 I think that's fine. It's three minutes, three minutes after five in Vermont by my watch. We've got Santa Claus with us tonight. That's very nice. Now he's frozen. Is she frozen? Yeah, she's frozen. She does not have. Here comes Randy. Nice, they're all frozen too. There you are. I might have to call in so that I can hear. Here comes the budget committee. Okay, here they come. Sarah, did you hear me? I think I might call in on the phone so you'll see me both. I'll be on the, but I don't want to lose it because I can't hear you guys very well. Okay, okay. Well, wait a minute for you. Go ahead. No, I'm fine. You can start. I just am going to dial in as well. Actually, I don't have the dial in information. I'll look at it someplace else. Let's see. All I have is the link. It's a 301. Hold on. Yeah, 715. Yeah, 8592. Welcome budget committee. This isn't the auto number. I'll look at it on the agenda. Oh God, what happened? Evening, Peter. We can hear you, Liz. Okay, I'm going to go on mute and hope that I have better. Okay, so welcome everybody. Uh, we have the budget committee with us, uh, and who else? Paul Otenki. Oh, Paul, where's Paul? I don't see him. He's down there. No. He's on my list. Yeah, he just, he just popped in. Hi, Paul. Thank you. Welcome. Um, so, uh, the first thing on tonight's agenda is the, uh, progress on the budget and a full disclosure. I do not have Dorinda's latest printout. I have the one from the last meeting. So I'm going to try and follow along with the changes she's come up with and see where we are. So, yes. Peter, we have to amend the agenda. You, you wanted to talk about something with Vic, and we also have to add the trails committee discussion that Mike Levine. Did you get his email today? Yes, I did. Yes. Okay. So if you would add that to the agenda and we can, we can do the, uh, conversation with Victor under the highway report, that's fine. Okay. So we're all good to go. Yep. Okay. So Dorinda, you're on. Um, there was very minor changes that came in. I think I got something like Vermont League dues. And, um, so I really didn't change a lot. I did find an addition error in my, um, in all my calculations. So I've got adjusted, but we're still sitting kind of where we left the other day at, um, 10 point, 10, 10.89% and that's with a 5% increase in the wages. Yep. Yep. So I was hoping I would have some kind of, uh, divine intervention of thought about this after our last meeting. And I really, uh, I really don't have much, much more to say than, than I've already said. I mean, it would be, it would be very sweet if we could, uh, get the increase down below 10%. But I think for all the reasons we discussed the last time, it, it is what it is where it is. Um, but I'm interested in hearing what other people think. You've got your hand raised, Steve. You're on mute. You're muted. I'm still on mute. There you go. There we go. Sorry about that. So on the special articles, um, you've got like a, a decrease of $31,000. So those items going to be coming in anyway, right? Yeah. And from what I understand, the library is, um, going to be higher than last year. Um, that's what the rumor is and, but anything that's not accounted for has not come in yet. Okay. A little, uh, and I'm, and I'm being very honest when I can't remember who told me this, but it was probably through my darling spouse who's still connected to the library. She said they had changed their mind and decided, uh, they were firmly told that they would have to get a petition if they wanted to increase their amount. Uh, so I believe we're going to see, uh, a letter request from the library just for the same amount, but until we get it, we won't know. Okay. But truly, as we always, as we always discuss, as we might rumble and chomp at the bit about the special articles, we have no real control over those anyway. So what we're focusing on is the budget without the special articles. And I know, uh, budget committee, you were just, you were just having a meeting. Where are you? Where are you on this? I don't believe the budget committee hasn't, uh, taken a vote as a whole for a group. So at this point in time, um, I don't believe we're, we're set to, to provide a recommendation as a group. Um, I can speak as an individual, um, I, I personally feel that, uh, offering 5%, uh, COLA on top of the broad sweeping market adjustment that was provided earlier, um, is, is pretty tough to swallow. If the market adjustment hadn't happened, I would be more than happy to see a number like that. It's, it's just not the right time in my personal opinion. I hear you. I, I, I hear you and I understand. Other members of the budget committee, you're, I mean, we're not, I just want to be clear. We're not finalizing the budget tonight. Um, this is just another opportunity to look at it and make, uh, make changes if we think we need to make changes. But, uh, certainly I'm hoping we're gonna, ultimately whatever we come up with, we're gonna have the support of the bar budget committee. That's what we have you guys here to do. Yes. So Peter, um, historically, have we ever had a budget increase of this size before the voters? In my memory, no. Dorinda, do you ever remember having an increase like this? I can't. No, I don't think so. I think, I think, and I was trying to think about this and I look back through some of my stuff and I really couldn't find anything. I mean, I'm sure we've got the information, but I think one year we did do a five or 5.5% increase, but that's the highest one that I remember and I can't even remember when that was. And the other, you know, the other variable, the other unknown is just how much of this will be absorbed by the grand list, correct? Yes. And this is not, and there's no, I don't, I don't want to lead everybody to believe that I think the grand list is going to soak up a big part, but certainly there's a chance it's going to soak up a significant amount of it. So believe me, I'm hoping this is not a 10.89% tax increase. And the other, the other thing we have, the other thing we have is we have a significant fund balance and this, if there was ever a year to maybe use a little of this fund balance, that might be, this might be the year two. So that's, that's the other thing we have working for us. Yes, Randy. So I have a question and then a comment based on that. So the question that I have is for Dorinda, does this latest budget worksheet, does this include change in healthcare costs based on the discussions that have been had? Yes. And where does, where does that stand as of now from a, from a select board's point of view? Are those conversations continuing on, or is that something that you guys have voted on? You'll have to excuse me. I haven't, I haven't really, I don't remember if you voted on increasing the compensation for healthcare to include spouses and the such. We have not voted on it, Randy, because it's, it's, it's in these numbers. It's in the budget proposal, but we have not voted on it. So there has been, right now there's no official policy change right now. Let me clarify. I think in one of these changes, I'm looking at under the health insurance and I don't see where I did. I think I put it in and then took it out because it wasn't, I, I don't think that change in healthcare has been made according to these numbers. Okay. I'm going to have to go back and relook, visit this one. So let me, let me revise my statement. We've discussed that it is now not yet in these numbers, but it's certainly out there for further discussion. Okay. It doesn't, it doesn't finalize. Now we have the, the, the tricky part of, of that one is that we have done it for two of our employees. So we're in the world of, you know, not following our personnel policy at the moment. So we're going to have a real problem if we say we're going to back away from what we already committed to. So the real question is, do we now make that our policy that that's what we do without really knowing, as I think you pointed out before Randy or somebody did, we can't be sure who's going to, who's going to take this coverage and who isn't. And the other thing we can't be sure of is, and we haven't decided is what we would, what we would offer to people who choose not to take this. So, it's still there. Okay. So my understanding was that when this was offered to secure the bookkeeper slash assistant, it wasn't a offered as a guarantee that next year they were going to get that it was going to be explored. That was my understanding and I hope I'm not wrong in that understanding. But it seems to me that going through the exploration process is meets the statement that was made and correct me if I'm wrong. The other thing, you know, that I was looking at is you made a comment about trying to get down below the, you know, the double digit increase. And without even talking about the healthcare piece of it, just to get down to 10%, you know, a two and a half percent cola gets you down to that 10%. So, you know, I guess that's just a statement. I don't need a follow up on that, but thought I'd throw it out there. Oh, no, I understand. I understand. Yeah. I am, as I think I said before, I am really between the devil and the deep blue sea on this one. Having just been through this thing with the road crew and hiring our accounting person and everything else we've been going through. I am just very nervous about, you know, backsliding again. I mean, we've done this so many times in the past where we've said, well, our goal is a 4% increase. And if we make the cola this, it makes the 4% and guess what? Doing that year after year, we got ourselves behind. So I don't know. Yes. So it sounds like it's safe, but so let's assume for the moment that by some measure, we could get the budget increased down to 10%. Let's just assume that for a moment. I don't know how we do it, but let's just assume it. Can that, can a budget increase 10% be sold to the voters? That's a big question. We have never, what I would tell you is in all the years, we've never had the voters turned down a budget. But it certainly could happen. And, you know, it's especially a little chancey when we still don't know whether we're even going to be able to have a town meeting. So we're going to be able to explain this in person. We'll certainly be able to explain it in some kind of Zoom meeting or free town meeting or who knows what it's going to be. But chances are, whatever the budget is, it's not going to be able to be amended from the floor like it would be if we had a critical town meeting. But it's safe to assume, Peter, that with a 10% budget, just probability wise, there's going to be an increase to the tax rate. Correct. Yes. And so, you know, that's, we have to think about that in terms of this continued high rate of inflation that may persist through most or all of next year, depending on when the supply chain problem finally figures itself out. So, you know, you've got people who are concerned about inflation and their groceries and their gas costing more, and now they're going to pay more in property taxes. So that's going to be a tough sell. Well, you know, it's interesting because the way I think about, the way I think about inflation, which may be right or may be wrong, is what's the point if you get a 6 or 10 or whatever percent it is, pay increase, and yet the cost of everything you pay for goes up the same amount, which is, I mean, it doesn't track exactly, and it certainly doesn't happen at the same time. But over time, that's exactly what happens because all the prices go up. Somehow you got to pay for those pay increases, and somehow you got to pay for the increased cost of goods, and they're paying their employees pay increases. So it's a spiraling effect. I just want to be sure, I just want to be sure that we are paying competitive wages to our people. And, you know, whether that number means we need a cola of two and a half percent or five percent or nine percent or who knows what, you know, it's kind of a crapshoot. But I've been reading a lot about inflation, and now the feds are going to start ratcheting up the interest rates. That isn't going to help inflation. You know, I don't think it's going down any time soon is what I'm saying, and I just want to make sure we don't get behind. So I have to believe, and I'm an optimist, but I have to properly explain to the voters, and hopefully we can at least have some kind of, maybe have some kind of an indication. So by town meeting, we can say, you know, we believe that with a combination of the increase in the grand list, whatever that is, and potentially putting in some of the fund balance, we can keep the increase below that magic 10 percent mark. And I don't know, you know, politically, does it feel better to say 9.8 percent than 10 percent? I think maybe it does. But you know, in the past, when we've tried to do that, and we've said, oh, you know, no matter what, we don't want to go over 4 percent or whatever the number was, to be truthful, people don't seem to pay a lot of attention. And probably because it's been because we've been so conservative. I mean, the other thing, the other thing, the third piece of this, of this stool that we need to think about, and this doesn't happen until we set the tax rate. But when we actually set the tax rate inevitably and do the budget and set the tax rate to support that budget, we end up under spending the budget nine times out of 10 and by a significant amount, I mean, 20 or 30 thousand dollars. So potentially, could we be a little more conservative in the way we set our tax rate? Yes, we could. Yes, we could. We have flexibility on that. And I don't want to, you know, I don't want to put us in a position where we don't collect enough taxes to cover the budget. But, you know, could we not, could we not 10,000 off? Probably we could. So those are the, those are the tools other than changing the numbers in the budget. Those are the tools we have. Steve does hand up. Yeah, Peter, I just wanted to reiterate what you were talking