 We'll call a meeting to order for September 21st, 2020, turn closer to the end of the year. Everybody's seen the agenda, pretty simple tonight. I'm not gonna say it'll be over quick because that's usually when it lasts forever. So if somebody wants to make a motion to approve the agenda as it stands, unless there's some changes. Can I add something to the agenda? A small conversation on emergency preparedness. Try to keep it real short. Anybody else? Okay, with that changed, so may I give you a motion please? I'll make a motion to approve the agenda with the addition of the emergency preparedness discussion. Second that motion. Mike seconds it. All those who wish to approve it, just say aye. Aye. That's agenda items, simply the minutes from the last meeting, September 8th. If anybody wants to approve that, go ahead. I make a motion to approve the minutes of the September 8th select for meeting. Second it, somebody? Second. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Public, I see we have a couple of people here tonight from the public. Somebody who wishes to speak at this time. No. Yeah, thank you. We were asked to join you this evening. We're representing the Friends of Waterbury Reservoir and I think we're the second item on your agenda. It's Eric and Francine Chittenden. Currently I'm the treasurer of the organization and Eric has up a week ago made president. So, okay. Okay, thank you. I'll unmute myself. All right, anybody else? Seeing none, hearing none. We'll move on to select board items. First item is to designate a voting delegate for the Vermont Leagues of Cities and Towns Annual Meeting. Is that usually you, Bill? Yeah, so VLCT has its annual town fair on September 30th this year and they have a policy meeting where the legislative policy that they'll be proposing at the annual meeting will be discussed and that meeting is tomorrow. Because of COVID, this will all be virtual this year, no in-person town fair. And typically the select board has designated me as the voting delegate. I've been going to the town fair since 1982, even before I was in Waterbury. But we have to have one voting delegate. And if any one of you wants to be it, you're certainly welcome, but if you would like to appoint me, it needs to be done. I move to appoint Bill as our delegate to the Vermont League of Cities and Towns Annual Meeting. Second. All right, Katie. Any further discussion? Yeah. Anybody else wish to jump on? Go ahead, Mark. No, I was just unmuting to say yay. All right, motion been made and seconded to elect Bill as a delegate for VLCT Annual Meeting. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Okay, discussion of the waiver of decisions for annual meeting funding request. Will us in on what that's about, Bill? Well, Carly can help probably equally well, but the town has always required new organizations that are requesting special articles for the first time to get a petition in order to get onto the agenda for a town meeting. This would be for special articles. So, you know, we have probably 20 or so articles every year, some of which are on there year in and year out and others of which are new. The select board's policy for special articles has always been first time requests need to get a petition. And then after they receive funding, they can be on in subsequent years provided there is no significant increase in their requests. So, you know, a couple of years ago, the senior citizen center went from a $10,000 request to a $30,000 request. And that year that that change happened, the select board made them go back and get a petition. So that's how the system works. I am not up to speed on this, on why this is on the agenda. So that's what the policy is. Maybe Eric and Francine have something they want to say about it, it seems. Yeah, okay, this is Eric and we were, we had a plan in place to get signatures this summer and we started last year, we started late for different reasons, but this summer, when we went to do this because of the COVID situation, no one was allowed to even pass out papers or to, we would have had to have a different pen for everybody. That's how that was that the training went. I was not there for the training, but everybody was there said, and even the Greeter at the Greeter program said that he couldn't pass out papers to anyone. So it's one of those situations that we've been a very strong voice for the rest of war. There are many of us involved who've been going to different meetings that from the power production to the recreational part since the mid-80s. And so we represent all user groups, it's important you know that. We have a recreationalist of Steve and Emma at UMIAC, we have any number of people representing everything from power boaters to kayakers to whatever. And so there are a lot of expenses involved. I'm gonna let Francine address that because she's the Trezor and she'll tell you about what kind of expenses are involved in this and the importance of it to the town and the money that's generated from this, it's a very significant, it has a very significant impact on the town finances as you probably know. Yeah, so what we are hoping to do tonight is request the waiver so that we don't have to collect these signatures because it is quite actually impossible to do this here. And so we're here to answer any questions if you're not familiar with the organization or are you know anything from the select board would be certainly something that we could answer at this point in time, but it would be. This is Bill, just for everyone's dedication and to remind folks, we already work with this organization and the town applies for a grant. We've applied this year, I believe it's for about $3,200 and the town doesn't put anything in to match this grant. I believe the friends of the reservoir through their own fundraising have made whatever matches necessary. So we do apply for the grant. The grant process takes some of staff's time, especially Steve Lott's speech. He has, we've got to get the grant application in on time and then there are what ends up happening is that we have to make two requests to the state for the money. I think we've already received half of it or so this year and let's see, grant reservoir. Yeah, we've $126 so far and that gets passed through to the friends and they use it to pay the greeters, I believe and I don't remember how many greeters that you have and where they're stationed. I know it's different every year. So the town does play some role in this right now. Perhaps, Eric and Francine, as he checked the tech is on the meeting as well, which has been very active in the friends of the reservoir and he's been Steve's contact for the grant program for a number of years. Beyond the grant for 2021, what do you think your request for an appropriation from the town is going to be? Well, it is a pass through grant and the money that we receive, we do receive from the state of Vermont goes through Waterbury. We were hoping, so this past year, last year, we had enough money in the program through the grant to have two greeters, they're part-time people. The greeters responsibility is more, has a lot to do with invasive species and educating the public as they come in and out of the reservoir with their mostly boats and any kind of watercraft. This, they're generally positioned at the blush hill access and also over at the dam access. We don't really do much with the canoe access that's up off of at the other end of the reservoir and the state parks, we don't do much there because they have a fair number of staff there. So primarily the grant is about controlling invasive species in the lake. We were not, we had put in for a larger grant request last year and it got cut down. So this past summer, we had one grant, one of our greeters in position. They basically, this individual was there on either Saturday or Sunday. Basically it's an eight hour a week position. Some weekends he would be there. If it was raining on Saturday, he would work on Sunday. Or if it was fairly, or split his days, four hours, one day, four hours the next day. So it's a very controlled amount of time. What we had hoped to do as many of you are aware when you do any kind of staffing of people, there's a lot of costs. And so luckily the grant has helped pay a fair amount of it. We've also been able to get some donations in and a lot of in kind donations from people who go out and work around the reservoir. Our hope this year was to recast the $1,000 towards at the town meeting. And we were in the process of putting a petition together, quite honestly, when we realized we couldn't go forward with it. So that's what we're looking for. Francine, from a petition standpoint there, how many signatures do you need for that? You know, originally I believe they 250 and they're, they have to be Vermont, Waterbury voters. So it's an update, yeah. So that's what we understood. It made it difficult to even go door to door, this whole COVID did it. It's pretty much eclipses anybody getting 250 signatures without unreasonable effort. We were all active and excited about doing that this year because we'd been talking about it, but it just wasn't in the cards. I should mention too that some numbers that come up and the estimate that the state gives the forest and parks, I believe this is