 Already Scott? You're all set Terry. Okay, I'm set to go. So I will call the meeting order at six o'clock on the dot and before we go to public comment we don't have any minutes to review tonight. But before we go to public comment I'd like to read to you a email that I received late this afternoon from Gordon Sableir. Dear Terry, I'm submitting my resignation from the Williston Select Board. I consider my service to the town of Williston in honor and have enjoyed my time on the board. It has been a pleasure to work with the Williston community sincerely Gordon St. Hilaire. So with that we'll go directly then to public comment. Is there any public comment from anyone? Brian, why don't you come to the the table? I take these seats out there Brian. But we have our guests. My name is Brian Forrest, I'm a ten-year resident of Williston and a former energy coordinator. On one side of the sheet is a proposed energy plan budget that I gave to Eric last year. And on the other side is a list of the towns in Chittenden County and their tax rates. Williston is down at number 15. And if we fully fund the energy plan on this side, it would add 13 cents to our tax rate. That would drop us all the way down to number 14 with with still a most of 3 cent margin between the next town. So obviously there is not a financial impediment to us funding the town energy plan. And in my comments last week I talked about how the international community in the United States is not fully funding the climate crisis and the state hasn't seen its way to funding the Global Warming Solutions Act. So if anything is going to be done dealing with climate it's going to fall upon the towns. And if Williston, with its low tax rate, is not willing to fund this issue, like it funds other public safety issues like fire and police, then it's not going to get done. And people like Terry and I are not going to see the full effects of climate. But the rest of you and your children and grandchildren are definitely going to find, in counter to catastrophic events, that that the scientists are telling us will happen because we're on a path to have it happen. So unless we stand up and fund the energy plan, nothing's going to be done. And the consequences will be what they are. And let me just say one thing that when all is said and done, you will not be remembered for keeping low taxes. That's going to pass out of everybody's mind. We'll be remembered if you stand up and deal with this crisis and protect the residents of Williston. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll put this in our files to look at as we go through the budget. Anyone else in the room have any public comment to make tonight? Anyone on Zoom have any public comment tonight? Nope. Then we'll go directly to the operating and capital budget presentations by our various departments. And our first one we have tonight is the Harktown Clerk, Sarah Mason, to give us the Clerk and Elections Department operating budget. I don't think you have anything in the capital budget. So you're on. Well, good evening, everybody. Happy to be here in the top spot again. And I will keep it short so that we stick to your schedule for your evening. I know that you're all pretty familiar with the budget for both my clerk's office and for what sort of subsection out for elections tends to be pretty straightforward and pretty consistent with normal needs. Computer replacement office supplies, ballots, and postage. You'll notice probably just a little increase, probably along most line items, which I won't go through, which is really just the cost of everything being higher. The building maintenance is kind of a big jump that we're all splitting the cost of. So that's kind of a big bump from 16 up to 20. But that was really one of the bigger items that I can't really don't have much control over. Something of note, I guess, would be that revenue is headed down in a couple of different sections. As we sort of adjust to this post pandemic life and how people are going about their days and the availability of a lot of things online. My two biggest ones being land records are online as they are in all states. Vermont is behind on that, but we are online as most towns are coming on that way. That does equal attorneys, realtors, appraisers being able to access those from home. So some revenue is down from that. And also, we're just not having the banner year we had in 2020 or 21 when interest rates were very different. So the refinancing and all the sales have sort of come to a halt. So that is down a little bit. The other noticeable spot would be in vital records, where before your town clerk was the only spot you could get those things, you had to go to the town where the birth death or marriage had occurred. That's not the case anymore. And that's been the case for a couple of years when the state sort of streamlined the process. You can get those at any town. So the people that are getting most of that business would be towns that have funeral homes in them, towns that have the hospital in them. You know, we lost some revenue when the respite house went to Colchester and that's been years. But that line item, which was a pretty good stream there for a while, is also sort of starting to come down just a little bit. The good news is that passports are back up. You know, we had a year where I really couldn't do any office traffic was, you know, minimum zero for a while there. So that will be on the up and up. And again, you know, Shirley and I have to make some pretty big estimates as far as some of these numbers since a lot of what I do depends on, you know, human nature and the state of what's going on out there. Another one a little hard to project is postage every year when we get to the elections budget, I really have to sort of think about postage number of people that are going to want mail in ballots or absentee, whatever anybody wants to call it, which is of course drastically increasing every year. So both of those I've bumped up a little bit on each of those categories, just as our best guests watching some of the data that I have from the past years of in person versus mail ballots. So that is pretty much everything in that show. Like I said, I know you've all seen it. It's in your binder. It's consistent year to year, a few fluctuations and just trying to see where everything will sort of line out in these next couple of years. Thank you, sir. And questions for Sarah regarding her proposed budget. Thank you very much. Very straightforward. Try to try to stay on an even keel here. Thank you everybody. We'd like those. Thank you very much, sir. Next we have the Cemetery Commission, Jack Price, who is the chair of the commission. Good evening. This is Drew Nelson, my right hand commissioner, soon to take my position, I think. I believe you have three documents in front of you that Shirley and I worked up. One is the cemetery summary. Then there's the expenditures breaking down the expenditures for the cemetery commission and also the revenues. I'm going to deal just with the summary and I'll walk down through that and try to keep it brief, as Sarah did. And what I'll do here is if you need to me to elaborate on any item, please interrupt, and I will explain that as best as I can. But bottom line is the Cemetery Commission is asking for a 7% increase in budget this year. 2000 fiscal year 2023. Our operating budget was $36,585 here. We're asking for $39,255. That increase is almost totally accountable for by what we anticipate the increase in the expenditures for professional services. Professional services are defined as mowing, trimming, leaf cleanup in the spring and fall. And last year, we engaged a new contractor for that. We feel he did a very good job in the four cemeteries in Williston. We'd like to keep him. We've had some problems getting quality work in the past, even some damage was done by people who weren't competent enough to do that. This was not the case this year. And we're very happy with this contract. We would like to keep him. We haven't talked to him about next year's possible contract, but I've been encouraged by people in the know to probably increase the line item for professional services by about 10%. And again, that would basically account for most of the 7% increase we're asking for our budget. There's one other line item that we added this year that we haven't had in the past. And that is a $500 allowance for the maintenance of the monthly maintenance for the Memorial Garden, which is the cremations repository as part of Chittenden Cemetery. In the past, that garden has been neglected because it hasn't actually fallen in the job description of professional services for mowing and trimming. So with our request for $500 that accounts for the 7% increase along with the bump for professional services. Having talked about professional services, let's look at property and casualty, insurance, telephone and postage sets out of our control. So I'm going to skip right down to maintenance and repairs. Maintenance repairs, we have had a standard line item for that for several years now at $5,000. And that basically covers monument repairs, the cleaning of stones, repositioning of markers, storm damage, etc. Things that are just wear and tear in our four cemeteries. And that remains standard for $5,000. That's what we applied for last year. And that's what we are this year. Next item is cornerstone expenses. Cornerstones are six inch cube of granite with a monogram of the lot owners that we sell a lot to and dear view. They define the circumference of the lot. It's for reference points for us. So we know where to sell the next lot and who is in there as far as the record is concerned. So we're anticipating that we'll need six sets of cornerstones to be ordered this year and the current prices from vendors in the monument businesses cost $300 a set. So six times 300 1800 there plus the installation of those six sets by one of our subcontractors $150 per set brings that cornerstone expenses line item to $2,700. Equipment repairs and maintenance is is a an old line item that is no longer relevant. And this time next year, that won't even appear on this summary. We don't have any equipment anymore. When we while we do it is not it's not being used so we don't maintain it. So that will drop out of there. At this point, we have the lawn mowing services subcontracted. So that's irrelevant. Okay, Memorial Garden maintenance and insurance costs. There's a mistake here in the proposed fiscal year 2024 down at the bottom. Sorry, Shirley. This is something you don't know about. And those last two line items, I'm going to correct. Luckily, they cancel each other out. So the bottom bottom line is the same. So the the internments that we do in the Memorial Garden have been two or three a year for several years now. So we're estimating on the high end, maybe, you know, you never know. But we're estimating three internments. And with the contractor who prepares the site at 350, that's $1,050. And then this new line item is trying to applying for the monthly maintenance fee of for $500 for the season adds on to that. So the total line item there would be 1550 instead of 1400. Okay, so that's a bump up of $150. The next line item should actually be titled lettering on Memorial Garden stone. Okay, and this is somebody has to actually put the dates, the name of the person who is interred in the Memorial Garden, and the dates, and they and that is a fee that is escalating like everything else in this post COVID or COVID era. And so right now, used to be about $150 right now. What's the range that you found, Drew? What was the range for lettering? Okay, so we're maybe a little lost, optimistic that we can keep it at 250. But that's what we're going to put down right now. So right now we charge $600 to buy to reserve a place in the Memorial Garden. 350 of that goes for the internment fee. And $250 of that goes to the lettering. Now that could obviously we're going to have to keep our eye on that and bump it up so we don't lose money in this aspect. But so at 250 per set or per excuse me, for lettering, and with an anticipated internment of three, that makes it 750, which is down $150 from the 900 that was originally was accounted for as $300 for lettering. So that would be three times 300, so 900 at 750. Is that sort of through that? So those are the expenditures, the revenue that we raise for the cemetery basically comes from the sale of lots in Dearview and the Memorial Garden. The fee is $500 for residents in Dearview. It's $1,000 for non residents of Williston in Dearview, but $600 for resident or non resident in the Memorial Garden. We also get an annual gift. Hope it keeps coming from the Asseltine family, usually of $2,500. That helps us a lot, you know, in making ends meet. So just for your information, we sold 11 lots in Dearview this year, and the last well since the beginning of the fiscal year, and two, two spaces in the Memorial Garden, total burials in our cemeteries this year was 26 in all the different cemeteries. Questions? Any questions for Jack? Again, straightforward. So thank you on the commission for all of what you do. Thanks. Moving on to planning and zoning. So Matt Balange, what do operating first and then do capital after that? Thanks for having me tonight. Planning and zoning operating budget is very similar to budgets of the past few years. I've identified a few differences for you in my memo. Starting off with revenue, we did adjust our revenue projections upwards a little bit. Traditionally, our revenue production projections have been very, very conservative, because we know they can be volatile. But we've seen performance over the last number of years that suggested we could slightly adjust those upwards with fair degree of confidence. So we've done that. In terms of expenditures, the two biggest changes where we're asking to put some more money back into our miscellaneous planning studies line. This is the line we use for consultant help and in particular, to match grant requests we make through a number of different programs that lead to larger comprehensive planning projects. In particular, in FY24, we're hoping to kick off a fiscal year long public engagement process for the 2025 Willeson Town Plan, which will be the major work product of the office for the next couple of years. We also are proposing enough funding in there to match the MTI, the VTRANS grant for microtransit feasibility study, which Willeson was selected for. Beyond that, we would have a little bit of headroom remaining in that line item to