about, you know, like we kind of dug ourselves out of this hole as far as the pay across the board, which I think is a good thing. And it is like Randy's saying, it's pretty hard to swallow. But I do think that we need to keep with that five percent. But I was doing some things here before. And, and I was just just a suggestion. I was saying that we could reduce that by twenty five thousand dollars out of our fund balance, which brings it down to nine point oh one percent. And that's that's a suggestion to bring it down under that 10 percent if we wanted to, if that was a target you were trying to get under. Right. Doesn't our fund balance allow us to avoid, you know, and I don't know what's in there. We talked about a little while ago, but I can't remember what the numbers were. Randy, Randy, the unallocated fund balance per Dorinda is about one hundred eighty eight thousand. Okay. So I'm thinking about, you know, potential issues with, you know, save we run into issues with delinquent taxes or something like that. And we're still making, you know, education payments and all that kind of stuff. I mean, isn't that what we traditionally lean on that fund balance for? And do we put ourselves into a position where we potentially struggle to, you know, to do both of those things. And then the other, the other comment I have about dipping into the fund balance to offset this is it's kind of a band aid for this year. You get, you get hit with it twice the following year when you, when you're making up for the difference in what you, what you bought down by the fund balance and then any increases in the, in the following year as well. So I'm a little bit worried about that. Well, so the fund balance, and I'll recognize you in a minute Dorinda, I see your hand. The fund balance gives us a cushion in a lot of ways, Randy. I mean, there have been years where we have had bills and we've had to borrow against taxes because the money hasn't come in fast enough. There have been years when we've had delinquent taxes and I can't ever remember Dorinda if we borrowed again. I don't think we've ever had to borrow for delinquent taxes, but we've had to borrow, borrow against future taxes to cover cash flow. So it gives us a cushion on cash flow. But the purpose of the fund balance, I think part of the purchase of the fund balance is to try and keep the increases as even as we can over time. So when we have an exceptional increase to me, that's a good time to use a little bit of the fund balance, not a lot. But I mean, as Steve said, if we use 25,000, which is a pretty small percentage of the fund balance, that makes a big, you know, that would, that would get us down in the neighborhood at least of 9% without any increase in the grand list. The problem with all this stuff is guys, that we don't know those numbers. I mean, we're sitting here right now and we don't know those numbers. If we knew, if we knew we were going to have a 6% increase in our, in our grand list, wow, I love it. When I said this, I think at the last meeting, when you read in the paper almost every night, some town is saying this budget or that budget is going to affect the tax rate this much. They don't know that. I mean, they're making some kind of projection about what their grand list is going to do, which is a real shot in the dark. So I am, I am very hesitant to say, you know, that we're going to get a lot from the grand list. But, you know, from what I heard about sales over the last, over the last two years, the sales are high, higher than asking and the higher than appraised value significantly. So that would, that would tell us that potentially the grand list should be, should be going up, but obviously it doesn't track necessarily in a timely manner. Yes, Dorinda. I have several comments in looking at this health insurance thing. I know the reason that it never got plugged in because I believe at the last point we were debating how we were going to handle the HSA contribution. If it was going to be doubled, or currently we give the employee so much and then we only give $500 towards the spouse. If we equal it to what the employee is getting, which I just plugged the numbers in, that now has us up to a 12.10 percent increase. So that is your new number with adjusting the health insurance. If you go exactly employee spouse and same HSA contribution and all of that. Secondly, back to the fund balance. I have never supported using fund balance to reduce the taxes. And for several of the reasons that we've mentioned, we have borrowed, but we borrow from ourselves is we go into our bridge fund. We go into our paving fund and we have borrowed. The only reason we were able to offer four payments to the taxpayers was because we can float our money this way. You are much better off reducing your debt than you are offsetting your tax rate. There's a lot of expenses scheduled for the upcoming year. Every day more come in and the money is better spent. The other reason why we have $186,000 in that fund balance was last year we got extra payments for COVID and we also were able to collect $72,000 the last week of June that was from two years ago that had not been submitted. So that has helped and that's the only reason we're at $186,000 in that fund balance. Yeah. Yes, Liz. I'm just looking at this spreadsheet and could you just have two questions. Could you just tell me what you did with the health insurance tab to change that to 12 percent? What were you doing? I went over to the health insurance tab and I made the family spouse equal to what the employee's portion is. That is for the premiums each month and then under HSA contribution I doubled the $1850. Okay. For the ones who were just $1850? No. For the two-person people. Okay because the two-person people HSA it says $2350 on this spreadsheet. Right because they get $1850 and $500 for the spouse but if you're going to match what the spouse says it's going to be $1850. $1850 plus $1850. Okay. Now I have a question you know in terms of you know possible ways to get it below $10,000 that might be reasonable for this next year and maybe using fund balance money instead because it's one time purchase would be the tennis court has the $10,000 tennis court repair which you know isn't a recurring expense year after year. So if we took that out of the budget and decided to do it and maybe used fund balance money for that then you don't have to worry about replacing that fund balance money for next year. We also have you know this which I agree we should have this but maybe this is not the year to start it which is the unforeseen road repair $5,000 and again if we have an unforeseen road repair and it's not budgeted then we use it from the fund balance. So that's like $15,000 right there that brings it before the health insurance thing to under 10% between those two things and then maybe you know I think Randy does have a point about the salaries is that we just did a very generous salary increase and maybe you know we reduce that 5% to 3% and if it you know appears to be the kind of year that we feel you know maybe we need to be giving out a bonus or something that can come from the fund balance. I think a 5% expectation is I mean that's I don't know if anyone is giving out 5% necessarily as they're across the board increase. I agree that people are you know competitive but I also believe that we just did a very good thing and I have brought people up to a reasonable amount and a healthy amount. So you know I think there's opportunities to get this below 10,000 by doing some small things that if we need to we could maybe pull from the fund budget. I mean from the screen. Peter. Peter. Yes. I just want to read. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can talk now Sarah. Okay great. I'm sorry. I need to comment a while back and talking I was just saying that in turn you asked about support of the budget stuff and what I was saying is just that well 10% a lot. I don't see how to avoid it and I think that the wage increases at a minimum have to be COLA and then there should be some consideration of merit on top of that but also I think you've done you know significant raise already this year so you'll consider the whole package. Sorry that's an odd timing. Yeah. So it looks to get the budget increase under 10% it looks like we need to slice about 30,000 from the budget and Liz just offered up 15,000 which means we need to find another 15,000 to get us from the 12.1 to a hair under 10. Other other places we could be more conservative and take a chance this year and assume that we're going to underspend in areas that maybe historically have we have underspent in the past. That's a tough one because it isn't always the same. Here's what we always say and and and Victor's going to shiver and Steve is going to shiver and I'm going to shiver but the truth of the matter is all the money's in the roads and the road equipment so you know if you want to want to find some money there's where the money is unfortunately. Again we've worked hard to ratchet up our our money on the roads whether it's whether it's buying gravel or you know whatever and I hate to think about doing that but I mean we can certainly find find in a combination of different categories $10,000 in the rug budget if that's what we want to do. Yes Victor yeah we um you know in that you're you're correct that we did increase that gravel because we felt that it was very important to do to resurface some of these roads you know I guess you either don't pay as much in taxes or you ride on rough roads and the other thing is nobody's saying right here and you know these I hate to even say this but you know what Randy started out with with that five percent cola and and that's very generous I I would not want to take that away from any of our employees but I mean I was thinking about it and isn't what we increased their salaries was about 12 percent I mean should that be taken into consideration or no I mean I of course Victor of course it should the the the question is you know the way I look the way I look at that adjustment is that's something we should have done before now we did it now and and hallelujah and we can we believe we can absorb that and in this year's budget and carry it forward that's fine that's fine but do we have to increase it uh to the to the extent that you set the five percent in other words uh um you know five percent on top of it is is is quite a bit really and uh we I've noticed that we get those and maybe you do too you get those uh people advertising the jobs uh for town bill and hey a lot of those are down around 22 bucks an hour very tiring people either well that's not necessary you don't know that and it's not necessarily true I mean well there's all I would say no I you know depending on qualifications or whatever right you know and we found we certainly couldn't hire somebody you couldn't do it you know but you know you're right we didn't we didn't we had a hard time doing it right right I mean you know you hear I mean I've been trying to I've been trying to to reach out to various employers around and see what they were doing for cost of living increases and a lot of them are telling me that they're going through the same kind of struggles that we're going through I didn't get any uh well I'm sure they are yeah yes Mark so so every every percent on the call is what 4800 bucks so I mean if we if you're looking at what Liz has suggested she's got 15,000 and we shave or point it to off call you're still got you've still got probably 5,000 that you five or 6,000 that you've got to find could take that out of the road budget I mean it could take a little bit out of a couple of different places and get this down under 10% not pretty but you know spread the spread the risk around right so let me ask let me ask you this this is another idea which would potentially save a little money if we said if we said that the spousal health insurance was going to be that we would pay 100% of the premium instead of 50% but that the HSA contribution was half so instead of 1850 it was 900 or maybe even 500 for this year I mean paying the other half of the premium is a big uh yeah is a big deal I mean so maybe we do all that in one year well I think you could even get the HSA premium down to like 1200 or something like that I did the same thing I've been plugging in these numbers and switching stuff around so if you keep the spousal at full paying for the spouse and you take out that 15,000 and there was one other small thing I took out for 2000 oh no if you took out the future grant mix it's 10.1% increase if you took out the two thousand dollar grant match you know and use to use your discretionary money money for it I mean I think that there's a way to get this under 10% I mean the other the other thing to do would be just you know one one thing we we haven't spent in recent years consistently to get to get to I think it was Mark question is we almost never spend all our discretionary money so maybe instead of putting what we've been putting in the discretionary we just put 2000 less in the discretionary during the shaking right now. We just don't account for it in the discretionary line it when something comes through that's unbudgeted we say take it out of discretionary and there's never been a journal entry made that moves because when it happens at the time it goes to whatever that expense is so if you used it to put windows into the town hall it went to town hall repairs and the money so it just increased that category that $10,000 or whatever it's been sitting there just offsets the bottom line basically just bottom helps the bottom line but typically we don't go we don't necessarily go over budget in those categories where that money goes either town hall repair being a good example sometimes we do sometimes we don't one of my things is the paving fund so we have a paving project that's definitely slated for the spring I think we have a grant for part of it but I believe we only