 So folks, I make it to be five after six. I would suggest we get started and as people join in, we'll bring them in and they can contribute. I think most of you know who I am. I'm Peter Hood. I'm the chairman of the Select Board and I will be the moderator of this evening's meeting. Just a couple of things before we get started. I would introduce the members of the Select Board who are present. You've heard from me. We have Phil Hayek. I fill. We have Steve Martin. We have Mary Skinner. Liz Sharf is not with us. Her father passed away the other day, so she's dealing with family stuff. The other thing I just want to let a couple of things. I want to let people know that a week ago, one of the members of our road crew passed away, not on the job. He worked a full day as last day, went home and passed away overnight. Steve McClaren, the newest member of our road crew. So I just want everybody to A, be aware of that and B, be thinking of him and his family. Oh my God. What machine did he run? He was the newest member of the road crew. I think he pretty much did a little of everything. I mean, he's only been with us for how long, Victor? Six weeks. November 29, 2021. Yeah, longer than I thought. Anyway, it's still sad and we're back in the mode of needing to hire another member for the road crew. So that's not great news, as I say. So another thing just quickly as we start, if you wish to be recognized, first of all, I would appreciate it if people would keep themselves muted for the most part until they want to speak or they're recognized, just so it keeps the background noise down. And if you want to be recognized, wave your hand. I've got quite a few little boxes on my screen, so it's a little challenging. And if Dorinda and Sarah are going to keep their eye out, if I fail to recognize somebody, they'll remind me. And also if we're all really bad and you haven't been recognized, just speak up and interrupt us and we'll be sure to recognize you. It's our intent to obviously recognize everyone who would like to speak. I think that's pretty much it for housekeeping items. I would just say by way of introduction and I hope, first of all, everyone has received their town report. Is there anybody who does not have a town report? Good news. I was really worried and last Thursday I received mine, so I presume almost everybody had their town report. So we'll be referring to pages in the town report as we work our way through this process. And if you have a particular item you're concerned about, please reference the page number. Also, when you are recognized to speak, Sarah is trying to take notes of the meeting, the minutes, and she needs to know who's speaking. So if you'd identify yourself, she may or may not be looking up to see who's talking on the screen. And if you forget to say who you are, I will I will do my best to remind you. So with that, wave, keep yourself recording in progress. And hopefully we can have a good organized meeting and everyone can get their questions and concerns addressed. By way of introduction to the meeting and the information and you're going to hear this from from Phil again and and other board members, but we had one of the most challenging budget processes that I can remember. We had a challenging situation with regard to wages trying to hire a new accounting bookkeeper person in the office and a new member of the rogue group. We were unable to do that at our current level of wages and we've all been reading in the paper about pandemic wage increases. So we ended up having to pay the new people more and at the same time turn around and bring the wages of the existing people up. So we were being fair to everyone and we did that. We did that midterm. So we've got a budget challenge this year to find that to find that unbudgeted unbudgeted expense. But as a result of that and other cost increases, we have a significant budget increase this year, 8.73%. We started out with well over 10% and we worked very hard to get the budget increase down to 8.73%. We're hoping that an increase in the grand list will help out with some of that and that won't result in that 8.73 increase in town taxes, but that will remain to be seen. So with that, Phil is going to give an overview of the budget situation and refer you to his budget report and also the detailed budget comparison which is in the town report. With that, Phil, you're on. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. I'm not going to read this to you. Some of you may have had a chance. I had it posted on front porch forum yesterday in anticipation of this meeting. It also is in the town report and we've been trying to do this every year now for the past few years to kind of hit the highlights of the items that are the major drivers in our budget increases or in decreases in some cases in lines. But Peter stated, starting out, the challenge that we had with personnel really was unprecedented and it was an extremely competitive market trying to hire people. In several cases, we went through searches, we interviewed, we made offers. The competition for positions with other towns or with private industry was out there. People in some cases that we thought were going to come to work for us went to work for others. We were finally able to fill positions and that kind of trickled through the whole budget, if you will, in a sense that we raised wage rates above what we were currently offering to, in some cases, fairly long-term employees and felt that we couldn't ask those people who had been loyal to us for some years who had a history working for the town to work for less money than somebody who was newly hired. So that trickled through and of course that had an impact on, you know, unemployment compensation, workers come up, benefit packages and all of those things that go along with the cost of personnel. So that was a major driver throughout this budget. The other thing that shows up as you work through pretty much everywhere, which I think all of you understand just from terms of your own personal budgets, is that the cost of goods and services generally because of the pandemic is up and keeps going up. So the rate of inflation is much higher and that affects the town the same way it affects any of us as far as our own household budget. So to purchase anything or the cost of services, gas, oil, all of those kinds of commodities that we need to run a town, you know, paper, business supplies, postage didn't go up, but pretty much everything else was up and it's reflected in this budget. I'm just going to take a look here and skip down through, as I said, general government. Administration has increased and again this one is mainly due to the fact that we have two unfilled listers positions. We have had this kind of a personnel issue, but these are elected positions and or appointed positions that we just have not been able to keep filled. And as we continue to work through this, we've needed to, as a stopgap, measure, do a subcontract for an assessor to help us build a grand list and keep our grand list up to date with valuation on properties. There are write-in, those positions, the listers are write-ins for the most part this, I think, in fact, maybe all this year. Hopefully we will get people into those positions who have some interest, willing to go through training and are willing to stay with us for a while to help serve the town. If not, we're going to face another situation where we're going to have to continue to look at subcontracting or eventually going out and doing away with an elected lister's position and hire someone who's available. And again, that's going to have impact on our town budget. Town hall costs