support any unified planning work program requests that we make through CCRPC. And we have a few small ones of those that we may pursue for next fiscal year as well. Otherwise, you know, this time last year we were working through the process of considering adding the energy planner position to the planning program, and we ultimately did do that. And in really simple terms, that just means that our numbers have increased ever so slightly by one. But there are a number of budget line items that need to track with that to support training, office supplies and equipment, subscriptions and dues, et cetera, as we have those additional staff. So I've made minor adjustments in those lines just to try to reflect supporting the additional staffing that's in the office. And we've found that training and maintaining certifications and regular replacement of equipment, especially the laptops in the office, just keeps us going and avoids anything where we really are down because we're, you know, down on equipment or something like that, lets us keep a little bit of reserve in terms of our technology especially. And we've seen good results from the training opportunities we've been able to access in the past. So that's most of it. From my end, we've seen good use in operating as it relates to our conservation efforts and continuing to have our part-time trails and primitive parks, land stewardship position in the summers. That's been really terrific. I will also note, and Eric may have shared with you a late breaking memo from the Catamount Community Forest Committee. The request they are making is to add another $2,000 to the Catamount Community Forest line. This is not reflected in the budget you have right now. It's for discussion later. And they've provided some information about land management activities that would be supported by that increase if the board wants to take that up as you work through your total budget in the next month or so. I just received that from Bats. I'll get to the board before the next meeting. So I'll stop there for the moment. I'm happy to take any questions about any particular lines or overall direction of the department, or what we think some of those comprehensive planning activities look like coming up. Otherwise, we can talk about capital. Again, pretty straightforward. Any questions for me? Okay. Looks like capital then. I think I only had a couple of things that I saw in the capital. Yeah. And I confess, I printed everything and I think I didn't print capital. So go on memory for a moment here. But really, our... Thank you, Shirley. I think you saved me the four on this. 54, 55, is that what you're talking about? Yeah. That's about right. So, sorry, age is 54, 55. Sorry. So, really, our capital budget is all about infrastructure related to our country parks and the Catamount community forest. And you can sort of see with what's on 54, we're talking about some stream crossing structures, a new access trail from Governor Chittenden Road to the southern parcel of Catamount to reroute traffic away from the homestead there, and some trail restoration work that will need to take place following the forestry activities that are planned for the community forest. We also, you know, not in this budget, but the conversation we've had is regarding the sheep barn, the historic structure on the property. And, you know, the town is essentially committed to stabilizing that structure similar to the way we relate to the Brennan barn on that parcel. But when we talk about making capital investments in it, we sort of go around and round a little bit about, is there a use for the structure? Is there a reasonable cost to adapt the structure for a use that would make sense? And if not, then simply stabilizing continues to be the strategy out there. So just, you're not seeing that in this budget, but a conversation that I think will continue to come up and just happens when towns own historic buildings, as I'm sure you're familiar from a number of others that we have. On page 55, this is our ongoing capital request to do other maintenance of our trails and facilities in our other country parks that are not Catamount. We've been handling costs this way for some time. And, you know, you can see from the items in the project summary, most of what we're talking about is replacing and maintaining boardwalks. We have trails that go through wet areas. They have boardwalks that have a lifespan. And because of the inventory work that was done by SE Group in past years, the good news is we have a handle on those and their replacement life cycles and timeframes in which to do that. And this capital budget request continues to support ongoing maintenance at a pace that will help us keep up with those. The other item, Terry, I think I mentioned this to you, Matt, was to maybe walk through your memo for the growth projection as well. Absolutely. So we tucked that into your memo. This is only the second year that we've prepared a projection like this for the board to look at. I'll give some thanks to Emily Heyman on my staff for putting a lot of this together. We worked together on it this year as well as last year. So in our conversations about preparing this memo, we wanted to provide some additional context. The original assignment last year was to talk about population. And when you talk about population, you're talking generally about residential growth. And it's still a big piece of the memo. But when you're talking about thinking about the growth of the town and especially in the context of long term investments that are made in the town, it's the overall growth that the town experiences and certain kinds of growth result in certain kinds of demands for town services and facilities, not just residential. So we did want to provide a little bit of context around commercial growth as well this year. And we've tried to do that. And the comparison I make just as a measure of intensity is that with what's on the books now somewhere in the permitting cycle, i.e. we know about it, we can predict almost as many new vehicle trips from that commercial development as we can from all of the residential development that we know is planned. So just as a very, very rough measure of the intensity of development that happens in town, that's the vehicle trips is one way of looking at it. It's a point we made just recently in our five year review of the town's growth center designation by the agency of commerce and community development in the downtown board. They ask you a lot of questions about how much has happened in the last five years in your growth center and how much has happened in the last five years not in your growth center. The one where Williston always looks very good is the residential growth in that 70% or more of our new residential growth in the last five years has occurred in our planned growth center. When they start asking about commercial uses, the downtown board wants to know well how many structures were built in the growth center and how many structures were built outside the growth center. So as Emily and I were looking at the numbers, we said well you know we had this or that new multi-tenant retail and restaurant structure in Finney Crossing and then we had U-Haul and there were 16 structures at U-Haul. So by the numbers it looks like less is happening in the growth center than really is. So we brought in the vehicle trips as a piece of context there. In regards to the residential numbers and population predictions that come from them, this is an extremely, extremely optimistic prediction. It assumes that all developments will proceed as fast as Williston's permitting timelines allow them to and that all of them will actually commence on those schedules. That's not realistic, but it's the quote-unquote worst case scenario that you would want if you're asking just how many more people might we expect to be in Williston in the next five years. And you see our number there, roughly 1,400, but dialed back by about 200 due to continuing trends in shrinking household size. So over that FY23 to the end of FY28 prediction line about 1,200 new people in Williston. This is page 20 for the board in your packet. So again I'll just say it's a very optimistic projection starting next year assuming we continue to do a memo like this for the board. We'll actually start to assess what our predictions were in the past and how close or far away we were. We did a little bit of that informally when we were preparing these numbers this year and just said well you know some of these projects that we thought would get off the ground in FY23 have not. That's par for the course. We think they will come online eventually. But once we have a couple years worth of predictions we can go back to that first set and say well just how much of this really happened. You know I would I would guess that we'll find that somewhere between 75% of what we predicted and all is where we'll land. Most of it will get off the ground. Most of it won't get off the ground as fast as we allow it to under our permitting regime. Questions for Matt? No not really. That last comment had me a little confused though. You talked about you know this you know somewhere you're going to come where somewhere between 75% and what you actually predict. That made sense. And you said most of it will have some delay associated with it. I didn't quite get that piece of it. So after somebody gains their approvals from the town or almost all of their approvals from the town they will usually if they need to go to act 250. And we spend a lot of time in residential subdivision talking about growth management, setting a start date, setting a schedule at which you know units can come online. It is almost always the case that the first fiscal year or two in which we predict and allow units to come online in a project nothing happens at all. Maybe at the toward the end of that second fiscal year the roads start to be constructed or excavation goes in for utilities something like that. So this this memo doesn't assume that that delay will always happen. It just says if we are in a position to issue a permit for something we're assuming it's getting off the ground. But in reality especially for larger projects that that's almost never the case. There's a lot of more permitting and preliminary work that happens before it gets off the ground. Okay. Even though it's got in its town approvals. Okay. And as one person who looked at this memo for me said or we could have a big giant recession. And you know certainly Williston has experienced you know predicted projects that were going to move forward and then a change in economic circumstances and things slow down. And I you know I would say reflecting what Sarah Mason said about activity related to financing refinancing and sales. You know that increase in interest rates over the last year. We do see it as a small slowdown in the build out of existing projects. And just you know it it affects how quickly things turn over. It affects who can purchase. It very much affects the actual real price of buying a home. And all of all of that changes. What we see in terms of the permitting track and build out track. Getting back to your you know discussing there might be a delay, especially in larger projects, but particularly that to go through something like act 250. With that window of time they have to do that project will stay the same. So it's part of what you're saying they'll be an accelerated development post that one or two year lag. The track we tend to see is projects will sort of catch up to their growth management schedule. And then they will usually finish about when or just a little bit after that growth management schedule imagines that they would finish. Typically if somebody has some kind of product in their development that can be sold individually like a subdivision that has some single family homes on lots. Those may get off the ground first that funds the infrastructure. And then maybe the multifamily product comes in a little later. So as that plays out in terms of number of units per year, you see there's sort of a pause. And then a few start coming online. It may even not be all that many by the numbers. Then things hit sort of a steady pace. And then if economic conditions don't change, it sort of winds down within a year or two of when we thought it would. Okay. Okay. Any other questions? All right. Think we're we're separate. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. We'll bring a little bit of head side and the next folks. So we'll be the police department chief fully and lieutenant more. So we're doing both operating and capital right? So we'll do operating first and then the capital I just only hearing about anything that has allocation for fiscal year 24. Anything that doesn't have allocations? Well, I'll start off the semen. Thank you. And good evening, buddy. Another lovely budget season going forward. Seems like we're meeting every week. But hopefully it'll be a long way before the next meeting. But our FY 24 police operating budget is again a collaborative effort between the town manager, the fine instructor, myself and my lieutenant. During the past four budgets, we were recommended staffing at 17 Swan personnel include myself, Lieutenant for patrol, a comfort dog, and then patrol officers. We've never been really at full strength, full strength in the five years I've been here until this past July when we graduated our final two officers off the Sabrina, a bootman and also Kelsey Parker that brought us up to full strength. And I always talk about once we get the full strength, we need to see how, you know, our operating strengths are and where we need. And we've already seen it in the short time since July, where we're planning to reintroduce our detectives position, which is called BCI Bureau criminal investigation. And we've noticed in the last since July, a very large uptick in DUI's slash DUI drugs. And the drugs that are a big concern for us, because with the recreational marijuana coming out, we believe we're going to see a lot more of that. So we developed a lieutenant more developed a position called the traffic safety officers position. So after the first of the year, once we meet with the union to come up with, you know, job descriptions and MOUs will interview and hopefully by by at least some time in February will be operational with a detectives position and a traffic safety officer's position to go along with our comfort dog program. So we'll have a unit upstairs not building will be special units, special units. So that that's working well and our comfort dog is, you know, since it's been with us has been a shining star and all that. As you look at our budgets, again, we increased our patrol salaries to include all the positions, the 17 positions and also new newly created positions. Our administrative salaries include myself and lieutenant, as well as the administrative model to support police services, including patrol investigations and communications. I guess we spoke last week during that presentation about the transition over to the town of Essex, you know, we're reallocating time and for our administrative assistant to spend time time downstairs to pick up the duties that our dispatchers can't do at that point, meet and greet people one day through Friday, still carry the South, you know, making the payroll, making the voucher pain, you know, the administrative course, but also assistant new officers with their their work in there. So we're the over the next two and a half weeks is more of a training for everybody. The dispatchers over in Essex training on their days off and the administrative sister Rowan Derby is being trained downstairs to acclimate herself in the in the front lobby, pretty much. Again, being this far out of the the center of the town, we really don't get a lot of walk-ins and walk-ins we do usually gather people using a drug drop off or people coming in for a fingerprinting. That seems to be the biggest walk in. So we need to have somebody in the lobby set up the appointments, have them be ready to be fingerprinting. So it's a work in progress. So hopefully by July one, we'll be ready to go. Definitely for dispatch will be ready to go. And I think it'll be day to day for downstairs in the lobby. And speaking of that, you know, we have signed an interview with Essex for the next two and a half years that will be a cold shared dispatching operations there in Essex. They are, like I said, they are over there now training on their days off. It sounds pretty good. And it's still the same thing. It's just a different building in different town, but it's still Welleson, Welleson Police. The other increases and basically we support basically three things that are in my general budget. We support the Chittenden Unit for special investigations. Again, that's something, you know, down the road, we'd like to try to put somebody in there to also provide, you know, the cost is costing us to put somebody over. But that's part of what we're going to look at with the detective position to train them and all that. But our community support group, which is supported through Howard Center. We have five specialists that share six departments. There's four plus a supervisor. They're assigned to departments throughout Chattanooga County. And it's worked out great. You know, they're getting really used to, you know, our officers and we have a good working relationship with the whole group of the whole five of them. We also support our community justice program, which is very, very active even during this pandemic and all that. We cover the course not covered by the Department of Corrections. And with that, it's that we will not know until May what the, but they have met the Commissioner of Corrections met with CJC and their volunteers and did a lot of discussions and on that. So we believe we might be in a favorable spot of not have to come up with additional monies. But it's state government and, you know, government decides what's what's going to go over now. So we keep offering it first, but we believe it's a well, you know, program. There has been some changes. The assistant to leave Brenna, she left and took him out of the job. We're in the process of starting a one of the interns that came over, I think from St. Mike's. I'm not positive she came from, but she's going to fill in the vacancy for the next six months to see how we're going to go with the money. The corrections, then we'll decide we're getting the money that we need and we'll fill out that position for really pretty much. We most of the course is based across the living during our budget. And if you look at all our budgets over the last since I've been here for the five years, it's a tight, tight budget. There's no froze in it. You know, we pretty much try to hold the pencils of paper, you know, when we win this business, it is a business. We've done some adjustments with overtime with the additional two full time positions that brought us up to full staff. So over the next six months as we end this fiscal year come June, we'll be able to see how well we did with with the adjustments and that that that'll guide us, you know, further through. Speaking of personnel, we're in the process of trying to start up a study, just like the fight department did almost two years ago. Myself and Tom Andrews met with one of the vendors, a local person who's done this on a national level, an international level. We're just trying to come up with the funds. So, you know, it's right now it looks like a $30,000 investment. So we need to figure out where we're going to get the money to make it work. Because if we have to wait any longer, then it drives us back because we're looking at grants through the federal government, the COPS office. So if we can figure out a way by next year when we get ready for the next year is the FY 25 budget. And we can say that we need X amount of employees, additional police officers, and we can go forward, come march and apply for the federal government. And it's a, you know, they'll split the cost over three years for us. So, you know, we won't have to pay the full vote of that position until four years. So it saves the town a lot of money. So, but we need to have the okay from the voters that you know, so that's that's going to be a work in progress for the two of us being Lieutenant and the top manager and surely the fine instructor to try to find the course, you know, between now and the end of June to see we have any savings in our budget, but we, you know, we need to try to get this off and running, you know, as, as the planning and zoning administrator talked about is that the grosses, even though you talk about growth, you know, it's still growing. You know, we see it every day and we, we look at the traffic, you know, Matt does a great job, but we look at the traffic in this town. And when we have three of the busiest intersection in Chittenden County, it tells you something and just drive around the town and all that. I don't see anything major in our budget other than, you know, doing the cost of living so we can go over to the, the capital and if somebody here has something. Let's just try and see what everybody has questions for you on the upgrade. Do you want to take what's the capital? What's the capital? What do you think? There's really nothing here. You mentioned this study and you're going to hire somebody who is going to look at the police department and I assume identify what we're doing well and what we might want to do increase and which could include new, new police officers. What's your gut feeling? Well, hypothetically, you know, if you take what the population per thousand calls for the fire department, they use the number 1.9 fire fighters per thousand. So take the 11,000 that we have just for our nighttime population. Let's not talk about the people coming in the town, shopping, eating, you know, staying at the hotels, but the census, you know, shows about 11,000 residents here. So, rounder off the two, that's 22 officers. We're at 17, so that's five more officers. If you take the projected daytime population anywhere from 15 to 40,000 people on a given day depending on what time of season all that, you know, everybody talks about a study that was done in the 80s and early 90s when they were planning to put the mall in, the pyramid mall, and they were talking about our PD being the size of self groaning around 40 officers, but nobody can find that study for me. I have been calling people up down here in town and talking to the uniform crime report. They talk all about the country, all the districts and all that. New England averages anywhere from 1.8 up to 2.3 officers to 1,000. So I always round it off to two, and when I was not a Massachusetts, I used two. You know, our town was basically the same population, the nighttime population. So, you know, you're doubling it, even tripling it on a good summer day or a good fall day, before college graduation, homecoming weekends, all that. It's just, you know, I invite any four of you to spend a couple hours with us in a patrol car right around. You live in town, but see how we see things and all that. So, you know, we're going to do a right away thing, but he plans to build it out. So like, okay, what's the PD going to look like in five years? What's going to look like in 10 years? What about 15 years? So it's not going to, so this plan he's looking at, and he's going to do surveys and he's going to meet with groups in the community, just like in five years. That's, you know, we're going to look at that. So, so down whoever, you know, takes a seat after I retire, whenever that might be, has a game plan. And the town has a game plan. The, you know, the town manager has it, the finance has it, you know, the board has it. So, that's what we're looking at. You know, it's something that needs to be done. You know, how many police departments, how many officers and all that, and nothing went with it. You know, so again, you just, hopefully it's done correctly. And I have really a lot of confidence in gentlemen that we've talked to. I've seen some of his work. He's got some people that, that I know that have done this before, that I really feel confident they understand what all enforcement's about and understands what community needs are. So, I think he's a great person to be able to handle it. He said it'll take anywhere from three to four months to complete. Okay. So, if I could repeat what I heard is using different words, is be prepared because it may come back that we are significantly understaffed on the police department, in the August department. I could, yeah. I said that when I took over in 2017, but there were people, you know, you build on your strengths and you fix your weaknesses to get them to your strengths. And, you know, you know, when I, when I took over in Douglas, you know, we had six officers when I left there, we had 15. And that was in 22 years. So, it's something that, you know, I, it doesn't have to be right at the back, but we build the building blocks. You know, the building blocks. And then, you know, skip a few years and then go back and add three more offices. So, you're gradually building up and you're staying paced with the growth of the town and all that. You know, I want to have each shift, you know, we want to have two people in the BCI in the detective unit. You know, so that way somebody can go in the QC and help them out. I want to have each shift with them and things like that. Okay. I appreciate the heads up. The silver line is those there are grants out there. So, the cop grants, those are usually a springtime, you know, you apply for them in the spring. And they do help offset for several years. So, you know, that does help with the cushion of the overall budget. And I've been working on this with Chief Lieutenant for a bit and my department was fully staffed and maintaining that and get that baseline and then look at what the future needs are for the community. I put some money in the manager's budget in FY24 to look at part of this initiative and also be looking to bring to the board if we could start looking at this in FY23 identifying some funding that stretches over two fiscal years understanding where the numbers are going to start this project and then round it out in FY24. And just on that note, it's important to remember that if we wait another year, then it takes a whole another year to apply for the grants and then it takes a whole another year to hire people. You know, it's 12 to 14 months from the beginning of hiring to getting them on the roads. Every time that we push this off, it just adds to it with the amount of growth that's going on. So will they also look at you know, whether or not our community support services kind of piece is also commensurate with the growth of our town? I assume that would be another area that we want to I mean, I know Howard does a good job, but I assume with a growing population and a growing police department we'd also want to increase community support services and all of that and how that is their employee that is kind of doing what you're speaking to. Pretty much like a community liaison. Yeah, and I just think that's an important you know, seeing the way policing is working and all of that and how effective the community support is. Yeah, there's a lot of different tools. There's a lot of different things that you can do with positions in funding. Thank you. Traffic Safety Officer, is that how is that going to be different than a regular patrol officer on a day-to-day basis? On a day-to-day. So if this was to come to fruition, if this position is created, it's a supplemental position. So this person is a designated person who is experienced and trained in DRE. That is a crash reconstruction as I can do all the fatal accidents you know, here and elsewhere when called upon. This will be the resident expert when it comes to those types of things. Speed Cards, I mean we have many of them that it's extremely cumbersome to sit there and dump all the data and report all the data. So this person also will be the liaison for the Governor's Highway Safety Program. So they'll run that for our police department. So it takes the load off of some of the other folks that are carrying a lot of different jobs in-house. DRE, drug recognition expert. Do we have enough of them now? In the state? We have two. Is that enough? We actually do really well. The two that we have are pretty active. One of our newest members, Officer Miller, I think he's probably number two in the entire state right now for DRE call-outs and exams. I did something a few months ago. I think I did a report. I don't know if you were here for it or not. But I compared the last several years for DUIs. I didn't break it down between drugs and alcohol. It was just cumulative. And when I did that, I think it was November 1st it was four. We were already in the 80 range. And that was like 50 more than the year before and 40 more than the year before that. So the uptick is there. And from what we're seeing every morning we're going to keep increasing. And the intention here is to