 show us what you got right here show that till it turns green push hard it's green is it on hello it's green so what do we got looks like a permit application for a sign for McGillicuddy's Irish pub on Main Street is that correct yes I think you had one of these I think you had one of these a few weeks ago for the wine shop okay is this in the same line with the ordinance that we did for is that why this is coming in front of us or is it no this isn't this is not the new banner ordinance this is there's a prohibition if somebody's going to have a sign that means the existing signed by law but it overhangs the right of way has to get approval by just like so you recently had one with wine shop on the street right so I didn't I didn't apologize for my misunderstanding but I thought it might have been because of the Main Street project no it's on Main Street so no it's the village trustees used to approve these because they're in the village so now that there's no more village trustees it's like boards honor could you just explain a little bit about the sign yep so I gave everybody a I gave everybody a copy of the packet and this is a picture of the sign as it's over the sidewalk and David brought a bigger picture this one with more detail on it about how far the sign will is proposed to extend over the sidewalk I think this is a photoshopped picture right and down at the bottom it says 22 to 24 inches so it's proposed that it's going to hang over the pavement about 22 to 24 inches and then the map behind that is the Main Street recon a map from the Main Street reconstruction it shows the right away and there's a perpendicular black mark that shows where the sign is going to be located along the front of the building extending over the sidewalk it's a three by four sign yeah that's nine feet off the ground yeah oh yeah and then and that's important too because all signs that extend over the public sidewalk have to be at least nine feet above the sidewalk so that's from the pavement to the bottom of the sign do you know what was the previous signage I think before this allium just did signage on the awning and they didn't have a projecting sign and before that our vods had a projecting sign in this same spot but it was a little bit different bracket it was like a curved bracket with like a oval sign I don't know what the size of it was I didn't I didn't pull it similar projection I would imagine but but in the in in in between those two allium didn't do a projecting sign that I recall they just changed the the wording on the low on the awning which counts as a sign and and that's part of the sign application too but I didn't bring it to you folks because it doesn't involve the projecting sign and what is the reason for the sign sticking out that far it's four feet wide mostly for visibility obviously that's where the existing sign was for our vads these it's in the exact same spot the the front of the of three South Main Street they're there you know I never had so many comments as opposed to when we took the deck off it was well if any guys are basketball fans it's like when James Hardin shaved his beard there's no it was unrecognizable with the awning coming over the top that's really the only opportunity to have any kind of signage that would would kind of face traffic that wasn't flat to the building there's really no there's really no facing of the building yeah I mean you know we will have some internal signage inside the windows but I'm not sure that's you know appropriate you're going to be building the deck back in similar fashion to what was there correct it's it's slightly larger well it's the if you look at the picture you can see where the deck is kind of angled back to the building and what we're we're planning on doing and what we've been approved to do is square that off and so the sign will be in the same spot that our vads sign was but the other so this is a photograph of the old building with the new sign correct and that's the old that's the old decking which unfortunately was was rotten which is going to be replaced with treks decking and like a wrought iron rail that will go around CV you'll be able to see into it but there's really no opportunity to hang a sign be any really anywhere else on the building without it infringing on either some of the other tenants or you know kind of a lack of visibility because it'll be hidden by the owning so the decked bike squaring that corner off the deck's going to end up getting a little bit longer it is yes corner and as well the roof too yes so the sign will sit are you suggesting that the sign will sit kind of in the in the center of the deck or roof roof line as opposed to or is it going to the far end once you square no it's not going to go on the fire and it's going where it is now okay and then it will there will be I think one more pole or yes stanchion or whatever and then it will square back but if we had decided to put the sign there I think it may have obscured some other signs further on down in the building and the nine foot clearance is that a is that an ordinance okay yeah that's from the pavement to the bottom of the sign vertically this way anything that's over the sidewalk has to be at least nine feet up right I believe that's for the snow plows make sure the sidewalk plow can get underneath it okay is the just curious the size of the sign is three foot by four feet so it's like 12 square feet is that a limit of our ordinance also I mean to put you on the spot so it's in the downtown commercial zoning district and I know that there's a square footage total for the whole building and all the businesses in it so they've all got to add up to I think it's 40 it's dependent on the floor area of the business I believe the entire building was allotted it was 42 feet or 47 feet square feet excuse me and out of that because I'm the the largest user my allotment I believe was 22 square feet now it's an allotment that was given to me by the landlord is Jeff Larkin and his wife you're well under that yeah we do we do have some additional signs like Dean was mentioning that will be on the profile of the awning but that's just writing that won't be obstructing but that that will be about another eight feet of you know they'll say McGillicuddy's Irish probably will be a shamrock and some kind of things that you see similarly on like black backs awning yeah okay it looks like it's a black sign with yellow letters it is black yeah no the awning no no the awning is green the signage is black when it actually with gold trim gold lettering and is gold faced the building used to have a big marquee type built sign on the Elm Street side that said Conte building and had a list of all the businesses in it the businesses were favoring these projecting signs you can see that too that are farther down the road here have two projecting signs so the landlord building owner decided to take that wall that big wall signed down and that gave them more square footage to divvy up the businesses which zoning just says we don't care who has what just adds up to a total landlord gets to divvy it up yeah okay thanks for explaining that so you'll have some form of light that comes to the top of this correct yeah and it's two-sided the sign is correct is two-sided do you add the lights from the top that's a bit of tricky business I think it comes from the underneath the awning I think it may even come and be shown so it's shown up I don't I don't think you'll see them oh scar