 Let's call the meeting to order. It looks like it's just us. Oh, I see Teagan's there. So yeah, hi, Teagan. So I really don't need to introduce Donnie then, except to say, hey, we're so glad to have you with us, Donnie. Hello, thank you. Yeah. So we all met you. Yep. So let's move on. We've got minutes. Oh, wait a minute. Have you called yourself to order? Yes. Sorry, I'm supposed to be taking minutes. Oh, you are? Yes, Rose, it won't be here for half an hour. So what did you do? Oh, sorry. I just said that there's nobody here who doesn't know Donnie. So I just said, welcome. Thank you. Can I just interrupt and say that is hot apple crisp. So you guys should help yourselves. Is there ice cream? Pretty. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Has everybody had a chance to look at the minutes? Yeah. Any changes? No. I'll move to accept the minutes. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. OK. Thank you. Actually, I'm going to put you guys upstain. Yes. Your attendance at meeting. Is that OK? Works for me. OK, so 4 to 0, 1 to 1. Thank you. Next up is board orders. Carries didn't bring the packet. So we thought, oh, wow, that was fast, Carrey. Carrey now has the packet. That was very good. But you've all gotten the basic list of what needs to be, what has happened. Does anybody want to look at the packet? Do you want to talk about anything in this? Because I'm thinking, although we haven't done this in the past, we're supposed to do this in a public meeting. We should probably move signature. We should probably all agree to sign and then sign. Would you like me to put this off? Do you want to spend some more time looking at the packet? I'd like to look through it, but it's the same. I never make any changes to it. It's more for my edification. OK. So let's just move it to the later in the agenda and then we can make the motion. We'll do it if there are any other. OK. I'm going to put it down at the bottom of my pile here. Thank you. Did you catch all that, Barbara? Were you trying my select board orders? Select board orders. In order to give people time to look at them, we're going to move that to later in the agenda. Are you going to sign them as we pass them around? Yeah, technically we're all supposed to vote, but sure. Go ahead. Because I have. Pass them around, and I'll sign them, too. All right. You remember we had not warned. You remember at the last meeting, we agreed to accept the money that's sent from Mount Regional Planning Commission is going to give us for the Kent Hill scoping project. I have gone ahead and signed it, but I will need a vote to officially ratify the meeting. I mean, sorry, this authorization to sign it. Will somebody please move that? So moved. Barbara, you got that. You understand what's going on. Do we have a second? Second. OK. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. We need a vice chair. We don't have Gabrielle. Would somebody like to nominate? I'm going to open the floor to nominations for vice chair. I would nominate Jordan to be vice chair. If you were so willing and serving in the position. Oh, thanks, Jamie. And I'd be willing to accept that nomination. Oh, thanks, Jordan. No problem. Do we need to second those? I'm not sure. Is there a second? Oh, second. Oh, thank you. Does anybody want? I assume there are no further nominations given that. Yes. OK. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you. And Jordan is our new vice chair. Congratulations. And Wadele Rachel here shall be second. Yeah, she'll have three minutes. We'll see how that plays out. All right. I assume nobody has any comments. Is there anybody from the public there? Peter Harvey, I see, is there. Is there anybody from the public who would like to speak on an issue that we're not going to be dealing with later on? Well, people on Zoom aren't participating, are they? So we'll pass over that one. And now we have Rick. I'm sorry. What's Rick's last name? Reagan. We have Rick Brigham Young? I know, as in Brigham Young. Oh, like Brigham Young. OK. Welcome to Rick from Sullivan and Powers, who is going to present the town audit that they carried out last summer. So Rick, are you going to talk us through it a little bit? Sure. Do you have the copies of the reports in front of you? Perfect. So what I'd like to do is just kind of spend a few minutes kind of running through what the audit report looks like and the different sections kind of explain it, kind of go over. I took some time this afternoon and went through it. And I'm going to highlight a few items that I thought as I was kind of reading through it a fresh perspective time that I thought would be interesting to the board and going through the stuff. Obviously, there's a lot here. It's almost 50 page report. My charge as your auditor is really pages one through three or one through four. That is what we call the auditor's opinion. So all the things that go into the financial statements throughout the year, paying bills, paying payroll, taking in taxes, receipts, all that stuff builds into the books. My job is to come in at the end of the year and do some testing, test transactions, account balances, confirm balances with banks, review invoices. That's all part of the audit process. But my ultimate goal is this opinion here. So this opinion basically has three choices. You can have a adverse opinion, which means your financial statements are not fairly stated, or you can have a qualified opinion, which means you're fairly stated except for, or you can have an unmodified or unqualified opinion. For almost all your funds, as you see in the middle of page one there, almost all your funds have an unmodified, which is the best you can have as far as an audit opinion goes. There is one qualification that you had for a few years related to the cemetery fund that relates to the investments being carried at market value rather than cost. I know my business partner Fred has talked with the board about that over the last few years when he was here doing these audit reviews and talked about what the qualification was for and why. Like we said, basically back down to the standard, say, market investments under the modified cash basis have to be carried at cost. And I don't think that those numbers were readily available. So they're carried at market value, which quite honestly is a more usable number. But so that's the only real qualification to the report. Other than that, everything else was unqualified, which is, like I said, the best you can get. And I always like to congratulate organizations that achieve those results of unqualified opinion. I do a lot of these board meetings. I've done some adverse opinions and many much more qualified opinions. So again, a lot of work goes into this from Sandra, from the board, from all the staff there. And I just wanted to congratulate them on again, a mostly unqualified opinion. If we're looking at pages five and six, that's what we call, we basically have two kinds of financials in the audit report. There's what we call the government-wide financials and then there's the fund financials. The government-wide financials, which is are on pages five and six are basically a balance sheet and income statement of what happened for the whole organization. All the funds combined together, rolled up into these columns and shown on this. Like I said, if you're looking at page five, it's a balance sheet. So under the modified cash basis of accounting, this is what your balance sheet looked like with all the funds being combined in there. And then if you look at page six, this is what your income statement would look like with all the funds, you know, as far as being combined into the government-wide. If you look at page seven, that's more what people are focusing on when they're looking at their audit reports for governmental accounting. These are what we call the fund financials. You'll see here, these are, there's five major funds based on calculations that go in, total assets, revenues, expenditures, the standards spit out, kind of what are your major funds? These are your major funds for the town of Calis. Kind of going down, looking at page seven. Like I said, this is a snapshot in time of what the General Fund, Highway Fund, Cemetery, and ARPA funds look like at June 30, 2023. Little things to point out here. In the General Fund, you can see your fund balance is sitting at 412-946 at the end of the year. The Highway Fund is back down to a zero because I believe most of that got transferred out. Any sort of surplus got transferred into the Highway Equipment Fund at year end. And then the Cemetery Fund is sitting with 234,522. ARPA's sitting with 245,200. Going to page eight, this is the same funds, basically looking at an income statement of what happened, revenues, expenses in these funds during the year. Like I said, you went from a fund balance in the General Fund of 532 down to 412. So there was a net reduction in the fund balance of about 1,19660 in the General Fund. And the Highway Fund had a small deficit in the previous year, which was more than made up for this year in the excess reserve was transferred into the Highway Equipment, leaving it with a zero fund balance. Looks like you spent, you got in some more ARPA money. Looks like you'd spent a lot of your ARPA money. And so you're sitting with that about 245,200 at the end of the year. Kind of skipping over to page 11 through 28, or actually, yeah, 11 through 28. These are what we call the notes to the financial statements. If you're looking for terms of what your debt, interest rates are, loan balances, what your uncladeralized cash is, what your collateralized cash, what your restricted fund balance, there's a deep dive level of information into these notes. It would take too much time to kind of go through them all tonight, but just know if you're looking for specific information related to the balance sheet or to fund balances, these notes are a great place to go to get more detailed information on that. One thing I did want to point out in the notes as I was going through it, I'm sure everybody's well aware of this, but I did notice that when I'm looking at pages 27 through 28, which have all the debt instruments that the town had, starting with the beginning balance, right through showing the ending balances of the debt at the end of the year, looks like you paid off a lot of debt during the year, which I thought was very good and important to note to people that the debt went down from 212, 945 at the beginning of the year down to 118,000 of total debt at the end of the year. I know there was some subsequent debt that was taken out after year-end. We always disclose that at the end of page 28 just so that the readers are aware that this is where the debt stood and here's what's happened since. And looking at the pages 29 through 33, this is probably what you're more used to seeing throughout the year from Sandra, looking at the budget versus actual of the general fund. I kind of went through it again today, looking at things that kind of stuck out to me. Obviously the big thing for me was the, like I'd mentioned at the beginning, your fund bounce went down about 119,000. A lot of that seemed to be in legal fees, which I know I dug into quite a bit when I was there as far as reviewing those costs and invoices and stuff. And so there was a, you were about 102,000 spent over budget on that. Looking at other things that sort of stuck out to me, the town treasurer wages were down, but the contracts with NEMRIC were up. So those kind of were offsets. And then looking at like page 32, I just noticed that there was a town hall renovation loan, which we budgeted at 40 and paid 80. I think that was a pure timing difference of when a bill, when one of the notes got paid at the beginning of the year that it got paid at the beginning of the year, then probably in June of this year, so it ends up going in there twice. And then looking at page 34 through 35, this is the same kind of format, looking at the highway fund, looking at the individual revenues expenses versus their budget. The things that stuck out to me on this were the Moscow Woods grant income in the Lightning Ridge grant income, which weren't necessarily budgeted for, came in this year on projects that I think had already been done. So those were surplus revenues that came in. And then I noticed that there was a lot more spent under the road maintenance item on road signs, like it was budgeted at 3,000 and spent about 55,000 on that. So there was an overage in that, as well as overage in the vehicle equipment or repair line at them at the bottom of 34, about a $40,000 overage on the vehicle repairs. And then if you're looking for the rest of the funds, what we call the non-major funds, there's a lot of them back here, back pages 38, 39 through 41. These are all your small funds. Again, same kind of reports back here, giving you where the fund balance is set, what are the assets and liabilities of each of the funds and where the revenues went from the beginning year to the end of the year. Nothing there struck out to me to be able to communicate to everybody there. As part of the audit report, one of the things we're required to do is report on any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies that we found in the audit. Again, congratulations on that. During our audit, we did not note any significant deficiencies or material weaknesses that needed to be reported in the audit. Couple other required communications that we need to do as part of this board contact is to let you know that we encountered no difficulties in dealing with management. We had no disagreements with management. There were no consultations with other accountants or auditors on any technical issues. And all entries that we proposed were posted so there were no unposted entries to the financial statements. That's pretty much my quick synopsis of the audit report. Like I said, I thought it went very well. Everybody was extremely helpful and the process went very smoothly. And I know you guys have been going through a lot with the floods and stuff and even getting through all that, we certainly were able to get everything done, which was great and fairly and timely too. So. All right, thank you, Rick. Now let's open it up to questions. Anybody? No questions? I have one. I'm trying to understand, you have qualified the cemetery endowment because you say we should be using historic, I just need to understand that a little better. Historic cost instead of current cost. Yeah, well, instead of current market value. Like if you look at your investment statements, those would be market value. If you guys are operating under the modified cash basis of accounting and under that standard, investments are to be carried at cost because that's what you paid for them. So if you paid $100,000 for AT&T stock and now it's worth 150, they would want you to carry it at the hundred. And I think those investments are probably so old that nobody has the historical carrying amount of those costs. So it's digging up those numbers. My partner always says, if you really want to get rid of the qualification, you could sell the investments and buy them back the next day and then cost and market are exactly the same. So, but it's really been a qualification that's been in the report for a few years. But quite honestly, like I said, that's the standard that we all have to live by because