where this comes from, but the reservoir generates about $8 million and estimated expenditures in the area from stores to restaurants to bars and so on. There are any number of benefits to some of this stuff in fact it's become extremely popular. And some of the things that the greeter has done, besides just talk about invasives, people have a thousand questions when they come. And they ask about life preservers and fishing licenses and just about anything you can imagine. And so he schools just about everybody who goes through there with the courtesies of being on the reservoir, the 200 foot rule, five miles per hour within 200 feet of the shore and that kind of thing. So the greeter does more than just do the invasive species. He becomes a voice, a very strong voice for those of us who can't be there. And I think we have only one this year, right, Francis? We couldn't afford a second one, but we have five different accesses to the reservoir, public accesses, and it'd be nice if we had another greeter at each, the foot of Blush Hill and the dam. Those are the two most active places where it gets plugged up. It gets, there are a lot of questions and so on. Go ahead, Bill, you had something to say? Yeah, I think this is a worthwhile program. And we have had the greeter program in this grant for a number of years now. As Francine said, the grant was, or maybe it was Eric, but the grant was whittled down a little bit by the state. Usually, the state is willing to provide grants and over time, they always hope that the grantee, the people that get the grant end up finding a different funding source. So far, they have not told us that they won't fund this. I think the State Department of Forest Parks and Recreation where this grant comes from understands the importance of the reservoir, the Waterbury Little River State Park, I think is the most frequented state ground in the state. So the reservoir is a real resource and they have not told us at least yet that they won't fund this grant, but it's a possibility. What I'm concerned about, though, is that if you set a precedent by allowing this group to not have to get a petition to get a special article, where do you draw the line? You know, if it just becomes, anybody can just say we wanna be on the ballot because we can't raise 250 signatures and it's a reasonable concern that they have about trying to get those signatures. I'm just afraid that we really might open the floodgates and then how do you go back a year from now? So what I would suggest to the select board is, you know, you are the folks who are in control of the budget and rather than put this on as a special article, if you think for this one year that $1,000 is worthwhile just to support, just like we do in the general government budget where we have 10,000 of the 30 for senior citizens is in the general fund budget, we've got money for the historical society in the general fund budget. Rather than agree to not allow petitions in order to get on for special articles, I would recommend that you just consider creating the line item in the general fund for this. We don't have to, you know, you don't have to go out of your way to get other organizations to come in and ask this. You won't be hiding anything from anyone because it will be a line item in the budget and if somebody wants to ask a question, they can, but I would rather that you just think about it during budget time and if you think that this is a worthwhile program to support that I would just ask you to include it in the budget and then in a future year, you can say, okay, we're gonna go back, we let you in one year without it, now go but get your petition. But I'd rather that you don't just say we're not gonna require petitions to get on a special article because I'm concerned how many requests you're gonna have. All right, go ahead. I agree with Bill's methodology, but I'm also concerned, I know I have expressed this concern before about the continuation of special articles, where does it all end? As much as I'm very much in favor of inspections, you know, I'm a user of the reservoir, I get checked on the reservoir, I get checked Lake Champlain, I have got checked on, you know, probably 10 or 15 different Vermont lakes, which I think the checking is a very noble thing. But I also believe that one thing that we have to look at is that grant, Waterbury Reservoir is not just used by Waterbury residents, it's probably, you know, probably only a percent. I would hesitate to say maybe 20% of the users of Waterbury residents, it's a resource. That's why I think it should be, you know, done by state grant. And yes, to having a problem this year, I think we may be able to consider, but I wanna ask the Chittinans, what has the friends done to fundraise to help make this come about, you know, that the friends, I think they should be part of the solution other than just grant money to have the old fashioned bake sales and stuff like that to raise some money, you know, to further the friends' cause. Maybe I asked the Chittinans, what have you done for fundraising? Yeah, okay, I'll give you a couple of comments. We have gone to the Lintelac Foundation, they have been supportive. It's of course, all these organizations right now are getting hit pretty hard. And another source that I'm sure Bill is aware of is the mylot funds that come into the town. I think it's about $17,000 or $19,000 that the state of Vermont gives to the town. It's a mylot money in lieu of taxes. And so maybe it could be looked at as money coming out of that for this. And certainly you have a very dedicated group and us, we are there, we are a very strong voice. And there have been a lot of issues that could have been negative for the town and we've been there to speak for it over the years. So, you know, if it's possible, you know, we certainly, you know, we're just here for the rest of the group. And, but I think all the comments that I've heard have been pretty positive. And I feel that it would be nice to get something worked out with us. Eric, I'm very positive about, as a matter of fact, I'm very supportive of what you guys do. But do you vocalize, you know, running a potluck to raise some money? You know, I know this year is a very difficult year. So that's why I'm very supportive of what Bill has said, maybe use a budget line item. But I'm, you know, in the future, I think, you know, a lot of these small groups need to help raise some money, you know, not just rely upon the town voters because we're being pressed in all kinds of ways. We have roads to fix, infrastructure to maintain. And it's gonna get up to a point where it's gonna be very hard on the taxpayer. And I understand, you know, there are funds like the Lintelac Foundation, there are a whole bunch of ones, but sometimes the small nonprofits, they don't do the old-fashioned, you know, potluck dinner, you know, to raise some money. Everyone kind of pitches in and has, you know, addition and stuff like that. You know, I wasn't hearing that. I heard you're all basically looking for grants and that's a noble thing, but I think there are other ways to raise, locally raise money and without asking for the town. Yeah. We have done it in the past. We've, I mean, not recently, obviously, because of some of the confines, but we've invited speakers. Willem Lange has spoken and we raised quite a bit of money a few years ago. We've worked with, we've worked with a lot of other businesses that have done fundraisers for us, the reservoir restaurant, did some work, some things for us. So it's not that we haven't done other things. I will say this has been a more difficult year. And I would say that Bill's suggestion that we are totally for doing signatures. It's not like we can't do this, but I understand you're wanting us to do more and we do maintain a pretty active website. We have a strong, a strong internet, what I don't know what you want to call it, but food, Facebook and others, there are opportunities to communicate with people. And it is used by more than Waterbury residents. You're absolutely right about that. I think it's the only body, this specific body of water is entirely in Waterbury. I'm not sure if you're aware of that. So the shoreline is entirely in Waterbury. We do get a little bit of support from Stowe because they understand the value of the water for them. So we do get a little bit from the town there. And so we've done lots of different things over the years. We've been around for, I want to say the organization was formed in the 90s and maybe early 90s and we've been around for a really long time. We've gone through phases of being fairly dormant, where there wasn't a lot of controversy or things that really needed to, when the dam was drained, there wasn't a whole lot to do. So there were times when we weren't that active. And so now there've been a lot of changes over the last few years and it's use and we're being asked to do more and more and take more of a leadership role to bring the voice of the people of Waterbury specifically to the Vermont Forest and Parks or to some of the other agencies that we work in. They do turn to us. And it's, it would just for us would be a huge assistance, quite honestly. So I got a couple of comments here. I hope you can appreciate this. The select board was elected to