decreased primarily, again, because one of the things we've been looking at the last couple of years is what are we going to do with town hall? It is in need of repair in a number of different areas, and we have had a lot of discussion about how we approach that, and we've held off doing a number of those repairs simply because we prefer to not put a lot of money into a facility that we may not be able to continue to use for the benefit of the town as we move forward. We're looking at some options as part of our capital spending plan, again, which Liz has been heading up, but isn't here. Although Randy, I believe, is on that committee and might be able to speak a little more to that if anyone has some questions. Sorry to put you on the spot, Randy. What else? Public safety, small increase. Fire department. We've been working with the department very closely over the past few months, and one of the things that we have wanted to do, and some of you may be aware and others not, that our fire department is not a department of public government. It basically is a private fire department that operates as a non-profit organization, and it's been the select ward's opinion for quite a while that we really would like to bring the department into town government, and we've been working closely with the department to get that to happen. We do have a transition plan. I think that's going to happen, but one of the things that became apparent as we were having, I think we continue to have monthly meetings, joint meetings with the department, is that the stipends for our firefighters were really, really minimal, and these are people who have really important high-risk jobs. They had not been able to attract the kind of volunteers that we really need to staff our department on an appropriate level, so we felt that we needed to deal with that issue, to raise stipends, to get it to be a reasonable level, something certainly in line with what other departments offer around the area, so that certainly had some impact. The rest of things in the fire department budget are things that we understand, debt service on trucks, debt service on the building, and again, utilities, training. I think we may have increased training monies available, and the department staff have really availed themselves, and we've been really excited to see the kinds of training and cooperative training they've been doing with other departments around the area, so we're really glad to have put that money in the budget and make it available for our fire department staff. Public works, this is the largest portion of our budget, and there's a significant increase. The number of things, again, as I started out talking about just overall operating costs, have gone up, so the costs of gasoline, diesel to run equipment, heating oil for the garage, electricity, again, wages, benefits, show up trickling through here again. We have some issues with the building that we have, I'm sorry, the building up by Romney, which is the town garage, definitely has some issues, and we're having to look at that, but also we're needing to do some repairs for that to keep it operational. I'm not sure, is there, Victor, anything that I else I need to mention here that's Yes, there is. Yeah. As you can see in the book here, the cost repairs is just going to site, which that in summary is kind of drove us over the top. We, of course, it didn't cost us anything, but we had to, well, we got a new grader that cost us some money, but we also had to order, we have scheduled a new plow dump truck for fiscal 23-24, but we had to order it by, don't quote me, I think it was November, if we wanted to get one, if we wanted to get into the line of having one built for us. So yeah, that thing is equipment and equipment repairs. Good, thanks Victor. Yeah, that continues to be a challenge for us pretty much all the time, dealing with keeping the equipment going and then repairs needed that kind of just jump up, that we didn't expect, of course, and on this kind of heavy equipment repairs are costly. Anyone questions before I, Jan? Yeah, Jan. You're muted, I think, Jan. Is there any COVID emergency governmental relief that we can tap into? Well, so far, not that we know of. The final grueling on the use of those funds has just come out. I haven't had a chance to work my way through it. I don't know, Dorinda, if you have, we've been tossing this around, you know, every now and then as we get a little bit more information trickling out, there hasn't been much that we've seen so far that we would be eligible for, but we're hoping that we might be able to get some. But my personal opinion is that's going to be, that's going to have minimal impact, most likely. So what Phil is talking about is the ARPA funds, which the town has received. And at this point in time, we haven't spent any of that money, and that's roughly Dorinda helped me out, but it's like $583,000, something like that. It's a little over 500, but we've only received 50% so far. Yeah, we've received half of it, but it looks like I read over the latest stuff, and I saw a few windows of opportunity, but exactly how that will sugar off, we don't know, but we've got our eye on that, believe me. I just noticed that, I think it was Denise posted in the chat that increases in the stipends for the fire department might be eligible for some mitigation under the ARPA funds, and you're right. That may in fact be a possibility. So again, we're going to look at everything we can as those things come along, but we really don't have anything that's totally certain right now. There were quite a few loans that many organizations took part in that were relieved. So it would be nice if we could have taken a vote. Okay, at least for governmental agencies, pounds, we do borrow for cash flow and for various purchases. However, those are typically ongoing kinds of things. I can't think of anything that we need to borrow that happens strictly because of COVID. So I think we would have a hard time, and you can't supplant. If it's typical boiling for operations, those are not things that fall under COVID relief. So yeah, and again, we've been around through this. Well, I think just to wrap up that topic, I think what we're focusing on is if in fact a component of those wage increases that we've talked about and additional expense is in fact because of COVID. And I think many people are trying to make that case. There's an opportunity not just on the fire department side, but also on the town side. But anyway, believe me, we're looking at it and working on it. And yeah, hopefully we can use some of those funds to mitigate some of this. Right. Sarah, you had your hand up. I just want you to know that Denise has a question on the chat that you may not be able to see, Peter, that says, if we vote in this proposed budget, what is the process going forward for application of the ARPA and corresponding scale back of spending under this budget? Just want to make sure you saw that. I'm sorry, can you say that again a little slower? I'm sorry. If we vote on this proposed budget, what is the process going forward for application of the ARPA and corresponding scale back of spending under this budget? Maybe Denise is present. Maybe you can ask her to explain a little bit. No, that's fine. Let me try. And Denise, if you need me to elaborate, let me know. No, let us know. So if in fact in this budget year, starting with July of next year, we can use some of those ARPA funds. We can reimburse ourselves for some of the expenses we incurred this year and maybe possibly some of the expenses last year. So the net effect of that potentially would be that we would underspend