of the modified cash. But I actually think that having the investments in market is actually a better indication of where you stand, to be honest with you. That's something I'm supposed to say, but I'm saying. Yeah, you've answered my question because I don't understand what I want to know is how much money I have now. Exactly, I get that. And that's why to me, I don't rate the standards, I just have to abide by them. So if we had their historical cost and we recorded, you wouldn't have the qualification. But still, I feel looking at your reports that the market value is a better indicator and better idea of where your financial position is. Thank you. That touched on what I was going to ask, Rick, is just for our education, would you say a little bit more about the modified cash accounting basis and how it's different from say a cruel or another basis that people are more used to? Sure, so a lot of small towns, all towns have that option of going to what we call modified cash basis or modified accrual basis. In modified accrual basis, there's a lot more work that goes into that as far as booking payables, booking accrued payroll, booking prepaid expenses, booking pension deferred inflows and outflows, booking lease obligations, booking debt into your financial statement. So there's a lot of complicated factors that go into it where small towns don't have really the resources to generate all those calculations. And so a lot of smaller towns will choose to do the modified cash basis, which is still a legitimate and probably in some ways, it's how they operate all year anyway. So probably a little bit more clarity as to consistency as to what you've seen all year long. A lot of these audits that we do for the modified accrual, they adjust those liabilities at one time a year and that's it. So the board's been seeing everything cash basis all year, but then they get one accrual basis report at the end of the year. For me, it's all about there's a lot of work that goes into a modified accrual basis report, a lot of calculations that the treasurer and the finance team have to understand to be able to accept the report. I prepare the audit report, but it's really your numbers. And if you can't review it and understand it or I have to don't get the calculations or how they all work, then I really can't issue an audit report. It's really an audit opinion and that's really based on professional standards. Thank you. Thanks. Yep. Everybody happy? Wow. Thanks Rick and thanks for your kind words. We know Sandra's a magician and wonderful. It's always a pleasure working with Sandra. I bet. Shall we vote then to accept it? Is that the next step? Is there anything else we need to do? I don't think there's anything else that you can accept it and I'll get Sandra a client rep later. We'll get that back and get you final copies. Okay, then I'll take a motion to accept the audit as presented to us. So moved. It's been moved. Is it seconded? Seconded. You can pick whichever one you want Barbara. Take it for a second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Well, thanks Rick. Thank you very much. We're also, we have another contract in front of us here. I don't know whether you're presenting that. Have we all had a chance to read this? For, this would be for audit next year plus any single audits that you do during the course of the year, right? For Christmas. Yeah. Okay. Does anybody have any questions about this? It's a two year agreement, isn't it? Yes. It's two years. It covers two years. Sorry. So it's a, it's a certain amount. It's 18, 400 each year plus 6,000 for one single audit and 4,000 for each additional single audits. Right. Okay. So we, looks like we all have to sign this. So I'll take a motion to sign. One quick question. For the single audit, it says the fee for the single audit is 6,000 for one major program and 4,000 for additional major programs. Do we just have one major program anticipating? My guess, I would never know that until I see your schedule of federal awards, which is a literally a schedule of all the federal expenditures that happened during what will be the 24 year. When I get that, then I'll be able to know how many majors. But basically if you have over 750,000 in one program, which I'm going to assume is FEMA, that's going to be a major program. I assume you won't have any other programs that have over that amount that would require a single or would require to be major programs. But if let's say you've got some sort of AOT grant for a different CFDA number, that was a different million dollars. That could lead you to a second major program because we basically have to treat each major program and test it separately, according to the compliance requirements set out by the standards boards. Great, thank you. Okay, thanks. So I'll take a motion to sign this. So moved. Do I have a second? Second. Okay, all in favor? All right. All right, thank you. Thanks, Rick. Thank you very much. Have a good meeting. Thank you. Thanks. Wow, this is so unusual. We are way ahead of schedule. You shouldn't have said that. You shouldn't have said that. All the more time to do the fun stuff with the budget. Sandra, you've given us this internal financial controls checklist. Could you tell us what this is about? I think Hari has to un-view her. Oh yeah. You did it now? I'm gonna see. There you are. Internal. Yep. What's the title of it here? It's this thing here that was in your Google Docs internal control, internal financial controls checklist for municipalities. It's the bottom last document in the folder. So that document that you are looking at now is originated in the Vermont statutes and is required of all governmental entities as well as school districts to be presented to the board once a year for acceptance so that you can, so that the board can understand what internal controls are being used. It is somewhat archaic. It kind of changes tenses at times. It refers to the board and then it refers to the treasurer. It's not a very elegant document, but it is the document that the statute requires be filled out. I suspect at some point in time, a lot of towns don't get audits. And so this is a small lens over how the financial office is managing its internal controls for the board. It's not anything that we have generated or would ever generate, but the statute asks for me to present it to the board and for the board to accept it as presented and to note it. Additionally, our bond application does require that we have one of those guys current and I believe we have to upload it, but we also will be uploading the audit, the most current audit that you just accepted as well. And that's gonna have the weight. So this doesn't get filed with anyone at the state? No, it just goes in the filing cabinet. Okay. So I'll just make one note where it says, it asks if any of us went for trainings. I did go to one kind of very simple VLCT training on financial management. You've changed that check mark. I didn't know that. And you certainly can change that check mark and put your initials on it. Okay. Okay. Anybody have any questions for Sandra about this? I guess not. No. Mm-hmm. Thanks, Sandra. So we need to authorize one of us to sign this, right? Yeah. Okay. So I'll take a motion. I'll move to authorize and to sign the controls checklist as presented by Sandra, or prepared by Sandra. Second. Friendly amendment, except that I'm gonna change the one check. Right. Since one of us did attend a financial training. Barbara, is that clear? Okay. And we have a second. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Thank you. And it's signed. I'll just comment that I think the purpose of this is just to get the board to think about this at least once a year and all the different factors. And there is a line on here about financial policies. And so that prompted me to go do some homework and read up on the town's financial policies which are on the website. And there's some important information there, I would say for you. So at some point, you have a little bit of time there's a credit card policy, there's a financial and banking, banking it's there, you know, there's some important controls there. Court Sandra. I also, we, there are a few financial policies that need likely to be updated and also to be added. And I think the audit report talks about that a little bit. So there's some work to be done, but there's, you know, we're not in any trouble in that way. All right, thank you. Given that we're half an hour ahead of schedule, would you like to jump right into budget, Mark? This is a question for the board or do you want to skip over and take care of some of these other little things, get them out of the way? Anybody have a strong opinion or even a weak opinion? I only, I guess, unless we're expecting anybody to show up for those, but if we're not, then I'm... Right, I was just thinking it might, it might be worth skipping over just in case there are people planning to join at seven for the budget, but... Yeah, okay. I know Jared is not gonna show up, so we can certainly take care of that one, if that's all right. So next up is commission appointments. Jared has applied for two positions to the Historic Preservation Commission, and I got an over-the-top enthusiastic endorsement from David Sheets saying, please, yes, please, we need him. So let's start with that one. Would somebody like to, would you want to talk about it? Would you like to move, appointing Jared? And if I could just say that Jared and his family are new to Calis, and they came, they attended our first weekend of Fall Foliage Festival when we had a meet and greet with the select board, and you might remember the family that sat around the table right here where I'm sitting, that's who Jared is. Yeah, we know he had a chance to be here. We've all met him. Oh, that's right, you're here. That's right, I'm sorry. He applied to be on the select board, yeah, except you would not have met him, Donnie, so... Nope, he just said good luck on the way out. Yeah. And we beat him up pretty hard. I felt the pain. As you can see, we're giving him a lot more time. Would somebody like to move Jared for a Historic Preservation Commission then? I would move that we appoint Jared Weiss to join the Historic Preservation. You have a second. Second. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Okay, now the planning commission is a little bit more complicated at the moment they just have five seats and they don't have an open position. However, we can just create one more position on this planning commission and appoint Jared to it or we can just let him go to meetings until March and then appoint him to a vacant seat of which there will be at least one because the chair has announced her intention to resign. I'm inclined to go ahead and create the seat. We can always take it away later. Have you had conversations with anyone on the? Yes. The planning commission. Are you in favor of creating another position? They don't care, which way we do it. Okay. They're fine. Obviously they'd love to have more people. Right. When I was on the planning commission, Scott, we had seven, didn't we? When we were on the planning commission together. They were all, we were all busy. And we were all busy. Yeah. Creating a new position may be good then and maybe it stays. And sometimes if there's a vacancy on a commission you get interest from people who otherwise wouldn't think to express interest if it's fall. Agreed. Agreed. So we could bring it up to seven then for now because that'll bring the quorum to four whether you do six or seven. Yeah. And I think that another thing to note having had a couple of conversations with the planning commission, updating the town plan is the next big priority for them. And I think that's really important work. It's going to be a lot of work. And I think the commission would probably benefit from having just more people participating in that conversation who have kind of a formal say in what goes into the plan or what work can be done on it. And I think that'd be great. So yeah, I think that that also is a good rationale for creating it and getting Jared in there so you can participate in those conversations as they're getting involved and perform work. Other thoughts? Can we have a motion to increase the number of seats on the planning commission to seven and appointing Jared Weiss to one of them? So moved. We have a second. Second. All in favor? Aye. All right. You're like, it's Jared. Don't learn that from that. I don't know what he's thinking. What did you get for not coming to meet him? Barbara, is that something you'll take care of informing him tomorrow? OK, thank you. All right, do you want to move on to getting some of these reports? We could hear from Tegan. Tegan, do you have a report for us this time? Tegan doesn't have a report. OK, Kari has some things you'd like to say. Would you like to hear that now? So it's great. Let's go for it. Sure. I just wanted to share that, obviously, today was a very busy day for the low crew. You were too naughty. Not just because it was uniquely wet, heavy snow. That was certainly bad enough. Lots of downed trees. I mean, lots of downed trees on certain roads and power lines as well. But we were also a truck short and it was just really hard. And last Wednesday was also a challenging day, with Route 14 being closed and the detour just didn't work for everybody, including the big trucks. So I've got some follow-up I'd like to do with the state on that. But so obviously it's been challenging. We have ongoing equipment problems. I'm just really surprised. What do you mean it didn't work for the big trucks? For large trucks going up and around, especially coming down. Really, really large ones. They have to go behind the store, right? They have to make that sharp turn. It's not an appropriate detour, I don't think, for some. And the state's way of notifying a truck driver is completely inadequate. Something has to be done. Anyway, that's another task. I wish you luck. We had 80 conversations around the whole liability thing. But it just baffles me that you could have, yeah, 50 semis lined up at Peck Hill with nowhere to go for every person. It's kind of shocking, but it's amazing. Kari, just for your information, we've had a couple of studies done over the years as to what to do with that intersection, including one where we hired a professional. And I have a copy of it at my house, which I'd be happy to share with you. In fact, maybe we should have it in the files somewhere. And they offer, this person offered, the firm that did it offered, I think, three options, all of them increasingly expensive, like really expensive at the time, so we never did it. Now they're gonna be even more expensive. We didn't have a sense of the files at the town office. I think it's a party tomorrow. Ah, okay. Then I get to keep my coffee. Yeah, I'd say that'd be a pretty good conversation. I guess the rumor is that there's gonna be a significant amount of work that's being done on 14. So there's the culverts that are being replaced now in the bridge work that was replaced last year. And that's all in preparation for a pretty significant resurfacing. And I know 14 is used pretty heavily by semi trucks, granite trucks, the garbage trucks, so there's a lot of North-South traffic that goes up there, and it would be nice to know that the state has a pretty adequate detour plan in advance. Are