assign our incumbent officers into these special duty roles not having any additional people at this point. It's just a lateral move. And the way that we envision this working is it actually will lessen the call volume for some of the road officers. So if there are accidents this person is designated to take those when they're on shift versus the officers so that way they can deal with that. Okay. Great. Thanks. So if we continue on. So I just didn't want to make sure right now there is not another officer proposed in this budget. Correct. This is us being creative. But what I'm concerned when I say I'm concerned about it please take that in the right light is if next year we're in a position where we're dangerously deficient you know from let's say a police officer safety standpoint or what have you I my approach would be much more than let's start hiring now and not have to hire five at once if we can instead of hitting this I don't know what the right word is it's not wall but where we have these hefty increases I'd rather see it more of a ramp than a one year where we have officers versus maybe two in one year and three in another that may not be possible right now but in an ideal budget world it's weird the whole situation is weird because you look at all the neighboring agencies you look at a state everybody's hurting for police officers where we're in the opposite position we have all the ones that we can have right now but what the town is telling us is it's growing it's growing it's growing our call volumes are skyrocketing we are going to have to ease into this I think one using the cops grants and you know I would apply for four if we can and hopefully get all four because I don't think that a lot of these other agencies out of state are going to be able to use cop grants because they have so many open positions so we might actually be in a good position where we may actually get all four and get the funding for all four and that will definitely lessen your blow you know then the other thing is can we find the people I'm hopeful and then like I said before we got to keep our people hungry if we if we don't give them other opportunities they're not going to stay here there's too many other opportunities to go elsewhere so with creating new opportunities and at the same time you know expanding the size of the force it's only going to you know benefit the community but benefit the people that we currently have so what what do you hear is is Wilson a good police department to work for that's all I'm hearing so far you know I mean we've come to you folks many times now because we've seen the writing on the wall we've never I mean it's been a revolving door since the day I got here and that was 16 years ago and there's many reasons for that but there's many reasons as why that's not like that any longer you know we came to you and we saw an issue and you know there was bonuses that were given out for retention well that seems to work because now we're fully staffed and everybody's here so you know there are ways to to keep people hungry and keep them here and I think doing it the way we're doing it is good right now for this year we've added two additional things you know when you build a building it doesn't stay new it gets old you know 60 so one of the turtles we had over the last few years is our HVA system and building maintenance so we've changed a lot upstairs but our door locks which are security brand they don't make them anymore so that's we're in buildings okay sorry see we got the page numbers keep everybody you are kidding that brand new building is 16 years old yes Bond's going to be paid off in a few years the mortgage burning party so this is a during the pandemic Lieutenant Moore was able to access grants to upgrade that building next door the larger offices room did some cosmetic work and all that but we we noticed our building locks access were falling apart so it was a two year undertaking and this year we're looking for an additional $80,000 to fund that to finalize it and all that so as we talked last week about egress and from Essex will be out of month for us when they're over there so they can do everything out of dispatch so they can open the doors for us open the so this is all going to be state of the art locking mechanism and that project would be completed so this will be off after next year yeah phase one was just completed and I spoke about it the last time we talked about the dispatch move initially it was $41,000 last year $41,000 for this year obviously you can see that that $41,000 turned into almost $80,000 this year so and that's just the cost of doing business right now so but the remainder there that $78,000 that will conclude the project in full for us our intent was to split over two budget years but we didn't count on inflation that won't be making the cost that much higher by deferring it and it's been dragging because this it's evidence back-ordered and the total was $82,000 so we split it and now it's almost $80,000 for the second half again second piece of the puzzle is our HVA system our furnaces and our roof we need the plan for a rainy day our HVA system is pretty much up to date we've done a lot of over the past year a lot of fixtures to those but we're concerned about our furnace and our roof there have been some patchwork up there so we need to put something in a rainy day fund and plan that it lasts longer than another year so that's our second largest capital that we've put in here and how does the I see an ask of 15 versus a manager recommendation of 5 how does that pan out we certainly looking at the request to build this just when the bottom line was getting finalized we had to make some adjustments here certainly we want to build this up over time but the board's discretion how you want to fund this but initially I needed to look at some areas a little bit initially and have a look at some of these longer term savings first the history of that was before last year there was never any capital for the building so this was brand new for you folks last year and the reason was there was major issues and surely can probably come up with a real number but it was somewhere around $30,000 that it cost us to fix the HVAC system that was never budgeted so that whole 15 we were just putting something in there for the time being so that's what that initially was next thing up is on page 60 which is our vehicle replacement we try to rotate our cruises every two and a half to three years we try to keep the miles down so we get great trade in and resell, we do trade them in we went to a large vehicle we went to Tahoe's this year and we did away with our pickup truck we actually sold the pickup truck to Berlin PD because again all the police agencies are not getting their vehicles and they might have ordered a vehicle in 21 for 22 and now they're getting a 23 because there's no more 22s and their course went up and they got us to wait six more months and all that so we offered it out to the departments in Vermont who needed the vehicle we had one agency that was gun hold and needed it so we actually exceeded the trading that we'd go over we're going to get we have a second vehicle that we brought over to Hershack today for sale and again it's far above the $10,000 that we'd go get in the trade it could be higher than $20,000 so again the resell we keep them we take care of them we care of them when they need to be repaired we keep them clean and all that so every year we're rotating and the ones with the least miles they'll go to canine comfort dog officer and our detective unit so their vehicles are still up to date and newer and all that so that's that's a constant every year of course again and everything went up higher the equipment we try like with the new towels now is that when we start looking at replacing them they'll be able to move the equipment currently in them over to the next round because they're pretty much the size will not change that much the interior of the vehicle so we'll get a good six years out of the equipment we have before we have to replace them the uncertainty is the the laptops we have we're in tear the way you're driving and the bounce and all that so that's the unknown this year the next page 61 does anybody have any questions on the cruises I should keep asking just a comment I was looking forward the possibility of that should be at some time not to miss the future no and again everyone's on when we do the back to put charging you know I think it'd be the first one to be the hybrid see how that works with you know I know Essex has a couple of them on the market you know with us is that it might be good for somebody in the detective unit to have an electric vehicle or how you know with the canine but you know again when we're out in the middle of the interstate and zero temperature and a blinding blizzard you know you got to make sure that kind of staying running and you know what's the life expectancy and all that so it's going to be a trial and error but you know we're looking forward to it and be a little more progressive on that but I think we start slow and with units that I'm not going to get a lot of travel time on it because we listen to you know some of the neighboring communities actually have electric vehicles and by the time they get to work they have to go over to a healthy living a couple hours so they can do patrol work before they you know finish their day and come back and charge it again before they head out so it's got to be efficient you know and on the parking lot we're working on design I just signed a contract last week we have money in this year's budget and part of their design will be to design electrical conduit in the back parking lot and I've asked them to extend in order to the police part of the parking lot as well so we can lay the infrastructure and we work on the parking lot probably targeted FY25 as we get the pricing and look at a couple of grant we might look at too but build that infrastructure in so when it comes time to look at changing the fleet to EVs gradually that we have the infrastructure built into our parking lot to handle that traffic I'm good thank you traffic safety equipment we just added a third trailer and we have signs and we network with Bruce in highway when he needs additional sign we share course and all that but this year we should be all set with our signs we do have some covert monitors that we put out there also so we'll get an accurate picture so that'll be one of the duties of the new traffic safety officer going out there moving the trailers downloading the data compiling the data and all that this is on page 62 our technology we're pretty much spot on with that you know we're building on the monitoring equipment if you notice in FY22 we receive a grant to replace all our cameras and monitoring equipment keeping this fun we'll just go forward creating a cycle again if you have time if you're busy days stop in the PD, look at the monitors we have we're watching our building monitoring the fire department monitoring town hall it's clear as day it's really a safety thing for us that we can watch the valuable assets we have in this community and that is being transferred where Essex is going to be able to monitor us from their department no additional technology was needed because of the dispatch transfer or anything the costs really weren't anything significant there was some fiber connection which we built in the annual it's $308 a month for that that's in the regular budget just the startup we'll be fine for this current budget anything fine in it like we mentioned last week is that meeting set for June so it'll be our six months we can see where the challenges are see how everybody is working and what changes do we have to make as we go forward so right now everything seems pretty good everybody is on the same page so that's positive on page 63 again this will be a re-incuring course over the next few years to re-establish the account just new firearms this year new holsters we were able to regroup a lot of the money from the sale of our used weapons so everybody likes the weapons we have now nobody had anything negative to say about and they did very well in the qualifying so that's a positive so this is the next one on page 64 I'm just talking about it I'm just listening to everybody else talk about it so I defer to our manager I can update the board on this the radio communications tower project we've talked about a little bit over the past year the board approved the lease agreement for the property a couple meetings ago so I've been working on this with a town attorney looking at the next lift in this is going to be the public utilities commission filing for a permit for this structure so it's likely going to take a little bit of time in the next year I'll have a larger timeline update for the board on this I'll put a little more work into it the next month or so but we're going to look at that permitting piece and then look at the funding piece a little bit more for the board once we have a pathway for the permitting plan here part of the permitting is going to be the cost to it there's going to be some legal some consulting engineering to look to prepare this application and it's going to be it'll likely be in the tens of thousands of dollars to look at the permitting side so I want to get a better handle on that I'll probably be issuing an RFP for engineering services project management to assist in this and I should have an update for the board probably later this winter so if we are going to move ahead with doing some of the work that's needed whether it be permitting there's nothing in the capital budget where will that money come from we'll have to identify those funds I don't have a good handle on that the board is right now just hold off for a little bit that's it for the police department thank you and again thank you for all your support this past year thank you looking at our operating budget under the recreation we are proposing revenue increase in the day camps the enrollment has increased after during was a little low during the pandemic but it increased afterwards so hopefully this is a trend that will continue and we also hopefully see revenue increase in the contracted camps the revenue that was taken in this year was very high though we want to match that taking a three year average and slowly increasing that over time and again the camps were very popular and we're hoping that trend keeps on going but we're also looking at the fact that some other places were not open yet compared