our budget. We may very well know more about this by the time we come around to setting the tax rate. So when we're thinking about setting the tax rate, we'll be making a decision about whether we fund the budget a hundred percent or we think we can use some money out of the ARPA funds so we don't need to set a tax rate to support the whole budget. But that's an unknown at this point. Not to be cynical or anything here, but once you give somebody the money, it's almost never not spent, right? So that's my challenge. Well, the issue is the pay raises and the stipends, we've got them. And the bottom line is we'll see what happens out there in the world with wages. But I don't see wages going back down. Are they getting continued to increase the way they have over the last year or the last six months? Hopefully not. But you know, we exist in a very competitive world when we're competing for employees or volunteer firemen or whoever we're competing for. So we have to at least, our goal has always been to be in the middle of the pack on wages, not be the highest, but certainly not be the lowest. And over the years, that philosophy has worked pretty well for us. We've been able to hire and retain good people. But this year was just an unbelievable challenge. But yeah, if the ARPA funds provide some relief, it's just going to be a one, one shot relief. It's not going to be ongoing relief. That's for sure. Does that answer your question? Kind of. Do you want to ask a follow up question? Well, I mean, it feels uncomfortable to me to have a half a million dollars, which I realized, you know, there we don't have that many things that can that can be applied towards right under the rules of it as I've read them so far. But it feels uncomfortable to have a half a million dollars sitting out there and asking people to have an 8% increase when we haven't really thought about how to apply that money. Well, we've thought about how to apply that money a lot. I don't we've been paying attention to all the meetings, all the guidance, everything we could we could read. So don't don't think we haven't been okay. That's my concern. It hasn't been reflected in the budget, right? So we're assuming we don't even have that money when we're when we're asking people to have for an 8% increase. And I just don't feel comfortable with that. So again, understand if we have an indication that we really can use that money by the time we set the tax rate, we can reflect that and setting the tax rate. So even though even though that money is in the budget, we can use potentially use some of that ARPA money to fund the budget and we don't have to use tax dollars. That's the best I can do. I'm sorry. Any other questions about the budget? So yes, Sarah, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Thank you, Peter. Sarah Seidman. I have a question about the roadside mowing. I understand that you've cut it back as a cost saving measure as a farmer. I would like to say that the timing of that mowing, if you're only going to do it once, is pretty important. So I don't know who to plead with or talk to about when the guy is going to do the mowing. But if he waits till August to do it, you might as well not do it, okay? Because all the weeds will have spread into the fields by then. So I don't know how you time that mowing. Well, go ahead, Victor. We try to time that in the spring and later in the summer. Unfortunately, last year, we were planning on doing it twice and we rented equipment off from Fairfield. And that equipment just did not work. It was broken down all the time. I mean, if you drove around town, you saw it set inside the road quite often. To answer your question about once, we have one mowing that's left over that we'll do before July 1st, hopefully early in June. And then the one that's left in the budget is the one that we would do after July 1st, 2022. Right. One before a first cut and one before a second cut would be nice. Give me a date. Okay. All right. I'll just tell you which weekend I want it and you'll just get the guys out there. You have some machinery that works now? What's that? Do you have now have equipment that you believe will work? Hopefully. Are we renting it? Bigger pardon? Are we renting it? Yes. We do not go by a $100,000 machine just more. The boys would like to do that, but we just don't have the funds in our equipment budget. It's not just getting the equipment. As you know or may not know, we have a pretty sizable project of paving from roughly Steve Martin's house to the interstate. We have a lot of work to do that ditching and installing culverts. Right now we only have the foreman and two guys. One of those guys has got to be on the grater if you want your roads graded. They're not doing the mowing anyway, Vic. They're not doing the mowing. I'm talking about the mowing. Because the guy that we were using retired. I know. I like that guy. They're getting older, Sarah. They're not going on and on and on. That's no excuse, Vic. That is no excuse. I bet. So, Sarah, the bottom line is we're very cognizant of your concerns, but there is going to be two mowings this year. Then we have to look in the future where we continue with the two mowings. It sort of happens, Dan. But to the extent that the machine didn't work, we can only do one mowing so far this year. So, in effect, we get two mowings this upcoming year. Okay. Thank you very much. I can talk to Vic directly about dates. Yep. That'd be great. That'd be great. Other good questions, anyone? Let me just talk about the last three items quickly. Go ahead, Joel. I'm sorry. Yeah. Recreation is actually a fairly small budget, but the budget increase of over 50% here is for money to repair the tennis court. I don't know off the top of my head how long ago that was put in. Peter, you probably remember. I think the late 70s, early 80s, something like that. And has it ever been resurfaced? It had been resurfaced many years ago, but it was just done, you know, like, I don't know what they call it, like a patch sort of thing. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it was re-coated, but the drainage and the other problems weren't the best. Right. Very expensive, too. Okay. So we are at a point where we do need to do some major work on that tennis court. It does get a fair amount of use. And I think our feeling is that if we let it go much longer, it's going to almost need to be redone. So we have set money aside in this budget to deal with that. The last couple of findings have to do with zoning and planning, and one is up and the other down. The increase in the zoning and the ZBA kind of combined budget has to do with it anticipated legal fees. The zoning and the zoning board of adjustment, especially for the ZBA, we're finding that we have more and more complex issues coming before the ZBA. And in some cases, they have already ended up in legal proceedings, appeals of decisions, and we expect that as we continue to move forward, there's a fairly good likelihood that we are going to need to spend more money on legal fees to iron out issues between people who are asking for waivers to ZBA. And I don't know, there's not much more to say about that. I did serve on the ZBA at a time when that was starting to happen. We were seeing more and more complex issues. So it is ending up in legal territory more often than we'd like to see, and that means we need to spend money on legal fees that we haven't had to in the past. On the other hand, on the planning commission side, and the planning commission has really been very active in the past year, their budget has decreased again by 50%. And this is basically due to the cost of consultants which have