 to have a contest to name the path that runs along the Winooski River. You mean the bike path? The bike path. Yeah. Shared. So we, you know, we recognize that the bike path was really used by many forms of transportation and wanted to kind of educate the public around the use of the path for all modes, but also to kind of select a name that we could be, you know, proud of and that we could use, you know, and learn and know, recognizing that really no one, really knows what the name of that path is. So, especially in light of it being expanded very soon. Right. Right. So as, you know, you all know we're going to be expanding the path from Stonecutter's Way out the Gallison Hill Road and then have it run all the way out to Westall River Park there. So we had a contest that ran from essentially 4th of July through Labor Day. We received over 200 name submissions, so I thank the public for engaging in our contest. There was a lot of terrific suggestions, some honoring, you know, those who contributed to the trail. You know, a lot of John Snell recommendations to name the trail after him. As well as others who have contributed to the path. But in the end, we narrowed it down and it was interesting. I don't know that we thought we were going to go down this path and selecting the name that we did. But in the end, you know, we felt it was important to kind of honor the river, honor the path, honor the water and the connections to their cultural past. And so we selected the name, Sibawina Bay Path, which means River Water. This was a name that was, that we chose from our very own Jamie Grandfield, who's here in the audience. So thank you for taking us down that path. But before we chose this name, we thought it was important that we approached the Habanaki Council and asked them permission to make sure that this was the right use of the name, the right pronunciation and meaning. And they were very pleased that we were giving consideration to, you know, to their tribe and the fact that they've, you know, they settled in this area long before we walked the path along the river. So I'd like to read a quote that we're going to include in the press release, but I thought you would enjoy hearing what Chief Donald Stevens said regarding this. It is refreshing that people in Vermont want to acknowledge and celebrate the Habanaki people as the original Vermonters by using their language to identify various places. Partnerships like these are to be cherished and bring hope that our children will have a future path where all can be accepted and proud of their heritage. Education is the only way to bring about lasting change, and this is certainly a step on that path. Just a couple of other things I want to just mention in terms of opportunities in using this path. One is we talked about maybe our next step in looking at some signposts similar to what was installed in Hubbard Park that we might be able to identify and locations along the path pointing to different things. We also thought there might be an opportunity either in existing parks such as Peace Park or maybe the Confluence Park where we could put up a little bit more information about the meaning of this of Sibyl Winnaby, or the Habanaki, or other settlers along the Winnusky and Montpelier. And then we were planning to have a ribbon cutting and a little bit more of a formal ceremony where we can be inclusive of those that were involved, including the Habanaki tribe, maybe in the spring or summer when it's a little bit warmer. And Jamie. So anyway, I just want to share with Council this is our recommendation to select this name. And thank you, Jamie Granfield, for proposing this thought and taking us down there. Yeah, Donna. As long as I don't have to pronounce it, and you are going to have to record this on the city website. That was one of the things that I struggled with initially, and we realized that it's not that big a deal once you have it in front of you and repeat it a few times. And then it's really important for us to take that in and really have it be a part of that river and our walking along it. So we'll take care of you and me both. I'm phonically deaf, so good luck. But I would like to make a motion that the Council accept this recommendation for the name of the path that runs all the way along the Winnusky River. Thank you. I'll second that. Further discussion? I guess before we vote, I just want to say thank you to you and the committee for running this competition and to all the people who submitted to suggestions. And I'm just really excited for the bike path to be done. And then we can be talking about it and know how to refer to it. So it's great. Yes. I just wanted to mention that as I've been talking to friends around town about this extended path, a lot of folks who I generally think it was pretty well keyed in to what's going on in Montpelier were totally unaware that we were extending the path out to Gallus and Hill Road. So I'm hoping we can get your help as we announced the name and as the path is built to promote it a little bit more. And I think it's a really exciting thing and I want everyone to know about it. Great. So further discussion? Right. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So that brings us up to the Central Mont Public Safety Authority. And I'm going to turn it over to Lucas. Sure. So just for our record it is 645 and I'll call the meeting of the city of Berry Council to order. So we do have a quorum. It is being recorded. Carol will be watching the video to take. Carol's here? Oh, Carol is here. She sent me a message earlier. I didn't know if she'd be making it. So we have a quorum. Councillor Bouton is walking this way. We have Councillor Batham. We have Councillor Higbie and Councillor LePage. So thank you. And I'll turn it back over to you. Oh, okay. Well, and I'm just going to invite the CVPSA to come and give us an update. Why don't you come up here? I have one actually. Thank you. I have the whole thing. Thank you. We have a brief, first of all, I want to thank everyone for coming here. If anything, having both city councils together is a success for CVPSA. Thank you all for coming. You know, we keep coming to every year. We keep slightly changing a little bit, but I think the message is relatively the same. But we tried to flesh out a lot of the questions that came up over the summer. Sorry. Before you get too deep in, it might make some sense here. You were just introducing some people from your council. And I think it might make sense for us to just go one more time. Just everybody, say your names as we go around and then, and then even down with CVPSA folks as well. So if we could start over there, if you would just say your name. Michael Bouton. Rosie Kruger. Jack McCullough. Brandon Batham. Lucas Harry. Anne Watson. John Odom. Simon B. Golan Hutchison. Big dad John LePage. Connor Casey. Donna Bate. Tom Golonka. Pakha Lalmant. Tim Dreamy. Sam Dworkin. Martin Prevo. Great, sorry. You were saying. Okay, so I have a small, a short presentation, which I was going to go with, basically just to summarize what we've done over the past year, and also to set some parameters for newer council members to understand what you're working towards over the past couple months, as well as to sort of frame tonight's discussion. You know, ultimately, we're looking for guidance in regards to what the step forward is. We haven't generated any type of specific budget request for this year pending this discussion. You know, it could be as little as nothing to as much as whatever you want us to put on to utilize the central public safety authority structure or framework. I do want to start by just thanking the commitment of both the cities of Bury and Montpelier in this effort. You know, regionalization is never easy. Change is never easy. We've tried to take the perspective of what will improve public safety and also try to take it from a position of strength where it's not broken, where we haven't had a significant failure or we haven't had any type of problem with the current system. So I think it's from this vein of thought we've tried to put together a plan that we view as a possible step forward, possibly with alternatives or changes from the different cities. We think it would be a good exercise to go through this and go through the process of what we've looked at over the past year and to thank the board for their commitment over this period and to thank the communities for supporting us. I have this presentation. It's up on my screen. I don't know. I don't see it up there. Is there anything, John, I need to do? Turn that off earlier. And everyone should have a copy of this, so I'm not going to read it all completely, but I think I'll just go to the highlights. And what I'll do is I'll turn it over to Paco to get in any more specifics or to answer any specific questions you have and hopefully start the conversation up from last December. It's doing things that are different. It takes a couple of minutes. It takes a couple of minutes at a time. Usually this happens perfectly. Oh, yeah, yeah. There we go. Thanks, John. So I figured I'd start tonight's discussion to kind of review what was asked of us last December and what we asked the voters back in March to approve for our effort for this upcoming fiscal year. And the first item was really to encourage and include an additional member, and particularly to look at the capital fire west structure and see if there's a way to integrate that into the CVPSA model. We also wanted to come up with a plan that we could recommend to these councils, review a potential budget with some of our assumptions, review the simulcast digital upgrade project that capital S is currently looked at. So we wanted to have some sort of idea of a timeline and implementation plan for that. We were asked by council members to incorporate community and staff recommendations in public safety. We feel we've done that with numerous meetings and we'll enumerate a lot of those over the next couple of minutes. And we also wanted to identify the role of the CVPSA and any future governance or public safety and to sort of get some feedback in regards to what it could be useful in the future. So basically the summary has in regards to the first item in regards to getting a number of member. I do want to announce that we were successful in obtaining a positive vote for the capital fire mutual aid system to join us as a active board member in the process. They just started participating in our board function back in September. As a reminder, this body's contract up with Montpelier's up in two years. So I think it's integral to have them at the table to have them working with us in any of these solutions. They also are integral