 A meeting of the Waterbury Select Board on Monday, January 8th, 2024. First item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Do I have a motion? So moved. I think. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. Next is the consent agenda. Do I have a motion? I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented for the minutes of the January 4th, 2024 meeting. Second. Okay. Seconded. We don't need any discussion on this. So all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. Now we have the public session. Anyone would like to address any items not on the warned agenda. Please come forward. And I ask that you. Keep your comments to three minutes if possible. If you need more time, we'll be glad to add it to the agenda. Yes. I'm kind of requests just today to testify in front of Senate operations Wednesday. About the municipal flood response and in essence. I want the interactions with the state and town government. Okay. Do you mind putting that at the end of the agenda? Right before the next meeting. Discussion. Anything else? Then I understand Brian Voight is joining us via zoom. Brian, are you there? Yeah. Hello. Great. Great. Brian, thank you for joining us. You've agreed to present us with some options on floodwater mitigation. If you wouldn't mind just introducing yourself with your title and your brief. And then we'll go ahead and do that. And then we'll go ahead and do that. And then we'll go ahead and get your position. Within the state. And then go forward. Happy to do so. Hi, everyone. Brian Boyd. I'm a senior planner and program manager at the central Vermont regional planning commission. My apologies that I. Couldn't make it there tonight in person, but I'm glad to be here. I'm a senior planner and program manager at the central Vermont regional planning commission. I'm a senior planner and program manager at the central Vermont regional planning commission. I've been at the regional planning commission for. About 18 months. I'm the lead natural resources planner and also. Head up the, the GIS geographic information systems work here with the organization. I'm the lead natural resources. I'm the lead natural resources. I'm the lead natural resources with a real. How the amount of that workload. Allocated to working on issues of water quality and water quantity. To that end, I'm the. The team lead on the clean water service provider program for the Wanooski river basin. And I'll touch on that in a few minutes here as I go through my, my presentation. Am I able to share my screen? Okay. I'm. Otherwise happy I could email Tom. Presentation right now, or we could do without. And I can just talk about my slides. However you see fit. Karen's given you a little authority to show your screen. Sounds dangerous. Thanks, Karen. Thank you, Bill. Okay. So hopefully you can see. A slide that. Says opportunities for flood hazard mitigation. We. On the same page. Okay. Great. Okay. Well, I've already introduced myself. So I won't, won't bother doing that. That's a bit again. I'm going to talk tonight about a few different things related to flood hazard mitigation. I'm going to start out with a brief overview of storm water master planning. And then I'm going to talk about a few different funding opportunities and really want to leave plenty of time for a discussion. And then I'm going to talk about the next steps. And then I'm going to talk about the numbers of the public that are attending the meeting tonight to talk about, you know, in your ideal world, what would the next steps look like and talk about what role CVR PC could play in facilitating those next steps. So I'll kick it off with. Again, a brief discussion of, of storm water master planning. So, you know, why, why plan? What, what's up with these storm water master plans. So, you know, I'm going to talk about a couple of things. And then I'm going to talk about, you know, some of the services predate the statutory, statutory requirements for storm water management. So we're already sort of starting from behind the eight ball, if you will. And really the, the goal with storm water master plans is to. Focus on water quality improvements. And minimizing downstream impacts from, from flood waters. We operate on the, the old adage preventive, the water flow, and then we also move towards the pure water and the water flow generation. So if we can target these areas where we're seeing increased pollution or excess storm water runoff. We can capture and hopefully remove or mitigate. That situation more efficiently at its point of origin, as opposed to dealing with. Recovering and repairing downstream damages following an event. and or best management practices, things like green stormwater infrastructure and low impact development policies that can both help repair past damages but also look towards the future to hopefully avoid repeating some of the mistakes of the past. And then the other nice and very essential component of a stormwater master plan is this public participation piece. So increasing public awareness about stormwater problems, identifying opportunities for community action, and also daylighting the cost of engineered and other solutions. Helping the community make sense of the potential financial ramifications of project implementation and also helping them contextualize an outlay of money that they may not consider as something worthwhile by addressing or explaining what has happened via past events and the cost associated with post-storm recovery in the past. So a little bit of background on stormwater master plans. The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation has worked on this topic since the late 1990s with a staff position supporting urban watershed management in the year 2000. The legislature passed a Vermont stormwater management statute that, among other things, promotes implementation of pollution prevention, encourages municipal governments to utilize existing regulatory and planning authority to implement improved stormwater management and promote this public education and participation amongst citizens with a goal of achieving cost effective and innovative measures to reduce stormwater discharges. So the overarching goal really is to target locations where this pollution is generated so that we can capture and mitigate this in a cost effective manner. So the stormwater master plan is essentially a comprehensive plan for addressing stormwater runoff and a typical process for stormwater master planning includes things like defining the water quality or quantity problem through existing data. So things like biological chemical monitoring, river geomorphic assessments, so things that already exist within the state library, so to speak. We would gather existing data so make use of our extensive spatial data resources from the Vermont Center for Geographic Information. We might look at existing reports or existing data analysis if either or both of those exist. And then in addition, some new data collections. So field surveys to compile a list of potential sites that are contributing to stormwater problems or water quality pollution problems, conducting a limited amount of field data analysis, compiling that list of sources associated with these defined water problems. And really the end goal here is a list of prioritized projects that can lead to the selection of projects deemed feasible by the community that we can then advance for funding and implementation. So currently the town does not have a stormwater master plan, but some work was done in the 2009 timeframe by the state DEC to map some stormwater infrastructure in both Waterbury Center and the town of Waterbury. And how this differs from a stormwater master plan is that essentially it's DEC staff that gather available information. So they might look at anything from municipal plans for stormwater infrastructure to site design or permit issue permits related to site design to gather any available information they can about the way that stormwater is being managed throughout a municipality. So this effort resulted in a table, don't worry about the numbers or even really about the fieldheading, suffice it to say that there's this catalog of stormwater infrastructure throughout the town. This information is a bit dated, it's 14 or so years old at this point, but it does include a potential place for us to start beyond the projects that Tom and I have discussed briefly in a past few phone calls. So the nice thing about this is that the outcome of this stormwater mapping effort by DEC produces this list of potential projects and we get an idea about the amount of throughput going through these different project locations both in terms of the quantity of water but also importantly any pollutants associated with that flow of water and in particular we're talking here about phosphorus and I'll come back to why that is important later when I talk a bit more about some of our funding options. Last thing I'll say about this table is that maybe you can see some color coded cells here on the left hand side of the table. There's also a loose prioritization, again not based on any actual sophisticated modeling. They actually use a fairly simple approach to modeling the sediment and phosphorus loads in these locations but the document itself is at least internally consistent and we could use this as a jumping off point for identifying potential areas for greater scrutiny if the town chose to go through a full-blown stormwater master planning process. So what does that process actually look like? This is something that I mean it certainly could be handled in-house if you had the required staff to do this but typically when we engage stormwater master planning we procure an engineering consultant. We've worked with several different engineering firms to work on stormwater master plans throughout the central Vermont region so we procure an engineering consultant and the planning and conservation commissions really play a significant role in this effort and that's not to sideline the select board. The select board is encouraged and certainly could be as involved as they have time to engage this activity but we use this the public input from planning and conservation commissions and active citizens to generate a list of potential problem sites. The engineering team would then perform an initial analysis, generate a list