dropped out of the budget and the elimination of a grant match for work that they did, I guess, about a year ago. So that phase of that work has been completed. They're moving on to some other things that they won't need the consultant or the grant match for. So that in a nutshell is the budget that we've prepared. And it was, it took a lot of discussion, a lot of fretting over and compromise with what we were going to offer. And it's one of those things that we wanted to try and keep costs as reasonable as we could, but yet we also understand that we have a responsibility to provide a certain level of service to the taxpayers and to the residents here. So this is the best that we could do. Hopefully it'll be supported. Thank you, Bill. So I would also like to say that the budget process is done in conjunction with interested members of the public, but also in conjunction with the budget committee who is a very active part of this budget process. And you should take a look at their report in the town report as well. They were very vocal about keeping costs under control. And we were too, but we were listening to them and I appreciate their input and cooperation through the process over the challenging here. Any other questions about the budget, Jan? It's the tennis courts. May I suggest that at least one of the courts be turned into a pickle board? Pickle, what's it called? Pickle board court? Do you know what I'm talking about? Pickle ball. Pickle ball court. It's much more popular. I think a lot of the community would be able to use it, especially off hours of school instead of just turning them all into tennis courts again. Well, I think that just just to be clear, and I think that's a good idea. I agree. And my understanding is, and I've seen this in action in other places where it can be a tennis court, I end up picking a ball court. You just have to have different lines. And I guess you set the net at a different height or something. So we will certainly put that in. It would be a great idea to send the board a letter suggesting that. So we don't forget, Jan. I think that's a really good idea and a minimal cost to do that. Anything else, anyone? Okay. Victor, do you have anything to add about the roads? I think you've pretty much said your piece, but this is your chance to add any other information you think is germane. You're muted. Yeah, we have, you know, Shane and the boys have a challenging summer. I mean, we have to, the big thing is the repaving project that we have down there, and we have pipes and ditching to do down there before we can do the actual work, the thought process in order to save money so that we can do the portion of McCullough Hill, which is down to the bridge, which is now paved but broken up. We would have to get into removing some of the existing pavement down there to make up for money and kind to pave that and make it less. The other thing we have is we have our regular maintenance, and as you can see on our five-year plan, we have a pretty aggressive plan to do the road shown there on the five-year plan for this upcoming year or two. And we have an aging excavator. Hopefully we can get that to make it through the repaving project. And of course, when we do a full service on a road, we replace all the culverts and do the ditches and stonefell them to meet our environmental obligations. Just to give you an update of what we're going to have to go through, hopefully we will have good luck and no problems and everything will hold together and we'll find another a person to join the crew to help us fulfill that work requirement. Thank you, Victor. Any questions for Vic? Any questions on any topic with regard to town meeting? I have a question so it's Denise. You can see me. I have a question about the motion, I should say movement about walkable middle sex and how that fits into the town planning process. Sandy, are you available to answer that? All right, yes, I am. That's a project that the Planning Commission has been working on to develop the planning for making the village area safer for walking and for bicycling through the village. There's more activity in the village now and we're trying to figure out how best to manage that. It's part of the work that the Planning Commission is doing. We're viewing it as a longer-term project and hoping that, you know, in the next time the road would get upgraded or new work would be done on route two that whatever the town decides to do could be incorporated into that. I'd like to walk over to Red Hen. I hope I'm not dead by the time we get a slide. I totally hear you. I do know that folks at Red Hen are also looking at the possibility of some demonstration projects, some temporary fixes to, you know, make that, you know, easier to walk there. These transportation projects take a long time. I wish we could do it overnight, but we're plugging along with it and thanks. I will just, since we have a survey out, we'd love to hear from folks. We have a meeting tomorrow night if you want to provide some feedback on some of the options that we're looking at to have sidewalks, trails, slowing traffic down through the village. It would be super helpful to hear from folks and thanks so much. Anyone else? Yeah, there. Sandy, it's just, it's always being, the question is always coming up about the, you know, having sidewalks. Even there was some talk about bubble outs and stuff like that for, for the crossings. And is this going to be maintained year round? In other words, is there any, any monies or any considerations for, say, winter maintenance on these, or just maintenance on these additions that will be put on for the, for the road crew to take care of? Or is it going to be taken care of by those people that have businesses in that area? You know, that remains to be decided. Certainly some areas for sidewalks that's maintained by the folks who, you know, they plow or shovel their sidewalks in front of their businesses. I know one of the options you were looking at had some, you know, bollards, some posts for bike planes. Those would be taken down in the winter. So the snow plows could go through, but when folks are bicycling in the, when there's not snow on the ground, there would be a separated bike lane for them to, to bicycle on. Has, has the planning commission the contacted the agency of transportation and the, the local transportation facilities division where they, they, they have money and they do, they design that for you. They would, they would have, but it would, it would be part of an agency of transportation route to project. I realized something like Waterbury, but has anybody, anybody been approached for that? Um, certainly, I mean, we've been keeping them in the loop. Basically what we're doing is a piece of the planning that would normally be done through the transportation agency. So we've just taken that, that piece of it and they're in the loop on, on all of the work that we're doing. Okay. Thank you. Either Hugo has his hand up. Yes, Hugo. Thank you. Hugo Leitman. I'd be interested in hearing from town officers, town boards, the planning commission, about articles 15, authorized cannabis retailers, article 16, the integrated licenses and 17, the enhanced energy plan. Um, a little bit of education, perhaps. Is it good or bad for the town in some people's opinions? Uh, if you're allowed to talk about opinions or what are the, what's the impact on the town? I'd like some, you can on that. So I, you know, I understand this kind of free flow and form, but we really should stick to the agenda. You should really should work through the warning. That's what you're supposed to do. And so that people who are waiting to talk