oversee the voters tax dollars. Number one, I'm surprised that the state as critical as you explained to us that this body of water is from a financial standpoint, a tourism standpoint, I'm surprised the state doesn't do more in the way of putting forward funds to protect against invasives and pay for these readers, among other things. Number two, you mentioned something about an $8 million income from the visitors of the lake. Unfortunately, unless Bill can explain to me otherwise most of that money comes through the, comes probably into some of the local businesses, but I don't think the taxpayers see a huge benefit from that influx of visitor revenue source. Maybe I'm wrong, but Mike's point about generating revenue or fundraising efforts what popped right into my head immediately was whether or not you could do something like, it's simple as a raffle. If you could coordinate with the state of Vermont, get one of their campsites for a weekend or a week, three, four days, whatever seems to work the best and raffle that thing off to people that you might generate an astounding amount of money to help towards this process. But the date can ask the voters for, and I know it's only $1,000, but if you add up all the special articles, there's many thousands of dollars there. And to Mike's point, when does this come to an end? And I couldn't support your efforts more. I'm just wondering if there's other ways besides continually going back to the taxpayers for this effort? We're about $70,000 worth of special articles now. It's about a penny on the tax rate. Many of the organizations as we talked about all the time are not located in Waterbury. They don't provide any real direct service to Waterbury. Waterbury residents might be their customers, but the whole special article thing is a challenge. To your question, Chris, you're right. There's no direct benefit to the town coffers from anything that happens at the Waterbury Reservoir. I would caution, however, that there are many things that we do to try to support businesses that indirectly help the town of Waterbury and its taxpayers. I mean, we spend $56,000 a year on an economic development director trying to provide services to businesses so that they can be successful, that they'll invest in this community, that they'll employ people in this community. So, you know, there's not a lot of things that happen outside of here, except sending a tax bill that directly impacts the town's coffers. You know, we don't get a lot of money from any multiplier effect in a direct fashion. So, I share your concerns about special articles in general, and Mike and Chris have talked. I will reiterate, if we're going to do it and allow them access without a petition, I would suggest it be a line item. If you don't want to do it at all, that's the board's prerogative, but I really think you should not set a precedence and just say to everyone out there, kind of carte blanche, oh, you don't have to get a petition, you can just be on the ballot next year. I would hesitate to do that. I mean, if the revenue source is benefiting some of the businesses, is it absurd to ask for donations from them or are you already getting some donations from them? Francis. I just got to unmute my computer. We have had support from, as I mentioned, a couple of the restaurants. I said the reservoir in particular, maybe because of the name, I'm not sure. We've had a lot of people who have assisted us over the years. I can't think of all of others. I said we've been here for a long time. Over the years, we've had people who have been more active than others, not so much. So it's just a really, can I pull them all out of the hat? I don't know, but we've been supported a lot. Boomiak, who does have a vested interest, obviously at the reservoir, has been very supportive as far as helping us run fundraisers. We've had, when Green Mountain Coffee was very active, they were wonderful to work with the supply volunteers for special events that we were running. Yes, I will say, we've had a lot of support from local businesses, but again, it's where we've been around for a long time. So it just kind of comes and goes. The interest in the politics of the reservoir comes and goes too. So it's just the reality of, it's been here a long time. That body of water has been here for, since what, 1935. It's been here a long time. So thank you. I'm very supportive of Bill's idea of at least for this year, having a line item, because I don't believe we should go around the 250 petition, but we'll get you your money by the line item. But I would also suggest that if you can have some, maybe have an appeal to the businesses with saying, hey, it brings in $8 million to the community. Can you not get 10 businesses to pony up $100 a piece to basically reimburse the town for what you're gonna do? And I think to be quite honest, in this year of COVID, if you make an appeal to the state for that purpose, they're gonna understand that this is a regional gem. And if anything, I know I use the reservoir a lot. The population that's been using the reservoir this year during COVID, it's actually too much. The accesses are being overwhelmed. So I think having the greeters there is a really important thing. And I'm very much for it. And I would support $1,000 line item in the budget to support the friends. I'd like to hear from the other board members on this, please. Yeah, I'll jump in. This is Mark Fryer. I actually am one of the owners of the reservoir restaurant. So I'm not sure if you're aware of that. I think it's a small price to pay. I mean, I do agree the conversation surrounding special articles and potentially getting out of control and maybe reviewing the list, but $1,000 to support a resource like the reservoir, I think is a small price to pay to maintain its use and its use for locals and tourists alike. I think the natural resources, we benefit from an investment made back in the 30s that $8 million does go a long way. I mean, it supports my business and many other businesses in town, but you look at that, if the business market isn't strong, then potentially a vacancies in commercial buildings and then all of a sudden property values go down and that ultimately affects tax base. So a strong market and supporting that $8 million estimated spend, I think is important, but separately it's just the use of that, maybe only 20% as estimated as our locals, but that's still a significant amount of our local population that uses it and sees it as something that's very important to them and use of it and that it maintains its health and invasive species can be a huge detriment to a body of water like that. $1,000 to help support an organization like this, I think is a small price to pay, but I believe as business owners like myself, we will also contribute to that. Those of us who believe that organizations like this are important for our community. So I appreciate the work you guys do and I'll continue to support you personally outside of this position, but I also think it makes sense as a resident of Waterbury and as a leader that your organization is supported by the town. Yeah, I agree with a lot of what Mark has said and what Mike has said. I do believe that this reservoir is not just an asset, but it's an economic driver to a lot of our businesses. I mean, it's the reason a lot of people do come to Waterbury. And once they're here, they get gas, they get groceries, they get dinner, they get lunch, whatever. It's an important part of who we are. And I would support this. And yes, thank you for what you've done. Okay. I see the importance of this. And I mean, I'm seeing both sides of it. When I'm looking at the warrants each week, I'm looking at what's over $300? Like what is expensive in looking at the grand scheme of things? A thousand isn't a lot, but sometimes it feels like it. For the future, I would like to see what other fundraising things that you're doing and seeing if we could come up as a town or working with a state, something for like additional revenue that you can gain from people going to the reservoir who use it during the summer. And so that becomes a regular thing. So you wouldn't need to depend on town, you know, money for, in case things happen like this again, like you need something for the future. But I'm in agreement with what other people are saying, but I'm hoping that you receive more donations from people and businesses around town as well, especially if you reach out. I'm sure people are really open to this, like Mark said. Okay. So, Eric, you wanna say something that looked like you're looking to say something? I'm here too. Yeah, well, just a couple of things. I even overlooked this myself sometimes, but there's some of the things that we're required to do. We can't piggyback on anybody for insurance or assistance with a website or anything like that. These are some pretty big numbers that we have to deal with. The insurance thing is a lot. The website, I don't know, Francine, you can think of some of the other things. I mean, we've been, we're a very frugal organization. Our budget is very small, and I just took over the treasury position from Chuck who joined us earlier. So I'm still working on understanding what's been, where the money is going and how it works and things. So really for us, we're very