in the decision making in regards to the simulcast digital upgrade process. So having them at the table I think is a significant step forward. It positions us to really help Montpelier and Barrie really identify some of the infrastructure needs over the next couple of years. What we were asked to obviously is prepare and recommend a plan for the future of dispatch operations as our first entity under advisement. And I wanted to clarify these four sort of things that we wanted to include into our plans. One, we felt that it had to be, in our opinion, in the best interest of central Mont, not just Barrie, not just Montpelier, all communities in this area. We wanted it and the Chiefs insisted on that a plan to show improvement from both of the situations would have two people, two dispatchers on at all times, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Right now you do have maps in both cities and each city really, I don't think, has the ability to have two dispatchers on at all times. And we feel that's an integral safety goal that we would like to prove in our plan. We also were committed to coming up with a plan to improve technology. We think a lot of the technological problems could cause significant problems, particularly if you were to add on any new contracted members with extra revenue. We think you're at capacity at this level, but extra technology would help improve that and could potentially offer significant revenue opportunities. We were also committed to recommend a plan that allowed for this expansion, as well as allowed for potential shared savings, whether through grant writing opportunities or whether through purchasing opportunities, the CAD system being a primary example. By using it through CVPSA, you really only need one license instead of two. And so at a price tag of $125,000 a pop, you can see how those savings can add up. Just in this one project, if you look at others down the road, you could have significant savings. What we've come up with as a transitional plan, and ultimately, we feel having dispatchers work together is the best solution. And so our recommendation from the CVPSA is to explore a single size dispatch center. We're indicating that it should be leased in the early years because we figured there really wasn't the appetite to purchase a building. The bond costs of that would be too extraordinary. Long term, we would like to see an own facility. But we figured based in Berlin, we'd offer the best opportunity for both communities, as well as our contracted towns. Obviously, the benefits to which we've listed before, I won't list all of them, but I've said some before, the technology, the grant opportunities, coordination of resources, I think are tremendous opportunities for all involved. Looking at the budget, I want to explain this a little bit because we wanted to compare apples to apples. Right now, you aren't paying for a CAD. We assume in this budget model that both Barrie and Montpelier will have to assume CAD implementation in their models at some point. We put it in here, one just for CAD will be an integral part in our budget process. So if you notice, year 2020 has a leap, but it's the capital leap. It's not the operating leap. And if you can see in that graph, the CBPSA model is slightly below in all categories. And maybe that's generated through operational efficiencies, as well as some overtime savings, and Paco will go into that in more detail and explain some of the estimates he's used in that model. So just as a point of how we're going to go through this, do you want questions at the end or do you want questions along the way? Well, I have questions at the end because then Paco can get more, if you have more specific detail work in regards to the proposal, he can break these down. But I just want to give a big overview mainly for the public, as well as the Council as a whole in one shot. These are the assumptions we made. Five-year combined savings of $271,000. The CAD system upgrade is assumed in all projections, and that's $125,000 per contract. We list an excess capacity, which we don't include in these models. One of the questions from Mayor Lausanne a year ago or two years ago was that he wanted to see, well, what's the opportunity for expansion? Right now, you're at a cap at both towns. You'd have limited capability to add extra revenue. We figured in a single site with two people on at all times and have a more professional staff, we've identified about $600,000 in additional revenue, which could go directly to the bottom line to lower these costs for all towns and all members in the plan. What that looks like in terms of a digital upgrade. And in regards to here, it's a digital upgrade. I think one of the slides is missing this thing that you have. This is an older version that I have listed. The city saving slide, which we added in, it shows it breaks it down by barium up here. You have it in your copy. This one that was downloaded, I must have grabbed an old version, so I apologize for that in advance. I'll go out of this model. Looking at the simulcast digital upgrade, that was another one of the requests that the towns asked us to look into. Ultimately, this is a capital West process, but it's interval in regards to Montpellier's way of providing a single dispatch system. It runs upward of a million and a half to $2 million. How do we afford this? How are we going to, as a community, look to finance such an expensive undertaking? We feel it's essential to review. We're not ready to recommend how we're going to do that, but bringing capital West into the model, I think is a great first step in regards to addressing this issue. We've developed an initial cost model using capital West's model. This is it. We basically took what the cost would be, a $1.6 million bond at 3% over 20 years would cost the towns about $109,000. We plugged in this number into all the member towns in the capital West network to give us a starting point of what potentially it could look like. We're not saying this is what's going to cost each of the towns, but I think using their model gives us a really good starting point of how they've already fleshed out the details of what it would look like. You can see it breaks down into ranging anywhere from $1,000 to $20,000. If you break it down amongst these 20 towns, it becomes more easily recognizable that this could be attainable and it would benefit the whole community. Leading to my last assumption as well and what we want to get to meet up tonight is, well, what is the role of CVPSA? We think this is the best direction that both Barri and Montpelier and the outside towns should take. Ultimately, we would like to see CVPSA take a more active role in dispatching services. What that means and what time that means is to be determined. Ultimately, we view staff transition as employees of CVPSA. We feel that this coordination of the CAD system and simulcast radio plan will be a significant benefit of utilizing CVPSA, even if you just use this for financing or grant writing capabilities. And we feel debt issuance, no one town is going to issue this debt that's potentially needed. We feel you could use this vehicle in regards to debt service, but we're at that point where we can't really do anything more unless we have direction from the councils in regards to where you want to go. Is this feasible? Should we explore this? Do we need more answers? Do we need benchmarks in regards to when can we move forward? Because I don't think any one town can do this individually. And I'll leave us with a quote, you know, basically by John Kennedy. And I think it's really apropos to hear, you know, change is a lot of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. The future of dispatching is working together. Montpelier cannot afford to do it alone. Barry cannot afford to do it alone. I think utilizing the benefit of us working together can really benefit all of us. And I think it will provide the 60,000 or so residents of Central Vermont with something we can be proud of, what we can expand on. And you can feel confident in that if you call that 911 number, you call that emergency dispatch, you're going to get an answer, you're not going to have interference, you're going to be able to be confident that you're going to be responded to. And I think if you don't do that, we're going to go down this slippery slope where eventually you're going to come to a place where you're going to be at a situation where it's broken. And I'd hate to come back to this table in a situation where somebody's either had an accident, where the system failed, where the simulcast system doesn't work, where they're trying to catch up and it's going to be a lot more expensive, it's going to probably won't be done as thoroughly or thoughtfully, and I think you'll be remiss not to miss this opportunity. So with that, I'll throw it to Paco to answer any questions or to any other board members who have any comments. I appreciate all the effort and time and meetings we've gone to. I want to thank the staff for all their help and participation in formulating these ideas. It's always fluid. There's no set and stone right answer, but I think working together will get us to the end point in this mission. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, good. So questions? Yeah, so looking at this, the five-year budget projection, this initial 2020 year estimate that you've put together, you said assumes capital costs in the overall costs. Is that this number, the status quo number for 2020, does that include the tech upgrade that we're talking about here? It includes CAD. Yeah. So that is an assumption that these two municipalities would... Yeah, we wanted to compare apples to apples. You can take that off if you don't do it and Barry doesn't do it. Take that $125,000 out. And can you speak to the disparity and the city savings? What's to account for that jump between fiscal year 2020 and fiscal year 2021 specifically for Barry City? I mean, you see marginal savings in that initial year and then a massive jump. I'm trying to figure that one out. I'm not sure what you're looking at. You look at it. The city savings. Why is there no savings in this year versus this year? Well, I'm less concerned about why there wouldn't be as much savings in fiscal year 2020 as much as I am. Like I said, the disparity between the two years, it's just a sizeable jump. The only explanation I have is in fiscal year 2020 is where we invested in capital expenditure of an extra $125,000. And the cost savings formula was derived from taking the percentage that Barry City contributes now or would save after you subtract your revenue and factor it into this formula. So the real answer lies in the capital expense associated in fiscal year 2020. So in fiscal year 2021, the capital expense goes away and there's a jump in savings for Barry City. I'll have others, but... Could you talk a little bit about the enhanced... Oh, could you talk a little bit about the enhanced grant opportunities that you've described or alluded to for the sources? And why did you see that as being enhanced with this operation? Well, any grants will ask who are the members that are applying for the grant. And I've been informed that you have a better chance of success if you have multiple communities applying for the grant in one package. And so we haven't identified specific ones that are going to pay for this yet, but we anticipate that an application from a joint entity would have a better chance of success. That's what I meant by that. When you say specific ones, you mean sources, potential sources of funding? Sources of federal fundings, whether it's federal or if there's state or if there's Homeland Security grants available, if we don't have any right now that are on the table, but it would be ones that we would explore through our operation. Okay, so you're speculating that there could be some grant opportunities that are enhanced? Enhanced by our application as a group versus Barry versus Montpelier. Thank you. Okay, Connor. Would we envision any reduction for us in current public safety staff in either city? We were anticipating utilizing existing staff in the capacity with this total number. In terms of who they would come, depending on the structure who signs their paycheck would change depending on CVPSA involvement, but the physical people who are answering the dispatch calls, the goal of this production would be to keep all of them. Okay, thank you. Sorry, just following up. Is the FOP supportive of this plan? They've been active in our participation. Caroline's here to represent them, but we've actively engaged them in discussion. We anticipated that and we voted as a board that we would not reduce force. That was one of our discussions we did have that we integrate the existing force as is, because we will need them if we're going to have two people on 24-7. So just going off from Connor's question, if you're going to have a different entity being your boss, basically, that hiring process, are you going to basically slot into a position that you previously held that looks like your old position, or is this another hiring process where you have to basically go through that process to keep your job? It's our intent to take the existing employees and slot them into the new jobs to honor their seniority and to develop a pay structure that is fair and equitable. Now, beyond that, I don't want to go too deep because there's a collective bargaining process that we have said that we would honor and work with them. But the idea is to move the staff and to our best effort, honor their existing seniority, their existing benefits, and enhance wherever possible. Yeah, and I think that gets to my next question. In earlier discussions, there was some talk about kind of trickle in the shift from the employees being employed by the municipality and then moving to CVPSA, and then there would be a gradual shift in that. And I was concerned at the time that it seemed at the time, and again, this may have changed as the proposal has changed. So I guess maybe my first question should be, are we imagining everybody shifting on the same timetable and everybody's negotiating their contract together as opposed to what that initial plan had been was, okay, well, we were going to have superior dispatchers move over first and then very city dispatchers were going to gradually move in and would likely have shifted over after collective bargaining negotiations would have taken place. So is there still that gradual shift from the municipalities as the employers and then CVPSA? That's really a question that's yet to be nailed down. We don't have a labor management plan, but to answer your question based on what I believe is the plan is, we would work to bring them over at one time, when I say one time, as employees of CVPSA. Now the plan, if we move forward, is to work to transition the actual dispatching function. We plan on cutting Montpelier first and then a few weeks later cutting Berry City over. But the staff would be employees of CVPSA. And to the extent that we can do this and work on a collective bargaining agreement to allow it to officially happen, that's what we want to work towards. Is it fraught with hurdles, stones, potholes in terms of actually figuring out the steps? I think it is, but our vision would be to, if we get a notice to proceed, would be to start working with the employees in their collective bargaining in a collective bargaining organization. We can't necessarily assume that it would be the FOP. We have to let the employees decide that. But we would want to start that process as soon as possible to see what the landmines were in terms of making it happen. Ideally, we'd like to pick a cut over date that has a collective bargaining agreement in place and employees starting on day one. So speaking of day one, when would day one be? July 1 of 2019? We specifically didn't list a date. We listed days of timeline and rights implementation. I think it's important to... That's a difference from last year where we said, well, we want to do it on July 1. We understand that there's steps involved, that there's benchmarks that need to be met either through Berry or Montpelier. And so our point is to say, this is the plan we'd like to proceed on. If we do, I think it's important for both Berry City and Montpelier to understand this so they can integrate it in their budgets. And if there has to be some type of intermunicable transfer six months after the fiscal year starts, I think that's doable. But you need to know about this is what we're thinking. So when you go back to your budgeting process over the next couple of months, you include it. Because we're not putting this in a CVPSA budget because we don't have that July 1 cut off date like we have offered in the past. There's too many variables that could back things up. It's not ready. The negotiations with the unions hasn't been complete. So I think the go-no-go date would depend on benchmarks and parameters that are set by the chiefs. And we'd be beholden to that. And that's why we didn't want to put a set date. In fairness to explain the board's planning process in mind, if we go back in time, I originally had put together a Gantt chart of tasks with a timeline that targeted July 1, 2019. That was predicated on finding a lease, entering into a lease agreement with a facility. It was predicated upon moving staff over. More importantly, it was predicated on a notice to proceed at this time frame. And that we would meet all these benchmarks. I have been told by other people that a best practice is to implement some technologies. The CAD system that you've heard about. There's no way that that could be done, in my opinion, now based on some things I've heard by July 1. But our original, my original planning process included a July 1, 2019 date if we met all of these benchmark tasks. But the board and myself realized that we were probably better off creating months to completion when eliminating the hard dates. Because, you know, will we get a notice to proceed? Or when will we get that notice? We don't know. But it's safe to say that the timelines in terms of days and months in the plan is predicated on starting the process. Councillor LePage. I'm very pleased to hear a lot of, in the remarks, the muses, the questions about some uncertainties and such. And the quote that I want to share is from Michelle Rilke, a French poet and writer from the turn of the 19th century to the 20th. And that is to value your questions. And we are here to ask questions. And answers are not certain at this point. And I haven't seen anyone introduce themselves here tonight as a registered psychic. So obviously we're not going to have anybody say, this is how it's going to go. Now I'm not in a position of fall or against at this point. But my sort of ponder is, has there been given any thought or any plan, any discussion to assessing this, assuming we have a go ahead, some sort of consensus that says this is where the direction we're moving, that to review projections in comparison to what's actually happening. Has there been any discussion about presenting that in a very readable form for average citizens without going through the graphs and things? In other words, our projections were for X. And here we are at 90% of X. Something very basic. Has there been any discussion or plan to present that to the public, assuming there's a go forward? I think that would be a great opportunity to engage the public in regards to getting further information. We just don't need, we need to know from the cities if there is an intent to proceed. And from Barry's perspective, I see your concerns. What do you do with that space? And how much does it cost to keep it? And do you want to hire someone in that space and is it going to cost you more? We tried not to go into the Barrie budget or the Montpelier budget for residual costs. That could impact your decision. We just wanted to say what we thought was in the best interest to provide the level of service we think is needed in central Vermont. And from that framework, I'd be happy to go present more simplified slides or benefit analysis of what you're going to get better than what you are right now. I think the dispatchers do a great job. I think they're understaffed. I think they're overworked. And I think they don't have the backup that a single site with duplication and career advancement would allow for them. But I don't know how you prove that until you actually get into the model. But anyway. Right, right. I was just sort of pondering the public safety authority as being in a position of issuing a self-rating report card, not necessarily that you're going to hold joint meetings, which I think is great to have the Barrie City Montpelier. Has this ever happened before, Barrie City? Yeah. How long has it been since this happened? Two years. Two years. Two years. I am the greenest horn on the council here. There is one that's newer than myself on the council. And so it's something I had not seen. And I think it's a wonderful thing. It should happen more than just for this issue. Yeah. This is a community. This is not, I mean, there are separate council meetings, separate dates and all that. But Central Vermont is a little bit like this list of towns involved. As I read postings on Front Porch Forum, I read all my neighboring ones. And I am so impressed when I see, here's Montpelier with