of 20 to 30 potential projects, interface with again the planning and conservation commissions and the select board as well to really set up a more prioritized list of projects. So from that initial tranche of 30 or more projects it gets narrowed down to about 20 projects and then typically anywhere from three to five of those 20 projects go through a preliminary engineering design. The state refers to this as a 30% design so they distinguish between this preliminary or 30% design with a 100% or final design which is the last thing that happens prior to project implementation. So the document that comes out of this process and there are several different templates depending on the area of focus anywhere from an individual site all the way up to entire municipalities or potentially even sub basins within the Lake Champlain drainage area but the output of this is a document that includes details of the entire process and more importantly really sets us up for the the three to five projects puts us in a good position to pursue pursue additional funding be it from federal or state resources to to complete the implementation of these projects. As I mentioned before there's a significant education and outreach component involved here looking to involve the public really at every phase of the the master planning process with the end goal of building awareness about the the current concerns and what it's going to take to implement these changes moving into the future. And I should mention also a really interesting example and the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission doesn't have a have a parallel to this but it's something that we internally have discussed as a possibility moving forward but the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission has a stormwater education program called Rethink runoff again really geared towards reaching the the public and helping build consensus around the work that needs to be done related to stormwater management. So that's the stormwater master planning process in a nutshell. I'm certainly happy to answer questions either now or can wait until I run through just a handful of additional slides but I'll take a quick break here. Any questions? How long does the process of implementing a master plan typically take place? I'm not sure I told her the question how long is the master planning process or how long is it from that? Okay yeah so on the order of months six months that maybe eight this is something that could be completed certainly within a calendar year. So as soon as we would be budgeting for such a function would be 2025? Well let's not get out ahead of the budget discussion just yet because I do have some potential funding options where we wouldn't necessarily look to the town to fund that or if we did it would be a small slice of matching funds and not necessarily well depending on how you do your budgeting it might be something that you could work into existing budget buckets so to speak. I think you know for a stormwater master plan if we were to target the the entire municipality then we're talking on the order of you know 35 to 50 thousand dollars. That would be the town's portion? No no that would be the the whole the whole cost of a stormwater master plan. Yeah sorry didn't mean to suggest that 35 to 50k is pocket change for for anybody's budget. Yeah okay and well you'll you'll get into what it might cost the town depending on your succeeding discussion right? Yeah and we can and we can certainly talk more about that you know beyond this evening as well. Yeah Chris. So is he is he specifically talking about a master plan that encompasses all like all the tributaries and potential stormwater runoff throughout the entire town of the library or are you talking about just the needs that municipality itself in the property that they encompass in other words you talking all private projects as well? Yeah so the the the plan can address both public and private lands and so you know the question about does it does it address all the the tributaries this is not a stormwater modeling exercise typically the the way the process works is after the engineering consultant's been procured then we would meet with whatever group planning commission conservation commission select board all of the above and generate this list of potential problem sites you're the ones that know your your community the best and so you can think about where do I see standing water after even a moderate rainfall? Where do I know that we've got issues with blown out culverts or undersized bridges you know identifying projects like that that we can then task the engineering consultant with digging in further so some of those locations may very well fall on private property and that's another reason to engage the the public about this and you know quite frankly not every private landowner would be all that excited to host stormwater infrastructure on their property and that's their prerogative as the the private landowner so that would influence that final list of projects and in particular that list of the three to five that go through the the preliminary design that 30% engineering design we certainly wouldn't want to advocate for a 30% design on a project where a landowner has said that's not something I'm interested in pursuing. Any other questions? Okay great thanks. Okay so I'm going to talk about three different funding opportunities and talk about or discuss how I think they they do or don't fit with stormwater master planning and also the opportunities that they present even if they don't fully address the the complete stormwater master planning process so I'll talk about the hazard mitigation grant program the building resilient infrastructure and communities grant program and then lastly the the formula grant clean water service provider program. So the first of these the the hazard mitigation grant program and I should mention I will send this slide deck to Tom so that he can distribute further and or just put this up on the the town website and I have hyperlinks to the different grant programs in the slide deck that you'd be able to access easily if anyone wants to do additional background work here. So the hazard mitigation grant program this is money that was made available following the the July 2023 flooding event and it's money that comes through the federal emergency management agency and it's administered by the Vermont emergency event uh Vermont emergency management DEL. It's important to note that damage from the flood is not required as part of your proposal so the money itself is released in response to the July in response to a flooding event in in this particular case we're talking about the July 2023 flood and you don't need to have realized specific damage to infrastructure or a property that might fall under this proposal during that event it's just that the money becomes available following these these large scale events. This has a 75 federal 25 local cost share and if the if the town has any ARPA funds still remaining ARPA money can in many cases be used as the the local match for this. How about any state money involved with this one? No. Okay. That's that well let me just say maybe and and then come back to that because it's actually a slightly more complicated question than just a yes or no thing so when I talk about the clean water service provider program um I can talk about how that money can maybe be used as match and technically that money comes from the state but um we'll we'll cross that bridge here in a few minutes. Thank you. In terms of eligibility oh sorry I didn't drop Brian uh Tom's going to give us a little insight. We've had conversations about hazard mitigation grants when Izky Street being one project the cover we lost and we lost then Greg over being another speaker. Stephanie Smith who's in charge of the program at the state has said don't apply five times apply once. Otherwise you're administering five grants a set of one. The challenge with the 25% match is it has to be non-federal and so many state grants have a federal component to them too so that's the long and short here. Yeah thanks Tom for mentioning that you you've talked with Stephanie I was meant to bring that up as well. I'll just let me just address this the local cost share piece. The clean water service provider program you are allowed to use some of that money to serve as match for federal projects. I would need to get the approval from DEC for that but it is it is possible whether or not that well it's possible but it does also present some other complications and we can talk about what those might be when I when I touch on that program in a little more detail but there are options for for cost sharing anywhere from from ARPA to the municipal tax base to potentially some fairly restricted funds that that that may work for this. So we've got a few different eligibility requirements. There needs to be a FEMA approved and adopted local hazard mitigation plan. My colleague Keith Coven is currently working with town staff on this with an anticipated completion date I believe he told me in summer of 2024. Good standing with the national flood insurance program we can check that box for you and then also an adopted local emergency management plan another another box that we can check. So really the the outstanding issue here is the local hazard mitigation plan but given that there is a work in progress we can also apply for a waiver from that requirement and that essentially means that the town's going to commit to wrapping up that local hazard mitigation plan within I believe it's 12 months of receiving the hazard mitigation grants of funding itself. So it's it's not necessarily a workaround we still have to commit to getting that local hazard mitigation plan done but it's not a complete obstacle for seeking these funds just because that work has not been completed. So typical project types for funding under this kind of opportunity dam removal upsizing a bridge or culvert flood plane restoration and even engineering design for elevating residential properties or commercial municipal property flood proofing. So this goes back to the point that Tom made we should really have a conversation about the the diversity or the range of projects that the town is interested in scope some cost for what that might look like and then make