careful, quite honestly. We're not out there and we stay within our budget. Again, we were hoping to have two greeters this year, and we do more than just the greeter program. We do a lot of work with the burders in the area. We've worked with the Loon Project. We have one of our board members is a very strong naturalist and does a lot of photography and there's a lot of interest in that as well. So there are other things that we do. The greeter program is the most visible because we have an employee doing that, but we're also very much the voice for, when people have conversations around what's going on at the reservoir, we hear about it. And we're not able to really, we don't have the strength behind us as far as we can fix things, but we can also direct people to where they need to go if they have some real concerns. And we can talk about it and see if there's anything we can do. Some of the other things we've done is this Rosalia project. We've broken down the reservoir into sections and we've gone out and once a year, like a water, a green up day on the reservoir, but we've pulled everything from tires to this and that. And it's all volunteer stuff. And we get into a number of volunteer. The Loon thing was very important. Eric Hanson runs that for the state. And France and I were involved in building the Loon, a floating nesting site last year. And it was a free press, actually did a very nice story on it. So as you all know, it's to go out there and raise the funds. It is a lot and managing this whole thing is a lot. And so fortunately we got some very committed people. And so, and the one that Francine was talking about the naturalist also works with the green reservoir and it's the same thing there. So, and then there's the friends of the Winooski River. There's a lot of friends and we're all vying for these same funds. So, but we feel strongly about the value of the voice. We are very strong voice and we had to make comments and we didn't have to make comments, but we made it was one point, for example, that when they were thinking about reopening the reservoir when it was all the way down that they weren't going to bring it back up, there was going to be, it would have done away totally with the beach and any of the beaches, including the state beach, it was all possibility that they were going to leave the water level very low. That was a several months of concern, but we were right there speaking front and center on that one. So- Okay, well listen, we appreciate your time here tonight. And I think you can understand that what I said earlier about the elected officials having to, you know, and oversee the voters tax dollars, I mean, you can tell by looking behind me there that I'm as big a sportsman as anybody out there and I love sports, I appreciate, you know, the reservoir, I have a place up north on the lake and a lot of people that are on that lake up there are also participating in similar circumstances like you are with looms and protecting the shorelines and whatnot. But Mark Fryer wasn't at our last meeting. I don't know if you heard anything, Mark, about our discussion about appropriating more money for an animal patrol officer could be to the tune of 6,000 and up to, depending on a stipend after that for calls itself, you know, could run us close to 10,000. So I get your point, Mark, I agree with it, understand it. But that money that every time we turn around there's more money going out the door and just be nice if somehow we could get some of it coming back in. But with that, if everybody's done discussing this issue we can, we need a motion for this bill. Thank you everyone for listening and for letting us join your meeting actually. Yeah, we understand the work that you folks put into it. I've been there, so I understand it. Eric and Francine, I'll make a $100 donation to your organization. Michael, I'll call you tomorrow. We'll have a meeting at the reservoir, we'll buy you all a beer. Hey, I used that reservoir plenty and when I was on the conservation commission that was one of my prime things to work with the friends and we did a cutting of Japanese knotweed on the reservoir and it's just such an important resource and I do support it, but I also, I'm a fiscal conservative, you know, ultimately we keep on getting bombarded by requests and where does it all end? So that's why I always say, I like to see when organizations have some fundraising which you've highlighted and I wish you'd appreciate to do that. So I'll help a little bit with my $100 bill. Well, we'll fundraise without reservation. Okay. So Chris, I don't think you need a motion tonight. Carlos, mark this in a minute. So I've got a note and we'll talk about it when we get into, you know, budgets in a couple of months. We're gonna put it in the budget, it sounds like and to me, I agree with Bill, I don't think we wanna start precedent to omit people doing a $250 petition at least the first time because you wanna see that there, it is an organization that has support. I have no doubt that the friends do have support but I said, it sets a bad precedent. Yeah. Yeah, we're very fiscal conservative also. So we get it. Yes, totally understand but thank you again for letting us join you and enjoy the rest of your meeting. We took up more than the agenda said more time than it said we could. We're gonna leave now. That's typical, no worries. Okay. Thank you. Thank you both. Nice to see you guys have a lot of work. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I guess we can jump to your item there, Mike, now. It's how you think it's gonna be fairly quick your emergency preparedness. Yeah, I just want to, you know, I've spoken with Bill and I've spoken with Bob Farr and, you know, I've shown an interest of, you know, Bob Farr, Barbara Farr is probably gonna, it's gonna be stepping down in the spring as our emergency management director. I have interest in, you know, fulfilling that role. Sometimes I guess I didn't realize how involved because I took the, it was a full day emergency management director class and I found out a lot about that. I think the key thing that I want to bring up is we probably need to have the select board more involved with emergency preparedness. And one thing that I kind of would recommend, they're on the 29th and 30th, they're going to be having an Vermont emergency preparedness conference. I don't know if people would be interested in attending that. I think it's really important. You know, again, we don't have the emergencies like, you know, we don't have wildfires. We don't have earthquakes. We don't have, you know, a lot of the tornadoes and other storms, but as we knew from Irene, flooding is probably one of the biggest things. You know, we do have some power outages and it's, it would be a good thing. I think that the select board is engaged on what preparedness I'm hoping to be able to attend this, you know, conference as everything, all these conferences are done virtually. So it can be, I know everyone can do that, but, you know, I guess the deadline for registration is the 24th. So it's coming up fairly soon. We also do have a lot of good support for emergency preparedness from Grace Vincent, Vincent Bin Son is our area coordinator. She works out of the Regional Planning Commission. She's really good. It's really a shame that the Northeast, I mean, you get the Northeast Regional Coordinator, which was Emily Harris. She's leaving that position. Although she's not leaving Vermont Emergency Management, she's stepping up. She's now going to become the Engagement Section Chief. I'm not quite exactly sure what that is, but it sounds like a career advancement for her. She'll be missed. She was the one who actually did the training, but that's where I just say, I think it's always, when an emergency happens, we need to be prepared. And I think as a select board, I think, you know, there needs to be some a little bit more engagement than there may have been in the past. It's just a really smart thing involved. And if I become the Emergency Management Director, you know, I may have engaged the select board into maybe some trainings with the highway department, fire department, et cetera. But I'm just curious to what your thoughts are. Bill, can you clarify a little bit about the status of that? Is it a volunteer position? Yeah, it has been a volunteer position and Barb has been the Emergency Management Director for a number of years. I'm in the chain of command as is Bill Woodruff. We haven't, with this current select board, we haven't done a training recently. Chris, you probably remember after Irene, when you first got on the board, there was a lot of activity with regard to trying to get back up to speed. You know, Irene was a good lesson for us all and staff, existing staff certainly remembers the process. We did take, we were involved this past year with a tabletop exercise and we were going to be included in a statewide tabletop exercise. But given all of what we're doing with the construction of Main Street, staff is pretty stretched in right now. So we begged out of that this time because it just was not something that the staff really had the time for given all of the work that folks like Bill Woodruff in particular are doing with the construction job. So Barb did tell me earlier in the year