a smaller population than Barrie. And the postings on Front Porch Forum are three to seven times as many as we have in Barrie. There's discussion. It's lively. Be careful what you wish for. Yeah. Be careful what you wish for. I assume some people don't like it if you end up getting your ears burned on it. But it's an incredibly valuable resource to get a false. And I'm sure it has bickering, but so does the city council meeting. And so I'm just sort of wondering if there's a real clear intent to issue a self-assessment report card without being complex, without, you know, this is what we projected and this is where we are. That's what I would like to see a commitment to that. Consolidating anything instead of Montpelier's challenge. You know, if you wanted to ask me what are my self-assessment of CBPSA over the past number of years, I'd probably give us a low grade. We haven't been able to prove what the value would be. We have a lot of these theories and ideas. And a lot of it, in order to get that proof of value, is to actually take the leap and implement them. And it's hard to do. It's hard to ask a council to give up control without having strings attached. And so an entity like CBPSA is great in theory. But until we actually have teeth or ability to influence decisions, we're going to go nowhere. And that's kind of some of these sessions I think are great. But I'd rather you say, no, we don't want to stay with our very model or our Montpelier model. Or yes, go ahead. It's this middle ground that is very difficult. It's very frustrating. So I'd give us a low grade. Well, thank you for your candor. Hang on. I think we have a line here. Yeah. So we could go with Glen. Yeah, Glen was next than Susan Donna. This may be brief. I'm curious about the, you mentioned something like 600,000 new possible revenue. Can you go into some detail on that? Yes. It is on page six of the report. If you look at it, now part of it, Tony will probably, he's in fact there. He'll yell at me. Getting in a PSAP. And I don't think Tony wants to do that, but it identifies new unidentified town. It identifies Berrytown Police Department fire down medical and it lists them dollar amounts. And then it lists Berlin. Ultimately, there's also state potential revenues. So it's broken down in fiscal 21, 22, 23, 24. And you can see how it gradually increases. That number is minimal right now. I think with the lack of a round the clock two person set up, I think, I think, and without having the technology to really do it more efficiently. But, you know, I think that's a goal. We didn't include any of our models, but it's something that Mayor Lozano asked us a number of years ago. It's important to realize that if we build this, not just they will come, but we'll be the only ones in town. And if the state requires certain things or changes the way they give free dispatch service, it could open us up to really, I think, tremendous opportunity if we have it ready to go at that point. If they suddenly say, well, we can't provide Berlin, but we'll provide X number of dollars for you to provide Berlin. I could entertain those as options in the future, but I don't want to guarantee any of these revenue streams are guaranteed. Councillor Higbie. Have you considered a different implementation schedule? Sometimes changes happen a little bit more easy if you phase in slowly. And it seems to me that you're asking everyone to leap in. Why that we could have catastrophic circumstances arise if we don't leap in, which I have to say I'm not comfortable with that style of approach, either by front porch form, I understand there have been some postings, or just even implying here in this meeting that the things could get really bad really fast. I actually am very proud and pleased with the service that we get in Berry City. And I'm sure you are equally pleased with what happens here in Montpelier. Now, we could articulate the need to look at different types of communication advances. I don't think that we should necessarily jump to the other side of the coin this quickly. Having said that, I wonder if there is a different phasing in of this idea so that we have a huge organization in place in Berry City. We might have an easier time looking at the budget figures and making some changes internally. We've tried the phase approach at the board level. It's been met with lukewarm reception and it's caused us to go back and forth. Whether you do Montpelier first, I know there was a period there where we were going to do Montpelier first and then phase in Berry in year two. That was rejected for different reasons. I don't rule it out. I think anything could be on the table. I think moving the step forward I think will benefit everyone. Phase approach would work. In my mind, it doesn't seem to work with the board at this point. I would push back at the comments I just heard. Do you make council or that this is a strategy or a way of trying to push action? From my perspective, I think my comments have been consistent for the last year or year and a half both in this council and at our meetings that whether or not things move forward with CVPSA we have a serious need for massive infrastructure rehaul and repair that haven't been done in decades and that there is a significant weighting risk of serious infrastructure failure. This is based on my interpretation of discussions we've had including with capital fire mutual aid folks the people do the dispatching with the chiefs of police with people who do policing on a day-to-day work and interact with the equipment we're discussing. We're using 20 year old technology in 21st century. I think it's bound to break. Sorry, just a point of information. Are we hearing from the chiefs tonight as well? I think we could. I just want to get a sense of where the discussion is going to take us. I'd like to address that last question. And I understand and agree if we go back three years when the CVPSA put together its original business case for wanting to do this our recommended course of action was for CVPSA to take over governance and management and direction of both cities dispatching as they existed today so that we could work on trying to standardize policies and procedures, minimize the impact of any transitional move to the employees out of their work environments, take some time to work on collective bargaining agreements and really get a handle on costs and how to share calls for service between the two centers. That was, in my opinion, the least invasive approach to doing this. It caused for really a phased in approach which this board, the CVPSA board endorsed 110%. And that was rejected by staff and the councils at this time. During the course of the last three years, I have worked on putting together many variations of the original concept, the original alternatives. The original alternatives is in the business case for moving forward with trying to consolidate originalized dispatching was keep the two centers operational as one alternative, collapse one center into the other center. Another alternative was to build a new site and the last alternative was to do nothing alternative. That was always recognized as an alternative. We have gone through and I think done our due diligence in exploring every single one of those options. And we're at a crossroads at this point to either look at this plan, go back to the other two, or go to alternative D, which is the status quo. Donna, you're in line. Thank you. Thank you, Pablo, because that was going to be one of my points. The other piece is I would like to go back to the question about self-assessments. And although Pocket talked about it, he didn't refer to page 31, which is sort of the project timelines. And there are estimates there of days of endurance, notice to proceed how we would do things. And for sure, I would expect us to assess how we're doing. Are we taking longer? What went well? What didn't go well at all along the way to be very clear that we would do self-assessment and we'd be very public and very transparent about it. So I just wanted to get back to that question. Thank you. And I would like to follow up on that because on page 16, it talks about management and staff shall also work together to develop performance measures for the dispatch function. Baseline measurements will be established and tracked over time. One of the key components of CBPSA assuming responsibility for the dispatch function is to measure performance so that we can show success or alter shortcomings. And I didn't include it in this plan, but in one of the first iterations of the planning process, I took the time to develop performance measures that addressed benchmarking, calls for service, time response, cost of service, et cetera. And it was not put in here because many of the staff at the time thought it was overreaching and a little unrealistic because we didn't think we had the capabilities to identify those benchmarks and hold people accountable. Well, quite frankly, it was intended to hold CBPSA accountable as to show progress in how we develop. So tweaked it a little bit for this version of the report, downplayed performance measurements and made sure that I included staff being involved in helping us guide these performance measurements. One of the guiding principles of CBPSA that we've documented is try to be employee focused. And I've heard that loud and clear over the last three years from city councils. And to the extent that we can, we have tried to include that in our written material. You know, that's always, I'm sure staff may be sitting back saying, you know, that's nice to hear. And the proof is in the pudding, but the proof is in the pudding. And that's one of those performance measures that I think we need to be accountable for. Councillor Batham. So just, I think so, I'm clear as to what it sounds like you're hoping to get out of tonight. It sounds like you're looking from the council members present for a general do we see a path forward with this approach or not based on where we're at tonight. Is that an accurate assessment of what? I think we've explored every possible option for consolidating dispatch in central Vermont. And if you're not even willing to consider moving it forward, we should just call it a day. Because I don't know what else we can say. You know, we can say, yep. And it could be, yes, we're interested, but you need to meet this benchmark by this. You need to do this by then. You need to do this before we're going to give up control of any type of employee relation. It's fine. It's a commitment that, A, you'd consider during your budgeting process that, you know, there is a need for some capital investment in both towns. Why not do it together? And B, can we