 I'll call to order this meeting of the Waterbury Select Board on Thursday, the 4th of January. The first item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all of you say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? The agenda is approved as warned. The second item on the agenda is a dog bite hearing. And I'd like to just start by apologizing that we've been having some challenges in terms of recruiting and retaining animal control officer during the two years that I've been on the board here. It's a challenging position and so as a result we don't have as much control enforcement that maybe we should, but we are here to hear this hearing. And I guess I'll ask for the folks that pose the complaint to come forward first and then we'll hear from the other parties. Yes. And Roger, just as a practice, this is something where folks would be directing comments to you as chair regarding the situation as opposed to a dialogue? Right. Yes. Thanks to all your comments to me as chair and other members of the board will be asking questions. If you wouldn't mind coming up and introduce yourselves. It just helps for the Zoom. Yes, it helps with the microphones and everything. You can sit down. Of course you can stand up. Jokes is in the hole. So, just your names first. Kristen Graham. And my name is Travis Lowell. And the incident happened on December 23rd at approximately 10.45 a.m. We were sitting in the kitchen and all of a sudden I heard one of our chickens squawking pretty good. So, I ran out to see what was happening and saw someone sitting on the edge of our property hollering to their dog. So, went out further off the back porch and saw that the dog had killed one of our chickens. I guess that's the short version of it. I mean, I just feel that, you know, there's obviously rules that were broken and that's why we're here. There should be, you know, some reinforcement of the leash law and all the rules that were broken. And how about indemnification for the lost bird? She offered to pay that day. She did give us cash that she had on her. And I just do also want to say that, you know, we love animals and we're not here trying to get anything done to the dog. You know, we don't have any harm or anything done to the dog at all. We're here because, you know, yeah, it was painful for us. We were in quite a shock and didn't know what to do for a little while there. And we called the state police to try and figure out what the steps were that we had to do. But I just feel, like you said, it's been an ongoing situation for you guys to find someone. And maybe it's time to, like, seek an alternate route than, you know, filling that position. You're trying to find a different type of position for at least give tickets to people or something. Because, you know, living on beside the ball field, this is everyday situation, you know. This has happened to her in 2020 where one of her chickens were killed back then and the person actually took the chicken with them to hide the evidence. So this isn't the first time this has happened. We've had to put a dog fence up for our own dog for his safety because we have had dogs coming up trying to attack him as well while he was on a dog run on our own property. The state police last spring told us to put up posted private property signs, which we did. But obviously that has not helped, nor does it block someone from getting their animal once it's on our land. And dogs can't read either. Only the very smartest ones. Were the chickens within this fenced area? No. Well, chickens can fly a little bit but they were on our property. The fenced in areas for the dog. So you're seeking more enforcement of the leash law? Correct. Anything beyond that? That's really what we would like. We have dogs, maybe not only this incident, but the gooping and peeing on our property. It's just constant. And this was a horrific thing to watch because when I walked outside, the chicken was literally still fluffing and all her feathers have been ripped out of her back. And there's parts of her meat and stuff on the ground that she was still alive while it was happening. It was pretty traumatic. I got super upset and super emotional and was yelling. I'm not going to deny that because I was really upset. We don't want to necessarily force you to go through further trauma with that. So we're trying to look at what can we do going forward to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. I have to ask, would you consider putting up a fence to further secure your property? If the town wants to pay for it? If I pay for yours and you have to pay for the rights. I mean, I think this is a town situation where they need to do something because if you can't find somebody and you're allowing dogs constantly down there. And also, the signs you have down there kind of contradicts the rules and regulations of having dogs on the field. They're not even supposed to be on the field, period. Well, again, you know, and I didn't put up those signs, but clearly the interpretation of the town back in 2015 was that you are allowed to bring your dogs on a leash on Dacrop. Just not on the playing fields, not on the bleachers, and maybe there's one other thing. But they have signs showing a person holding a dog with a leash and says you're not allowed to have the dogs on playing fields on the bleachers. But the indication is that according to that ordinance passed eight years ago, they did expect the dogs would be allowed down there, but on the leash. Does anyone need to say something? Any comments after? Okay. Any questions from the board? Yeah, Katie, I will. Do you use your chickens for livestock and sell the eggs? We do, and they also are used to feed us. The type of chicken she was was a rodent on the red. They actually produce the most eggs out of many breeds of chickens where it's 300 a year, where others are less. She just started laying. She was still laying where we had to not laying anymore, so we were getting only four eggs a day now, and now we're only down to three. And we have a family of three, so. And we can't really afford to hurt with any, like we were. So, I'll be wise. Anyone else? Mike. You said that the dog owner enumerated you in some way, shape, or form. Was that commensurate with the value of the chicken? No. No. It was $16 cash. Okay. But if I understood you correctly, you're not asking for further remuneration from... No, we're not. This to us is not about money. It's about a pet. I think it's more to us about something needs to be done with the dog issue. Okay. Well, we are ideally going to try to solve this before 7 o'clock. If that doesn't happen, we have scheduled a deliberative session later on at the end of our meeting tonight. And so, can't solve things to satisfaction of the board. Before then, we'll be talking about it later on. So, it seems like maybe two solutions needed. One, you know, the specific situation of, like, what might need to be done for follow-up on, you know, the dog and owner in this situation with making sure everything's up to date. Talking about leash laws, if there's a penalty to provide or not, making sure the dog is, you know, registered, et cetera. And then making sure you're satisfied with, like, the current situation. And then secondly, what could be potentially a bigger discussion about how do we start, you know, having more enforcement, better signage, more clear, you know, if there's a penalty, what is it, is that posted anywhere. And that, transparently, will probably take multiple meetings, you know. So, is that kind of how you're looking at it? And that's kind of how you're, what you're looking at as well. A current, like, present and then a bigger. Yeah, we understand that's not going to get solved tonight. Perfect. Thank you. Anyone else? Don. Just a question. Since you live right there. Aside from signage, is there anything else we could do, aside from signage and trying to hire someone, is there anything else we could do to think that would improve the situation down there? The only other way to improve it, I mean, people know their signs, they know what they're doing. The only way to improve it is to penalize people. And I don't, I mean, I think it needs to be more than like $20 fine because I think someone's just going to look at that and be like, oh, whatever. They walk off. But I think the biggest concern here is, I'm having all these dogs that on my property as well from this, just this incident. But I don't know if they're vaccinated. I don't know if they have, you know, parasites or something where they're pooping on my lawn and my dog could get it. So, you know, it's all these things with these wandering dogs and I really feel like it needs to be taken care of. And I don't know what the best solution would be for that right now, but I'm tired of it. And speaking of, you know, you were asking if we were willing to put up a fence. I mean, 75% of our yard is fenced in. It is, because it's, we're right at the end of Manuski Street. So all our neighbors have wooden fences all along. So we went off and put up a fence on this side that goes to our back porch. So the only part that's open is our driveway area. So the dogs aren't coming up the hill? Yes, well, but our driveway is, you know. Oh, your driveway goes up the hill? Right. Okay. Like, people's dogs will come through our driveway and run to the cemetery. And then their owners will chase them. I mean, time and time again. And they ask one lady, and they're like, hey, there's a leash. And she's like, I know. Okay. Mike, have you saw this dog before, Offleesh? It's been multiple times. Not this particular dog. Not this particular dog. Father dog. But I mean, she was with another person and we've seen that person many occasions with two dogs, Offleesh. Yeah. Thank you for your listening. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. We're coming in. Anyone else like to come forward to address this issue? Any comments? Sure. If you wouldn't mind just coming up and identifying yourself. Sure. They, this is all recorded. So it's easier when you have the microphone. My name is, my name is Denise McCarty, M-C-C-A-R-T-Y. I am good friends with Kristen Graham, and I support her. It was a very upsetting situation. I would like to remind the select board that there is an animal control ordinance. And in this particular situation, there's at least four sections of the ordinance. That was violated. So section four running at large, section five domestic pets on public grounds and cruelty to domestic pets, which is also section five and section seven. And then section 12 is mandatory license, which I understand this dog is not licensed and does not have proof of vaccination given to the town. So I wanted to bring that up in this meeting. And, you know, and I think it was you that might have said, you know, what, what can be done to better help these kinds of situations. And my opinion would be that just remind people that there is an animal control ordinance in effect for the town of Waterbury, whether you posted on the Waterbury Front porch forum quarterly, like especially, you know, maybe seasonally as well. I wasn't there when this event happened, but I have had my own encounters with dogs off leash when I've walked on Randall Street, when I've walked at the Waterbury Complex and in those fields behind the complex. And, you know, a couple of times they were pretty scary because I'm a small stature and when you have a big dog charging at you, not on leash, like, you know, it makes this generation pretty scary. So that's why I, you know, I'm here to support my friend and just to advocate better enforcement of the leash law that is in place within the town. And also just the animal control ordinance. I understand that, you know, the difficulty of securing an animal control officer, but asking property owners to put it more fencing on their property seems unreasonable to me when they already have their dog leashed or, excuse me, their dog contained in their own fence in property. And that was all. I don't want to ramble on, but I just wanted to provide some comment for the board to consider because I know that, you know, you have the ability to impose civil penalties depending on, you know, the violations. And honestly, like, there's enough violations here that it's pretty serious. And, you know, maybe that would send a message. I don't know what the updated animal fee schedule is. I know it was talked about in October. I believe the first offense is $50. So, you know, I just, well, I wouldn't want the dog to be harmed in any way. I am an animal lover. I've had three dogs at once, so I completely understand. But I do feel this is a serious situation with an unfortunate, you know, ending occurrence. So that's all. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. But anyone else like to come forward? Chris, thanks for allowing me to speak on this. The young lady said that trying to make people more aware of the ordinance is one possibility. I think people have been, that's been beat into people's head enough that they should be completely aware of the ordinance. Some people, you might as well talk to that post, you're going to get that much reaction out of them because they just simply don't care. And they don't care about landowner's rights. By default, I think in this particular situation, we don't have an animal control officer. Under the circumstances of what I'm seeing and hearing here, you guys, by default, are the animal control officers. Not that you take that position, but if something's brought in front of you, you're going to have to deal with it. I would suggest that property owners, if possible, get the name of these people who are allowing their dogs to run free, come to you and either you can start out with a warning with these people. I think you're wasting your time doing that because they're just going to do it again. But start to impose fines to make them pay attention. And I don't mean just the $20 fine or $50 is reasonable. The second offense should be double that. And if the activity continues to happen, then maybe they lose the right of certain areas to walk their dogs completely. One other thing that nobody's mentioned here tonight, just so the select board knows this, and I know nobody's going to want to hear it, but when it comes to livestock and dogs attacking livestock, you have the right under state law to eliminate that dog because I've been through it. My son raises chickens and he's had many of them wiped out at times from neighbors' dogs. So just that's my thought on this subject. Next question. Who is here? Are we asking to hear from the owner? Are we asking to hear from the dog owner? Yeah, Amy would you like to address the group? Sure. I was walking my dog and Amy, I was walking my dog was off leash. He's great voice control, but he is a prey predator and got a chicken from the ladies property I called him right back, he dropped the chicken, he came and sat right next to me. I proceeded to pay her, she took a picture, me of paying her, put it all over Facebook, he is put on front porch form, he is licensed and he has all his shots. I am very sorry it happened, but here it is. But at the time he was not licensed? He was not licensed because it was seven days before Christmas and I had moved to the previous spring and was waiting and that was my bad. I apologize for that. The chicken to buy, the chicken is three dollars. The red Rhode Island, they were about three bucks to buy and I paid her sixteen dollars. So yes, he was not licensed, but he is licensed, he's up to date. The vet can vouch. I apologize for the situation. And we'll keep him on a leash. Any questions? Nope. Thank you for coming on. I know that we are looking at reviewing the fees for dog licensing, possibly dog penalties for infractions as well. Do you have anything to report on that? No, we're meeting tomorrow first before this. Good timing. Okay. Just curious if anyone wanted to propose a fee, an infraction fee in this case. How does it work? Because according to this there was four infractions. I know the fee schedule under the Animal Control Office ordinance has civil penalties, first violation, fifty dollars, second violation, fifty, third violation, seventy-five, fourth, a hundred. That's how it exists. Probably not sufficient. But how does that work if there are multiple issues? Is that considered one violation? Or is that a disaster? My interpretation of that would be an incident. In sixty seconds, one thing happened and it just happened to cause three things. So my interpretation would be the incident fee for this incident. And then should something happen again, it steps up. I don't disagree. I was kind of just asking a question. Yeah, that was my interpretation. Part of the work we were hoping to get to tomorrow was to define that more clearly and perhaps bring to the board and ordinance update at some point soon. Well, we have a recommendation from a couple people here that we increase the awareness that there is an ordinance and this dog was both unlicensed and off leash and attacked a chicken somebody else's property. So I think that that qualifies as an incident. So I would entertain a motion to impose a fifty dollar fine for the infraction. I would second that motion. I'll make the motion that the only way that we're going to get any kind of corrective action, if any, is incurring fines. And if that's in front porch forum or whatever around about that there was a fine and pause, people may think twice. Some may still do that activity but it's going to get progressive, you know, progressively. And in lieu of us, I wish we did have an animal control officer. We did, the person had to resign. We found it very difficult to engage an animal control officer. But in lieu of not having one, I think there has to be some fine involved. That's why I'm proposing a fifty dollar fine for this incident as being the first incident, first violation. What is the motion? The motion is... The motion is just... Maybe I went into the discussion. A motion is for a fifty dollar fine as a first violation for the dog animal owner. So I will second. I will second it to move into discussion. Okay. Move and second it for the discussion. I think I'm really torn because I think in some ways it, as Mike mentioned, people will hear about it and might turn or have people be more cautious. But I also think that in terms of the person in this incident, fifty dollars is significantly less harsh than the experience that they're going through and how difficult it is to deal with what happened. So I just feel like, I don't know, that's an important piece to think like for themselves, the deterrent, I think, is what they're dealing with and going through right now, what they know the other people are going through and not ever wanting to be in the situation again, not the fifty dollar check that they're going to have to write to the town. And if people know that fines are given, perhaps there will be some change. I think Denise, I'm going to make a suggestion about quarterly update. Like quarterly announcement. And I think that's fantastic because it's not just people who've been here forever ignoring rules. It's people who are new to town. It's people who've come of age and get a dog. It's family's first dogs who maybe have not looked at the rules because they've never had a dog before. So that kind of awareness and updated and clear ordinance, all of those things are our responsibility and I'm glad we're on that track. Okay. I think I disagree a little bit before we made the motion, Danny, with the, yes it is one incident, but I kind of would, I guess I would compare it to getting pulled over, right? So you speed, you get pulled over. If you, this dog was unlicensed, if you get pulled over for speeding and you don't have a license, too violation. You know? And it snowballs from there. So if the original violation of the dog crossing into the yard had never happened, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all, right? But it transcended one violation after the next, and now someone's livestock is dead. So I would, I would probably count each violation at, like if we're tallying, I would count them each as an individual violation, not just one incident at large. Well, it's a little past seven o'clock, so I do want to move forward. I'm going to support the motion as moved. I think, you know, we can have further debate on the amount of fines and what is really going to bear some, bearing on corrective behavior. But I think given the ordinances we've got and the directives that we've got, I think that's the option most open to us right now, so I'm going to support it as moved. Further discussion? Okay, hearing no further discussion, let's vote. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? All abstaining? Because I didn't say anything. Staying? Yeah, I thought we were going to do deliberate session is where I thought you were going to say anything. The vote was being called, but that's okay. All right, well, the motion carries. We'll impose a $50 fine on any. Apologize to all of you involved. Hopefully this will happen again. Hopefully our motion here today will have some bearing on this. Thank you for coming. Do you want to be town? Yes. Thank you for coming. Moving forward, we have a, the next item is the consent agenda. Do I have a motion? So I'm a motion to approve the consent agenda. I note that it's 703 on the dot, and that's how you put on the agenda. We got to celebrate the one. You got a second. Okay, moving second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? The consent agenda items carry as warned. This is now the public session. Anyone that would like to address anything that is not on the warned agenda, I would ask to please come forward. I'll also ask you to confine your comments to the three minutes if it requires more than that. We're happy to put it on the agenda at the next meeting. Okay. We'll move forward with the flood update. Tom, Liz, Tom, Gary, and Bill, all here. Yeah. Let's start with Tom. Tom, then you can call on your members and then we'll move to Rob. Not really a huge amount of report compared to the prior flood. Town staff did some help with some of the garbage removal. We did wind up calling in Monash to pump out, I think, the Vector L1 basement. But I think the rest was generally handled by people just pumping out, and then the volunteers and homeowners cleaning up. Monash was here, and there's some other work by the way here, since there's a pretty big cost to go in here. There's still a dumpster out, but I think it's going any day now. As soon as they come and pick it up, it's ready to go. I think there's... There were a few lean burning issues, Route 2, with trash pickers, it has all been corrected now. But in general, it wasn't a debris we had the last time. It wasn't the same same level of water, obviously. No real serious damage to the structure. Winozki Street down the end was washed out, but that's the shoulders, and that's really just grapple, that they'll mostly push back in once the weather prevents. So in terms of the town infrastructure, much less of a burden. Probably the mud season that we experienced after the flood is probably tougher on the structure than the flood. So really it was a matter of the volunteers to do what they have to do. Good. Gary, do you have anything further to report on part of this fire department? No, not since the last meeting. It's really not been involved at all in the process. We've had a busy month for regular calls, but it's not anything for the flood relations. This is the beginning of the last one. Okay. And Bill Woodruff? No, just a clarification. It was hard again, the back of the truck. Two basements. But essentially, yes, as Tom told the story, that's pretty much what we have. Okay. Thank you. Just kind of Vermont gas, but they're back to, two vector days, and Vermont gas, and they're back to three extra months. Liz and Tom Drake, do you have a report for us? Yeah. And I'm sitting next to Liz, who did the lion's share of the work, once again. Well, I did it on my winter vacation. Volunteers rallying in, we have our plan 30, and they did the same things over here, like in the middle of this, five months ago. Collins will check in on their preparation for flooding, as it looked like that storm was going to be a big one, on that day. Moving things out of the basements, which I think we've gotten better at, knowing that we need to do that. Organizing volunteer supplies, mucking out basements, ripping out insulation after the flood, washing and cleaning basements, mold, vinegar, mold, collecting and loaning, dehumidifiers and sump pumps, organizing meals from local restaurants, delivering meals and flood affected folks. It hit the same kind of areas, Route 2, down near Barfield, South Main Street, Healy Court, Elm Street, that hit very hard, Randall Street, mostly on the cornfield side of Randall Street, Union Street and Huntington Place over here at Port Waterbury Center, still like groundwater up there and you're up there with this beautiful view and just continuing to pump it out some basements up there, it's really kind of mind blowing. Altogether, 65 to 70 buildings were reported, a number of those were multifamily homes, six to eight businesses, but those are only real estimates because some people you know, kind of in the Vermontier kind of way, just dig in and don't ask for help all the time. So we don't know for sure that those are hard numbers, but based on what we do know, those are pretty accurate. So it's really important, I'm just going to keep pushing, that people report their damage at Vermont211.org no matter how much damage it was, inside or outside, but this is a factor in the state, whether or not the state will include Washington County, we've had some conversations with some state officials in the past few days that essentially a lot of folks, including municipalities in Washington County, haven't reported their damages and so that's why Washington County was not included on the disaster request and it matters for all kinds of things, anything from the kind of reimbursement that's potentially available to the town, but also in making our case with the legislature, with FEMA, with the helping organizations because we are concerned around what is going to happen for folk who just lost the heating system that FEMA just paid to replace, through no fault of their own. And even begun to start to figure out the kinds of things people have been doing at the household level, and as we have talked in earlier meetings, moving that electric box or moving that heating system or by an order of magnitude cost-wise, more than replacing it. Replacing the electric box is X, moving it up is seven grand. It's a lot more, so that's kind of a longer term, we're hoping to tackle that this year but we're not going to work on people once we get them back to if you feel safe, your basement is dry and you're not worried that you're going to get sick from your basement. Excuse me. Do you have any tracking or any sense of how many people have reported damage? I have a report from 211 on December 21st, there were six people on it. Six people from Waterloo? Yeah. I think that is six people from Cruz area which includes Mortown, Duxbury, Bolton. Yeah, because Mortown and Watesville got hit hard. Watesville did not have individual level damage, but we do need them to report their bridge level damage because it's a key factor for Washington County. Right. So it is, I'm going to ask again, so I have to ask them again to send me what they have now, but that is a definite concern. It is the only way the state is tracking. Right? They haven't, we know they haven't called us to ask how many we've told them, but they haven't called to ask. I've talked to them generally around municipal and we've got to give some rough estimates. Most of our costs are things like the debris cleanup. We don't have a lot of out of pocket cash for this. Yeah. That's all part of it. It worked a lot. We didn't have a really big staff response to this. Well, I do want to say they did an amazing job, Tom. Just and Woody, just kudos again, right? Getting the vector and all those pumps and getting all that debris I could say more dumpsters please next time because it helps a lot in the beginning. We got one. Just that one. And so it did cause a lot of angst for people about feelings that they were, it was fine it got switched out but the holiday in there made it a little challenging with the dumpster, but it is I'm always going to be like spend on dumpsters because I love them, but it's just so incredible to have the public works response because they were on it every time and there's one house that needed the vector really needed a lot of work that was a lot of people working and that makes a big difference for that family it's not the kind of thing we got volunteers Woody directed people, it's a really big deal we are helping the residents with stuff that is unprecedented for them The other folks I really want to thank are the Rotary who organized all this food and we really concentrated on getting the food out to affected families lots of restaurants either donated or provided food at cost Rotary organized a whole bunch of volunteers and we had volunteers for delivery not everybody got every meal and I know some people are really sad about not getting the So Street Cafe Shepherd's Pie but we did get meals to every neighborhood around the town multiple times and it did make a difference for people during the holiday season it's so overwhelming I want to talk a little bit about the mental health impact it is a kick in the teeth to have this happen again in just such a short space of time and the financial unsureness about what our insurance company is going to do how are people going to respond what's the impact on them going to be on people and just ask people to be cognizant of that we don't know the answers either like about what's going to happen or how it will affect people's insurance ratings or their values it's a real thing we don't know but that was a big focus on the food I want to just emphasize if you don't have he please tell them to email at gmail.com or call 802-585-1152 we'll make sure I'll send you all this but Tom or I will get the message we have a lot of space eaters courtesy of the state of Vermont who brought them to us personally and it helped a lot both with drying out basements and knowing for people to have that heating company could get there and on the volunteers I just want to say it was incredible we both know that Keynes committee is going to be really important this preparedness committee I shouldn't call it Keynes committee preparedness work is going to be really important for the pregame because this is going to happen again and then to build that willingness of people to come out again and again we were pretty worried that on the first day when we kind of put it out and nobody signed up and then Nicole Grenier put it on her instagram and that really started moving the needle and we had over like 130 probably more than that volunteers who did all kinds of things and so that I think I told you this Roger the war and fire department came because they were not hit the way they thought that they were going to be an incredible job to do and they made an incredible difference for the family that they helped just to hold half a dozen people just moving in power and through that kind of stuff really matters and I just want to say like we're going to get good at dealing with this right and being able to manage volunteers and attract volunteers and thank them is part of that you know I was I just want to mention before I turn I was on the phone with the Vermont disaster relief fund and they are starting to move their process forward about helping people become whole from July but they're still not there yet and you know it is a real challenge for folks and the fellow on the other end of the phone said I didn't think we would need this again so soon he was talking about between Irene and now and I said I think we should think of this as a athletic event that we want to get very good at learning how to deal with I don't think a general theme I'm seeing with neighbors with thought affected folks it's just a sense of numbness sense of weirdness the water keeps coming to my basement I can keep mucking it out but I can't keep the river in its banks who can do that I know there's a lot of talk today and Montpelier about it and also talk about how expensive that's going to be but I think that's where people are thinking who's going to help with the bigger mitigation and is it the town I don't think it's the town it's the electrical grid it's this whole system so is it the state, is it FEMA, is it the feds I don't know but I hope that answer can come and whether it's lowering corn fields or putting in berms or doing something because if it's going to be happening it's multiple times a year people will leave and Brian Voight who's one of the project coordinators for this Walewski watershed is going to be coming to address the select board on Monday January 8th with some potential solutions Bill yeah I'll come up so you can I just want to amplify what Liz said a little bit about the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund you're all elected officials and though you don't like to admit it in one sense you're politicians the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund isn't a direct agency of the state but the state has a lot of input into what they're doing I'm not sure who appoints the people to that board but it's very frustrating Liz just alluded to it in Waterbury between Crew and the Good Neighbor Fund we've probably spent and distributed to local folks about $85,000 since July the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund is called the Table of Last Resort and they haven't opened the Table of Last Resort yet even for July so even though I went through this in Irene it's really amazing to me the patchwork quilt of where funding comes from to try to provide assistance to those who've been impacted by the flood we all know about FEMA and you submit your claim and you get $25,000 from FEMA that's great but that's generally not going to take care of it the Good Neighbor Fund steps in and they might help you do some repairs to a car that got flooded they might help you buy a refrigerator or a stove that you need you've got a whole litany of faith-based groups the Catholic Church the Lutheran organization Habitat for Humanity which isn't faith-based necessarily all these NGOs out there that are providing help and all of them say well here's some money, you can use it you can buy materials with it but you can't pay contractors with it and this group has other rules and our job and crew is to try to orchestrate how to put all these puzzle pieces together just to get the $5 into somebody's pocket and it's very frustrating and very difficult so all I'm asking you and I want people who are watching to know but the state legislators need to be told this our local ones know this but the state legislators when you talk to them we need to get the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund open and available since that happened and people are still waiting and we're providing what we can for their immediate needs just so that they can live but if they're really going to recover from this they need assistance from the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund and the folks I was writing an email today I didn't send it yet because I needed some more information but we're going to try to put a little bit of pressure on these folks to let's get to the table and open the purse so people can move forward so anything that you can do when you talk to state legislators if you're in the state house at all if you go there the governor's office certainly is a key to opening the purse strings there the purse itself I mean so anyway I just want you to be aware of that there's a complicated and complex tangled web and for the folks out there we're frustrated dealing with it the people who are impacted by the flood they're just burned out they don't know where to turn and they're just floundering and in a sense drowning in this you got it? First of all I want to thank all three of you and everybody that's been involved with us I was away during this last little incident so I was not available to help out much if at all but I really do appreciate everything that you folks have been doing and we'll continue to do getting on your emails if we change the subject there Bill I wonder if you have an email that you've written that maybe crew could turn into a template and we could ask volunteers to send emails to legislation outside of us as town representatives which we can put some contact but I think there would be plenty of folks who would be willing to just edit the template and sign their name and all of that I think in general I don't know some of you may remember the Rebuild Waterbury raised a million dollars and spent about 10,000 per household and they were doing first floor rebuilding we definitely we weren't walking in with some idea of a budget or whatever but we knew we wanted to help people afford to move their stuff the basement's empty that's kind of the long-term goal and probably $10,000 on our part per household is what it will take but there has to be other money coming to the table to help with that and it's not just this the challenge now is how paperwork everything is and how limited things are the income thing you're off by $5,000 you don't get the efficiency Vermont deal it's very it's much less generous in so many ways than it was after Irene I think that is just a real experience for people to put the point it's not just people will leave they won't be able to live here because of the fear of flooding or the giant financial hit every few years they won't be able to maintain the standard of living and that will be bad for us as a town Tom said it, day one we cannot afford to lose giant swaths of our town to reign that's because it's just if we're going to have to get very good at all this I just think we didn't expect we would have to become very good at raising together every little piece of money we could find because it has just is actually much harder than I think it should be especially for folks who are already dealing with financial constraints and so they don't have a retirement fund to tap or they don't have equity in their home to tap or all the things that folks who have more resources tap when the going gets really tough and that is just such a big concern so yeah we'll find something that folks can share out and we'll also, as Tom said, put pressure on the legislature around we need a bigger conversation about the river right and I think that conversation is happening you heard over the past couple of days in the legislature and with governor that conversation is alive and well solutions are a little harder to find but I do on the glass half full side I did want to also congratulate you on doing again a tremendous job of responding I mean I think Waterbury is really cognizant of the fact that we have a tremendous volunteer response it's well coordinated volunteers that I was talking to the meeting the flood preparedness committee recognized that we have something that other towns don't have and they want to replicate it they specifically want to talk with you and Tom about what you do know what you have learned and so that we can incorporate that into a system going forward I think we got to give it back right like that we have a great select board we have a great town manager and former town manager single property we have a chair of public works the same I mean we are so lucky in the talent that we have in this room right like Gary right Woody Karen I can't like I can't say enough about how much it helps to