yeah maybe down I don't know it's the same thing it's basically the same way that Jeff had it all right well I'm ready to make a motion to approve the sign as it's shown please do you're running the meeting I'll make a motion move McGillicuddy's Irish pub sign I'll second that obviously there's no further discussion from us I guess so if you wish to approve it say hi hi okay I have one question what are you planning to open about 30 minutes after we finish okay I think three to four weeks we're just finishing up the site work on the deck and the inside is pretty much pretty much finished and we're excited to to get an operating here I appreciate you thank you for your time thank you thank you okay that was painless now on to revitalizing Waterbury's ArchFest we got a letter from Karen Nevin in reference to right annual ArchFest Aaron is not able to be here tonight and asked if I could just present this I think you've seen the letter the ArchFest has been happening in July for quite a number of years now and this is a similar request to what they have had for every year for the last several so they're looking to close Stowe Street from Main Street to Union Street so that will obviously the Drybridge will be closed to vehicular traffic and then Pidwell Lane would also they're asking that to be closed Foundry Street beginning at 10 o'clock on Friday the 13th and then running through 5 30 on Saturday July 14th they they'll do a good job they've always had done a good job with the businesses the businesses have generally supported the the ArchFest and you know they'll be in a block party from 6 to 10 and everything is there on this page so everything else has been approved I believe the liquor license that's something that Carla can take care of so everything is all set to go they're just like the approval by the board to close the roads for the appointed time all right and hasn't been any issues that we know of so things are running fairly much better I mean the year before last they had a few small glitches just because the event turned out to be much more popular than it had in the recent past so they had a little trouble the year before with not enough Portalettes with some trash there were some issues with parking and there were a few people there's always a few neighbors you know there are people that live right there on the street and some of them feel a little bit put upon but you know it should all be done on the Friday night by the entertainment will end at 10 o'clock and pretty much everybody's gone except for the cleanup people by 10 30 or so last year they picked it up we had a deep briefing after the year before and we talked about the trash and the Portalettes and they did a lot it worked out much better last year and I'm sure they'll be right on top of it this year as well you know they made a big effort to direct people for parking right because that was a big issue two years ago okay well there's no issues with it then if somebody'd like to make a motion to approve the Waterbury Arts Fest as presented there for July 13th so moved 14th okay your second oh second all those in favor say aye aye I'm sorry who made that motion it looks like it's Friday the 12th and Saturday the 13th did we say that no it says July 13th and July 14th I'm looking at my calendar here on my phone Friday is the 12th so it's not Friday the 13th yes you're right good call so we'll change that to Friday the 12th through Saturday the 13th thanks to you that's July right yes maybe it'll be worn by then maybe right okay bill managers items all right I'm expecting will be cozy who lives over on musky Street to come in he wants to talk a little bit about the tax stabilization fund evidently and when he saw the agenda he emailed me and said you know if I get around 730 yes good very fun almost a little bit ahead of schedule but you're here now and we haven't even started the managers items you'll have to sit through this a short presentation that's not what I want yet let's do the budget first numbers and they're they're all doing pretty well right now so these these numbers are through May 31st so last week all revenues and expenses including payroll and accounts payable are accounted for here I'm not going to go through every single one of these line items we're still early in in the year and we're still a good two months plus away from when we will begin collecting revenues I did not print a balance sheet out I might do that for the next meeting just so you can see that but we are borrowing in anticipation of taxes now we're still only borrowing from the village we had a hundred eighty thousand dollar true up with the with the school district so what happens is in none of these numbers are on these pages but with the with the school tax in July we set the tax rate and and the state tells us this the school tax rate is dollar sixty for residential and a dollar fifty eight for non-residential whatever it was and then you just plug the tax rate in and it generates a bill and you know it generates twelve million dollar bill that goes to the school and we take point two two five of one percent we get so that's about twenty four twenty five thousand dollars which is up at the top of the page about five lines down we we get to skim that off the top for the administration so we get twenty five thousand dollars for billing and collecting and chasing down twelve million dollars worth of school taxes and doing all the listing and all the appraisal and all the work and then on the balance sheet there's a due to school district that goes on there and let's just say it says twelve million dollars and then when we collect the school taxes in August twenty days after we collect them we've got to pay what we collected to the school district and then the same thing in November so at the end of the year there were four hundred thousand dollars that we still owe the school district that we hadn't collected yet and the law says that you have to pay the school district everything you owe them within a hundred and twenty days of the tax due date whether you've collected it or not so on on our November 10th last year we owe them you know five million dollars we paid them everything but four hundred thousand dollars and we carried that four hundred thousand dollars forward on our balance sheet into this year and we had to pay the school district in early March so we paid that bill in early March sometimes we get a preliminary adjustment from the state and they tweaked that number a little bit this year I don't know if it didn't come but I didn't see it so we paid the whole formula four hundred thousand dollars that we owed them and then about three weeks ago the state did the final true up and we actually paid them a hundred and eighty thousand dollars too much so they've paid us back and that hundred and eighty thousand dollars has kind of stopped the bleeding in terms of the need to borrow for a little while yet but we've got about sixty five thousand dollars in the bank right now so that goes through this week and next week probably and then we may have to borrow again the other thing that you need to know I'm not sure what's going yet with regard to school taxes but the hunger mountain childcare had requested they thought that their property should be tax exempt so they they appealed to the Listers and and said that based on similar service that was being conducted in Rutland the folks in Rutland appealed and felt that their property would be tax exempt