do, should we do this in a single site? Is that the solution? Because I think in our mind it is, at least at this point. You know, unless Barry is going to say, well, we're going to double the size and we can throw everything over there and you're going to put a million bucks into it or something. Conversely, if Montpelier is willing to invest a huge amount of money to add a third floor up under their police building and expand that way. You know, other than that, the other option is to build a new facility and spend 10 million bucks and I just don't see that as an option. I think we're out of crossroads and it's either you do it or you don't. And we hope you at least move the process forward. So just to clarify that a little bit, I think there's the seating of authority, which is one question. There's also the other pieces, which is Simucast and the other abilities that we could entertain through the Center for Public Safety. We've kind of proposed Simucast. It was proposed last year that we'd investigated and what we've realized is bonding $1.6 million amongst 20 towns is going to take more than just us at the table. It's going to take a roadshow between CBPSA and the Capital Fire Mutual Aid Group to go to each of those boards and say, listen, this is what we've come together as a board and if it's that breakdown or not, I don't know and maybe it's slightly different based on what we negotiate or what we figure out is valuable. That's going to take a 20-town tour to get back to Barrie Montpelier with, listen, we have all these towns signed up for a bond. Would you agree to us putting it on our ballot? And so that's a year-long process that I don't want to even start unless you guys say that Barrie Montpelier would be okay with us pursuing that because that would be the worst. We go and promise all these towns that we're willing to do some digital upgrade and then we come back to Montpelier and Barrie and they say no, no way. It's just wasted effort. We lose goodwill and you jeopardize relationships that we may have built up with them being on the board and working with us. So we're not proposing that here other than if you want, we're willing to start that process. And I envision that as a long process, about at least a year. So similarly, an interesting question, I think, is how Alucard is, are any of these choices? In my head, I've got at least three things at play. Single site and then where is that single site? There's CAD and there's simulcast. So my assumption is that if we're still two separate sites, then we need two separate CAD systems. But I'm not sure about the simulcast. Two separate CADs to me is a mistake because you're going to be paying two times what you could be doing jointly. And if you both need it and you're going toward a single site, why do it in one versus wait until you get to that point? I know it's a necessity, but they kind of go together. Can I? Yes, sir. CAD is a computer aided dispatching is a best practice. I don't want to say that the best practice is something that has to occur today, tomorrow. I have to acknowledge that the two centers now have been operating for years without an official computer aided dispatch system. CVPSA has determined that that is something that will help increase the efficiency of dispatchers in a consolidated environment. It's just a position the board of directors has taken. As far as simulcast go, I want to point out that simulcast is a radio project. It is a project that really belongs to Capital Fire and Capital West. It has maybe little impact on Berry City except in the context of if CVPSA manages it, what would enhanced radio communications look like for Berry City? I don't know what that is today, but we're looking at the best interests of everybody in central Vermont. Does it have any impact on the City of Montpelier today? And does the City of Montpelier have any obligation to fund a radio simulcast system? I don't know. The contract with Capital West says that Capital West is responsible for radio communications. What I do know is that over the course of time that I've been around, that I've listened to, is the interference that is caused with the radio communications of Capital West is very frustrating to dispatchers. And we are trying to recognize that another best practice in a regional center is to create the best radio communications that we can. And that's something we would want to do for the dispatchers. Other questions? Oh, the Chiefs. If the Chiefs would like to come up and make any comments. Sorry? Oh, did you have a comment? Let me sit back down. We received an email yesterday or the day before regarding whether or not we go dark in Berry City. And the issue at hand was the administrative positions. And I wanted to know if the Central Vermont Public Safety Authority would be handling those admin functions that currently the dispatchers in Berry do, such as record keeping? We talked about that. Do you have an answer to that? Well, yes. We have said and I looked through this report and I didn't necessarily highlight in this current report the administrative functions. That we would envision dispatchers assuming in the consolidated site. We would assume, we have said before that we would assume as many of the administrative functions that was reasonably responsible to take over in a site that's not in the police departments. We would provide assistance to the police departments and the police officers were appropriate. But we would also take over to the extent that we can all of the criminal justice database responsibilities as well. So are there certain administrative functions that still would be required in the two cities police departments? I think there may be. And I don't know that we could do them all, but we would make every effort to manage what we could. But there would be certain things that would not be done by CBPSA running your jail, is not dispatch related. We could put video technology for like a door. So if somebody came up to the door, they could video link up to the single site with the dispatchers. We wouldn't have a person there downtown Berry. So calculating the dark costs and we've talked, Steve's been great. He's come to our meetings and we've tried to, we didn't want to get into what are the policy issues in Berry City in regards to what do you want to leave there or what do you require there? And then try to incorporate them in our budget. We figured it's easier to say, well, we'll do whatever we can that's currently being handled by the dispatchers in this other site. But stuff that needs to be handled in the Berry City area right there, whether it's the jail. We've mainly talked about the jail function. But the other administrative tasks, I imagine we would continue as is. But that's why I had Paco answer. Anything else? Okay. Chiefs, if you want to come up and make any comments. I'm sitting next to Paco. Chief Brandt. Do you want to be up here too? If I don't, he will kick me under the table. Hard to do that from the other side of the room. Those are mine. And I don't have another pair on me which is unusual. I have a copy of your letter to the pocket I handed around. So they all have a copy of your letter. So for my council members, they've heard a lot of this last night. One of my first questions is if TV PSA was to go forward is the question of does Berry City go dark? Does my period go dark? And what does that work financially? And what are our citizens expectations? When they see the police sign and you go to the front window and nobody's there at 6 o'clock at night. That is a policy that councils have to make independent decisions on. But it also comes with a financial component depending on where you want to go with that. In Berry City, that can be as simple as, and it's Councilor Budin's question. I think two administrative people and the way I came up with two. As I look what happened around the state and the state, police consolidated into the PSAPs and put admin people in the barracks. Very familiar with that. I did almost 27 years with the state police. They have admin staff during the day but at 5 o'clock, the place is dark. So admin staff to the day would probably be a dollar figure in the 150 to 160 range for two people for the week. Then I looked at what if we kept the lights on and we ran our jail, etc. That takes the price up considerably. Things that we don't consider that have nothing to do with money. Absolutely nothing to do with money. On going dark, closing our jail and requiring that my officers have to transport people. Granted, there's overtime involved in that. That's not my biggest concern. I have concerns about finding officers available to come in to transport prisoners to St. Johnsbury and or Chittenden County. And then what does that look like if you have a night like the night before last where it snowed all night? I worry about my safety of my officers. I worry about the safety of my prisoners. Do I pull staff that are supposed to be patrolling the city to do these transports? So those are other concerns. And in Berry City, Berry City PD did 199 lodgings as 199 transports. Am I going to burn my staff out by calling them in at all hours? So those are some of the other concerns. And I don't have an answer from the Berry City Council with regards to do we go dark? Do we stay open? I know from my conversations in Montpellier that Montpellier had a building for a dollar and chose to build a PD downtown so that you had people here. I have my own thoughts on what it's like to go to an office and not have anybody there, but I'll keep them out of that part. The other thing is we talk about dispatching for Central Vermont and Montpellier and Berry going into one location and opening the doors for these other services. When we look at what people have for options now, as long as the Department of Public Safety is giving dispatching away for free, you are never going to be competitive if you're charging. Those conversations have been taking place in Montpellier. They got benched last session. I'm sure they're going to be coming around again this session. But as long as you have somebody out there giving dispatching away for free, it doesn't matter what we do. We're never going to be competitive. That's like a free bottle of water with no label on it versus one that says it's from a mountain spring in the Adirondacks. I'll take the free one. This one's $10. So that's a concern. And then when we talk about patchwork and I've heard the different comments of her comments from my staff about the patchwork services, I want to be clear in Montpellier, if you are a Montpellier citizen or a visitor or someone in need in Montpellier and you call for a police, fire, or EMS, you get Montpellier dispatch, you