some decisions about the projects that do or don't make the cut for for the proposed funding. I will note that there is an application deadline at the end of the month for this current round of funding and that the other important piece to note here is that four projects that are funded through the hazard mitigation grant program the scoping projects that are funded under this are also expected to then pursue funding within the same funding cycle for project implementation. So that's another piece that maybe might constrain the list of projects that would be included on a grant proposal to this program. A typical scoping process here involves procuring engineering services and it's going to be this engineering consultant that would work with the RPC if you want us involved as well as the town to assess the issue or issues that are present and develop a list of alternatives. They would work with the the project team the project partners to select a preferred alternative and then develop some designs a budget and a real scope of that preferred alternative in addition to a benefit cost analysis in order to set the stage for pursuing implementation funding. So much like this idea of this 30% design for projects in the stormwater master planning you're going to scope a project or a set of projects develop your preferred alternative and really advance those to the design stage so that you're well positioned to solicit additional funding for implementation. So this particular funding opportunity it is probably not the best fit for pursuing money to do a full-blown stormwater master plan but I do think this would be good for some of these isolated projects and Tom and I've talked about at least a couple of them I'm sure there are some other ideas floating around that I'd certainly like to hear about as well but you know my conversation with with Stephanie and my understanding the this grant program is that it might not be the the best fit for pursuing stormwater master plan funding so we'll just put that in our back pocket for now and move on to the other funding opportunities and then we'll circle back in the in the discussion piece here. The next next opportunity I want to mention is this building resilient infrastructure and communities grant program also known as the BRIC grant program. So unlike the hazard mitigation grant program that we just discussed this funding opportunity is it's an annual program. So FEMA administers funding annually to essentially fund hazard mitigation activities with the with the end goal of reducing risk from natural hazards. It's really a pre-disaster mitigation program. Now FEMA sets aside two million dollars for the the state of Vermont. My understanding is if there's a project of national significance and I'm not exactly sure how that's defined but I'm you know if we come up with a really big big project idea I'm certainly happy to coordinate with our regional FEMA administrators to talk in more detail about what that looks like but if we did come up with a very large project it is possible to ask for funding in excess of two million dollars. Once again we've got a federal local cost share same basic idea where the clean water service provider may be able to provide some or all of that local match again depending on the project or projects that are being pursued. Several different eligible project types including and probably of of primary interest to the the town is really scoping for specific structures or areas with flood vulnerability. So you could use this brick monies to study a single bridge or look at storm water needs writ large across the entire community. So lots of options for the the scale of analysis that that could be conducted through this program. Now in my conversations with Stephanie she suggested that if the town wanted to pursue storm water master planning monies through one of the DEC programs currently that this was probably the better fit and that as long as we package that proposal or couch that proposal in the language of flood resilience that it's likely that we could access some of the the funding here. The downside of this if we look at the the last line on the slide here application deadline January 12th so that application deadline is at the the end of the week. So that's you know maybe a bit more compressed of a timeline than than we're necessarily thinking about on the downside but on the plus side note that this is an annual allocation of funds and if for some reason other funding opportunities didn't pan out favorably for the the work that lies ahead we could certainly make sure that we're well positioned to apply for brick monies in the beginning weeks of 2025. So the last of these funding opportunities as I mentioned is the clean water service provider program the state department of environmental conservation that ministers the clean water fund and as part of that the legislature passed a clean water act in recent years and one of the things that that did was to establish these clean water service providers for each of the the basins that drained into Lake Champlain. There's a lot longer history about this that I won't totally go through but essentially we're we're tasked with cleaning up our our phosphorus loads going into the lake. So I mentioned before that this funding resource might not necessarily be the the best place to shop for funds because the projects that we're talking about here must be non-regulatory. So not required by a permit that doesn't mean that they don't require permits for implementation but I'm talking about required by a permit like a three acre permit for example with a primary goal of phosphorus reduction. So I know that you know the the conversation tonight is really centered around enhancing or improving flood resilience so that puts some pretty heavy guardrails on the types of projects that might align with the formula grant funds. So really what we're talking about here for ideal project types are going to be things like a floodplain or stream restoration, developing river corridor easements, implementing riparian buffer plantings, and potentially performing operations and maintenance on existing stormwater projects. And so this last one is still sort of a work in progress at DEC but as the clean water service provider I can quote-unquote adopt an orphan project. So think about a stormwater project that was implemented but the the catch basin's never been cleaned out. You know the the stone line drainage ditch is now overgrown and filled in with sediment. So we can expend some formula grant monies to maintain the operation of these different stormwater pieces of stormwater infrastructure as long as there is a phosphorus credit that can be claimed in relation to that that work. On the plus side I'm soliciting projects at least four times and sometimes up to six times per year and I have a budget of about $875,000 to do project implementation. Now that all sounds great but I just want to bring us back to this primary goal of phosphorus reduction. So in my conversations with with Tom you know I certainly know that floodplain reconnection is excuse me a type of project that that Tom emphasized through our our conversation and so maybe there are some projects that are you know one-off projects that are really a good fit. And you know the other nice thing about this is that the municipality can apply for this directly with or without the the assistance of the Regional Planning Commission. So the last thing I will say about this I mentioned earlier that you know we can use some of our budget as matching funds so I could potentially you know if we advanced a project and it was to a place where we were going to award funds for said project we could use some of those project monies to serve as a match for federal money. So there's this potential thinking back to the hazard mitigation grant program the the first funding opportunity that I talked about if there was for example a you know a floodplain reconnection project that really rises to the the top of the list of priorities for the the town. Typically those types of projects also convey a fairly significant phosphorus reduction benefit and you know thereby implying that it's a it's a good fit for the the program itself. So you know again I'm not I'm not ruling anything out and I don't want you to either I just want to to make sure that folks are aware when they they see a big dollar amount oh a million dollars per year you know yes it is a lot of money but there are some fairly stringent guardrails that have been placed on that money that I'm happy to work with the town to continue to explore looking for projects that that do fit well under this current funding regime. And then lastly just want to talk about some some next steps. As I mentioned I've had a few conversations with Tom I have at least a limited understanding of the the priorities that have already been identified but would certainly like to hear about other project types and other work that the town hopes to engage over the the coming months and years. I'd be happy to talk about how CVRPC could help with broader municipal engagement and outreach up to and including engagement with landowners be they the state or private property owners and then lastly really want to emphasize that the Regional Planning Commission is here to help you both identify funding resources but also to pursue those funding opportunities so please don't hesitate to to reach out if some technical assistance grant writing assistance is something that you think that the the town could benefit from. So with that I'll stop talking I'm happy to answer questions but would also love to hear your thoughts on what you've heard tonight the kinds of projects that you really want to prioritize and really where we go from here. All right Brian thank you so much great overview of the some options open to us. Any immediate questions? Brian all of those funding levels are statewide and how competitive are they between the state's board and is there any priority given into different municipalities? Yeah so a couple of things here the the formula grant money that budget that I showed on the formula grant slide this is for work only in the Winooski River basin so I mean there are 50 or so municipalities there are plenty of non-governmental organizations natural resource conservation districts watershed organizations