these people to work with other towns that do you have the arteries that could take them further up? Part of the issue, just not to go too deep in the weeds, is that anything less than 72 hours of closure, they don't want to take any responsibility for the detour. Whether that be required to... Calis is a limited ability to detour people in appropriate ways. You know what the situation is. It seems like a bigger issue. So ongoing equipment challenges, we have no leads on a new hire, so we're gonna need to step up our efforts there. Yeah, and then in terms of my own training, I've done a little bit of payroll work. I'm hoping to dig in with Sandra on accounts payable this weekend next and get some experience with that. And then we are, so you know, planning to do our first test direct deposit this week, just one employee, and then next week if it goes well, convert it over to a direct deposit. And I've also started contributing a little bit to the Dan bond, we're gonna talk about that in a second, that effort, and also get training in the FEMA. Portal T, and I will help out with that. Toby, you need to break, and the passages are gonna play a lead role, I think, in the uploading of documents, but we're there for support as well. And on this list is Boomer. Yes. I don't have any information. I'm hoping that Toby's gonna join us, but he's probably gonna be close to the seven o'clock. But if I can put in just a quick plug, I know we were presenting the option of renting it for $28,000 or purchasing one, and then having it paid off within four years. I just gotta really put in the plug for just purchasing one outright, and that it will be more cost effective and less expensive in the long term, and they will be able to mow when they are able to mow and not restricted to what could be an entire month of rain. They could help Larry and the conservation committee with certain invasives on off-season mowing times. I just, for the cost and the limitation of being able to rent them when we need them. I think we don't know if it's available though. I think, so we'll need to hear whether Toby's checked that out. I think he was supposed to check it out between meetings. He was gonna do it today. Oh, okay. That's when you weigh too much. So don't let us lose that. If I forget to ask him, please, somebody remind me. Good. So that's it for me. Thanks, Kari. Okay, it's still 20 of, so how about? I wanna ask a question. Yeah. So do you want to make any kind of contingency plan for if Kari finds out tomorrow from Toby that it's available and you don't wanna wait all the way to December 11th, and then it's gone by then? Yeah, that's a good thing to keep in our heads. Let's find out if he's got it first and then we'll. Yeah, yeah. But not have to wait all the way to December 11th. Yeah, okay, good. That should be part of the discussion. Thanks, Barbara. Jamie, you wanna talk about Curtis Pond? Yeah, unfortunately don't have as much as I was hoping to have. The engineers and the contractor that we've been working with continue to express very strong optimism that we're gonna get to a place where the price tag is well under a million dollars is the closest figure I can get out of them. We will be meeting with them next week to sit down that by the end of this week, Du Bois and King will have the final sort of redesign on the new proposal and we'll have calculated numbers like how much concrete it's gonna take, how much steel it's gonna take. The change in design basically changes it from a structural dam which is anchored to the bedrock or with rock anchors which was the most expensive part of the project and changes it to a gravity dam which basically just has a footing that has so much concrete and steel in it it's really heavy and it can't tip over. And the theory there is that we'll save several hundred thousand dollars in the rock anchors and other work. The other big change is in the way it's being formed. It'll be formed with, you know, there's sort of big concrete building blocks I don't know what they're called. And so that will enable the contractor to do the concrete work themselves instead of subcontracting it out to a concrete company. If they don't flip or mold it would be. Right, so it's not like. It's like going out with rebuilding the banks and the roads would like block things as opposed to having to. Right, so it's just an easier construction method. The concrete blocks used as forms can then be reused so we don't have to buy them. And there's a number of other benefits. So we're all very optimistic that we're gonna get this project under budget but we'll have more on that to present at the next meeting. But we're confident enough that we decided to go ahead and start the bond application because the final deadline for the bond bank application I believe is December 15th, 18th. So maybe I'll let Kari or Sandra jump in on where we are with that. And there's like only two release dates, right? For that one, it's the other one. Right, so the other one is spring or early summer but it's too late, it would be too late for next year's construction season. So if we don't get in this application deadline then it would push the project back a year. And that would cost a million dollars more. Exactly, right. So it's kind of a bummer that they didn't come up with a more economical design in the first place. Yeah, agreed. Could I ask about this gravity dam? So you mean no matter how much pressure is on the dam? Well, so it's, is it just as safe as an anchored dam? Theoretically, yes, dam safety is okay with it as long as it meets the same calculations of force. Of water. And so that's, those are the calculations being done this week of exactly how it has to be designed to be as strong as the rock anchors. And then there's a few other money things, CPA, but do either of you wanna say anything about the bond process or where we are or are we good on that? Yeah, I think there is an action item on the agenda tonight about, Oh yeah. If we're gonna borrow in this cycle, we need to plan for which term we're seeking 10, 20 or 30 years. And so that has been, no, that payment schedule is in the packet if you have a chance to look back. Each of those options with and without deferring principal payment the first year could be a way to help with cash flow and cost more in the long run. So we wanted to make that available to you so you could consider that. I think our thinking was that the 20 year was sort of the good middle ground that we could live with. And that is the payment schedule that we've assumed in the budget. Just so you know, we can sort of change it but that's what's included. With or without deferring principal payment. Oh, God. Well, that would hit this year, I believe. Sandy, do you want to weigh in on that? Jesus, you did. You got to unmute her. I think she just needs to use that. There we go. And I think I know what your question was, but if you wouldn't mind, I couldn't hear all of it. Would you repeat that please? We were discussing the 10, 20, 30 year options with or without deferring the first year. And Kari was saying that you're both thinking the 20 year makes sense. And I just asked if you were thinking 20 year with deferring the first payment or without in the draft budget. Without. Without, okay. And the reason for that is we'd be paying $20,000 of additional interest that we would not otherwise be paying it at our first principal payment in FY 25. So there is some interest that will be due. It will hit in FY 24. There's a partial payment in on May 1st. That is shortly after the distribution in February. And that is in that we are in now, interest payment of roughly, let's just say $10,000 in that neighborhood is in that then it's FY 25. And what you see when you get to your budget, you're gonna see the FY, so if you defer your principal payment, you would pay an option of your principal payment thereby increasing your loan payment overall. By that extra year of interest without a reduction of principal. Now that's a strategic decision that the board will make, but Kari and I talked about that and we did select the option of no deferment. And that is what is in chief that you're gonna be looking at tonight. But I'm not seeing it in the run out. It looks like, you know, the forms that you gave us, it looks like there's no payment on May 1st, 2024. And the first payment, you know, whatever. Well, May 1st, 2024 is in FY 24. FY 24 is the fiscal year we are in now. It ends June 30th, 2024. Awesome, that's why it shows on the zero here, I see. Okay. I don't, so. It shows up as zero on the forms that we need to. When you look at your long-term debt, I'm looking at, I don't know what you are looking at, but I'm looking at a 20-year CPA bond of 22,500 with 20 years at interest estimated at 4.49%, 19,287 dollars. I don't know what, you know what I'm talking about. I think what Anne's pointing out is that the fact that there are two payments per year, one includes interest in principle and one includes just interest. And May 1st, 2024 would be interest. Would be just interest. Yeah, that's just a timing issue. Yes, that's right. That 19,000 dollars that is in the FY 25 budget sell is actually paid into chunks. One in November and one again in May. So November 24 and May 25 are in the same fiscal year, FY 25, and that's that 19,000 dollars. Thank you. So what are the pros and cons of doing the shorter versus the longer? Why wouldn't we do the 30-year, for example? It's a higher interest rate and you pay more interest over time. Okay. It's much more, overall, it's much more expensive. And if you look at your loan schedules, you can see the cost of a 30-year loan and compare it with the cost of a 20-year loan. I see. Oh, yeah, yeah, I see that. Yeah. I would lean towards the shorter, I think, toward the 10-year? Well, that's for the 20, but you know, I somebody who had like voted for the bond of thinking 450,000 dollars, it's actually 600,000. You don't want to add interest. Everyone's kicking in at like literally an additional 50%, which is not something that I fully process. And so I think, I mean, you don't want it to be too much of a burden over 10 years, but I turn it into 30. What's the difference between 10 and 20, pain-wise? It's under, it was 3.8, 9% versus 4.4, 9. And it's 120,000. Yeah. Roughly. And just so everyone's clear, these are not the current, or they are the current rates, they're not the rates that we will pay necessarily. Those won't be until close to that. That's like when you take a mortgage. Other questions? Yeah, Scott. Sam, do I remember right that there's no option to prepay with a bond bank loan? That is correct. Yeah, mom. You mean like if somebody gives us a bunch of money? Well, I mean, it always seems to be money coming along. And for example, when the school system purchased that it built their building on the U32 campus, they went out of their way to get a loan that they were able to prepay. And somehow they paid the whole thing off much more quickly than they had anticipated. That was a, maybe that was a different economy than we're in now. And I know Sandra has done the best possible for us. So this is what we ought to be doing. But, and I understand that the bond bank needs to ensure its investors have a constant rate of return. So that's the reason behind this and that maybe that's why the money is available. Well, and I think we in working with the CPA and meaning to create a mechanism for receiving those funds in and applying them to the project, we created a dedicated funds or a dedicated account. Is that right, Sandra, for dam related expenses? With the bond proceeds? Not with the bond proceeds to receive money raised from the CPA. We created a dedicated account that was structured so that that was money that can only be used for the dam project. Is that right? So it kind of sits on there. You already have a Curtis pond dam reserve and the motion I would suggest would be to accept the donations to be deposited in the Curtis pond dam reserve fund, which means that that money then can only be used for the Curtis pond dam project. And that motion should so state that. But that fund is pooled with the other reserve funds and with the operating account currently. And you would see that it's your due to do from report when you get your month end report, you see all of the reserve funds that we have pooled along with the operating account for safety and to get the best interest that we can at this point in time. But yeah, they would be segregated by virtue of depositing them into the reserve fund by motion and they could only be used for that purpose. So I guess where I was kind of heading with that relative to Scott's comments is that with that fund, we then have kind of a mechanism for continuing to raise funds into the future or go after grants and then make sure that that money is appropriated and applied to that reserve funds and thus reducing the burden to the taxpayer if we continue to pursue those opportunities. So I guess that would also come with a charge to the CPA to continue to look for those opportunities for grants like the one that we're going to be considering. Not only to skin that cap and to those worried about the total cost of the taxpayers might be less than $650 that you were worried about. Well, no, we never need to worry but we do also have the ongoing. We're committed. Yeah, insurance and maintenance and, you know, those things I don't understand the costs of yet. So, and I don't know if that'll be fleshed out more when we get the design done. Okay. Any further questions on this at the moment? Would somebody like to make a motion? I suppose. Hi, welcome. Hi, Ron. Nice to see you. Could you tell me what item you're under? Oh, we've jumped because we were so far ahead. We're over in the reports section and we're on the Curtis Pond dam already. Okay, so we're now under possible action, authorize the town treasurer to proceed with a bond application. Okay. Okay. Just wanted to be ready for a motion. So this is, we will be getting the bond over here preparing with the expectation. Well, if you want to so move, yes. I don't know if I'm comfortable moving that. Well, why don't we let Jamie formulate the motion? It's kind of down there. Make a motion that we authorize the town treasurer to proceed with a bond application for the $450,000 bond approved by the voters and that it be a 20 year term with no first year deferment. It's been moved. Did you get all that rose? Term of 20 years. And what was the last part? With no deferment. First year deferment. With no, thank you. Okay. Everybody understand the motion? Is there a second? Second. Okay. Are we ready? All in favor? Aye. You're not sure, Ann? It is, so we're getting it. We're... So one clarification and the Sandra wants to, I think Sandra's gonna say... And then we can't do that. I think Sandra wants to say what I was gonna say. Oh. What are you saying? What I was going to say is, going back to what James said, if the bond is not applied for at this round, the next round, then May, and the money will come too late to finish the project this summer and it would be deferred for a year. So you, if you decide to pursue the bond application, you can, the distribution won't be until February. You do not have to accept that distribution should something change your minds and you feel that you cannot go back to the project. So there's still just, because the day I've spent, how long y'all been working on 30, 40, 50 years, like this idea that it's just gonna be magical and la-da-da-da-da. So there is a lot for bid we need it and out. Right. So if February came along and we weren't able to get a contract with somebody who could do it within our budget, we could. Or any other sort of... Or any other... 