get Montpellier police, fire, or EMS. The same holds true in Berry City. The same is true in Berry Town except for your dispatches all from LaMoyle. It's our other little communities that we haven't brought into the fold and haven't got by in that are the communities that are patchwork. The patchwork for our communities only comes in in a mutual aid situation. And that is always going to be out there, particularly in law enforcement, if our mutual aid, as it is in Vermont a lot of times, is state police. I believe are always going to dispatch for themselves. Okay. We talked about simulcast. I had a long conversation with the deputy chief, chief Brent, the city manager last week. Yes. Yeah, last week. I've been up since four. Last week about simulcast, I think there's some great benefits to simulcast. Question is, do the communities want to pay the price for it? I think it solves a lot of problems. I do agree with Tom that someone has to do a horse and pony show to all those small communities under capital fire mutual aid. But I don't see the figure for the added income. I don't see that coming as long as DPS is willing to dispatch for communities free. I have communities around here that are dispatched from three different entities. But my period, very city and very town are not those three or any of those communities. So I think that takes your money down. And I think your savings go when we look at what's available out there. And I think until the question when we talk strictly money till the question of what the city's expectations are of their departments on do I go there at nine or 10 o'clock at night? And find nobody there or somebody got to be there until those dollar figures ironed out. This has a potential to cost you a lot more money. Might be breakeven might cost you money. Is it something that's going to happen in the future? I think it will. But I don't think it's going to happen till DPS stops giving dispatching away other chiefs. So touch upon also the what is the current condition of capital of capital fire mutual aid radio infrastructure. And there is no question that it is very old. It does need to be upgraded and replaced at some point. Is it are we on the verge of catastrophe? No, we are not. You know, but this does need to happen. I don't know. And again, in our letter, we talked about who does take the lead. That's something that we're, you know, given our contractual model. That's not clear might not necessarily not be the lead entity. But it's going to make clear that it's only it does need to happen. But again, how is that sort of emergent crisis? Because for the public safety, people need to be reassured to that they're also done its systems in any crisis. But it's something that needs to happen. My pillar, we're really very fortunate that we did up. We were able to upgrade to a digital sample cast system on the police side. So we do have those very current technology for the Montpelier police department. And, and, but it's still without, you know, we're still working through some bugs. And some of that has to do with our inability to do single site sourcing on the on the grant at the time. So, but that makes sense. So, but again, putting that in the proper perspective of what we're up against. And as far as that, you know, we don't operate a jail in Montpelier. So some of our operational challenges and needs are not the same as very city, but they would, they would, they would impact us to a certain extent. And I think it is cheap on, but you're sad, especially here in Montpelier. That's a, that's a community conversation to what is the level of service and that expectation for the Montpelier police department at different hours. I think, I think the culture is different today and the acceptance of technology. And certainly that Chief White was faced with back in the late nineties on whether or not do we build out the armory on East Montpelier Road as the new public safety site where we would have been co located or just the police department. And the community was very, very clear that it is worth the investment given a small footprint that we had to build our police department that we beat downtown. So is that the same today? I don't know. And I wouldn't really, you know, there are technological solutions. And Essex Police Department is an example from Montpelier that I would certainly see where you could come into a lobby. There would be a virtual presence where the dispatcher could see the person. You can see what's happening. They could see, you know, read their facial expression on the immediate danger or something chasing them in there. There are technological things that they can do. Can they control remotely the door access, for example? So those are options. But again, that would be for my next I'm speaking solely for Montpelier and what those applications would be in service delivery. And right now, as I said, and I'm also in agreement with our folks from Capital West, and that's really Montpelier's partner right now, even though they're also a member of the board, we need to see, and for me to make a recommendation, I need to see something with some degree of specificity as far as what is this plan or option going to be equal to or ideally better than what we have that exists today. Given the partnership today, we don't have very town. We don't have Berlin, although Montpelier does provide the dispatching as part of the Capital Fire Mutual. Capital West, rather, we do provide the dispatching for the Berlin Fire Department, the Berlin Fast Squad, the Northfield Ambulance Service and the Northfield Fire Department. State Police provide free dispatching to the Northfield Police Department after hours and on the weekends. So that's kind of where we're at when you look at what are the potential partners. Also, we provide dispatching for Waterbury Fire Department Ambulance Service. So again, we also have to be careful, and this was stated in the past as well, that with Capital West and the 17 communities that we provide service for Montpelier, we need to make sure that we don't build on infrastructure, hire employees, and do everything based solely on contractual relationships. And that's something that, you know, very proud of our collective work, I should say, with Capital West, that even though it's still technically, yes, it's a contract, but it really is a partnership, the input that they have provided in working with our dispatch supervisor, Fred Cummings, who's here to improve, especially on the fireside, systems, you know, so there's been a lot of things happening. That's what a partnership does. How do we improve public safety, whether you're out in Calis, whether you're on Main Street, Montpelier, and that's something we're proud of. And it's not a broken system, and, you know, as Cummings pointed out, but is it the best system? There's always a better way of doing things. It's usually a price tag attached with that, but I am committed to working in saying with Capital West, as I've said, both in council meetings as well as in the authority meetings, a threat. And lastly, I just want to also add just a few points that I'm really, no matter what happens, the work that was done by this board was not for nothing. I really want to drive that point home because it has provided training opportunities. We just had two dispatchers. We're just in Montreal at an APCO conference to specifically look at and learn more about CAD systems, introduce new ideas and new ways of thinking. And I think one of the biggest ones, even though Chief Bombardier and I have worked since I was, you know, a rookie auxiliary trooper in 1985, so long as we've been around, but it really pushed us further to the continuity of operations planning, the bridge system that's now at least creates a redundant ability. So if something were to happen, we had to evacuate them off to your police department. We could dispatch all of our clients out of the very city police department and vice versa. That's something that I think happened a lot sooner because of a lot of conversations. There's a lot of ways of looking at it because of the authority. And they provide a radio console for our police department. So third console that was needed. And I think overall, I was kind of, you know, counselor, you alluded to the relationships of communities. And I think those are all things that I'm very grateful for. Even though I don't think right now, depending on what level you want to, you know, I just, if it's just turning over the authority of what we know and what's at stake to an unknown at the moment, that's what makes me nervous. And that's why I don't recommend a full seating of authority at this time. Because again, limited partnership with other communities. And that's, and that's, and what is the more detailed plan? Because I'm pretty nervous about a leasing site, moving everything into one area. You know, there's a lot of physical security requirements for the staff in particular, as well as the technology and the redundancies from whether federated power, which definitely would be part of that proposal, to then moving again to a hopefully an owned location. So again, I'm thinking what do we currently have right now? And also, we do not know what level of leadership the legislature will or will not take. You know, in kind of leveling the playing field, if you will. And, you know, in all seriousness, I do need to consider, or whoever's in my position, or leads, you know, what's the month from the month, player police department, if we go to a single site, that person, you know, may have to consider it being a single-stage site with a PSAP. Because we, again, there's a lot of unknowns there. And I think, and lastly, I just want to say, no matter what happens, there is now a foundation. There is a roadmap for how communities can come together on this. And I just hope that's, I know I kind of said a lot of things here, but that's what we've been, our message has consistently been with the board meetings and our participation with this effort. Do you have something to add? I wanted to springboard off two things that Chief Ago said. Okay. Other things that have come of this, and before most of the CDPSA board members were around. I've been involved in this conversation for almost 11 years now. And the two things that we said from the start that weren't there, that are in place now, is an equitable sharing plan and a governance model, which are huge. Don't want to harp on dollar things, but one of the things that's in here that nobody's mentioned is the thought that our two communities would maintain our radio systems that we have in place at our departments now. That comes with a fee. Sorry. That's great. No. Okay. Oh, come here. So