or just here to, they're looking at the agenda, anticipating certain articles that we can get to that. This thing right here. Thank you. All right. I don't need to just, it's the quote-unquote parliamentarian in me. Great. I'll wait my turn. So really, uh, what we anticipated with all deference to our, to our town clerk who keeps us on the, on the street and arrow all the time is, uh, we decided to have a presentation about the budget and the roads and then have more or less, uh, open it up for questions on other topics rather than go down and discuss every, uh, every item on the warning. Um, certainly we're happy to answer any questions or any concerns about any of those, uh, items. And, uh, Hugo, unfortunately, uh, fortunately or unfortunately, your questions are at the, at the end of the line on the, uh, on the warning, but we won't forget you. So I would say if, if anybody has, has questions on, uh, on any other item, uh, now's the time or if board members have anything to say about any of the other items, now is also the time. Janet Clare would like to speak on article 11. Okay, Janet. Well, what about, are we going to just mention the other articles to see if anybody wants to talk on those or no? I mean, we can, we can go down through each and every one, but we could also be here all night. I mean, if people have no questions or concerns, I don't think we need to talk about all the other articles, but I'm happy to do what everybody wants. Yes, Sarah. Just do me a favor and read through the articles. So just in case somebody can say, yes, I'd like to talk about that. I'd like to talk about community connections or I'd like to talk about, you know, the interest rate. Let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this. So the warning for the 10 meeting starts on page nine. So I would encourage you all to, uh, to open up your town report to page nine. I am not going to read each and every word in each and every one of these articles, but I will mention each one of them and then we can see if anybody has any questions or concerns. So article one is to elect necessary officers for the ensuing year. I think that's pretty clear unless anybody has any questions. Article two is shell a town of Middlesex authorized payment of all property taxes to the town treasurer is provided by law without discount and for installments. The due dates are in there. It's basically mirroring what we've been doing uh, the last, the last few years. Any questions or concerns about article two? Article three is the usual article about uh, charging interest uh, on delinquent taxes and the rate has been 0.5%. This 0.5% is no change. Um, article four uh, is the budget article, which we've already discussed in some uh, in some detail uh, article five is shell a town of Middlesex appropriate the sum of $5,000 to the conservation fund. That again is something we have been doing every year uh, to build up a fund of money. We've used money from that fund in the past for the town forest and other uh, projects uh, then we get into uh, the uh, the special articles um, article six is and and what we did this year uh, just to remind everybody is we made the decision that if organizations would request the same amount of money they requested last year they didn't have to do a petition to get put on the ballot. So for the most part all of these uh, special articles, articles six through 14 well let's say six through 13 are all the same as last year. The one exception is the uh, Kellogg Hubbard Library who submitted a petition and I believe we have a representative of the library Carolyn Brennan is on the Zoom call so if you have any questions about the library we've got a live in person person here to answer those answer those questions. Does anybody have any questions or concerns about any of those special articles? Yes, Victor. At the risk of being completely critical I will ask a few questions about this uh, it's uh, has anybody uh, looked into uh, well first of all I guess you get 54% of your funding from the towns? We're talking about the library, Victor? Yes, the library. Okay. Yeah, that's that's correct. It's always a little bit over 50% and Sarah Seidman who is our rep, our middle sex rep to our board of trustees has our hand raised. I'm just noting. I just want to direct your attention to page 70 because that's the report so if you want the facts and figures page 70 on your town report. Thank you for that information, sir. I was wondering, what I'm wondering about is uh, the governor came out and as I understand a lot of the uh, the interest for this uh, for the for the library and all the towns giving money for the library it's uh, it's very uh, it's it's used a lot by after school uh, children. Is that correct? Yeah, um, more so prior to the pandemic uh, so before the pandemic started we would have upwards of 75 kids in the children's library at any given time between three and about 435 o'clock. Now we're doing um, we're going out and we're visiting a lot of the schools, the ones that we can actually like get into or we're doing virtual visits to try to teach kids about how to use the library. And we're doing some more sort of targeted outreach to different special to different groups of people. For example we've got the the Afghan families that again that have moved into Montpelier um, coming out to do an orientation at the library this week. But um, our after school traffic is definitely down. Did you want to know more specifics about after school or? Not really what um, it's it's uh, what I'm interested in is you know uh, there were several million dollars that Governor Scott uh, wants to allocate for both after school programs and stuff and um, and also for during the summer uh, for for some programming. Yeah. Which I also understand that you contribute to that in the summertime. Yep. Yeah. And so I was I did write a letter to Governor Scott asking him that what is there seven or eight towns in this school district that uh, that that that are being asked to uh, to donate money to the Kellogg Hubbard Library. Um, and uh, supposedly you're going to get a response for it but I don't know as I would. I don't know if that'll actually happen. Um, you know just stating that this is an ongoing every year uh, it does affect our tax rates uh, and and uh, quite a bit uh, and it also you know uh, with tight times uh, you know, maybe the you know, there's several things like Sarah's roadside mowing and stuff that uh, would be easily taken care of with this amount of money. But with with that said, have you, is there anybody from Kellogg Hubbard Library that has petitioned the governor for some of that money? Or is there some other you know, of that stimulus money? I mean it seems to be gobs of it around that could you know, not totally take away the amount of money that we would you know, that each town would would would give you uh, but maybe help out and so nine percent increase maybe drop that down a little bit. I don't know. Gotcha. So um, so we did, we have applied for, we applied um, at the beginning of the pandemic for some uh, money that offset on earnings lost from our book sale when we had to close the building for a little while there in 2020. And so that was pretty much that that pretty much just just covered a loss. Um, and then we are getting some ARPA funds. So I heard you all talking about ARPA funds earlier and the Department of Libraries through the um, national level organization, the IMLS, we're we're seeing some funds trickle down to us from that. Um, but like a lot of grant funds, there are really specific ways that we can use that money. So we're getting uh, $25,000 from the Department of Libraries, but