100,000 various people involved. Okay. Yep. From the spotted sound or something. Okay. Right. I can live without a pen. Sorry. Okay. How about you, Donnie? Are you comfortable now? Yeah. That was a little more clarifying. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So is that an I? That is an I. Okay. Yeah, you're not I. That's right. He does the job too. So, Rose, that's unanimous. Fine. Yeah. Okay, thanks. It's now seven o'clock. Shall we come back to... Well, we could do this last one very quickly. Would somebody like to move to accept some money to be deposited into the Curtis-Pondam Reserve Fund? People want one sentence. Sure, go ahead. That's great. Sure. This is a large chunk of the $270-ish thousand dollars the CPA has raised for the project. And as the town takes more of a lead in the project and taking on the bills and the realization that for the town to sign a contract with a contractor, when it comes to that, you want to have the funds in town possession instead of some in the community center possession, some in the CPA possession, some in the town possession. This is the first, probably of a couple of waves of sort of cash transfer from the CPA to the dam, to the town raised by the CPA for the dam project. Would the intent that they're gonna be transferred all of it to the town? Yes. Yeah, all along there's been some bills that the town has paid and some bills that the CPA has paid. So some of the raised funds have been spent on the pieces that we've done. And more will be raised and ultimately, everything raised will be transferred to the town. Okay, clear. All right. Would somebody like to move to accept $40,000 from the CPA and $140,000 from the Maple Corner Community Center to be deposited into the Curtis-Ton Dam Fund? So moved. Second? I'll second. Okay. All in favor? Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Rose, did you get that whole thing? Yeah, just put Jordan's name in front of it. Right? Yep. Just be sure to put that it's to be deposited into the Curtis-Ton Dam Fund, and not as I put it there in the agenda. I kept hearing Sanders say the Curtis-Ton Dam reserve fund. Yes, thank you reserve fund. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Do we need to clarify that that means it can only be spent on the dam, or is that inherent in it being in that fund? I think it's inherent in the title of the place. That's a percentage of money's deposited into the Curtis-Ton Reserve Fund that you could use only for that purpose. Yeah. I think it was part of our memorandum of understanding that it was a formal condition that we accepted. So there's previous record of that. That's right. Okay, shall we go back now to budget markup? It's back to the seven o'clock item. And because I've never done this before, I asked Kari to please lead this discussion because he's done it 19 times. Well, version of it. Yeah. Yeah, so my understanding is that you've seen many of the components of this budget as the different commissions and the fire departments, and Toby was here with the highway budget last time. So you've seen many of the pieces, but this is sort of the first look at all of it together in a comprehensive way, and we're gonna review it and see what we can do. I also understand that you were hoping to complete this budgeting process by the end of December, if possible. And because of the holiday, you only have one scheduled meeting on the 11th. So just heads up that there may be an extra meeting in your future. And so, and then in my memo, I tried to give you some framing, so an overview where we're at. The bottom line is that the, this initial draft calls for a 13% increase over the current budget. And so that's obviously quite a bit higher than the rate of inflation, and it's higher than the increases that have been approved, proposed and approved in recent years. So we've got some challenges, but keep in mind that it, so far for the most part, people have been bringing you what they would really like, and no one has really gone through and paired things down yet. With the exception I wanted to mention that we talked about quite a list of items last time when Toby was here about the highway. So just update your Toby's hand and I did sit down that week and talk about those items. I think all of them, and so there have been some adjustments to Toby's order. That's reflected in this document. Yes. Okay. Okay. So the memo also summarizes key drivers and where the increases seem to be coming from, and we can certainly dig into that, but just talk about the process that we're going to use first. So my suggestion was that you all consider a target. It doesn't have to be set in stone, it can be arranged, but I think it's helpful, it's an opportunity to think now before you get into the nitty gritty and the hard decisions to say what are we shooting for? And then you can always revise that when you go back, but in my experience it's helpful to know what you're aiming for. So, and then if you did that, you were able to arrive at something that we could dig in and go through line by line. But that's just my suggestion. How does that sound to you? Does anybody want to speak to that process? Seriously, as opposed to an increase of 13%, one is yet an increase of only 80% or something, or try to, is that what you're trying to do? Yeah, if you're based on what's reasonable, oftentimes you look at inflation and what's, because you'd expect the budget to go up by inflation and to give it to you. Or you might think about what is reasonable to ask the taxpayers to take on? No. What can pass, it's very painful for a budget to not be passed, so we want to avoid that obviously, but what's feasible. But that's just my suggestion, you can skip that step if you prefer. It might help us to, I don't know, think of a window. I mean, for me, priorities are paid stop. Benefits, things that are somewhat fixed, things that we have to have for road maintenance and those sorts of things. I think it would be who was to some of the other ones that perhaps people, businesses might want to pick up and sponsor or some of the more affluent folks in town might want to support certain commissions or groups or projects. So are you saying it would be good to have a target? I mean, I think having a target would give us at least something that it'd be very rudimentary, but I think it would enable us to be kind of thinking, I mean, 13% that's like so much and there's so many people in town, people that are so actively involved in our community and have been actively involved both locally and on a state level and they're feeling like they're not gonna make it. So I don't want us to be contributing to that. And I know it's gonna go up because of insurance, but whatever we can do to find places where you can kind of scale back would be great. Yeah, I think that one comment that I can throw out there is that we over the last, I guess looking at the last two budgets, we've been dealing with a situation where I think the true cost of the town have been pretty significantly underfunded and then running over budget pretty every year. And I don't think that personally is fiscally responsible. It just kind of hides the costs and then people get outraged when all of a sudden you've blown through some budget because you didn't necessarily represent what the costs are gonna be. And I don't have anything in particular to target so I think what this board has gone through and it says exercises and conversations thus far is that at least articulated a desire to start right sizing the budget relative to what the town needs to be planning to pay for not just next year, what we think is gonna be paid for next year but what the town needs to be paying for over the next five years. And I don't disagree. We have an obligation to everybody, including ourselves to try to keep our tax rates affordable. And I think it is worth if we are going to be trying to make those corrective steps and that is driving up the budget, I think maybe this is a time where we deliberately say we're going to reduce this budget to soften the blow while we try to right size some of these other things that are going to be long-term carrying costs and then try to find a way to add it back in there in years that haven't been so expensive. Well then exactly and I think that a lot of the ingrained comparatively to salaries and benefits they might seem small but cumulatively add up and I think there's a lot of alternative ways to sink funding for some of these things. So and I know it's kind of because you're correct that they presented a budget that certainly no one could stay within that we have no choice but to go over I mean legal fees a lot. So it needs to be an honest budget. Well you know. In the sense that we have you know that these are the realistic costs of things. So I guess I would argue I don't necessarily disagree except that I think from my perspective we have an obligation to pay for the things that we need to run the town and that is the human beings to do the work and they need to have a living salary to do that stuff and they need to have benefits that are attractive to keep them engaged and motivated to continue to do the work of the town. So. I think the town would be behind that. I don't disagree but I think that I think that that is going to have forced harder conversations around other extra funding other extracurriculars. Which is more starting out. Commission related costs or initiatives and that's just I guess the way that conversation could unfold so yeah I think we're on the same page. I think we are. And I think that's important to communicate in this forum. And if I'm reading this you know the vast majority of the increase is investing in our people. Of the $262,000 increase represented here 203,000 of it is wages and benefits. So I think we're that's the direction we're going. So do you want to have a discussion about a target? I have a question. On the first budget piece I saw it was what? Every 5% is another $20,000. $20,000 is $20,000. That's Kari's memo here. It's rough numbers. Yeah we're just curious. Yeah. So every $20,000 that we find and pull out we bring that 13 back down a little bit closer to the four. So Kari do you know what CPI is right now? I think it's running between two and three percent. That's all I did in this new agreement. So if we were to choose that as a target it would be about 2.5? Yeah I mean it's just be generous as it was 3% Okay. It would be $200,000. Okay. I think I like Jordan's comments and thinking ahead to what's the case we're gonna make because there's gonna be a story with this budget even if we were to get it cut it in half, the increase in half it would still be a sizable increase and so how do you explain that to people? I like the story of what we're being honest about what's needed to run the town in 2024. So and you know that might be an argument for not saying it's hard just going through line by line and saying what's the responsible thing to do here and seeing where we end up. That's fine too. Yeah frankly I think that's the only way to really kind of go through there. We know what the driving factors are already so it's somewhat arbitrary to throw out a number and say we're gonna try to end out at 4% knowing that we could cut everything and we're still not gonna likely get there. And so I think we need to have kind of an honest conversation I guess about the salaries and wages and the positions that were committed to filling and the ones that we've already filled and probably move beyond that and then start moving through some of the other bigger increases and see where we might be able to kind of roll those back or defer them if we can defer them. If that makes sense it'd probably be worth going there. So if that sounds like an approach I can put the budget up on the screen and folks at home will be able to see it. I'm not sure if anyone will see it that well but we'll see what you can do. Next to documents. Yes. Well it should be the same as that. And during the sort of suggesting an approach of why don't we start with I think looking at wages and benefits since that's the thing that's driving this budget and then just go from there. Does that make sense? Yep. So. Big glasses. They're probably not right. They're still designed for. Thank you. It's a curse. I can't see far away without them but I can't see close with them. So I'm going to focus up here so I use my glasses. Thank you. So we'll just go to the top and just so you know the color coding here in this orangey color is wages and stipends and it's a note that any changes there flow through to the social security and Medicare. They have an impact elsewhere in the budget and sometimes for retirement as well, depending on. So this first section is about select board. There are some stipends obviously reporting secretary wages but nothing significant in terms of wages. So the big first big category would be town clerk and in that we have the town clerk's wages which you point out does not currently include a cost of living adjustment and then there's an assistant assistant time clerk wage and there's no cure that temp work test for 10% increase and that's budgeted at 25 hours per week. So that's where the 34,827 comes from. So there's that. Let me also touch on the other office staff because I think these kind of go together to a certain extent. Also in here we've got the town administrator wages that was budgeted at 80,000. Just to remind you if you haven't seen that was pulled from the current year's budget. The director of public works was an 80,000 item that's been shifted over to the general government budget and is considered a town administrator. And then we've got a town administrator assistant at 20 hours per week at 25. I'm not really certain on the history of this. None of this, this is all coming from requests that were before I looked at it. Sandra could speak more to the history of where these numbers came from but this is really just a first draft. And then we've also got the town treasurer wages at $30 an hour for 32 weeks an hour. Assistant town treasurer wages only just $200 a year and finally the delinquent tax collector at 11,000. So that collection of positions, you might call town office staff, Tegan, Barbara and I had an initial conversation about and Sandra's also weighed in. What I'd like to do is find a way to reduce, it occurs to me that we need to develop the staffing model for next year now. I thought I'd have a luxury of more time to figure out what's that gonna look like post-Sandra when I'm pulling, I mentioned in the job and then we're thinking about what do we need for a treasurer or what do we need for assistance and that like. I think we need to figure that out now and what I'd like to do is reduce the overall amount of money somewhat. I think that there's some opportunity to do that in there especially in that assistant town administrator position. But I also like to make sure that everyone's getting at least the cost of living increase. I think that we don't wanna not do that. So what I'd like to do in that, there is sort of an initial goal of can