to us last year people were still getting vaccines staying close to home so hopefully they found a lot of what we do is a good opportunity and they'll continue to do that under expenses see a significant increase in our day camp salaries and our seasonal salaries one question on revenues I couldn't help but pick up on the change in the field use that's under parks oh okay yep I got that no that's okay I got that talking down here under parks so again under day camp salaries and seasonal salaries it's getting harder and harder to higher quality people at the lower end of the pay scale so we're looking to increase that but at the same point in time the revenue that we take in the day camp salaries and the day camp fees does not go higher than the revenue that we're taking in so we look for camps to break even if not make a little bit of money sort of a thing and then advertising we're decreasing that because I'm moving the program guides out of this line item of advertising and putting them into the four program areas so that programs pay for the program guides and we did a test last year of a three fold program guide that we mailed home and that was last about this time with camps and stuff like that and we did see a little bit of increase so another way of putting information in front of people and them reacting to that and registering we're feeling that programs need to sustain themselves so it's kind of pay to play people that are paying for registration, paying for programs that money's going back into the program in many different ways and this is one of them advertising did a little bit of a decrease to the day camps at the day camp expenses because just looking again the three years average and also looking to increase the salaries a little bit contracted camp increase because we also increased the revenue so but also contracted camps we add a price on to whatever the instructor wants so contracted camps and contracted programs are always a revenue plus if we took in $100 and I'm paying an instructor $80 we're making $20 we don't have any other expense so that's a positive and then special events increased by about $2,500 and this was due to the fireworks company had a minimum amount that you needed to spend to have and they're all doing this and that is because of material and staffing shortages that go on but know that we'll be presenting to you probably later this month or so a sponsorship and advertising so I'm looking to bring in hopefully a lot of sponsorships with area businesses here in Williston to help offset that 4th of July and other things that we do and we have a whole packet of great opportunities for businesses to sponsor and advertise with us here at Recreation so that is the recreation side of the budgets revenues and expenses any questions on the park no not so far on the park side of the operating budget oh I'm sorry and maybe it's not the right place for it because it's more of a policy question but are we doing are we still engaging in trying to get the word out do we have an abatement program for kids who want to do day camps kids who want to do the rec programs but their families don't have the money to pay the expense yes we have a financial scholarship fund and we actually have the ability now through our program through our website where you register for a program every month if you go on to register if you go on today and you go on tomorrow you won't see it again you see it another month but at the very end it says would you like to make a donation to the program scholarship fund and it starts off at $5 and people can put whatever they want and it just started at the end of October and I don't know the exact dollar amount but I've seen people hitting it compared to it being on our site and having to go there so we are bringing in money with that I would say right now we're probably with the scholarship money we had before we're probably close to $2,000 just in scholarship money but then in a program looking at that we always build in on the budget it will say like camp expenses or not revenue it will say revenue and maybe $5,000 we're going to bring in but I say 7 or 8 of that is scholarship so I'm actually going to bring in about $112 so we build it into the program plus we have the opportunity for families or individuals to give to the scholarship fund and that's on our website as well that people can apply for them. Is there a big demand? There is not, no and I don't know why that is we work with the schools so if case workers or social workers or guidance counselors have a family they'll come to us that sort of thing sometimes it's about transportation it's about being able to get to a basketball practice or whatever else we'll see more scholarships in the summertime and we'll see more scholarships in the ski and ride program where they're right at right at school and then bring them back and the parents can pick them up but getting to basketball or a soccer especially if we're playing out of town we don't see as many as I like to see. Thank you. From what you heard it sounds like you feel that the need for scholarships or financial assistance is being met you bring in enough revenue to do that. Yes. Under the parks side of the budget the operating budget the revenue, the field use fees during the pandemic we our fields were still open we were taking groups in where other places were saying no so we saw the revenue shoot up but then after we've seen it kind of be out and it's stayed right up there so I'm proposing to double the revenue that we're bringing in and on that I'll jump kind of to the end but we've always had park maintenance and upgrade of about 30,000 and that's gone into everything it has to do with the parks and what I'm proposing is the park maintenance and upgrades stays with the parks so that anything that has to do with park restroom, skate park ice rink that type of thing anything that has to do with the park is fun, is taken care of by this park maintenance and that line item we decreased it from 30,000 down to 20,000 but then what I'm proposing is a new line item called athletic field maintenance and I propose that we'll be bringing in $18,000 and spending $17,000 I'd like to have a little bit of a buffer there but the athletic field maintenance is 18,000 is coming from groups and organizations that rent our fields so we're taking that money that they give us and putting it back into the fields that they're playing on so soccer field, baseball field we have MOUs with Wilson Little League and the Wilson Soccer Club that $10 per child on their it's like soccer club will go spring and fall so $10 of the registered child comes to us as a field use fee and it would go back into the fields that they're using so again it's that pay to play we are taking the money that we are collecting from those that are using our fields overusing our fields some would say but they're there for an organized purpose and we're taking that money and we're putting it right back into the fields and the field maintenance field maintenance I figured out to be about $15 to $16,000 a year and that's you know painting them lining them that's mowing them it's buying grass seed and fertilization and stuff like that so that is definitely two things that are key on that is decreasing the part maintenance but then adding the new line item and the new line item again would be $17,000 the other two things is the maintenance salaries again it's you know we had a 30 hour a week for about 32 or 34 and looking to up that to 40 hours a week just giving people more of an option and again it's getting harder and harder to find people that want to work part time let alone seasonal so this way we can say hey it's a full time position but it's a 40 hour position but a seasonal position so it's not full time but it's a little bit more and then the other one is the park equipment and that's due to looking for about $1,000 that's due to purchasing electric equipment and we purchased an electric blower this year have on order an electric hand mower to help out with some of the bigger trimming areas and electric equipment is expensive so to be able and we're looking we had a manual blower a gas powered blower that died so we looked to replace that blower with electric one so that's what we'll do with equipment as it gets older and we can't fix it anymore just electric equipment sort of thing so that kind of wraps up the operating budget for recreation of parks did I answer your question Jeff about the revenue yes I see what's going on now what's the capital next 7 years 6 years 49 parks improvement parks improvement so the parks I'll speak of parks improvement and parks replacement you've always given the same amount each year where we have collected that and spend a portion of that what we have done this year is parks improvements which would be new things in parks was normally around 20,000 we dropped that to 15,000 and the parks replacement is replacing stuff that we currently have we upped that one from 15 to 20,000 so we kind of just swapped it's not an increase or whatever we're looking at those amounts because what we're finding is we're at a point we can always add new improvements but we're getting to that point where we got to take care of the things that we've been putting in the parks so we can need some more money on the side of replacements going back to parks improvements next year we're looking to surface the, it's currently the rink area we put up hoops there we put this up for a basketball court with lines and we would look to put in a top playground amenity so over the top playground area at the village community park we've, I've moved some of the play structures around and hoops to put in kind of like a merry-go-round that's inclusive and ADA accessible and allow handicap which we don't really have those items in that top playground right now the playground itself does have a transfer that children can use, handicap can use in such but this playground would, or this merry-go-round type of merry-go-round type of structure would add that to that so that's what we're looking to do for improvements so doing the courts would help keep the court surface from cracking and stuffs and we've seen a lot of use since we've put in basketball hoops over there and if anybody is aware and wants to know the ice rink went in Friday so it's almost ready couple more cold days and we'll have some good ice over there under parks replacement going back to the toddler playground over at the college community park that the fence needs replacing and I can replace the fence completely which would be probably three times the price I have here or we can use the pieces and parts of that playground of that fencing that's already around that playground and shorten the area which right now it's huge it doesn't need to be as big you got little kids short legs and they're running from one thing to the other it's a little bit closer together for them so we're thinking about moving the swing set forward and taking that back section cutting it down and using pieces and parts that are good there on other parts of the fence that needs fixing and then it just all needs to be settled back in because it's so that's one of the things that we're looking to do there the volleyball court netting behind the courts that blocks the courts from the houses in that wooded area that netting is becoming very very old and frail so we're looking to replace the bottom portion of that with a chain link fence which would actually make it easier to trim around and then we would use the current netting and continue to use it but lift it up so we have a 4 foot fence, 3 or 4 foot fence all the way across and then we'd have netting for the remaining of the height and the only other thing that we have for replacement is replacing the parking lot fence at Rossinol and that would be if you were it's the front portion of the fencing right next to the street it's very old the round posts are starting to one is rod away the other ones are rodding away and the backside near the fence near the park that fencing is fairly new before my time but it is fairly new and it's different than that front so just finishing that off and then that would be the capitals for those two and then we just put in the basketball hoops down at Rossinol as well so that whole surface hard surface in the basketball is complete down there and this fencing would pretty much complete work at Rossinol for improvements so those are the two things that we're looking at for that did you want me to talk about the Allenbrook at all yeah I can help with that too looks pretty good and then the capitals do you have any planar basics parts tractors and mowers yeah parts tractors and mowers pretty much staying the same we're we're replacing the Kubota tractor this year well actually 2023 and we increased it a little bit there we've done the life the life cycle of the tractors the zero turns were eight years a few years back and I slowly brought them down to six because we can get a better trade in value with as less the tractor we're getting a great trade in value but it's at that point where if we weren't doing a new tractor so all of these kinds of things they work very hard and it's better to trade them out while they're still new and fresh rather than putting a lot of money into them that we won't get back in trade ins we put money into them longer they go the less trade in we get so it's a loss around so that's the key things on that and the pickup truck we've changed it all and that one's not due out until 2027 what's that what's that yes so that and it's 9500 which that was increased a little bit because the zero term mowers the tractor and this new tractor we're getting is a bit up from the tractor that we currently have in size and power because we're doing more with it and needed and needed to have that happen as well any questions about just about with the tractors and the pickup truck things have you looked into doing EV for those is that an option to do electric for the so it's not on the tractors haven't looked that closely at vehicles yet because it's 2027 but also the zero term mowers this last year or so we've done a couple there was a a year or so ago there was a EV tractor not mowers and whatever else South Bronte we visited that and our VRPA which is the night recreation association has a maintenance workshop and there was some of that so yeah we have looked at that and what we're hearing right now is it's new it's fresh wait a little while and because they're always improving and whatever else and we had the CCR