be able to say oh yeah yellow house about two doors down from whatever yeah do this right they use the back door like any right like oh you know she's in a nursing home like her son's living there whatever you need to be able to help people is here in people's heads and it makes such a big difference to have that you know and for us to be able to give people good instruction is because we're backed up by all these people doing this great work I just it's incredible okay listen to our other questions we have other things on the agenda we'll be giving you this discussion we appreciate your time Roger who do you say we're coming in on Monday Brian Bort the OIGT we'll use the water shed yeah that's okay okay the the agenda will be coming out tomorrow but he's been preparing for more than a month he's got some interesting stuff to say all right next thing on the agenda is the Recreation Committee update I want to thank Frank Spalding and his team for the work they've been doing over the past couple of months I'm not still your thunder I'm going to slow talk while they're getting the technology figured out okay all right you could introduce your team I want to introduce Paul Lawson who's a member of the Recreation Committee and is on the team Paul you're welcome to come up if you want to come join Paul if you want to I've got a t-shirt I'm with students it sounds like it's over Frank return I'll say I'll be Frank there is a t-shirt that's great thank you thanks for asking us to come in I don't know quite a few years since the Rec Committee's presented to the Select Board first of all I want to acknowledge the great team that you have in the town Tom and Katarina it's just been a joy to be on the committee and working with us folks I want to thank you all for who you are and what you do so we're here to talk about really about the project prioritization list you got to keep me on track because I could go fully nerd so we'll be focused here so we're here to talk about the project prioritization list and before I do that I want to introduce myself a little bit I am the chair of the Recreation Committee but in my day job I'm the project manager for Vermont State Parks I've been doing that job for 25 years so a lot of what you're going to hear tonight is really the work of the Recreation Committee but the foundation of it is in my other work and so really we're focused on how we talk about prioritizing projects and it's been my experience that there's projects usually prioritized through some pretty inefficient ways my favorite is the one you break so that's a priority now the other one is the squeaky wheel and then the other one is the last thing seen very inefficient ways to prioritize projects but I'm sure pretty much systems that everyone's familiar with so about 25 years ago the Vermont State Parks went through and inventoried their entire infrastructure system and hired an architect that came up with a project prioritization system for Vermont State Parks I have shamelessly pirated that system at least three times now and I brought it to the Recreation Committee several years ago what you're actually going to view tonight is the third review of this system in Library of Recreation Committee we actually have done it with other departments in state government within the Orson Parks around to prioritize projects and so it is ground truth and it's really a project queuing system it's a project scoring system but it's really a project queuing system and we like to say it that way because a project it's just in queue it's just something good that's waiting to be done just because it doesn't get done this year so it really is a queuing system and it compares project descriptions against a set of criteria and those criteria what you see on the screen before you and so what I want to say is it is a comparison what this system is not and I think it's important to start with that it is not absolute this does not give you the answer this is not to say I have $30,000 to spend I'm going to take these next projects a sorting system that roughly sorts projects and lets you know what is rising to the top of the pale of note what's the cream riding to the top and what's not necessarily at the top yet again it's a queuing system it's not comparable against other initiatives in town we're not striving to compare recreation projects to the road projects we're just not, that's your job what we are doing is trying to compare recreation projects it doesn't create money it doesn't, as far as I know this is not printed a single dollar it has not added a single dollar to the budget but what it does, what its value is it's a queue it shows you what's up next possibly it makes you incredibly ready for money that does come along say for example if the land water conservation fund suddenly costs up $2 million available for communities to compete for you know where to start looking for projects so that is what it does so that's value and no experience in using this list for my work that has been a true value I've been to the legislature I've been given, there was one year back when the economy crashed in 2009 I was given 8 hours to come up to the $40 million list and I did it because we had this list in hand so that's how we do this with the value of it it also memorializes projects that may fall off people's radar recreation committees come, recreation committees go this list, this queue can be there and go beyond people that are on the committee so how does it do this? it does it by comparing the projects to this value map right here and so these are criteria and this is the biggest part of the work that the committee did is we went through these criteria which really represent our values as a committee what we value a project to do is the water barrier so we went through we checked these criteria these represent the values of the water barrier recreation committee and they were placed in order because you gotta have winners and you gotta have losers and but these were like okay what's the most important thing goes on top and they get the most points and then you back the points down to the bottom of the list they're all very important criteria but you have to rank them in order for this to work and so we did that and we developed this list and we put them in this order and it is a weighted priority list and then we took this and applied the projects to these criteria and the magical spreadsheet spits out an aggregate score so before we go on are there any questions about the criteria portion of this of this spreadsheet? is that the third column of the weights so yeah column C is the weights so that's the point system so when you see the next spreadsheet the spreadsheet will have an X in that column that you'll see and it will actually grab those points and add to the score so for example you're going to see this in the results a project that corrects a non-compliance where the code is going to automatically get 100 points versus a project that doesn't you know a project just because it corrects compliance with code if it doesn't do anything else it's still not be the top project because it could be a project that clicks a lot of other boxes that makes it more valuable in terms of our criteria might not necessarily be the first project to do still but you know it's it ranks the project Karen do you want to do a score now? I don't know show the winners the winners they're all winners the stuff on the bottom is me working with the spreadsheet do it now oh yeah now we see the override the key coming high up the bottom I'm going to add like 500 points on that one point so that key I've often called it the God key but the there's ways to I know that when the spreadsheet this system has been used by the departments and they've blown it out to be something very complicated and I think it's beautiful and it's simplicity the reality and that goes back to this is not an absolute this list goes to someone it goes to Tom it goes to Katarina and they look at it and say okay what makes sense for our budget this one this one that one or someone comes along with a pocket full of money guess what? do it now because it's on the list it's something we want to do it has value it clicks criteria but now the money's here you do it now opportunity is a viable criteria and we've done that a lot in the state when someone our current governor when he was in the senate said I want you to spend a million dollars on alternative energy so we went to the bottom list and we did a bunch of projects so we put solar panels on so we've pressed that do it now key many times there used to be a bunch of points on it if you're going to do it now just do it now we just kept it there because to convey the fact that there is an override to this because it is not again not absolutely right okay are we going to project list that? sure so we took these projects and this represents I've updated we went through this at the last meeting that's when we finished updating it the projects that were in yellow are actually projects that the probably more literally brought to the table Scott brought them to us we may have scored them but I wasn't sure so I thought to be safe I wouldn't convey them as being finally scored and that actually conveys that this list is continuing and will be built out and will be updated regularly this is meant to be a living document that's why when I sent the copy it's just a copy this is a list that should continue to be built because again it's a Q not an absolute list and if you scroll to the right a little bit you'll see that you'll see that this column is coming to play if you scroll to the top I meant to freeze the frame on that these people are getting sick they're going to call it's the ABCD right? oh yeah it's just small oh yeah yeah okay got you the row needs to be expanded that's all just expand that down until you see the text row one just drag that down if you're not going to have fun why do I? we're in the recreation committee yeah so there's the criteria listed across there we hit the X the magic formula on the far right of the screen does the math for us and then it kicks out a score actually I brought back over because I didn't want to have to scroll to the right to see it we have a note field we went through each of these projects and said does it meet this criteria and we literally asked the question does this project and then you read the criteria yes or no and we did a variety of selection methods including thumbs up thumbs down to say yep or no and generally the weight of the group carried the day and we went forward with the scoring system if you scroll back to the left you'll see this is all sorted based on the weighted scoring and what you're going to find is that the types of project that score high are projects that deal with accessibility and things that are really wanting to be done you'll notice the top one is the long range plan for Anderson and that was one we added at the last meeting and that was really we were getting a lot of requests talking about you know this kind of item to go to Anderson and that kind of item to go to Anderson we got the pool to deal with, we got the whole recreation building concept and we were realizing that we really got to figure out what we're going to do with that park and for a variety of reasons all of the criteria that get clicked because it really triggers out a lot of activity you know that ended up scoring pretty high and so as you get down you'll see those other things that Anderson feels that are selected for projects and if they ranked high you know as you look at this list Tom Cattery you look at this list you might say I know that this this project at Anderson scores high this individual project but we really need to do that plan first before we do that so let's skip that project and move to the next so that's really how this list works this queue we should say any questions on the projects I'll just mention that we are, Tom and I are planning to come to your next meeting we from tonight to talk about long range planning for Anderson and Anderson we at the end of the last meeting after looking at this list it's actually informed us that that may be all Anderson only we invested quite a bit of time in funding actually looking at the two other parts Hope Davy and the Ice Center area we'll get there I was thinking about on the way down here it's like and in this queue it's like I think one of the items is a town wide ADA item for the recreation facilities which is something we should be done but we have the long range plan for the ice rink parcel and Hope Davy addressed ADA so we can take those two properties off that list because we did it so something to Catherine addressing Hope Davy it's all a lot of moving parts our group really believes that the recreation assets and the recreation infrastructure is a very vital important part of our town and the ability of our town and its economic liability and what attracts residents to our town so treated this with the respect we feel it deserves and really want to create a product that allows this to carry forward and be informative well into the future Any more questions? I saw that the skate park was mentioned in two different parks is that because we are still technically considering two different parks? Yeah so the long range plan includes the long range plan for the ice center includes the skate park down there and the long range plan for the update including the replacement of the skate park up there I think that's one of those ones where you got that's the do it now key right there if they've got fundraising it's raised a bunch of money and can make that funding happen and let's do it now they've both been identified as attractive features to have in our town recreational infrastructure that's kind of how that list works in terms of how you see like long-term kind of direct committee and engaging with this so I guess starting with list of projects I assume some are from kind of ongoing municipal initiatives you talked with Katerina is it things the direct committee developed is it I have an idea for wouldn't it be cool if like where did that follow us come from? Oh that's all that you know like Clyde Woodmore, Scott brought the Clyde Woodmore Little League stuff a lot of that's just what Clyde Woodmore and probably may not even rise to be needing to be on the list but we'll put it on there you know advocacy groups like the Skate Park folks, individuals committee members actually put a lot into this too we actually did a tour I had never really realized that the seminary had a field that was ours as long as we were on that yeah just seeing you made a big difference and that project was born that day we just said remove dugout and fencing it's not needed anymore so that's you know we just couldn't envision that ever being needed as an asset for that park again so let's get it there's two ways to attack a list of projects you gotta do one is to do them the others to get rid of them I would just add to that that if someone comes up with an idea the reason why we have the scoring system is that if it's not an idea that meets many of those criteria it's a way that it might fall to the bottom of the list but it's still on the list or vice versa yeah it could be the newest idea and it rise right up to the top because it's the best idea one of the things that we did not include and then I asked Frank about in my last game was a budget item here this is purely there's no money involved this is everything other than the cost of it because that's obviously probably going to be number one I guess part of the other question I would have for you and Tom is if you guys have a plan or some ideas it would be fantastic to get them ahead of the meeting so we could do a little homework and ask questions then we can read them and then ask the questions I can tell you briefly right now some of the conversations in the pool work and I don't want to hold up the regular I can be pretty quick the pool work that Alec has done I say this in the most fond way is a typical engineer you ask him to do something he gives you 38 alternatives which is great so he keeps coming up with every time I think he's settled on a concept one that's better and cheaper so I'm not rushing him because that's what we want him to do one of the concepts is that you know relining the pool or redoing the pool in some form the demo is expensive so what if we don't demo it what if we demo the top foot in the building and put it in the pool and put some clean fill and build the pool where the ball field is and move the ball field where the pool is maybe cheaper and easier so that's one concept but that brings up well it's re-jarring the whole Anderson field but it may be possible it may be cheaper than demoing the pool and dealing with all the presumably tracking that to I don't know where maybe just what is your art but maybe it's maybe a landfill but you know there's fiberglass and concrete and all this stuff expensive to get rid of just get rid of the top foot of it and maybe the sidewalk around it building dump it in the pool but if you want a clean fill maybe we can build a ball field on that so when that idea came up that caused you to think a little bit differently than just building a new pool and the demo work in theory in theory and practice could be done by our crew that would be what he's crew has got all the time in the world definitely in the summer but to say all that we haven't done the right capital planning for this year yet so we can try and have that ahead of time if that was the other front of that question right but in the end I think the the numbers he gives us for the pool are going to dictate a lot of our thinking because they're not going to be it's not a $20,000 project like you said it's getting cheaper not that much cheaper it's still going to be well in seven figures trust me this is a continuum of progress infrastructure so we're happy to do that well this is great I want to really thank you for coming up with a plan and implementing it and having this prior organization as you say helps us at least a screen for what does this do for the town, what criteria does it meet and how do we prioritize the capital improvements for recreation in our town yep and thank you and I actually want a special specialization for us for you coming to meetings you gave us a target to hit you said we want to do this so okay we had a target to hit which allowed me to be semi-dictatorial but yeah this it was a good exercise and it's not done we'll keep going any time? for the questions, Mike do you have any comments on I know this is probably Caterina's part but in terms of the budget for the upcoming year for the rest department I don't know the question I don't have any comments on that has discussed that with Caterina I will say this about how the committee work has changed to answer that question a little bit is we've become a little less involved in the day-to-day the town now has a full-time director whose job it is to manage the day-to-day and a program manager as well I know that when I joined the committee it was a part-time recreation director the committee was more involved in the day-to-day we stepped back from that and tried to really grab on to the longer term planning 10,000 for a few more strategic thinking about recreation in the town and let Caterina do her job as well as she does the number of people who are thrilled when you got your job Caterina was just really, really really graphic that's my way of answering your question that's what I thought I'm curious if the committee has discussed anything another question I had I mean the things that was attractive about bringing in Tom Lites was that St. Albans had just put in a pool a 12 month pool and so we had a great visions of how this was going to just happen in Waterbury this turns out to be a little more complicated than that but the one of the things that St. Albans did was to solicit the