we reduce it by at least $20,000, pull 1% down and get everybody at least the cost of living increase. That was sort of the initial parameter that I put out there. And I'd like to hear what you think about that is does that seem reasonable to you and then have us work on that more and bring it back to you by the 11th? So that'd be for treasurer, town clerk and you. Plus the three assistant positions. Plus those assistant positions and the delinquent tax collector. And the delinquent, oh, so the 11,000s in there too. Yeah. And keep in mind, all of these have significant implications on the benefit side. Any of them that are especially full time. Can you quantify that in any way? By the amount you, yeah. Can you say if we reduce it by, you were going to try to reduce it by 20,000. Does that include the benefits? No, that's just on the wages side. Are you able to say if we reduce it by 20,000, the benefits will reduce by this? I don't think the benefits will decrease that significantly. Medical insurance is the big one and we'd still be looking, I think at the same number of full time employees. And so the implications for benefits are probably the same. But we are rolling out a change to the buyout policies. Is that one that we're discussing so that we could theoretically project kind of a reduction in benefits if we had kind of a good idea of how many people were going to be taking that buyout. Potentially, right? Sure, right. So that could work for us. There's no assumption of a buyout in the current because we don't have a policy yet. That's just my discussion. That is something that we'll want to factor in to the extent we can. And that's we figured 40%, you say 40%? Which would be parity with what the... With the road project. The road contract does, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And did you have a question? So as you're talking here about maneuvering these things before the next budget, which would make sense. One, I know you had talked some about taking on some of their treasure duties and possibly getting like a bookkeeper. And if that were the case, would we still need the assistant person would help during tax time? Primarily, I just feel like Barbara wears like 20 hats. Can we give her like one title? I know. You're all the assistants, mostly, right? I'm so not sure. Okay, no, I feel like we have multiple assistant jobs and you are that assistant. Well, at the moment, I think I'm just the assistant town clerk and the assistant treasurer. Okay. Because I don't think the select board administrator is going to continue. And so that job has gone to Kari. Okay. But also going to Kari is the opportunity to hire a town administrator assistant. And so we don't know how, we don't know how that's going to look like yet. And that first draft has 20 hours in it. So that's what I'm saying. I think we need a little more time to think that through. But I think there is an opportunity to reduce the number of hours that are allocated in here. Okay. And then bring down the budget. Okay, and then I feel like I saw something. So this new budget, Toby would no longer be because you will have absorbed him by then. So that's another question that comes under highway department, but there is 10 hours a week of grant administrator in here. So we'll get to that in just a minute. But that was another thing that was incorporated in here. And I wonder, I guess, if it makes sense, as I think you're exactly right, you know, the assistant positions were kind of put in there with the assumption that we wanted to try to put some money against presumed responsibilities, just to provide a way of kind of channeling the funds there in the budget. But I think there's now, I think a little bit of slack in that. So that we could consolidate a lot now that we've been spending a lot of time thinking about the structure of office staff and roles and responsibilities. I think the town would probably benefit from leaving like a consultation budget of some sort of professional service budget. Because I think we get sometimes wrapped up and distracted by the names of things, like assistant treasurer or, administrative assistant or something like that. What we're struggling with is like, what are the things that need to be done? And how are we gonna get them done? And if you need to pay somebody to do pretty high level stuff because we have a particular gap in the staff and we should afford ourselves the ability to do that and maybe that's just bookkeeping. Maybe it's higher level financial consultation or training or something like that. And that's where I think it kind of goes back to the grant administrator. If we don't wanna fully release those funds but try to step away from that formal position and let's just make sure that we have a placeholder that's just professional assistant and somebody wants to step up and fulfill a role throughout the year for an acute need. At least we have it there. If that makes sense. Yeah. So that sounds like a yes, Laurie. Please provide us with that. So that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna work on the office staffing model over the next two weeks. We'll bring you a proposal. Hopefully we'll bring down the overall dollar amount but also make sure that everyone's gonna at least accostally agree. And we need to address the opt out medical insurance region if that's what we end up doing. So that's on the office side and then on the highway department side that's a separate part of the budget. So we've got budgeted four full-time road crew positions and that includes a 3% increase and it's not negotiable. It's a second contract pulled out the road commissioner. We're not budgeting for a significant amount of temporary help. We don't think that we'll need that, that's covered. But we are adding a fifth position in here in the budget for a road foreman at a slightly higher rate. It's gonna have to probably be pragmatically if you're gonna fill it. Probably more than that. They're all making at least 30. So I think we'll be hard-pressed to find someone for under that. Because basically it's an Alfie without the title. But I can't disagree with that, everyone's just. Not that he's meant that he is a person. He's basically doing what he did right because you would be assuming grab work. That is my understanding. Yeah, I would not be the foreman, that's for sure. Well, no, you'd be like to be the technical, the grand things and that sort of parts of it. Yes. And then the foreman would be doing that day-to-day management and road assessing and ordering. Directing the work with the data. The energy sand and the like, yeah. And the buck would stop in regards supervision with you. Right, right, a hiring, firing. Yeah. Formal evaluation, that sort of thing. Because the foreman in this model is part of the parking unit. And we don't have an option if they're working for them and they have to be part of the union. Yeah. Yeah, if they're performing the duties of the road crew, like if they're performing the work, then they need to be part of the parking unit. They'd have to be part of the duty and only if they were not doing the day-to-day and purely like what you're doing. Oh, sorry, I forgot. Just what I thought. Managerially, I think it hasn't been super clearly defined. I think that's okay. We have the accommodation for a road foreman type individual to be part of personnel management, I guess I'd say, setting hours, managing over time, scheduling and that sort of thing. But yeah, the buck essentially stops with the town administrator. So it strikes me in looking at this that we've had over the last few years different models, right? There's been temporary help, we've had director of public works, we've had an operations manager at different points. In this budget is a new position called the road foreman. I mean, we might have had that in spirit, but not as a line item in the budget. And so just so everyone knows, that's a significant increase to the budget, $64, $65,000 plus the benefits that go with that. And I think that's just an example of Jordan's point. If we feel like this is what's needed to operate the highway department responsibly, then this is the budgetary implication of that. And we'll just be prepared to speak to that. But the foreman is essentially acting as what we previously called the road commissioner. That is now you doing the supervisory oversight portion of it. So you take it on like the operation manager role and the buck stops with you. I guess that's right. I mean, two years ago, I guess there was the road commissioner instead of the foreman. So I guess that wasn't. Yeah, so it's a change of, you know. And last year was a combination of a part-time road commissioner and some temporary help. Maybe that was how it worked. Last year they linked it pretty much to that. Yeah, just in terms of the budget. I don't know what the budget allowed because in practice they were bringing it. Yeah, exactly. But if we're committed to the, I guess the option of it is if we're committed to five full-time positions on the road crew, we don't have a lot of flexibility by contract. I mean, this is sort of what it is. The wages are set, the benefits are set. So does this include the part-time, the two part-time people? Yeah, essentially if it were, if we stuck with the model we have now, it's two part-timers instead of a full-time and you know, you save on benefits here anyway. So those are the, that's the lion's share of the increases. Those was at nine or 10 positions. Would you envision that we'd pay less for part-timers if we had another full-time person? No, you think we'd still need. I don't think you'd get enough part-time help. Well, I think both Ann and Dana would don't require getting 20 hours a week. They're counted at 23 actually. There's the most they can do. And that's pension per year? Like per week, per year? Yeah, per week. Per week, yeah. But I get the impression that if, you know, they don't get anything for a couple of weeks, that's okay with them. I mean, maybe Ann, you know this better than I do. Well, I don't think that, I think they work in retirement because they enjoy working. Exactly. I think they count on it, but at the same, you know, and especially is, you know, thinking more about spending time with family and things, but he's always ready to work the 20 hours a week, certainly. We've been leaning heavily on them because of the situation, but I don't think they expect to be, or need to be leaned on that much in the future. So we could save some there. Yeah. And we probably want to have those conversations with them because they, you know, creatures of routine and they work their 20 and that's what's customary, you know, and they might be totally fine with not working as much, but then they might also, that's what they expect to do. So I won't speak for them, but it's something we could explore. The overtime hours, the 656 is that just relative to historical time with an increase or just a carryover? I think we need Sandra's help with that, but I recall Toby saying that's sort of an average of, you know, a reasonable assumption based on past years. And is the 164 coming from just the balance of whatever that average is, you know, assuming that that individual would be, you know, performing the same work? Should be back by four or five. I think it's each one of these positions, there's an assumption of 164 hours of overtime, right? So in the four full-time positions, 656 hours. Yes, right. And I think that's just based on, it's a guesstimate based on what's happened in the past. Well, I guess my question is, do we have an obligation to pay, to schedule overtime for a road foreman, equitably to the other individuals? You know, if they're, absolutely, that they are part of the crew, they're doing the work, they're responsible for the scheduling, but I would also expect that that individual is also beholden to keeping costs down and scheduling things such that, or managing things such that our overtime hours are being held within a particular budget every year. And part of that is gonna be making sure that they're not putting in more overtime than needed. And is that something as you being the manager of the whole kit and caboodle would be regularly, would they be running overtime through you, would, I mean, certainly like in the winter, if you've had this discussion about, you know, like getting up early in the morning, you know, and do the all-inclusive, the extra money or just one person gets stuck with it, and then if they go out, they get the extra, you know, and trying to cut back those, because this year we had no choice with overtime, but there's probably times in the past where you could be hatched a little tighter. It could be a little bit more judicious. I think, you know, I've been on the job probably two weeks with weather so far, and it's worked in both ways. I've got it all said, is it okay that we go into overtime? And I've also, like I was mentioning to Anne Tyler, put in a 14-hour day, the other day, because the truck broke. He didn't check with me. I don't know if he tried to fight me, or he just did it, and I'm glad he did. Because that was clearly the right decision. So some of that's gonna have to be worked out over time, as was our understanding, when do you need to clear it one-on-one with it? Well, it gets the point. And I think that that gets to kind of another point. My hope over the next year or two is that we can start to define the role of foremen and the roles that the administrator plays in working with the foremen and managing those hours. That we start to develop some really transparent numbers about how many hours it actually takes us to do the core work that the road crew needs to do every year, and that's going to inform what we pay guys to do. So I'm not trying to single out Tyler at all. If the truck needs to get fixed, it needs to get fixed, and that stuff happens, but that stuff, it sounds like that's probably gonna happen over time, so that's not necessarily time that he would have spent doing anything else. But if we look at other responsibility, more seasonal work or something like that, we may be needing to make decisions about that's not something that we're going through here. Our guys to do, they have other things that are of higher value for them to do, and we need to make a plan for hiring that work out if we need the work to be done. Otherwise, you know, you get into a situation where it's just like, all right, I'm gonna do this thing for a week and a half, and it's just like, okay, well, that's a week and a half, it gets lost, and we're... I've got a concern right now that basically we're anemic. And the amount of work that we do and the amount of work that needs to be done and not necessarily the number of guys to do it but like how we spend our time getting stuff done. And I think a lot of that, if they have management, that can really, you know, look forward and plan every wonderful over the winter if we can get someone in there that can really be planning out this summer so it doesn't just come bud season and power through bud season and then the summer comes and it's like, okay, it's really gonna do, you know, but other things like grading this summer, it rained all the time, you have to have like consecutive decent days and we had crushed numbers on how long it would take to grade all the roads just one pass. Okay, one grader. With one grader. It would take