 We have the Select Board, we have Garinda, our Treasurer, we have Elias, Mark, Vic, Theo, Kennedy, and who is LG Style 4? Please identify yourself. So what do you think? Should we zap them if they want to identify themselves? I don't think you can do that, Peter. Well, you can, can't you, Sarah? I don't see it. I can, but it may be somebody who's just, I mean, I think they are allowed to attend without having to identify themselves. It's a top right of the second meeting. I see them, yeah. I thought you had to put, I thought you had to put in the minute tour was at the meeting. You only have to put the minutes who participates in the meeting. Well, somebody's attending the meeting, they're participating, right? Well, what do you want me to do? I don't know, I'm asking the Select Board what they think. I don't know, but I think anybody should at least identify themselves if they're going to be part of our meeting. Well, why don't I send them a message? See if that works. Yeah, it would be fun. That's a good idea. Maybe they don't realize, you know, their, their, their mic is turned off. Maybe that's, oh, that's Orca. Yeah, who knows? I don't think they know how to use the phone. Well, I'm not getting anything. I texted them, I don't know. Do you want me to put them in the waiting room? What do you think, board members? No, what I'm saying is that it's possible that someone like Mary Kay called in on her phone and it shows up as two things. Cause you know how you have to lay the wifi or you have to call in, that wasn't you, Mary Kay? No, Mary Kay's saying no. Was it you? I can tell you somebody was in the office today asking how to set up Zoom and that was the phone that was being used. Okay, perfect. Then I say we let the person stay on. And you can't tell us who that is, Gerinda? I already did, Juan. You did tell us. That's Jay, Flies, Files. Hi, hey Files. Remember we're a road crew. All right. Guys, I've got to mute myself for just a second here. We've got a little, my neighbor just hit a deer and I need to talk to him. Hold on one second, I'm sorry. Only in Vermont. Only in Vermont. I'll be right back. Maybe. Which neighbor? Everybody have their winter tires on? Not me. Who's not me? Bill McManus. Well, there you go, Bill. One on one car and one not on the other. I got the tires, but I haven't got them on it yet. I just got mine on today. It was perfect timing. Well, do you want me to start running the meeting while we're waiting for Peter? Do you want to wait for Peter? Just give him a minute. After all this is deer hunting in Vermont. Right. And I thought hunting from the road was illegal. Hey, ask him if it's a buck and where it is and you can go over and dig it. That's right. Can't hear you, Peter. Well, no, you can now. My neighbor just bashed into a deer on the interstate in Bethel headed to Boston. They're pulled off to the side of the road. They've called the state police. They say they can't come for at least an hour. Gonna have to figure out their own problem. I can't help them. I told them I'd come down at seven o'clock and rescue them, but I can't do it now. So anyway, I apologize for that. So we've called the meeting to order. We have welcomed guests. Are there any amendments to the agenda? Liz, you have one amendment, correct? Yeah, just under other business to talk about the capital spending plan. Any other amendments? Liz, isn't there a meeting on Thursday about that? Yes, there is. And that's what I need to talk to you guys about. There's a piece of the meeting that I need to discuss with you before I do that meeting. I'm gonna have something else under the treasurer's report, but nothing big. Okay. Thank you, Dorinda. So with that, we will go into our budget workshop, reviewing FY23 budget proposals for town administration, including Lister zoning, as well as conservation commission planning, commission recreation department and cemetery. In addition, the board will review Blue Cross Blue Shield plans for 2022 calendar year action possible. If necessary, approving all mid-year pay raise and other compensation via motion action possible. So there's a question, Liz, in the minutes which Sarah produced, she didn't think we made a motion on the pay raises, and I thought we did. Is that not the case? I thought Phil made the motion and I'm not sure who seconded it, but Phil, I thought made it. Yeah, and I seconded that. Yeah, okay. Seconded it, okay. And we approved it unanimously. So we need to add that to the minutes, Sarah. Okay. Okay, thank you. Okay, so with that, budget workshop, you on first, Sarah or Dorinda? I mean, I left a lot of places blank on this because as far as the town funds, because I wasn't sure what you wanted to do or some of the information we have not received yet. And we have not, we sent a message out to the cemetery commission and we did not hear back from them. So I don't know how you wanna handle that one. And I think there's a lot here to discuss and you're certainly not gonna do it in 20 minutes. So you might wanna choose your battle. Okay, what does that mean? Go to the other stuff and then come back to this? No, I'm saying that. I don't think you can accomplish all the things listed, the health insurance, the empty slots on here. So I think you're gonna have to do, pick what areas you wanna concentrate on and go from there. Well, let's, here's what I would suggest. Let's review what numbers we have in general government and administration and understand what decisions we need to make. And at the same time, I think we can, I think we are where we are on the health insurance for this upcoming year. So I'm not sure review of plans. I mean, that would be appropriate for next September, not now, I believe. Am I not correct on that, Dorinda? Well, yet we have to make a decision as far as if we're gonna stay with Luke Cross. And I think if you wanna explore other options, you're not gonna be able to make that decision this quickly. Get the information you need and make any changes. Yeah, I mean, that was my sense at the last meeting that was already too late to do that this year. In terms of, yeah, Mark. Just a clarifying question for the 2022-23 budget, is there a goal in mind for the budget increases to be a flat budget, a slight increase? Is there any thinking behind that? We have not gotten to that point yet, but based on what we know already and what we've heard, I'd say it's gonna be a pretty good increase. It's not gonna be flat, that's for sure. And with that in mind, we're going to be looking for opportunities to save where we can find them, because we already know, and you already know some of the areas where we're spending more money, but no, we have not, last year we were shooting to keep it at 5% or below, but we have not done that this year. Okay, thank you. Also, we just have too many parts and too much stuff going on to be able to do that at this point in time. As we firm up these numbers and move forward and start to see what the increase really looks like, then we'll be able to make decisions. Okay, thanks for that. Right now, we're more or less accepting information. We're not adjusting anything at this point. So, okay. Does, thanks. So, basically the wages and all the offsetting taxes are populated based on the numbers you agreed to last week. There's no percentages in there for any type of increase. So, those are just plug numbers for right now. But they're plug numbers based on our interim increases. Yes, correct. Okay. Any insurances related to property and casualty or liability, anything like that, we have not received those numbers yet. So, we can just start, we don't have county tax information, anything like that. So, we can start right at the top and go down and plug in numbers if you want to do that. I mean, there's some things you'll see, like when we get to town email, we had never budgeted a number last year because that was something we implemented in term, midterm, and it was originally falling under computer maintenance. So, when we get to computer maintenance, you'll see that's higher than what we budgeted for. So, I guess you can drive. Jess, which is what we've done in the past, is put in last year's numbers and gray it out or highlighted or put an asterisk after it so we know it's last year's numbers. Okay, well, we can do that as we go along, but the first one to come to is advertising and printing. We budgeted 500 a year before it came in at 1335. So, do you really want to plug in a $500 number? And I don't, you know, without knowing if our printing is going to be up for certain things. I mean, somehow we have to talk out, but I'm just trying to get at some baseline so we can move forward. So, without all these numbers, you don't even make any sense at all to me. Well, I can fly through them really quickly if you want to just, I mean, the first one, I didn't know how you wanted to adjust to that, you know? Do you want a level fund? Well, let's- Is that what you want to do? Is level fund everything? Oh, no, no, no, no. No. I'm just saying the numbers that we don't know are that we're waiting to get information. We should put in some kind of plug number just to start the process. Right. And I do- I'm just going to have that in there. Okay. Well- On some of them. So, I'll just plug in the 8538 on the property and casualty. Yep. All right. Now, advertising and printing. We're getting a thousand. Wait a minute. Why was it all of a sudden $1,300, Sarah? Are you, was there some reason to jump way up? I, the advertising and printing for, are we talking about the current fiscal year that we're right now? We're going to- I put a payment from the year before. Well, I would assume from the year before is because we were doing so much for the, for the 2020 election. Is that right? Were we setting out postcards and- I think so. We recouped a lot of those costs. But I think that there was a, as I recall, that was a heavy printing year. But we've also done a lot of advertising for hearings. And I think that even comes in below though. That's a different number. This is general advertising. Did we have a different person for the town book too? The annual report? No, it was all, it's still a jet service. And I think their fees have been pretty flat for the past couple of years. And that's on a different line item for the town report. Let's just put in $1,000. Okay, let's go. That's what I said. Yeah. Is the slide board going to take any courses? We always put in 200 and never use it. I'd leave it, I'd zero it out. No, zero it out. If we use it, if we spend it, we spend it. We haven't, I don't think we've spent it in four years. Well, but it's not gonna have a little extra money. Well, I think he'll let us take a course if we want to. Yes. He'll take it from his flush fund. Peter Welch Park has nothing. There's gotta be some money on that. We gotta get that done. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let's go, what are we gonna plug in for the town email? Where is the town email? I don't even see it. On 13. I don't know how much is it cost. So 710 was in there, where did that number come from? That was what we spent in 2020 one. Okay. And I think we're paying, it's like $3 an email or something like that, isn't it? Or something to that effect. I think it's up around $100 a month or so. So you're looking at probably $1,200. Okay. Right? Yeah, because there's also the spam filter and virus protection and that stuff. So yeah, probably 1,000 to 1,200 is much more reasonable number. Okay. I'll put in 1,000. Okay. Town property maintenance. We already have 150 in there for mowing the town properties that was submitted by Mitch. And there's other, we usually put money in there for other things like painting the town hall or whatever we do. So I didn't know how much you wanted to add to that 150. You mean 25? 2,500. Right. But well, no, we've is 150 for mowing town property from that what came. Oh, that goes in there. That will go in there. That's off to the side. And then whatever else, if there's anything else for town maintenance, I think there was some extra fees in there at one time we thought we were going to have for something. But again, the year before we only spent 50 bucks just about and we put in 2,500 for some reason last year. Well, wasn't that because we were going to be continuing painting like on the, we've been doing painting on the town buildings every year. Haven't we? We didn't do any this year. Yeah. I think that's right. Nothing. And we need to get back to that. Let's leave it. Yeah. Right now it's got zero. So when you say let's leave it, are you saying? We have 100. We have 200, 500. Yeah. Okay. 500. That gives us a couple thousand plus a little bit of the unknowing for painting. And discretionary fund that always shows like we don't use it, but what happens is when we do say, take it out of the discretionary fund, we put the actual expense to the category that it falls in. So if you're going to use your discretionary fund to say paint the town hall or something, then it would go under town hall expense and not under the discretionary fund. So how do we deal with that? So we see when we've used our discretionary fund, Arenda. We would have to go forward and make adjusting journal entries as it's used and move funds from one account to the other. Just something that I'll ever do in the town. Take it from the discretionary account and put it in the fund balance or? Put it into the line item for. Put it in the line item, yeah. We would reduce the expense by that amount. Okay. Well, I guess, I mean, somehow we need to be doing that because I agree, we, there are always three or four things every year where we say, we'll take it out of the discretionary but it never, it never vanishes. And then we can't remember what we used it for. But our, but our auditor says what we're doing then. Hey, or is that not so, Arenda? We're fine. We're not doing anything we shouldn't do. I mean, we're showing the true expenses of what we spent things on. So they're not concerned. It's more or less extra money you put into the budget for unforeseen circumstances. Well, it's, it's extra money. Yeah, we put in the budget and then we raise it with our property taxes. Right. We raise money to cover it. We could at 8,000 though. Okay. And I would recommend our share of Welch Park shouldn't be any more than $500. I wouldn't think as a guess. That's what I put in. Yeah. So I would leave it at 500 legal fees. Who knows? They have been extraordinarily high. I would put in 2,500. Oh, I think we need to put in more than that. I mean, if this, if this appeal goes forward again, not alone could be $2,500. 5,000. I don't know. I literally have, I literally have no idea, but it doesn't feel to me like it's enough. No, I agree. How about 3,000? How about 3,000? 