involvement of all the surrounding towns so they're all contributing to the maintenance of that pool Waterbury is the largest town in our school district attracts people from all the surrounding towns to a certain degree certainly we go to other towns as well but I'm just wondering to what degree strategically about Waterbury's recreational facilities in this general area I don't believe we have thought about it strategically as a committee I think we have talked about the fact that we tend to be the recreation destination for at least Ducksbury and some more town and that sort of thing so what I'm going to speak about from my other professional experience is I do know that out in the Midwest that a lot of park districts are regional of nature and you won't see towns having their own recreation you'll see like five rivered metro parks metro parks Cleveland even Cleveland's a big town but you'll see communities come together and create districts they actually have their own tax rates throughout the community that's I have thought about it in my head but we've not invested in this committee if you go to New York State it's much more county based or if you really want to think about it a different way you could think about it is we have districts for B-Trans that would be an interesting way to kind of look at it if you were in District 6 coming from our neighbors and now I kind of look at it and go okay what do we have the other towns don't who would be one of them including an outdoor pool a 12 year pool one thing you want to think of what I would want to think about is that the pump system for a pool is very similar if not almost exactly the same as a rink my wife has managed pools in about three states and was mentioning that to me and I was like that's pretty interesting and maybe something different I think the thinking about the other communities does happen like if we were to say okay I want to build a giant soccer complex we don't have the flat space to do it this doesn't get flooded every year but I mean just as an example you know Watesfield kind of has a big kind of big field so I think it would probably fall into that realm where we would compare and figure out if that is offered nearby enough where we would want to have to invest but yeah that's absolutely why we should be thinking more regionally than we are but our tax base and the way we pay for stuff doesn't allow that at this point in time unless there's magic okay any further questions thank you thank you before we dive into the budget get another space heater thank you this one next thing on the agenda is budget we are going to try to treat three items today public works the capital budget fire department okay hi Frank that one's not working I think that one tends to blow the circuit yeah I think so that one looks like it's from East Germany so some of these glasses will be sitting here right yeah why is that I used to work at the every time it comes in here I can't even see you I'm still here so sorry well yes it's just the thing we bought so highway which is the fourth page the same information as last time the the revenue of the Vermont State Highway it is more or less a based amount you get from the state every year they got some extra aid this year but it's not something that we can plan on forever I don't believe the amount would come down it's never really come down in case we get a little errors but I think getting budgeting what we have this year is pretty reasonable and safe no other real major revenues is on the highway side there's some miscellaneous revenue and permanent revenue and things like that the pay side there's a pretty significant change in 2023 we had money in the budget for a mechanic position which we were not able to fill I think we've essentially given up so that's how at the same time what I'm proposing is that there's a employee who's been working for EFUD generally on the water department issues has actually passed his water license I was also on the fire company and was I think junior firefighter a year ago but seems to be working out pretty well what I'm proposing is that he becomes a joint town EFUD employee full time with benefits and EFUD would pay a third of his salary in fringe and town would pay the difference and the rough plan is that on the town side who would help us out what we really needed is that cemetery is part of recreation work would he manage to hire another part time person and we struggled with that in the last two years with one one another person, another firefighter who's retired and will do it full time in the summer which is what we need to keep those costs down so that you're free up some of the public works crew to do less of that and more road maintenance how are you going to deal with the need for the mechanic and some of the work to provide the work up most of what we have heavy trucks are under warranty so we we're generally just doing the work of the dealers and taking it for inspections and we do some of our own work and a little change of things like that you know we missed the mechanic but I think we could hire mechanic but we'd probably pay 15 hour was my gut our old mechanic Eric has agreed to come back and inspect vehicles so he does a lot of work here and there I think he also assists the fire company on a limited basis yeah he's helped one of our officers does a fair amount of work on the trucks but he also talks with him gets some guidance but it'll be nice to have him to do the inspections one of the EFUD EFUD employees worked it out with Tom Bill about doing the annual service which takes a fair amount of effort and then the mechanic can just come in and go through the motions do the official inspection without having to do all the other work so we've got a plan place and it's just a matter of getting it rolling because if we had to send these trucks out the cost would be significantly bigger the other piece is I broke out we've never in the past budgeted for overtime it was all in just the payroll I didn't change the 2023 budget which was adopted but I went back in the history and broke out overtime and in 2024 I also broke out overtime separately so we're not really seeing a $50,000 reduction in public works payroll I broke it out differently you sort of pick your vows about how detailed you want each one on to be but if over time in 2024 I'm thinking it's about 36 grand that's meaningful enough to have its own line on them to see the difference in the budget you know health insurance is what it is based on the plans we have and the cadre of folks we have and the benefits are formulaic no real big changes as you go down we are budgeting until you get down to line 41 which is equipment maintenance and vehicle maintenance and we're posing some increases there and part of that is what we just talked about a little less in-house to spend more at other places diesels down a bit and reluctant to go down too far we may have another lingering bill or two for 2023 and I know prices have gone down recently worried about being stung a little bit but I actually think I'm looking at it further that we might spend 60 on diesel this year so I think 72.5 I can probably tuck that down a little bit so I want to get the margin of error something like maybe 65 then going to the second page despite despite having a plan where we I'm not sure we're going to use less salt because every year is different but we're going to not apply salt on areas and that's about 10% of our paved roads but nonetheless the price per ton is up more than 10% something that true reminds me though is that when it's warm it's fine, when it's cold it's fine it's when we get these freeze thought cycles and that's what we're going to see more of so proposing an increase there every year is going to be different but we're not likely to go down any results yet on this experiment of using salt I haven't heard any complaints we actually got one complaint from someone about it but he was out in Waterbury Center and he thought we weren't salting his road or we weren't just the road was the road I've driven around a few times and I haven't seen salt we were not supposed to put it they came back and they said to me the ice center road sorry is that river road was one of the roads in the west and they came back and they said you know we'd like to salt it to Rodney's just because there's a lot of traffic there and I said I think we're fine go forth and conquer but in general they seem to be following it and we've also told them if there's a significant ice event you've got some discretion to go ahead and do it going back to the diesel I know we've talked about possibly getting the tandem you know and you know there'd be running back and forth wouldn't that create an increase in diesel costs that would so we do that now already we have one person who does a lot of that with the tandem so we'll probably come to you this spring with the request or a vehicle subject to either select order or approval a year from now when we have to pay for it if we're lucky a year from now we've had some conversations about getting a tandem versus a smaller vehicle or contracting all that out so it could probably be a quality fiscal year I'm not really set on what we're going to do there but that cost wouldn't hit us probably until not even the following fiscal year but two years because it's going to be a year to board a truck a year to get it and then a year to drive it so maybe by then we'll have some other options that are a little better and one of the challenges is we talked about the the tandems they want to get when the manufacturers are switching engines and so there's you actually can't get a price for it so not only can you not order it but so there's more than one manufacturer but you know we think probably in a few months we'll have some proposals for you to consider but we ordered the truck to give you an example we ordered a one ton before my time last year it arrived what four or five months ago just a chassis I was originally told by Celia that we thought they felt they were going to get it and get the body done and put on around Christmas and now they're thinking they'll take the truck in the end of January and have it back to us a month later something like that so that was at any time that's what we're facing and that's the third year in a row of that scenario with trucks so it's not that's right you've got to order it and then subject to approval the company won't ever have a problem selling the truck if it's not funded by the voters because everybody wants a truck so it's not a risk but it is it's going to operate in the future yeah and a tandem is I don't want to wait for a guess the one ton with the bed is $150, $155 I think the 10 is over two so it's a pretty expensive proposition and perhaps by that time we'll have a local option tax and then sell it from the world too and some of these things they haven't gotten to a point where like those tandem trucks are electric yet I haven't seen anything bigger than the F-150 well that's what I'm saying I know even that's gone up in price today but that's probably the future of all these heavy equipment trucks are all going to become electric I don't know, I mean they have electric school buses exactly they're not carrying a heavy load they're carrying some kids just a question Tom line 46 we talked a little bit about it yesterday the public works director is that just a placeholder now? that's a number that's the number that was budgeted for 2023 was an exact number because it always was retrospectively what the town of each other and I noticed throughout the budget that it's all the same we just don't have the numbers yet so those will change a little bit but those shouldn't be meaningful it's going to be great in a big way it's going to be some might be up, some might be down and that basis is probably pretty small let the director show you that the public works director is not meaningful it's alright, I mean my he's not on my own yeah the biggest piece perhaps is you know line 66 will be sent to the capital fund 2023 was a real big number because we had a bunch of marble funds in there not all the ARPA projects were completed but I don't want to reappropriate the expense of the revenue in the second year in a row it's in the budget issue we can still do the project the fund, the cash is still there it stays, it's been sent to the capital fund it stays to the capital fund but if you turn the page to the capital fund so we had a conversation a little over a year ago about consolidating the capital funds so in this budget all the capital funds are not consolidated into one but there was several for public works that are consolidated into one and the revenue is what we transfer in so essentially that $595 is just tax dollars coming in there the paving budget in total is up $45,000 which I think is a good increase I'd love to I'd love to be in front of you a year from now saying we have a local option taxes have a paving budget of $3,500,000 or something along those lines why is the paving budget going up $45,000 so the the price per ton of black top has gone up pretty substantially in the last five years even higher than the base rate of inflation in fact probably close to that so even a 10% increase in our paving means we're paving less than we were a few years ago so we need to have I think we probably need to be in the range we've been level funded we've had roughly 440 for a few years now so we probably need to go another 50 or more to keep pace with the inflation but it's nice to nice to see the increase I'm curious and this likely is a bigger that's not just a budget discussion but thinking about our December mud season which was possibly worse than some April mud season mud scene what are the conversations like or should we start putting conversations on our agendas about what that's going to require because I know public works were really hard this month and did an amazing job but it was that's the future ongoing that's the future we certainly can't realistically plan to be but I think we can realistically look at our worst areas and consider extending paving where appropriate, you know, something we had that conversation internally and something what Ian Celia talked about was the end of Neal and Flats where it turns indirectly in the curve so we'd like to pave I believe it's a few hundred feet there it's not a huge amount and I think the sub-base and the road is in pretty good shape there's a whole lot of prep work so there's sections like that that we can address year to year but no, I mean I asked Woody I think this morning and he said if we just give me a ballpark number I'm going to hold you to it and now I will this morning public but he said if we had to just fall in, if we were going to pave our gravel roads what's the cost and he said a mile, something like that we've got I think 29 miles so it's an awful big number probably too big for us to consider but it's not too big to consider certain patches and extending the worst areas I haven't had Woody tell me this, I haven't had this conversation with him I've had other public works directors tell me that it's tempting to pave a hill on a gravel road where it's always bad but it doesn't work so well when you're doing a gravel and a stretch of pavement just more trouble than it's worth for the long run Woody might feel differently and I'm open to an expert opinion on that so I think our future might be to do a little more paving on the gravel roads year to year but it's not not really going to be so much a long term plan it's just dealing with the most challenging areas and you know maybe at some point we're not going to go to the road anymore Chris you had a good month yeah a few years back when I was on the board and maybe some of you have heard this before I threw out some numbers on what would take us for a paving budget to keep up with a 7 year cycle even a 10 year cycle at this point a third of what we need to keep up with that I don't a lot of you probably don't pay attention to the roads that are I mean that's my life, that's my business Perry Hill is starting to show some very big signs of degradation asphalt is really starting to bust up pretty good especially on the steep hill kneeling flats and we've missed that window to if we haven't missed it we're damn near missing it we're going to do a simple repave on that got the roads way overdue you know barns hill, the base up there the sub base up on the top of barns hill is horrible at best that doesn't even begin to address our dirt roads I'm still trying to find a road on that quarry on sweet road because I think that's the key to our back road our dirt road solutions to put a decent base down with some of that busted rock fractured rock and then put some decent material over giving it some drainable sub base to keep the mud from percolating to the top, the water from percolating to the top I've done it on a couple of the roads and had regular results with it, it completely eliminates mud but first you've got to have a source of aggregate to use so we can continue to throw gobs of money at dumping gravel into mud and ending up with mud continually ending up with mud or we can try to come up with another solution and I'm going to do my part to try to see if I can't get that quarry to come to the table but we'll see and the quarry that you're operating now was about sufficient quantities of gravel it has sufficient quantities of gravel we can have a conversation about that at some point there's a couple different approaches of how some of that aggregate could get used it doesn't have to go through a crushing process we could use some of it as a base to absorb some of the cost and then put a thinner top coat on it it's incredible gravel, there's three different types of gravel there that are available but it still is not giving you the drainable base that you really need to be able to stay out of the mud okay, I'll take you up on that for the conversation going down a little further there is 30,000 in the budget for sidewalks that is not that is not grant funded that is not the finalization of the industry project that is sidewalks potentially some curbing now there's some areas especially around the school where there's some older sidewalks so I think pecking away at each year is okay we get a really good price if we did a 5 million dollar bond and did every sidewalk in the village but I think we're going to get the worst at each year and it's pretty economical did we get state funding for the Randall Street sidewalks and that's not available on your order the project is ending there's a few wrangling particles what are you wrapping up it's part of the downtown yeah, I'm not sure now that main street is done Randall and Elm and Park will be part of this next phase of that downtown what we can get it was a grant, Karen Nevin basically is here this downtown money this downtown money available every year you can apply but if you receive the 200,000 dollar grant usually you'll find some of the elements that will need it but you should, it's a source of revenue that you should always look at any source of revenue you were saying earlier it's part of the patchwork and then there's 75,000 dollars for bridge improvements that's a still street range the project that we have 5% share more than 5% share is 195,000 so we spent some of that already we get invoices essentially when they invoice us so in essence over based on what we've spent already in the next few years we'll put 195,000 dollars into the capital for that it's a little hard to know the timing of the bills so the capital fund is this odd thing because you know this year you might put a bunch of money into it for a truck but you don't pay the bill for two years so you just gotta manage it for the long term and this is one of those issues a bit like a truck and that bills are gonna come in and this is the upper bridge on still street yeah did you say you had problems with the