, it is because of Us being a regional hub for business and everything that has forced the issue that that we're seeing right now But anyways, I I thank you guys and the police do a tremendous job and service for our community and we thank you for it and I'll certainly support any Any and all needs uh going forth Thanks Scott. Thanks Scott for your comment appreciate it All right, I have a question online from laura. She asks Why is it that the town does not budget for equipment such as an ambulance? We always take bonds Why not put some money aside every year for the purpose of purchasing equipment in the future? This could potentially save our community money It can't be a surprise that we'll always need equipment in the future and the thanks for the question laura If you look in our capital budget, we do have an equipment savings Fund or what we do is we take the useful life of most assets And plans to put money away each year for them So one thing we do like purchasing our tandem dump trucks In other pieces of equipment like that police cruisers. We have that that system set up The the history with the ambulances we've have done short-term borrowing for it But you know, certainly this is something we we could explore moving forward as well This is the the system we've used for ambulances in the past But we're certainly doing it for some equipment in town and I appreciate the the comment and looking at this here Let's see. I don't have any other questions at the moment here. Well, we'll give folks another few seconds here Well, I guess in broadcasting. I don't want the the air to not be moving here So keep keep this going for a minute that remind everybody you can go on the on the town website to get information about town meeting Going our home page. You'll see we have a nice Big picture to click on for town meeting information if you want to look at the line item budget there If you want to watch um discussions from the select board as the budget was put together in december and january Number number of resources there and reminder polls are open tomorrow from 7 a.m. The 7 p.m. Over at the uh at the armory So we'll we'll stay on as long as we have questions, but i'm not seeing very many coming coming through here. So, uh Maybe we'll give it a kind of a last call if you've got any other questions for town staff on on the proposals here Please raise your hand or oh looks like we might have one come in here Oh, here we go So laura's got another question. Uh, can you provide more specifics or regards to the energy coordinator task? language and Some clarification on the presentation language And how will the cost effectiveness of this position be measured? Or i'll be happy to share with you the job description That was and for folks listening tonight too. That's on the last select board meeting on february 15th It's a attachment there the board approved that final job description at that meeting And laura if you also want to email me your email address i can set that along to you And i i think that will help answer some of your questions on the tasks for the energy coordinator position And the the cost effectiveness of the position being measured I think we'll certainly use the the skills and expertise of this position as we move forward and and look at some How it fits overall and into the town and how we're able to realize potential savings and also assist our community So I think i'll be looking to evaluate that and Come back and let folks know how that how that role's been Been working after we have some some time if the voters support this budget and we have this position filled in the new fiscal year Here we go questions trying to come in here So sherry's asking what were the results of the consultant for the fire department and And sherry there there was certainly a number of findings and recommendations from the ap try and report and I should mention if you go on that same page on the town website We've we've got the complete report there with a listing of the methodology and then the findings and A number of items for the town to to consider moving forward. So I'd recommend Taking a look at that report at least parts of it that it's it is quite lengthy but if you look start maybe at the end you can see the the findings and recommendations and Provide something to help work backwards on for other seconds of the report there But certainly if you're taking a look you have additional questions for us, please please reach out I had another another question on the energy coordinator Now I'll I'll see if I can get that To make this easier for folks after we get off this meeting I'll put the job description right on the town meeting information page On the town website. So if you visit that you'll see an attachment a document to click on there For the energy coordinator position That that will describe In a in a bit more detail But certainly as we as we mentioned tonight It's goal will be supporting the advancement of the town's energy plan that was Put together in support of part of the town's comprehensive plan staffing our new energy committee Looking to engage the community in addressing energy efficiency and climate change Also looking for potentially adding additional solar siding in town But then there's other pieces of of this position we look at for Having someone on staff that can look to address other specific items of the town's comprehensive plan One that we've looked at for a number of years is affordable housing And this would also give the capacity in the planning department to have one of their staff members Doing work on these other Large-scale goals for the town Moving ahead. So I I know there's there's a lot of information there I have to help answer your question and and certainly the job description has some additional specific details of the tasks for that So we have a question Chief asking about how do we attract more call staff? Um, we we could speak to that a little bit We we worked to have a Application drive last summer and we were able to get three good applicants that are going through School right now for firefighter one and firefighter two, but I don't know chief Would you want us to be to um what it looks like for someone who wants to join the call staff? What the the commitment looks like and in the onboarding? absolutely so the opportunity exists for Folks that do have interest in serving the call staff To go to our web page and there you will find Applications, uh, we actually have We're shut down for a little bit with ride-along programs But we have opened this back up as the the covid pandemic seems to continue to Decrease in its risk But we still have masking in the firehouse But we'd allow folks to come in and have interest to actually ride on a ride with us to to see what the day in The life of a firefighter is See if that's something that you may have interest in we can go and have a q&a Session if you had questions about what that service looks like or any of the operations or the commitment, but The the general requirement is is we asked all of our firefighters to go through firefighter one or and two program If they're eligible it was certainly firefighter