have 200 and some thousand dollars in that one I don't have that number right here with me now so how far over are we going to have to pick up the difference there because that will have to come out of the fund balance I thought and correct me if I'm wrong Victor but weren't we and maybe it was maybe it was pie in the sky estimating but when we made the decision not to do the culverts in the fall and do the temporary paving and all that weren't we thinking we would have enough money in our yes your paving to cover that project I think so yeah you got it's what the the the bill to high chains was what 330 something thousand dollars and well you'll get 175 thousand dollar grant but then we're we're planning I guess we're planning to remove the pavement ourselves so that'll be less money that we'll have to spend we're hoping well the other places you've got 30 thousand dollars going into that fund on this year so because the paving project is being done do we reduce that line item because if that is covered you know we could skip a year and then start back up because we certainly won't be doing a paving project the following year or probably a few years down the road well they don't they don't give them they don't give us grants every year that's for sure right so that's why I'm saying so why put in the 30 thousand dollars into that fund if if that is you know if we if we don't need it for the paving project yeah Sarah I just want to clarify Liz can you clarify the 15 thousand dollars is that from the tennis court or is that from the highway department but the where's this it was two pieces 10 000 from the tennis court and 5 000 for emergency road repairs okay or yeah like non-budgeted or something like that okay and the other thing I just wanted you to know that I just got an email from the kelly cupboard library they do have their petition together and it is going to be 3202 how much is that increasing then let's see it's an increase of two thousand dollars plus right yeah could you repeat that again they got the signatures or they're trying to get 022 he said yeah 3202 Sarah started he said they had the signatures or they were trying to get the signatures he says that they all almost have them all it's a 7.45 percent increase yeah well again special articles mark yes so so based on dorinda's comment about the annual contribution to the paving fund if we were to forego that for 22 23 and simply reduce the budget by that amount and get us to under 10 what risk does that pose in the short term in terms of our our paving expenditures or you know our paving fund is there any risk to doing that the answer is there's risk to everything but if we you know it's it's it's it's the old thing yes we can stop putting money in the paving fund we can stop putting money in the bridge fund we can stop contributing to the uh environmental stuff i mean we can we can whack whack whack but in the end it's going to hurt us because when we need that money we're not going to have it which is what i'm well but i'm no problem taking maybe ten thousand dollars out of the paving fund i would i would hate to put off but to say all right use it by ten thousand dollars for a year right so if we go with the if we go with the 15 000 that liz has found and we take 10 000 out of the paving fund we're very close to getting under 10 percent well and then you you know if every one percent on that cola is 4800 box we're almost there you know it didn't she also suggest that we do two and a half percent rather than five i i did yes oh you did and and it wasn't um it wasn't um a recommendation from um whiz uh no i did recommend that we lower it from five either two and a half or three you said three three percent doing the three percent gets us to ninety six hundred dollars ten point oh seven percent um but i haven't changed with the ten grand from the paving fund i took out i know i didn't take out ten grand from the paving fund and if we did all four things we'd be under ten percent yeah yeah i haven't taken out i didn't even take out the two thousand for the grant either so the only things i took out were five thousand for that road um extra road repair whatever that was called um unforeseen road repairs i took out and then the tennis court at ten thousand and then reduced it to three percent but i also for the health insurance i turned the hsa contribution to 1200 so if we did that less if you turn the hsa contribution to a thousand uh a thousand for the spouse right yes i don't know what is that it's doing a thousand for the spouse and that would be 2850 that'd be 2050 so nope now now i'm up higher okay so um but you guys that you're all over the place here first of all i think it's a mistake to take money out of the tennis court when you just started that fund last year 10.78 you should i'm not suggesting that we take it out no no but i'm just saying that you know possibly you know it's um i think we have to look at where we are with these funds that these funds that we have put aside and unfortunately i don't have a copy of that home with me um so i can tell you what i just whoa whoa whoa stop could we just stop for one quick second yeah i i am worried about the damn tennis court and whether what if we call it uh i don't know what we call it we call it different things other than the tennis court but we're going to make the same mistakes that the city of Montpelier made if we're not careful they didn't maintain their tennis courts and then they spent i think it was like a quarter of a million dollars rehabbing their tennis courts because they let them go so they were virtually unplayable our our court is on the brink of being virtually i'm not suggesting that you don't give 10 000 i'm saying you take 10 000 from your um just not discretionary but the um the what i i can never remember the name of it the 180 thousand dollar fund but that you don't put it in the budget this year fund balance the fund balance that you can you can take it from the fund balance if you want but it doesn't show up of course that's not very transparent to the voters here's the other thing here's the other thing that that i've been i've been thinking about just on this on this cola thing because i'm very concerned if we cut that too much i'd rather put 48 hundred dollars take 48 hundred dollars out of the highway budget somewhere else and add one percent to the cola make it make it four percent instead of three percent i mean historically we've done two or three percent and that's what got us in trouble and maybe we're being too aggressive with the five and light of the rates raises but i think three is too low so i'd like to see i'd like to see it before and i think we can take 40 we can take 48 hundred out of summer maintenance or winter maintenance or whatever like nothing i mean i'm not saying it's nothing but it's relatively small and i think it's important to put it into wages but i i support i support reducing the uh the contribution to the paving fund this year by ten thousand dollars i support um making the spousal hsa contribution either nine hundred or a thousand dollars for two or three hundred dollars it doesn't make much difference um the tennis courts if we have to reduce that a little bit i'm okay with that but i don't want to do away with it and i think with a combination of all the things we've been talking about working it that way we can get up below 10 percent but someone refreshed my memory on the gravel why that's so much more expensive this year than last because we need we desperately need gravel we're going to buy more gravel okay with that said peter how about how about wait a minute guys i'm trying to recognize everybody as fast as i can but if you all talk at once we get nowhere so hold on a minute randy to render you at your hand up i think steve had his up before me right okay go ahead steve yeah i was going to uh reiterate like i i think that that five percent should be in there um i guess i'd go along with the four percent but i was going to ask victor about taking some money out of the roadside mowing what do you thought of that just what i was going to say what i was going to say because instead of mowing it twice let's mow it once like we did just here and you really didn't notice the difference i did but okay well we only didn't notice the difference that dam that dam mower did such a crappy job we might as well have only done it once might as well not have done it at all yeah but that would save us seven thousand correct okay that's right sounds good dorinda um i just want to say as of the end of november this is the budget status report through november um the highway department was at 45.41 percent of their budget that's five months into the budget we also will have probably we'll have to use some of our fund balance to offset the increase in wages for the seven months so we can't lose sight of that yeah randy so i hear the strong support for the additional cola moving up from the three to the four percent of the five percent that you guys you guys have so in my head i'm wondering about compromising on on you know that four percent and you know if you're looking at the health the healthcare picking up the premiums for the um for the spouses and leaving the hsa contributions alone where they sit today that'll make up some difference it'll give it'll give more cola to the employees um you're helping them out with the with the healthcare premiums you're just not investing in as much into the into the um hsas it's a compromise on both ends it seems reasonable yes sarah i'm not a board member but i am an employee and i think what randy is proposing is more than more than reasonable okay i would just leave the hsa contributions as they are now but you know the road crew may kill me for that what what are they right now sarah i mean the spouse is paid half of whatever the employee is paid great no it is going to be $500 $500 whatever plus 1850 1850 for the employee right for the plus 500 okay and that seems to me if you guys are picking up the premiums for the spouses that seems really really generous to me but maybe i'm not speaking for all the employees i'm just speaking as an employee of one benefits from this that makes it 2350 beef yeah just wondering what i mean all of these things can we have one person just kind of itemize all of these different changes darinda do you have all of that i had lost it partway through we put them in took them out so many times that um i got the health insurance back to where it's supposed to be um so we go through the budget items that we're changing then i guess you know i can update it from this end okay so you're saying the health insurance is paying for the spouse the premiums for the premium but leaving the hsa the same yes can someone tell me if the new hire has the stuff we need to wrap this up in about five minutes we're way over our time here and i have salaries at a four percent increase correct yeah okay all right so i just need to know the line items that you're changing okay so we're gonna take we're gonna take ten thousand dollars out of the contribution of the paving fund the uh yeah the paving fund okay we're gonna cut the contribution of the tennis court from 10 to 5 what else do we have lez um we took out 5000 for um unforeseen road repairs yeah okay so you're leaving that at zero yeah zero for unforeseen road repairs and what happens if we have a spring storm we'll pay for it out of red fund balance no we're i mean we'll do with what we've historically done we we cover it with the amount that we have in winter or summer right now okay the storm is well no that's a new line item that they created a few years ago so it wouldn't come we could separate storm repairs but that's fine okay yeah yeah sarah when you're saying taking 10 cutting the contribution to the paving fund by 10 10 000 what you really mean is contribute 20 000 to the paving fund right yes yeah correct i still have us down to 10.73 percent with all that well let Dorenda finish it line item was the paving fund on i can't even find it oh i got it okay so that's 20 000 and the recreation was line 233 yeah 5 000 you want it you said it out completely 5 000 is what peter just said okay for the tennis courts yeah okay and you took out the roadside mowing no i didn't take out roadside mowing one line 122 okay oh that'll get us right there to 7 000 to 7 000 instead of 14 it's gonna be the ooh close for me but not quite i have 10.22 i might be doing the health insurance i have eight 10.88 i have 10.22 what do you have for the hsa i have 2350 for a two person in 1850 for a single right oh okay i'm also counting the new hire as a two person is he or not no no he's a single person oh perfect so that saves money only three people should be two people two person so paying for the premium for the spouse for health insurance what's the cost of that 7600 i have us now down to nine and a half percent well then i got something out of yours that i didn't get out of mine is there grant money Liz that you've eliminated no i kept the grant money in 255 i kept in but you know here's what i would suggest guys we need to this has been a good discussion tonight i i appreciate everybody's input um if dorinda and Liz if you could put your heads together and do the best you can to agree to agree and let's let's see where we are and uh uh we'll have further discussion yeah you got that on the minutes i think so i just want to go over time peter there's no one from the fire department trying to get into this meeting so i don't know what's going on there the fire department portion is supposed to start at 6 p.m well let's hope i'll open up a fresh new spreadsheet and i'll try again so this is what i have do you want me to just run through it run through it really yes yeah we're going to leave the hsa contributions as they are just gonna leave it like that instead of cola of four percent cut contributions to the paving fund by ten thousand dollars so the contribution will be twenty thousand dollars