that she was probably not going to seek reappointment to this. Barb has a background in this. I'm not sure how many of you know, but Barbara was the state's emergency management director. She ran the whole emergency management department for the state and was instrumental frankly in getting the public safety building over at the state complex built. She left that position just several months before Irene had, so she was not the state's emergency management director then, but she's been a very valuable resource. And you know, Barb is approaching the time when she's going to want to retire completely. So when she talked to me about this listening to Mike at some of the select board meetings that we've had and it was on the conservation commission. And I know from his former work with USDA that he probably was at least a little bit clued into some of what goes on as far as emergency management is concerned. So I asked Barb to reach out to Mike and he expressed an interest. So I think, you know, probably going forward we should do something. I believe you, did you participate in the training already, Mike? Or did you sign up for it? Yeah, I participated in the training. As a matter of fact, I've been on one of the emergency management's round tables. I just want to, it's a bigger undertaking than I thought, you know, and you know, I'm lucky because my past with USDA rule development I had a lot of engagement with FEMA. So while I work with them, I do have some emergency management training but you see a lot of the emergency management training, you know, the directors, they tend to be fire chiefs and things of that kind of nature. You know, there are some areas that I'm gonna need to improve but they have a whole like a learning center where you could take different courses online. And I'm up for the challenge, you know? And I don't think this is something, I just wanted to bring this up now because like we're still in the middle of COVID, I'm just kind of getting this on our radar for maybe sometime next year, you know, for, I think it's so important because we never know when another Irene or some other, you know, disaster will hit us, you know, and it will, you know, it may not be next year, it may not be 10 years, but it could be within the next 20 or 30 years. And the more training that, you know, the select board has and, you know, again, it's also trying to get more people involved. So there is kind of a continuity because as I'm seeing more people who are older, who more tend to be volunteer oriented, I'm glad we see Katie on our select board, you know, kind of a younger person, but, you know, I know from, I volunteer with a lot of different organizations and there's a real challenge getting younger people involved, you know, especially in leadership roles. So, it's just... There are a number of training opportunities. The whole process of incident command is really preached to a high degree. Right. It's very intuitive for some people. It does not come easily to me. I took the training up at the So Public Safety Center. It was interesting. I think I took the training for incident command one. I think it was the middle of July 2011 and a month and a half later, we were putting it into practice after Irene. So, I guess more later, right, Mike? Yeah. And this is just put it on our radar screen. I think it's something let's discuss, you know, if people are available, you know, just email me. I could give you the contact information on where, you know, I know it's a commitment of, you know, time to attend this emergency preparedness conference, but, you know, it's always good that, you know, at least the select board, and this is something I learned from the emergency management directors, you need to, you shouldn't do it because it's typically not someone on a select board who's an emergency management director. It's a fire chief or someone, you know. I have no, I could see doing it. The biggest concern I told Barb I might have is possibly in the future with travel and stuff like that, you know, would I be able to commit that and say, you can't be here every time. You just have to have backups. And those are the kind of things, you know, Barb's been so trained in this and, you know, I'm sure she works well with Bill because she knows this stuff, but it's like everything. We're gonna probably have at some point, we're gonna have a change with Bill. Bill's gonna retire at some point and we're gonna have to work with Katie shaking her head, no, but Bill will retire and we will have to have some sort of transition and you don't wanna, you know, just wait until it happens and then just, you know, panic, you know, there has to be a good transition in all these positions. Well, I did go to a couple of courses and just active. Forget who I went with on one of them and we were so not impressed. We got up and walked out the door there about halfway through it. And as far as, you know, what you're looking to do, I applaud you for being interested in doing it. I hope to hell that, you know, if something, if we have a catastrophe that you're more valuable than FEMA was there during Irene's, from what I understand, they were as worthless as it's on a chicken. But so, yeah, I mean, we can make this discussion up next year and more power to you, Mike. Yeah, it's just, it's good stuff. And, you know, we're really lucky that we have Barb, you know, it's rare that a town has someone with that level of training, you know, in that position. So, you know, I had my fears, but she kind of, we had a long conversation and she kind of talked me off the ledge. Okay, we got to kind of jump towards budgets. Our budget items here, because we're a little overdue. Okay, Bill, your ball game. Okay, so I sent out two emails today, one early this morning, and then one just before I left to go home for supper and sent out financial statements. I don't have the ability here with me to, you know, share my screen or anything, I've just got paper copies. So, except for Cheryl, I think, and Orca, everybody else probably has what I'm talking about. I'll spend as much or as little time on this as you like. I'll start with the budget, I guess, which is the three operating funds, Fund 11, 12, and 13, the general fund, the highway fund and the library fund. And I sent a narrative this afternoon, a brief one pager. And we're through, this budget is through the end of August. August 31st. So we're through 67% of the year as far as the calendar is concerned. And on the budget side of things, especially on the expense side, we are far below that percentage, which is good. That's where I wanna be, especially this year. As we did take lots of steps to reduce spending, we laid off a significant portion of our staff. We cut ours, and we've cut back on many of the projects that we had hoped to do, all the hope of saving some money. And we ultimately turned around last month, or the month before, I guess it was August, and set the tax rate four cents lower than we had authority for, which gave back about $305,000 of unbilled revenue. So the taxpayers as a whole are billed $305,000 less than they would have been. I looked at the revenues first, and that continues to be the big question mark. As I reported in that narrative this afternoon, there are some things like town clerk's fees and planning fees where we're running ahead of budget even, ahead of even our budget that was approved in March. The town clerk has taken in $66,500 as of the end of August, which is 76% of the projected revenue. So if things keep on pace and there was no drop-off, and Carla can tell you if there's typically a drop-off, I tend to think as we move towards November and December, things slow down a little bit, real estate transactions, typically slow down, the holidays come. But if we continue at the pace that we're at, the town clerk's fees would be about $100,000. I'm thinking they're gonna come in somewhere between 93 and 95, which will still be above budget. We're in a similar situation with the planning fees, not quite as far ahead there. Those do generally drop off as we move into the colder weather months. People stop pulling permits, but it looks like we'll probably make our revenue projection there. The big question marks still are the pilot payments and the other payments that come from the state. I think I told you the last time that we talked about budgets that in my communication with the state representatives, Theresa Wood in particular, she indicated that the state, the formula for pilot, not only used the 2019 insured values for the state, but it also uses the revenues that came through June 30th of this year. And certainly the tail end of the year, they declined rather precipitously. So I'm not sure yet what's gonna happen. I've been led to believe that we'll probably be closer to what we expected for a pilot this year than not, but I think 2021 will be an issue. So looking at the other expenses that we pay only once a year, so things like transfers to the capital funds, some insurances, some debt that we pay late in the year. If you look at these different departments, they're a little skewed percentage-wise below really what they should be because if we were paying our debt like we all pay our mortgages, if we were paying it once a month, we would have paid 67% of our debt