etc that are competing for those funds now that said I've got a fairly significant amount of money left over from FY23 and haven't spent any of my FY24 money yet so we are particularly flush at this point with money through the clean water service provider so if we can identify a good project that meets this non-regulatory phosphorus reduction target that that we're talking about I think that there's a really high likelihood that the the town could access some of these funds the hazard mitigation grant program funds those are the ones that only come out following a disaster declared disaster you know my recommendation would be at a minimum we find one or two projects and pursue funding through that program that money is only available you know following a disaster there is a lot of money available and sometimes that money gets sort of lost in the shuffle you know with all the other things going on post disaster recovery wise you know it's my understanding that there are times when that money doesn't get all the way drawn down so I think going after some of that hazard mitigation grant program money does make sense even even given the relatively short timeline with a proposal scoping proposals due by the end of this month the the BRIC money that building resilient infrastructure and communities money that's probably going to be the the most competitive that said if we were looking to the BRIC program to fund a stormwater master plan we're not asking for a ton of money and that could make it a an appealing project for the the funding decision makers from that perspective because we're not we're not asking for or we wouldn't be asking for anything close to the two million dollar allocation again thinking on the order of you know 50 thousand dollars where if the municipal match the local match is 25 percent you know that means your your federal request would be in the the order of 35 or so thousand dollars so out of a two million dollar tranche of funds I I think it's you know there is potential there to to access that if you were trying to pursue a bigger project with the BRIC funds I think that you know we'd have to make a really compelling case for why why the town of waterbury feels like they deserve the lion's share of the the funds for a particular year I was curious if Tom the fume Brian had talked about potential projects for particularly for the hazard mitigation program yeah we talked about the culvert project and you feel like that's pretty reasonable to get the proposal in this month I'm sorry without without a question for me I didn't totally hear that no thanks Brian sorry I'll speak up by the time I did that one yeah I mean in terms of the the deadline I can I I can help work on the the proposal and then also the our emergency manager Keith cobin who's working on the local hazard mitigation plan for the the town he would also be available to put some staff time towards that so that we could develop the the most compelling proposal possible Brian I would expect that the master planning has been done for several different towns and that the the template for developing a proposal for that funding would be fairly well established yeah I would have to look back at you know we haven't done any stormwater master plan since I've been here I have in gay I was on the planning commission in the town of weightsfield for a long time and actually was involved in the planning commission when the cdrpc did the stormwater master plan for for the matter of valley so I've actually been involved in the the process the you know the proposal piece for that not overly difficult you know they're basically looking for an identification of who the the project partners the project team would be and then you know some details about the the area of interest which I'm I'm inferring but certainly correct me if I'm wrong would be the the entire town as opposed to just the the downtown either way is fine we just need to be real specific about what we're looking to analyze as part of that planning process and then are you familiar with the McBroom study that identified larger mitigation initiatives that was developed in 2013 I am yes and I will I can't say that I've read it cover to cover and certainly don't have it committed to memory but I do know of that that work and it would certainly be you know worth digging into more more based on what you did uh would any of those be a good fit for the hazard mitigation grant program I think so yeah I mean again I I can't tell you a specific project off the the top of my head but I could certainly look back at that resource and flag those that I think would be the best fit as one of my next steps coming out of the meeting yeah if I recollect there were three preferred alternatives that came out of that one was the harby farm over in in duck spray which if the landowners decide that they are not interested in working with us may not be feasible at least initially another would was the excavating of a portion of the state-owned cornfield and then a third was the reconnection of flood plain just opposite the town of the state complex in musky I mean in that's right yeah I I think the you know given the the questions about the landowner for the the first project I I don't think that's right for proposal at this time but I do think that the the second two would be priority projects that that we could and probably should pursue funding through this program for and this is a case you know again where we're talking about these floodplain reconnections that those are the kinds of projects that convey a fairly significant phosphorus reduction benefit and that really helps to support and justify the expenditure of the the formula grant funds through the clean water service provider to to help facilitate that project and so we can do this you know we can think strategically about how we might mix and match the funds to make them them go the the furthest I can tell you that I'm doing a working on a project in marsh field currently a berm removal project along the main stem of the the wanouski river and my target for the year is a 70 kilogram 140 or so pounds 150 pounds of of phosphorus reduction per year that one project that one berm removal project if we get it all the way through implementation represents almost two years of the the phosphorus target for me so when I hear about places that are interested in these floodplain reconnection projects those are the ones that seem really attractive that I think we could shepherd through the the funding request process even if it means trying to tap funds from multiple different sources yeah my only question Roger I know Brian is with the regional planning commission the cornfield certainly is in waterway the water across the river is dexbury so would dexbury have to apply for that are you is waterway eligible to apply for the ones across the river did you hear that Brian not really I I heard that it's had something to do with two different towns but I'm not exactly sure what what the issue was yeah Bill was just asking the cornfield does lie within the town of waterbury state no state owned the the floodplain reconnection opposite the state complex is in the town of dexbury and he's wondering if dexbury would have to apply for those funds or whether the town of waterbury could apply for that project even though the project would take place within the town of dexbury that is state owned land though correct yes it is yeah so really as long as we engage the state and the state is a willing partner ideally we would involve dexbury in the in the conversation but it's not really incumbent on dexbury to apply for the the funding it's it'd be a little bit of a unique case I suppose but certainly engaging dexbury through the process should help alleviate any any concerns and at the end of the day if we're talking about state property assuming that the state is on board with the effort in some ways it doesn't necessarily matter what the the town thinks and let me just I know this is being recorded and put on tv so let me just say I'm not advocating that waterbury start making decisions for the town of dexbury but I am falling back on this it is a state owned land and if the landowner is willing to engage the process I don't necessarily know why it would matter if it was waterbury or dexbury that applied it might strengthen the application if we get a letter of support from dexbury or if dexbury were to actually sign on to that part of the the project yeah and I think that's what Bill was just suggesting is that we could strengthen our proposal by having a consortium of two towns on this initiative do you know of who represents the state in terms of of whom we would approach within the state about the project the two projects cornfield and the project across the river jennifer finch she's the head of building general services jennifer finch okay cool well it appears like we're making some progress um i've been doing a lot of talking who else has a question here's a question okay yes let me try to read this for the clean water service provider funding is flood hazard mitigation identified as a co-benefit for the project in other words do projects that both reduce phosphorus and improve flood resiliency uh be scored well the short answer is yes um but it's really incumbent on the um the phosphorus reduction piece so i mentioned before my target of 70 kilograms per year phosphorus reduction if you look at the the overall budget that means i've got about 15 000 per per kilogram of phosphorus removed so as long as the project being proposed yields a phosphorus reduction benefit that is on the order of 15 or so thousand dollars per kilogram then the project itself looks attractive from a funding perspective the flood mitigation co-benefit does earn a project proposal additional points but the way that our scoring works for the proposals that we review under this program if the phosphorus reduction isn't significant and also meeting that that cost constraint it's really unlikely that the project would get funded regardless of the number of co-benefits that that exist and i know that's disappointing to some uh or many of our partners it's different than the way de c is operated funding for this type of work in the past um but the clean water service provider is specifically tasked with phosphorus reduction and if other good things happen