bridge down underneath the trusset here yes but I am I think it's a town project honestly though when we get closer I'm sure we'll aggressively apply for grants there but we don't want to do that bridge while the other way through is right it's not part of the state modeling no it was not part of the main street grant that I alluded to it was just outside it's not in our designated downtown right I'm so I'm actually due to the Stanley Watson parcel and potentially this I'm gonna work on actively amending the boundaries of the designated downtown so that may make some funding available I don't have a number for with that virtual cost we've priced it out a couple different times and it tried to get it lumped into the main street project that couldn't happen and it was an opportunity to do it during all that because it would have made a mess and as far as real priorities bridge 36 at the top those streets probably let's not upset the state too much let them do that project they're also doing route 2 by low river let them get that one done and then I think we can focus on that and then it may be we've had conversations with the state about hazard mitigation grants related to flooding generally and what they've said is five times or five projects applied once and I wonder if that bridge potentially could be part of a project I'm not the engineer, I don't have any vision for what could be different but if there's a better option that would help out in terms of the flooding even though we haven't had real damage to that bridge if there's some potential that might help us out in some new design what is the defect on that bridge it's just the beams the basic repair work we do to a bridge this state bureaucracy it's just unbelievable when the roundabout was done when the roundabout was done we were able to do like two beams of that bridge but we couldn't do the whole bridge as part of that project we go by sidewalk and then the main street project comes in and it's like 50 feet from the end of the main street project and we couldn't do that bridge because if we added that bridge then you're going to be over the limit that would trigger Act 250 to look at the whole project so they said please don't ask us to do the bridge and that's what Tom and Bill have to face now base and I don't have to that's dramatic I have to send one quick question just from my notes when is the Stoes Street Bridge project scheduled 2025 for construction there is a little bridge work we have been doing some on Guffle Road and we did the Armory Drive Bridge 33 last year painting the beams greasing the beams sidewalk work on Armory Bridge 33 we'd like to do some work on bridge number 4 on Guffle Road that is the bridge just before Neal and Flats by Dr. Murray's driveway so if you count the bridges as you go out from Guffle Road you won't come to 4 and if you count them the other way you won't come to 4 my Chris's driveway is bridge 3 the bridge by Gremiers is bridge 2 so yes very helpful so if you're trying to figure out what bridge 4 is it's not where you think it is but we've got about $200,000 worth of work there if you choose to do something like that that's bridge deck repair railing, guardrail approaches that bridge has a I think it's called a spill-through abutment so as Chris probably can attest we hit the whomp every time you go over that bridge love it we'd correct that so we've got prices to do that and a contractor lined up if we'd like to go that route it's about a 10-week project single-lane traffic falls summer there or whatever is that the bridge next to the cow pasture it's right before Neal and Flats 200,000 200,000 or something like that 200,000 200,000 or something like that and the other two bridges were Arpo so even though they're not done yet the Arpo funds stay in the capital budget so they'll be completed with the Arpo funds are there other 2R schedules this year so Armory Drive is done done and then the I don't want to say if it's bridge 2, 3 or 4 but the Gupto Road bridges is going to happen this year the bridge 4 and we priced out yeah we priced out all our bridges but yes I think the next needed is bridge 4 and did you do you have it in the budget now that was in the budget for last year it was in the budget so we had 495 for I believe 495 in Arpo for bridges last year I think that covered 3 different projects and we got one of them done so the money stays in the capital fund so we you can do it either way sometimes if it's not spent we'll essentially re-appropriate the revenue and re-appropriate the expense to show it differently but it's been approved by the board the budget's been approved we'll get it done do it now but half the challenge is with the capital fund you can give us another million bucks I'm not sure we can always spend it you can spend it on because there's a pretty good supply of paving contractors and plenty of projects but there's fewer companies that do bridge work and you need sometimes a pretty long lead time and that's just the challenge I have so is that range on the next on the docket yes contractor would start end of April but remember too the challenge to some paving projects is that you can probably get the paving contractors to be available to do paving but if you have to change culverts on the road before you do a paving project prep work that we typically do then that so that's been part of the bottleneck in terms of doing more paving over the time if you could just go out and pave the road fairly easy but if you've got to change all the culverts and you've got to deal with the shoulders and you're going to do that yourself your staff can only do so much in a year so there's a lot of challenges to all these things and the sidewalks are another good example of that you know last summer we had more or less a third of the public works to devoted to parks and cemetery maintenance we then had a period in the summer where our match for the grant was that we would pull the sidewalks with our own crew and then took them all for road work for quite a long time so it was good financially in that perspective but sometimes it's just easier if you can call the contractor Can I ask a real quick question about sidewalks Woody is the town still using following your own sidewalks? We have been and are we seeing a return on investment with like less heating of our sidewalks due to that? I would say we're not seeing any heaving what we do see a lot of is the areas that approach show your driveway approach in your street driveway approach behave a lot differently than different elevations we'll get quite a bit of frost better those spots but for the most part they're being pretty persistent I guess you can't have it 100% perfect No and it's difficult to understand why some driveways will heave 50 inches and so it won't move at all different soil types moisture content more moisture though and then there is a little money in the capital fund and I consider an almost base amount maybe they should go up for culverts and then a single amount for building improvements and that's public works garage there's always some money spent in the garage a lot of that again depends on the time they have to do it and culverts are one of those things sometimes they tend to run into they're confronted with a culvert at these three places where it wasn't necessarily anticipated there is a big culvert being rigged that was replaced as part of the waterline project that's a $42,000 culvert but that's paid for by a grant so that's something we did this year is it true that we're having to put in larger culverts because we've got more water we're really under-designed we're required when we change out any culvert larger than diameter to do a hydraulic study which basically always comes back saying we need a bigger part one on Tom mentioned on Ashford Lane, Kennedy Drive area there were limitations with water and sewer lines we couldn't go bigger we weren't bigger but as long as you could go speaking of culverts is that a big major wildlife passage is that within Waterbury? it's in the town of Waterbury where does that stand do you know where that spoke preliminary? preliminary, yeah I assume it's going to be state funds we're talking about going over or under? under on top of the hill road to just by the Bolton County line a big massive culvert kind of similar to what they did out in St. John'sbury that outpass that big are you going to give them sorting lessons too? yeah I am there's a big significant dam right below there problematic but on that that's public works I think the big issue is getting some agreement about the higher right it sounds like a good idea I congratulate you I'm finding solutions I didn't find them you came up with the idea no I didn't come up with the idea I was just trying to play soccer be nice to hire somebody who was born in this century yeah and he's a he's a really good kid the problem is I'm hiring another firefighter which I've already been informed that Christmas party night I'm on call you're on call because all my dollars are at the party because I'll probably have longer other than that, young people so no I think I think the biggest issue will just be figuring out distribution of labor I don't think so in terms of the capital budget is there any big decision that we need to be weighing the big decision I think boils down to your comfort with the tax rate because there's a lot of money in the capital budget so if you you know if you feel like for example the sidewalks are not imperative and that's a 30,000 dollar appropriation into the budget that's now there's some bad sidewalks there's not any outstanding lawsuits related to it it would be nice to do them over time but it's not it's not as high a priority as some other things but if you if we needed to find money for the sidewalks would be an option we could I wouldn't tell you to reduce it because it's a small amount already given the cost to the sidewalks so I'd probably tell you to cut it to zero and then we'll come back and future you with the plan we will be doing the power throw sidewalks we have to even though the power throw sidewalk is in decent shape we fought that battle and elm street I'd like to do elm street as well we want to do elm instead of park but the state is not yeah it's elm street park street one park row one connects you to the park I think we can still do both of them just park row side, not the other side park street park row west yeah Tom, an answer to your question I am I want to congratulate you on the budget you developed I'm reasonably comfortable with the increases that you put in here I don't think the second half it is extraordinary given the experience of inflation that we've endured in the past several years what I'm really concerned about is the school taxes and how much increases that's going to be because all of that combines into a big hit on our townspeople so we may end up having to tighten our belts because of the schools which doesn't sound fair to me but it's it's a big let's just question so we can move on to fire based on what I just heard from the chairs overall budget looks good do you have any final questions do you need any more charts yeah that is on my list so I can go down through so a lot of the budget that you have the insurance stuff I don't do anything with because there's nothing that I can do with that that's municipality I can go down and just hit some of the highlights under the stuff that I can control and if you have questions certainly throw them out I have brief discussions about apparatus and how I'll work with Tom and make some adjustments let me just put on the revenue work so that's that's based on particularly significant changes so the Ducksbury fire contract is based on our expenses for 2023 and they pay a portion of it and it's formulaic it's been in place for some time but essentially it's based on the portion of the grand list they cover and a ratio of that to the town's grand list the challenges our grand list is growing faster than theirs it doesn't mean it held a means in any one year but over a few years it means a little bit and so on I'm likely to send them a letter saying same methodology as prior years but 2025 we're going to have to do something a little differently because over time it's it's not a lot of money but a thousand bucks is a lot of money to make but the portion of the air town that it covers just the grand list of that portion just isn't going to move much compared to ours and our grand list tends to grow by a percent a year so not a huge thing it's you know there's bank growth by a percent so it's a percent well that's based on our prior year cost but if our grand list keeps growing faster than theirs it would be skewed a little bit and it wouldn't grow as fast as it should on the contrary their grand list could also grow faster than ours so at some point I'm just going to think about a slightly different, a slight change in methodology and maybe just say let's pegged it where it is now and grow it maybe not by the grand list but by the rate of inflation that way it's just set in simple for ducks very important Mary the amount that we get from them on per call basis we're recovering our expenses we don't do it based on per call but if you were going to you're asking if we were to do it that way does that mean? you know I don't know and every call is different week right last week we went to a reported crash and all it was was a car that slid off the road but we had three trucks on board or we could have a house fire and you still have three trucks and then you call in one week late so I guess I haven't really looked at that as opposed to the current system you know are we going to pay per call and then we'd have to calculate what's the value of the truck the cost of the firefighters so there would be a fair amount of work not that it can't be overcome but we might go a long time without a call in Dunsbury at all and then we shoot up Camelshaw for Crossville two or three times in a week we don't shoot up any of those hills actually we had terminology there is no way to shoot up any of those roads but it's a long ways up some of them so I'm not invested one way or the other quite honestly if you wanted to go towards a paid per call basis we're talking about projections in the future you have no idea how many calls you're going to have I guess you could look at how many calls you have and that sometimes is skewed and then especially the crashes a lot of them don't turn up to be crashes and then are we going to charge Dunsbury and just throwing this out so somebody goes off the road they're not hurt they don't call 911 somebody else sees it doesn't want to stop because they're too busy they call 911 we have to go and are you going to charge Dunsbury for that absolutely so that's what you'd be getting into and then the challenges every year our budget gets really bumpy if we did it on a per call basis someone thought it took the actual calls it might be 121 a year and he did the max of 175 and I would think they would want to have a pretty static way of paying for certain it's more like in the church you're covered you've got Bravo Fire they're covered with water Dunsbury still has to have a 911 call taker sitting there they're answering other calls but that person has to be there you have to have the dispatcher in Montpelier sitting there they're doing other things but in part their job is to take care of Dunsbury through water so all those pieces have to be in place for every call and don't forget it's a pretty good deal and any of our budget is paid for by another tax is there going to be anticipating any issues with Dunsbury fulfilling this delta I think so they didn't have any questions last year it's a bigger increase than it's been lately but it's based on our actuals if they have a problem they would notify us in advance of the budget I expect they won't like the increase you know I'll give them the actual number when I get a little closer to having it and what we've historically done is once we get not quite the first week of January but we try to make sure we get lingering invoices we build them using the formula based on the actual and we also say if an odd invoice is now in this letter then that's not part of it because we've already given you a set number which is a pretty fair way to do it I think you know they might not love it but I think it's pretty fair and I think given inflation it was a hundred it was higher in 2021 than it was in 2023 so we're not the long term going on that much okay okay so we should go on to expenditures sure on the pay side pay was the pay in 2023 is over budget but a substantial part of that was flood revenue a substantial part of that will be reimbursed by FEMA so 2024 really takes out the flood part of it it is still up despite that that's good that means our volunteer ranks are healthy and I also factored in the same base 4% for all people I'm also proposing to give to the fire group I don't see why they should be treated different I know they're volunteers but I still think that makes sense and then the rest of the budget the dispatching piece is worth a little conversation that's the capital west I guess I'll call it a consortium that we're part of and that increase is based on in essence their capital plan and our portion of that I was presented last year we can have them in if you feel like that's necessary but really what they're doing is they're executing the plan and the dispatch cost I went and looked at other towns and there's only a few regional dispatch centers in the state but the simple way to break it down is on a per capita basis and a lot of towns are built that way and that's a pretty reasonable number less than 20 bucks per capita it's a bargain it's a yeah it feels absolutely right what we're paying compared to other dispatch centers we're getting a really good deal there are other places we could go there's one that the neighboring department of chintin county uses but all they do is tone you out that is it they provide no real dispatch service and if we have somebody in our off in our radio room when we have a call and we need to get all the green amount of power we'll try and especially when there's a storm the dispatchers in the employer are busy so we will try and handle that ourselves there's a couple of us that have access to green amount power emergency line they don't want that being out there but they've given it to a couple of us so we try and handle that internally but if we need to have monthly call they will because that's part of their job if we want to go cheaper we get cheaper and it's not good we're too busy if you have 50, 60 calls a year you can say okay all we want is somebody to discharge us out but that's not water our call line has gone up this year we don't know the exact numbers but it's like 235 and that's a big jump over last year for many years we went down we are 343 a number of years ago was our high and then after that we dropped and dropped into significantly under 100 calls under 200 calls and now we're starting to go back up again how much of that is the highway? not a big percentage not during the storm people actually use their heads a little bit during the storm but it's when they start clearing the interstate and the sides are still both snow and they start picking up speed that's when we start calling but it's not a big percentage I haven't run the stats yet for last year that's maybe this weekend do you have any idea why the calls are going up? no there's nothing specific that I can point to just like there was nothing specific that I could point to why they're going down just the way well they went down before there a big time because we have a lot less chimney fires well yeah so we used to have when I started forever ago we used to have like 20-30 chimney fires a year and now we might have 5 or 6 it's very small and what the state does now on the interstates which is very helpful a little less so in the