current state, when there's a problem in the jail cell, what actually happens right now? So it depends on what the problem is. Honestly, if it's a medical problem, we would call medical staff and an officer. If it were a fire, dispatch would let people out. I mean, there's a pamphlet that's been approved by the federal government to operate a jail. Those are the procedures. All of those require people inside the building. Okay. And I think you asked last night, we don't have a desk sergeant. I know we see on TV where they have a desk sergeant, somebody that's in the building all the time. We don't have the type of setup. Okay. And what does Montpelier do with when you have arrests, if you don't have a jail cell? Most of our arrests do not require lodging. And we use the detox, whatever possible. And again, that's Washington County Mental Health's call. But we use the lighthouse. If there are going to be a low risk person for us, you know, where they can go to be, you know, sober up safely. And we will transport. And we have also used Berry City. And, but again, we're used to the, you know, we, in many cases, if we have a difficult prisoner, chances are we're going to take them to one of the correctional facilities because what we cannot happen is, you know, one shift will bring that prisoner to Berry City. And there's a problem. Now it might be four o'clock in the morning. There's two, there's two police officers on for the entire city of Montpelier. And now we've got to transport that person because they can no longer stay in Berry City to St. John'sbury, which is the usual spot. Okay. Because we were unable to do that. You know, we just deal with it and make a call to folks and we'll do that transport. The email that we received, we have about 199 prisoners in a given year. So that, if I was reading the email correctly, would that be correct? That's the way I read it. We were also, we were told last night, too. Yes. 190 prisoners. Those are power prisoners Berry City. And what I'm here, that's a huge, that's a huge difference between Montpelier and Berry City when there's only like 2,000 difference in residents. Wow. So to rephrase the question. So basically, why are we arresting 199 people or it sounds like in Montpelier? 199 prisoners are both detoxed. Washington County mental health did not feel we're safe at the lighthouse because we do the same thing. The berry that Montpelier doesn't bury is bring people to the lighthouse when Washington County mental health says they are other people that need to be incarcerated or can't make bail conditions. We will hold them in Berry City for up to 72 hours. We very rarely transport people to Chittenden or St. Johnsbury, unless they are unmanageable from the start. And we have exactly what Chief Facles is talking about. We have been caught. Second, third shift comes in and somebody becomes unmanageable and you have to call officers in and transport them to a regular Department of Corrections facility. So the bail piece is that more consistent with the courthouse? Is that what you're saying? I'm the bail. I mean, we call for bail on people when it's appropriate. And if they make bail, they get a citation to appear in court based on what the court conditions over lease were. But there's also another 60 roughly, I'm going from memory now, 60, 60 plus people that lodged at Berry City for other departments. I want to be clear too, as far as, it's from my rules of criminal procedure, which spells out what shall be done when we have somebody that's arrested. So it's not a discretionary difference between Berry or my appeal. I just want to make that point clear. It's rule three. And we follow rule three with regards to people in custody and setting bail, etc. And it's trending that fewer people will be incarcerated. I think that's a general death where it's kind of... We will see. For the record, I wasn't insinuating that... No, no, my concern was that you don't have any and we have 199, which is a huge difference. No, I was not asked and I've not supplied the number of people that we lodged. So let's just be clear. The number is not zero. We do, people do go to jail sometimes. Well, we have two holding cells. And so we still have to... But they're just that. They are not considered a longer term. So they're just basically there until the paperwork is processed. And then they either go on to either a release or depending on a correctional facility, to which would include the option to go to Berry City, which we also will take advantage of as well. How about how many of those do you have? I don't have that number. I can tell you that roughly we arrest anywhere from 250 to 300 people annually, but the vast majority of those are not lodged. So that does not include detoxes. And would we be in a similar position if we went to a single site that that would not become available or that would not be an option? Yeah. What it does, it would just make... Then anybody that we would, you know, on the criminal side, they would need... They would have to be transported to, most likely St. John'sburg with a transport team, which is two officers to transport. And women would go to the Chinne County Correctional Center. Okay. Well, so if there's... Oh, okay. Yeah, go ahead. So I'm just trying to wrap my head around the different options here. And can you clarify a little bit the... So $125,000 initial investment for the CAD, either together, $125,000, or if we were to do it separately, we each pay twice. Is there any way to use CVPSA to buy it once for both of us under our existing... We did nothing else under our existing structure. And I kind of left that out because I didn't want to continue to talk when I thought Councilor Bratham, that other thing to go. But what I have is more discussion than it is a question. So with regards to CAD, and I talked about this last night with my council, two weeks ago I attended the statewide VALCOR meeting with the chiefs, any VALCOR users. So for people that don't know VALCOR, it is a police record management system that was developed in Vermont. It was the brainchild of Mike Shirling, who was the chief of Burlington PD and some of his staff members. They went to a company in California and said, this is our vision. Can you build it? It has morphed into a record management system that is Vermont-based. We do things differently in Vermont in case you haven't noticed. That serves Vermont law enforcement with regards to what we're trying to get out of our records when we do searches and how we want to store things. VALCOR has just taken some huge steps and moved people, staff people to Vermont with the idea of servicing Vermont and keeping the VALCOR Vermont model going while developing it outside of Vermont for sale to other entities outside of Vermont. We are a partner agency. So Montpelier, Burlington, Berry City, the sheriff's departments that are using VALCOR are a partner agency. And we have a governance board that when we want something new, we bring it to the board, they decide. One of the things that's on the table is CAD. And part of that discussion has been driven a lot by Chief Locke of the fire department in Burlington. But based on the conversations I heard two weeks ago, CAD in some form connected to VALCOR is in the future. What it looks like, total cost, don't know. Is it going to be VALCOR CAD or is it going to be an outside vendor partnered with VALCOR that has, you know, a connectivity for sharing information? But that is on the table and part of the discussion with VALCOR. So that $125,000 for each agency could be greatly reduced. So I guess I would ask Tom to comment on that because the report really implies that you think that this probably isn't likely to happen with VALCOR in the near term. Well, VALCOR, I don't know much. I know we both use VALCOR. So if there is some entity, some new product that comes out that can integrate with VALCOR, obviously we have to investigate it and see if it's worth it. In terms of your question in regards to licensing fees, I can't imagine CVPSA could purchase one and use it for both Barry and Montpelier, even though they're just members of CVPSA. I think they would have to be, and I imagine you have to check the license agreement, that it would be employees of CVPSA and that's what you're buying the license for. I cannot imagine that we could share it, buy it and then share it with our member towns, but that's something we could look into. I think it's worth looking into because, I mean, if that is an option that makes some of this math very different for us. Oh, definitely. We're not just blindly saying we're going to spend. We're saying this is the worst case scenario we think could happen in either town if we go it alone and if we can find savings either working through VALCOR or getting a cheaper alternative that can integrate easily, that can solve the same problem, I think we'd explore that. But you can't do it unless you're at the table and you're kind of working together to work through these issues. And I think that's where we felt CVPSA provides that bridge. Other comments or questions? Okay, so I just want to say thank you so much to the CVPSA board for doing so much work on all of this and to the Chiefs also for spending time and working through all these great questions. And so I think it's probably about the time for us to, as our respective councils, sort of weigh in. I mean, at least I'll speak for Montpelier in saying that I don't anticipate any vote tonight. But I think it'd be good to give a sort of, you know, a general sense of where, what you're interested in moving forward. Does that seem fair, Montpelier? Okay, do you want to say anything like that? Just ditto. I mean, if you want, we could actually just go around the room like we did before to see people's interest. I'm wondering if it makes sense to do, like, one council and then the other. I don't know, just because, like, just to have a... Otherwise you have to, you know... Are you going to hear any public comments? Oh yeah, that's a great idea. Please do. Sure. And not just Stephen, but if anybody else from the public has comments, now would be a great time. Go ahead. Yeah, Stephen Whitaker and Montpelier, I have been engaged with this process, not as closely as the CBPSA board members. I've spoken to both this Berry City Council prior to your joining, but on this topic I've suggested that you be more engaged, more than at a drop dead date. I want to acknowledge and commend the work that Paco's and his governing advisors have completed so far, but it is far from sufficient or actionable. This started as a failover redundant two-site concept where either site could carry the full load for the entire authority's jurisdiction. That's a fundamental