so the folks here in Waterbury asked for tax exempt as well the Listers looked into it we've probably spent four thousand dollars and so on legal fees right now looking into this for right now the Listers made a final determination for them that they they did not believe that the property meant the qualifications to be tax exempt so the Listers here have sent a letter back to hunger mountain childcare and said you know we're leaving it on the tax rolls right now now the balls in their court they may or may not appeal that if they appeal the next appeal would be to the Board of Civil Authority here and then ultimately either party the party that doesn't prevail at the Board of Civil Authority could go on to the court if they felt it was necessary to continue to carry it on so I don't know whether they're going to appeal to the BCA or not but this is kind of another example of what's frustrating about this system that the municipalities have to hire and bear the expense of the assessor and the Listers and the Board of Civil Authority and when there are legal questions we have to pay the bill to get legal answers and 80% of the tax bill that they pay is going to go to the school so we're municipalities are in a position where the system sets us up that we are the kind of the line of defense we're the defenders of the statewide grant list so we have to bear that that expense and you know there are some cases that sometimes what a property is determined to be tax exempt it's exempt from everything and they don't have to pay the education tax or the town tax there are other times that the municipality could make an exemption and the Listers were concerned that if they determined that this was tax exempt based on the letter they got from the Hunger Mountain Child Care that the tax department could turn around and say well that's a local decision we don't think it's tax exempt for the purposes of the education tax and if you're going to exempt it you end up having to pay for it locally like we do with the veterans exemption and and other things like that so it hasn't cost us a lot of money yet but it has cost a fair amount of time you know Dan has spent a good goodly amount of time on it the Listers have spent a good amount of time on it and we have had to spend some money having a lawyer research this so we'll see where it goes but it's it's interesting and I just thought you should know about it now by way of speaking of the Listers Bill Woodruff who is a Lister now has moved out of town he lives in Duxbury now so he has resigned his position and we have that advertised we're hoping that at your next meeting in June we'll have some candidates to bring before you for for that appointment so just back up a little bit here with the daycare are they are they filed with the state as a non-profit or something yeah they are definitely a not-for-profit and I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of it but but with the universal pre-k that we have now so there are a number of students if you have a if you talk to the superintendent schools she would tell you how many students in the district are going to pre-k at all of the schools in you know the Howard district so they're made and I'm just pulling numbers out of my head there maybe there's seventy three and four year olds at Thatcher Brook who are enrolled in a sanctioned pre-k program daycares like hunger mountain child care can also offer a sanctioned pre-k program and if all of the kids there were in it or if all the three and four year olds were in it and if it was if it could be deemed appropriately appropriately open to everyone that would probably make that facility tax exempt because they would say it's it's just like education facility the gray area comes in well how how is it open to everybody I mean first you have to get a slot you have to be able to pay for it so there's there's a lot of the issues involved and of course you can pay a hundred lawyers and get a different opinion from all of them about whether it is or it isn't you know or how it is or it isn't so these kind of things unfortunately do sometimes end up trickling through the court system and you know the our lawyer Joe McLean from Stitzel and Page has indicated that it's not quite the same as the Rutland case there's another case that's probably 30 years old from a daycare in Brattleboro when it's very dissimilar to that one so it's kind of those are the bookends of kind of the continuum of the spectrum where you where you could fall and we're somewhere in the middle so I'm just curious to know how that hunger-mountain daycare differs from any other daycare and whether or not if they got yeah they were allowed to be exempt if that in fact would allow it's like your wife or it's because it's because it's because of the pre-k program that they're trying to take care the instructors have to be trained qualifications I'm sure I'm not an expert on it but anyway it's it's it's out there we've spent some money on it and we're probably going to spend more money on it and we'll see where it ends but so in terms of revenue you know if you can see down on the bottom of the first page we've taken in 3% of I'm sorry 3% of the total no I didn't do the percentage of the total anyway we've we've taken a very small percentage of our total about not quite 10% 2.9 million is the total revenue we've taken in 265,000 to date so I just didn't fill in the percentage there in the spreadsheet and that's pretty typical for this time of year we're through about 41% of the budget season but revenues are very top-heavy with regard to property taxes so until we start collecting our taxes we're going to be pretty on the low side there with regard to spending as I said we're 41% through the year and there's no budget that I'm overly concerned about at the moment you can take this and you know look at it you can ask questions next week or at the next meeting through the end of May we've actually spent 24% of the general fund so that seems like we're lagging about half behind where we should be at the 41% mark but remember there are a number of big ticket items that we pay only a couple times during the year and many of them right at the end of the year so all of the transfers to the to the capital funds that that doesn't happen until the end of the year so and then debt we pay interest in May and November and then we pay principal payments in November so that's all back loaded as well if you look at from 12 which is the highway department it's about midway through and it's on two pages again revenues we are about 3% of revenue there same thing property taxes is you know 15 16th of the total revenue taken in $55,000 of revenue today and on the spending side the highway fund has spent about 26% as you would expect the pay line is looks pretty high right now but that's always the case when you get into April and May you've had a lot of over time from January through the end of the winter and now we start into summer work and that over time will you know ratchet down considerably at this point the part-time pay line I think I told you this the last time that we did a budget report we budgeted $5,000 that says that we spent $14,402 right now part-time pay almost all of that was a highway department part-time employee who was working in the water or sewer department so we will be getting repaid by the time June is done I will have made that payment back so that that will number will go down below the $5,000 mark and you know