one, which is 200 hours The firefighter two programs extra hours We encouraged our call staff to be trained in ems and an emergency medical technician As our baseline foundation Which is another about a hundred hours of training so The the simple answer is Send me an email or go to our web page and submit an application But happy if you're just considering the the potential to serve us Stop by the firehouse ring the doorbell Come on in and say hello to one of our firefighters and We'd be glad to to meet with you to to take you through what it might take To be one of our call staff members Thanks chief So i'm just going down the line some additional questions that came in here. Uh, autumn's asking Help understand what if any positive impact to our taxes all of the development in recent years has had for us As in would we have been seeing even higher tax increases if we hadn't allowed all of this development So autumn, thanks. Thanks for the question We look at the town's grand list growth each year and part of that is the increased value of all our property in town and wilson's grand list is just over two billion dollars and We look each year and try to project how the grand list is going to grow It's increasing the tax base and that's factored in our our overall calculation when we come up with the property tax rate each year so um And and if you look in the document online that with the report Of the operating budget. There's a page. I'm going to just cite a couple numbers off of right now but Part of that report looks at the value of our tax rate our grand list the rate change the grand list change the percent of the grand list change since the year 2010 so Since the reappraisal was complete in 2017 We had some years we had an over two and a half percent Grand list increase over two percent around two percent another year And then the last couple years last year was just about one percent and this year is about three quarters of one percent that we're projecting growth in the grand list so certainly The any new development in town helps continue to grow our our tax base of each year and and it's going to vary each year And it's part of the listers in the assessor's job to look at that overall valuation and how our grand list is coming together each year I know this is a pretty detailed and involved topic So i'm certainly happy to discuss this in more detail with you and also we could Arrange some time to chat with the assessor's office as well to look at the grand list a bit more if you if you're interested And then scott is asking about arpa funding in the budget. I appreciate this question scott about three hundred thousand dollars was included in the operating budget to help offset some another revenue source here and in capital projects and scott's asking Speak to explain what will happen if all the funds are not spent for capital projects And what are some of these projects? so i'm i'm going into the capital budget right now to To share some of the projects that are included with the potential arpa funding They include a police store access security upgrades project design engineering for our town hall parking lot In the back here that that's been a project We've had planned on the on the capital projects list for a number of years And it's also looking on this is a big project a community center and library space scoping study to try to understand potential For a community center facility what the community might be interested in and also looking at future scoping for the library And what the needs are for the library and how that fits into what the communities needs may be as well So that that's part of those arpa funds And we also looked for some funds for electric vehicle charging stations and in town parks as part of our energy goals And also we have some variable message board from our public works department You might recall those if there's a road close or some news to get while you're traveling We have two message boards and those are up for replacements, especially one of them so that would help replace one of those boards and public works department is also working on an asset management system And this funding with the proposal for the additional staff in the fire department Those new staff members will need gear and radios to get started So the arpa funds would also help pay for those expenses And the other part of your question If if it if it turns out we were to get another source run of these say a grant or in the future The select board has on on its work plan looking at the arpa funds moving into this spring So if we recognize some of these funds might not be needed for some of these other projects They'll be part of the arpa overall dollars for the board to look at The town has until the end of 2024 to allocate these dollars until the end of 2026 the spent So I have a question here the projected return on investment for an energy coordinator It's I appreciate the question. It's it's hard to quantify that right now I think what we're really looking to do is to have someone take the lead and implementing our town energy plan Here so we'll certainly be looking at all this information moving forward But it's it's certainly a a town goal to implement our energy plan And this is going to be a big a big task for this position here, but I appreciate the question And then last one I have right now from jude. How do you business contribute to the budget? Since we're now concerned a top shopping center In particular police and fire services Much more of the services seem to be for these locations Um, so thanks for the question jude. I will will share, you know, any Any commercial industrial property owner in town is going to pay property taxes like like any other residential property in town So that's certainly going to be contributing to our overall budget We also by having the business community here in our local option tax that helps generate a local option tax revenue We bring in just over three million dollars in local option tax revenue each year and that accounts for about 25% of our operating revenue in town So I appreciate appreciate your question on that as well jude See at the bottom of my list right now If jude Wants further analysis we can actually produce the the number of responses that fire does to residential versus commercial He wants to reach out to that level of detail Connect us. Okay. Well, thanks chief jude for to send us an email. We can follow that if you'd like to look at that as well If there are no more questions It's about time to wrap up the informational hearing Hopefully if you have questions, you can still Ask them tomorrow Hopefully if you haven't already voted, please come to the polls tomorrow Or drop off your absentee ballot at the at the polling center And we thank you very much for your participation In the hearing tonight and hopefully we'll get back to a real town meeting next year, but This is better than it was last year with the Folks out there asking questions and pertinent questions. So Thank you very much. If there's no more questions, we'll end the uh the hearing tonight Yep, I don't see any more questions terry. Good Thank you all for attending