service already in the year, but we typically don't pay debt until late in the year when we collect our taxes. So those line items are riding far behind. Factored that in, I prorated the debt and even and the debt and the transfers to the capital funds. So it's looking to me that there's a reasonable possibility in the general funds that we might be about a half a million dollars below what we actually budgeted. At the end of September, when I do the next budget report, what I would do is plug the numbers in. If you remember, shortly after COVID hit, I think it was in April, I kind of did a restructuring if you will of the budget and I projected revenues and I projected expenses. I'll try to plug the numbers into that spreadsheet again. So we'll have a kind of a side-by-side comparison of what the budget was, what my initial projections were and what the year end is really gonna look like. I think right now, the picture looks better than it did when I made my more towards the worst case scenario right after we did this. I suggested in that budget restructuring back in April that perhaps we would not make all of our transfers to the capital funds and we could justify that because we cut some of the spending in our capital funds but if we can make all those transfers to the capital funds even though we're not gonna spend all that money that we had planned on this year, if we're still able to make those transfers and still have a budget that's three to $500,000 less than our initial budget was, we should make the transfers if at all possible. That will help the capital funds going forward but we do have that ability I think to hedge our bets and typically don't make the transfers to the capital funds until December anyway. So we should have a good handle on things. The other real unknown in terms of revenues of course is what property taxes are gonna look like. If you look at the balance sheet for fund 11 which shows the assets and liabilities, does everybody have that? I've got a couple copies here of our assets. No, not the portfolio. The portfolio. The balance sheet that looks like this that I sent this morning at 7.30. The wife printed off what she thought I would need in the home bill. Okay, well anyway, for those of you who do have the balance sheet, right now we have through the end of August we have $14,109,000 of assets. That's the sheet I'm talking about. You can see there, three or four lines down from the top where it says current tax receivable and it says $14,600,000. And then what I did, I took that number $14,600,000 and I added the, well what I actually did was I took the liability which is due to school found in the liabilities, $11,545,000 and I added what we have to pay to the general fund, what we have to pay to the highway fund and the library fund. So I came up with a number that we've, we actually build about $15,485,000 and you don't have that number anywhere on that sheet. I've just written it in by hand. So when I look at this current tax receivable $14,600,000 when I do the math, we're collected by the end of August, about $882,000 of the three plus million dollars that we need to collect. So, people are paying and as I told you, even though we pushed the due date off until November there are some people who just don't like to wait until the end and they pay early. So we've probably by now we've probably collected a million dollars worth of the money that's gonna come to the municipality but I'm still expecting that we will have a greater than average delinquency rate when we get to the end of the year. So until we really get a good handle on how much taxes people actually paid as opposed to what we build and then until we find out what we get from pilot current use and forest and parks payments from the state, altogether that's about almost $400,000 from those three sources together. Those are the big question marks right now. The tax delinquency and how much we get from the state. If we get everything that we had originally budgeted from the state that'll go a long way to making up for any delinquency that's above and beyond the normal. We typically have collected about 98% of our taxes. There's a chart here in the annual report of the point for taxes, 18. In 2019, we had a 0.64% delinquency rate when we went to publication for the town report. So that means we have a 99.35% collection rate typically in 2015, we had a delinquency rate of about 1.18%. So that's about a 98.9% collection rate. So we typically do well with collecting our taxes, but this year is an odd lying year and we won't know until we really get to the end how it's gonna turn out. I'm thinking that it won't be as bad as it was in Irene when we had lots of devastation in the village district in particular, but I do expect that there will be some people and businesses who just aren't able to pay their taxes. So we'll see where we are at that point, but things are looking better than I expected back in April and May, which is a good thing. On that balance sheet, the general fund balance sheet for Fund 11, if you look at the liabilities, about halfway down the page, you'll see that we still have about $1.68 million outstanding in tax anticipation notes that we owe to the bank and to EFUD. So even though we have $683,000 at the end of August in the checking account, at the time we still owed 1.679 million in tax anticipation borrowing, we have paid some of that in September. I didn't print this balance sheet out as of today, but I know our general fund checking account was carrying a balance that was pushing $900,000. So I did pay down the, so I think this 1.679 is higher than it is right now, actually, but we still have to pay that debt off. I'll pause there for, well, one last thing before I pause for questions. I think I did put this in the memo. Our recreation funds, we are doing better than anticipated as far as net expenses are concerned. Nick has done a really good job of trying to meet the needs of the community with this academic camp that he has going on now. We were able to run our programs this summer, we couldn't run a pool program, as you know, but when we put our budget together in the spring, the net expenses to run the rec department was about $255,000. So that was the expenses and then subtract the revenues that we anticipated getting. And we thought it would cost the taxpayers about $255,000 to run the rec program. We did get a 33, I think it's $33,342 grant from the state to help us with expanding our recreation program, buying equipment that we needed to do the socially distancing stuff that was required over the summer and is continued to be required with the academy that they're running now. So our revenues, of course, are significantly lower than we anticipated, but our expenses are somewhat lower than anticipated. Right now, if you did the math, the net expense for the year is about $82,500. That's gonna go up because, you know, there's transfers to the CIP fund that has to happen and there's still four months worth of payroll for Nick to pay. But even doing that, I think that our net expense to run recreation this year is gonna be probably not more than 185,000. So that's a savings of about $70,000 from what we anticipated. The pool not being open is a big reason for that. We budgeted almost $92,000 for pool expenses. And when it was all said and done, we've spent about $16,200 for pool. And most of that was spent early in the year when we were doing the lessons and lifeguard training at First and Fitness. And, you know, some of it was spent over the summer because we did run a little bit of swimming lessons at the Waterbury Center State Park. So we did have some lifeguard expense, but clearly, you know, we haven't even spent 20% of what we anticipated on pool expenses. So that's one of the reasons why, but I guess all in all what I'm trying to do is to report that the strategy that we put in place back in the spring to cut spending, to really try to pull in the rains seems to be paying off now. And I think we're weather the storm through this year. Am I promising that we will not have a deficit at the end of the year? No, I'm not promising that. I'm thinking that the deficit is probably gonna be less than I projected back in April. I think we'll probably be able to make most of our transfers if not all to the CIP funds, but then we'll have to see what things look like going forward, what kind of information we get from the state with regard to pilot payments and the like in 2021. If they're off significantly, you know, we still may have to do some work on reducing a budget for next year. I'm not positive of that. Everything that I've said carries over really to the highway fund and the library fund as well. Most of the savings in both of those funds will be because we reduce staff. We laid off staff in both of those departments pretty heavily and we have reduced spending in many areas as best we can for the operating side of things. I think you all know that we have completed the paving projects for the year. Maple Street has been paved. Portions of Guptell Road have been shimmed up. The bills have not come in yet for that. So I can't tell you exactly how much the paving costs, but we've tried to spend that half a million dollars that we have available. And with that, I'll stop and let you ask some