bring a couple toros over and that one the toro to me seemed to be very similar to what we have now and we have cabotas but I mean that you know they took a toro gas powered and they're now figuring out how to make it but it's not on the market yet they're figuring out how to make it so other ones have we're seeing oh well hey here's a EV we've made this but toro is kind of saying what we've done so well and we're trying to figure out how to make it electric so those are like the other other equipment when we're looking for trade ins or whatever else or when it comes for years for replacement engines we're looking to do that that's definitely things that we're looking for yep on the pickups truck side too and Bruce can speak more of this with his budget but we look at the skate contract to purchase a lot of those vehicles and I know state procurement last time we checked didn't start to have more of the EV availability under the state contract we anticipate that's going to change in the year to come but I think last time we looked we just had kind of a really low compact vehicle and not one of these more robust vehicles that are becoming available so I got information hard on the press I won't take Bruce's news we're going to talk about Allen Brook yeah so Allen Brook Community Park the revitalization of the master plan was completed in the springtime so I have beautiful maps on my wall I like to look at and dream about we have about $40,000 to $50,000 for engineering in this year's budget and then there's 800 you see in 2025 and that is what we have in REC impact fees to hopefully move forward and once we hire an engineering company and engineer phase one what's it going to cost or we'll better know that if this number is in the ballpark or if we need to whittle things back to this number or look for grants and other things to get that phase one done currently now there's two multi-purpose fields there phase one would give us our own entrance storm waters buffers all this and that it would turn one of those fields into a parking lot we would have the other field and then what I proposed is that we take another area which is not until phase three synthetic lighted turf all the bells and whistles but take that and just make it a grass turf so that we have the same thing we ended up we have currently now two multi-purpose fields but then with the our own access and parking closer to those fields the second phase would be the more of the community park elements of playgrounds and courts and bathrooms and such and then the final phase would be the baseball diamonds and again that synthetic lighted turf so it's kind of what the future is of looking at Allenbrook and I'm excited that we finish the study and we're hopefully jumping right into you know getting the project going rather than just having the studies sit on the shelf so I'm on page 48 and I'm trying to understand the capital budget for Allenbrook community park because it shows 800,000 in 2025 not next not the next budget but a future budget and none in this year's budget I just want to make sure I'm reading that correctly yep that's correct in FY23 we in the current capital budget we have the funding for the engineering design work so working off that scoping vision plan so that'll give us a vision for what it's going to look like and then we're not sure when that works going to be completed so we didn't put it in 24 but given this is impact fee funds there's potential to move up the timeline I'd come back to the board to amend the plan but we have and this sheet I was looking at just before the meeting we have a new capital project sheet that's further in the front of your binder and that's where we identify the impact fee funds so that's our and we're predicting additional funds coming in over the next year too so the scope will be a work in progress in the next few months the idea is we're looking for engineers right now so if that work is done say into the spring or whatever else we're looking to next fall to what can we do in that 25 budget to get started and that may be pairing back phase one or finding grants to complete phase one so that's why it sits there so the nice thing is there's nothing in next year's budget for Allenbrook well yes and I'm just trying to understand it okay and the 800 is sort of a for phase one if you will right and if the timeline was able to be moved up and could potentially start this project in 24 we'd bring it back to the board to amend the capital plan okay thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you I told Todd earlier since he was going for me not to get you guys upset or anything he just I didn't make you mad so we hide it alright so operating just a second please you know I put this together earlier I always think I have in such good shape and you can order it or anything else it's a huge budget when I'm looking for actually we'll talk about it all anyway it's my transmittal you have the page numbers Bruce it's 140 it's 140 looks like you printed out the different sections 140 looks like you made a capital budget I don't have it I know I have it pretty much I know I saw it thank you make sure I'm making the right ones here not okay thank you Shirley so in my transmittal I just pointed out where some of the increases are once again the paving line item we're asking for 10,000 I ask for that every year to try to keep that number up that then this was the highest year ever for paving cost which isn't unexpected I guess given what's going on a lot of this then is talking about our gravel roads and the work we've been doing on those a lot of that work's been happening with grants because of the stormwater permitting and stuff so even though we're doing a lot of work there we're getting a lot of money back actually to help all set some of that but the big one in here is this year's budget asking for a stipend for on-call people we've never had that we've been very fortunate in the town of Williston well we're very fortunate anyway to have the great employees that we have in public works but what it's been it's either been the highway foreman and it's going to end up even though we're not talking about water and sewer now it's going to be the same kind of thing for them is they take the call 24-7 without any compensation for having that phone with them so this would put a rotation in line with two people on call in a winter time that could come in here a little bit faster because they know their own call they have to be available right now the guys go home at 3.30 even though we say and they all know winter time they could be called at any time there's nothing to say they can't go home and have a few beers or something and not be we get hold of them or they should be responsible enough to say I went out to dinner they have to do that this would give us two people on call that could not make that kind of they know for that time during that week they have to be available we're one of the few communities that don't do that so this would just be to make people available for emergencies and we know we can get hold of them has it happened in Williston once or twice since I've been here that we just haven't been able to get hold of people when I say that that means certainly they can get hold of me and there may have been once somebody else I was able to track down or something doesn't happen very often but this would eliminate that and once again awards for lack of a better term people for being on call and taking that responsibility it would be two in the winter time and one in the summertime right now even though we're not talking about water and sewer budget water and sewer does have an on call on the weekends but Aaron the foreman or supervisor as his title is now answers that call all week long without any other kind of compensation so it's just trying to make it fair and reasonable for lack of a better term Bruce before you move off that subject I totally get it in the winter time when the highway department knows they're going to you know they're going to have to man the plows storms coming they're going to have to man the plows are they on is that considered on call no there's nothing in once again they all know that they're one of the biggest parts of their job is to be available in the winter time for snow plowing but there's nothing to say when they leave here at 3.30 we're not paying them we're not it's just because they're good employees and understand that's part of their responsibility and of course they make good money when they come in to be plowing but there's nothing if we can't get a hold of them we have no recourse to say what's going on okay and once again we would still be able to get hold of most of the crew in the winter time but this is a freak storm comes through they're not expecting it or whatever we're all human beings we all deserve to have a little time off so that's all this does I guess maybe asking the question a little bit differently now that this concept is out there is too enough in the winter time well we only have we only have eight so yeah I mean two even if we so first of all I don't think in a winter time we would ever run into a situation where I just said we really couldn't find a couple people because once again they're all responsible they realize what's going on but this would be two people that right away we need to get somebody in here to go salt some bad roads faster they know they might get that call they're ready to come in, they get in here and they get that work going or they can start salting even before the rest of the crew gets here to help get some things done so if you do it on that kind of rotation we're supposed to have eight people right now we have seven so it's only like a month maybe or something they know they have to be and once again get compensated for that trouble okay I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you wanted to put them all on college I mean pay them all for that but that's not reasonable and that's not what anybody else does okay good thanks agency of transportation has had this place for ages on call staff I started to do it I had it in South Burlington before I came here so that's why I say we've been very fortunate in that we've had people that are just those supervisors and you know I'm always on call 24-7 whatever that just comes with the job I get that but that doesn't mean I don't have a few glasses of wine or a couple beers on the night either or something but this once again just makes it so we know we can get hold of people in a real emergency a bad accident and the police need barricades or something these guys get in here and get that stuff together and you know a little bit faster than making phone calls hey can you come in hey can you come in whatever another thing Bruce and I talked about part of the budget proposal was we want to try and maintain being competitive with our other towns especially with a vacant position we've had we've advertised you know we're like Bruce said we're great we have great employees we're fortunate to have but we've lost one or two with other positions available we're not getting a lot of applicants at times to fill open positions and try to make sure we can stay competitive with everyone who is trying to use a small labor pool to fill vital positions in their communities that's what's going on in our industry right now is these guys can go anywhere they want to go they really can there's so many people looking for other people and our highway supervisor that we just hired came from another town and certainly I would never go to a person in another town and say hey you want a job but if they come to us we're certainly going to talk to them but it doesn't help any of us just keep eating people so anyway so the whole budget increase for highway is around 3.8% which I think is actually pretty good giving what's going on trying to keep in mind that we have to have increases but still trying to be realistic as to where the money comes from so so public works there aren't any line items that have huge increases there's my transmitters so I'm sorry I had it so page 142 yes it's the first page of the operating budget really for the highway and just keeping in the way I've always done things in the past just pointing out where there's really major changes some of the bigger changes are in administration and payroll if you go down though and look at equipment rental if you wanted to look at the actual box it's on page 149 but you'll see that we have no money in there for fiscal year 24 and that's because even though we call it equipment rental what it was is is when we used to act as a property management company for lack of a better term and do a pass through where we would hire a contractor to go do plowing of private roads we are no longer doing that and quite honestly I'm looking at we still have a private contractor that does about three miles of roads for us and I'm hoping this is the last one where we have that happening I'd like to try to take all that back in house next year but that does come with being at full staff as well what Eric said earlier is definitely true we've got one position open we've got one application for it and that person was up in the northeast kingdom or somewhere we've even relaxed the distance highway and public works are supposed to be within 25 miles and we've had to relax that but you still have to have some distance it can't be 50 or 60 miles it's got to be within reason still so that's a place actually where we're saving some money out of that budget sand we have up a little bit that's on page 150 but it's going from 14.4 to 16.2 so it's not a huge increase re-treatment 500,000 to 510,000 as I said earlier this was the most expensive year I think in my career that we've paid for paving it was $88 a time last year it was in the 70s I'm using 90 for next year's numbers for estimates but we're really hoping things are going to settle down and that will come down some that was definitely driven by the inflation the cost of liquid asphalt is actually what drives that cost our bid was actually 81.10 a ton but then when they give us that number it's based on whatever the liquid asphalt cost is then and then there's a clause that says if it goes above a certain percentage they can get some money for that and this year it took our cost $88 a ton we were still a hopefully still able to get everything done we didn't get two of the roads done that were supposed to be done Maple Tree Place Road was supposed to be done and Chelsea Common in the springtime we'll look at the prices because we obviously