middle sex district is the precooked roads and that helps with what? right it's not good for your car but it's good for crashes there's a trade off and that helps us until after the storm and people pick up speed because the main lanes on the interstate are clear but then they cut over the fog line and they get caught up in it and that's when they crash Roger back to this batch in 2 just remember that with this batch in cars that includes the dispatch in Fawassie right going further down there's a big number 87,054 new equipment it's a large number it's consistent with prior years Gary Scott a long list of items he reviewed with me and he's done that in prior years some fire department you look at other towns and you see 20 more items for hoses and the boots and the protective gear and that's essentially all that is in here and in 2023 Gary presented me the plan and basically bought everything on it once it was approved so the budget was more or less to the penny prices all in advance I have helped with that I didn't want to present that level of detail I think it would be more effective if people want that we should tour the department and go through and see some of it yeah I I don't know is everybody here bent into the fire station has actually looked around because I think you might be a little surprised as to what which truck does what and looking right now in the new equipment is PPE dryer so what we have been doing for a number of years has been putting in a washing machine we stopped doing that because it's just a washing machine and we bought extractors there washing machines on steroids actually extracts all the crap that causes cancer out of the gear so we have those but then we still have to put them in the back of a chair to dry and then when you have another call you're either that person is not going or they're taking somebody else's gear and if that person shows up they're cranky because their gear is gone so having these dryers will actually it's not going to solve the problem the solution to the problem in solving it is having two sets of gear I don't see that necessarily happening there are departments that do that but I don't see us doing that we have some people that have redundant gear like I have a set in Waterbury Center we have a couple people that work up there, live down here that might have a duplicate set because they're going to respond here for a call so but the dryers we can actually have them like a skeleton you just put the gear on it and you turn on the dryers and it dries the gear with just ambient room temperature air you're not supposed to use a dryer as an example that degrades the gear we found that out many years ago in the station down here when we had gear hanging along the wall and the sun was coming in and we found out that we literally discolored it and grabbed it and pulled it apart so there's some things you just can't do well this is your question how do you gain for a tour of the department during this time education for everybody sure I approve a lot of the warrants just looking at how much some of the equipment bought it just blown you by it's rough numbers what's it cost to outfit an entire fire so a helmet is in the area of 350 gloves are about about 85 a coat is 1600 pants are a little less they're about 900 the hood is about 65 it's a Nomex or similar material that keeps people from getting burned so in the boots they're expensive they're about 450 so yeah how what's the expected life of a set of year depends on who you are and I say that because some members are there more often you take Stan Morris as an example or my wife they're there on a more regular basis and their Kyle Gaia is there on a more regular basis but they're also aggressive interior firefighters they're going to wear that gear out more so the life of the gear if it's not damaged is 10 years if we get to the gear is two years old and it gets damaged we send it in they will fix it in the manner that is prescribed if it gets to like a year seven or eight it really isn't worth the cost to fix that gear when you're going to replace it in a couple of years because it's still expensive because they have to do things in a manner that is still going to protect the firefighter but those people might get eight years out of some of the others will get the full 10 years fine I try not to get dirty but I go on mutual aid calls and everyone I get to put an air pack on and actually play firefighter but we have our equipment officer he has everything on a spreadsheet and once a year he updates his spreadsheet and the year or that person's gear is due to expire that line or that item shows yellow the year that it has to be replaced pops up red those are the people we have to get gear for so he's got a real good handle on that I don't even worry about it he comes to me when he's trying to get gear he's already called the vendor he gives them the prices for each of the stuff and he knows how much we have in that line item and then he consults with me I don't have to get into it I just want to thank past select boards in the community for supporting this budget the fire department has the highest ISO rating that any volunteer fire department can have part of that is due to the good water system in the village that I invested in but the reason why we have 50 volunteer firefighters is because we invest in good equipment, good vehicles and provide good training to these people you can, you know, Duxbury gets part of their fire coverage from more time for the part of Duxbury that's on the other side I'm not here to disparage more time you be happier if you were being covered by the water the department you can go around the state and what did volunteer fire departments and I would put ourselves against any and it's cheap insurance and you have the department you have because the community has been willing to invest the money in it and I hope that we do it again thanks firefighters to full-time departments and one to South Burlington he decided to move outside the area but he could have stayed here and been on our department the one department full-time department in Vermont that does not allow their firefighters to be on other departments is Burlington they have their own stuff to do and it's an issue between the city and the union and the people to Burlington five really good firefighters and it's because I had the deputy chief and he says well we won't take them if you stop training so you know that would be great we burned a building for training that belonged to Ben and Jerry's and their training officer came down with their recruit class because they trusted in the systems that we use so yeah I think we run a good department I have great officers that run the department I'm just kind of the figurehead but we have some really great training we have some really great officers that like to teach people stuff and that's kind of where we're at I mean we have one of the best heavy rescue trainings around the state Spencer Morris who just recently passed away started it in 1972 his funeral is Saturday but he started it and it carried on somebody else's father was directly involved taught me but we've learned from some really good people and we've trained a lot of people but if you want to join I'd be happy to take you with me well I'll join you for a tour see what I really want so just let me know I'm certainly available and I've offered it up in the past we do our training the second and fourth of Tuesdays if you are available and you want to come I would ask that you call me and not show up because you don't want to sit there if we're running just some in-house training like CPR refresher we have to do I would love to have you come out I know you've got rules around that but you could come out periodically and see what it is that we actually do it's your department it's all ours and then thank you for what you did it's a pleasure we don't have to finalize it today we've ordered the truck your approval earlier so I believe our last meeting in January is our deadline for finalizing the warning so we'll have ballot language for that truck in the future meeting I did put in debt for that truck so the way long-term financing works is the best bet is to get your debt through the Vermont School Bombay and do this pulled offering of every town that goes in cheap way to get long-term cash so I assume the truck would be water approved when you go through the bomb bank you've actually got two years where you can pay interest only if you want it's just more costly long-term obviously but I do make payments twice a year once principal and interest one is interest only I did put some funds in here assuming that you know that the overall budget and tax rate were okay and so we wouldn't need to delay any payments we could essentially pay half the cost of the first year and the full cost would be next year in 2025 so we formally borrow the money in the summer of 2024 we might need to do something in short-term in the meantime when the cash is due and then we'd have the long-term loan and you know speaking of abratus and the truck that assuming everything is a go was the truck that was to be replaced in 2021 it was we discussed it why we set it back a little bit but in 2022 we were supposed to get the second tank truck so if that goes too far and you're then putting it at about the same time talking about a mini pump so I can work with Tom and I've kind of got a plan on how we can split that up a little bit and make it a little more consistent as opposed to you know two big trucks yeah that's what I want to avoid hitting two big hits on a continual basis because we're all going to time out at the same time well you know we've we've tried to split them up a little bit the problem was when you buy a fire truck in the town and a fire truck in the village you buy from the same vendor at the same time and then you merge you got two trucks at the same time and in this case we had two engines and two tank trucks so the next tank truck you know I think we ought to be looking at 2025 start having that discussion maybe get into the same agreement with the same vendor about their demo truck that he's already got in line that will save us a lot of money and this is just talking points and combine that with a replacement pickup truck which is due in 2026 so you get rid of that you're earlier switch that but then you only have one truck a mini pumper in 2026 unless you want to do them all which I don't think you want to do but I can work with Tom to come up with a creative way to balance having a balance as opposed to a couple bigger trucks at one time the number of trucks that you have it's hard not to have some of the industry do too we revamped the schedule several times but in old days when there were two municipalities it was cheaper to buy two trucks at the same time so they all have one reason to do it but now we put it to find a different way you know when certain trucks last 20 years and other trucks last 5 years or 8 years or whatever at some point they overlap and try to adjust it the ones in Waterbury has been really good about which would cause me the greatest concern if there was a problem or the engines, the pump trucks NFPA says 20 years and we've seen the outcome of getting close to that 20 years when we had a blown engine and we had a leaking tank and we were able to get a demo truck that was on its way what was actually here so the other trucks the tank trucks not as important but then you start working into maintenance issues so we're a little bit past those the end of the world but it's something that we ought to take a look at and work with Tom and how we can do that and do it in a the most cost effective way not just order a truck we can get one that's standardized truck that's in the queue already as opposed to spending another 75,000 on top of that to do our own just doesn't make sense by an engine and again I hope to be in a situation in a year or two where we can say that you know we have this local option tax we made a new fund you know we took in 700,000 last year and spent 450 we have this capital expense maybe we allocate some cash towards it I like the way that the global option tax revenue keeps growing a little bit yeah and how we can spend the cheapest vehicle truck to do is a pickup truck that is like pennies on the dollar compared to a half million dollar truck we certainly won't get the size truck we have now it was the only one that was available we wanted an F-250 that series whether it was Chevy or before yeah we wanted an F-250 short bed because it was just too much especially with the old water department building that we were putting it in and the only thing that we could get was a 350 long bed and it takes an airport to turn that thing around it's absolutely horrible but it's near the end of its life and if we balance it often we get rid of that a year before it's scheduled but it financially we just bought an F-250 for E-Foot I believe that was 60 just under two seater E-Foot bed ours would be a four door but about a little more yeah but the availability of trucks is starting to grow again in terms of the budget we have to have that separate warning item that will be on which is for the 435 or whatever that we previously approved and what we're seeing reflected is approximately 200 of that in line in the debt principal line the debt principal contains an estimated payment it contains a estimated you have to estimate a cost for the year so it will assume a new bond in over 20 years and as of right now it's only for the 20 year bond okay and the rest is for other existing debt and I can give you the whole debt it's fine that was just what I wanted to clarify and as of today the bond bank is actually going up they think in early March that the E-Foot will be on issue but they're still thinking 20% on 20 year cash so interest rates have gone up the days of towns borrowing 30 year cash at two and a half are done but they haven't gone up as much as home rates are so they're still in a very good position I have another question Gary the only other thing that I would put out and it's just a brief discussion is when we built the stations we have found that the heating system the furnace if you will was not designed for this size station down here the one in Maple Street it's the right size but what we've encountered each year is more and more heating problems and the alarm going off so that, not this coming year but probably next year it's going to be on the bubble to replace that system with a system that's actually designed to heat that building right now we didn't tell you what not to do that's going to go over here see I love this temperature, I'm good with it but I get that other people are my wife would not be happy but that's just coming down the road we are looking at doing some work this year to the building it's been both have been great buildings but we are doing some periodic stuff, we've replaced a couple of doors we're going to replace another one this coming year overhead bay doors we're going to replace two walk-through doors at the main street station at the front of the station you see a walk-through door on the left-hand side it goes right into the apparatus bay and they're rusting and we don't really know how we could have done anything different there's salt and that's just the way it is on the outside of the outside door and inside where the trucks get washed off there's water I have already met with DEW they built the station it's actually the son of the guy that was the superintendent of the project he's going to try to help us a little bit with that but the plan is to replace those with fiberglass doors and casings as opposed to steel and then that will get us way past when I won't care anymore I'll still care but it won't be my problem that'll be for the doors are this coming year that's on there but the furnace heating system will be in 2025 but it's just on the ball Chris two quick questions Gary do you I don't recall the village fire station is that all radiated heat it is downstairs not upstairs it's upstairs it's radiator radiator so it's just a matter of upsizing the boiler it's not in place right yeah I just had a quick question for Tom that answers my question Gary thanks when you talked about the Ducksbury Lawnbury contract you were saying that our grandmas is outpacing the area we covered for them are you suggesting that if I remember correctly and you could correct me if I'm wrong they will actually based on the formula the current formula they would end up benefiting more as our grandmas yeah and it's not a lot in one year it's a few hundred bucks but you know you give it some time and it'll grow so I think at some point and you're basically looking to hold a better figure from them as we I won't say continue to lose but you can see you outpace them and it would tip them in more favorable it's again it's small amounts but you might look at it in ten years and think it's not so small so it's not an urgent thing and I don't want to cause a big issue with Ducksbury I think it's a minor issue so I don't want to change it this year but I just want to work them on the issue and I literally didn't know if a few hundred dollars here and there and you know that could change and their grandmas could explode at some point but the topography for that area that we covered for them is pretty difficult yeah I don't matter so I think at some point just sort of pegging it to something different like inflation might make a little more sense but the challenge was we I think we made when we vet that contract we were getting like $25,000 or $30,000 a year we're getting $100,000 and now it's up to $115,000 and the argument that we used was you know it's one department covering this area so we should use the grand list of the whole area so you know that's as if it's one grand list is how the formula works so if we're going a little faster than they are and I'm not here to defend Duxbury but the argument that was made to them was you know you should pay as if we had one grand list covering this whole service area and their pushback was well but we don't get to vote on it we don't get to vote to buy a truck we don't get to vote to set the budget you do all that and we have to pay for it I mean there's no nothing wrong with looking at it and thinking about it but I think you know Tom's statement that you don't want to do anything to upset the apple cart and you know try to get $2,000 more and end up losing the whole thing you don't want to do that so somebody let me know some evening early evening, late evening I don't care I'm up until usually 11 o'clock anyway we could do two stations in one door we wouldn't take that long or we could do them two separate nights we'll talk to the other people about the place we'll talk to the other people about the place I'm just sorry I need a snack a little strewkushers yeah they always have a lot of snacks so back up you already talked about a snack budget I'm not seeing it I would say I can attribute it to a snack budget to be a snack budget someone call it like that is it? sorry where is about halfway through there's public works libraries and planning and zoning on the back of the library the back of the library the back of the library the back of the library the back of the library we're going to read them about the planning of the library separate it doesn't matter for this year I noticed that there was fire and barriers have separate capital funds for buildings and vehicles that's just one so highway has its own highway had three in prior years fire had two there's one there's still a separate one for parts of the library I feel like that would be pretty reasonable whatever we're planning and zoning I had a picture with three times to find it myself planning and zoning planning and zoning planning and zoning there's actually an awful lot of action in the department we have a proposal before you it doesn't need to wait