reduce the contribution to the tennis court fund from ten thousand dollars to five thousand dollars and remove the five thousand dollars allocated for unforeseen road repairs and remove seven thousand dollars from the roadside mowing bringing it to seven thousand dollars is there anything missing uh no just that there's three people that are on a two person plan right there are three people who are on a two person plan okay and leave leave hsa as it is but but pave in full for the for the spouses um health insurance insurance premium pay premium for how premium for house okay what if you take the cola to three percent that's another forty eight hundred it won't get us there i don't know mine is at nine point five but i'm what i'm going to do is i'm going to open up a new a whole new spreadsheet um i didn't save this and uh and start over with what she just said and see what i come out to okay well we can what are you out darinda uh well i was i just changed it to three percent to see what that came out to um um and that brings it down to nine point one six according to me mine if we went to if you went to three percent nine where are you where are you where are you with the four percent please it was ten something i think wow much of it's only forty eight hundred dollars but it was only yeah forty eight hundred percent i said it was ten point eight eight darinda nine point nine point five well with a four percent that's what i got was nine point five oh that's it well okay it's not that great that's a lot of work that's a lot of work to save a couple of percentage points but i think it was worth the uh i think it was worth the effort down to nine point five percent yeah nine point five with all those things that you just said and and might i say i do want to add you guys that by paying double for the spouse that's a lot of that's a huge increase like sarah said i mean that's really like a six or seven percent increase yeah we're the the only thing you haven't addressed is are we not changing anything for the single people okay no okay so what do we hear yeah we can we can talk about that another time the other the other unknown item is we haven't decided what we'll pay for people who don't take the health insurance all the opt out yes anybody who's opting out to my husband's company we don't we don't i'm not correct surrender we don't pay anything now for people who opt out oh we do we pay um 1800 okay so we i guess my proposal would be we leave the 1800 the way it is yeah but we don't want to use it do they i'm sorry what was the question we may not have anyone who utilizes that not as of today guys we need to uh conclude our budget discussion uh budget discussion for tonight um we're supposed to i just lost my copy of the agenda on my phone great i love i might not have my phone we were supposed to have vicks um i think 15 minutes ago right we're supposed to have dorinda's a half an hour ago yeah well where are we with the fire department if they showed up in the way they're now here all right okay what i would what i would suggest is we we have the fire department discussion and then go back to uh to uh victor and dorinda if that's okay with everyone thanks peter all right i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry thanks everybody appreciate it okay that is well thank you all gentlemen good evening all right good evening so um we also have uh paul attendee here with us uh zooming into the meeting for the benefit that you can probably see him on your uh on your screen um so jeff why don't why don't you uh why don't you give your report and then we'll have our discussion our organizational discussion okay um as all good things i prepared this yesterday and numbers changed this morning so we're up to 68 calls so far this year um we've been out 15 times we've been mutual aid out once no mutual aid in our max number of responders was seven men was three and our average was four um engine one was at 11 times engine six was out one time tanker one was out five times and rescue one was out five times we had a truck versus deer at the beginning of the the period and last this morning we had a truck versus deer both a 989 i don't think it was the same beer um we had a motor vehicle accident on lovers lane and route two just just across the bridge into more town a chimney fire on mccullough hill um motor vehicle accident on 89 motor vehicle accident on route 12 um which the state police ended up canceling us um car versus pole uh that was actually it came across as 102 they actually screwed up the address and it was 102 so we got canceled because that's water barriers response area we had um a carbon monoxide alarm that was ended up being canceled a vehicle rollover um on center road the motor vehicle accident uh a pickup into trees a vehicle fire on mccullough hill road it was a truck fire carbon monoxide alarm that had gone off two days before on west hill and then they called for the fire department nothing was found and then a fire alarm at paul's seminary's old house which um we've been there before for this um same incident they around midnight they start cooking some celebratory meal and smoke up the house which sets off the fire line um and then the uh the and then we had a rollover sunday morning um it's uh six o'clock in the morning as far as uh training in december we flip flop our training and meeting nights because we have our annual meeting on the first tuesday of the month so we're doing training tonight and that's uh team building exercises we're making up two teams of the members and we're doing some exercises with that as far as repairs that we've had to do the problem we thought we had with engine one and its battery tender system ended up only being a plug on the drop cord that we were able to fix and there isn't a problem with engine one purchases out of the ordinary our thermostat for the the bay had to be replaced and then they were waiting on a valve controller for the heating system that allows the water to go out to the the loops for the the bay and the training officer but i want one edge uh we have members of the fire department who are working at the vaccine clinic up at burlin mall uh the department helped with toys for tuts providing gifts to middle sex families we have uh one of our members is enrolled in the currently enrolled in the emt course and i believe her graduation date is in march uh we have two members that completed the district six medical first responder course uh with this next month hopefully the legislature will approve this whole system with that will then allow them to do is respond to calls as fast squad members for um cpr bleeding that kind of thing nothing real complicated but it gives us a little more um flexibility or a little more people out there to help our annual meet like i said our annual meeting was held on the 7th the 7th of december and eric has been elected new chief dug his step down from any officer or executive officer positions he just wants to wear a black hat again um i'm still the president and the assistant chief and that pretty much sums up and as normal sarah i'll get this to you i'll probably get it to you tomorrow once i make the corrections with the added call any questions from you all thank you jeff any questions for jeff good report thanks good report i agree thank you jeff so some i guess i somehow i missed that eric um is now the chief um when did that happen it officially takes place on the 1st of january oh congratulations eric yeah yeah congratulations eric great he's selling quite a campaign fund uh war chest but but you're saying that dug is still going to be a volunteer on the fire squad yeah yes in fact dug is here tonight and uh he was at the 3 30 call this morning and the six o'clock call sunday morning wow and now he's retired he can you can go to all the calls thank thank you dug so i would i would just uh i would just like to say in all seriousness first of all thank you dug for all your years of service and uh and all your years of being being chief and the other thing i'd like to say is at at some point and i don't know what the appropriate time is and what the appropriate recognition is but we should have a little recognition ceremony for uh for uh gets been how many years dug 32 years 30 years in this department yep 30 years wow that's amazing dug that's so great congratulations it is great so we need to keep that i've i've hold on sir i've i've i've challenged uh jeff to keep that on his radar screen and we need to keep it on our radar screen and maybe we could do a little something at our at our next joint meeting a month from now i don't know but i'd like to do something for him absolutely let's wait till spring where we could be outside maybe yes that's that's that's that's uh suggestion yeah is it 30 years on the fire department or 30 years is chief 30 years department 10 years thank you for your service wow so the other thing we have on uh tonight's agenda is to have further discussion about the uh potential reorganization of the fire department and how and when and and what and all that and uh in the area of of full disclosure uh i had a telephone call with with jeff and eric last night kicking around and just talking some more about what we discussed at our last meeting when uh when they weren't there um and uh i'm not putting words in their mouth i'd like to hear from them but i was i was telling them more about phil's idea of moving forward in a collaborative way not putting a not putting it before the not putting it before the voters with the idea and and this is this is my date not phil's date but the idea that we would try and reach some kind of conclusion by budget time next year because really the earliest the earliest this change could take effect from a budget point of view would be july 1st of 2023 so it would be this time next year budget time when when the world would change however however it's going to change what does that mean about not putting something on the uh agenda well what phil suggested we were we were talking about putting the question putting the question to the town voters whether the town of middle sex should should take over whatever the whatever the right word is and make it a town fire department instead of instead of the an independent nonprofit and now you're saying that you don't think we should well phil brought up the suggestion at our last meeting that he thought doing that was a bad idea and the more i thought about it the more i agreed with him and i thought this sent my sense of the discussion at the last meeting was that pretty much everybody else felt the same way now maybe i got that wrong no um but that's what we're that's what we're here to talk about tonight but the more i've thought about it the more i think if we can do this in a collaborative way with the fire department and agree to agree so then we just have a select board vote and say effective whatever date in the fire department votes and we do it that's going to be better than putting it to a town vote when people aren't or likely not to understand what's going on despite our best efforts to have you know meetings and all kinds of other things to get the word out i i guess i don't know about that i guess i didn't come to that conclusion i thought we were going to have the vote and at the same time hope that it was going to be collaborative so we could say everybody agrees to this but we want the people to vote on it no i don't think i mean that wasn't what i concluded mary ben maybe i maybe i got it wrong but i would say i'm thinking about it and talking we talked for what about an hour last night uh jeff uh i'm thinking at trying to think it carefully through it just seemed to make the more i thought about it the more that approach made sense to me rather than putting it to a town uh rather than putting it to a town vote and i would also say and i'll let them speak for themselves but uh the fire department like that approach as well from what i could tell yeah that's the conclusion that we came to that we we've since we've started having these meetings together i think we've made leaps and bounds on our working relationship with each other and that we'd like to see that continue and discuss where what this new model's going to look like and the reality is that um trying to get it to be put on the the agenda right now doesn't leave in my mind is not leaving enough time to really get information out to everybody even if we had weekly meeting weekly informational meetings you all are aware how often those are attended by people um that there's enough common ground in my mind and i think you're really absolutely that we can go forward with this way there's just some things that we need to flesh out and the reality is considering that the budget's going to be voted on uh you're going to finalize the budget possibly tonight and then the budget's going to be voted on in march that the transition wouldn't happen until effectively um july 1 of 2023 because the we've already will have already be partway into that budget process anyway and so we're we're kind of too far down the track to to make that change if it were to happen sooner rather than later and um the the reality is that there may be very few tweaks on the way things are being done currently that it would be with a change so that's uh well what we need to flesh out jeff that's what we need to we that's the thing we need to go over is what what is your view of this what is our view and then come to a common understanding of what what we both think the view in the future of the fire department is going to be and and also looking at not just next year but taking and i'm sure paul would agree with me on this one taking a look out five years out with the middle sex increasing where is the fire department going to have to go with increased town size like i i didn't i didn't do a hard thing on fast spot calls just a real quick count we've been out on 11 medical only fast spot calls and if you have