everything else is as you would expect I think you know salt and sands budgets are going to be high at this time of year because we're we have four of our winter four of our six winter months are in the spring and you know we'll come more in line as we get into the last half of November and December so there's really nothing that I'm concerned about at this point if there's anything that you see that you have a question about I would certainly tell you to you know either send me an email ask now or bring it back up at the next meeting the last few pages of the budget report which is in different farm I did not expand these out to give a projection or anything else funds 71 72 75 and 76 either capital funds or the municipal building operating fund we have spent about $30,000 so far the main street construction project that's a total number that has been spent to date this year some of that is water and sewer which will be reimbursed to the town so that number is actually a little inflated right now and then on fund 72 just to show you that I got posted to the wrong dump truck line but we we did purchase one dump truck this year that has already been delivered so that 119 374 should be up two lines from where it is where it's budgeted fund 75 is the recreation budget recreation capital fund I should tell you a little bit about that at the next meeting I'll have much better information for you if you remember we applied for the vorac grant and we did not receive it so I kind of had a two-track budget for the recreation and one of the things that we decided that we're going to go ahead with was to replace the lights after over 30 years here on the lighting field and if you happen to notice there's an excavator sitting out the wrong right now freedom powers here last week to help put the meter in the power is going to be run from over here by the banner poles and go out to the field there when we get into it we have Kevin Collins the electrician is is working on this job we found some things that were frankly a little bit dicey in terms of what the panel was that there's probably some connections in the system under the under the ground that you know it's definitely not too soon to be replacing them and then the electrical inspector of course came in and you know obviously we want to do everything right the lights they're going to be a little bit more costly I don't have the numbers in front of me right now but I've asked Nick and Woody to put together a report and the lights at the playing field they're going to cost more we're going to have to figure out how we're going to kind of balance that extra cost out because we already have just about finished the work that we're doing in the rec building so there's a lot of play but we have to do it right obviously we've got a we can't leave it in a situation where it might be dangerous so I'll have more information for you at the next meeting and the municipal building operating fund that's the second to last budget there that's pretty pretty standard spent about 34% in there and again the debt hasn't been paid at all yet so we're a little ahead on that but again a lot of that is due to winter times we've paid for our heat and lights so anyway unless you have a question that's where we are we've got the budget for the main property and those capital funds any questions concerns no somebody had asked me about what was going on down here and I said well they're replacing the lights and I said we're applied for a grant but I don't think we received it that's unfortunate and the one of the biggest things we're hoping to get significantly upgraded is the ability to control when they're on and off I mean there's a pretty rudimentary timer there right now and it's you know I think it's kind of you live there so yeah it might be every day is exactly the same yeah yeah I've heard that more than once yeah and I won't promise that that won't ever happen again but it should be more powerful than it is now yeah it's not that's an old name so that is the that's the payment we make to revitalizing while great for the economic development so we're ready to move on Chris to the air yeah all right so we're going to talk about the tax stabilization fund I bet these are handouts just for the tax stabilization fund I've got information about the other investment funds that we have but we'll just talk about this one first and we'll do to see here who lives right in the backyard for us here on Winooski Street after town meeting sent an email to Chris and me and then I met with him and we had a couple of different meetings and some conversations and he just had some comments and concerns I think he and I had a good couple of meetings and some exchanges about this and I believe he understands you know what the town has and has tried to do better than he did before but he also because he expressed an interest when I put this on the agenda for tonight I I sent an email to will and I told him that would be talking about it and if he wanted to listen or make comments that that would certainly be welcome so anyway the top sheet which is the print out from the the balance sheet for the tax stabilization fund I printed it out for the period of May 2019 but the reason why the there's handwriting in there is because the statements have not been received yet by the treasure I get the ones that are attached online today so the unrealized losses for the month of May have not been plugged into the balance sheet yet so the balance sheet now with my handwriting on it kind of matches what is in the investment portfolio so the portfolio itself is four hundred and six thousand three hundred ninety dollars and twenty six cents seven hundred and twenty three dollars and changes in cash and four hundred five six six seven is in securities you can see the security starting on page two of the Edward Jones printout we have three three bonds still paying a very good rate we can't get those kind of rates now if we were trying to buy fixed income security so we purchased them a number of years ago well back in the early to mid-2000s I believe and you can see you know seven and a quarter percent for two of them and six point four five percent for the third one and then a number of mutual funds that spill over onto the third page and and then there's eighty seven hundred ten dollars in a money market fund which is again listed as a mutual fund on the third page and then going back to the balance sheet the seven hundred and sixty thousand three hundred dollars that says advanced to other funds that's money that tax stabilization from lamp to the highway funds and the fire department for the purchase of graders and fire trucks and the like so we're paying ourselves four percent interest on those on those loans and we're paying us that amount of interest in order to try to you know it was done for two reasons one it was a means by which we could diversify our portfolio a little bit that's seven hundred and sixty thousand dollars is frankly like a fixed income security it's like the bomb we hold to ourselves so it's more secure than any other securities that we have we don't have to worry that we're going to go out of business we have the unlimited right of taxation Chris so if we can't pay ourselves we can go and tax everybody to death until we can see never see never though so anyway the the fund has has gained this says thirty thousand five hundred from the beginning of the year but again if you take my handwriting into account