that's great but um certainly not the focus of the of the money uh for that program i read this morning that uh the cities of berry and mapealier are looking at flood proofing um yeah i would assume that means or could involve the construction of burns are they looking at these same funds or are you familiar with uh those initiatives you know i um i have been involved in some conversations particularly with some of the um house and and senate members uh they they uh from berry very very town berry city and in mapealier that are responsible for the the recent omnibus package that was put before the the state legislature um part of that work if it were to be funded and i know there's a couple of different groups that are doing some work on this and and i'm not sure if chris kaliva is involved from the the uvm side uh in a parallel effort here but um you know part of that omnibus package if it were to pass uh would fund a a flood study that um would really help us identify the most vulnerable locations within the drainage basin within the wanuski river basin um and help set priorities on a more regional basis um i'm not aware of either mapealier or um berry city looking at the hazard mitigation grants program funds or the brick funds for that matter um to do any work just yet and they definitely have not applied for money through the clean water service provider for this work i would be surprised um if berms were the way i you know we can't universally say no more berms um but i would be surprised if berms rise to the top of priority projects given that we're actually trying to take berms out in in many other locations right yeah it becomes up there uh other questions chris jordan i need to come up or can he hear me uh step forward because it helps thanks uh brian for a long time i've been advocating for uh a problem that i see as being a huge impact into our stormwater environmental issues which is trying to uh reduce the amount of sand and salt use throughout the state most towns put up three to five thousand cubic yards a year uh they go through a large portion of that most of it ends up in our brooks and streams um i don't know how this uh how how your department um if it's even on the radar number one number two how would it address it if there are there any avenues to address it um you know just while i live on kneeling flats it's probably a two mile stretcher road um pretty flat most of the way there's a short incline up by the town shed but uh we cross five bridges it the road so close to the brook we cross five bridges there and it's exclusively used salt is used to clear the road so it it doesn't have a long ways to travel to get right into the water stream uh second question is and kind of encompasses the salt and sand use that you mentioned dam removal uh i know on codieville they removed one or two dams there in the last couple of years and what i've witnessed is uh huge amounts of sediment have been eroded from the last few streams that has caused huge embankments uh where the where the brook has during high water uh problems it has cut you know huge amounts of silt down through uh that section of brook uh and all the way up through it about by my house and i'm curious to know what the impacts of that are on the the lower tributaries with no ski and even the lake shamp plain uh and then the last thing pertains to the mitigation study done on the duxbury side of the river back after hyrene there was a project two duplexes that were built just down here on the bold road just outside of town below the dam um the exit of the dam river that flows into the wanouski uh i'm i'm assuming and quite sure because i spoke to an engineer just two days ago about it that those projects the two brand new duplexes had to meet new flood plain criteria as far as elevations of first floor both those units have been flooded twice during the last two storms to the extent of two to two and a half feet of water in the lower units and i i guess my question to you tom was when that last storm hit or the last two storms was the dam still operating under some capacity releasing water and had it been able to shut the water completely off would that have prevented those those apartment complexes reservoir water reservoir yeah i everything you did is documented what i can tell you is they followed their protocol and they closed the floodgates not just on the reservoir but all the dams all the flood safety dams upstream of us and at no point um did water flow over the floodgates or did they have to open the floodgate because of capacity issues the several days after the flood proceeded they opened their gates in a major way to get themselves additional storage to be prepared for the next event but my understanding is in short the the dams did their job 100 percent they don't shut off the floor a little river doesn't stop yeah they don't pull away from the back we'll see back when we were looking at the new flood elevations uh the consensus was to go at a i believe 101 foot elevation for new structures for first floor structures i proposed 104 feet uh and there were some other people on the planning commission that were on board with that too but we settled on 101 and consequently those two new apartments got flooded because of it not to say that you know and i was wondering what could have taken place that might have prevented that and if i recall that that mitigation study uh 300,000 cubic yards i believe at a cost of seven million dollars only lowered the water level of foot from from the iran flood so i think it's going to take more than more than that it's a good start but i think you know moving forward i think we're seeing worse consequences from the storms and wondering how how how effective something like that would be so thanks okay thank you chris uh brian do you want to address uh any other three questions that uh Chris had yeah sure um so the the first question about uh salt use on the roads uh the lake champlain seagrant recently had a a workshop and chris uh the panic is i think leading this effort here um at the at the lake champlain seagrant but basically looking at salt application and alternatives to salt and so you might have seen in the last few weeks or so a story or or two about using brine on on roads as opposed to salt um you know that is really a decision to be made by the the select board and the and the road department um the rpc does not dictate or govern what what the way that the individual roads are managed within the municipality um that said you know there are this effort there is this effort through the lake champlain seagrant there's a better back roads grant funding as well as a as this um research effort out of out of uvm and the the seagrant and really you know the um it's not that the technology is super advanced but it does cost money and it's a different piece of equipment that would be used to spread brine and even to create the brine um then what exists for all of the the trucks that are outfitted currently that are that are spreading sand um you know 25 years ago i moved here from the the pacific northwest they stopped using sand i'm sorry salt on many of the roads at least on the west side of the the cascade range because they were concerned about the impacts to salmon um obviously winter looks a little bit different over there but um you know they've dialed it in pretty well so it's certainly something that can be done um but it is a pretty big change of mindset from the way that roads are are currently managed um i can certainly have our transportation planner reach out and talk more to um the select board and or the the town road crew if that's something that folks are are interested in in advancing um second question was about the the dam removal um and what sounds like some scouring following the the removal of some some small dams i need to get a little more detail um on the the dam specifically so that i could do some research on you know when was the when were those dams removed who was the the project sponsor and um you know make a connection with um you know the the project sponsor as well as um maybe connect with some some de c staff the river scientists for example to go out into the field and and take a look and it's potential for a project like that where um what's known as a strategic woody addition so basically dropping um logs or other large uh chunks of wood into a stream anchoring them um slowing down that water and thereby reducing the potential for scour during the high flow events so um there are you know there are some options um but i think i need to get a little more detail before i want to to dig in uh to too much on that and i'm happy to follow up with uh with you on that chris and then the the last um piece was a question about um flood plans and and new developments um i'm not sure how new uh the new development the the duplexes are that you're talking about but we're currently um engaged in a process with FEMA where they're updating all of our flood insurance rate maps and as part of that they're going to um delineate new flood hazard areas and my understanding is that for Washington County we are looking at a preliminary data release hopefully sometime in 2024 the the date has been shifting uh backwards a little bit but i i've been led to believe that it should be summer 2024 but um also don't have any control over when those maps themselves are released i my expectation based on your description of the property would be that um you know the the recently constructed duplexes are likely to fall inside the new designation for that that flood hazard area and um we're working right now on some evaluations of town plans and zoning bylaws to assess whether or not they conform with the the model language that's already been approved by FEMA and we'll be conducting outreach over the course of this next year to engage the planning and conservation commissions particularly about updating um flood hazard regs uh in the in the towns doesn't do much for the structures that are already there but hopefully we'll get us to a place where we can avoid uh these kinds of repeat losses for future development yeah yeah just a couple of points uh first the uh the second point Brian the dam in Kobeville uh was not a dam removal it was a dam failure um no one somebody owns that dam but it hasn't been maintained or um actively looked at at all uh