eight weeks with one grader. Yeah. So, that would over time. You've got a spreadsheet yard, that's a long one. A lot of different things to think about, but... But it does that same thing. And I think how much time does it take to grade all of the roads if you're like ideally just doing it as much as we feel like it is appropriate. And it's sunny every day. Yeah, and it's sunny every day, and that's gonna be a number and it's either realistic or not realistic. And I don't necessarily think that it means, you know, just kind of throwing more guys at it. I think there's opportunity for other conversations about like, well, how are we maintaining this section of road that makes it a requirement that we're spending two weeks a year, you know, grading? There's something else that we can be doing and budgeting for, you know, should we have a capital campaign for, you know, replacing whole sections of road so that every couple of years we're doing a certain amount of road repair. Relative to how much it costs a day. I mean, that's something that they would love to do because I know like that one section and it took a whole week of max grade, which was not a huge section, but it held up beautifully during the flood. Could it have been rebuilt recently? Yeah, so they had to reditch and they put in a much larger culvert and they had crowned it and like really laid down with chlorine, made a very hard surface and when the floods came that held up so that everyone on our screen was like, so when are you going to do that on my section? Yeah, that took like a week, a lot of materials too, so it would require some, yeah, planning. Donnie, do you have something to say? Nope, nothing. Oh, sorry. I wish I could see. Yeah. So, I mean, I hear you, I think I do, there actually is a specific point in this budget slash plan regarding the grant work with the Kent Road, what's it called? French mattress is what it was called and that could be done by the road crew and save us money because it will be reimbursed, but what's the opportunity cost of that? I mean, that's the sort of thing I hear you saying like, we need to sort of get to a point in our planning where we can make intelligent decisions about the use of our limited resources, whether that's time or money. And also our equipment, because the French mattress is very hard on the equipment and I know the guys were very anxious to destroy their trucks because of the big rocks. Well, I think with five people there's a lot of opportunity to get a lot done. Yeah. Especially since how five's really six with the two-part timers. I mean, those are two of the better greater operators around here and there's really no reason they shouldn't both be going every possible day they can. But I think there is something to be said about the risk-reward versus what you're doing specifically as far as that. I mean, replacing roads, one thing, a French mattress, if it costs you $10,000 to replace broken bodies, those bedchains are not very cheap. So, you don't kind of picking what projects are really good for them to do that are most productive. And what we're using our equipment for, you know, you can hire out trucking. You know, we don't need our guys to be going and hauling material. Maybe we can use them for hauling more locally. But, you know, that gets weighed down into the weeds and frankly, I think Donny is way better equipped to be having this conversation. So, I think we can kind of save that for a little bit later. But as we are looking for a road form and I just wanted to kind of set the expectation of what kind of oversight I think we should be expecting because it's going to get really expensive to perform, self-perform. And it's going to change the calculus criteria. I hear you and I think the implication of that is that we ought to be budgeting for more than $27 an hour if that's the quality of the supervision we want. If we want anybody, frankly. Well, I don't think you're going to find somebody with a lot of background and knowledge at $27 an hour. What would you say? I would say at least start at $30. With that being said, there should be some qualifications that they've had some experience and not just necessarily worked on a road crew. Some sort of, I mean, really half their job is managing personalities. I mean, at the end of the day. So what, I mean, at $27. Are we in agreement about the five positions? I think it's necessary. I mean, with the amount of roads that we have, you know, when other towns are trying to coach our guys, they always make the point of saying how many fever miles they have. So, you know, for them to... I think I got all these. Have we had five... I guess when Alfie... Did we have five full-time equivalents then? No. No, we didn't. So this is really basically adding... Right-sizing. Right, but adding 2,200 hours a year to the pool. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what we're seeing. Yeah. It's a significant increase in the budget just from that. Right. So, I mean... Can I make a comment? Yeah, please. So last year's budget had the $80,000 for the Director of Public Works, plus four positions. So essentially, by eliminating the $80,000 and replacing it to the foreman for $50,000 to $60,000, there's really no change in that salary line other than the raise to the four crew members to $25 an hour. Well, unless you sort of think of the town administrator position as the... What was in there is the Public Works Director. Yeah, so... It's basically taking the one position and making two. Well, then that would be... Well, for the Public Works Director, Alfie was still... I don't know what his title would have been, so he would have remained the road commissioner. That salary was still included even with the Director of Public Works, so it's kind of absorbing that. Right. So, I guess circling back on the hourly rate and the budgeting for the road foreman, I think it's fair to take the input from Donnie relative to the conversation that we were just having about what our expectations for that individual is going to be. If you make it $30 an hour, or do the math, you're coming out to $62,400. And if you wanted to try to make up the difference for that, I'd say that it would be fair to say you would expect them to work less overtime than the rest of them. And now you're netting around that same 62 to 64. Call it 64 and cut their hours in half, their overtime hours in half. And the foreman should work in most instances less overtime. You know, that was certainly the summary. I didn't want to call out the same guys, because it's a fair just because someone still lives down the street and it's the easiest one to call every time a tree's down because then someone else isn't getting the overtime. So yeah, the overtime should be equitable and should be focused, I think, on the crew when there's probably a certain instance that they're going to have to, but I would have wanted to see them taking all that we wouldn't hire such a person. So most of the overtime is winter plowing. Right. Essentially you've got to have five people, so that includes the road foreman out there plowing as well. The rest of the year it's really only emergency situations like trees and storms that cause any need for overtime. Most of the summer work is all fixed in a nine-hour day. And that includes the road crew themselves, correct? It wouldn't be just the foreman, that's all of them. Yes, so they average like 164 hours a year of overtime. Right. But again, every year the overtime number is going to change depending on the storms and the incidents of plowing and icy roads and all the other stuff. And it's totally unpredictable that 800 hours is sort of an average over the last four or five years. You could cut some of that if you want and hope for a less severe winter, but that's going to change and you can't really predict it. That's fair. Good on that one. So we've gone through the obvious positions of the Highway Department. What else do we want to look at? Do we want to look at the smaller items? You mean we've done wages? Yes. When you say smaller items? Yeah. So insurance, we don't have any control over because we're constrained by the union agreements for the guys, right? And we need to provide the same for them. Correct. We're locked into a gold plan or equivalent. As with every budget that I work on, medical insurance is a big driver and it just goes up faster than anything else. And it certainly is a case here. It's a monopoly. So, yeah, you're seeing that on the Highway Department and in the general government budget. And then we've got retirement. We've got other benefits. But there's not a lot of flexibility in those areas. At least not with the Highway Department. There is a line item in that section that's called benefits contingency. And it's $15,000. I don't think we've ever tapped it and I don't know why it was created, but that's a number that you could probably throw out if you'd like to, because I don't know what it covers and whether it's important or not. We actually took it out of this trap. It was in there last year, so we zeroed it out. Do we want to go back and start from the beginning and just work through? Just make sure you at least understand what the plan is about? I'm wondering if while we've got Toby here we should just have a quick conversation about that boom mower. So, Toby, were you able to find anything out about the boom mower? Is there one available? Yeah, it's still available. The price is still $130,000. And when could we have it, Toby? Pardon me? When can we pick it up if we were to buy it? Well, my phone was out all day, so I have no idea, assuming we could get it as soon as we need to. If we commit to it, I'm not sure how long it would be before they'd want some payment for it and have it delivered to the town, or we would go pick it up. I mean, having said that, we don't need it till spring, of course. Right. Well, again, if we buy it, I'm not sure how long they'll wait for us to pay for it. Right, right. And you're saying we could get it for $28,000 now. Is that what you said? Well, what would we do at least to owe a five-year plan? Right, so it would be a five-year lease for $130,000. If you divide $135,000 into $26,000, and then there's going to be interest on top of that each year, so it's going to be somewhere between $27,000 and $28,000 per year for five years. Wait, I'm sorry. It's $6,000 plus interest. How did you get up to $28,000? That's $26,000. My $26,000 per year on the principle... Oh, $26,000. That's what I missed. Okay. But with good maintenance, it could last us quite a long time, yes? Most certainly, yes. I mean, that is, we have a crew that's excellent about maintenance. So if we were to approve that tonight, do we have to take the $28,000 out of our current budget? No, you could use that line item to make the capital payment if you wanted to. I mean, you would have to put it into the following years, capital plan for $28,000 or whatever the annual payment's going to be. But you would eliminate that. You can just leave it there now. If you decide to purchase it, you can move it from the operations plan and put it into the capital plan, but it would still have the same effect on the total budget. Right. We wouldn't be paying for it out of the fiscal year 24 budget. They could wait probably until we... Well, we won't be starting that budget until June. No, it's about taking a lease. And essentially, if you took a lease in January of 24, you could put off paying your first payment for a year, which would make it January of 25, but that still is in fiscal... That would be in fiscal year 26. Okay. So you would save the 28,000 in this current budget for 25, but it would have to show up in 26. And again, it's about the timing of when you purchase it. And you decide to take the lease in arrears. No, I was concerned that it has to be in the budget we're operating under now. No, no, not at all. Okay. You guys want to talk about it? Tobi? No. Tobi? Yeah? If the first payment is in January 2025, January 2025 is in... Oh my gosh, I couldn't catch that. January 2025. So if we move it, so if you put the payment down in capital expenses and take it out of the operating budget, it would not be in change for this year. There we go. Did people hear that? In this budget, we've got 28,000 allocated under the general budget. We could move it into the capital budget. We actually have it covered in this budget. So this is a used one that Dana used this summer that we rented. This one he's talking about? The one that they're talking about, but we rented it for the month and he really thought it did a great job. How much do they run if they're full price, Tobi? It seems like it's considerably. There's like two hours left. So the Massey Ferguson that we would first use was about 155 brand new and the ones that John Deere would bet was 190 brand new. Do you know how many hours the machine has on that, Tobi? The Massey? I don't, but I could find out. What do you guys want to do? Do you want to put this off? Do you want to make a decision tonight? Wait. Is that the answer? Yeah, it's me. I have a question. Tobi is the more you're looking at for 130, is it new or used? It's used. So if the same rules apply to heavy equipment as applied to automobiles, you cannot lease a used piece equipped. I don't know if that applies, but you'd have to look at that. And you could not lease it to get a loan passed for five years. So that would be a good question when you're looking at that equipment. Can we lease it or does it have to be a loan? What's your sense of, if we take out a loan at the bank, would they give us a loan for the value of the tractor? That's a question for Sandra. Sandra, are you there? I didn't hear the question. So if it's a used piece of equipment, can we take out just a regular loan from the bank? Yeah. Well, it's up to the bank. The loan as long as the loan does not exceed the life of the equipment that's really all the bank is looking for, but we have to ask the bank. The dealer may seek for that. Yeah. I will investigate that tomorrow and find out whether or not we can, you know, how we can pay for it. Okay. I'm getting the sense that we're inclined to buy it. Is that right? But we may not be quite ready to make the decision. Yeah. I mean, the Massey Ferguson is considered a quality model that holds up well. And can you have parts available for it? Don Hawkins, who looked at our side one, I'm strongly recommended the Mackey Ferguson. And I just think long term, it's going to save us a lot more money than trying to rent and then being restricted to very limited timeframes and not being able to get everything that we need to do with the bus. Toby, the four weeks that's in there associated with it kind of cost estimate, was that four weeks that was performed this year? No. So we only did three weeks this year, which was less than the 28,000, but we did not complete all the roads and the roadside mowing in town with those three weeks. So I extrapolated to four at a minimum. And that's why it's 28,000 in that line item. Right. And that doesn't necessarily mean that in those four weeks in spring and fall that we can get all the roads mowed in that four-week window. Yep. Because it only could be run 40 hours a week. That's the rule with the rental. With the rental. With the rental. Yeah. Yeah. And that was just mowing, right, Toby? That didn't increase. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right, Toby. That didn't include any pruning or tree work or anything like that? That's correct. It was mostly all just roadside mowing. And only a single pass. There were some areas where a second pass would help. There were viewshed and safety line of sights. We didn't back up and redo a second pass. It was just a single pass with the mower. And the other thing is that there were days that we didn't go out to mow because the weather was terrible and it wasn't appropriate. So we probably lost a day or two in that three-week period where we were not utilizing the equipment. Whether there were days that it worked on the weekend. Right. And if we owned our own machine, we would have the flexibility to mow when the weather was right and the crew was working in. Essentially would give us a better result of mowing around the roadsides in town. Was the last one that was purchased and now has died? It was dead when it arrived. Right. Exactly. Was that paid for in a lump sum or over a course of a couple of years? It purchased it for $17,000. I'm pretty sure they just paid for it. In a lump sum. Yeah. It was just a purchase. So I kind of like to get a straw poll here because I think we want to at least get the sense of where we are. Where are you guys on this? Kind of getting back to my original diet tribe. I guess I don't love the idea of mowing, but I understand the logistical challenges of it and I don't have anything to really kind of compare it to. You know, I think there's value in having the machine. I don't really see much of a need to do the least to own and say let's budget for it, buy it. But I think over the next year we should look at how much time is being spent mowing and how that affects everything else and what else needs to be done. We can always sell it. It's a good tractor. So equipment tends to hold its value as long as you're not abusing it. So if it doesn't get abused and the calculus isn't working out, I think it's a fairly low risk relative to how much it's going to cost to rent one and I'm sure it's not going to be any cheaper to pay somebody to do it. Jamie, I... Yeah. Okay. He's over. Yeah, no, I don't need to ask you guys. I mean, I assume you're... Not long enough to find a used one, Toby. Well, it just popped up. I didn't really have anything to do with the delay in purchasing. I just kept my ears to the ground. So Toby, yeah, the clear sense is we want to do it. So move forward. Okay. So I'll talk to them tomorrow. I'll call and find out if there's any financing available that we can do through them. And I'll work with Sandra to see what the bank would do as far as a lease, I mean, a loan other than a lease. And then we'll just figure out what, you know, how to use the financing to go ahead, to move ahead before we make the final purchase. Great. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Do you need me for anything else on the highway budget? Kari, where are we going next? No, wherever. I mean, much more talking about what we want to give this is. Well, we had scheduled till 8.30 to keep going. You guys okay? Well, are there any other questions about the budget? Well, are they in the highway budget under stuff? I have a question. For the new form of position, was there also insurance added in for that? Yes. All the benefits. Okay. Yeah. We just had a scroll there. Yeah. So, things you had mentioned the other day, like with things like Ravelin's sand, because we had had the discussion at our previous meeting about the wash versus the unwashed, and now that McCulloch's is closed. Yep. I think there's a possibility of saving a lot of money. There. Um, sand? Yeah. Wash sand versus clean sand. I mean, or bank run sand. I mean, you're going to have some rocks, but what you're spending on wash sand is pretty expensive. And then having to mix the stone into it afterwards. I just think you could, you could probably put out bids to the local gravel pits to be able to get a better number. You know, we need, I haven't seen the number for how many yards they go through. That's probably around 6,000. Yeah. Roughly. Uh, you probably get a lot better number than that. I would think. Okay. Are you still there? Did we ever bid for those things before? No, because we had a, we had a pit right behind them. All right. There we go. Right behind the shop. And, um, It's our shop. And essentially the trucking was next to zero. Yeah. So that's what's going to change in the sand function is there's going to be a lot of trucking and time on the road. Now, do you think putting, putting something like that out to bid to even haul would be cheaper than them hauling at themselves? Yeah. I mean, I'd have to look at the invoicing on sand to find out how many cubic feet or cubic yards that we actually bring in every year. I mean, the budget, the, the actual last year was 40,700. Um, and so I guess we'd have to do, do the math or find out how many, um, cubic yards that is, and then we could put it active it. Um, the one thing you, you probably realize is our sand pile is not easy to jump to because it's way up to the woods behind where the shop is. And so, you know, a large tractor trailer full of sand can't get up there and dump. So that, you know, it has to be hauled in 10 wheel trucks. Um, so the trucking is going to essentially add a cost to the sand that it's not going to be there, but it's going to be wear and tear and then power. So does this, this sand budget include the stone that's bought to mix in afterwards? I guess so it all depended on how it was coded. I don't know, I was not involved in the coding stone when it. Okay. But I'm assuming, I'm assuming it ended up in there because it was all meant for the sand pile. Essentially we'd have to look on if, if you ask Sandra to give you an itemized listing of that line item so you can see where all the charges were. We can see who provided it and, and what was included in, um, in that line item. I guess the other, the other challenge that we have is that you kind of alluded to it as our, is our storage issue. And that kind of comes into the bidding, even if you can get a number and sort out the trucking, that keeping the volume somewhere is, is a unique challenge for, for us. Right. Well, you know, it works fine right now. It just, the limitation is that you can't get a big track or trailer for the sand in there, but it would save you money on trucking. Um, but you, you can't dump it, if the track or trailer can't go up on the top of the pile and dump it, it has to be dumped by the time we are. So, well, and we could probably also save, save on the trucking, but also save, you know, at least a couple bucks, uh, a yard out. Imagine on, on going to somebody and saying, this is the allocation that we need, and we'll be ready to take it over the next week. You know, that, that could put a pretty decent dent in the material cost, but we don't have anywhere to put it. And even if we did, we have to think about, you know, if we're going to spread it around in smaller piles around town, then you have a loading issue. I'm wondering like if we approached any of the neighboring towns that might have the storage capacity to do like a bulk buy where their, their equipment, their loading equipment is already there. Can we buy cooperatively and, and store at their facility where they have equipment? So, so Jordan, the problem is, if you have more than one sand pile, you have to have more than one loader to load your trucks when you're using it. Um, and we've talked about, you know, storing in different places, but then you have to drive the loader all over town every time you change the position of the other pile on the other side of town. Well, it's easier to get to there, but now you need a second loader. Unless it's another town, unless it's another town's loader. Or somebody else has a loader there. Well, again, so now you'd have to have a mutual aid agreement with the other town. And, um, again, I'm not sure who's appropriate there, whether Woodbury's close enough to where we end up, or whether it would be Worcester, or even East Montelia, that where we would share, we would share a resource. I think we just put it out to bit and find out how many cubic yards we need and send it out to local suppliers and see what we get. We're not likely to do that. And time for this budget, are we? Well, what we can do is I can figure out what we've purchased in the past per year, and then we can see what the prices are in different pits, and we can just throw that number in for the time being. Yeah, because I think they, like, they've priced out a bit, but it'd be nice to have that kind of deal. Okay. Can you come back to us by our next meeting with that? Oh, sure. No problem. Great. Okay, thanks. Yep. Can we, can I pick at one other line item? Yeah, are we doing, are we doing highway? Yeah, go ahead. Can you talk a minute about the 7,000 for line striping? That's for you. It was the first time last year, and it's supposed to happen. So the line striping is to pay for white fog lines on the pavement. The yellow is taken care of by the state of Vermont, so they do the yellow lines for us. We don't do that. So the line striping is just for the white lines on the county road and the other paved roads in town. So that was budgeted for this year, but not done, so we're just carrying it over to next year? Is that... Well, I'm not sure how you carry over. You have to talk to Sandra about where she wants to remain at the end of the fiscal year, or whether... The end spend on tractors. Well, they're illegal. Well, the highway funds get rolled into the equipment fund. Oh, yeah, that's super bright and attractive. Yeah, somehow we bought a $130,000 tractor with $7,000. It's pretty remarkable. Yeah, time to go home. For the change of climate. And so, yeah, so the line striping is important because those fog lines are very important for traveling up and down the county road at night in the fog. Did you get your question answered? Yeah. Other questions for Toby right now while he's here. Heads are shaking, Toby. Oh, I think you can... Good. Thank you very much. Thank your head. I'm very good. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. All right, see you. Thanks so much. Thank you. Kari, looking at your list, although I'm also looking at some drooping islands around here, including mine, the next one up would be single audit, I guess. Although there's not much we can do about that, is there? I don't know if we're going to accept all that. Do you have another question I had? Does the... I know there was the funding of the East Calus Community Store that also is tipping us through it towards an audit. And then FEMA just kind of blew it all out of the water anyway. But does that single big audit count as like the event, or does there need to be like a separate auditing of that project? Is that going to be like another $4,000 project in addition to the FEMA thing? Yeah, but the good news about that one is there's enough left in the grant to pay for the audit. Oh, right. That's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. This project includes 10,000 for the single audit, so it would be two major audits which we made. Yes, but the next one is $4,000? I think it's $4,000. So if we do end up with two major projects? Right. We're good, yeah. And then the next one up you say your list is Technology Reserve Fund. That's... Is that written in stone? Do we have to do that? Or can we... Where does that number come from? I don't know. Oh, we have to buy it first. Hey, Teagan, you've got an echo going on. Do you have... Are you using two accounts or... No, no, I don't. Did I know... Was I echoing the same thing before? It's gotten two echoes. Well, actually, Teagan, I think I can probably explain it to you. So the reserve fund for ITS was predominant created to make sure that we were funding for the replacement of on-premise server and it has to be replaced every five years. What I don't know is whether or not we're coming up on needing to replace it. I don't think we are. I think we're another year or two out. Two years out. Thank you, Teagan. And and that's a somewhat soft number. It's a pretty important piece of equipment so I wouldn't punt it too far, but you could probably do an evaluation with RB Tech relative to what your backup we have a pretty good backup situation. It's pretty easy to replace them pretty quickly, as long as you've got a good backup. Potentially you could defund that for a year, if it were already adequately funded. Is it already adequately funded? It'd be on the balance. I don't know. It'd be on the balance. My guess is that it's probably getting pretty close. How much do you need to have in that fund? Probably $5,000 or something like that. $5,000. I'm not seeing it in the report. Sandra, do you know where that's at? I don't see it where I'm looking at the in the town report on the report of capital special revenue funds. Hang on for a quick second. I lost my internet and was disconnected. Do you know what the current balance is in the technology reserve fund? Let me Is that the one called the technology fund? Hang on. That it looks like $13,000. I got it. $12,905. Let's see what it is now. Oh, that's right. I think the prior board spent how does that match your technology fund is 23,449,21. So you're good. Yeah, so I mean we're pretty close. It may not even be like a full full-blown replacement like a $25,000 charge. That would be like a full employment of all of the pieces of hardware for running it. I'd say you could probably pretty comfortably skip a year. RV Tech wouldn't love that idea. But if we're all the same people next year and we knew what we were talking about, I think that that's probably reasonable or we could just dial it back. I'm not seeing the number. I kind of lost track of page Oh, no, it's in there for $9,000. Yeah, I'd say you could pull that out or we could go down to $2,500. Which is what they did last year. Oh, gross. Let's be bold. They went down to $2,500. It had been $8,000 two years before that. Yeah. Do you want to check anything before saying that for sure? The only question is whether or not we've made any particular withdrawals from it relative to new equipment that we've purchased but it doesn't sound like we have so it sounds like it would... Yeah, so I would say let's be bold. Let's pull out $9,000. Okay. Are you having a heart attack, Tegan, or... I don't think I've talked... I'm a threat. Oh, no. She's logged in under Tegan and Team Calis. I think she's logged in twice because I saw both Tegan on screen and Team Calis on the screen. Well, now that I've lost my house to get out together, I think we're in teamwork. What I wanted to say was that we're at $25,000. Did anybody get that? Yeah, we're at $25,000. We're close. No, it's going to be significantly more than $25,000. In my memory, we're at $25,000 right now. Tegan, maybe if you spoke more slowly, we could get you. I tried. Can you see the chat, Kari? Is she typing in the chat? You might have to stop sharing your screen. Oh, yeah, what is it? It allows us to replace all computers as needed and we haven't replaced any since I've been here. The server is more than you're estimating, but I can't find my numbers at home. So this is a potential area. Yeah, it sounds like a conversation. It was a couple weeks ago. Okay, yeah. Fair points, Tegan. Yeah, why don't we look at this list of heavy hitters here. So interactive math program. Please