the accidents in we're at 20 for the month um are we going to potentially in a couple years be looking at doing what east mopilier did and have their own ambulance service instead of relying on in their case it was very town would we be getting to the call volume where it would be prudent to look at having an ambulance service of our so these are the kind of things that we need to to to discuss and not just like i said not just come up with a short term next year plan but not only next year but looking out you know a five year kind of like a fight it uh plan for the uh where where you all where we all see that we need to grow the fire department thank you jeff steve you have your hand up yes i just wanted to say that that what you were saying earlier was right we we weren't going to do this as far as a town a town vote we were talking about being collaborative with the fire department and the town you know the select board and and working through some of these things everything has been very positive coming from the fire department i'm extremely happy with that but i i think that collaborative we can work out some of these things and it will never have to go to a town vote just what we were talking about before it can be something that between the fire department and the select ward we can make that decision and and a vote within the fire uh select board itself and not go to the town i'm not opposed to doing it that way i just thought that at some point everybody said in the because of transparency we wanted to have the town weigh in on this change and so i'm just surprised that now we feel we don't need the town to well let me let me just say mary i think i think what we're all saying is let's go down the road and see where we get if this all works out and we're all we're all shaking hands and smiling at each other and agreeing as i said to the gentleman last night when we were talking the truth of the matter is is making it a town fire department a significant step you bet it is but what really changes we are for the most part acting now as if they are part of the town we arrange for their insurance we provide their building we provide their equipment dorinda pays their bills um you know what what would really change would be relatively little if we if we became a town fire department the way i see it yes les i just want to clarify to mary that indeed at the beginning of that conversation that we had because i too was like oh i don't remember that but i did look back at the minutes and even though phil had originally said that he wanted to bring it to the voters the conversation ended up saying that we should instead avoid putting the question on the ballot and approach the fire department so it is in the minutes for the last meeting but i agree with you i i sort of forgot that piece as well so i thought we were going to have them work together that's all that's the way i remember that conversation but but i agree and you know with what paul was saying originally in that original email paul attendee that and i had stated this last meeting as well that like if we're going to do something like this for the voters it has to be very clear what they're voting on because it's it's not clear to me so if it's not clear to me it's not going to be clear to the voters um and so um you know in terms of the benefits right the and and so if we can continue to do as steve said this great communication and you know monthly meetings with the fire department i'm happy with the way things with with the way things are going am i understanding it correctly that at the end of our collaborative thing we're going to have both the fire department and the select board vote that they will become a branch of the town of middle six that's all okay you know that at that yeah i'm not opposed to that and i also we in our conversation last night i i emphasized to jarrett erick and and jeff that there's no reason that the non-profit part of the fire department can't continue and they can do fundraising and engage in other activities for the benefit of the fire department that that's exactly what goes on in in a number of other towns that's it but that non-profit would have nothing to do with the town of middle sex it would be a support organization for the for the fire department so you know i really the more i thought about this and the more we talked about it and everything else i just think this is uh to say that it's less combative i would say is an understatement i i think it's i think it's a good way to go forward and and phil i commend you for uh for bringing that up the last time i think you really started turning us all around on this and i uh and i really uh i really appreciate it and i the fire department also appreciates it thank you better to be non-confrontational well and it just the difference between the conversations we're having now and the conversations we were having a year ago is like 90 days true so anyway guys i i i don't know i don't think we need to have a we need to have a vote on that we just agree that we're going forward that we're not going to put it on the town meeting day ballot and let's let's keep these meetings up and let's devise i think uh i think jeff maybe maybe you and i could could get together off screen and maybe maybe paul could help us out and we could come up with uh with the steps we need to uh work on to do this i'm sure eric will have some thoughts on it as well but have some kind of regular plan of how we're going to work our way through this process do you want me to to start to try to capture uh fast squad calls and with this as well or just stick with art of art calls for now oh no because the fast i would i think it'd be great to have the fast squad the fast squad's an important part of this yeah really is okay and that like you said could be a a bigger piece as we look uh to the future as to what the is we all gracefully age right phil yeah let's leave it the only thing i would i would suggest on that if if we're if we eventually get to going down that route of the ambulance is east montilier is the most recent town that's done that so we would want to speak with them and see how how things went what the stumbling blocks were how the financing is going currently and how it started out uh because that's a that's a big expense yeah but by the same token we pay a lot of money to city of montilier yeah to fund that service now so yeah anything else we can recoup some recoup some of that by by filling out for insurance but that's a discussion further down the road yeah yep yep yep yep anything else board members are far department for tonight good job very good job all right guys i mean ladies and gentlemen select board and and far department i think i think this is a good way to go i really do so thank you very much and congratulations to eric and uh congratulations to our former chief for all of your hard work yes i agree happy holidays all of you yep have a good evening and paul i did uh i i did get that 33 page thing you sent me but i have not had a chance to look through it but i but i will did you share that with the fire department as well yes you did yeah yeah i said yeah okay and again it down the road it's you know let's haven't just get you folks thinking about a plan going forward because we're growing you know it you're in the business you know we're growing as a community yeah we are well thank you for sending that over and we will and and stay involved in this process uh paul we welcome your input thank you all okay i think we're all set with that thank you for the department have a good evening and a good holiday happy christmas yes yeah holidays so i have electronically lost my agenda so i need a little guidance i think we should go back to dorinda and then uh victor who's who's still waiting in the wings and then go from there i'll relinquish my spot to victor because i really don't have a lot so i don't have anything okay thank you victor you're still out there victor victor victor there he is yeah who i am okay um the first thing that i have tonight was uh a uh well i guess it's a complaint and uh it was from charles paltcher and dorinda can cut in or come in anytime she wants or not but uh we got an email from charles to uh shane he says to whom it may concern when my family and i came down with covid in september i was told i don't say by who but would not have to worry about going into the negative on sick time even if i needed time off for an illness before being back into the positive i had to take a few hours off recently that i marked a sick time but was charged for vacation hours i would appreciate it if my vacation hour times would go back so so i could use it for actual vacation time thank you charles paltcher and what happened was which it doesn't say in this email but which has come out that he um took three hours off six six six six hours off and that was to take his child to the emergency room um but anyways um so it came out that one one issue is uh one issue is uh the covid thing and um you know taking taking your child to the emergency room is not a covid activity uh i know i've talked to peter about this he has a different view um but uh he also worked how many hours overtime he worked eight hours overtime okay which um and we paid him for eight hours of overtime correct yes okay which if he took which it says in our in our uh employee policy on page nine uh sick time cannot be used to cover a shortage in hours worked so he should have got straight time for those six hours as far as overtime goes and um and two hours of overtime and six hours of straight time instead of eight hours of overtime correct and it says what's that got the hours wrong he physically worked 48 hours when i received his timesheet it had been totaled to 34 regular hours six hours sick time in 14 hours of overtime and so after we made the adjustments because they weren't eligible number one they were not eligible for overtime until they physically worked 40 hours so that got reduced from 14 to 8 his original what he had on his timesheet was 48 hours of working time then he added in six hours of sick time which should not have been on there to begin with in the first place because we only pay on a 40 hour work week he did not receive overtime pay or that but i switched it from sick time to vacation time because my understanding when we discussed this covid situation was they could go into the hole for covid and then if something came up in the future when they ran out of time we would discuss how we would handle it as we have done previously with other one other employee that i know of um and that was kind of how it was handled and but that person who had gotten gone into the negative before was out of vacation time and everything and that's why it got switched but to be honest with you he shouldn't have even gotten those six hours in any form of pay because that is buying back time that is not something the town does so he shouldn't have gotten it either way but i figured the hours were there he had put them down rather than create another issue which in hindsight did create another issue um i switched it from sick time because he was already negative sick time and it was not a sick it wasn't like he was sick this was personal time he was taking i would i would say that if you had sick time i would use my sick time to take my kid to the er i mean that's sick time is for that as well but are you saying he actually physically got dollars for those vacation out you changed into vacation so there was money in his paycheck for those if you were to just take it out all together and just say he used his he's already worked his 40 plus hours why does he even record it at all that he used sick time during the day if he worked so just make it be a wash but he is going to probably lose money because you paid him for his vacation but if you take that out you just don't pay him right so that's what happened technically he shouldn't have been paid but i could not get high try calling Shane i couldn't get a hold of him at the time we were processing payroll so i just moved it i did bring Shane Shane showed up at the office later i went through everything with him um and showed him how everything was calculated and that was where it was left and but technically he shouldn't have put i mean once somebody physically works 40 hours anything over that is over time and there shouldn't be sick or vacation or personal or anything put into that so it's so technically now he's gotten paid six extra hours so there's two ways to handle it we can deduct six hours from his pay next week and put everything back to where it was or he can take that six hours vacation and i mean i guess we can move it if that's the thing but once again that is not how and this is where i'm really having a difficult time the we rewrite this personnel policy every time an issue comes up and there's nothing in that personnel policy that says how these situations are supposed to be handled and i'm the one that's put on the the hot plate for making following the rules that are in the book right and so that is where the frustration is coming in the part of this that brings true to me is if he's already worked his 40 hours of straight time and a little bit of overtime how does he get to put in for six hour sick time well i just why isn't that just his time i don't know i don't know and all the the time sheets all came in totaled with all the inventory they were not based over time on the work week they were all totaled with overtime based on the day so all every time she had to be adjusted i think we should explain this to him and tell him that we're giving him back his vacation hours but we're taking away the pay it does not make sense for him to to claim even if he had sick time to use that when he's already worked his hours that just makes no sense to use that up so he just needs to be informed that we're going to deduct those six hours and unrelated to i mean what if he does overtime