two winters ago or two springs ago now uh a small hole came into the dam and now the hole is bigger uh DEC was notified of it when it happened so that there's nobody to find uh who removed that dam it's it's simply a uh a failure and it I looked at the hole the other day and it's it's bigger than it was a year ago so I expect there'll continue to be some degradation there uh your point about woody debris you know putting wood into the stream we did that in the lower portion of um Thatcher broke down below the um Gristmill probably 15 or 20 years ago to try to stabilize the bank where the kids uh cross country ski down below the school uh the village or EFUD has a sewer line that goes across that field and it's important that that be stabilized so yeah there was rip wrap and there was uh you know some um kind of experimental programs in terms of driving tree trunks and the like into the into the bank uh so that might be something that can be none there I came up here I I don't think Chris really meant to imply that um you know a foot of flood reduction isn't important um you know seven million dollars to reduce the flooding by a foot even in even in Irene somebody was flooded that wouldn't have been flooded if it had been a foot lower and in July and in December uh I think if we had that extra foot of capacity there'd be a lot happier people around and seven million dollars sounds like a lot of money but it's three times that we've had that flood since 2011 and it's probably going to be I hope not but more frequent uh so anything that we can do to to lower the the flood elevation is important in those buildings that Chris talked about I remember the whole discussion about 101 or 104 um probably it would have been good in those days if we had said you know if there's nothing in the flood plain you just can't build in it as opposed to deciding to raise the elevation of the first floor and and you know it displaces water and everything else but that's a that's a different issue but I did want you to know that the dam was not a removal it was a failure and um reducing the elevation by eight inches of for a foot whatever we can do to make the flood elevation go down I think it's um the cost benefit over the course of time will will be worthwhile yeah thanks uh thanks bill and um maybe tom knows the answer to this but has anyone from dam safety been out to look at this following any of these dusts if so no it's notified us okay I can I can reach out to uh to some folks over there see if it's on their radar and if not um try to get it on their radar to go out and and look um at that and see what uh if anything could could be done there uh bill just mentioned that dam safety was notified yeah when it happened when it happened in 2021 I think it was um we we notified them they they looked at it there's no report here that I'm aware of so we have to hear enough no Catherine who only is identified as Catherine Catherine's iPad says October 17th 2021 dam release in morning in Cobyville yes dam safety has been out Catherine do you wish to speak to your comments it's only Catherine's iPad maybe Woody said home on Kate's iPad hi Woody Woody he's on an iPad so it's no time okay all right thanks we do have an update thank you appreciate it um great uh Tom you've been having conversations uh with Brian about the priorities and I want to get to the next steps because we're running out of time for what we allocated in terms of near-term priorities what uh what are you what have you been discussing potentially some flood heartening at the sewer plant the water infrastructure seems fine we've been discussing Windows Street and discussing there's also a sewer line down here that's exposed and potentially protecting that we've been discussing the gray hill covered potentially a couple of other ones um and then some some conversations about the cornfield the state complex and across the river those are really big projects not on Brian's list but we actually it's in our it's in our to-do list to go um to visit a couple facilities that use Brian the state has facilities and I think Morse other Morse town and Morse still has one so I think we go there at some point this winter and been there we are but it's it's a likely six-figure investment to convert entirely to Brian right you have to convert all our uh drugs yeah and we are reducing salt use on a number of streets on an experimental basis yeah I do think for a component of a list of projects that might be eligible the culverts as Chris pointed out we go over five bridges climbing that road and we saw in December areas that flooded that weren't flooded in Irene and weren't flooded in July um so I think having water in places where there shouldn't be water especially up there was a great concern to a lot of people and I know some of those culverts are probably smaller than they need to be at that point yeah we can look at those um challenges not unfailed in the end and when it comes to um our focus is going to be on the art of the possible here for the first round um and you know bridge work we can do where all the bridges were inspected by engineers and they came through the floods fine um the flooding in private land is a private land issue at this stage we haven't engaged with them yet so yeah I think it's probably I think there's probably some projects here but it may not be a 2024 maybe the next round of funding later in this year or next year yeah well listen Brian have towns used municipal planning grants or other resources particularly for the master planning for storm water not that I'm aware of no I don't um my recollection is that I've never seen that kind of work prioritized by um ACCD for the municipal planning grants it's more like update your flood bylaws or update your village master plan um but I've not seen anything specifically targeted towards storm water master planning with those funds yeah I mean we could certainly ask the worst they could say is no and then we're in the same place we are and I'm I'm happy to reach out to the crew at ACCD to ask that question but my suspicion is the answer is no that there's other funds um that they would prefer that we pursue for that purpose yes Mike um Brian as kind of it's been said a little bit here flooding events phosphorus siltation sediment they all don't respect political boundaries um it's it's a base and wide program and a lot of your the proposed proposals for hazard mitigation plans etc are on a town by town basis is there any move to convert to more of a basin type planning to attack all of these issues because if we don't some of the towns may be passing some of their problems onto other times well I think some towns are already passing their problems onto other towns as it relates to water for sure um have I seen any move towards that um yes and no yes from the perspective of river corridor management um so one of I think it was bill that that mentioned this earlier or maybe at least think about this that you know this thought that you had if there's not already development in the floodplain then let's not let it let's not permit develop new development there you know with the river corridor management um pursuit by by dc they're looking really at uh no adverse impact so basically not permitting structures closer to uh the floodplain then then already exist so um not allowing that type of encroachment to occur uh you know I feel like the state is beginning to acknowledge the need for a larger role at least in the the river corridors as they present themselves what that means for local planning and decision making I'm not quite sure yet because I don't think that idea has been um been fully fleshed out I I mean I think you're you're spot on it's you know the issue is it really kind of conflicts with the history of local land use decision making in the state and so when you start talking about giving up some of that authority at the local level there is uh almost certainly going to be some some pushback even though I would agree from a um from a hydrology or ecology standpoint managing some of these critical resources at something other than a political boundary definitely makes more sense I think that I think the legislature is going to have a heavy session of discussion related to flood hazard mitigation and so I'm excited to see what comes out of that and really hoping that the release of the new flood maps from FEMA will help us guide that conversation in a way that's that's constructive and yields the results that we all really want to see Brian um given the the tight deadline for the BRIC funding um would it make any sense for us to try this scramble and get in a proposal for a master plan um uh before friday or by friday or should we would would make more sense to just wait until FEMA's done its work and wait for next year let me look at the the application in more detail and I can I can let tom know tomorrow morning if I think that's something we should pursue my inclination is to say that we should probably wait for next year um but if the application does not seem too onerous we might be able to pull something together in in time the you know the question there would be um whether or not the the town has matching funds available at this time or if we'd have to seek other funds for matching or if you would um and I'm not sure where you're at in your budgeting process um whether there's still time to include matching funds as part of the um next year's budget we can figure out the matching funds fees yeah we're still in the budgeting process and will be until the end of the month uh so that we can we can figure that one out uh that shouldn't be an obstacle especially for $15,000 um Chris yeah one last question Brian um but I I agree with Bill that you know any any help to lower the flood level is that is a benefit uh the $7 million price tag was a decade ago um do your programs have the capability of putting that type of funding forward for projects such as that wasn't wasn't 7 million Chris um through you sure I think it was 2.8 or 3 rings but it's probably 7 today yeah so um you know the short answer is no but um the hazard mitigation grant program as I mentioned you know that's a pretty big pool of funds and so that might be an area to try to tap for a project of that magnitude the other piece um to mention is that we could continue this dialogue with the um emergency