3,000. Okay. They're saying go up. Huh? Well, we've got that Bowdoin appeal from the BCA that's been kind of deferred while the courts are dealing with their backlog, but I have the feeling that's going to speed up next summer. So I just expect there, there could be some legal expenses there. Down report. Down reports in there. We've got numbers for that. The leak, we don't have any dues fees yet. So I'll just plug in last year's number. We don't have, I'll plug in last year's number. Central Vermont solid waste. We don't have that. No. The next two items we do have, we estimated elections. I talked to Sarah about that and we estimated it probably a couple of thousand dollars. Miscellaneous expense. We just throw a five, we've been throwing 500 in there just in case something isn't captured somewhere else. What does that come? What's missing that doesn't have a category? Okay. As you can see, it was $85 the year before. The capital plan, somehow this was, we put it in as a line item last year and for $900. We should, our biggest problem is we enter into a lot of grant agreements partway through the year. And we don't necessarily spend that money in that year. Like we might get it in, but then we don't actually spend it and able to collect on it until the following year. So these are really hard to capture. Well, I just think based on our past experience, we need to put some kind of a plug number in there, a thousand dollars or something. And just call it grant matches. All the time. Yeah, grant matches. We'll just change the line item to grant matches and plug in a number. Yeah. Okay. And how much would you like to do that for? Where do you think a thousand? That's what you said, yeah. Yeah, but it's least at something. Would it be easy enough to gather information on what we've done for the past three years or something and pull an average in? I mean, is that easily accessible? Of what everything we spent in matches? Yeah, for, you know, look back at the last three years and just plug the average for the last three years into that line item. I'll have to see what we... I'll have to see what information we can get out of the system. I'll look for it. My only comment is it seems like it's more and more all the time. It is. Tax abatements. That is so small write-offs, like if somebody, you know, they kind of paid in between and we're off by 50 cents or a dollar or, you know, something like that, we write off these small amount. I just leave that at zero. I mean, the highest that's ever been has been a few hundred dollars, like less than $500. Yeah. Well, at the COVID-19, you skipped that one, line 27. Right. I mean, I don't know if we want to, again, put anything that was a surprise to everybody. So it just, those were expenses we incurred and we were separating them only because we thought we could get reimbursed for them. Yeah. I think you're still gonna have some residual monies that'll be spent on that, at least for the short term. But I also think we may be able to recover that money from our ARPA funds, right? That's what I was gonna say. Yeah. So I would just leave it at zero and understand that, I mean, I'm open and we can go back and recapture the money we've already spent. I think they already told us we can't go backwards. Well, we can certainly go forward. So. Right. Fine items, so we've already measured it when it comes to ARPA money. We've got it all done already. Yeah, but I'm just saying don't budget it because we expect it to be zeroed out. If we expend money, we should put it in that line item as an expense, but we shouldn't budget it because we expect to recover it from ARPA and zero it out at the end of the year. Well, if we use it. Will it be eligible? It has to be eligible number one. I'm sorry, go ahead. Were we not eligible for PPP as a municipality? We didn't apply. So I don't know if we were, I don't think we ever had that discussion because I would have paid for, I think some of those things, the supplies and all that. That's history at this point in time. But if we, my understanding is that COVID related expand, you know, again, it's still very unclear to me what we can apply for or not, but I don't anticipate it's going to be a big expense. And I'm hoping that we can take it out of our ARPA funds. And if you guys think we should plug a small number in there, I'm fine doing it, but I don't anticipate any additional changes to our office space. And I can't imagine we're going to spend much on supplies at this point in time. But I don't know. Is some of the language in that prevent you from using the ARPA money if it's a budgeted line item? If I recall, there's some requirements in there that if you have it in a budget at all, it's not ARPA eligible. So it would be beneficial to leave it out. Randy's right. Yeah. I say leave it out. Well, any expenses anyways, we go under the ARPA expenses and not that line item if we were trying to get anything back. Right. So, okay. So we can skip down under administration. We can skip right to office supplies. What line? Hey, line 41. Line 41. Yeah. Peter. Fireman, yes, Steve. I was just, our schedule says that we're going to be reviewing the fire department budget proposals. So we're still in the budget stuff, but can't we just go to that so that these guys can get that in there? Well, I was hoping we could, I think very quickly we can zip down to the bottom of this first page and then get to them. Okay. In the next four or five minutes. Yeah. If we can't, we'll pause. I don't want to keep them waiting either, Steve. Okay. Just to get to the town administration, we don't have much. The only office supplies, I think we might, if we're trying to save money, we probably can scale that back maybe. Sarah, I don't know what your feeling is on that. I'll just shake the printer. Just cartridge. Why don't you put in what you had for last year? I mean, if we have to scale back later in our budget, that's when we can do it. Okay. And we should have 1500 because the price of stuff has gone up immensely. 15. Well, we had 3000 in there. Yeah. I would just have a budget item. Yeah. Yeah. Stick with 3000? Yeah. I thought we were going to just round up what we actually spent for last year. People think we should do 3000. Let's just put 1500 in and save 1500. I think 1500 sounds reasonable to me. Okay. Equipment and a pair. I'll keep the same. Equipment purchases. I don't know if there's anything that, again, this is a, you know, we need to talk about it. This wouldn't fall under the capital spending plan, but any kind of purchases. The one thing I did read that one of the towns is buying systems to conduct their meetings remotely. They're buying these owl systems and EVs. Yeah. And it's being covered under the ARPA money. Right. So that might be something, but again, that would be an ARPA expense. So I don't know how much equipment we really need to purchase. Well, I just told was presumed something's going to break or blow up or somebody's left. Put in a thousand. Yeah. I think that's fine. Yeah. The list of computer, we did the upgrade on that. So that's going to be a zero. Yeah. And then everything else I kind of went through and from the list of budgets and all and plugged those numbers in. I think you guys received a copy of the list of budgets. Yeah. So I plugged those numbers in. The copy or lease, I'll leave in that one. We can do computer maintenance. That's the biggie. That's where all of your RB technology bills fall under. And just the contract alone, based on the current amount we're paying, I don't know if there's going to be an increase is $8,500. But every single month, we have seems to be, we have overages. 22K. Well, that's just, yeah, that's a little bit more than what we actually spent last year. 10%. Yeah, that sounds good. Okay. 15.79%. All right. So that takes care of that part. Do you want to skip to fire department or? Let's just shoot down through the town all quickly. It looks like you've got pretty good numbers in here. The only one, again, the only thing in here is building repairs. And then we always put $10,000 into the town hall building fund. And those are the only two I didn't fill in. I think you keep them the same. Yep. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Dorenda. Yeah, thanks. Round up to 2,000 for the building repair. I'm sorry, Mayor. 5,000. We're just going to keep it. Oh, I thought we were, when we say keep it, we were going to keep it at what we spent, not as what we... Keep the number. Keep the number, Dorenda, as put in there. Five for last year, five and 10. Yep. Okay, got it. All right. Okay. Thank you. We are now going to pause our general budget discussion and take a look at the fire department budget. Gentlemen. Good evening. Hi. How are you guys? We're good. Thank you for waiting for us. We appreciate it. Not a problem. We all set? Yes. Okay. So for the insurance, for property and casualty and workers comp by plugging in the same numbers as last year, and have the new rates yet. Supplies, we went up $100 because we're buying more and more cleaning supplies. Equipment repair, we kept the same. Equipment purchase, we kept the same. The telephone, we kept the same. Fast squad, we kept the same. Let's see, electricity. Actually, we dropped it down a smidge just because that was a little bit high. Seemed like we weren't reaching it. Fuel and heat, we did bring that up because we heard rates were going up. Building maintenance, we've kept the same. Radio dispatch, we haven't got the new numbers yet so we kept that the same. You've got that now, Eric. Oh, did we get it? It was on the last bill that you received from them. Oh, I probably overlooked that. That's okay, $28,394. Okay, thank you. Yep. I must overlook that. No problem. Do's and training, we did up that sum just because we're spending more on training now. Courses and seminars. Some of that is covered from the state so we dropped that sum, those courses. Forest warden, we kept the same. Gas and diesel, we did drop down because we just haven't been using that much. So this is the one that changed the most is stipends. Okay, can we just back up a minute to gas and diesel? Yeah. Because my understanding is, and I've been following this mostly because of the road crew, not because of you guys, but we're potentially talking about a 50% increase in cost of diesel fuel and gasoline the same. So I think you should bump that up. Okay. I agree. Probably small number because you don't use that much. That's the good news. But I think it's a mistake to cut it back. So I guess I'm suggesting put it up to maybe 1200 or something like that. If that makes sense to everybody. We can do that. Yeah. Peter or Eric. One other thing on your courses and seminars, you dropped it down to 300. Do you think you're not going to use that? I mean, you guys have been going pretty good with training and stuff like that. Well, yeah. If you look up above, we have training up there as well. So we kind of, we kind of were, it was kind of, how you would call it. Yeah, it was dual. So we basically just kind of, we bumped one up but brought the other one down. It's still roughly the same. You're comfortable with it? Yeah. Okay. Okay. The stipends, yeah. So with our new program that we installed, we tried to take an average of how many calls we have a year, how many people roughly go to those calls so far of what we've kept track with to try to come up with a number that's reasonable to cover what our $10 an hour cost is now. And that's what we came up with. Mm-hmm. So. So how much does it call? 18,000? Okay. You know, and we'll have a better feel on it, maybe end of this year and into next year of where it's actually gonna be. But we tried to average everything to try to come up with a reasonable number on both ends. So what was the rate in 2021? You changed it mid-year, didn't you? It was $5 a call and we went to $10 an hour. Right. Right, so you changed the whole system and you changed it in the middle of the year so that $12,000 number doesn't really represent the current actual cost. No. That's a $1,200 number and that was when it was changed from the current year. Right. Wasn't that Eric? Yes, correct. Okay. Yes, and we're also paying for meetings and trainings too and work sessions. Yeah. So it's, you know, we're trying to figure it out and I guess we'll see where we end up but hopefully that's pretty close number, you know? Okay. Radio communications, we kept the same at 1200. We added a line item here for turnout gear. We figured roughly 13 sets of gear at the cost of $1,300. Our plan is to try to offset that with fundraising. Fundraising, we're going to send out a letter to the town's people and we get, help me out here. Raffle, yeah, we have a raffle going too. So we've got some things in the works to try to offset that as much as possible. That's great. So the only question I have about that is and I know we've talked about this in the past and I just can't, I apologize. I can't remember the discussion but is it possible, for instance, is all our turnout gear exactly the same age? No, right? There is, I think. Majority of it is the same age. The, a lot of the older stuff is still being used. So we're doing it right now, yeah. All I'm wondering is, and believe me, I want everybody to be safe and I want them to have the right equipment and the right gear, but if there's any way to spread that out over two budget years, it would be great. And I don't know if there's any, how you're doing on this year's budget, but if you could squeak out some money this year to pay for some of that, just to spread out the cost a little bit instead of having it all in one year, especially when we're ratcheting up the stipend so much, which believe me, I support, and I think it's a good thing, but it just, the combination of the two in one year makes a big lead. That's why we're doing the fundraising is to try to offset this with the raffle in the envelope. It's a letter that you brought up here when you talked to the fire department back in mid-summer. Oh no, I'm with you all the way. I'm just trying, I guess the other way to deal with this when this of course brings up the whole issue of the independent nonprofit versus the town fire department, but we could potentially borrow for some of that cost if we didn't want to put it all in this year's budget. I don't want to borrow for the stipend because that money's gone at the end of the year, but what's the expected life of the turnout gear? 10 years. So if we pay that off over two years instead of one year or maybe three years or something like that. It's certainly an option. It's certainly an option. And see how the fundraising goes, but I guess what I would prefer to do and help me out to render in terms of how we would do this, but if we all agreed that the way to do this was to spread out the cost with borrowing over three years, we should just put in one year's, one third of that number and then add in some interest expense, right? You would have to go out to a road on it, I believe, if you want to take out any kind of loan on it. For that small amount. So that would have to be a special, I believe that you would, Sarah can correct me, but I think anytime you go out for any kind of loan, unless you're going to pay it off in one year, you have to get a special vote on it, correct Sarah? I believe that's true. You can do a one year note, which is what you know you do, but if you're going for more than that, you have to go to the voters. So it would be, you could actually make it a special article in the town meeting warning saying, should we go and borrow the dust and clutch for that? For sure not. This would be the time to decide whether or not to do that. Right. Yeah. I don't think so. I don't know how the budget committee and how the select board feels about that, but I just hate to see a $30,000 job that won't bear. I think it's a good idea to have a vote. Well, I think it's a good idea to spread out the cost and if what we have to do is have the vote, then that's a good idea too. Yeah, spread out the cost and have a vote. I don't think it would be any problem to have it pass. No, I don't either. Well, it should be considered as a capital asset. It's kind of like 10 years. That's right. Oh no, it's like buying any other, like buying a, I mean, it's a much lower cost, but it's no different than buying a truck or a grater. I'm just saying when I looked at this, what jumped out at me is, oh my God, it's just my slime dog way of doing it. It's a 30% increase. And I kind of hate to see that. I don't think it's the best way to manage our down funds. So. Well, can I have, you know. We're not voting on the budget tonight. No, no, that's fine. I'm just, I just wanted to throw something out there. It might not be a bad idea to split out the turnout gear anyway, so that they're not coming due all at the same time again in 10 years. Does that make sense? No, they're still gonna come due. I mean, if you need the turn out here now, I want to get you to turn out here. I just want to spread out the paying for it. And if that makes you face the same thing 10 years down the road, we do or we buy some of the town that turn out here one year early. And the other bunch, one year later, I just want to make sure that the fire department has the correct turn out here. Fair enough. And this is from the budget committee standpoint, this is something we could plan for 10 years down the line. We could put this in as a capital improvement asset. Right. I see you, Randy. I'll recognize you in a minute. Yeah. So I guess what I'm suggesting for tonight is we plan on doing that. Dorenda and we've just got to remember, we just got to remember to do it when the time comes. Okay, so I'm gonna take, I'll take that out of the line item budget. Okay. That's fine. Thank you. I'm sorry. Is that you, Scott? I can't hear you. We can't hear you. Oh, I'm not saying nothing. Oh, okay. Yes, Sarah. I'm just confused what you say we have to plan for this and take this out. You just be a little bit more specific. Are you saying that you would like to have a special article on the morning for 2022 asking to raise, should we go into to borrow for $30,000? That should be the plan for right now. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. Just need that clarification. Yes, Randy. I was just gonna say something similar to what Mark said and, you know, the fact that stuff like that's gonna be incorporated into the capital plan. I do have a question, Eric though, you know, you said 13 groups of turnout gear. How many, how many members do you guys have now? Does that, does that cover, you know, future expansion of the fire department? If we think that we're gonna continue to grow. What 15? We have 15 now, but several of them are juniors. So they don't, they don't go in a burning building. So they don't need the same level as the rest of us. Okay. I got, I think what, I think what's Randy is asking, Eric, is if the fire department continues to grow, like let's say by next July, you have 15 or sometime during next year, you have 15. Should we really be getting, I mean, I don't know how you do it, cause we can't, we can't buy the, the turnout gear has to fit the firefighter. So you have to be within this certain weight range. Yeah. That's the problem they could have fit. Right. What we've done in the past, Randy, is, is the numbers are not great and we find that money when we need to do it. I mean, if we have more, if we have more firefighters and we need new turnout gear, that's the good news. But to, to buy turnout gear when we don't know the sizes and we don't ever, anything else is, of course, I suppose we could, we could borrow the money and not spend it, but that doesn't seem like a good thing to do either. So my recommendation is we stick with the 13 and yeah, maybe, maybe save the best of the old turnout gear. I don't know how we do it. I'll, I'll try something nice to manage that, but we can deal with that. Yep. So I, I'm a little confused. You mentioned the number of $30,000. Right. I mean, it was about that. The turnout gear is $16,900. Yeah, that's 16,000. Like why would we be talking about 30? I was confused on the 30,000. I didn't know what, what that was about. That's you, Peter. I think it was a clerical error. Okay. That's fine. I, I was just like, wait, did I miss something? No, no, no. We're not going to borrow 30,000 to cover 16,000. 17,000. Okay. Mental error. That's fine. I just make it sure that I wasn't missing something. The 30,000 was the combined stipend. Yeah, gotcha. But we're not borrowing for the stipend. Oh, no. There, all of a sudden, my computer is printing words of what everyone's saying. Is everybody else getting that as well? Yeah. One of the participants has asked for a transcript, a live transcript. And that's, all right. I had that happen. No, it's just you. When you're frozen, Mary. Hey, I got a question. Oh, because I'm too far off. So when we do our fundraising, even if we need some extra gear, we can use from our fundraising for the gear. If we need more, if we get more members, correct? Yes. Erica, done any fundraising this year? We have got some stuff lined up that we're actually starting right now. We've got a raffle we're gonna be doing to win a gun. I guess we're gonna get the grocery stores. Yeah. And there's a few different things that we've got. How about the prizes? Because you work to do it at the concerts this summer, the raffle this summer. Correct. Doesn't that bring us right up to the regular meeting for them? Yes. Steve, you're the... I'm Giver. ...of the agenda tonight. Yeah. I just don't want it to go to 8.30. I know, I know. I'm doing my best here, bear with me, but keep doing good. As long as you say it in a positive way, I respect your comments. How about that? Yeah, more so. So I think we're all set then, guys, right? I have one more thing if you have the like about a minute and a half. Sure. Okay, I have the monthly report. Jeff had emailed it to me. Our total cost of date is 53. Last month, we've had three calls, zero mutual aid out and zero mutual aid in. The max number of responders we had was six. The minimum number of responders was three, so we averaged just four. Engine one went out twice. Engine six did not go out at all. Tanker one went out once, rescue one went out once. The calls were on the 30th of October. There was trees across the East Hill Road, right by your house, Peter. Yeah. Engine one, tanker one, rescue one, and six members responded. And we actually called in the town's road crew to assist us in removing this. It was a clump of trees. It wasn't just one tree across the road. On November one, we had a gas odor on Gallagher Road. Nothing was found. We swapped out a CO detector, turned the gas back on. We lit the appliances. Engine one and three responders. On the 8th of November, we had a car versus deer motor vehicle accident on I-89. I responded in my own vehicle. The car that hit the deer was damaged. There was no fire danger. The deer was actually hit prior to this vehicle hitting it. So I held everything in quarters. And there were three responders. For training, we did scene command exercises and radio operations for non-officer firefighters. Repairs, E-1 is having problems with the battery tender. We're still working on it. We made no major purchases. One additional item is Mike Peltier. Can't be complex. We had a couple of false alarms this fall. He has installed a fire alarm zone map, which Jeff inspected and found missing a door to the back area. Mike is gonna update the map. So that is the fire department working with in the community and the report. The report. Thank you, Doug. Yeah. Thank you, Doug. And I wasn't trying to cut you short, but because you guys still have time, I just was trying to get to that regular meeting of the fire department. So your way ahead of schedule now. I'm trying to help out. Thank you. Thank you. If you all want to know, Eric, the new total for the budget is 86067. And that's a 24.06% increase. Yeah. But with that is the potential for property and casualty and workers' compensation to change. Right, correct. And you'll give me those numbers when you get them? Soon as I get them, you'll get them. Awesome. By the way, Dorinda, just as a buy-to-buy and harkening back to my old life, my understanding is, believe it or not, workers' cooperates are going down. Unemployment rate went down, but I haven't gotten anything on, not that it went down that much, but I haven't gotten anything on the other yet, so. It may not be bad news. I have no idea on the property cash or the side what's going on. Yeah. Okay, so do we have anything else with regard to the work? We've, I guess, left our budget meeting temporarily, at least just so we can finish up with the, just so we can finish up with the fire department. Anything else? Anything else for the fire department? No. I would just put everybody, fire department and select board on alert, but I think we all, as a community, we owe a response to both Waterbury and Montpelier, who were offering to help us back in the early stages of this update process. And we also need to make a decision about how we're gonna go forward on the governance issue, which we haven't had a lot of discussion about. I just like to say again, to the fire department and to the select board, I think we've really made good progress and turned the corner on our relationship and how we interact with each other. And I think that's a wonderful thing. And we have some more work to do, but let's keep it up. And I look forward to my visit with you guys next month in December. Sounds good, yeah. I think we're moving in the right direction. Yeah. Thank you, Eric. Anything else that you give us that are tremendously helpful? Good. I think we have a much better sense of what you're doing in the community. Yeah. Good. Bye, great. Okay guys, we're all set. Thank you very much. Have a good night. Have a good problem. So do we, let's see, it's now six o'clock, believe it or not, we're a little ahead of schedule. Do we want to do more budget stuff? Yes. I think we should. Unless we're keeping somebody waiting on... No, we're not. The next agenda item is 620 Central Vermont Police Community Advisor Board Update. And Kim's not on the Zoom yet. Kim is on. Kim is on. Kim is here. Oh, well, maybe we should. Hi. Hi, I am here. I didn't see you. To go now. Yeah, no, I want to get here. But she also has, she has another meeting to go to, I believe. Why don't we let Kim give her report and then we can, if we have extra time, we'll go back to the budget. Is that okay with everyone? Yeah. Go on. Okay, Kim. Thank you. Thank you. Not quite as prepared as I'd like to be, but... So I am Kim Baldock and I am one of the two elected Middlesex reps to the Central Vermont Police Community Advisory Board, which is a mouthful. So from now on, I will probably just say the board. The line item on the agenda is the short story of why I'm here. I'll try to keep the long story short as well. The good news is I'm a speed talker. So if somebody doesn't understand me or you want me to slow down, just raise your hand, wave at me. So I'm going to start by briefly, briefly outlining what the board is and some of the data that I'm going to share is based on a 2014 document, which I forwarded to Sarah earlier. And she's welcome to share it with any of you if you have any questions. She did, I believe. She's got what you sent us. Sarah? Yeah, that's why I sent you. Perfect. So I'm going to highlight just a few things of the, it's kind of like a newsletter. Of the 251 towns and cities in the state, 200 towns don't have their own police fort. The Vermont State Police has 12 field stations across the state and the Middlesex station serves 18 towns in Washington and Orange County. In addition to the usual police work, the Vermont State Police also provides specialized services including bomb squad, crisis negotiations, scuba team and rescue, tactical services, seasonal marine and snowmobile patrols, along with a few new ones. The board helps raise awareness between what services are provided. They do not bill towns for services unless the town chooses to contract with the Vermont State Police for additional patrol time. And that's something I would have to defer to Sarah to know if we still do that, how much do we do it and all of that information. The board awareness of the need for better communication between towns and the state police inspired the state police to authorize the creation of a community advisory board. In 2004, the board was formed. It is an independent nonprofit corporation where officers elected by and from among the representatives to the board from 18 towns. Board members are ordinary citizens appointed to the board by their select board. The mission of the board is to communicate between law enforcement in the community, not just among law enforcement. It works to increase understanding and awareness of the state police and law enforcement issues and to provide better ways to advocate for public safety. Again, this was written in 2014 and the accomplishments in the first 10 years were really expansive and there's a whole list of them on that newsletter. And the big one highlight for me is always this trooper appreciation picnic in August. The board hosts the troopers, their families, our board members, our families and the guest speakers are all welcome to come as well. This year it was a really great event because all of these troopers work together and they never get a chance to see each other and they never get a chance to meet each other's family. We had a great turnout this year. We hosted at the Waterbury fishing game and it was a really nice event. We actually had to kick them out because we all wanted to go home. It was like 730 and we were like, let's go, let's go. There's a lot of ongoing education by the station commander and guest speakers. While under the direction of Lieutenant Nally, he used to have a really lot of informative presentations and distributions to the towns that we would handle by front porch form or minutes provided to the town clerks or select boards. Lieutenant Nally was really proactive in a system that they called spider webbing and they would basically use cross communication between towns to accumulate all of this data in a spider web and circle it into connect dots to solve crimes. And a lot of what he did was based on the presentations that he provided to us at the board. So why am I here tonight and what changed? Leadership changed. Lieutenant Nally retired three years ago, I believe and his replacement Lieutenant White had just come on board for about a year before COVID hit at a time when there was a lot of staffing issues and a lot of decreased overtime. Attitudes across the country changed to towards law enforcement and Vermont was no stranger to that. Volunteer burnout is a huge one and lack of representation on this board. So at our last meeting, we met probably, we used to meet every other month. During COVID, the majority of the time I think in the last two years or the last 18 months we've had three Zoom calls and one kind of ad hoc meeting in the middle of the afternoon. So we reviewed our town coverage which is basically out of 18 towns and two dedicated full-time Waterbury troopers. We have 14 reps, several of them are very inactive. A few towns do have two reps. At our last meeting, we had seven people present. We discussed our mission, the current needs, thoughts for the future, what changes might be needed, views on law enforcement and procedures. We discussed the level of commitment from both the towns, the state police and board members and the result of COVID fatigue. We had a heartfelt discussion on the pros and cons of continuing. How much more could volunteer time be? What communications do we use to get the message out about what we do? What differences has social media made against what we do? You know, we were originally Neighborhood Watch. We did a lot of the communication and now it's real-time stuff. It doesn't do any good to communicate