it lost about eighty five hundred dollars last month so it's down about you know twenty twenty one five or something like that is what the gains are to date not including any of the four percent interest that we're going to pay ourselves because we just pay that the left some when we make the principal payment so it's performing a little bit I won't say lower than expectations but certainly lower than what we realized last year until the very end of the year and then at the very end of the year we're kind of get in the early part of this year it was it had dropped down and now with all the trade wars escalating it's dropping a bit again late and we'll see what happens so if you remember at town meeting this year the voters changed the formula by which we're taking money out of this fund we we had a formula that was a little bit complex you know we had to the first three percent stayed in the fund and then the next five percent was transferred to the general fund and then about eight percent there was a 60 40 split some of which stayed in some of which was transferred and after talking both with Billy acrimony our former auditor and the folks that sold in empowers they felt that a simpler formula that said you know you can take five percent of the year and value out up to five percent the voters changed that so we still have the same if this balance sheet doesn't show it but if you look at our audit report the audit report tells us that 644 thousand dollars of this is reserved it's basically the corpus of the of the fund and if it goes below that if it goes below 644 we cannot take anything out of it until we get it above that again and that's really where we'll want to make his comment so if the board has questions of me about this you can ask them now otherwise Chris I'd ask you to let we'll make his comments you can sit over here well it's easier just make sure that's that's all is the button right look on your backside there is it on right here is it staying on green or no no try this other one batteries okay it's this one work yep so I when I attended town when I attended town meeting I started looking through the documentation that they'll put together I understood why the intent of the proposed changes in that they were intended to reduce or to improve the efficiency or effectiveness of the fund but it occurred to me that might not be the right way to go about it for a couple reasons I guess the first and foremost is if if you think about what the new rule allows you to do it's essentially just to withdraw more funds and if you were to go ahead and follow those rules over time the balance of the fund would not keep up with inflation so I got curious and I went home and I took that initial I can't remember what the initial balance was but adjusted it for inflation and it turns out that the balance you you guys have now is pretty much what the original would you call it seed money bill yeah yeah pretty much the original value of the fund adjusted for inflation so I just wondered if there should be some check in place to adjust that lower threshold for inflation so that over time the effectiveness of the fund doesn't decrease so well and I had a fairly long discussion about this and I did the same calculation and I didn't bring I earlier today I thought I would print out the last email exchange that we had but I got tied up and I didn't do it I think that taking the $644,000 and then going back to 1996 whenever the year was we adjusted it by inflation I think it got up into the high 80s 885 900 or something like that and the balance of the fund at the beginning of this year was you know something like bag 60 or something like that and I'm not sure that it's allowing us to take out more money than we take out now I think the purpose of the change was to to make the formula a little bit more understandable it doesn't it limits the the withdrawal to no more than 5% in any given year and the select board of course can choose at any point to take more than that and that was pretty the board talked about that when they put the warning together and said you know we don't want it to say the board shall take out 5% we wanted to say the boy may take up to 5% and Mike Fryer was quick to say you know if it does 20% in a given year and we don't need the full 5% we we don't have to take it and obviously if it doesn't do well in a given year we we don't have to take anything at all but the way the former formula worked was that there were years that we were taking nothing because you know the the performance was three and a half percent and there was just nothing to take or maybe it was negative 10% and and there was nothing to take but the way the formula was written almost built in this kind of movement bust cycle that some you know a couple years ago we took out $75,000 or $68,000 because the formula said that we could and then the next year you know doesn't perform anywhere near as well and you take nothing so you know there's a $68,000 hole in your in your budget from one year to the next and the the 5% was looked at as a means to really level the amount that you could take out it would incrementally go up over time if the fund continues to grow but you wouldn't have $65,000 one year and nothing the next it would be much more even so you know I think that's a reasonable a reasonable approach but I I do think that when I emailed Will on Friday to tell him that we're going to talk about this I said you know if you make your comments to the select board there's there's at least three things the select board could do they could just say thank you very much we're going to just leave it as is and you know the only way it's going to be changed if somebody makes a petition to go to the voters the other thing that they could say is boy you know maybe we should for our own purposes consider the floor of the fund to be something higher than $644,000 and then the third more aggressive option in that regard would be to go back to the voters next year and say that let's adjust the $644,000 for inflation get that up to whatever you know $875,000 and tell the voters that we're going to adjust that 875 every year for inflation and we won't go below that in other words reestablish the floor and and put an escalator on the floor if you will so that somewhere down the road you know you're not in a position where you say well we're going to take out the full 5% and you know that ends up causing the value of the fund to be $700,000 which is $175,000 less than you had 22 years ago whatever it was not adjusted from places so I mean I think your goal was to try to strike more of a consistency of forward revenue source coming out of there so that we had a more or less a guaranteed amount that we could kind of count on with a trigger mechanism that would allow us if the markets plummeted to adjust accordingly and not sink our ship I don't know is your goal will I think to try to build the fund more as time goes on or are you trying to not really to build it I think just to recognize that the value of money changes over time and I think you could do both I think you could keep the rule that you have and the flexibility that comes along with that but by moving up the lower bounds it just keeps you more aware of the devaluation of the dollar the fact that inflation happens you know I mean there's there's two ways of looking at it I agree the devaluation of the dollar over time does impact you know our bottom line but the other flip side of it is the