next week i don't know if that's going to happen but you just take out six straight hours of pay if that's possible adjust it so here's here's what i would suggest i would suggest we give him the chinese dinner approach number one you can accept that that six hours was taken out of your vacation time and you've been paid for it and we want you to understand that in the future that isn't the way you calculate sick time or vacation time because if you've worked that much straight time you're not entitled to get sick time or vacation time but what's happened has happened but choice number two is we'll give you back we'll give you back your six hours of vacation time we're going to take it away from your next paycheck yeah there's no freebies here i don't think sarah isn't that what liz just said are you just saying the same thing are you saying something different the same thing but i'm saying but i'm saying give him the on his bank but he doesn't but he you he has to he gets six hours of paid deducted from his next paycheck yeah and his vacation given back to him the six hours given back to him for vacation yeah randy randy he's unmuting uh sorry um just a suggestion it seems like there may be uh you know shane as as the supervisor um it may be beneficial to run through this at that level um because i'm assuming that he's approving their time sheets before they even get to dorinda um so maybe there's some confusion there that needs to be cleared up i think there is i agree because it sounds like there's a couple issues and and sounds like and and maybe i picked this up wrong in the conversation but it sounded like they were computing overtime on a daily rate instead of on a weekly rate and then the next piece of that conversation is you know if you're if you're over your 40 you're not claiming any additional time sick or vacation right yes dorinda i also want to add he did it on the following week as well he worked 45.5 hours and then put in for three vacation hours is there another issue here though yes is there another issue dorinda and the fact that uh and and and and lis just said uh i think he should be able to put in uh sick leave if uh he's uh taking a taking his uh uh his child to the to the emergency room uh but that's not what that's that's not what the plan says that's not what the policy says the policy says that it's just for the uh for the uh the employee to take for sickness or injury and the idea as i understand it is that's why you get three days uh personal at the beginning of the year to do things like that i know i have never heard of a policy where you can't use your sick day when your kid is sick yeah well central law that's because i'll answer that yeah that may just be an assumption that is that's that's not even that yeah i never heard an assumption what is an assumption that it's assumed that sick days can be used for your immediate family members who are sick i thought that was sort of a law too like i think i'm fairly i'm fairly certain that phil is right that it is it falls under that uh the federal guidance for that however medical leave right so the point for him though is if he doesn't have sick time and it's not covid related then the pa that least any place of employment that i've been at you're not you you're not allowed to go into the negative there you're taking your personal or vacation time to compensate for that yeah well and you're also not allowed to when you've already worked 40 hours you're not allowed to push that into the overtime category correct or some of the 40 hours into the overtime category correct well what's yes stave i have two questions one is if he hadn't had to take his child to the emergency room and he worked that six hours would he have had 14 hours in overtime would have had no no because he told the time sheets were totaled on overtime per day and not overtime per so he only ended up with and he's not the only one that did it the same thing happened with jay the only thing was jays all went in as vacation hours but they put in for more than 40 hours per week okay is what they had it did on these sheets but um but so no i mean the way the sheet came through it originally said 14 hours overtime because it was totaled by the day if they had not he should have bottom line then 40 hours regular pay eight hours overtime would he have had overtime that day if he would have worked if he had worked yeah okay that was my question the second thing is that i'd like to know is how did these how are they in the hole on sick time why he's he's the only one in the hole on sick time because he went in the hole when this happened he went in he went in the hole 40 hours on uh september 3rd the week of september 3rd he went in another 30 hours on the week of september 10th another four and a half hours on the week of 1126 was that covid related those and they were all put into sick time because of covid and so i'm sorry did we did we have some thing that was like it was only if you didn't have enough hours and it was covid related we would pay for you or something no we said we said if we would allow the employee to go in the hole on the hole okay right um did we allow them to go in the hole if they were vaccinated or is everyone vaccinated because i i just want to say people are about to get sick all of us are about to get the omicron and we may have a lot of sick people and we probably need to have that discussion and what we might also want to consider is something like a sick bank if there's people who have lots they've been there forever and they've got so many hours that they don't know how to use them that they could donate our strategic bank but i'm telling you you guys we're in for potentially some people being sick and out well let's i i agree with you list but let's let's talk about how we're gonna handle this problem and how we're gonna handle our payroll administration going forward and then talk about what our future choice options so how do we handle this does dorinda meet with shane and then shane or just dorinda meet with shane and victor and then shane and victor deliver the news to charles how are we gonna do it that sounds right yes i think it's more than just it's i think it has and i tried to explain this to shane when he was in the office the first issue is calculating the hours he needs to understand which i think he does now i gave him another copy of where it stated in the personnel policy that they have to work 40 hours but once that top line hits 40 hours they're done if it doesn't hit 40 hours then they couldn't put in for this other time but they wouldn't have overtime if they didn't work that 40 hours right the only exception to the rule is during a holiday week and we do count a holiday as time worked correct right and i think that's the federal law also i believe yeah so but does that work for you does that work for you victor i have no problem other than changing your sick leave policy to say that uh you can use it for your siblings that's siblings that's i believe that's federal law though victor we don't we don't have any say on that yeah but what you're saying in in there is conflicted sorry to that it's conflicting with that statement with that i i don't care i agree i know i used it for for you know if i had to take somebody to the hospital i or my kid or spouse or whatever uh i i don't disagree but it's just not worded in there that way right so you're saying that the policy conflicts with the federal law and it says that you can only use it yes for the employee itself right it doesn't say the word only no it says an employee may use sick leave for illness or injury that prevents the employee from performing their the employees duties so it doesn't go beyond that the word only is not used Sarah the board has had these discussions about eliminating the term sick time by putting in paid time off pto so that you don't have to get into these hippo violations of saying well were you sick and how so were you sick which is what the employer should not be asking so you guys probably need to go revisit the personnel policy again paid time off is that they will use all their paid time off for vacation and then they won't have any sick time i am against paid time off yeah i think this kind of work with the personnel policy that you have i think you've already had this discussion at least once or twice it all we have to it all comes back we're just going around and around and around but the employer doesn't have any right to start poking into the employees if the personal sick fairs and i think that vick we're not disagreeing that he could if he had needed it sick time and he had it that he could use it to take his kid to the ER no one's disagreeing with that it's just the personal the problem is our personal policy doesn't say that though but that's not what happened we know go ahead darinda i'm sorry that's not what happened nobody would have taken it away the only i think the bigger question is say he goes out and stubs his toe tomorrow and can't work how do we handle that it does he have to use up his vacation time because the original discussion was he could only go in the hole for for covid related issue and that is not his understanding he believes no matter what he can go in the hole for sick time that isn't what we agreed to well that is not what's understood am i correct how you're going to have that conversation with shane and victor and victor gonna talk to to charles about it i mean in all fairness to shane and he's not here tonight um i had a discussion with him for a couple of hours this morning uh in his office and he he he uh he understands i i truly believe he understands how it's supposed to go so i mean we can still meet with him and uh i don't mean any problem with that but i'm sure he will uh will agree with us but is he clear with how future sick time will be handled i believe so okay and that's what i told him we told him because i i was told that he was told that no matter what his sick time was covered yep i understand that but i think it's been discussed since you and him talked okay re re you know rehashed it and then we talked this morning so i think it's okay he did say this morning that after the first of the year he's going to petition the select board to change it to uh overtime over eight hours we'll see how that goes that doesn't mean but also petition for a five-day work week to to make that happen he didn't mention that i mean that is oh no no no i'm sorry i'm sorry i misspoke he on a 10 hour day he wants uh he wants you know when um when they are working four days a week if they get the day off he wants to get 10 hours for that day instead of eight that's completely against all of the um what we pay for vacation and sick time and all still can ask the question we're getting off onto something different yeah right so quickly and i'm not saying we need to decide on it tonight but we need to i agree with lis i think this new covid thing is going to is going to sweep through here and god only knows god only knows what's going to happen they're going to certainly going to be some breakthrough cases even on the people who are vaccinated so we ready we better be ready for this so if if what we said before was we would allow them to go in the hole on their sick time for covid related things covid related illnesses are we going to limit that are we going to say it's i mean what happens if one of them gets sick for three months are we going to pay them for three months we can't do that that doesn't make sense hold on a minute uh randy we need to we need to have a real policy for this i'm sorry i'm i'm sideways i had to plug in my ipad the battery was going dead um well what would we do if someone had a heart attack how would we handle that would we pay them when they're out if they say if they had sick time and i do know in the past you guys have done um with a former employee after all their vacation time was used up you did allow them to go in the hole but i think you do need some kind of cap on this because you just can't let it go on forever and ever um on a regular basis long term or short term disability kicks in so um you know but i you just i mean it's really hard to sit there on monday mornings and process this payroll when you're trying to you know go by what i think we need a discussion on this on a different night like but i think you need to discuss this and have it be on the agenda that we talk about this soon soon and also anybody time to do any research on what other towns might be doing or whether bltc has any recommendations on how to treat this they probably do can i just ask a quick question are we as a town under the family medical leave act so that you know they they they still can have their job um you know if if there's a catastrophic illness or whatever um they don't get paid but they don't lose their job is that with 200 or more employees i can't remember well we have it in our personnel policy that eligible parties may receive it so i would assume yes yeah so i think what we want to think about is like a covid a cap on the covid days of what you can go into the negative because it's not fair to the employee either they'll never catch up right and we can't afford to pay them for that many sick days that's not how our budget works right and and so we have to have some sort of cap but i think we can all you know pretty much assume that someone is going to be out and if god willing it's minor but they still may be out for six days right and they may not have six vacation i mean they may not have six um sick days with the long and short term disability coverage that we have dorinda kick in at some point with the covid i i think it's after so many weeks i don't think it's days it's like i mean i think it's like three months is it that loud i think it's like three months for for sure for short now it's something that's yeah it's um short term i think maybe weeks and long term is months something to that effect if if that's possible to check