something a month later. Most of the reps monitor the front porch farms and report things back to the state police if they feel a need to, or if they see something, they might reach out to their, if they see something on front porch form, they might reach out to that person and say, hey, on the rep, what do you want me to communicate? It's been financially a little challenging. We receive donations from the towns if they're willing. Some are budgeted matters and some are strictly donations. Our major expense is the picnic. It usually averages around $400 and we usually break about even on that. Our president, Jeff, and his last name just totally escaped me. Campbell. Yeah. And Lieutenant, yep. Jeff Campbell. Jeff Campbell, yes. And then Lieutenant White planned to meet this week and something got pushed back. So they're gonna meet in about a month and have a heartfelt discussion about how our board can assist the Vermont state police with their mission and what the future of the board might look like to benefit the 18 towns. We're gonna make an assessment based on that feedback. The Lieutenant's buy-in because the transition from Lieutenant Nally's buy-in to Lieutenant White's buy-in has been significantly decreased and the commitment level of all of the involved. That's gonna help chart our future and whether we continue, whether we disband and what overhauls we can make to the program. So we decided that each board member would kind of reach out to the towns because many of the board members that are currently on the town are not the same ones who elected us. Many of them don't know anything about the board. And so I'm coming tonight to start that conversation about how our board can assist communication between the Middlesex Vermont State Police, which in a few years will be the Berlin barracks of the Vermont State Police, our town office, its citizens and our board. And a few other towns have met and those discussions have prompted an agreement that ongoing communication is essential to the effective policing, but what that communication looks like depends a lot on the input received from Lieutenant White and meetings like this. So how'd I do? How long did I take? Very good, and it didn't take a long time. So I would just have a couple of quick comments and we'll see if other board members have anything to say. Number one, I appreciate the bulletins you put out on Front Porch Forum from time to time about particular situations that are going on that involve our community and the state police. I think that is a great tool to use and while not everybody in our community is on Front Porch Forum, many people are. And that's certainly a very cost effective way to get the word out. And I think it's great to get your report. We don't need to hear from you all the time, but when you have something you need to say to us, we welcome your participation in our meetings. And I guess I would, I mean, the state police across the state of Vermont and across the country have tremendous challenges ahead of them. And they need the support of all the citizens who they support to be able to do an effective job. So whatever we can do is a community to help. And certainly by having you representing us, we feel like we're doing a good job right there. How about that? Cause I'm sure knowing you fairly well over the years, I know you're not a shadow in the background. You don't hesitate to speak up when there's something to say. And I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else, anybody? Kim, thank you for your work. And have you had any luck in trying to find someone to replace, oh, what was this for? Same coffee? Revrat. Revrat, yeah. No, we have not. Again, it is an elected person by the board. I have not solicited anyone because with COVID, we weren't really barely meeting. It is a board that is aging out. Our callous representatives, you know, it's, I am, I'm going to go on a limb here. I'm not sure. And I'm not, I am one of the younger members of this board. Thank you, Kim. Sam, I have a question. Yes. So I kind of didn't quite understand at the very end you were saying is, is one of these lieutenants like not terribly supportive of having these community groups? I think he is very overwhelmed, Liz. He took over from Lieutenant Nally. And if you ever met Lieutenant Nally, he has like eight kids, I think. And he was amazing. And I think Lieutenant White, he has not officially attended, I think he attended one of our meetings in the three years that he's been Lieutenant, very overwhelmed, often gone to training. And with the barracks being so short staffed and not allowing any overtime, he just, he's juggling too much. And I think- So when you meet, there isn't even a police presence there, a state police presence there. One time he sent somebody on his behalf, one time he, somebody directly under him, one time he sent a guest speaker. You know, we were spoiled by Lieutenant Nally. He would put out an agenda and he would bring us pizza and he would tell us in advance who the guest speaker was and give an update on the barracks of how many staffing they had, what the guys were doing, the communication. And I don't think it's intentional. I think a multitude of circumstances, you know, could it have gotten better if COVID hadn't hit? Absolutely. But the intention of this group is sort of to be like liaisons a little bit with the community, right? Like to be able to kind of, you know, if there were some issue in the community and, you know, we said, you know, we really, you know, feel like the police should be doing X, Y or Z. We could go to your group and say, and feel like we had some sort of, I mean, I think it's a really important group to have, frankly. And I would be really disheartened to see that it does get disbanded. I mean, it's not an oversight group per se, but it does probably offer some sort of communication between the community and the state police, correct? Correct. Yeah, it is definitely not an oversight. And one of the big things that Lieutenant Nally did would be to bring in representatives. I mean, we had like these, I mean, we had the bomb squad come in and give a presentation. The specialty forces of the VSP are pretty incredible in what they do. He had the search and rescue team at a waterberry come in. The knowledge that these people, they'd give like a 20 minute to a half hour presentation and the knowledge that they would give and one of the biggest things we struggled with, how do we get that information back out into the community? I mean, you can't put a 20 minute presentation on the bomb squad out in the community. Everything from the mental health crisis, the drug crisis, he would have all of these people. And then he really nailed down into the spider webbing and what the behinds of the scenes and the emergency plans for towns and the response during Irene, there is so much information that would come out of that. And one of our biggest struggles has always been, what do we do with it? So we tried for a while to, and as much as I'm a speed talker, I'm the secretary of the board. My secretary minutes are pages long. So I tried to drill it down and summarize bullet points to put out on front porch form, but it became really time consuming. And so, and nobody was sharing them anyway. So that's one of the hugest challenges from our standpoint is what's our purpose? Because the mission has changed so much with the addition of social media. And then the second one is actually getting volunteers on the board. So I personally, I mean, you're welcome to have one select board representation. It's ordinary citizens, but I think some people, they're town constables, somebody from the sheriff's department. There's a lot of different representation. And this is all around the state too with different barracks, right? This board was created, each barracks had their own board. When Lieutenant Nally left St. Albans and our board were the only two active ones. And I believe St. Albans has now disbanded as well. What's your recommendation? I would like to see it continue in some form. My first recommendation is that we get the representation, that we get every town to have representation. And maybe one thing we can do in our select board assistant is really good at this is to get the word out in the community that we're looking for a volunteer to work with you in the town of Middlesex to at least take some of the heat off you and have some backup. I think we can do that and get the word out and see if we can't find somebody for you. That would be much appreciated. So one of our plans, if we decide to continue, we are going to write a letter to each town asking them, again, you have a chance to elect two reps, you currently have one, you don't have any. Okay, well, I think what you've heard from us tonight is number one, we're supportive of your efforts and we hope that this relationship with the state police will be able to continue. But let us go to work and Sarah is listening. I know she'll put that on our list and get the word out and see if we can find somebody who would be interested to work with you. Okay, and the second thing is, I think, thank you very much because I think each year, pretty much, I did not ask this year, but I do know that I usually late October or November do ask for a donation. And I think, you know, pretty continually, I think we've gotten like a $75 donation from the town and that all goes to the picnic. So thank you. You can't imagine that will be a problem. Great, thank you all very much. We've got to move on, but thank you very much for all the work you do for us. Thanks, Kim. Okay. Yep, thank you, Kim. That was a good presentation. Okay, so we've still got the budget committee here. We have about 10 minutes until we're supposed to hear from the highway department and get on with the rest of our agenda. Can we move down our little chart here, Dorinda and Sarah a little further? Yeah, yeah. Under public safety, I plugged in a $72,000 for the ambulance. That seems to, it had been 70,000 a year before. We never seemed to get these numbers in time for anything. And last year we had plugged in what it had been the year before and it had come in like, you know, a couple of thousand dollars higher. So if it came in at 70,000 last year, I figure if we went to 72, it might be a good number. Yeah. And speed enforcement. I don't know, we continually, we know what the problems are there. We always put money in the budget. Again, I can plug in what we've been doing, but it's a cost saving thing. If we really think we're not going to spend it, maybe we should reduce it by a couple thousand dollars, maybe bring it down to 5,000. I hate to do this, but I agree. I think it should go down to 5,000. If we can't spend the money, it's foolish to put it in there. We've got other things we need to spend money on. Yeah, we'll pay for it, too. Okay, I can do it. I mean, and that isn't to say, and that isn't to say we don't, we don't, when the contract comes up, we don't put in a higher number and hope they can do it and find the money somewhere, if in fact they can. We'd love to have more speed enforcement, but I don't think we're going to get it. Oh, they're shorthanded. Yeah. Just heard how shorthanded they are, and there's no overtime. On the other hand, if there's no overtime, maybe we will get more, because that's the only extra money they can earn. Who knows, but it's been an ongoing frustration to me that we can't ever get the service we contract for, so. The next group, which we can continue to wait on the cemetery. That's been like $6,900 budgeted for the last several years. I, you know, we'll wait and see what happens. If not, I'll just plug in that number. Yeah, we requested budget numbers from them. Yes, we have. Okay, all right. Thank you. And down under zoning and board of adjustment, I just need some direction. Again, on an advertising and legal enforcement, how much you would like to put in those? Okay, what line item are you on? I'm sorry. This is under zoning and board of adjustment. It's like. 242. 242 and 243. Okay, hold on. Thank you. For some reason, my fingers aren't working very well. There we go. What is the legal enforcement for zoning? Like, what does that mean? Well, if there's any kind of, I think we've had, haven't we had the lawyer involved in some zoning? Okay. Well, we have had appeal or has that come under something else, Sarah? The appeal of the. I don't know where that comes under the budget. I know that it was a peel of the planning commission decision, but with, you know, the way properties are getting subdivided now, I would not be surprised. Do not lower that number. That's going to be a big legal cost. I'm afraid. You know. Anything I'm wondering if it should go up? Because we spent $29.90 and we only budgeted $3,000. Put in $3,000. Yeah. At least. Yeah. Okay. And then advertising again, every time we do something we have to advertise. So. Um, maybe 400 then. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And the rates of the times are going to have gone up as well. So everything's going to be higher then like maybe 500. No, that's what we only budgeted $50 last year. So. And I think 400. I think 400. I think 400 is fine. It's one of those things that's going to be whatever it is. So. Okay. It is what it is. And then we had down under the planning commission, they didn't, no, that one's all set. Nevermind. Just didn't carry that over. So I think that pretty much takes care of everything. I plugged in, which I don't know is on your sheets and not what we had for special articles so far, which they're just starting to really come in now. Yeah. Okay. So you will send out, will you send us updated sheets? Reflecting. I will send out updated sheets. But I'm going to hold off on sending them to see if I get anything over the next, because week or so, because we won't meet again for what, two weeks. Yeah. Oh my God. Wow. You got a week off. We won't know what to do on a Tuesday night. Yeah. We can go out to the bar, Phil. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Darinda. Any, any, I guess the one thing I have on my list that we need to be thinking about is. So we've made these interim payroll adjustments. There's nothing in this budget for projected raises for next July 1st, and we need to think about what that, what that number is that we're going to put in here. And unfortunately, I think it needs to be a pretty good number. I think 2% is probably too low. So I don't know whether it's 3% or 4% or what it is, but we need to plug something in there because that's going to make a significant difference. And it trickles down through a lot of these, got a lot of these accounts. Yeah. Anything else, budget committee or select board or Darinda? Okay. Not in regards to the budget. I have a lot of empties on the planning commission. And have you, I mean, you have nothing for legal and you have nothing for all those grants. Are they going to be, they didn't put any, the planning commission gave me their budget. So if that, those shouldn't be blank, let me go back up there. I'm, this is Elias from the planning commission. I thank you a budget and it did have those blanks because we've already, they're not expensive we expect in the future. Right. Yeah. I don't have anything in for legal even though there is that pending appeal. So I don't think the planning, I don't think it's ever been part of the planning commission's budget. Those legal expectors. I don't know where they get recorded. And I don't think we don't even know how much it would cost in the past. So I think I would defer to your judgment on the zoning, I think it's in the zoning, Mary. I think so too. Maybe we should. I mean, that's common is right, that, you know, the way subdivisions are going these days, we seem likely to be hitting some snags. And, you know, hopefully we can improve the way our zoning regs are written so they don't have as much room for that. What kind of issues have come up with us? The way they're written right now, it's very hard to follow what's expected in terms of the zoning regulations. And we're, you know, a few times we've run into issues where someone's saying, well, we want to subdivide, but we don't have a plan to build. And the regulations don't clearly allow for that. You have to sort of make these decisions without knowing exactly what you're going to do about them. I don't know, that doesn't quite make sense, but basically it doesn't have a good way to deal with subdividing, but not developing. Okay. Interesting. That's the major issue. That's twice than this last year we've run into it, that the most recent appeal was basically around that. Because, you know, the planning commission said, well, we need to know what, you know, if you subdivide without developing and then you do, someone applies to develop a single property, you don't get the same review of like contiguous, you know, forest lands and stuff because you're only able to review one property instead of the whole original subdivision. And so those are, that's where it gets tricky is how do you deal with a situation where someone really just wants to split their land up but not build on it in terms of the town being able to maintain, you know, forest lots or whatnot or like a plan for drainage over the whole property. Yeah, not any. Can I ask a question about the budget back to what Peter just said about, you know, the wages? What are these in the budget? What are these fiscal year 2022, 2023 numbers? Where did those come from? For like select board clerk? Those are the numbers that you decided on it last week. Okay, so those are the numbers we decided on last week without any kind of increase, right? Correct. For the 2022 year, okay. So the bottom line. I thought we hadn't decided, like I thought we weren't gonna change anything about the select board, like why is there a 20% increase in that? I thought we didn't change the select board wages. We didn't change. It's so tiny. I think because we added, that's because we added the road commissioner as a new position and we were paying him at what we were paying the chair. Okay. Well, that increased it. It wasn't in last year's budget because it happened halfway through the year. Okay. So our next discussion is what is the increase over what we see right now? What percentage increase would we like to offer for wages and benefits to the road crew and the select and to the town in a minute? Yeah, okay. And typically to remind you what we've done is we put in an overall percentage, but at times everybody hasn't gotten that percentage raise. Some have gotten a little more and some have gotten less, but the overall raises come out to that percentage. Yeah. But we're gonna have, the other part of this is we're gonna have an ongoing discussion and probably at least one, if not more special meetings to discuss just in general, the way we deal with rates of pay and wages and are we gonna reward years of service? Are we gonna provide pay changes for different levels of skill, that whole discussion that we started? I don't wanna get away from that, but we need to put it in some kind of number because I have to believe we're gonna need to spend more money as of July. The other thing I would tell all of you just by the buy is this week, all town employees with their pay stub, most of them don't get checks, but they all get pay stubs. I've sent them a letter talking about the interim increases and the original plan was to in that letter have what those interim increases were, but we ran out of time. So the promise is with their December 16th pay check, which is the first time they will see the new raises that there will be another letter saying, here's what your previous rate of pay is, here's what your new rate of pay is, just so it's all documented and writing. So does it make sense to put in for wages that are in this 2022 line or column E like a 3% increase or 2.5% increase just as likely? I don't think so. I mean, what I said in the letter is that an additional pay raise is anticipated for July 1st, 2022, but it's subject to the budget discussion and approval by the voters at town meetings. So I can tell you, if we put in there that we plugged in a 3% or 4% or 2% increase and then somebody doesn't get that increase, they're gonna be screaming bloody murder again. So I am- No, but my point is I'd like to see what it looks like. What does it look like on our overall budget if we were to do that? Well, we're gonna put in a number. That's what I'm saying. We need to come up with what that number is, but I just don't wanna promise any individual employee that we get that increase. I'm not asking that. Okay, I'm sorry, I misunderstood. He was just suggesting we put in a figure or maybe we should do several figures, 2%, 3%, 4%, something like that. Yeah, this is what it looks like. I mean, but we're gonna talk about it later on. That's exactly what I was just talking about that we need to make that decision and we haven't done it yet. Okay. I mean, absolutely, that's a big number. Typically in the past, we have done that after we deal with everything else and we know where we are. But I'm happy to... I don't think we have time tonight to do it, is what I'm saying. No. Don't say we have to meet next Tuesday. I'm not saying we have to meet next Tuesday either. Okay, can we move on? Anything else, anybody? Okay, so we're on to the highway department update. And we have, I believe Victor and Shane here with us. Shane's still here. Yep. Yeah, there he is. Okay. Gentlemen. I hope that anyone wants to do the contracting, you know, subcontracting. Well, I guess what I can report and Steve and Vic can speak up is I spoke to... Oh, I spoke to TJ Kingsbury and I also spoke to, oh God, I'm blanking out, our Jamie Bouldock. And I also had a conversation today with Matt Dwyer from Akhulak, Russia. And the message was pretty similar from all three of them. If we are really caught in a tough emergency type situation they'll try and, all of them will try and help us out any way they can. But they are all more or less dealing with the same problems we're dealing with. They don't have enough help to do the work that they already need to do. And in terms of subcontracting for an employee or an employee in a truck for the winter, they weren't willing to do that at this point in time. And I think the same was true of your conversations, Steve, correct? Yes, that's exactly right. Jeff Newton would love to... I had two different conversations with him. He really wanted to do it but he just couldn't commit to it because of, especially because of the help. So he didn't even put numbers to it but it would have been a pretty good number too because they were gonna be, I mean, they're on call 24-7. That vehicle that they would commit and the personnel were committed to the town. So, but he just doesn't have the personnel. So it's basically the same story. I mean, if we were in an emergency situation and we called him, he'd see if he could help us out but that was it. So, I think where we are is this and we might as well deal with this situation first and then we can talk about any other updates about other issues. But the big gorilla issue is what do we do about this? What do we do about this hiring situation? And where I think we are and please anybody else speak up if they disagree is we have a decision to make whether we're gonna go ahead and I am not in favor of changing our nepotism policy. I'm in favor of having a statement in our minutes that we recognize that we are, I hate to use the word violating. Whatever the right word is that we're recognizing that we're not following our nepotism policy and the reason we're doing that is because of the very tight and difficult employment situation that we're facing and our inability in almost six months time to be able to hire anybody. And I think with that the decision is do we go ahead and hire this gentleman as we discussed or do we make the decision that we're gonna try and struggle along with a three person road crew? Because that's what I think we're talking about. And you've heard me say over and over again I think the three person road crew is a potential real problem. I think with three people can we, as Gary LaMell said last year we got along for a long time with a three person road crew. Sometimes the roads weren't plowed in a timely manner. Sometimes the work wasn't done in a timely manner. All those issues. That's why we went to a four person road crew. Well, what I'm more scared about is I think potentially we could limp along with a three person road crew if we have to and that's the decision. But what happens if one or two people get sick then where are we? We're really, really, really in trouble. And that's when we've gotta start calling on these outside contractors and hoping they're gonna bail us out. So I've had Victor, Victor made the comment to me that he has chapter and verse of many situations in the state of Vermont where they violated nepotism clauses. We historically in the past have, I was laughing with Matt Dwyer today saying there was a time when we thought the McCullough family was running our town road crew. I mean, it's a very tough situation, but I think we need to, my recommendation is we go ahead and do this hire and that we don't change our nepotism policy. And we just have a statement in our motion that we understand that we are not following our nepotism policy for this particular reason. I agree with that. And I'm interested in hearing what other people think about this, but I do think we need to make the decision tonight. I don't think we can push it down the road any further. Yes, Phil? Yeah, I agree with you, Peter. I'm not in favor of actually changing the nepotism policy. And I think rather than saying that we're violating it, we're actually going to grab a waiver. This is a specific situation brought on by labor shortages, the inability to hire a qualified person. And we're knowingly granting a waiver to be able to fill a position because we've exhausted all other opportunities that we have. So yeah, I'm in favor. I like the word waiver rather than violate. That's a nicer talk to it, I agree. Anybody else? Liz, Mary? Yes, Mayor? I still oppose changing it because this is a tight labor market, but this hire is a person who we hope will be with us for a very long time. And so it's a continuing waiver. It's not just, he's not just coming on for the winter. He's coming on. We hope for a good long time. And it bothers me. It's like, maybe we're going back to the days and the McCulloch's were in charge and now it's going to be the Brickie Martins or whatever. I just, yeah, I just can't support it. Okay, any other thoughts, Shane and Vic? I'd like to just make a comment that I understand the need for the road crew, an additional road crew. I think it's hard to go back to a three-person road crew because the four-person road crew has been, I think, more effective and we get more done, and also just with the weather, erratic weather that we have, we just don't know. Like we can't predict whether it's going to be a super snowy winter, a super icy winter, and that I think in the best interest of the town, it makes sense to have a fourth person. I will, I agree with Mary that I'm uncomfortable with a close family member working for Shane, just in what could potentially be backlash from the other road crew, some perceived favoritism, whether or not that exists or not, you just don't know. And so I guess I would vote in favor of it, but I would also note that we could have some problems in general with morale or... Well, I'm here just to not to interrupt you, but understand, you know, we're hiring this gentleman or we're proposing to hire this gentleman. If for some reason there are problems and issues that come up down the road, we'll have to deal with those problems. And could that mean that this person has to be terminated potentially? Maybe possibly. I would doubt it, but in a worst case scenario, that's what would have to happen. And, you know, Shane, I think, understands that and is ready to deal with that and take that risk. He's comfortable with this. Victor's comfortable with it. I have some of the same doubts you and Mary have lived. I mean, in a perfect world, if we'd been able to find anybody who was remotely qualified, I would have preferred hiring that person over this person who has perfect experience and is the ideal employee, I think, in every other way. But this is a situation where you move ahead. Peter, it's Paul if I may throw a couple of comments in there, obviously speaking from experience with Steve and I, you know, what I would add on top of what Liz has said, you know, just the level of expectation from roads with school buses and whether it's a snowy winter or not, it really only takes one event, you know, for things to kind of go haywire. The snow is a little bit wetter. The timing is just a little bit off. You know, obviously, as everybody knows, I'm a big advocate for a four-person road crew, just knowing what can happen, you know, tire blows. And all of a sudden, there's another guy going to help the broke down vehicle. That only leaves one guy, you know, maintaining the roads. The one thing I wanted to add with the gentleman, you know, the subject at hand here is, I think we had in the employee handbook, did we have a probationary period that that person had to go through or am I mistaken? Yeah. Yes, we have a six-month probationary period. Yeah, you know, I mean, what's that? It was taken out. Oh, it was taken out? Oh, okay. It's actually all the probationary period. You're right, you're right, I'm sorry. Okay. You know, I don't know what the legality is or the procedure, but it might be worth putting something in there, you know, just to say, you know, because of the circumstances, we do acknowledge, you know, the nepotism clause and all of that. But because of this, we're going to add this in in hopes of, you know, mitigating any issues down the road and having a little bit of, you know, within the right-of-way, I guess I would call it where you've got some legal power, just to, if potential issues do you come up. I don't know if that's, you know, something that might be considered just to protect the town, but obviously I'm in favor of the fourth guy, but can certainly appreciate the, you know, the situation. So all I would do on that subject is remind everybody, and I think this is part of the reason we did away with that probationary clause, and I apologize for my misstatement, because I do remember that we took it out. All our employees are what's called employees at will, which means they can be dismissed at any time for any reason now. Can you, you know, and can they go after us and say we discriminated against them because of their race, religion, you know, who knows what, those kind of things are always an issue, but basically in terms of being able to dismiss them if there are issues and problems, that is not an issue as long as we do it with proper warning and notice and all the usual stuff. So I don't think that that probationary thing is as good as or effective as it was in the old days is what I'm saying, Paul. Yeah, excellent. No, again, certainly