it's something that the select work improved at their discretion and that's the that's the fee total there was a memo that went with that some comparables to other towns there's a memo there too but the long and short of it is we are I wasn't able to find when our when our fees were rest modified so it's likely sometime ago but in looking at comparables this is not an attempt to generate revenue it's an attempt to charge fees in a system of other towns some towns have a model that I hate where the fees are based on construction costs I just don't see how you ground truth that someone comes in and says they're going to build a house for 250 grand and it's a 2500 square foot house how do you have you have to question that and then you get into these awkward conversations so I think having to fee on per square foot basis is the way to go mm-hmm after sending it we realized we made an error at the bottom the second one from the bottom we jumped the gun and we put in the rental registry as a mistake thinking that do we have fees for that? no we didn't propose a fee but there's no ordinance yet so I recommend just scratching that for your discussion and to clarify the legal reviews it's up to $300 an hour so there are more complex cases that require legal reviews but essentially what we're saying is the first hour is a fee and beyond that it's a town cost which again I think is reasonable because sometimes the legal reviews it's project pacific and it's it's not always obvious that we require some legal work and what we're not and sometimes it really depends on some big reason of his own laws so you would inform him about this future and I think the rest is fairly consistent with some other towns of our size in thinking about this a little more over the weekend something to consider perhaps is based on the bylaws and the updates which are not adopted yet of course but that's going to be under desk soon enough the bylaws encourage density particularly in areas where there's water and soar and so consider after I think about this further some sort of a reduction on the first graph left fee that's drawn into the water or soar be a little consistent with what we're trying to do through the bylaws it's what the PC desires to do so if you wanted to consider something like five cents first graph reduction for water and five for soar something like that would be pretty reasonable I think but I think in general the fees are consistent with what other towns charge for and obviously has revenue impact in the budget I think the $50,000 is pretty reasonably conservative just based on what's been permitted in prior years after the fact fee my way up which one sorry after the fact zone anything I think it's important to have that be a substantial amount you know that really shouldn't occur should be as rare as hen's teeth to charge that I think it's important for it to be there I think since I've been here we've run into one case where someone did something substantial without it but I also think it's pretty routine that if you're building a town ever not you need to call the town office and figure out if you need a permit or not Tom can you tell me about it's highlighted it says new, no charge abandoned, bladed, unoccupied permit and so that's in essence so we're aware of it and in some cases that's just an issue of who to call so there's really no work on our part but if you want to be aware of those issues that generate complaints we don't have a lot of them in the Waterbury it's really just about our knowledge Tom when you have under zoning, compliance verification letters you're talking about certificate about occupancy letters yes that's pretty onerous because sometimes banks in mortgages for a small mortgage they're looking pretty big number I'm thinking in terms of a new house it's not such a big number but if you have addition being put on or some sort of modification that's kind of onerous that's up to you that is your desire zoning compliance verification my big question these fees is I think the $40 per square foot is more consistent with the other towns if you want to say that legal reviews are the town's problem or if zoning compliance verification letters should be a lower amount or zero I have no pride of authorship really beyond the few major items I'm looking at more of like there would be some sort of differentiation between a minor project and a major project where a minor project this is always expense to do any of this stuff if we were charging someone doing a little project in their house to charge them $50 I don't have as much of a problem but to charge someone to do a small project $300 especially someone who's low to moderate income I think that's more of a problem I know what you're talking about I'm just asking because we don't do these houses zoning compliance that are going to require staff to go out to the property to insure compliance because previously we didn't do that so if we're going to require I don't think $300 is too much to ask you're going to have to be more than that I think it was I know a previous I wanted us to stop we did I would note that we also do certificate of occupancy right now so it could be required of that now in the mortgage industry that's going to be whether you do a little $3,000 project or if you do a $500,000 project you're going to have to do that and that's what someone who's doing a little tiny project I kind of I know it's we want to cover our costs and doing kind of things a little more cursory on a small project than what a percentage makes sense or is that too complicated I think that gets complicated I mean this also as Karen pointed out if we're sending someone out to check for compliance we now have sort of an enforcement apparatus I think someone would do that without raising taxes you know I'll just draw my line in the sand that I spent an hour talking through these I have a lot of small $50 tweaks and I kind of took the approach of we don't really need to add $50 the ADU permit and if you have a new ADU I think it should be the same as one within the footprint but we can talk through staff time I personally like the water super proposal personally I kind of landed on some of the things that are good and necessary updates so I guess I would say like if we're going to have a conversation about tweaking some of them I have like five more things I would want to discuss I'm also comfortable adopting this as a good appropriate update right now I just want to be honest like yeah there's things I would get into a lot more detail now but if the board is comfortable with I'm comfortable with that as a whole that would be the next time to discuss like if it was adopted now that's my concern the things that we wrote 50 years ago it was still using $30 so is it worth that extra time or setting the adopted now but putting on a calendar a revisit the reality is most of these these wouldn't come into play very often so I think you know a revisit in a few months would be pretty easy okay is there a reason to adopt them now as opposed to a few months from now there's always a revenue reason and a big part of it is I think we've got an office, we've got a new team there we've got other costs in the budget that are related to what we're trying to accomplish in terms of getting a software package for people to do their permitting online we could have a rental registry online as part of that if desired and then also we're trying to work hard to get to the point where we're doing real enforcement which is something the DRB tells us a lot and so there's some legal costs in there to help us prep for that so I think this is part of that part of that strategy is on the one hand we needed to update the fees because they were just not consistent with our peers on the other hand we do have some increased costs in the budget related to the desire to do zoning enforcement so I think they're to some extent bound and I have a general I have a general approach of things and I can correct this if it's wrong but my general approach is you know the way you hold the line as best you can on taxes is you you try to do it through reasonable user fees and then it applies to this and then it applies to recreation so I think our fees right now are below market maybe the market's not reasonable but I think we're below market I would agree with that statement that we are below market but I do think there are differences in projects and that's where I have a little angst on this you know are we going to really affect you know I work a lot with lower and this is going to have an adverse effect you know I'm all for you know I don't want to raise people's taxes but also I hate to you know have someone where you're going to have costs that are going to prevent someone from doing a project especially a little $2,000 $3,000 project so Mike you have an alternative proposal or would you like to take some time I think this is already suggested she might get $500 to do it as well for the purposes of tonight I will move to adopt the updated fee schedule as proposed Mike does $150 for zoning compliance letters feel more reasonable because I do I hear your argument that that's a mortgage that's less selective I would note that the very modest things every mortgage now has been but like establishing a home occupation and existing uses and forges are like $50 so I personally feel very comfortable with residents who want to do a modest project in their home that's a pretty reasonable fee noting that the legal review would be $300 up to $300 but not the whole bill and then no we can revisit in the future but I'll move to adopt as proposed with zoning compliance verification $150 and noting that we don't have a rental registry so that shouldn't be included wait I'm sorry I'm sorry I need you to clarify are you changing something in the language about the $300 it's a $300 per hour it's $300 up to $300 per hour up to $300 so that's it just change to up to $300 I got those two thank you it's just a problem it's like I just last month went to motor vehicles you look at one more and then going up this year I saw some of the expenses it's like fees everyone doesn't like taxes but fees take you just as much as taxes and I think these are pretty modest it feels like a subdivision and I want to support more so I will also say new accessory dwelling unit that can be up to $1,400 square feet now that's going from $200 to $560 under the $40 per square foot total I still felt like that wasn't a detriment to develop I'm open to us lowering it in the future I assume we have zero at residential rental registry because that's not yet yet and then we can amend further based on okay, moving on to any further discussion hearing none all those there will say aye any opposed any abstentions alright, we've got new fees on the rest of the budget a couple things I want to highlight the professional services there's $10,000 budget in which is about a three-fold increase what we've had in the past I was really convinced of this the presentation that the SE Group the second open house with the me had really brought home this only bylaw changes just to see the slick brackets they produced they've helped a lot help staff and the planning commission move along in the process and that works to continue in 2024 but what I would like to see is the bylaws will be before you in February I would like to see the planning commission and the staff take a little bit of a break since they've been meeting weekly for a while but then they want to start attacking the rest of the town I think at some point there should be a conversation between staff and the planning commission about how you go about doing that in the most constructive way because if you just say go for it and conquer all of the town north of 89 no break you almost want to go like district by district yeah we want to have a good targeted approach and there's a lot of people with different ideas about that but I think the consultant is going to help us and I think that should probably align with them for a long time and something I've said to a number of people is you know bylaws don't have to be this this issue take years to update you can if there are certain things in the current round of bylaw updates that apply to the rest of the town you can do that you don't need to do a comprehensive update it's of course great if you can do that but it might be nice to just make some progress along the way and have bylaw updates on a routine basis from the select point and that would be I think the goal to get reasonably current and just keep chipping away but I think we can have a conversation about that once we're through the big projects in front of us now the other piece is there's a so there's some reductions bylaw rewrite that was substantially grant funded and the rec master plan and those projects are essentially done there's a big increase in legal services even though we had a little actual in 2023 maybe two lingering bills but that won't go up dramatically and the logic behind that is we've reached out to an attorney and had the conversation to essentially acknowledge that we haven't done significant zone enforcement in some time and have a good playbook get the legal advice in advance and have some counsel to tackle some of the immediate challenges before us so that we avoid those challenges so our thinking is the legal budget goes up for one year and then we've got the playbook and there's always going to be a need for some legal advice in that office of course the more enforcement you do the more likely you are to have challenges but the direction the DRB seems to be giving us is there's some enforcement that needs to be done thank you I think that's where you're over here so I think you know the enforcement is going to start but it won't happen on day one it's going to take a little bit of time to get there and we'll just be careful about it and then going further down there's a big line item for a software suite and that's for the proposed permitting software um what's nice about the software is no town has a perfect pipeline from the permitting office to the Lister but with software it gets a little stronger because the Lister can have access to it too so the Lister can know what's coming in advance, what's happened and make sure that he's going to go out there and make sure he values those properties and doesn't miss growth so that's important that adds to brainless growth probably on the margins but I think it matters over time a big part of this is it would all be moved on line so part of the cost is just it's higher in the first year because there's some transition and there's some taking of the recent data and getting into the system so there will be an annual fee but not at that level? not that level but it's not going to go dramatically down it's going to go to 15 but that's the cost of just having an online information system but I think it's time and I think from the user perspective it's better and then the other piece I'm happy with our staff now but when we were looking for the planning zoning director we had a candidate who had some personal issues and couldn't take the job unless it was substantially remote this is a walk-in-off this is small town drama we get a lot of foot traffic but with the software we could maybe at some point have that conversation with the job candidate say well it can't be fully remote but if it's online the work can be online and maybe it can be partially remote maybe we can make that work between two staff having office coverage so it gives us some flexibility and even just for the staff we have now if there's some sort of challenge and their work-life balance we can find a way to make it better so yeah it'll go down and it will go down in 2025 but not dramatically and that's planning and zoning and a nutshell there's... can you remind me on having a senior moment the reclassifying of revitalizing Waterbury to the general government why did we do that again I'm trying to remind you I think part of it was it could be wrong I think there was a base appropriation to RW and then it was increased to pay for the economic development position but it's established so I think we can just put it in one place and go from there it was because we had a beautification lying in the planning budget forever and then revitalizing Waterbury came along and it was we stuck it there so it doesn't work the problem there it should be somewhere else it's just it's a lot more in it now than originally so the economic development director money comes out of the general fund I think goes there so putting it further down is a good idea go ahead the line that says PZ is something more economic is that central line central for economic development corporation so that's not the invoice that I was that was CBEDC CBEDC there's two central line regional planning commission and central line economic development corporation and that one's like $2,000 and the planning commission should be $5,000 there's one in my spreadsheet they're like special articles I've had a few meetings with Melissa Bounte who's the executive director and it bought e5 a state grant to do the route 10010i so she was instrumental in helping me get that across the finish line so I think grant funding they can be a big help and she's she may be part of a selection committee or she's sort of an advisor to the in this case it was it was ACCD to advise of some some whopping power of nothing else and I think it's she's sort of the guardian of the regional economic plan so if you're proposing something within the conference she can help you champion it I think we're very instrumental with the veggie grant for even the one that ended up not coming it's cheap I was just saying it's really the state apparatus for going from a statewide agency of commerce and community development out to regions is through these 11 regional development corporations so that's our corresponding one so for Tom's point like grants especially the ambulance actually just got a list of like 10 regional priority projects for central again they're facilitating that but often like when I was economic development director that person got a call from the state hey we need XYZ office space and they would then call me and say like do you have anything in Waterbury that meets these needs so it's just one of these we don't quite have the regionalization we don't quite have the counties but if it was to work it would be a long map model of that in between levels 2,000 bucks is cheap as well well spent it's from 2,000 dollars for 30 years it doesn't go up yeah this is the one that I'm thinking about okay any other questions on your play oh I was just saying having just made the motion to approve the fee increases is 50 realistic or should we do 40 to be conservative I think 50 is conservative if we had had these fees in place in 2023 then 60 alright well thank you thank you next on the agenda is penalty tax rate and I'm not sure we need to have a huge conversation about this so this probably comes up every year you have a few people that miss the day by a few days you have a few people that consistently miss it every year and they crack about the penalty and the penalty is 8% because that's how the voters count leading day and I dare say you'd probably struggle to find a town that doesn't charge the same penalty there's a few out there but it's that story maximum and what I say to the people who call and complain is that I have no authority to waive your penalty it was go to approve and if I waive your penalty I'm essentially committing fraud at that point so I'm not going to do that and your options are to try to have a conversation with anyone on the select board or try to have a conversation at town meeting day and then you know after the due date those calls by down within two or three weeks and I think once people are a few weeks late they sort of acknowledge that it's a problem it's their problem if you will so I don't