management and try to assess whether a proposal like this might actually represent a project of national significance where we could go for money in excess of that two million dollars basically competing at the national level to see if a project of this nature might be interesting enough as a proof of concept for example to tap into a larger bank account and um you know implement the project and use that as a as sort of a benchmark for other communities facing similar types of issues I mean it's not certainly not guaranteed um the provision is there for these projects of national significance but again without knowing the the set criteria for what that actually looks like I'd be hard pressed to say that that would be a good uh a good avenue for sure okay what what if for example the whole basin went in on together of Barry Montpelier, Waterbury, Richmond or if we all went in on a project together to apply for that federal grant do you think that would be an avenue we could pursue I think if we made the connection between upstream and downstream communities and had support from downstream communities that that takes us certainly down the the path of generating more compelling project idea than simply the town itself proposing a project for seven million dollars with the potential to benefit downstream neighbors without without collaboration so I think if you could bring more partners to the the table or and or get um supporting documentation from other other municipalities in this case that it does make the the proposal stronger whether that meets that yet to be determined threshold of a project of national significance I don't know but you're you're you're thinking along the right lines in in my estimation and when I was speaking with the um the legislators from from uh Barry City, Barry Town and Montpelier you know my message to them was really you know it's great that the the three of you are working together but what I'd really like to see is that you reach out to um you know the reps for uh even the municipalities in Chittenden County because if we can get Chittenden County on board and supporting projects like this little old Washington County might seem a lot more important at that point and you know mitigating the issues in our county before they get to Chittenden County certainly seems like the the right way to go and you know that might include even uh you know more wild ideas like having other you know downstream communities help facilitate um you know potentially matching funds for a project of that magnitude you know they're still gonna derive some benefit even if the project isn't constructed or implemented within their within their county boundaries challenge you have right now Kaine is um most most communities that work it hard don't know what their plan be is actually they're still figuring that out they haven't had a lot of time to do that because they're still figuring out the FEMA claim from the first flood the other piece is um after the flood my sense from talking with folks at the state was they were really interested in projects that would reduce the impact of future flood and more floods like lowering the floodplain areas reconnecting floodplains more so than flood hardening and and since then I sounds like they're thinking a shift and even the state of the state last week I really got that sense that there's less interest in those sort of projects and more more interest in just acknowledging floods are going to be here it's hard but it's cheaper cheaper to do that than to reconnect floodplain and do some of those other projects it's just a sense I have it could be entirely wrong all right Brian thank you so much for taking all the time with us I didn't realize we've gotten a bit over time but we really do appreciate your expertise and you sharing it with us as we mentioned you'll be back in touch with Tom maybe as early as tomorrow about the potential for the master planning and then also these hazard mitigation priorities that that were taking under consideration yeah great and I will as I mentioned share my presentation with Tom so he can share it out with you and for those of you that don't have my contact information it's included on the last slide of the the slide deck so look forward to continuing to work with you and yeah please just don't hesitate to let me know how we can help moving forward okay thank you very much appreciate it thank you thank you bye oh yeah sorry I just want to acknowledge Doug who's our rep to CVRPC who obviously provides this type of stuff on an ongoing service but has been going to the monthly meetings I took the minutes while we were sitting here so just to thank him one of those folks we appointed a long time ago and Doug do you have anything to add to the conversation before we move on only that um the regional planning commission's been asked to assemble a sort of big list of ideas to share with a couple of legislators so in your student the flooding issues that we're facing and then we'll be working on that internally and that will go out but I don't believe it's anything it hasn't been seen elsewhere I think we've mentioned a couple of priorities here I think Tom I don't know if you have a sense of how to move forward in the short term with with Brian and any ideas that we can share with Doug I think in the short time I've been focused on the hazard mitigation grants the brick is relatively new to me and that's just sort of an example of the morass of funding out there we've got to figure it out I think as a mitigation against our best approach from what I've been hearing and for that we would need to identify a number of priorities and then narrow them down that 30% engineering uh yeah in essence if you apply to the state the state does the engineering pays for the engineering through the grant and based on that they do the wrong cost benefit analysis and if it fundamentally makes sense to pay for the implementation they'll help you with that correct then we share that information with Doug so that he can coordinate with the with the central permodigital planning okay no more questions on this we'll move on to the next dynamic agenda which is budget the budget starting with the cemetery thank you Karen so uh Tom didn't mind just leading us through the sure it's been prepared for the cemetery if you start with the expenses and I'll get to the revenues because there's a couple a couple updates so on the expense side there's regular pay and part-time pay the regular pay is for some staff that do some work related to all the administrative work for cemeteries part-time pay is actually generally public works where they come in and do the grave openings we thought in 2023 we had some extra funds in there we were looking to hire a very interesting job at a cemetery sexton so still exists but it's someone who in essence manages administrative side of the work I've gotten quite an education in grave openings and related things put that hit the pause button on that done because it's a tighter budget this year challenge we had for cemeteries there's there's sort of two big numbers in the expenses there's grounds maintenance and there's contractors we we spent extra in 2023 in part because there was a donation received in a prior year to do some capital work which was done so the money came in a prior year went out in 2023 we also for years had a great deal with a local guy who mowed Hope Sanitary for almost nothing he retired didn't want to do it anymore we went out to market what he got everybody could and the cheapest bid was two grand a week came all every week and trim every other we we have just recently we hired a member of the fire team was gonna he's gonna mow and trim for us all summer he's retired individual and that should help control costs and then there's a proposal to hire an individual that's been working for the water department and to make them an essence a third paid for by the town those costs are in public works and that would help too so I think in the men analysis the the $50,000 for contractors is probably going to be controlled but we'll shift it to pay so I think on a net we're going to save a little bit but but I'm not super confident about that yet but the short way to think of it is that you know it's 90 grand or so to maintain your cemeteries and there's no big major capital projects planned for next year the good news is we've done a lot the last couple of years so we should be able to maintain around the $90,000 level on the revenue side what I showed on this street was sort of base revenues that we anticipate every year from things like lot sales and then grave openings which are fairly minor we you know the Seminary Commission is looking at some of the prices we charge but there's not a lot of volume there people are cremated these days and that's just the trend if you will what I didn't show here it is it is incorporated to the budget and sort of the summary pages is the funds for the cemetery trust it's timely because I met with the library earlier today to talk about funds from their trust for the last several years the cemetery trust has given sort of skimmed off the top 25 grand the cemetery commissioners have agreed to increase that to 42 offset the budget so that's in there so the way to think of a cemetery is there's net revenues of about 57 and there's net expenditures of of hope in 90s so you've got below $30,000 costs to the taxpayer at the end around the cemeteries which is not incredibly high but it's higher than it's been in future years future sorry it's higher than it's been the past years in the past few years the taxes we sent to the cemetery were fixed at 15,000 but in the end that wasn't enough so we were sort of catching up for the last couple years and the cemetery commissioners just like the library commissioners don't control your budget but they have an element of control over the trust so they've agreed to that increase around the $40,000 cut into the principal yeah no yeah there's about four there's about 400 grand there so unless you're in 10% it'll cut into the principal no so yeah I apologize I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding and I've had this conversation a couple of times with Tom um unlike the library the cemetery fund fund 53 has as an asset the money that's in the trust the money that's held in the town's checking account the