still have that money and hopefully we can get both of them done if we can't we're going to get Chelsea Common done for sure and if we have a little money left over we might go look at another little road here or there to do if we can't get Maple Tree Place done which means that'll get shifted and one of the reasons even though Eric's been very nice and not asked me for it that's why you don't have a five-year painting plan right now either because I'm still in the process of trying to put that together and see what that's going to look like but I will produce some for you Highway Line Striping is down in this budget and that's because in Capitol you'll see we're asking for some equipment we're going to go into the painting business as much as I didn't want to but we just don't have any choice there were only two painting companies that did highway or road work kind of painting in the state of Vermont one of them decided he's done he's done planning traffic is exactly what he said I don't blame him the other one didn't even bid on our line striping for this year the company that I finally did get in here at least get some lines done was out of Massachusetts so we've reduced this because we're still going to have to bid out our long lines center lines or white edge lines will have to be done if we can get the equipment we'll be able to do turn bars, stop bars I mean turn arrow stop bars lane lines those kind of things ourselves crosswalks and we've gotten a lot of flak because crosswalks aren't done and deservedly so to some extent except that we're a victim of the economy like everybody else I just couldn't get anybody to do it pedestrian path paving I brought that down $5,000 one of the reasons is we've actually done quite a bit of paving but it still allows us to do some more as they start to need it and that's that's it for any real major changes in the highway budget questions for Bruce, are you planning to do a plan one thing are you planning to do a 5 year plan for paving again every year so it's kind of handy to have no I will that's one of the things I'm working on yet Terry because of I'm just waiting trying to get a feel for what we're going to be able to get done because that's going to if I have to move Maple Tree Place to next year that's going to take you know $100,000 out of that budget was supposed to come out of this one so and once again and you all know it the paving plan that that 5 year plan is fluid anyway depends on what we get for numbers grants those kind of things I mean one of the things Eric and I got some calls about this year was Mountain Dew Road and you know wasn't supposed to get done well we got a grant so we moved it and got done the section we got done yeah thank you so capital I'll just start with building the buildings part of it the fire so it was page 29 fire protection the Old Brick Church money in there to do some design work to hopefully go to I believe we're talking about going to Bond yeah most likely looking two years down the road in 25 so that's what that one is about Old Brick Church chimney the chimney at the very top of the church is in very bad shape and needs to be repointed probably be rebuilt so that's what that one's about as always all we talk about the ones that are actually in this budget here questions about the other ones that are in here still that's fine 33 doesn't have any money in 24 I asked for it but Eric didn't put it in there so next is sidewalks road sidewalks bridges obviously we all know the one of the big things that was done this last year it finished and it's quite nice it's the muddy brook bridge project culvert project if you want to see some really neat graffiti you go down and look over the sides 39 it's the nav for road sidewalks bridges sorry about that this one just tells you what we have for the most part what's been done we are working on removing ash trees started in Brennan Woods today Chamberlain Lane I think it's going to be 20 some of those are going to take out right now Brennan Woods actually has quite a few ash trees throughout that whole neighborhood but we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves especially in neighborhoods it really wasn't so bad on marshal or harvest or even maple tree place but once you start getting into neighborhoods and the cause I got today was you're taking my tree so why don't you explain to them no, not really and tell them the whole situation and everybody was fine when I save you I got three phone calls today the HOA did help get the word out so where it was requested to help get the word out about taking those trees so that's where we're at with that program at this point in the grant that hopefully we will get we've been pretty successful at that if we do we'll be planting 42 trees in the springtime so that'll take care of maple tree place and these ones were taken out of Chamberlain if we're successful so then page 41 minor transportation improvements that's just the pot of money we have for things that we're planning on so much you can see the list there of what that money has been used for over the years and now the big one I'm on page 76 which is large in all the big capital now for highway 77 is large highway truck rotational a big dump, a big plow plow trucks they're growing up just like everything else so that's what this number is for just to keep us on our rotation we ordered the truck for this fiscal year that we're in back in March as soon as the budget was over and the best they would do was say if you order a truck now from us we will tell you that it'll go into the cycle in the beginning of January and be built in that quarter but they didn't tell if it was going to be in the beginning of the quarter or the end of the quarter usually we would order a truck like that after budget approval in March and we would see it in October so that's what's happening with that kind of stuff right now so that's what that capital is for 78 is large highway equipment just what it says for our bigger our bigger equipment sidewalk clouds you'll see in there I've removed two items one is the brush hog and the other is the John Deere tractor the John Deere tractor is the big green tractor that you see doing road sides it's the only thing we use that thing for we also have another piece of equipment our sidewalk machine our trackless machine that can do road side mowing so I couldn't see any reason why we would go buy another tractor when we have another piece of equipment that we can do the same thing with so that helps those numbers out a little bit and the trackless the sidewalk machine for the most part was only used for sidewalk plowing we are using it now to grind tree stomps but it is a piece of equipment to run year round and do that kind of stuff once again though we only have one of those so if something happens to that machine sidewalks won't be getting done and we aren't I'll be totally honest we are nursing it right now we're hoping to get it through the winter we had a problem with it we sent it to New Hampshire we trucked it to New Hampshire ourselves they brought it back seemed to be okay and now it seems to be having a problem again it's a $14,000 fix to replace the transmission and I don't know when we need to get it done and get it back here so we're going to keep using it and hopefully we don't have to use the snow blower on it too much this winter you get tired do you get tired do you get tired do you get tired you're right you mean Bruce will retire anyway so highway pickup replacement and this goes into a little bit of the EV discussion and I meant it when I said I had something hot off the press we went today to pick up a new pickup for a water and sewer and when we were looking at buying our stormwater vehicle which was in the budget for this year I did go to the state state contract looking for EVs they did have some on there but they were the the real little cars you know I can't remember the names but they weren't any kind of all-wheel drive vehicle which is something we would need to get it done and then we got it done and then we got it done and then we got the drive vehicle which is something we would need to have so I did find one finally on there and got hold of the gentleman that deals with all the state contracts and said find me this kind of vehicle or the equivalent he tried he put an order in he came back and said we can't fill it so we couldn't buy one if we wanted to next year so picking up the pickup today I asked him if he would be able to get electric pickups oh next year I just came from a meeting last week next year $80,000 I said that's the state contract yep they're not going to give you any breaks so we can pay $27,000 or we can be $80,000 so I'm just putting that out there that we're trying to stay on top of it we're keeping as close to tab as we can and I don't doubt the EVs are probably going to cost a little bit more when it comes to pickups and stuff but that's a big difference over so many years time so that's where we're at with that right now so the highway pickup replacement is just that it's just to keep our fleet of our pickups that our supervisors use buildings and grounds facility mower I was interested to listen to Todd because this was one of the places I was really going to look hard for a excuse me electric and I still will but I haven't found anything that looks real great yet but I think if anywhere that's going to be the first place we find stuff so we'll keep working on that that way so that was on page 80 so we've been through 79 and 80 and 80 80 one is signal replacements that's just to keep making changes to our traffic signals that we have down Marshall Avenue there's four intersections that we own five intersections that we own down through there page 84 is the next one with any kind of money in it that's the variable message boards we own a few of those but we would like to update them the good news is ours are old enough that somebody can't drive down the road and program something into them so we shouldn't see any special messages on ours unless it's one of our own people that did it to us but anyway we do that that is what that is about to upgrade those update them and then 87 is the line and pay a bit more at the machine I alluded to a little bit earlier saying that we're going to go into the painting business or we would like to and actually kind of need to our highway supervisor that we just hired is actually the grandson of the gentleman that started Scott's line striping who was the world's thin business and the other one of the two line painters in the state of Vermont so he at least knows how to do that nothing else so anyway that's what that's for so we can we can start doing like I said our own crosswalks stop bars turn arrows those kind of things and you know we'll have to have out to bid our long lines keeping in mind that the state does all the centerline marking on class two town highways they don't do white edge lines but they do the center lines so we still have plenty of centerline road to do south road it's maple tree place is not a class two so we will have those kind of roads that we still have to be responsible for Terry if I could just add proposal from public works and parks division looking at additional items for the budget is looking at staffing in buildings and grounds division and parks division in the coming years Bruce and Todd made a request I wasn't able to include it in your budget just looking at the bottom lines but certainly to be aware of in the next budget cycle too is needing to have additional staffing in our buildings and grounds division we have some part time staff right now we know there's going to be some transitioning moving forward but there's certainly going to be a work demand that we're already facing year round in those divisions so it's something we're going to keep looking at a staff level and other items how we clean our facilities we have some contracts there as well and see what that may be able to bring to the board in the future but it's certainly a need that we're seeing and just with challenges this year I didn't leave any new positions proposed in the budget just some hour increases for existing positions but just make the board aware of that that was something I was I didn't fund in my proposal and I'm sure it comes later right now April okay still going to be here Jeff what's that we'll see thank you all sure before we'd like to probably shouldn't take too much time hopefully do you want to start with manager or finance Terry would you like to start with manager's budget or finance budget sure so this also includes your select board budget so there's not a lot of items in that piece of it it does include some of your contracts that I believe for the audit service let's get my page the major items in the manager's budget falling under some of our general categories first I'd like to speak about IT it's certainly a largest increase in this budget operationally the last couple of years certainly had to do a lot of flexing on the IT front figuring out with the pandemic and then post-pandemic and then also being aware of cybersecurity and protecting our network and our files for our staff and our town documents so our vendors been very good throughout the pandemic they didn't increase their rates at all during the pandemic but last year they did increase like most professional services so that affects us a bit we also audited all our computer systems that we needed to have a contract for IT support we're trying to cycle out older computers and not have a contract on these older ones we do keep one or two backups we bought a laptop just as a backup admin computer someone has an issue warranty and they're going to lose their work station we have one storage upstairs here that they will use in the interim so they have a disruption in their work computer so we built in additional cybersecurity measures as well recommended some things from our vendor looking at two-factor authentication we have a tool someone is remoting into access our server we have two-factor setup for that during the pandemic but we also it's recommended additional two-factor in-house and then some tools setup for that so that's built into there those increased service costs we benefited through Vermont legacies and towns using a tool called no before this is a piece of software where it sends everybody an email every couple of weeks and these are based on phishing emails where their potential scams and they kind of scan to see what are the scams that are out there right now and it's training our staff to not click