value of that money in our hand on a year-to-year basis and how it helps us I mean there's got to be a multiplication factor there that helps us with our yearly budgeting sure you know as well so it's yeah it's a kind of a funny juggling act and I think for Bill's purposes I think this was just after a trend of trying it the way we've been doing it for so long that he realized that if we set kept more of a consistent revenue source coming out of there that we'd be no worse often yeah than we ever then we were in the past my my hope when I brought this to the board's attention was to eliminate this in terms of the revenue stream and make it more like that but again I think will's point is reasonable and that you know every board is different and not that we want the voters to tie up the board's hands the board is elected to make decisions but right now as I said if you read our audit report the CPAs who audit our finances are going to say you know you're fine right now your 644 thousand dollars is the limit that you can't go under you're at 960 you know you got 300 thousand dollars to play with and in the worst-case scenario now we're kind of you know governed by the five percent rule but you know five percent of a billion is fifty thousand dollars you take that out and then next year the market goes down and you you know it goes down you know 10% so you've taken 50 out so now you're down to 900 then it goes down another 90 so you down to 810 and then that year you take out 5% and pretty soon you know you're a lot closer to the 644 than you really might want to be so I think there's no you don't have to make a decision tonight but I thought it was this point was worth talking about in advance of the town meeting and maybe you know you want to think about a little bit I can put it on the agenda toward the end of the year again and just re-establish that forward the voters to say you know it's really not 644 anymore because 20 years have gone by so would you see would you say that as a rule are the interest rate the 4% that we pay ourselves back for yeah borrowing the money yeah isn't that a tad bit higher than what couldn't you suggest that that does help in in a similar case oh it did to what he's looking for it definitely sherry aspect of it I think we've been very good stewards of this money I think if you look at the amount of money that we've given back to the voters the taxpayers over the history of this fund and look at what we what we've built the fund up to I think we've done a really good job of that and one of the reasons why we're paying ourselves back higher than we could borrow from the bank is you know in a sense we're doing like six and a half percent good to ourselves because we could be paying the bank two and a half or three percent to borrow that money and then not paying ourselves anything yeah the two together and it's it's six so you know that we've done a good job I think of trying to be good stewards of the fund I think the issue here is that if you're not careful and if you don't reestablish the floor to adjust it for inflation you could find yourself in a situation because it says you can take up to five percent the board has the authority to do that now and even though you don't have to take it you could find yourselves or a board could find themselves in a position where they say you know what we know the market went down 15 percent but we still really need that five percent for next year's taxes and if you take that and the market has a couple of bad years in a row when you take the five percent the full five percent every time because you can you're going to find yourself down in the $700,000 range in this fund pretty quickly and I think what will is just saying is maybe go back to the voters and leave the five percent there you can take it but if you're taking the five percent out in any given year is going to put you below pick a number eight fifty eight seventy five eight twenty five you just can't do it because you're eating into principle really that way because you're 644 back in the nineteen nineties to replace that you'd have to come up with eight fifty today right it's like it's a statement of intent it's like if you adjust the floor you're saying I want this fund to be available to the residents of Waterbury forever you know when I first learned of it I was like wow that's that's really cool that somebody had the foresight to set that aside now we get to reap the benefits of it just thought it would be the right thing to do to pass it on right well if that's the case and then maybe maybe part of that interest rate that we're paying ourselves back a percentage of that if if possible could it go towards the inflationary aspect of the of the fund as opposed to I mean how else would you how else would you other than raising that cat well I think I think setting the floor does does what you're hoping to do I mean the fact that we're paying ourselves back is is good I'm hopeful and you know a couple years that we won't you know what paid this off and and then maybe we could use it again instead of borrowing from the bank for whatever paving project or or truck or whatever that we have to buy but I think that adjusting the floor and just saying that we want to adjust this by inflation at least from time to time really gets you the protection that you're looking for and allows you the flexibility I mean we're hopeful that the market will do well enough and and despite you know the current political situation and you know we we weathered pretty you know the the market went down 50% back in 2008 2009 and we went four or five years without taking any money out because we had that floor and we couldn't go below it so I think it it it might be worth considering that and again we don't have to decide tonight this is a meeting morning but truth or thought so I think it would be good to have the whole board here yeah I appreciate very much having this discussion now in June and I mean if you look at it we've got 70% of what we would really otherwise have if we hadn't borrowed you know if we hadn't borrowed for the fire trucks and the loan is an asset so that this balance sheet is showing that that we have that other funds or us money so even if when when the when the loan gets paid back the the advanced other funds drops and the cash goes up so it's already this this is the true fund balance I see yeah actually I had suggested the bill that we should be saving more and putting it in this fund because of the power of being able to borrow from yourself and it's just a great way of savings yeah but anything's possible our road and we're trying to catch up sure the easiest the easiest way to save more is to transfer less out right so we've budgeted $48,000 to be paid from here into the general fund and we've done that because we don't want to raise that $48,000 in taxes we'll see that's again to his point that's that's the other thing and to Jane's point we're we're woefully behind on infrastructure costs I get it as she said at one of the meetings you know your paved roads they degrade to a certain degree and all of a sudden they know his dive while we're at the nose dive part on some of our roads and that's where the value of the dollar really comes into play because we're longer we put those off the bigger the nose dive is the more it costs us so to try to understand I understand your point here but right now that money is more valuable to us out on the streets and highways then then we