questions if you have any. Well, I thought your memos were excellent. Gave me a real good idea. I was actually very pleased to hear where we are at at this point in time. I was wondering, and I think you answered that, is that the tax collection so far this year, people paying in advance due to, we usually have an August tax payment that some people have come and paid their taxes in advance is great. I'm just a little wondering, because in your memo, the second memo you talked about, we gave away the $305,000 in build revenue when we set the tax rate. I don't think that's, is that good? I don't think that's gonna be a factor. I think, again, we still have some unknowns. We have to see what comes through. I think pilot is a huge one. You see what the pilot number comes out to be. But I think we're on projection, you know? Yeah, well, if you look at the budget for Fund 11, the revenues, the first line, you can see right there what I'm talking about. We approved a budget at town meeting that required $1,832,780 of taxes. When we build taxes, we gave away that $0.04. And what we're actually gonna get in the general fund now is $1,570, and that's if everybody pays everything. So it is a factor, you know, there's no way around it. We have given away that $305,000 worth of revenue. But to the point I think that you're trying to make the reductions that we made in spending have right now look like that they will balance that 305 off completely, if not more. Right. The unknowns is, you know, if that pilot payment doesn't come through at $300,000 like we're expecting, that's gonna be a little bit problematic. But I think we're in as good a position as we can be right now with some rather major unknowns still out there. How is the library, because you put it says the library operating fund is in the same situation and projects to year and spending about 90% of budget. Why I would think that the, is it because of the reduced reduction in staff hours that we're at that level? Because I would think, you know, there's not gonna be much income coming in from the library. Well, there's not much income anyway. That's $113,000, you should have that income and expense report page 1112 of what I sent you this morning, I think. Anyway, the library revenues were supposed to be $503,000, $484,000 of which were from taxes. They're at 98% of their revenue now, they're gonna take in the remaining $6,500 worth of money that they're gonna get from their trust fund. They've had some donations and the like. And you know, like every other department they did reduce spending, we had layoffs there. Right now, this is showing that they're at about 36%, 37% of total spending for the year. But again, the debt and their payment to the municipal building operating fund lags behind. We don't make that payment until the end. But when I factored that into the equation, it looks like the library will spend about 90% of its initial budget. And most of that savings will be in the regular pay line due to the layoffs that they had. So that's in line with where I think the highway department is gonna end up then it's a little bit higher spending level than I'm hoping the general fund ends up that. So. Can I answer my question? Okay. Okay, if there's no other questions on budget stuff I would like to go to the other part of that memo which is what I sent out early this morning and just quickly touch base about our investment portfolios. And I said in that this morning when I wrote that I'm considering selling some equities that as the market prices are still relatively high. The market has a drop precipitously in March. We had some significant losses on paper. And then really since May the stock market has been climbing back, gaining back almost everything that it had initially given up. In February, before the market crashed not because I knew anything was gonna happen with COVID but simply because the market was really very close to it's all time high, we did initiate sales from the Tax Stabilization Fund and from the Cemetery Fund in particular that the town has. And we sold off a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of equities then and then the market dropped considerably. So that looked like it was the smartest thing that I could ever do. But it wasn't because I had a crystal ball it's just that it seemed like a good time to kind of skim some cream off the top. We needed some cash at the time and rather than go out and borrow money felt we could take some of our equities. In my plan for later this year we had talked in April also about the fact that we do plan to do some borrowing. We're gonna pay, I hope we're gonna pay ourselves back some of the money that we have been borrowing from ourselves replace that with low interest borrowing from a bank so we can actually get some cash back into the coffers. And my hope was that I would start to reinvest what we had taken out earlier in the year over the next 12 months or so. I speculated that maybe it was time to take a little bit more out. Chris pointed out in the text that he sent me this afternoon. Well, it's maybe too late the market kind of tank today, which it did but it looks like at least for today and maybe for the next couple of days that it hit its bottom. I think it went down to about 850 down and it ended about 510 down. So it rebounded about 350 points from its worst this morning. But even at down 800 on the day that's really only about 2.5% of the Dow Jones industrial average. So I'm thinking that right now I'll just kind of pay attention to what's going on in the market. And my plan is that over the next 12 months we can reinvest some of the money that we've taken out especially if the market drops again. At this point, I guess I wouldn't sell anything. I think we're gonna be in a period of pretty high volatility now at least through the election and maybe the end of the year and there's a lot of speculation what can happen. There's a lot of politics going on of course right now and the markets don't like uncertainty. So I think you're gonna see some pretty big swings up and down over the next several weeks and it probably doesn't make sense to do anything with it. I did show you on this memo and I sent the portfolios out if you wanted to see more specifically what some of the equity funds are what are the tax stabilization fund? That fund is actually through August it's up about $15,000 from what it was almost $16,000 from what it was at the first of the year at $1,017,400. Now the equity value at the end of August was about 387 that's probably, well, I know for certain it's lower now because the market has kind of ticked down for the last three weeks and the last five to seven days have been even a steeper drop. So we probably lost a little bit from where we were in August the funds still is in pretty good shape. If you look at that balance sheet or look at the memo I show you there that we have a net loan to other funds to ourselves from the tax stabilization fund of about $630,000 right now and that's what I'm hoping that we will end up paying ourselves back borrowing rather than from ourselves from an outside source to get some more cash into the coffers so that we can use it to buy the fire truck that we're gonna be getting probably delivery of in October and some of the other things that we need to finance through the capital expenditures that we have. So that fund is in good shape right now where we'll end at the by year's end, who knows but it is interesting that even with as large of a drop that we had in that fund back in the spring that it's actually up. And frankly, the reason it's up it probably would be up higher if we hadn't taken money out of the equity funds but that kind of parachuted or went down the roller coaster and now it's going back up but I think we're continuing to manage that fund as we've expected. The cemetery fund is doing quite well. Also have over $560,000 in that fund about 430,000 in equities and the rest in cash. And then those two smaller funds the CC Fisher fund, that's the fund that it's available to provide training or equipment to the fire department and then the Veterans Monument Fund that's kind of self-explanatory. We use that to maintain and clean and upgrade the various Veterans Monuments around the community. So I'll stop again if you have questions certainly ask if you're all set. I'm done. No, the volatility of the stock market like you said is due to several reasons and one of them quite frankly is the people that make their money in the stock market are playing cards right now. Like Kenny Rogers said, no one to hold them, no one to fold them and they folded them today. A lot of them. The first guy to fold them is the winner. A little bit. I think we've all become accustomed when you hear the market drops a thousand points we all kind of wow a thousand points it's a thousand points on a market that was up around 29,000 or 27,000 it's very different than when it dropped a thousand points 15 years ago when the market was at 12,000. So it's a big number but the percentages are not all that different and for the most part, we are not, the town is not an individual or a family. The expectation is the town is going to be here in perpetuity and I think generally we have been best served by buying quality securities and just holding them