design principle that we have strayed from. We have to move back to the idea of full failover potential. Either site could be damaged by bomb, flood, fire, poison, whatever, and you need full capacity to exist, both in equipment and personnel at the written site. The technology and communications have to be designed that way as well. The technology and communications between all the repeaters need to be designed in a ring architecture, so one tree falling doesn't create a huge dead zone among the transmit dispatch area. That type of planning has not been done. The local presence keep alive concept. The idea that people who have been here, living some on the margins, know that they can go behind the building here to the police station and get help. If that were to go dark, it's not sufficient to have a video camera if you can find your way to it and figure out how to engage it. You mentioned the scenario that comes to mind is an OD victim stumbling and hoping to find someone and they see a TV screen and they're dead before the people arrive. Steven, could you speak to the mic? Thank you. Sure, I didn't realize I wasn't. I don't know. So there's a telecom plan. Fundamentally, we need to inventory where our repeaters are, where there's fiber, where there's not. This plan refers twice to relying on consolidated communications. We're talking tens of thousands of dollars per month, at least in communications costs here. That's a significant percentage of these budget estimates you're seeing. We've also just formed a fiber district that could and should prioritize building to the needed sites for this public safety imperative. We don't need to be hemorrhaging a million dollars a year or two out to consolidated communications. It just doesn't make sense. The planning is the simulcast plan. I adamantly reject soul sourcing anything, especially just on the thin concept that we have to choose one vendor. Harrison Motorola both make good stuff. Other vendors can provide Motorola. I haven't heard any sound reason for not using standard bidding processes, especially on million dollar purchases. There's no labor management plan, the failover resilience plan. There's no plan for a PSAP. I do commend Chief Fecos for bringing that up tonight. Montpelier was a PSAP when I helped design the first 901 system in the early 90s. And it should be a PSAP again. The reasons it got out of PSAP were related to politics and mismanagement of the state 901 governance issue. Both Barry and Montpelier could be PSAPs and with full failover capacity for each other. There's no political legislative plan. There's no one has yet articulated that we need the legislature this year to weigh in and resolve whether or not the state police are going to give free dispatch to towns that want to freeload and whether or not it's okay that the Memorial County Sheriff can dispatch marginally effectively for a town 35, 40 miles away and basically disrupt the economics and the convening of this district or the concept of the district. Barry town needs to be an essential partner here, but we're not going to get there until we create the uniform training standards and get the uniform quality control of everybody's services up to where Barry feels safe. That's fundamental. And it's probably not okay for Barry to... Well, I don't want to get too mired in it because I know I'm... You're at about four minutes right now. Well, I just wanted to... I asked you... It's okay. Just want to be conscious of the time. That's a topic I've asked to come in and speak to you for half an hour. That's fine. I'm not cutting you off. I just want you to know. There's no privacy plan. I mean, we hear casual references to Valcor and CAD, but I have done my own FOIA request of the Valcor system. There's 20 years of erroneous, inaccurate, unsubstantiated, rumor and innuendo in there. And there's no provision for public access to it or expungement of it. Fundamentally, we need a privacy plan. We are not building a big brother. You need strict standards on what's collected, what's expunged, what's accessible, what's correctable. The short-hold and transportation plan, they've covered it as well. This will not work. CVPSA is a consolidated dispatch and consolidated call answering, single-stage dispatch, PSAP answering and dispatch is a good concept. It is where we need to be headed, but we're not on that track yet. This will not work if we do not get the economics of Waterbury, Berlin, Northfield and Berrytown at the table. It is insufficient to create the illusion of a bigger membership by roping in Capital Fire Mutual Aid and giving them two votes for 26 towns. The governance model is not cooked yet. The CV-Fiber governance model, the Communication Union District, is one town, one vote, and I've continually pitched that. But until we get Berlin in, which requires our Secretary of Administration and the legislature resolving whether they really do get 20 years of free dispatch for hosting a battle hospital, until Berlin is at the table, this will not work. But Berlin, Northfield, Waterbury, Berry and Montpelier, and Berry City Montpelier, that's a viable economic model to pay for the simulcast system to do what you're trying to do. The telecom plan needs to be both for public safety and for broadband. We cannot ignore the gaps in both the public safety radio, LMR, or the cell. We need to integrate this, we need to quickly fill the gaps in the cell cover just so people can call for help if they run off the road. These priorities are not even visible in this plan. So I'm trying to say keep up the momentum. Don't just call it all to a stop, it will not stop here, but the current path we're on is not, well, I have more to say, but you got to make a special meeting or invite me. I mean, I sat here for 35 minutes of housing advertising. I anticipate we may have other meetings too, but we certainly want to hear your thoughts, but just out of respect for everybody's time too, please feel free to write to us. Sure, that's fine. Other comments from the public? I wanted to specifically, I mean, there are employees of the various departments here, and so I want to invite them to speak and us to hear their voices if they would like to. I don't want to put anybody on the spot, but they're not just members of the public, they're very impacted by this. Or Ms. Erl, if you have anything? No. How much more you got, Stephen? One minute. Okay. Fundamentally, I want to second that point. Having the full buy-in from the people who are doing the work and seeing this as an advancement path and an upgrade and better pay and higher skills in a path to management level, that's fundamental, and that's not here. I would say plan first, set aside the discussion of seating authority. That's a year, two years, three years out. Get the legislature to resolve the issue of poaching long-distance dispatching and Berlin's free-ride confusion. If we do the telecom planning for our member communities, both for broadband LMR cellular, that's going to build the trust and the cooperation from which you could then get closer to the point of people seating authority. Integrate the functions incrementally. As you inventory the telecom infrastructure, you can inventory the trucks and the specialized equipment that different departments have. Don't lose momentum. Let the momentum that has been built here throw us into the next phase, but it's going to take some real diligence on all of y'all's part, more so than CVPSA, to define what that next stage looks like. Thank you, Stephen. Yes? I would just like to, one final comment. I'll be quick. It's a personal note. I've been before the two councils for the last three years. I've produced varying documents. You have all listened attentively and shown a lot of courtesy to my efforts personally. You've provided me with direction and constructive criticism that are appropriate. And I want to thank you for that. Thank you, Paco. So, oh, Donna, yeah. I mean, I was just looking at the agenda. Maybe Barry City has it to it, but we have an agenda item. It has a little sheet. And on the sheet, I just want to read this because I don't see any asks for succeeding authority. Is, shall the city council support CVPSA's timeline as presented and support the plan to move forward with this implementation or attach any conditions to the CVPSA's planning process deemed necessary by the city council? So it's more of a nod. Do we keep moving ahead or don't we? And if it's a nod to move ahead, then what do you need to make that possible so we can follow and insert what we need to in our own timelines and measure whether we're getting there or not as we move forward to what your input is. Thank you. So I wanted to defer to Mayor Herring's idea here and just go around. If Donna started, then we could just work around the table. Do you have anything more you want to add to like what you think about what we should do? I support the statement that we encourage them to move ahead and if other council members want to insert conditions that they should be looking for benchmarks, then great. Sure. So try to be pretty brief here and just want to say I think that he's done a tremendous amount of work here and really appreciate the time and effort that's gone into it. And I support upgrading the technology, no question. I support the look at regionalization. There's no question of my mind on that either. I think the uncertainties are still in my mind at weighing the benefits of adopting this timeline at this point. And I've spent too much time over in the State House to have any confidence that in the next biennium we're going to get many answers to these questions. And I do look, I come from a labor background, I look at sort of equating the Act 46 collective bargaining structure to this. It makes me very nervous to be honest. So I'm reluctant to say like stop what you're doing, but as far as like giving a green light to the timeline at this point, I'd have to say I don't feel confident it's ready for prime time. So that's just where I'm coming from. But thanks very much everybody. All right. I guess it's time to echo the thank yous for people's time and effort in this and multiple presentations under a lot of circumstances. And I guess I'd have to echo my previous speaker, Montpellier City Council about my hesitancy in the face of, it seems quite obvious that there is more research related to a lot of nuts and bolts in infrastructure. I would like to acknowledge our member from the public. I thank Donna for her term phonetically deaf. So I can't really get your name out of that. Steven Whitaker. Steven Whitaker. I think your comments about the nuts and bolts aspect of this are very appropriate and need to be looked at quite seriously.