that that would be helpful as well brandy yeah so i was just going to ask whether or not uh we allow employees in the current policy do we allow employees to roll over or or a crew a set amount of sick time and what that number is um for example my employer allows uh and a crew of a maximum of 720 hours and the thought be the thought behind that is that that 720 hours um will get any employee to the long term disability if they were ever in that situation and that's what we're at that's what we're at it says that uh your employee does not use if an employee does not use all the employee sick leave in a year the employee may carry up to six days 48 hours of unused sick leave into the following year an employee may accumulate a maximum of 90 days 720 hours of sick leave so you are correct that's probably when the long term disability kicks in i think it is that that six days is what they accrue every year yes okay i think that honestly i hate to say this but if we want to come up with some policy we probably need to meet next week because this is moving so fast no come on it's christmas week isn't this christmas week well i have a suggestion i have a suggestion i say i say 14 days they can go in the hole for covid well starting from when you guys you gotta you gotta you've gotta make a this you gotta warn something like this right okay but i'm maybe i'm just throwing out an idea and we can vote on it at our next meeting or whatever i know that i'm not saying we're we're ruling on it today but i mean i'm not thinking we put in a month or two or three months would that get a short term coverage dorinda no i don't have it off the top of my head i'll have to see if it's in our insurance book might might i suggest peter that you look at it in a number of hours yeah that's probably better randy i agree yep but let's find out what our short term disability if any is i thought we had short and long term we do do but do they pay for it or do they get to choose it what the typical i can tell you from my experience what the typical short term disability is first day accident eighth day sickness but who knows what we have what we have we need to find out before we get this done so whether i am against i'm against les having a meeting next week okay that's why we can do this in two weeks we can make a retroactive we can do whatever but we need to formalize this i agree but can i just ask a question are the um does dorinda is everyone automatically get short term and long term because like i have to pay for that and so i have to make a choice about that it costs us like something like between we get life short term and long term and um it costs the depending on the age of the employee and how much they make and all of that it ranges but so it costs the town anywhere from 280 dollars up to 300 and some dollars um a year for that and the employee pays six dollars a month and they they choose to do that or it's automatic they know it's automatic included all right that's what it's there for not for us to put them in the hole for three months of sick time no it's not and the other thing is and i mean and this is typical wherever you go i mean it's not just here people use their sick time rather than their vacation time all up front and you know and that's why there's never sick time available and that is a standard thing in i mean i managed a company for 20 years and they didn't have a lick of sick time yeah i don't want to do that i know but but that's what i'm saying that's why there's not sick time available when something happens right yeah yeah i think we're up a dead horse let's move on i agree so does someone have a printed a printed agenda in front of them what's our next agenda item i don't know i don't think victor's done oh i'm sorry oh no he isn't done you're right go ahead vick okay um jane got a quote from uh we don't we don't have uh any heat over in the building next to the fire station where the graders park and they can't born says they can't repair the heaters in the main garage anymore because whatever they do it just doesn't work so they need to be replaced um the quote for the garage is six thousand uh rough six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars plus another two hundred and fifty because they need a lift i don't know why they just didn't quote it all but they say in their their quote that uh that they want to lift so that'll be two hundred and fifty dollars extra i don't know i've talked to shane and i don't know as we need heat where the grader is it was the idea was to start it but um there's uh i mean you can put a heater on it if it doesn't already he was going to check it out to see if there was but those things start pretty good anyways uh are we are we talking about the old fires the old town garage we're talking about the old town garage where the side where the grader is right that that building that building has virtually zero insulation insulation in it i mean heating we should put a block heater on the grader that's correct that's we all agree to that but anyway so it's six thousand bucks to do the other one the the main garage and they don't and do we want to put it off for a year and hope we can limp this one along uh it's it's possible but we just wanted to get your uh which building are you talking about we're talking about the town garage the real town garage the old town garage okay yeah there's no in there excuse me there's no heat in the real town garage yes there is right now but it's uh it's very poor shape and and uh if we're gonna uh borne said that if they uh they just can't fix it anymore it's just beyond anything they fix just just breaks again so what exactly is wrong do we know we don't we don't they're just old old and parts aren't readily available and the technology no longer works but we're the thing that's so here's the thing that's unfortunate you know we're we're trying to go through this this uh capital plan and we're trying to think about things like this and one of the questions is one of the big questions and that is what do we do with that building and i would i would hate to put six thousand dollars into two brand new heaters and then decide a year from now so we need to tear that building down okay so that's the answer to your question right there we'll try to limp along with the heaters there's two heaters so if one heater fails there's there's still heat in there it isn't maybe full heat but there's still heat and uh i just until we reach some kind of conclusion about what we're going to do with the town hall are we going to completely renovate it or we're going to and if we're going to completely renovate it what's the heating system going to be right those those motings are hideously inefficient what was have been and i don't think the new ones are any better than the old ones they may be new but they're no more efficient i'm not sure no and i'm not either i'm not a i mean the good news the good news is if we really get in trouble they can use you know they can use temporary heat they can do all kinds of things but i am against spending six thousand dollars right now and i know we're going into the coldest part of winter and all that but what does everybody else think i was going to suggest that maybe i mean borns gave him that that uh the other ones been working on the heaters as other people that i mean borns apparently given up on repairing them they're saying they're beyond repair yes okay and and this this proposal they did you know they checked them out last year i think chain said that was last year they said that or the year before and they're going on what they saw at that time and then we're we're assuming we're assuming that they they have provisions in there if uh if everything is good the piping's everything is good this is what the price would be but if it isn't they got its time in materials and this could be another one of those uh estimate of six thousand dollars that we pay uh ten thousand dollars you know how that works so i mean i i just brought it up to let you know or or we did i should say uh just to let you know that uh we'd gotten an estimate on it and in the situation that well the other way be repaired the other way to look at this is they're not both going to fail simultaneously right so if one fails and it can't be repaired we buy one no one that's that cuts the cost in half right there doesn't that's like buying a few greater tires then right i mean we got to have we got to have heat in there if there's no question about that yeah we're gonna close we might make it yeah right yeah there you go so so vick we need to talk about the we need to talk about rupert's rock and that section of road up there correct yeah so this is this is the old situation about the class four section a bare swamp road which leads from the north end to the parking lot at uh going up the mountain hunger mountain park hunger mountain and the problem is that in the spring and fall and early and early winter people drive through there and it turns into a goddamn mud bog and we had conversations in the past about you know won't the state come help us fix up that section of road the state asked us to to upgrade the road and plow it to the parking lot um there's never been any resolution and the problem is ongoing um and i'm sorry i can't think of the fellow's last name but his first name is rupert is the guy who has the house there and what he wants to do was with his tractor push a rock over and block the road off so they can't go up there well when we've when we blocked off the road in the past what happens is everybody blocks parks in the road and also in the snow plow turnaround and that causes a horrendous problem and the third part of it is that there are a number of people and i don't know if this is still true but the last time we went around on this there were a number of people who have have camps in that section of road and they want to be able to get in there during deer season so and and probably all winter not just not just deer season get to their get to their camps so i don't know what the answer to this is but we've got a we've got a gigantic mess and problem on our hands once again that's what i'm saying the only thing i would add to that peter is uh forest and parks and recreation walter uh he wanted us to close it off too and he has a sign and i think the sign says uh you know some of the effect that you not to drive beyond uh rupert's uh sorry no yeah but then do we do we block off the other end of the road as well or do we leave the other end of the road no we're not we're not talking about no no i don't think we ought to block off either you remember what happened to mccullough hill road when we blocked it on both ends yeah what i don't want to reoccurrence of that what happened people were screaming at us neighbors were mad at neighbors it was terrible yeah it was terrible yeah how about you put a sign uh just a sign up that says it's not um not travelable by motor vehicle or how about the road's not plowed you travel at your own risk wait but wait a minute i must be misunderstanding what you're talking about i thought you were talking about past jen's house like you know once you you're past the parking lot of hunger mountain the second parking lot and then you have that you know basically the beaver area that gets flooded no no no no no no this is the section basically the section of road where the class four section of the road which starts at the turn around by jen's house but that rupert's house is on the class four section of the road yeah but you can't block that off because that's where the parking lot of hunger mountain is why not and it's not plowed so you can't go there in the winter so everybody's plowed in the winter we're just gonna block it off in the winter turn around at the bottom of rupert's uh driveway and then they walk in to do the hike in the winter yeah rupert plows it for us on purpose he makes a whole parking area for hike for winter hiking he does not he does not plow the part that goes from his turnaround to where you start hiking and where the summer parking lot is he doesn't yeah so what are you suggesting how about this how about we tell rupert to put a rock in the road and put walter's sign on it and hope that makes it better who's walter walter is far as parks and recreation far as parks and recreation yeah let's try it i'm sorry what is the problem the problem is that people drive through to the parking lot and it gets so muddy that people get stuck in there you mean they they drive to the parking lot in the win in the bad season not the stuff okay yes rupert has to go pull them out he thinks yeah i see okay so but we're not talking in the dead of winter when there's snow no one's driving through there right well you put you would put the rock there in the fall and pull it out in the spring yeah do it do that you've got somebody patty with her hand up i think yeah you put a rock you put a rock in there and we're not going to be able to get rescue vehicles through there when one of them fall up on hunger mountain and we have to go in and hike it we're not going to get an ambulance we're not going to get any of our equipment through there i've been on a couple of calls yeah but you can't and i'm sorry i can't see i can't see who you are you're not on my screen i apologize um but last name in the winter time you can't you can't get in there anyway right we're only talking about we're only talking about late in the fall and through the winter and then it would come out in the spring when everybody's going in hiking yes okay who who is patty i'm on the fire department what's your last name patty oh neil hi patty i don't see your face i don't think you're coming patty yeah thank you patty's uh patty doesn't have her face she just has her um hand up and um i don't know how to get that down i don't know how that happened i know you have to lower it you have to go under uh here we go did it i'm sorry i for some reason i don't see on my screen