on those links a lot of them just they aren't all saying send me $500 gift card so I can get out of prison in a foreign country those type of scams but ones that are more playing into that kind of social engineering and what's going on because we've seen it some towns in Vermont other municipalities in the country where you can have ransomware where results when someone clicked on a link and it infected the whole system with that malware ransomware so we've been doing this for a couple years now it's good feedback from staff they'll even get one that they say what's going on with this email you should take a close look at it maybe it's a training email or you don't want to have a phishing email so if someone does click on the link they are brought to a refresher training for a couple minutes about what they clicked on some things to watch out for so that's proved very helpful BLCT's covered that through our passive funds that's something one of the things we're doing but trying to stay on top of this it's a emerging out there with the cyber security piece for our network our network is physical infrastructure is secure in our police station but it's all these blind spots we're trying to be aware of especially looking for more remote work moving forward for some staff part of our operational procedure we're looking at is kind of a robust IT security part of that ability to work from home so all these items we're looking at so that's certainly a big piece of the jump here increased legal a little bit just on actual costs the last couple of years a few thousand dollars as we spoke with the police budget as well looking for some professional service funding towards the police department assessment management study I put some of that in the manager's budget for FY24 here as well those were the major items in that cost center and then just generally along to just increases for contracts and building maintenance that we split among departments Any questions from Eric? No Okay, do you have any I think though I just have the server and I think that was there's nothing in next year's budget I think I have a sheet for our community center library project I don't think I haven't put any funding in it right now for next year because we're doing that study right now but I think as that work wraps up the board and library trustees will have some decisions to make on the pathway there So we need to do a lot of finance now So I'm not going to say a page number because mine was the first one we printed and we had some blank pages we were playing with Eric so page 63 There we go 63 in the big book I didn't remember mine So because I already have the transmittal I'm just going to hit on the highlights for you Office I'm starting with the Listers department so the real change there is in office equipment that's really just we need a computer replacement in FY24 so you know that's the big change other than wages and benefits in finance the other than cola and merit we have a part time position that is presently budgeted for 16 hours we haven't filled it I hope to do that to start that process in January and really the purpose of that is twofold Mary is the treasurer and she has no back up right now I can't back her up for internal control so I can't do receding because I can sell cash so that position was designed to become the assistant treasurer and if Mary wants to take vacation then we're looking for someone who's flexible, willing to work full time maybe one week while Mary's out or a day or whatever the transactions continue to be posted cash out at the end of the day deposit to the bank and to take over some of Mary's responsibilities in terms of the miscellaneous AR billing she does and to help with some finance tasks so if you were in the summer you might have seen that we have the last couple summers we have she's a teacher actually her name is Samara and she came in and worked for us and she helped and some chart of accounts cleanup and stuff so that position is in the budget for 60 hours right now but I need more help and so the plan is to up it to 25 hours and the FY24 budget again have put more of Mary's work in there so I can get more of Mary's time and to just sort of share the workload a little bit more let's just say that so that is probably the biggest change in the finance department budget and in computer applications that looks like it's up a lot but really it's just we hope they're probably not going to make it FY23 there's some money in the town manager's budget for a payroll software just a time reporting system so we can get rid of manual time sheets but it's just been so busy I'm not optimistic that will happen in FY23 so hopefully in FY24 that will happen and the building maintenance that is you saw that the manager's budget the clerk's budget and finance share the cost of the maintenance for this building and that's just the increases from inflationary expenses and that is really it for me not much to it and the numbers haven't changed a lot I would just echo Shirley with the load on it we have a great finance and HR team here but we're finding the central administrative load of the town is increasing with additional staffing we've added additional complexities and we're very fortunate that the dedicated staff that we have here that work a lot of extra hours every week but this is certainly a pressure point for us it's 25 hours a week right now and the budget face where we are next year but I can see needing to grow that the next couple of years as well also trying to think of the HR side of it Shirley holding a dual title of finance and HR director right now it's quite a heavy load for one department head to carry so trying to think of how we spread those HR tasks among the organization as we continue to grow Erin Dickinson in the manager's office shared position between Shirley and I and she's been great to help pick up some HR work but it's going to be continued for the board I think the next couple of budgets as we work through that central administrative capacity here and so the step we felt with this lean budget we try to deliver this year was the increased hours for this position to cascade throughout the finance and HR division to assist Shirley and her staff with some additional capacity and Lynn as well actually she is constantly working overtime so hopefully this 25 hour position will also help to do some of the AP work with Lynn so we have a full job so one question sorry one question is going through the capital budget some items are funded through the fund balance some are through ARPA could you just hopefully briefly talk about your strategy for what got ARPA associated with the funding and what got fund balance I can speak to that I don't have numbers and mainly I tried to look at things with ARPA that were more one time you know you'll see in public works there were some equipment items like you know the building replacements like the chimney like the design for the fire suppression trying to fully fund traffic signal replacement the message board replacement some of those items we can likely defer the board doesn't want to move forward with them all with ARPA some are like the police station walking project that we had intended to not have a double the second year we funded with ARPA the first year if we were to get some grants for that that would be great but I don't know if the funds would be available but things like that for building security kind of these one time items also trying to balance the use of the fund balance to try to wean it down a little bit I think for years using that balancing piece for tax reduction we were a little bit higher last year we've gotten it down closer to that $500,000 mark but as we try to predict where that's moving the next couple of years I thought for the board to try to wean off that balancing mechanism so then that could be funded in other ways because we start using that even a couple of years it's really going to affect your fund balance proportion that you want to have on hold I think if the town can move more towards using fund balance primarily towards capital into the capital reserve fund it just builds up the capital reserves more than trying to have a balancing mechanism for taxes so it's my thought there is trying to do some incremental movement certainly ARPA having those dollars there to move some of these capital items along certainly the most pressing ones is a replacement from using fund balance or just operating dollars which is at this point likely more taxes trying to find that blend in menu that the board wants to look at and if you wanted to first some projects we can certainly look at it as well so Jeff to add to that something I noticed as I was sitting here tonight I think if you look at your page 10 and the capital budget section my number should be right for that Eric and I have a little refinement to do but that is the equipment capital and equipment projects budget summary and it shows you operating impact fees fund balance ARPA and other so if you look at that ARPA column it has 176,000 being funded by ARPA we might be on page what 10 other budget let me catch up okay good so that 176 that's in that column for ARPA funding now I'm going to take you back to your operating binder if you go to your revenue summary Eric you actually I think this page might be right page 40 so if you look at under the category interest and other revenue you look down and it says ARPA funding and we have 217,500 there 92,000 of that is for some one time operating cost the other 125,000 was ARPA funding so you can see those numbers don't tie Eric you see what I'm saying so we just need to go back and make those tie so out of the 217 125,000 is just general ARPA funding but it doesn't tie to the capital expenditure that says 176 is coming from ARPA so we need to just that's just another transfer in line then yes so we just need to make those two coincide so just to make sure is it appropriate to say that the amount of ARPA dollars that are being used in the fiscal year 24 budget includes operating and capital and I should combine the two to get the total amount so 170 and 217 was that around 400,000? well is that the number we want we really only have 217,500 in ARPA funds no matter what we're saying that we're going to use it for we only in this budget have 217,500 but I think we just so admitted that transfer in for the capital from the operating I see what you're saying and if we do that if we put more ARPA money in it just means we'll lower the property tax I mean that's the other piece so we just like as I said I think Eric we need to sit down and look at that and when we give you budget changes we'll have that in there that's okay I'm trying to figure this out so the 217 is the total amount we're going to spend 500 is we're going to use ARPA funds for and we know 176 is for the capital budget so was it 217,500 minus 176 is what's being used for the operating budget not quite so the number in the operating budget right here the 217 would just be in the operating budget not counting capital okay so I do need that the two so this makes the operating budget balance and then this this looks at as an independent source that doesn't have a transfer from the operating so they're two mutually exclusive numbers would it be possible to get one of the things I want to evaluate as we're looking at this whether to spend ARPA dollars or how much ARPA dollars is where does this put us in terms of our remaining ARPA dollars that would just be helpful for me would that be hard to do surely oh no not at all I um I don't think I got it in there I don't think I got it in there but I think I did have it on my computer and you know my concern is that someday we're just going to look at ARPA and go oh my god where did it all go it's just ding ding ding it's not that it didn't go somewhere good I didn't mean it like that but we just didn't realize that the fund was depleted so much so um and Eric we can send this to the slide board but this is just a schedule that I put together of the ARPA funding that's been approved I'm sorry so this is a schedule that says okay here is the projects that have been funded using ARPA funding so like the nine new firefighter radios and turnout gear and this is what we've spent against it here's the here's the FY23 funding here's some additional funding for like the community center scoping study and then what we spent against it so I have a rolling balance right now and then I put in here only 217,005 right now Eric but with that number in mind we are looking at like 2.3 million unallocated I think this will change but in ARPA funding okay and then if we take the 176 out so we're down to around 2.1 million so we basically spent about a million not spent allocated about a million of our 3.1 right alright good thank you and if that's easy to send that'd be great yeah we'll send that around here I'll say we're fortunate that we have that money it's certainly a big task on how to allocate it but I think the last couple of years where we'd be if we didn't have that funding to and is there an end date that we need to allocate or spend that money buying so I was just going to ask allocate by the end of calendar year 24 spend by the end of calendar year 26 okay and that includes the revenue replacement because all of ours have revenue replacement if I remember right because they offered that for us to take as the size of our award under 10 million which open it up for flexibility so part of this will be if it's looking at a larger scale capital project being sure it can be done by the end of 2026 the reason I'm bringing this up is because some of the programs I work with for the state of Vermont are funded with ARPA and supposedly if I heard what they said correctly the state revenue what is it revenue replacement dollars does not have those have to spend it by dates associated with it which gives the state a lot more flexibility in how it wants to use those dollars and that's why I was asking whether we had that and it could be there's just a difference with what goes to the state versus what goes to the municipality right good thank you that was helpful to me at least you're welcome I do not rest of this next week the budget goes as well as a other business that we had to take care of but before we do that we have other business to take care of that take up I'm not sure I did Terry was it a weird time on the phone earlier you're doing something oh no nothing tonight nothing no other business for me tonight so any other business to take up tonight then we are take this week