in favor of the fourth guy, you know, and I would hope if his resume shows and his, you know, references check out, you know, that's always been our standard procedure. So, you know, if all that checks, hey, it sounds like we know a guy who knows a guy, so you know, you never know. Obviously we know that shortage of labor is real, and at this point we're in quite a tight spot. No. Peter. Oh, yeah, yeah, hold on a minute, Vic. Yeah. Dorinda had a hand up. Yeah, I know, Dorinda. Just a couple of things back on what you were saying about the employment at will unless there was discrimination, the potential could come back that we were discriminating because he was a relative. So I just want to make that statement that, you know, the other question I have is in regards to the number of vehicles that we have, how soon will our other, right now my understanding is there's only one truck that's up and running, how soon will we have another truck to put this person in? There's two trucks up and running, and the third truck will be back either Friday or the beginning of next week. Okay, so we must have just gotten another one back because a week ago there was only one, correct? Yeah, we came back last week, midweek maybe. We got a break and the gentleman that's working on the freight liner found one out and found the part out in the Midwest and we're supposed to have it, Shane told me. And so we should be set with the freight liner next week. But I will say, I don't think, you know, I don't know, I haven't known Shane a long time, but I've been impressed with the time I have known him and I really don't believe he would allow somebody to go to work even if it is his brother-in-law that wasn't going to work out for him. I think the thing that we got going here is a lot of fear. And the worst fear is fear itself. And as Peter has said, I know people, you know, McCullis has worked for a lot of people, a lot of different towns. There's a lot of road commissioners and that are run by two people or even three and their father, son, it can work. And I don't see why you wouldn't give it a chance. It's, this three-man crew is a great idea, but it really won't work out well. And one of the reasons I believe Paul can correct me, but one of the reasons is that you, we're plowing all the roads at once. And whereas if we only had a three-man crew, we would more likely just open up our main arteries and then we would have to go back and it would be more time consuming, more money spent to pull back in these side roads. So it's a win-win situation. I see no problem with hiring the person and I think we've got to look at it positively. We haven't been able to do anything for six months and as everybody knows, as we've talked about, we do have options if I can't imagine that it would go south. I think that it's the interest of the town to hire somebody that is knowledgeable and willing to go to work. Anything else, anybody? I don't mean to impugn in any way any of the individuals involved. To me, it's a matter of principle and I'm clearly gonna be voted on this issue. I have no reason to believe that this person who's been on a plane field road crew is gonna be anything less than really competent. I just think it's a bad precedent to go back to the days when one family was in charge of another member of the family and you're right, Neil. They all need to talk back on it. I just disagree with it and I think we can tough it out and hopefully we'll find somebody else but I don't mean to cast any aspersion on Shane, on Steve and whoever, whatever the brother-in-law's name is. I wanna be clear about that. So with all that, I think it's decision making in time, we previously discussed the terms of the hire and what it would be and what the rate of pay would be. So I guess the question is, do we direct Victor and Shane to go ahead and make the offer and hire this gentleman? Yeah, Peter, I think we should go with hiring this person. I think that Vic and Shane have both expressed their feelings and they're the ones that's in their department and I think this thing can work. So I think we should go ahead with that. Okay, so is that a motion, Steve? That would be a motion, yes it is. Can I ask one question before you move with that question? Yes. Are there any other concessions that have been made or that have been discussed other than the rate of pay? Are we talking about any other kind of like sign-on bonuses like with these other people or any kind of other adjustments in any of the benefits package? My understanding is, correct me if I'm wrong, that there were no other. No, there's no standard. The one other thing I believe that we included was which is permitted by our personnel policies is based on its experience and qualifications. It's gonna get three years, three years, three months, three weeks. Don't you wear my head is tonight. I apologize, three weeks vacation, but it will accrue. He doesn't get the vacation up front or the cruise per our regular practice. And it's based on his current level based on his experience. Correct, yes. Yep. And we've done that before and I'm sure we'll be doing it again. But yes, yes. Sarah, okay. Are you making a motion to waive the per this, the nepotism section of the personnel policy and in order to allow Shane to make this job offer? Yes. Okay, could you just phrase that when you make the motion? I will. Thanks. So I'll make a motion that we allow Shane and Vic to hire this person, to hire Steve McLaren at the rate. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Isn't it that we don't want to have the name in our minutes until it actually happens? Oh, that course has left the barn. Yeah. Well, I would prefer that it isn't, I would prefer that it isn't, not even though we all now know who the person is, I would prefer that it's not in the minutes until, I think that's just been our practice in the past, isn't it? Yeah. Especially when they're employed by another client. Leave your name out. Well, usually, you don't say that. Okay. There's some chance, there's some chance that the last minute, heaven forbid that he's going to say, you know what, I've changed my mind, in which case we don't want to screw up his situation with his current employer. So I would just, I would just recommend that the motion, not say the gentleman's name, that's all. Unless someone disagrees with that. No, that's fine. Okay. So go ahead, Steve. So we allow, so that we allow Shane and Beck to hire this person for the rate of pay and the vacation time that we had discussed, and that we waive our nepotism policy to allow that to happen. I think we have to put in there regarding, I would say in light of the difficulty in hiring, in our inability to hire anyone for this position. I would put one, just a little line of explanation in there. Yep, that's fine. Sarah. Can I just rewrite it to Steve move that after exhausting all potential candidates or the board will waive this provision in the nepotism policy, thereby allowing Shane and Beck to hire, Shane's brother-in-law. I would just say the candidate. Well, the candidate, I mean, people are gonna say, well, why are you waiving the nepotism policy? Right, you are. Just put it out there. All right, all right, I'm good with that. I mean, the other thing I would say is not only- But I could also say this one time, like- Or else you could say this one time, and should you make it like, instead of a brother-in-law, just make a relative by marriage? How about that? Sure, like that better. Okay. And I would also say, exhaustive search of all candidates and potential subcontractors. Yes, and that we offered jobs too, remember? We did offer jobs and people turned them down. Right. We need to be in the motion, I don't think Liz. I mean, we're saying difficulty, that's included in the difficulty. Yeah. Okay, so we need a second to that motion. Second. Phil, okay. Any further discussion, anyone? Okay, so with that, we're going to vote on the motion. Do you want to read it to us several, what you have? Please. Having Steve move Phil seconded, having conducted the town, having conducted a six month exhaustive search of candidates for the, to replace a retiring member of the road crew. And after consulting private contractors and finding no one, the board will waive a provision of its nepotism policy, will waive the nepotism clause of its personnel policy in order to allow Shane to hire a relative by marriage for the discussed benefits and pay for the road crew. Something like that. How's that? Thank you. That sounds good. Yeah, that sounds good to me. Okay, all in favor of that motion, please say aye or raise your hand. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Mary opposes. So it is four to one and the motion passes. Thank you all very much for all your time and attention. So boys, go get them as they say, please get back to us. Hope he wants the job. Yeah, I hope so. I won't let you down guys. I know most of you don't know me that well, but you don't have to worry. Okay, thanks Shane, I appreciate it. And you'll let us know after you talk to him please. Yes. Okay. I just wanted to say thank you guys for doing the search of calling all the contractors. Because I felt like that was a really important step that we needed to take. And I'm glad that you did it. So thank you for doing that. And I would also make that based on the people I talk to, everybody couldn't have been nicer. And I really think if we are ever in an emergency situation, they will rise up and help us out. So that's the good news. Because we could still have, I mean, if we had two people out sick, we'd be in victim trouble. So anyway, knock on wood that won't happen. So in terms of other highway issues, we heard about the truck and there is an update on the excavator. Is that correct? Yeah, Charles and I think we fixed it today. Hopefully knock on wood. We exhausted, we tested it a bunch of different ways. Charles worked it pretty good and we found where it was leaking. There was a couple of fittings that have O-rings in them. We went and found some new fittings. Took us a while, but not everyone carries them. But anyway, we fixed it. Charles ran it for a while and it's still dry. So we're really, really crossing our fingers. That was the problem. Good news. And in terms of other equipment, we're all ready to go for snow. Assuming this truck comes back when it's supposed to. Everything's gonna be okay. We just gotta put everything on it when it comes back. That won't take too long and it'll be ready for snow. Well, knock on wood are truck problems a date. They're not, they're ever gonna go away, but let's hope they have a date about that. Yeah, I'm with you on that. Anything else from the highway department? No, I think that's it. Okay. Shane says it's gonna snow next week. It's been snowing in my house all day. I know you're glugged down in the banana belt, Victor. Couple hundred feet lower. It's been snowing here too, trust me. Okay, thank you. Okay, so Dorenda, we are back to you. Treasure report. Okay, just a couple of quick things. I just wanted to bring up the continued bills that we get from RV technology. I sent you an example of the recent one. And I personally have a concern when they charge us for half hours time for Amy to sit there and argue with them to get credentials so we can have NEMRIC come in and perform updates on the software. And that's one issue. Another one was Rich, they charged Shane evidently had a problem with his email on the computer by the time they got back to him, the email was working. I just think perhaps the internet was down, maybe. I don't know. But again, another 3250 for them to say, oh, okay, the email's back up and running, no problem. And then the other one was they charged just 9750 for a health check, for a town of Middlesex reoccurring monthly health check. And I thought that's all part of our, why we've contracted for them to do these monthly health checks. And I don't know if it's because we ran over our time and now they have to bill us for that time or what, but there's another hundred bucks. And these bills just like not one month comes through that we're not over our contracted amount. In 2020, we spent $8,300. In 2021, we spent $13,560. And so far, we're only four months into it and we're at $5,300. So it just is like bracket creek big time. Well, if everyone remembers and now that we're most of the way through the budget, I think now is the time to have the meeting with Reuben that we previously discussed and go over these issues. And if we can't get them satisfactory resolved, then we need to engage in a search for a new vendor. I can just tell you, I'm not even gonna say anything. I know you're frustrated, Darinda, I understand. And whether it's we're not budgeting enough or we're expecting, I mean, we just need to, we need to clear the air with them. I guess is what I'm saying. Well, I think it goes beyond, I mean, I'm not really talking about a budgeted amount. Certainly we're over it, but I think the things they're charging us for is these passwords belong to the town. There are passwords. And we should be able to have somebody else go into the system. All the software is not owned by RB technology. And it's literally, I heard Amy on the phone with them just saying, look, we need this password. And she finally agreed to chew it up after she finished talking to him and got him to set it for that day or something. I don't know how they got it to work, but this shouldn't be proprietary information. Well, Darinda, let's hear it from the headman's mouth and then we can make a decision. I mean, if you don't wanna do that, then I guess we won't do it. But I think that's the first step in this process is to say, Ruben, here are the problems we're having. One, two, three, four, five. And number one, we feel strongly that some of these charges are inappropriate. Number two, we don't ever seem to be able to budget the corrective, whatever the issues are. The passwords, we need an understanding of what the deal is on the passwords. And so- That's why I'm bringing it to your attention because I don't think just by signing off on the bills every week that that is apparent what's happening. So that's why I'm doing it. But I think, I did have that conversation with Ruben. He agreed to comment. And I said I would get back in touch with him after budget time, which I will now do and arrange to have him come. And I guess what I would suggest and I'm willing to have it happen at a full select board meeting. But what I would suggest is to start out with it, maybe Sarah, Dorinda and I meet with him and then report back to the select board. And then if we wanna go farther than that, we can do that or we can invite him to a come to Jesus meeting with a whole select board, whatever your pleasure is. Okay. And the other thing is- Whoa, whoa, whoa. So what are we gonna do? Select board. How do you wanna handle this? I like Justin. I think Dorinda and Sarah and you should meet with Ruben. Yeah. Agreed. That's the sense, that's the sense of the board. Liz, you agree with that? Did we lose Liz? No, Liz and Charlie there. There you go. Oh, she's giving me the thumbs up. I'm giving me the thumbs up, I'm on mute. Okay. All right. So I will make that call Dorinda and I'll report back to you. Okay. Okay. The other thing, two weeks ago, I think I sent you a copy of the audit report. I just need approval to, I'm sure you all read it covered to cover. Of course. So I just need approval that pass on to Bonnie so she can print the final copies. So our motion to approve the audit that's presented. I'll make them. I think we decided that we didn't wanna have them come in and present it, didn't we? Right. Yeah. I'll second it. Okay, so I'm sorry. Who made the motion? Steve. Steve, okay. And Liz seconded. So all those in favor of approving the audit. Well, I didn't review it. Was there any problems Dorinda that were discovered when they did the audit? No problems this year. She said we did a good job. Yay. Yep. Good job, Madam Treasurer. Yeah. So all good. With that, we need to vote on the motion. So all those in favor, please say aye. Raise your hand. Aye. Aye. Liz, where are you? We lost you again. I'm right here. But you gotta say aye or raise your hand. I'm saying aye. You did. Thank you. Thank you. Any opposed? Stop scratching your cat and pay attention. I'm right here. Okay, all right. So it is unanimous, I believe. Is there anybody opposed? Okay. You're good, Dorinda. Thank you. Okay, thank you. And that is truly good news after the issues we had last year. Yeah. I can't even remember the issues we had last year. What works? Suffice it to say that we're not serious issues, but annoying issues in terms of dealing with the auditor more than anything else. Yes, Sarah. Oh, thank you. When you get to the next item, would you mind passing over the November 9th special minutes, special meeting minutes so that I can redo them to include the motions, et cetera? Yes. Thank you. Move approval to November 2nd minutes. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. We need to approve Sarah Berger's nomination to be Lister until March of 2022 town meeting action. Likely is there a motion? So moved. How did we talk her into it? She's here on the phone. She can tell us. Right here. Here she is. Sarah, how did we talk you into it? Oh, Sarah, Sarah Merriman twisted my arm and apologies for the noise in the background. My dog is chewing on a bone. Thank you for offering to it. Yeah. Yeah, thank you, Sarah. Okay, so we did have a motion in a second. You got that, Sarah? No, I only have the, Phil moved. Who seconded? I'll second. Okay. Liz second. Liz seconds or Mary seconds. Yep. Charlie seconds. Charlie seconds. Yep. We lost Skipper. Okay, all in favor of the motion appointing our new Lister. Thank you, Sarah. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Sarah, you're in. Congratulations. Very good. Thank you. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. Sarah Merriman, I'll follow up with you about next steps. Okay. Have a good night. Okay, thank you. Thanks for coming. Thank you. And we need a motion on the renewal of the filling stations, third class liquor license. Action likely is our motion. I'll make the motion. Oh, I'll second. Okay, Steve and Mary. All those in favor of renewing the filling station liquor license, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you, Sarah. Okay. And I've already signed it in anticipation of... Me too. Steve, since you're in the area, would you mind coming by or fill tomorrow? I've got it right out there. Just sign it. So they're a liquor license. It's weirdly on a six month schedule. No one understands it. They've got a seasonal liquor license. So there's expired October 31st. I'm going to get this to DLC as soon as I possibly can. So if one of you guys could sign it, that'll be a majority and it would be fine. I can stop in. Thank you. I've got to stop in to sign more. It's anyway, so... Great. Perfect. Any of us? Yeah. Okay, so the next item on the agenda is considering this declaration to declare 1118 as a National Injury Prevention Day action likely. We received a letter from a new resident in town who happens to be Liz's neighbor of all things. Who was the representative who was charged with going around and asking towns to approve this resolution. I would just make the comment. And in the past, we have been reluctant to approve any of these resolutions that come in in this way and manner. And we received a letter from the president of our fire department who was against it. I had a conversation with Vic Dwyer. He is against it. I just don't like the idea. I mean, I don't know what the ultimate purpose of this resolution is, but I certainly support safety for our kids, but I just don't think it's the right thing for the time to do. But I don't know how everybody just feels. I'm against it totally. Could we hear from the people who are here to talk about it? Yes. I think Allie is here and Mary Kayes, are you here and... Yes. Who's the person on the iPhone? You're muted. Allie? You're still muted. We can't hear you. Not me on the iPhone, but I can go ahead and get started since I was the one who sent it in. And I just wanted to say thanks. I know it was really late notice. I recently joined as a... And I kind of wear two hats in this situation. I volunteer with moms doing an action. I also work for the health department doing injury prevention work. And so that was part of the impetus for sending this in. I know that not all towns want to do a proclamation for every sort of day because there's lots of different days that you could have proclamations on. But the main reason that we were sending it out is because we are not only in Vermont, but across the country, gun injuries are a huge issue and this is not accidental injuries. And this doesn't have to do with taking away people's guns or trying to give people to give up their guns, but really just trying to educate people about safe storage methods. And even in Vermont, I know that I'd seen the email from the fire chief and that he hadn't personally experienced it. But in Vermont, 68% of our firearm injuries are due to accidents. And while the highest rate is among ages 25 to 44, but the second highest rate is between ages 15 to 24. So that is generally youth, if you think, under 18. And these are, all of us know that it's not suicide or homicide attempts, but they're accidents. So that's things like playing around with a gun, a gun's loaded, but they don't realize it's loaded. And then even hunting accidents. And then there's also issues of reporting. So these are all injuries that come into the hospital. So it's likely that there's probably injuries in there that we're not even able to capture. So really this is just the proclamation is here to build on safety, to increase education about safety, to get people more aware. And this is, the proclamation is just a guide. It's not, it doesn't have to be word for word. I know that there's hesitance because it might be the every town component, but I don't think that is completely necessary. I think the main component is, is the injury prevention day component and trying to get more folks to recognize the importance of storing their firearms safely. Cause we do have a pretty high rate of gun ownership, as most of us know, over 40% of people in our state only guns or 40% of households. And so really state storage is hugely important because we don't want kids getting hurt. And even if, and we're a small state, right? So even if you don't know somebody that has this is, this is happening by proof of our data. So I just wanted to, to offer this up. And if, even if we don't accept the proclamation, I just want us to maybe even be thinking about it in terms of our state and our community. Thanks. So Ali, I have a question, Peter Hood. So what, so let's, so let's say we do adopt the proclamation and this day is, is middle sex, whatever the right word is day. What's, where does this go from here? What's, what's the next step in the process? I mean, are you going to be proposing legislation to deal with this or are you going to be proposing regulations to deal with this? What's the next step? No, no, not so much in terms of, and maybe Mary Kaye can help me answer that with this proclamation, the idea is to where, excuse me, raise awareness and promote efforts around the B-Smart campaign. And that campaign is just around teaching people how to store their firearms properly. And that's really the, the basis of it. Mary, Mary, did you have anything else? No, I didn't have anything else to add, except that safe storage is a, a initiative of the gun owners groups as well. Safe storage is not a controversial subject. And, and the idea that this is the camel's nose in the tent is, it's like a box. It's, it's, it's like thinking that there's a boogeyman out there or something. This is children's and not about individual adult rights. It's just about storage and it's a safe storage subject that all organized groups, including gun owner groups, are promoting safe storage. So it's not controversial. Thank you, Sarah. Mary Kaye, hi. I'm Sarah Merriman. I'm the select board assistant. I'm taking the minutes. Could you please? Hi, I'm. See, I just need your name and what town you're in. Yes. My name is Mary Kay. Yep. My first name is Mary. My middle name is Kay. My last name is sure not spelled S H E R N as in Nancy O C K. And I live in Northfield. I live in Northfield Falls for 36 years. And do you spell your first name Mary, like Mary Christmas? Yep. Okay. All my life. All right. Thank you. Thank you, ladies. So what's your pleasure select board? Yeah, Phil. Please have a question. I'm just looking at the agenda item and it's saying National Injury Prevention Day. So if it's a national day. We lost him. Yeah, well, I lost my internet again. Feel likely to feel likely to be back. Did the iPhone person want to say something they had been muted in for trying to talk? I can't see who that is. It's Tammy Peacart. Okay. I thought it was you. I sorry. I just seen you in a while. Yeah. I just wanted to voice my opinion. Because this is where things start little and people say, oh, it's not further. It does. So I'm here just to say I'm totally against it. We have people in many towns, in every town that goes back generation to generation. This is a right. You know, we need to protect people. You know, I realize they're protecting people, but there's probably just as many that protected the other ways. So I'm against it. I'm not against it. I have no problems. Signing, having middle sex sign a proclamation for keeping children safe by making sure people properly store their guns. I mean, I don't think it has. And to me, it does nothing to do with gun owners rights. And except I guess maybe, you know, what some people may say as well, I want to protect myself. So I keep my gun loaded next to my bed, which, you know, I think probably studies show that people don't necessarily protect themselves when they are doing that, but I can't say that. So anyway, I personally have no problems with saying that people should store their guns properly to protect children. I'm getting on the guns. Liz. Yes. Do you want a gun? I do not own a gun. Yeah, I don't. Well, that this is about this to do with with why I feel this way. I personally, you know, I felt like not people need to keep their guns safely so that guns are not getting in the hands of the wrong people. This is a second amendment issue. No, it's yes, it is a second amendment issue. And these right here are not doing anything but pulling the wall over your eyes. It's a movement. This is a movement nationwide. You know, I am for the movement then. Let me speak please. They are they even say they're with every town. They're with Mike Boober. And their whole idea is to take away our second amendment rights. Liz, how do you pretend to even imagine not owning a gun or not that knife if my gun is locked up in one room and my other ones locked my ammunition up in another? How do I protect myself? I don't know who you're protecting yourself from, but I think you and I are never going to agree on this. I'm just that's right. But that's right. Problems with it. That's right. We're probably not going to agree on it, but you're doing a great disservice to many people in this town by signing onto this. And it's not funny. It's not. I'm not laughing. I am not laughing. Hey, hey, hey, hey, calm down, please. Please, please, please, Randy. These people are doing nothing, but they're they're trying to take away to eliminate either amendment from US Constitution. Hold on. Well, wait a minute. What we got a lit Victor speak and then I'll recognize you, Mary, anybody else who wants to be recognized? Go ahead, let me hold on. Go ahead, Victor. Go ahead. He wanted to say something. I'm sorry, Mary. He was ahead of me. He had his hand up before. Look, I'm going to try and recognize that we have lots of hands up. I'm happy to hear from Steve first, when the second, you third Mary, please go ahead, Steve. I my comment is that that I agree with what Beck is saying. I and I also agree that with gun safety, people taking care of their stuff, but we don't need a declaration in our town to take to have that to happen. And you don't need to have that in our town for them to teach or promote safety. You can do that without us having an approximation. You're muted, Randy. Steve touched on some areas that I was going to touch on as a gun owner. You know, it's my responsibility to teach gun safety to my children. Those around me, I don't believe that the town needs a proclamation to make that happen. It's part of being a responsible gun owner. I think that we need to, you know, the select board, you know, while everybody has their own personal opinions, think about the town folks and, you know, the stance that the town folks would take and let's look at this in a reasonable sense. I'm in total disagreement with trying to push this forward. And again, I don't believe that we need to sign a proclamation to recognize that we need to teach gun safety to those around us. And as a gun owner, that's my responsibility to deal with, you know, with my children and whatnot. And that's all even at that. Okay, thank you. Brenda. I just want to say that I think gun safety is important 365 days a year, not just one day that's named gun safety day. And we've had guns in our house, my house for 45 years. I've raised two children. I have two grandchildren who are here daily. And there's not an issue. I think we should be concerned about bigger things than naming one day a year a safety day. Great. I agree with gun safety. I agree with what Dorinda has said, but I go back to what she said, Peter, when we started, which is that don't normally take a position on petitions like this to come in, that ask us to join for a group or against a group. And in the past, we have not done so. And in that light, I'm going to move we pass over this, pass over this request. That's a motion, Mary is. Okay. Is there a second to that motion? Oh, second that. Okay. Any further discussion about anyone? Okay. So all those in favor of passing over. Excuse me. I'm sorry, we're getting some cross talk here. All those in favor of passing over this request, denying this request. Please say it's over. We're not saying yes, nothing. No, we're passing over it. We'll always say that we're, we're passing over this. We're not saying yes and we're not saying no. Does everyone understand that? Does anybody have any questions about that? Okay, so that is over this request. All those in favor of the motion, please say I. I opposed. Okay, I don't think so here. Yeah, we lost Phil. So it's, it's, it's three to one in favor of passing over. So we are passing over this request. Ladies, I do appreciate you. Appreciate you reaching out to us as I, as I said in the beginning, this is as much about what our town practice has been. I think we're all in favor of gun, gun safety. That's not an issue. It's just, we don't think this is the way to go about it at this time. So thank you very much. Thank you for having us. Appreciate it. Okay, good night. Boris, I have my, I have my other business that I need to talk about. Okay. Not at the end yet. Oh, there yet. I don't have the agenda in front of me. Okay. Any correspondence Sarah. Yes, I have one bit of correspondence really fast. The Winooski Basin Water Quality Council is looking for a representative if anyone is interested in joining. They are, there are 49 municipalities in the Winooski Basin. Apparently we're one of them. And if you do know of anyone who would be keen to who knows about clean water topics, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. If you want to go in, if you want to, if you want to push this for them, or if one of you wants to join, you may. I have the application right here. It was sent to the select board. I also, I also received that. Thank you. I would, I would suggest that maybe we put it out on front porch forum and see if anyone is, is interested. And I would also ask you to put out a note of interest about the, whatever that police. Yep. Liaison committees name is. Okay. Okay. Thank you. And Derinda, you've got enough signatures on your orders. Um, I think when I left, I had to Mary came in and made it gray, right? Yeah. Peterkin. Yep. Oh, so yeah, we've got enough then. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Liz, any other item? No. Oh, yes. Um, so tomorrow. I'm sorry. Not tomorrow, Thursday. Thursday, you're all cordially invited to the public input meeting of the capital spending plan committee and where we have, um, what we've done over the last eight months. So Peter and I have been on that committee, but a lot of you Randy as well, um, but a lot of you, um, haven't sort of seen exactly, you know, Phil and Mary in particular, um, and Shane and, and Vic as well. Um, it would behoove you to, um, to attend if you're able to, um, because we're going to talk about, uh, the process, um, that we went through as well as, um, how, uh, you know what the, the, um, the documents that we came up with, um, that include, you know, sort of a budget, uh, capital, uh, expenditure plan as well as a process by which how, um, we as townspeople who need to purchase, uh, large expenditures, how we would go through the process of including, um, an item in a capital spending plan. Um, so the, the meeting is, is actually going to be probably a half an hour to 40 minutes of a presentation and then 40 to 45 minutes of questions. Um, but one of the things, the reason that I'm, I'm actually asking tonight is that one of the, you know, questions that may come up from people who attend the meeting is, well, what are we going to do about the town hall and the town garage, right? Um, and, and that's not really what this process was, um, in terms of, we didn't, this, this was not about how, uh, do we, um, repair or replace the town hall and the town shed. It was really about inventory collection, costs of things, replacement times and replacement amounts, um, so that as a town, you can better plan, um, over a period of time. However, what, what we, what came out of this committee, um, was, uh, the, um, the need for, um, forming, um, a committee probably out of the select board, um, that would, uh, that would actually go through probably, um, a scoping study of, um, of determining over this next year, um, the various scenarios of, um, the future of the town hall and the town garage. Um, and so what I wanted to get from, from the select board was sort of an endorsement that, yes, you believe that, that that's necessary that, that we as the select board, um, form a committee or perhaps, um, appoint a committee of people to, um, to, to go forward with that. Um, so just in a nutshell, what we're, you know, what this committee would be doing would be, um, would be looking at many things, like looking at the existing town hall, um, everything from doing sort of minor repairs that get us through the next five years to major overhaul, um, and refurbishment of the town hall to selling the town hall and, and building a new town hall on different property, um, or purchasing an existing property that may exist in middle sex that would meet the needs of the town hall, um, perhaps, uh, you know, joining the town hall and the, um, the town shed into one location, um, and, and anywhere in between. So, so we believe that it's important on this budget committee, what came out of this was that, yes, you know, it seems, uh, that that's the logical next step. But before I announced that in a public meeting, I wanted to gauge from the select board whether or not they agree that, that that would be the logical next step. And I believe it would require, um, either looking for grant funding from like central amount regional planning commission or money to actually perform because we're going to need engineers, right? This is, this is, if you're looking at the building, it's going to be engineering, um, structural, electrical, plumbing, all of those, those things that need to be evaluated before we can make an educated decision on what the next steps are. Um, in a ballpark figure, um, uh, Christian had reached out to Duboyan King and they were, they quoted five to eight thousand just to do an engineering study on the town hall. So we believe it will take some money, um, but we may be able to also, you know, get some, uh, you know, donated time from experts within the town to help us with that or hire a smaller, you know, firm, a one person, you know, show to, to do that. But anyway, that's what I'm asking is, does this, is this something the select board agrees is a good next step? I don't think we have to vote on it, but I have a question. Just want to have members of the select board or is this going to be another group that includes people from the town? Um, I think, you know, probably out of the interest of, uh, of bandwidth and getting some expertise that we would reach out to people on the town, you know, who have expertise that may want to help us with this. Um, but also have members of the select board. My comment would be that I think we need maybe it's certainly a minimum of one, maybe two people from the select board, but that this would be a community, uh, a community committee, much like the, uh, planning, uh, committees that we've had over the years for additions and improvements at the school, the same kind of, same kind of process. Uh, not that the whole select board would be involved in it. Would it be similar to what you and Liz have been doing up until now? No, I think it's a different process. This is a totally different process. This is a specific project. The, the, the problem is the capital planning project is looking ahead into the future. These are things we need to be doing now urgent. And this gets put into a capital plan, right? That this is like, you know, before something gets put into the capital plan, you know, you have to do the, and I mean, this would be a town vote, right? I mean, this isn't anything that, that we as a select board would decide that we're going to like build a new town hall. Um, but, but before we can present to the voters options, we need to know what those options are. So I think, I think the process would be, and again, I'm, I'm thinking about how the school process went, but this committee would do the legwork, compiling information, make a recommendation to the select board. The select board would say, yes, we like your recommendation or we want to change it this way or that way or the other, and then it would be presented to the voters. That's the way I see it going. I think it's a good idea. I think it's something that we has been a long time coming and I support it. Will there be any impact on FY 23 budget? Do you think? I'm, I'm determined at this point in time. I, I think that there probably would be with that engineering study because it's, and I don't know if people in King, if they were that $68,000 was just for, you know, a study of the existing town hall. That's all it was. Right. I was going to say there's probably a significantly higher cost when you start evaluating properties for new buildings or other existing properties and what the potential construction costs might be and whatnot. So, I mean, really it's a feasibility study of, of, you know, this process and that, that $8,000 really could be, you know, a $30,000 number at the time you factor all of that in. And to point King said that they thought that, that this could be done by like a, you know, sort of a one person show like some, you know, a consultant that does this kind of work that wouldn't necessarily have to be done through somebody like them and, but yes, you're right. And I, and I also believe that there are unless the, unless the planning is used to follow our grants with their sidewalks, but there usually is money like in the central market, you know, when you through these grants for this specific kind of thing, right? So I'm going to look into that. But if we didn't get a grant, you know, I think you're right, Randy, we'd be probably talking anywhere between 10 to $20,000. But also, you know, using some of the expertise of the, of the townspeople that we already have, like Ray Hill might be able to help us out with some things, you know, at a cheap cost or for free. But I think that, that we've done a lot of talking about this for years and it's, and it really is this, this capital spending plan, I think has driven us to that next level of, you know, we have to address some of the crucial things about the town hall and, and so, you know, we really should be doing a greater study of the town hall. Steve, Steve, did you have any comments? No, we need to increase our budget match. I, our grant money significantly. Probably because we only put a thousand books in there. Did you guys know what was the, it was like a 10% match for the central Vermont Regional Planning Commission? I think it was a $9,000 grant. So that's where that, yeah, something like that. Yeah. Did you, did you guys ever meet with that? I forget the name of the person, but the person that was going to talk about the way that you have, that you're able to use the money that was provided down, I think it was the SRF money or something like that and, and how that, how that impacts like what you're looking at with the town hall and the impacts of COVID on this and whatnot is, is, would something like this be allowed to, to tie into the study of the existing town hall and what would need to be done there to make it a more usable structure within the confinements of COVID and whatnot? I mean, would this be allowed as part of that? You're talking about the ARPA money that the towns have gotten, right? Yeah, we, we got, I forget what the numbers were, but you guys at one point had talked about talking with somebody further about, you know, being more creative with the use of these and I, I didn't attend that, but I don't know if this, this, at least the small piece of focusing on the town hall, the existing town hall, if that might fall within, within any of that. So yeah, I think it might be a stretch, Randy, but I think that, you know, if there's, you know, we'd have to look at the fine, fine print to see if like there could be some case of like air quality, right? And, and that, you know, in order for us to do a full thing, we'd have to do a whole engineering study. Again, I'm always just trying to think outside of the box and if there's this money that's available and we can get it, even if it's just, even if it's just partially covering some of the costs, I mean, it's, it's, it'd be a shame not to, not to utilize it if we could. Yeah. I agree, I agree also. I, you know, the, the, the problem is, the problem is just so everyone understands, we want to know what to say at this meeting on Thursday. So if, if the board is uncomfortable with us talking about this potential committee, we can defer, we can defer that suggestion, but I think the idea was that we wanted to be able to say to the community attending this meeting that the plan was to establish this committee with representatives from the select board and, and residents of the town who are interested to explore this and explore it means, you know, what information do we need to gather? How much is it going to cost to gather that, that information? And it's going to be an incremental process. It's a little awkward. It's good in a way because we're right in the middle of budget time. So if we need to put in a couple of thousand dollars for, for grant match to cover us, that's probably a good idea. I am not in favor of, of, of putting a number in the budget of $20,000 before we've even, before we've informed the committee, but I don't disagree with the render. If, if the, if the census to form the committee, I think it at least makes sense to put a little more money in grant match just to have us covered on that front. If that's the way we go forward, but this is the, this is the start of a process. It's not the, not the end of the process planning strategy. So, you know, is it the potential to, to spend money and in the next fiscal year? I would say definitely there is, but we're not there yet. By, so really looking for the sense of the board that forming this committee makes, makes sense to you. I think it's a good idea. So there you have it. There's four of us and we have a good idea. Yeah. Okay. All right. I just want to be, we just want to be transparent and want to be sure we say the right thing on Thursday night. And I would encourage, I would encourage any of you where have the time and are available to, to zoom in and, and get up to speed on this. We have done a lot of work and we're, we're trying to address. We'll send us a zoom connection. I thought I, I thought I invited you all. Well, I, okay. There was a zoom, Steve. Yeah. I just remember getting the invitation. I didn't look to see if there was a zoom on it. There should be a zoom link right in there. And if there's not Mary, there should, it's on the website. I'll just have Sarah send me. There's probably five of them on front page. Right. Randy and I double, double advertised. Yeah, I saw that. Nothing wrong with that. It's been a long, a long and busy meeting tonight. And I, I for one have had enough. I appreciate everybody's time and attention. We hope we'll have a good news from Shane tomorrow. And we can, we're just going to send us updated budget numbers. We do need to be, we do need to thinking, be thinking about what that, what that percentage would be. Cause by, by December, we need to be, we'd be, need to be finalized. Well, I guess actually not by December by January, right, Sarah? By January. We need to be finalizing our budget. And we need that number to do that. Oh, and Sarah, I'm a, Peter and I are coming to the office tomorrow for six o'clock. Cause I said there would be a person at the town hall. Well, you keep saying tomorrow. Don't you mean Thursday? I know. I keep thinking tomorrow's Thursday. I'm sorry. I meant. Yeah. That's made you. Well, Peter. You guys both have a, you guys both have a tease, right? Well, I have some key in my person. I don't know what it is. And I'm thinking. I definitely have a key and I'll be there. So. All right. Well, if you don't have a key, just let me know. No, I definitely have a key. He's going to. Speaking of, um, the budget committee has a meeting on the 30th and I've been asked to be down at the town hall. So I don't know what, what kind of timeframe you're there in, but I made my book is coming out. I am not here. I'm going to be in Plainville, Massachusetts. Cause it's eight o'clock. Don't worry. We'll be in touch. She'll work on it. Randy, you can borrow my key. There you go. I gotta go guys. Bye. Bye. I gotta go guys. Bye. Bye.