yes uh liz liz sarah i had to go downstairs and get a cup of water what did you guys decide to do about the unheated fire in the unheated garage nothing at the moment let it limp along no action taken okay so victor will you get will you get back to rooper and and walter and tell him that's what we're gonna do so far thank you absolutely thank you you know what ropert could do he could also um you know put up a um a gate right and close it he can't do that no that's not rooper rooper can't do that we would have to put up the gate we'd have to do it right i have to say he could volunteer i think from what rooper says his tractor is strong enough and that rock is big enough that it'll do the job and i'm taking him at his word he seems to know what he's talking about yeah okay his last run are you all set vick um yeah i am there was a couple other things but they can come up next next time yeah brandy you had something are you gonna set timelines for that i'm just the only reason i say that is because i can i can totally see like uh a point in time when um the select board is going to be faced with complaints because somebody didn't move the rock and they don't feel like we can always we can always move the rock but the bottom line is as you know very well and we know when the appropriate time to put the rock in is weather related and the appropriate time to get out is weather related so to say we're gonna leave it there from December 1st until April 30th i don't think it's the right approach we just have to use judgment well you know also we get complaints has recommendations of dates for hiking too so yeah there's not supposed to be any hiking on the mountain till memorial day weekend right so by then it should be dry enough but moving on formal randy but it has it has worked pretty well in the past and since we stopped blocking off the road it's been a real problem so we have a citizen who's willing to handle us for us but you used to do this anyway yes correct yeah i don't know i don't know what you're telling me when the hiking trail used to go right by jams remove me on okay guys we can move on what's next on the agenda the uh the approving the minutes of the december 7 select board meeting second moved by mary seconded by steve all in favor of approving those minutes please say hi hi hi next sarah renewing the certificate of approval for the location of the bouldic salvage yard i'm going to need you guys to come in and sign this when you do this nothing has changed same place they just have to do this every five years so who moved is there a second second second by steve all in favor of approving the what is it a resolution for the certificate the certificate of approval of the location of the bouldic salvage yard do they have to have proof of insurance or anything like that that's not i mean he just really needs this to send to the state so i just share the state is going to have to review the proof of insurance okay i saw my motion all in favor of the motion hi all right closed okay can you guys find some time some i just just before the year to somebody to come in and sign this i don't know when he needs it but probably soon okay thank you this this brings up just one quick thing i am uh i am here in colorado to the 30th so three of you could sign the oilers down at the town hall that would be good i look them over they look fine to me but i can't sign them in colorado sarah are you at the office tomorrow yep okay and what about thursday no okay i'll be in tomorrow how early do you get into the office sarah nine tomorrow because yeah okay you're gonna come in late you said no i'll be there at nine next item discussing continued use of rumney school as allowed for the town's 2019 easement and i just want you to know that classic christ mcbay fashion he emailed me uh while during the meeting um letter that i suppose i should read to you and i think this is an issue that i guess he has redone the easement or something um uh so do you want me to just quickly read the letter since yes okay okay and follow dear colleagues and follow up to the tuesday december 6 2021 select board meeting i don't think that's the right date but that's okay i contacted interim superintendent right jennifer miller arsono and discussed the easement problems of access to the rumney building and grounds which were discussed during the select board meeting i believe sarah merriman previously shared this email with you i've attached a copy of jennifer email to the town clerks addressing access to the elementary schools including rumney for town meeting and you guys as members of the bca were all sent that as well so in answer to the questions that were posed the request for uh for the clerks of the five towns to mail the ballots was made to coordinate all of the ballot made mailing so each town population was a shared of receiving the ballots at roughly the same time in the same manner it was an effort to ensure a uniformity of delivery of the ballots for registered voters in each of the towns okay the december 15th 2021 deadline was created to ensure there was some leeway for receiving votes in the various towns as there is a hard deadline of january 25th 2022 the activity needed to prepare for the mailing and soliciting the respective towns approval coupled with the school board meeting already scheduled for december 15th 2021 played a role in selecting the december 5th 2021 deadline i have no idea what he's talking about that's okay i've also attached a proposed procedure for access to the rumney memorial school and the school grounds as preserved in the easement i've attached the copy of the easement for informational purposes i've shared this proposed procedure with interim superintendent miller arsono and now the middle sex select word for feedback please return comments to me by friday january 7th 2022 by copy of this letter blah blah i asked for her comments so in other words we just got this night while you're in the meeting there's no way to warn it i think that january 4th gives you enough time to read this and have comments back to chris by january 7th and it has to do with ensuring from what i could just briefly tell access to rumney school which i think peter is your concern was your concern about for the um i don't know the way it's got here well my concern was we got we got some kind of letter or response saying that we would be able to use the uh gym at the school and the bathrooms only for our town meeting right and that is way out of compliance with the easement and doesn't address any of the other potential uses that the town might want to use the school for so i said if the if the current thing is covid related you know probably we can make it work for this year but i want to have some real understanding that the town is going to have reasonable access to that school for any of its regular activities whether they be band concerts or community meetings or whatever it is and you know we've had ever since ever since whenever it was a year and a half ago when uh when we entered into this agreement we're forced to enter it this agreement giving away our school um there've been a lot of nos and very few yeses about use of that building and that is not what that easement says so i will read i will pay attention to reading that over i would suggest let me read it over quickly and then probably we should send it to rob and have him read it over i think so i'm not an expert on easement but yeah i want to enforce our easement that was part of that contract i don't i don't think we should sign anything that somehow limits what we got in the original easement so just to be clear this isn't an easement we've already done the easement this is a procedure for town of middle sex and its residents access to the remedy memorial school pursuant to easement so it sounds like an easement of an easement and you will get a little forward this all to you tonight okay information on the easement i'm saying you don't have a description um if you if you were going to follow the words of the easement that's all i'm saying it's going to make it harder for us to use the building just it's just my impression from the way it sounds well and i haven't looked at it yet so well but we need to pay attention okay i will send it to rob i'll send the whole thing to rob and then i'll be able we'll be all ready for the january fourth meeting when i'll put it on the agenda to discuss it how's that sound perfect can you send a copy of that too uh sarah yeah i'm going to send it everybody i just said it came over during the meeting so i i may at least take that back to us there are people who don't respond to peter we have to take very i agree i mean this has been a this has been a burr under my saddle for a while so anyway i'm laughing with you not at you believe me what else what else have we got sarah next up is oh i'm going to give you a brief update on 28 rich road that can wait there's nothing there's nothing pressing about that okay and then uh correspondence uh this is this has to do with receiving not correspondence the verbal complaints they received two phone calls last week from somebody saying i guess the carol picard's animals were kind of out of control last week and um just wanting to know what the board was going to do about it and i i read through our ordinance and we have a dog running at large ordinance we don't have a pig running at large and i just don't know um i don't know if there's uh i don't know if there's anything that you can do um but so i'm just bringing i just told them that i would bring it to the board and bringing it to the board well i conducted a drive-by inspection of those premises the other day and i did observe that she has built a bridge across the river probably unpermitted and has created one or two pastors over on the other side of the river so i don't know if that's where the animals are now there's definitely some kind of a pan on the north end by her house that's got animals in it yes victor um yes jane and i went down and talked to her about the fence being falling down into the road the wooden one now about the uh about the uh trash bin and at that time she said she was moving them over on the other side and i think as you said i was through there a couple of times and uh just recently and they have been moving even the trash bins been moved a little bit i do think they're within the 25 foot right away but it's better you know progress not perfection yeah i'm out of here even though the bridge probably illegal if it's if it solves or mitigates the problem i'd say i'd say it's a i'd say it's a good thing badly and i know ski does i feel badly for those animals i'm not sure that i'm not sure about the bridge uh mary i'm not sure she the only thing she had to do according to well before i don't know if what was sweats changed but according to our zoning regulations it just has to meet with the stream alteration guy and he has to say yeah or no i mean it's three of them down through there they're they're not really permitted anyway yeah well does she own the land on the other side yes i'd hear chapin's buried over there okay hey sarah yeah what's the deadline for if we're gonna run for select board again what's the deadline for our signatures 5 p.m 5 p.m 1 january 15th 15th okay and then the other question i the comment i want to make is i am acknowledging that you're requesting um the little blurb for the um the town report and i'm working on it so i just don't want you to think i forgot yeah i'm sure you weren't give everybody long long deadlines yeah thank you so january 50th or 15th for then for the petition is 15th for nominating how many signatures do we need 30 15 and where do i get that form for you it's also on our website you can spend there since august okay the form says january 24th well let me just go check my thing no it doesn't well i'm looking at it all right is this your formal announcement for running nothing nothing well you know i'm gonna be there on whatever day it is at 4 59 p.m if i run one more time that it'll be 10 years and then i think oh she's right it is i'm going to retire it's whatever it says on the form january 24th or someone may run against me so i have someone that i i have someone who is actively wanting to talk with me about running for select board and i think they want to run against me which is fine i if i don't win i don't win and that means somebody else can someone else participate in these endless yes so i have a grand no time what else there anything is that it that's it well wait wait levin wanted to remember we had to amend the agenda to talk about the middle sex trails uh so right that was not warned we should we he wanted to he wanted to uh he talked to me i told him to submit it to the select board he just wanted the select board to say yes that sounds okay for their work program for the uh for the trails and i don't think there's any urgency to that i think we can read it over and uh and approve it at our next meeting yeah i read it it's pretty uncontroversial no i think it's i think it's fine but i i think we should i think we should formally approve it and i think we should review it and i think we should warn it that's all i'm saying so let's do that i mean i think he understood that too yeah yeah just you just wanted to give the board a heads up that's all and that yeah no okay so we are very good my my picture went away because i out of my batteries very very low but very christmas happy new year yeah on the floor i want to know i want to know when christmas party is les are you didn't we designate you to throw the christmas party this year no remember we're not allowed to because then we'd be oh okay sorry okay so everyone have a safe christmas and please please get your booster if you haven't done the show already and stay safe and wear your mask whenever you can so that we all get through this omicron healthy and not sick yes absolutely merry christmas very christmas everybody see you next year bye bye