it's to be used for uh, PPE, technology, and and pandemic related losses. So all of the costs that we have increased every year with inflation like every every organization has increases every year. Um, we still have to cover that in our regular operating budget. So that's where these increases are coming in and we we did hold off for for four years. We haven't requested an increase from uh, from our outlying town since town meeting day 2018. Uh, and you know, costs have gone up every single year that we've level funded, which is why we're seeing this jump this year. So so we are getting some ARPA funds. But those ARPA funds are we're using that to play catch up with some of our technology equipment. Our networking equipment now is um, going on to its 10th year. We installed it in 2012 and that's got to get changed out and that's a um, about a $7,000 project. And then we've got PPE increases to be able to keep the building open. We've got to buy, you know, sanitizer and gloves and masks to hand out to people and all that good stuff like everybody else does. Um, and then we have staff uh, staff computers that are about a decade old also. So we're we're mostly using the ARPA funds. We're using it for some outdoor space making, which is going to increase our ability to have programs and activities, particularly for kids in this part of the summer reading program outside on our lawn. And then the rest of it's pretty much going to get eaten up by technology. I'm just just playing catch up for stuff that we haven't replaced and haven't been able to replace in a really long time. So if you could get some of that money that the governor I mean, maybe, yeah, yeah, if it's if it's out there, if there's more money to be had out there, but I'm not going to know that we would have it before, you know, before next Tuesday. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Other questions on six through 13? Anyone? Article 14 is the omnibus article we've had in recent years where if organizations choose to apply for money for the town of Middlesex for $250 or less, all they do is submit a letter. They don't have to do a petition. And we create the list and make it one special article. So there's the list. Unfortunately, in the, in the no live town meeting world, there's no opportunity to amend or adjust that article. We either have to vote in favor of it or vote against it. But I'd be glad to reports for most of the organizations are in the town report. If you want to read them, I didn't check to see that they were all there. But I presume they're, they're mostly there. So that's, that's that. Hugo, here we go. We've got we've gotten to you. So we had a citizen in town who requested that article 15 and 16 be put on the town and meeting ballot. After a fair amount of discussion, the select board decided that the best approach to this was to put both articles on the, on the ballot and let the citizens in the town, the town decide. Unfortunately, I would say none of us are, are experts on this, on this subject. I think the feeling of the select board was let's see how the citizens feel about having this, having this happen in, in middle sex. And they're basically two articles. The first article permits cannabis retailers in the town. And the second one article 16 permits integrated licenses, which is kind of a confusing term. But what an integrated license means is that you can grow wholesale and retail cannabis. So that's the more, that's the more inclusive, inclusive of the two. Do any of the, any of the board members or anyone else have anything to, to, to add to this? Again, it was, it was done at the request of a citizen to put this up to, up to a town hall. Peter? Yes, Victor. I understand from the news that there's no, there's no, there's not any much of an income enhancing portion of that to the town because you can't charge any more tax than the 20% unless you have the already one percent, which we don't have for meals, rooms and meals. So that's correct. So more of a, it's more of a, it's, it would be more of a convenience. We're not to go as far to, to get your product. Well, you know, we, again, I don't know the answer to all the questions, but what we did discuss at the select board and other board members helped me out was let's say just for example that the Red Hen wanted to sell cannabis products. Would that potentially enhance their business and make that a better situation for, for them and also for the town? Possibly, who knows? Would somebody maybe open up a pot shop downtown if it was allowed? Possibly, possibly yes, but you're right. Red Hen could do, could do brownies. Yeah, who knows? I mean, there are a lot, there are more, there are more unknowns in this than there are, than there are knowns. And it is a, if it, if we do, if we do approve either one or both of these articles, it's, it's tightly regulated by the state of Vermont. So we are not, we are not involved. I'll be right with you Phil. So it's not like, it's not like the select board is going to be out there patrolling who's buying cannabis and who isn't, that is, that is not the case at all. Right, right. And the state has the regulatory and the enforcement portion of that, they're working on it right now. Anyways, correct. And I understand that if they go through, you wouldn't be able to do it to lock over. Anyways, that's when I believe that's when you can open up pot shops the first time. That's my understanding. Yes, Phil. I just wanted to go back and, and, and I think my recollection is correct that as a select board, we had an option to have this article as either two parts or as one so that both the retail and the integrated license were combined and would have been one article. So it would have either all passed or all been defeated. We chose the option to put them as separate articles so that either one could pass or either one could be defeated. I think I'm correct on that, but I don't, you know, maybe Sarah remembers or can refresh my memory. I just wanted to make the point. You're right. Am I right? I believe that's correct. Yes. That was all part of our, that was all part of our discussion. I mean, again, the thought being we still have not a lot, but we have some, some farmland in Middlesex and we certainly have some under utilized agricultural land. If someone in Middlesex wanted to grow cannabis and it was legal and it was a source of revenue for them and it kept agricultural land and being used for agricultural purposes, that might be a good thing. But again, it's a, it's a town, it's a town decision. Yes, Sarah. I just want to reiterate what was mentioned during that select board meeting, which is that these are, these are entities that are legally allowed already to do what they do. So all the, all the town voters are being asked, are you going to allow these entities, which are already approved by the state of Vermont's cannabis board to do what they do, to operate in Middlesex? If the voters pass this, they're not, they're not creating, they're just allowing state authorized entities to sell, either sell or do the integrated licenses to the soup to nuts, right? Am I wrong about that? I believe you are correct. Either we still have, we have two things in chat. The first one is Janice. It would like to say a few words about article 11. And Denise was asking, I believe she was referring to article 14, whether or not those organizations were 501C organizations. Okay. So article 11 is $7,000 to the Montpelier Senior Activity Center. But that was you? Yes. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm, I'm not a Middlesex resident or voter, but I, I live and work in Montpelier. And I'm Janet Clare. I work for the city of Montpelier doing communications and development for our community services department, which is comprised of the senior activity center parks and recreation. And I'd served as director of the senior center for the past decade. But in September, we transitioned to a new director named Sarah Lipton, who looks forward to meeting more Middlesex residents in the coming year. And she sends her regards. So our mission is to enhance the quality of life for the older adults in the Montpelier area through opportunities that develop physical, mental, cultural, social, and economic well-being in a welcoming and flexible environment. And I know there's quite a few of the senior center members and active participants on the, on the Zoom tonight. So it's nice to see you all. So despite COVID, we've continued as a vital resource for residents of Middlesex providing feast curbside pickup meals twice a week, referrals to area services, three dozen affordable weekly classes, which now are online in person or hybrid. More are online than in person at this point. And many free dropping groups. We also offer financial aid, technology assistance, tax preparation, foot care clinics, media, and more. And in recent years, most of our classes have opened up to younger adults and teens in some cases, making them accessible to even more of your residents, especially due to so many of them being offered online. And we're excited about expanding those multi-generational opportunities. So our labor facility and other operational costs to provide our vital services are increasing. And the city of Montpelier is including a larger allocation in its budget for our senior center and FY 23. But we are seeking level funding from the town of Middlesex. In FY 21, we served at least 68 Middlesex residents. And since many of our activities don't track the town of residency, the number is probably higher. We really appreciate, as always, Middlesex voters and residents interest and support. And we hope to welcome and serve more of you in the coming year. So if you haven't ever checked out our services or programs, we would love to give you a tour and show you around and find out what you might be interested in. And we also recognize other senior centers and agencies importance to your residents. And we believe in working collaboratively. So thank you for considering our level funded request of $7,000 to support our affordable programs and services for older Middlesex residents. Our total FY 23 budget is $675,300. So our request to your town represents just about 1% of our budget. And I'm happy to take any questions that you might have. Any questions for Jana? Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to speak. And Denise, you wanted to ask a question about Article 14. Yeah, I just was wondering whether these are like 501c or, you know, equivalent sorts of organizations that we were contributing to, or if there was any requirement to be so. I don't believe there is a requirement, but I believe most of them are. And again, their reports are in the town report. I'm sorry, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not, I know many of them, many of them are because I'm looking down through the list, but some of them I'm not familiar with. Maybe you know the answer to that, Sarah, do you? You know, almost every single one is, for example, I don't know about the Montpelier Veterans Council. I don't know what exactly they are, but there's, to my knowledge, there's no requirement that you have to be a 501c3 or organization in order to ask for money. But so far, even Big Heavy World, which is probably the biggest outlier on this list, is I believe they have that status. Thank you. Yeah, when I look down through the list, I'm familiar or at least passively familiar with those organizations that I know that most of them are, but I can't certify that they all are. Okay, I was just curious because it could be some fly-by-night thing. You know, who knows, right? So I was just curious. Well, I mean, if you have any questions, honestly, this is why when we took over the town report, we have all the contact information. So you're free to, you know, contact them. There should be email, telephone. I would call them because it's not my job to track down people's tax status on these situations. But they're putting themselves out there. And if they want money, I don't think there's anything wrong with calling them and asking them, why do you think you deserve this money? That's my opinion as a town clerk. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. So do we have anything else on Article 15 or 16? Hugo, does that answer your questions? Okay. Okay, so our last article is Article 17. Shall the town voters approve the enhanced energy plan and its appendix and an update to the town plan? And Sandy, once again, you're the likely suspect to talk about this one. Sure. Thanks so much. I'm Sandy Levine. I'm the chair of the Middlesex Planning Commission. And the Planning Commission worked for a couple of years on the enhanced energy plan. We worked closely with the Central Mont Regional Planning Commission and pulling this together. And it basically takes the state's energy plan and figures out, you know, what can we do as a town? What can what parts of that can we implement? Can we encourage to reduce overall energy use to address problems with climate change, to encourage more renewable energy within the town, and so on. So that's what the enhanced energy plan is. It's aspirational. It's part of, it would become, if approved by the voters, it would become part of the town plan and would guide town actions going forward. Any questions for Sandy about the enhanced energy plan? So I just have a comment. I read the thing from cover to cover, which was hard to stay awake, I have to say during part of it, but I think it's a really well-done piece of work. I mean, I know it's hard to establish something like this, right, because it's pretty nebulous, right? I mean, in terms of what a small town like Middlesex can do, I come from the energy business, the bad part, right, the oil and gas people. And I just thought it was a really well-done piece of work. Great. Thank you. And thank you for reading through it all. Who just spoke? Denise. Sorry, Sarah. Yes, Sarah Seatman. I just wanted to echo that. Thank you, Sandy, so much. This is the hard work of, you know, trying to move the town forward, is this sort of nuts and bolts grinding along and getting these plans, and so appreciate your work on it. Thank you. Other questions, anybody? Peter? Yes, Victor. Yeah, Sandy, it's just an opportunity to ask this question. I guess I could have asked it months ago. Is it true, like, if you have, I mean, this may not have anything to do with your plans. Do you have solar panels? They're not taxed as far as real property? I have no idea. I believe that is true. They don't tax them, but yet they will tax, if you have renewable wood, they'll tax your woodshed. Would anybody, would the Energy Committee entertain looking into that? I think those taxes are set up as my understanding at the state level and what is exempt and what is included in sales tax and so on. But we have a very active Energy Committee and it'd be great to have them take a look at it and make a recommendation. If it's something the town can do, we might be able to do something. If it's something the state needs to do, talk to your legislator. Talk to Kimberly Jessup. Yeah, Phil. I see you, Jan. We'll get to you in a second. Phil. My understanding, having just had a solar installation this past summer and into fall, is that in fact the value that the solar installation may add to your