could ever accumulate in here it's unfortunate to say that but that's the circumstance so so yeah it's a pretty finite juggling act here it's at times unfortunately I appreciate that yeah although I mean the point about inflation was a good one because maybe there's some ways that we could I think you know kind of by maybe there's a little bit of savings that could be accrued somehow with better management in a different way I think that you know we we've adjusted this formula this is at least the third and maybe the fourth time the withdrawal formula has been adjusted and frankly I think it's the intent of the the first select board that that received this money from the school district and certainly me was to make sure that this fund was paid first and it was allowed to grow before anything was taken out and you know the first year that we had it the market went down the first year so it was difficult for that board because they knew that money was there and they they had fully intended to use it but you know it had dropped in value from say 644,000 to 630,000 dollars in that first year and they were disciplined enough and you know the they paid attention to what the voters said we said no we can't touch it and every time we've tweaked this a little bit it's it's been with the intention of making sure that the first money has certain amount so we couldn't take under the former formula the last formula it had to grow 3% before we could take a dime out and fortunately in the last 10 years or so inflation has generally been below 3% so that 3% that we leave there has helped us basically keep up with inflation so I think we we didn't specifically say that we wanted to keep up with inflation but the decisions that we made to not take the first dollars out was a good one and I think will's point is reasonable and we should discuss it again when we get toward next year okay thank you thank you for coming well I know it's a crowded house tonight well thanks for coming here one more update on this there's a couple more of these we don't have to spend any real time so there's three other three other investments relatively small special and then the third one is large cemetery fun you've got monument and you've got cemetery that's it so the veterans monument fund about $85,000 in that fund, and that's basically fully invested. That money came to us from the BFW, and they wanted to make sure that all the veterans, moderates around the town were cared for. We're probably going to do a cleaning job on the Civil War Monument at Seth and Thatcherbrook School this year, so John Woodruff, the Cemetery Commission Chairman, and works at Perkins Park or Funeral Hall. They do a lot of monument work, so he's getting the estimates and wanting up that work, so we'll do that this year. I think there's also a movement to have a three-way project between the American Legion, the Cemetery, I can't remember who the other one is, to put a flagpole in the cemetery in Waterbury Center. Some of that money may come out of that fund. And then the cemetery fund, that's a pretty hefty fund value that about $517,000 after some losses last year. A little bit of cash in that fund that's invested about $97,000 of cash in the checking account that boards to that fund, and then a number of mutual funds where that money is invested, and that's done quite well for us over time as well. And then the CC Fisher fund, that's really fire department money that was established. CC Fisher was a fire chief in the old village fire department years ago, and this money was donated in his memory, I believe, and the firefighters use it for, sometimes they have a member who wants to go to a fire school, sometimes they buy equipment with it, that's not coming out of the pockets of the taxpayer. They turned that over to the village before the two fire departments merged. It was, I want to say, in the $10,000 range from when the municipality took it over and then we invested it and have grown to almost $25,000 now. And the fire department has a committee that makes the determination when they want to use this money and then puts it in a request for it. They haven't used it for a couple of years now. Anyway, questions, concerns, all that? I'm just looking at the Seminary Fund there a year ago, down about $40,000 a little over a year ago. But it's not going anywhere either, I mean, all the dividends and everything is being interest is being reinvested, so they're being purchased at lower rates, lower costs right now, when the market goes up again, you know, it will go up. There's really no way to time the market to decide when you're going to, you know, let's sell it. For us, you know, if we try to time the market and say, okay, we're going to sell it now just to, you know, park some money on the sideline and then try to decide when we should buy it back again, it's really kind of like chasing your tail a little bit. So just letting the dollar cost averaging works is a reasonable strategy, I think. Yep. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to sit there and play the market like the ones that do it. They're making all the money, but we're doing okay, I guess. Yeah, I think in general we're doing all right. Okay, you want to talk about the professional audit? Just briefly, I might put this on a future agenda when everybody's here. The auditors are coming tomorrow, so I put this on just to have a brief discussion. As you all know, we transitioned from Billy Acaboni, who had been doing the audit here for longer than I've been here, to Sullivan and Powers, and they audited the 2017 books. That audit is finished now. I don't have the final product when I get it. We'll get it to the board. I'm going to talk to them tomorrow, you know, for Chris anyway, maybe Jane. Have you ever been, were you on the board when the auditor actually came and presented the audit? So typically, you know, we have we have the audit done and we invite the auditor in to come and meet with the board so the board can hear what the auditor has to say, ask any questions that you might have of the auditor. I think it would be in everyone's interest for the sake of time and money to have the auditor come in after they do the 2018 audit and present both the 17 and 18 at the same time, as opposed to have committed to the 17 and then a couple months from now committed to the 18. But the audit that we're getting now is is much more extensive than we got before. And I don't have to be careful. There's nobody in the room except the TV's on. I've spent a lot of time on this on this audit. And I don't think we have any choice because every auditor that's out there now has to, you know, audit us to the to the Gatsby standards. There were some things that Yacoboni did and he just did it himself. So for instance, the booking of fixed assets. So we just paved, we just repaved East Street. That one probably isn't a good example. But let's say that we did what we're going to do on Loomis Hill to East Street. And it, let's say it cost $150,000 to do what we just did on East Street. And it was going to be grinding and, you know, putting in new base and then putting an overlay on it. And if that $150,000, the Gatsby standards say that has to be booked as a fixed asset on to on to your financial statements. We never did that. Billy Yacoboni did it. He had a handwritten spreadsheet that was yay long. And he, he reported it in his audit report. But it was nothing that we were actually adding to our financial statements. It