when the market drops prices go down. Most of the funds that we own are balanced funds or income funds. They have lots of equity funds. So 60-40 equities to bonds. There's a considerable amount of interest that gets kicked off by the bonds and there's generally most of the equity funds that we own are pretty significant dividends and when those dividends and interest get spun off we just reinvest it. And then the interest in dividends hit we buy good securities that are 10% discount from what they are now and eventually when they go up we end up with more money. So buying and holding for us none of us are counting on any of this money to support us in retirement and everything else. When you've got retirement money that your family depends on I think your stomach is probably churned and I know mine does a little bit more when I'm thinking of my own money but this money that is the town's money generally we're best served by just riding it out. We have to pay attention of course and you're expected to be good stewards of fiduciary responsibility the principle that you're going to do what's right kind of buy what the common ordinary man would do that's an expectation but for the most part holding these funds has not hurt the town. What I'm saying I guess is that the key is and you already exercised that this spring is to use those funds as backup when the economy falls short when our revenue source falls short typically what happens is when that occurs in some cases everybody's fall short and he has to pull some of that off before that happens and have it in reserve so that when things do fall short you've got the backup there to play in symbol yep it's trying to guess rolling the dice guessing what the market's going to do when it's going to do it is a game and the reason that Carl and I decided to sell off some of the securities this spring in February we had basically a bull market for the last decade there's been some ups and downs of course but really since the financial crisis of the late 2008-2009 the market has pretty much been going up the whole time it was near record levels so the expectation is well how much higher can it go and you know I'm not one that's going to try to say well I'm going to hang on to it for another three weeks because it might go two or three percent higher the likelihood that it's going to go down 15% at that point is much higher than it's going to go up 15% when it's going up up up so that's why we decided to sell when it was at what turned out to be it's you know top of the market and we were lucky that it worked out that way if we had delayed for another two months well we would have been saying well it's not time to sell now but it broke right for us this time and we try to pay attention and speculate listen to all your comments what might happen come next year hopefully things will sugar out so that we don't get hurt too bad but I guess the last meeting when I asked you about our portfolio and how we were doing thinking to myself you've got some pushing there in the spring for us whether or not we should by watching the market if we should take advantage of any more of that in anticipation of speculating that maybe things won't be so quite so good next year but that's that's anybody's guess I think we're in a pretty good position right now unless anybody else got anything else to put in there on this I'll call it a night motion to adjourn thank you still with us looks like we're headed out alright appreciate everything you did Bill Carla thank you board for being here tonight and see you at the next meeting next meeting I'm going to try to have Lieutenant White from the state police at the next meeting Chris and I have talked a little bit about this I've had some conversations with some other people in the community about it just to let you know and it's not too early to start thinking about it but the contract that we have with the state police runs through June of 21 so in our budget for next year we have to have six months worth of the state police contract I'll be reaching out to Ingrid Jonas at the state police who is the contact person for the overall contract probably a little bit in a month or two to just say we're starting our budget process first we have to find out A is the state police even willing to continue the contract they may decide that this isn't for them but the board needs to keep that in mind it's a thousand dollars a day the contract is $365,000 right now my guess would be if we keep everything the same it would probably go up a little bit it was a three year contract and there was no escalator in the contract at all so we need to start thinking about that we'll talk to Lieutenant White hopefully at the next meeting so you can ask questions about the service that is being provided whether you think that we're getting our money's worth or not those are all things that you have to figure out the other thing Chris mentioned earlier tonight about the animal control officer I have not heard from anyone about that Peter Tramel said to me today he called me on a different issue he said that you know if the board wanted to talk to him about it he would consider doing it again and I think Peter had a lot of good brought a lot of good to the position but I think that there's also a tendency Peter's part to sometimes really burn through staff it's a high maintenance thing so I'm not opposed to having him do it again but I think that if the board wants to talk to him we've got to get an understanding Chris you know Peter very well and he says what's on his mind is that the most effective way to make friends with people that you're working with and that's an issue that we'll have to iron out if we're going to go down that road yeah you got to know how to take him and he stopped a couple days ago there to see me and talk briefly about the old position so if you want I can try to make a range I don't know how to do zoom but we'll I think we're going to talk about this tonight but you know as far as the opening of the office is concerned we as staff believe that we're providing the service that the community needs right now we definitely do not want to open the office just to anyone before the election happens there's just there's too much involved in that the election we're all going to get ballots mailed to us by the secretary of state's office and then you'll either mail them back here or bring them and dropping them in the drop box we will not be having any voting here at the office before the election it's just you know we talked about it the other day and with the current protocols you know we'd have to have a line with markings on the sidewalk all the way out keeping people six feet apart could only have one person in at the at the office I think people into this building is not an easy process right now Carla there will be in person voting at the school on election day however right yes that's correct we're doing it at school okay so we're allowed now I have to open for in person voting if our offices are open to the public we do so we're closed right now except by appointment only and as far as the office day-to-day work is concerned we need to stay close through through the election anyway and then we can revisit that because it's just when Carla was talking to me about the protocols and what's necessary to deal with people coming into this building to vote it's just it's not doable we cannot provide the social distancing that's required so I think you know Carla had good experience during the primary we managed to get through that without having people come into this office building that was all by mail I believe but it wasn't even okay so that was that one was you had to request a ballot versus being automatically mail the ballot right okay so do you want to talk to Peter at the next meeting did you the last discussion again yeah we I did I put it on fun porch form and you know it's Lisa Scolati put it in the no one jumped on it I do want to talk with him and express my concerns over the feedback I received years ago from some of his interactions so I just want him to be aware of that and those are some of my concerns is that he represents the town in that role and I know that quite a few people had some interactions with him they didn't know where professional are appropriate so you know I think I just want to talk that through with him a little bit more but yeah that's reasonable and just to be clear the animal control officer is an appointment by the select board it is not an appointment that I make this is one of the few positions that the select board themselves will get to make so it's perfectly appropriate Mark to have kind of conversations and you know I think we definitely need an animal control officer there's been a couple of incidents in the last couple of months one just a couple of weeks ago that you know really kind of begs for some intervention but you got to have the right person to do it and I think he's able to do it it's just sometimes the bedside manner is the important thing that needs to be communicated just an FYI before we leave next meeting I'm there's a strong possibility I may not be in attendance it's my wife's birthday come along okay motion been made to adjourn and seconded unless there's anything else of you guys next meeting