I'm not convinced that anything needs to change per se but I think at one point we just decided to put it on the agenda and get the opinion of the board if they wanted to do anything different I would argue you need a penalty because most of what we're collecting is school taxes and we've got to pay that bill no matter what so the interest in penalties are a big part of making this whole you know I think one of the conversations that is maybe reasonable to consider is some towns go all alley postmark and since the mail has gotten coogie of late that's something that could be considered it's a little more work for staff to track that it's not impossible and we do get those people that say we do have a few of that I think one or two of this year that they would generally mail it before the due date at a time if you know the mail takes time mailing it a day before the due date you wouldn't feel it in Waterbury you might not get it done and I think and you can put it in the box and I think every year there is one or two people who complain that it did legitimately take for whatever reason they're not far but it took 10 days to get here and my answer to that is you know I get it in my town you pay one bill a year I pay that three or four weeks in advance to make sure I see the check clear because if it doesn't I'm going to go down and avoid the penalty because it's so huge so I'm not sure you need to do anything I think if if you wanted to consider the postmark as an option not an undue burden on staff but I think if you if you want to consider reducing the penalty at some point I'm going to argue with you how absolutely insanely complicated would it be to have a tiered penalty so one you know five business days is four percent I think pretty difficult yeah I had a short conversation with Karen on this it seemed like it would be a small yeah for her to adjudicate all of that and this deadline's been around forever been around forever I guess I think about you know when we had the woman who came who advanced she forgot until four p.m. and raised down here and was just too late I get four thirty or whatever it was an hour late and eight percent is wild saying like I forgot until moment and then I just got there too late and on one hand absolutely she missed it there's this fee on the other hand that is a wild fee for in her experience is a half hour and I don't know if there's a solution to that but I like thinking about it talking about it considering that some people can't send their bill in thirty days early to watch the check there because it isn't in there to do of course there's a personal responsibility conversation but I just I just feel like it's worth talking about and thinking if there are solutions and if there aren't there aren't but rather than just saying people need to figure them figure it out I don't always think of like the way to go I'm not running the meeting but well you're not there yet you're very empathetic to people who have financial issues so in that exercise I feel like I need to point out that the little old lady who's on the fixed income who still isn't going to pay within thirty days she's the one that's going to pay that eight percent opposed to the women but that is a grave you know thirty days is wildly different than twenty minutes but she's the one who's financially struggling and you know heard and I can't solve everybody but I can't solve everybody's problem like what she needs is social services to help her run her calendar we can't do that but we can think about what might happen often enough that we need the solution or if it's one person once a year it doesn't need a solution but if it's a dozen plus people who are late by one day forty eight hours maybe there's something we can do for that like subset of problems but there is something you can do for you allow director I said you already have a system in place where people can sign up for ACH they don't have to deliver their check they don't have to drop it in the mailbox you send out a notice and say if you want to sign up by ACH just make sure your money is in the bank on the day of stew and you'll take it out and you know I dealt with this issue for forty years and we used to accept post marks and when we were in the fire station I remember it was a very specific day there was a person yelling at the tax clerk it wasn't Karen at the time it was the person before Karen and the guy was very upset and we told him sorry we don't have the authority to change it blah blah blah and while we were talking the mailman came in and dumped fifteen tax bills that had a post mark because it's post mark well then I'm paying a penalty but they put it in the mail and it's getting here at the same time and so we did away with the post mark thing I think there are many envelopes that come through the mail now that don't have post marks so you're not going to be able to tell any bank check any bank check doesn't have a post mark so I would just say you're never going to solve the problem every year when taxes are due no matter what your deadline is no matter whether you tell the person that while you were half an hour late so you're a day late you come in on Monday instead of Friday and those people get four percent well the people who come in Tuesday are going to say well I only missed it by a day there's always going to be a deadline that has been missed so I think you just kind of if you're a staff person you suck it up and you not understand that people are going to yell at you for a little bit and then it calms down and it goes away and this is a perennial thing we had this conversation on the town meeting floor probably eight or nine years ago when the guy who was yelling about the post mark brought it up and we had a big conversation and the town voted the taxes are due at four thirty and it's eight percent and it's one percent interest so you can talk about it every time but it's going to be the same I agree with Bill with the exception of I think the post mark is a reasonable alternative because if someone does have a post you could actually say I want you to step my thing so I know because we're seeing mail taking five ten days sometimes to get to places but it's no excuse and I'm one I came I was coming from northern Vermont I usually take my taxes on the last thing because I don't like losing any interest and I was stuck in traffic and I was half hour late and you know I'll never miss that tax payment again and as Bill said you have that OCH option you know just use it it's not a difficult thing to do it's just people don't want to do it Chris make it quick you just hit it on the head you get stung once and you learn this enabling people to continue to get to continue to miss to continue to come up with an excuse it's an adult and it's not fair if my wife was here she would be unloading on the select board as to the reasons why not to change the current system because she spent 35 years dealing with it and she's had so much experience with it that the current system that's in place is the only thing that seems to work and work fairly you know there's it's called tough luck sometimes you just got to get spanked and my wife would tell me about these older people that would come in tears running down their face paying their bills with their handshaking because they didn't have the money but they were there to pay the bill on time because they knew they had to and she felt real bad for those people because they really didn't have the money what I will say is and this is on the this page here so in 2023 between tax interest and penalties we've collected 110,000 2024 is proposed about the same just a few years ago that was less than 70 if in fact there's going to be a school increase of 18% or something on the one hand we've got to pay the school that's a guarantee on the other hand we can reasonably expect more delinquencies more penalties and interest as a result of bills going up I don't know if that changes anyone's thoughts something we'll see did we try doing it lower during COVID wasn't it 2% during COVID or did I not get out did the board do that we met some abatement I just thought not paying you during COVID no I know I'm just like I'm wondering if that's why the 2020 was low and the 2021 just for Tom's point because that actually does all on me but I do recall there was a year while I understand we'll have impassioned opinions and that we need a revenue source I would also be curious to look at as Melissa pointed out maybe outside of pandemic years if there are years where it was significantly different or slightly lower slightly higher how the revenue changed if our goal is a high fee to prevent people from paying late then the ideal outcome pays late and we have no revenue if we have a lower fee maybe it's not as much of a deterrent but then more people do it and then we have a higher revenue so I kind of hear us talking about one and two things we want to deter people from paying late but we also want the revenue and those two things oppose each other I don't have a solution proposing something I would be curious to look at if there's actual data to be mine that says when we have a lower fee more people pay late and we get a higher revenue so I'd be curious to see that because maybe then we take it from 8% to 6% the revenue doesn't really change it's just more money from more people instead of more money from fewer people I want 100% compliance there's one minute and we have no revenue look at you go was it if you look at staff time chasing all the people it costs 4% and no interest until April so then you're going to proceed to that one Tom yeah I'll fall out the camera we only have one due date in 2020 we're going to discuss from that I wasn't aware for this question ultimately you brought to the town voters I think not until we come up with what we think is a more small alternative as of now it's the same policy that we've got the motion to collect taxes has the penalty and the due date and everything in it so that's something that comes up every year it's on the warning all the time I was sitting next to you at Tom meeting you were very clear about that with the voters you said I want to be the one to make what we assign who does why and Karen did what was it so in 2020 we did reduce the penalty from 8% to 4% and we also extended that interest didn't begin until April and it was because we only had one tax bill that year remember Bill we didn't get a tax rate until I don't know deep into the summer not in time to mail tax bills for 30 days and so we and there was special legislation granted that year to allow the select boards to change because we had Tom meeting before the pandemic happened so in a normal you don't have the ability to change what the voters have stated at Tom meeting answer why it was so much less in 2020 and Danny I feel what it's really appreciated compassion about this it's just that as a court heard the years this is the kind of topic that comes out everybody's really ticked the last two or three weeks and then people because they're really mad at themselves they're not mad at us they're not mad about the 8% and my point is that it's going to continue to come up because select boards change and people have different opinions ideas experience so it's either like we allow the conversation where we just say this never gets discussed again right so I understand that when you're consistent in a position you're experiencing multiple times but the people at this table important to remember are not experiencing it for the 12th time 15th time it could be the first time or the second time so it's a new conversation for this group it's a new conversation the first time someone's late so it's frustrating when you experience something over and over again but to remember that the other person in that conversation is new for them so everyone's opinion including people who've experienced this a million times is really important like your input is going to help dictate the decision and we have to accept that the conversation is going to continue to happen and I feel like I'll follow up with you Tom but I think we're ready to move forward I guess the one thing I will add is that people come in that we're still behind on 2022 taxes and we applied their bill to 20 we applied their payment to 2023 so they hold it in penalty and we've done that consistent so Danny I just want to say one last thing from an empathy standpoint he Bill said one time you know we rely on those late penalties and interest for revenue I said that's unfortunate we have to rely on people's misfortunes or mistakes to operate our municipalities so I am empathetic about the extra additional costs but you know it's a tough I think it needs to move forward I'm not the chair but I just I think it's time to move on with the agenda that's okay I'll let you guys go thank you for everything great people see you later unless there's any more discussion on the channel the tax rate Jennifer next meeting care was kind enough to draft yeah this is so much more too right we want to move on animal control discussions in this meeting ordinance is something we mean I'm sorry just to be clear this one's already posted thank you never mind that's fine but are you saying you want to delay the deliberative session tonight or we don't need do we need yeah that was unclear that's why I was confused by the vote I was unclear if that deliberative session was for tonight's dog bite hearing yeah well my father explained it but oh no you were fine I should have during discussions said I wanted to go to deliberative no I had brand trees I had forgotten my point was that if we couldn't come up with a solution that would be satisfactory by seven we would need a deliberative session if we had a motion on the floor and felt as though it was sort of neat the general crux of what was being discussed it got passed and so I felt like to move to that deliberative session that won't save us 15 minutes is already been spent if you would you like to add the animal control issue to the trial site I would I feel like there's more conversation to be had on that front and we can help you have some more news see updates proposed I think that's just a few of the things we probably can't by the evening tomorrow morning right plus yeah right so it's the 22nd and I guess I'm struggling a little right would be the one that's we skipped a week in our every week and I guess I'm just saying looking at this draft agenda that is quite a lot of content and two very substantive conversations including housing task force which is short term rental and ordinance so I don't disagree I'm just looking at the agenda mapping and it's not mapping looking to could we have at the meeting going to be do we have time so like Karen Tom and I are meeting at 2pm tomorrow which literally Tom emailed I will say to his credit I think to like December 21st and was like hi we're supposed to meet about this I propose the 8th and Karen was like no the 5th and we were like okay whoops I think for the 22nd with Joe's presentation or well if he just does the presentation it's fine I don't know if this agenda item is also intended to like be a rental registry conversation which needs more than that okay because I was going to say that might be a that might have longer comment from the public than we have a lot of time for the 29th to late I think on the 22nd I don't think the senior center is not asking for any increase this year so based on that you know they can come in and get an update but maybe not during January when the schedule is packed just from the public perspective I think okay similar story for Reduising Waterbury they're asking for a very minor inflationary increase I believe so I'm not sure that's a necessary meeting so it could be on the 22nd with the budget side if it's shortened up a bit I should say that I'm again not going to be in town I'm trying to say it I'm going to be in town on the 25th and you want to move it or do you want to add do you feel strongly about wanting to move as I'm here for those budget items definitely yeah I mean I'd be particularly the library budget I think is important because we're asking the trust to contribute to some budget increases and reluctant to do so so I hope that's going to be potentially contentious on the cemetery I made the library chair aware of that I like that yeah I mean if it's okay with everyone I'd prefer to meet out there instead of trying that that's not going to work through like that I would not be able to be president and there's no meeting on the 25th that's stolen and alternative days to the 24th one people I think with King instead of the Monday it does I mean you can have a meeting without me I heard do you know I don't have a bike saying that the development review board wasn't having their next meeting in January what they do they can meet that there no I don't want to ask them to do that because the meetings that they've had they've had a lot of public attendance I don't think it would be it's kind of awkward meeting in that room he said there wasn't application it was only like minutes so that would open up Wednesday January 17th if you need to have an extra meeting that week there's a potential does that work for you King I mean I don't think so I will have to meet then it's not on Monday to miss anything but don't and you want to be here for libraries to show I can just miss it or perhaps I can zoom in so let's just do that would Joe be her pair for the eight no I would say Joe very intentionally at the last meeting on the 18th which is the regular hasn't passed first meeting to review what he would present on the 22nd alright I'll just what I mean I actually think Joe could go to February but that doesn't solve the Roger problem like to not make that Thursday and King would miss on housing but the 29th do we think we're going to have the conversation that is the warrant that's great for yes especially because on the 29th which I know you said we have to meet because we have to sign the warrant is that super substantive like do we think would we be able to have an other agenda item oh yeah I think there's time on that so I'm wondering if given that I mean I know we don't want to push the housing further but also for a one week do we bond housing to the 29th and then I can get a hold of Joe if I were you to confirm that yeah oh he definitely knows that's what I said because he said he was going to review the 18th and plans on that but I mean I've lost track of the goal here I know Thursday is so early I guess it's too late to text him but no just plan on zooming in on the 22nd Danny and I can determine whether she wants to chair or I prefer not to try to chair from the zoning it's not easily done and then so we'll just keep around the 22nd and if we we can decide at the next meeting whether we need to add more to the 29th I did invite you Fudd to do the 29th every schedule so we already have EFUD which is unconfirmed but I invited yeah that's a big chunk of time yeah you remember now your dog ordinance we scheduled discussion tomorrow to the best of my knowledge it's not landed anywhere so do you want dogs on the 29th no not with EFUD please unless we get a lot to so on this on this draft one for January 22nd the last item under budgets is review draft agenda that's supposed to say review draft warning so if there's time that week we can get the warning you know if you're ready then we can have a lot of that done that night freeing up a lot of time on the 29th maybe we can wait and see where we get because I don't want that meeting you know I can warn the meeting of the 29th after we meet on the 22nd and I can put the dog ordinance in the parking lot so we don't forget it so I'm going to pay for it right now yeah, sure any other questions about filming agendas here we go we have a new session we definitely need to do it we will entertain a motion to adjourn I move to adjourn second so in second all those add bye