house cannot increase your property tax amount. So that is cost-neutral. As far as the woodshed Victor, I, you know, I'm not sure about that, but you know, probably have to get taken to the woodshed, you know, to get the answer to that. That's right. No pun intended. Jan. You're muted. All I know is it's been many years, but I was the first wind generator in town. And the whole town voted against us being, no, against, for our wind generator being taxed, saying that in fact it could easily be, you know, that it is giving so much worth to our land. And we actually said, you know, it's four bolts. It could just be taken down. And they said, sorry, no. And in fact, like five years later, that's what we did. We sold it and four bolts were taken down and it was gone. But it was pretty upsetting at the time that we were taxed for that wind generator. Anything else? Anyone? So I just have a couple of things. Go ahead, Mary. I'm sorry. I just wanted to thank the select board members and the members of the community for the honor of serving on your select board for 24 years. Part of my closing remarks was going to be to recognize you for all your years of service. So I'm going to do that right now. First of all, I would point out to everyone that Mary Skinner has served the town in a couple of different capacities from, for a period of time, she was on the budget committee, but since 1998, she's been an active member of the select board. And I've served with her for most of those years. I'd like to personally, personally thank her and thank her on behalf of the town. And Mary, I would say we haven't always agreed over the years, but I think we've had a good working relationship and I've enjoyed, I've enjoyed working with you over the years and I really appreciate all your work on behalf of the town. And most of you have probably already noticed that our town report is dedicated to Mary this year to to honor her years of service. So you've kind of beat me to the punch, Mary, but I thank you on the list and thank you for all your hard work, for all your hard work. The ability to serve. Thank you, Peter. Yep. And the other person I just wanted to mention is Bruce Fitch was a long-term member of our road crew who retired in in November. And we had a little select board had a little cake and a and a party for him. But I just like to, again, we don't have a we don't have a town meeting so we can't recognize them at the town meeting. And I just like to recognize them at this forum. And he's not participating in the zoom, but thank him for all his years of service to the town as well. The last thing the last thing I have is there's been some discussion tonight about these about these ARPA funds and the select board envisions making the process of determining how we use those ARPA funds as public as possible. We haven't we haven't created a plan as to how we're going to do that, whether we're going to have separate hearings, whether we're going to include it as part of our select board meetings. But we're looking forward to public interest and and support in that process, because it is, you know, never say a once in a lifetime opportunity, but it is a significant opportunity for the town of Middlesex. That's a lot of money that's almost that's almost half of one year's budget in in additional money that we have to use. And one of the I'll get to you. One of the big things we can use it for is is broadband. And that's one of the things we're going to be looking at. But we're we're also and we don't have to all use it for one thing, we can divide it up. So if we can use some of it to help out with the town budget and the town tax rate, I think it would be a good goal to do that. Enhanced broadband in town is of course a huge issue. So if this allows us to move that move that forward or move it ahead, that's a big thing. Other people I know Lee Sharpe was was interested to see if there were funds available for our food bank, our local food bank. That may also be possible, but we want it to be a public process. We want to hear what the citizens in town, in town, how they'd like to see us use the money. Yes, I know you're not Hugo, are you Mrs. Hugo? I'm Cynthia Liepman. Hi. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to suggest that you post thing post reports on Front Porch Forum regarding this discussion that would be very helpful for everyone in town to see. Yes, we will certainly do that. And we'll also post it on the website, of course. Yes, Sarah. I just want to say that this is also recorded. So if anybody wants to get a recording, it's hard for me to keep it on the website because of its size, but I can get it recording to you or I can give you an access key so you can get recording. And I'll have the minutes done by tomorrow. And it's on our website all the time. So I usually I'll just put a little thing on Front Porch Forum saying the minutes for this are on the website. Hopefully I didn't screw them up, but you never know. Thank you, Sarah. You never messes them up. Oh, sure. There you go. So so the and I promise this is this is this is the end for me. But you've heard that we are that we need to find an appointment to new listeners. And we are looking for people seriously looking very hard for people who might be interested in that. I would tell you when it came up earlier in the in the meeting tonight that in the in recent times and down through all the years, part of the listeners responsibility has been to to go out inspect properties, both both new construction properties and properties that have been changed and amended. That no longer is the case because we have subcontracted that appraiser process. So the Lister function would primarily be working in the in the town office, integrating the reports from the appraisers into the town computer computer system and submitting that information to the state. So we don't know exactly how many hours that is, but we can put you in touch with the people who've been who've been doing that work and let you know what we budgeted what 314 hours, Sarah, for listeners. I think that's the render. It does pay. It's it's pay. So it's yes, it's a pay position. It's a pay position. We did 800 hours between the three positions. But if we only have two, of course, that will they'll pick up those extra hours. So but that's a little bit that's also a little bit of an unknown. It's an estimate because it was an estimate based on us hiring. This is new to go out and have the assessor. So it was just a best guess. Correct. But we're looking we're looking for interested people. And also, as we've already mentioned, we're looking for a new member of the road crew as well. So if anybody knows of anyone who might be interested, help us out. It's a challenge to find people to meet these positions. They're doing a good job in that speech, Sarah. Did but you forgot the collector of delinquent taxes. Oh, the link with taxes, which I'm pretty sure that falls to the chair of the select board. So yeah, thank you for that. Yes, the collector of delinquent taxes. There's a wonderful opportunity to serve the town. We're looking we're looking for all the all the help we can get the delinquent tax position is also a a paid position. Anyway, thank you all for attending the meeting tonight. We really appreciate it. I hope you've had some valuable information. And Mary, this is the end of your select board career. So remember they're putting maybe you'd like to be a list or Mary, there are opportunities available for that service. Maybe I'll decide to come back again later. Or you could meet the link with tax collector. No, I don't think so. Thank you, Mary. Thank you for all your hard work.