wasn't really on our books. And frankly, it doesn't tell us anything. It doesn't really do anything for us, except the auditor wants to see it there. So now, you know, when you get a bill, Bill Woodruff, fire by fire, myself, we're, we're doing this work to put this on this balance sheet. And it's a challenge debt. We've always, I know what we owe. I know all the loans and bonds that are outstanding. So I can tell you that, okay, the town has, I'm just picking a number now, $6.5 million about standing debt. And I can tell you what that that's for, you know, $480,000 for the Perry Hill Paving Project still, $4 million for this building, you know, $2 million for the fire station. So I've got a list of that. They want the debt booked on to the balance sheet of the water and sewer funds, not for some reason, the town debt doesn't have to be on there the same way. And I know the reason intuitively, but I'm not going to bother explaining it to you. But not only the debt, they want me to calculate the the accrued interest. So our year goes from January 1st to December 31st. And we make principal payments on almost all of our debt in November or December. That's how it's structured. So if we have a $100,000 note out there, and it's at 5%. So the interest is $5,000 a year. So we pay that $100,000. Let's say we pay $20,000 of it. We're going to pay it over five years. We pay $20,000 in it. We pay our $5,000 interest. And then in next year's budget, I say, okay, I got $80,000 outstanding now. It's still at 5%. 5% times $80,000 is $4,000. So I put $4,000 in the budget. Well, they want me to show on the financial statements that 45 days worth of that $5,000 is really in last year. So I got a book that's accrued interest. So all I'm telling you is there's a lot of work keeping up with this. I'm hopeful that when we get through it, we'll have enough information about what they want that we'll be able to do it a lot more efficiently than we are right now. I would guess in the last two months I've probably spent 30% of my time just on these audits. And there's no value at it. Right. I mean, you know, eight people in the town are going to look at this art report, and seven of them are going to be, you know, you five and, or six of them are going to be you five and Carla. And I'm going to be the one that reads it from cover to cover, maybe. So I'm just, you know, on my bad days, I've been, you know, sputtering to my wife and saying, you know, when I retire, they really need to hire a town manager and a finance director because this is not stuff that bookkeeper can do. Even Leanne would not have been intuitively able to just do this. That's why she got out when she did this kind of stuff. Yeah, I know. Yeah. So anyway, when Fred or Rick come when when the 17 and 18 audits are done, you know, I'll ask some of these questions, but I just, I just want you to understand that it's a little bit of a challenge right now. Michelle's doing a really good job as the bookkeeper. She's not a CPA. I'm not a CPA. And you know, I spent all of this is a village thing, but I spent, I probably spent six hours last week doing the calculations of this accrued interest for the for the village and came up with it and said, okay, there's whatever, you know, 12,345 dollars worth of interest that we're going to be paying in 2019. That really was for the last month and a half of 18. And I got it all done and I sent it over finally got it finished. And then they called me up and say, Oh, don't you remember that the village went out of existence on June 30th and they knew utility district came into being on July 1st. And I said, Yeah. And he said, Well, any of that debt that you calculated and that accrued interest belong with the village and not. And I said, Oh, there were two bonds that we had a principal payment in June. So now I have to go back and recalculate that for that one month and then, you know, recalculate the rest of the village. It's like, It's just make work. At the end of the day, what value does that add to any of this? And is it just really nonsense? A lot of it? Is it a requirement? I'm having a hard time with that. So, so no, it isn't Jane. I don't believe there's any legal requirement that we be audited. Certainly not every year. But the caveat to that is when we get grants from the state. Yeah, I didn't mean is it a requirement? I mean, I understand the need to be audited and and to kind of keep all of this on the up and up, you know, by documenting everything every year. I just meant, is this to a fine point what you're discussing and parsing out these sub funds that went? Is that really required? Or do you think it will get easier next year having done it once? Well, it's required by the Gatsby standards. And that's where that's why Billy Eccaboni got out of municipal accounting because he just said, you know, what is the point? This isn't this is not giving any information to anybody in the municipality who needs it. We don't issue our own bonds. You know, we're not like even the city of Burlington. They're just big enough to, you know, go to the bond market on their own. When we sell a bond, we go through the Ramon Bond Bank and they get it's all lumped together with all the bonds that other municipalities put out. So if we were a big city, Manchester, New Hampshire or bigger, and we were going to the bond market on our own, the bonding houses were going to sell the bonds. They would want the spider detail. But we've been to the bond bank, you know, how many bonds in the 30 years that I've been here, I've been able to provide them all the answers, all the information, and they might ask a few questions and say, well, you know, we think you're, you know, pushing the envelope and then you go back and you say, okay, yeah, we're pushing the envelope, but we just had Tropical Storm Irene and we had this devastation. We can't afford it all. Just, oh yeah, that makes sense. But we've been able to issue our debt. Nobody's, they've all had the auto reports from Bill Yacoboni and while everything isn't in there to the nth degree like these folks needed, it passed muster and got us what we needed. So I'm not saying, and then the kicker is not only that, you know, it's a lot of opportunity costs for me, because I'm spending a lot of time doing this. It's four times more expensive. What bothers me is what's going to, what impact financially to the town is going to affect us after you're gone and we have to, you know, hire two people to do the same, same job you're doing. You know, is there a way that we can tell them to go pound sand or find somebody different that doesn't require all this? I think that, I think that they're probably, it's probably required and and all the firms out there would probably require the same thing. I am hopeful, as you suggested, that as time goes by, you know, we'll just get a little bit more used to this. You know, the honeymoon will be over and maybe things will settle down a little bit, so to speak, but I just wanted you to know that it is a bit of a challenge and it's eaten up a lot of my time right now and it has to because I've got nobody that I can, I'm using the staff that I have. Barb is helping out, Bill Woodruff are helping out to a degree and Michelle is helping out, but they're, they're all taking my, you know, the leave from me. So anyway, that's just where we are. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yep. I guess if we're all set, then take a motion to adjourn. Make a motion to adjourn.