send her a suggestion there. We could use there's a reserve fund for the planning commission. I got that right. There's so am I on? Yeah. Am I on? Yes. So somehow it's, I don't know that your side or my side but on my side anyway, we're going in and out. I'll talk as fast as I possibly can. The interactive program that's $6,000 is to is for the initial set up and the $3,000 annual fee forever more for that program. The listers indicated to me that they really want to do that. And they indicated to me that they really would have like to get that online ASAP which would be fiscal year 20 this year fiscal year 24 in which case we could take that $6,000 for the initial set up and the first year's operating costs out of the reappraisal fund is a program that would enhance they say enhance the reappraisal process. I do not know if that is accurate or not. I did not talk to Mr. Claude Felder about that. I believe John McCulloch did but there but if you wanted to wait until July 1st 20 24 that's your fiscal year 25 you could at least take the $3,000 initial set up fee that is a one-time fee out of the reappraisal fund. We have enough in the reappraisal fund we went over that to be able to take that $3,000 out as long as the board feels that is an appropriate use and so that would drop that line item to $3,000 and that line item would remain there for as long as we had the use that program it's $3,000 a year at this point in time going forward. Thank you. So my understanding we would take $3,000 this year from the reappraisal fund if you chose to onboard that program and FY24 you would take your $3,000 you would have to take your you'd have a choice you take your initial set up from the reappraisal fund so the entire $3,000 was that a I didn't hear that. I was confused whether by initial fee you meant the entire $6,000 or half of it. Half of it. $3,000 is a one-time set up fee that's the initial set up fee. I see and $3,000 is the and then $3,000 is an annual fee so you would choose whether you wanted to do this if you wanted to do it at all or FY24 if you went with FY24 which would mean we'd get that onboard whenever in the next few months you could take the $6,000 out of the reappraisal fee or at least half and the other $3,000 would be an unbudgeted expense in FY24 or you could wait until FY25 get it all set up take $3,000 again out of the reappraisal fee and then just budget the $3,000 annual fee which will be an annual fee it will be in your budget for as long as you use that program but it doesn't have to be $3,000 in FY25 pardon me it doesn't need to be budgeted $3,000 in FY25 it can be budgeted at $3,000 with the understanding that you would take the initial set up fee out of the reappraisal fund not it and you need to check with Claude and Claude Felder to make sure that's okay no you folks would want to interview John McCullough and ask him what Mr. Claude Felder said John McCullough and Jan Olson are the point people on this particular item I just happen to be in the office that day and John and I explored if the reappraisal fund could handle the set up fee again you have enough money in there yeah I think John said he'd be willing to come in and give a presentation to the board which I think I would kind of enjoy and I think we should probably bring in the webmaster and maybe any other kind of stakeholders my impression is that this resource would be pretty valuable throughout the town for work being done in a couple of different applications but just saying whether we make the decision to do it an hour later it just has to be the $3,000 you just have to remember to use the fees that are already held presentation would be helpful though I think because it's kind of a complicated thing and I want to know like if you can really use it anywhere like anybody like we could all use it in our different areas it would be exclusive to one area it would be like an online interaction it would be similar to our other interactive map with just more bells and whistles are you saying we should have them come in at the next meeting a little worried about a timing thing I don't think it has to be the next budget purposes I think we could probably go ahead for $3,000 in a plan on tapping the reappraisal fund system matter when we want to do that yeah okay next one is the Sumeria Doc that was a one-time request we have to do that don't we I know but I think that's one of those things that you could probably find I mean Curtis Pond in fundraising was able to get some pretty big donations it seems like a community member with resources might be willing to donate yeah they did do a I don't know the numbers off the top of my head but I know they did a fundraiser which I believe raised half the funds for the project and they were asking the town for the other half of the funds for the raft for the raft and you would suggest the same thing here give them $2,500 oh I was clearly saying that I believe that the $5,000 request is half the cost of the whole project exactly and they raised half of it $10,000 for a a raft no the raft is done we're talking about the dock now you're right I think they asked you're right I was confused with the raft you want to knock that down to $2,500 I think that there's a lot of generous folks in the community that might be willing to sponsor the I think that's reasonable I also am wondering about the swim fund I know that we never send these for anything right is there a chunk of money for a swim fund that could be allocated to this or is that just for that's what we did with the dock instructors no I thought that was for maintenance crash removal isn't that what they told us yeah $1,500 we wouldn't want to dip into that for the swim fund I thought that they had a huge pile of money but I thought they had accrued money somewhere that they had not thought to do no no I don't think so what is the increase of the increase of the cost for the dock it's $5,000 Whitman going to get additional bids he'd gotten one he was you're right it might be worth checking with him he was going to research if it would be cheaper to build one than buy one one of them is trying to butt in do you want me to follow up with more yes please Tegan are you trying to say something oh it's Sandra sorry hi so the swim fund historically has used the swim fund line item which you see at $1,500 to help support their swim lessons it has been as high as $3,000 in the past and that would help that would that plus the swim lesson fees paid for the instructors salaries the swim fund is also test with paying for the trash services and the Porta Lett so that's what that $1,500 goes for I do not know if they are going to do swim lessons this year but they have currently $1,700 in their account to be used toward the Porta Lett the water testing and the trash removal services that and that really may not be enough to cover all of their costs that $5,000 for the dock I believe is to cover the whole price of the dock I'm not real clear on that they have roughly $5,800 in their vanguard fund the vanguard fund is viewed as an endowment and is restricted to being able to use the interest and it is several years old the initial donation is kind of lost to history but a prior select board stopped the use of that funds at $5,000 so it has grown to I'd have to look at that exactly but it has grown to roughly $5,800 so theoretically $800 if they wanted to use all of the growth could come out of that vanguard fund and be applied toward purchasing this stuff again this goes back several years but the swim committee is tasked with maintaining the dock, the raft the trash services, the water testing and the porta potty and this is and giving swim lessons so that's what that $1,500 is supposed to cover if they're going to give swim lessons they're not going to make it they'll go in the red probably with a $1,500 appropriation my understanding they're also getting in the family very small right my understanding last I heard is they're not super optimistic about finding an instructor for this year they're still trying but they're really struggling to line somebody up then that $1,500 ought to be sufficient to cover their obligation to maintain that recreational space in terms of trash, water testing and porta let as far as the dock is concerned maybe they could tap into that vanguard fund okay well we'll hear from Mark whether he's able to get that price down and fundraising okay so the next one is the damn bond we talked about that it's just a big ticket item it was approved we'll have to remind them that now we have to pay for it proving was the easy part fire truck loan I think we're committed to that right mowing we talked about we've talked about road materials fire and ambulance service that's a tough one because it's basically presented to us not exactly take it or leave it but it's kind of well we can talk about it on the 14th when we go to their meeting that's where they're doing their budget I did find another one I was looking through that before trying to find it it was a professional assessor for $6,000 is a new item is that the new property is it like is that a contract to commemorate for property assessments that have to happen like can you answer what that one is is that the professional assessor the listers are anticipating the retirement of I think most of them and they feel you're going to have to at this point given the climate we're in you're going to have to hire an assessor so the as this amount of money this $6,000 is a precursor this is for three months of the year from April to June which let's see I'm just looking for the listers section there's a note there professionals that pro-rated for the end of FY 25 $25,000 a year is the estimate that the listers have for the town to hire an assessor and this is just that last quarter of the year with the anticipation that an FY 26 you're going to have a $25,000 item in that cell not $6,000 if we do have the professional assessor for the fourth quarter would would we not have the listers working as many hours like would there be a little bit of offset there because the Lister Wages going up to indicates to me they're anticipating that for the full year which seems like a little overlap the Lister Wages went up because they're anticipating additional time for the reappraisal which is set to start in July at the beginning of FY 25 and go for maybe eight or nine months it's all going to be in FY 25 I think they figure it will go from July 2024 to April 2025 and they are anticipating having to participate in that that's why they are they increase their wages and then in FY 25 in March of 25 which is our next nope in March of 20 let me think in March of 24 I think you have a couple of Listers stepping down they'll step down in March of 25 so with the end from March to June 25 you're going to need a professional assessor that's what I understood her note to say so only one Lister term expires this coming March and that's Wilson and I've heard he's not planning on running for office so the question will be will there be a Lister seat on the ballot to try to elect a new Lister to replace Wilson for a three-year term or any portion of the three-year term I am unable to address that question Barbara and I'm only I'm relying on Jan Olsen's note to her budget proposal which included the $6,000 I have not spoken with Jan personally but she did make I thought she came in and made a presentation to the Board but perhaps she only sent in her written proposal with notes you're reminding us you're telling us exactly what she said I don't know that there's much we can do about that one you're all hard what do you say everybody had enough I think let's go thank you everyone with your two hands start okay shall we wrap that one up for now and come back to it next week in two weeks alright, thanks Kari and Sandra let's see did we do the vote to accept the donation we did Jordan do have anything on IT another quick Curtis pond one okay that came in today there's a $50,000 grant that we are applying for that we think is a really good match for this project and it requires two letters of support and so we don't have to vote on this today necessarily but I put in the board folder a draft letter of support that Marge wrote isn't it deadline for that December 15th yes so it would be ideal if we were ready to approve it tonight so it could be included in the packet when did you put that in the folder this morning right I emailed it to everybody too yeah midday I just got it from Marge when my internet is this a short letter can you read it to us it's a page long it goes through the history of the dam it outlines the funding mechanisms that we have in place it talks about the partnership between the town and the CPA the money that's been raised by individuals and just says that the town that the grant would help the town take this important step in preserving this who's the grant from so Vermont outdoor recreation economic collaborative part of the Vermont agency of natural resources parks and rec and are there any strings attached it did not sound like it now so why are we eligible for it what's the purpose of the grant people it generates economic benefit maybe we don't know what you said part of the town Jamie say that again she said no there's no strings attached is there a match oh is there a match I will no match I don't actually have a copy of the whole grant application but I will send it around when I get it from Marge and when did you say it needs to be signed by like I think it's like two days after our next meeting so Marge was hoping we move forward today but I think if we're generally in support but want more information I think that's right I think that we can push it to the next meeting okay and you get us the rest and we'll get the rest of the details okay so I'll put it on the next agenda is that it for Curtis Pond now thank you Jordan anything on IT no not other than wanting to follow up with the conversation that Tegan and I had with RB and schedule a training of sorts I guess a focused work session with them to start diving into the shared documents structure which is going to kind of get into I think permissions and record retention and that sort of thing so it's kind of top of mind for me and that's likely going to come with some expense I guess because it's going to be a special project for them I don't know how much time so Tegan I guess we might need like a proposal like do you have time to reach out to RB and ask what the cost would be for like a scope of work for not teams roll out I guess yeah if you have a statement that you want me to discuss with them just let me know if they have better ideas I'll send you an email okay thanks thanks oh sign board orders they've gone around and I think we've signed them but can we have a motion to approve the board orders so moved take that as a second all in favor okay thank you and finally Shed V. Callas yeah I think it would be worth going into executive session to have a quick update on that oh for the executive session you want to go into executive session under under one VSA section 313 Rosetz in the agenda there yeah did you make that motion Jordan yeah we're in it doesn't really matter Jordan moved and Jamie seconded to go into executive session yep under and you've got the quote there before we do that is there any other business or can we sort of let everybody go does anybody have stipend paperwork for me I do