other revenues come into that fund and all the expenses for the cemetery are in that fund so if you go back to the 2023 budget the only interface between the cemetery fund and the general fund was the $15,000 that top line property taxes from the general fund in the general fund budget there was a $15,000 appropriation made and you can find that in the town report and that $15,000 gets sent to the cemetery fund in 2023 and it happened if you look down in the 2023 budget Tom has a line that says from cemetery trust which is not in the budget for that was presented last year there's a line that this line that Tom has for interest 53600800100 that line was budgeted for $250 this this this year and you can see there's $1572 of interest that's been posted to that line that interest is the interest that is generated for the cemetery trust by money that's just in the town's checking account and my presumption is that the fifth that there's 1572 there because I think earlier in the year you took $25,000 out of the investments and you put it in the general fund but when you took the $25,000 out of the investments it went from money that was invested in fund 53 and now it shows up on the due to line in fund 53 so it's still all in fund 53 the $25,000 that Tom has on the line that says from cemetery trust I have the budget here that's interest on investments last year we generated 17,462 and we had losses last year of almost $60,000 on another line that's not on Tom's budget for securities gains and losses so that that line that says from cemetery trust you don't need to take money out of the cemetery trust to put into the general fund to pay for the cemeteries the money is already in this fund I don't know what the the gain is going to be but my my guess is that on the interest line that Tom doesn't show interest on investments it's probably going to be above $10,000 and I'm pretty sure that there's going to be securities gains this year so I think in your 2024 proposal you should have something from the cemetery trust generating interest there you don't have to take money out of the cemetery trust fund in order to pay for cemetery expenses as long as there's enough money in the general fund you can just pay for it and in the due to line changes so um so this is accounting we just have a difference in accounting but this is budgeting well there should be 20 there should be something in the proposed 2024 budget it's a different page of the budget we're interested in the same thing summary of all revenues and then in this time we have cemetery fund which is so in 25 25 25 25 budget and the proposed 40 for next year but the 25,000 you're claiming that's that's all for the interest but that was just reflected in a different line here all I'm saying is you don't have to pay money out of the cemetery fund the cemetery commissioners don't have to say sure let's take 40,000 rather than 25 it's all in the fund it's already an asset in the fund so if you want to take money out of the investment portfolio to earn less interest and to not be able to get gains on it that that's fine you just don't need to do it in this fund the library fund is different the library fund has fund 16 which is at the trust fund money gets generated there and it gets sent to the operating fund of the library this is the operating fund for the cemetery so you don't have to take money out of the trust unless there's not enough money in the general fund to pay for cemetery stuff so in terms of budgeting all I'm trying to say and I apologize is that I think there should be the line items that we proposed to the public last year should be shown to the public this year in terms of how they perform and they probably at least one of those lines should have some revenue that's generated for the trust the 25,000 I think that you have here Tom that you're showing from Cemetery Trust is the money that you took out of the investment portfolio yes and I've changed the accounting for how we do cemeteries okay that's fine so the accounting has to be shifted okay uh questions about the percent I don't know if you're done yeah I'm done okay questions about the cemetery budget yeah not to go too deep into the cemetery fund just 60 but at some point with the rate of people not being buried right eventually the fund runs out yeah right I mean it's not this year it's not next year but it's in some year the fund could be so the way to the way to think of it is um forget if there was a trip there was a truck 90 grand in expenses 20 grand in revenue so you got a gap of 70 that falls to the taxpayers we skim money out of the trust to cover some of that gap um it's no guarantee if the trust goes up or down right I think it's important to take money from the trust because if the cemetery commissioners who have them under control over the trust they see the monthly statements of the trust balances so if we say to them hey there's 400 grand in the trust um but there's an accounting entry so you really don't have that 400 it's invested on behalf of the town that sort of gets lost to the wind and they think well we got 400 grand um think if they make decisions to pull from the trust we should pull from the trust which is what they decided similar to the library um but yeah the library is different the library is ongoing the library is going to have ongoing capital needs you know at some point there's going to be a capital a big capital project to to redo the building I know it's new but give it 20 years right um they'll pay their fair share of the heating system which we're going through all sorts of nationations with cemeteries are really pure maintenance right the maintenance is going to increase very slowly so yeah the future of the cemetery trust it's probably going to take many many years but there may not be a trust fund invested there it depends on you know the reasonable rate of return you expect there but and also the reasonable rate the reasonable tax increase rate you want to have and how you want to balance those two right but in the end it's all a taxpayer cost in the end which is the direction I was going um since we are losing money and people are seemingly not choosing to be buried or receiving headstones as we go through the years it's worth thinking about moving this out of this sort of budgetary discussion and maybe putting it to referendum at some point the next 10 years on whether the town continues to maintain the cemeteries using fund or using taxpayer dollars I mean in the end they're one and the same they're all sort of owned by the tax doesn't the the town own the trust fund town's a trust fund the commissioners it's just like the library the town owns the trust fund it is indeed town dollars but the commissioners vote on the use of the fund right and there's kane if you look at it and if if i'm hearing what you're saying if you use the trust fund to maintain the cemeteries in the next five years there's not going to be any money left and right how and then we're it's just taxpayer dollars to that point there is no right and I think what you're trying to manage is the balance between those two over the long term right so you don't want to use the fiscal cliff analogy you don't want to sort of have a shock to the budget all in one year so if you are you want to sort of increase I think the cost of taxpayer relatively slowly which we're doing to the tune of about 15 grand and then I hope you know we're going to work real hard again to hire for the summer but I think the way to do it I think we can maintain the cemeteries cheaper with our own part-time staff it's been a struggle to find them heavily and it's funny because for for the first 20 years of my career the mantra in state local government was outsourcing now I think that coin is flipped a bit and we're trying to insource some of the work again I think that's a better option we just got to find people do it but we've got one guy who's happy to run him over in a trimmer of 40 hours a week all summer and that's going to be a big help and then if the if the swipe board if I board agreed to hire the employee we talked about he'd be he'd be available in the summer for a lot of that work too that's not necessarily a savings because to some extent it frees up more experience for a crew to do real work the other piece to think about is that the budget and I didn't I tried to get there I just didn't have time and I didn't want to make too many changes in prior years but for at least several years public works crew have done fair amount of cemetery work already so we're now reflecting there across in the budget so really you know last year they did they did all the mowing and trimming in maple street what's that what is that in terms of time it's pretty fair amount yeah all that's reflected in rec in parks in rec but they did all that work too yeah in past years that money was accounted the cemetery fund paid the highway fund for what the highway and it was on the ground statement side and that's you can easily do that and it was done with there's cross charges or there used to be cross charges at least in every department so in past years what the highway crew did for the cemeteries was paid to the highway so I think if you look at the 2023 budget you'll see line items for revenue was a highway department and expenses and other departments that paid those cross charges and whether or not that was done this year I don't know but the cemetery fund I guess all I would ask is that the 23 budget for the purposes of reporting to the residents and taxpayers should be shown as it was budgeted last year so line items that are not on this sheet that were presented to the taxpayers should be on there so you can see all the revenue that went into the cemetery fund and all of the expenses that came out of the cemetery fund if Tom wants to change how he accounts going forward I have no problem with that and and you know it's not an issue between Tom and me about 2024 but 2023 should be accounted for as it was presented to the voters and right now here it's not it's just a different part of the budget just presenting it differently listen I guess as I'm trying to consider this as a select board member I'm asking if we're comfortable with the recommendation from the cemetery commissioners I don't have a lot of experience in this I know we have a tax stabilization fund that has a set policy I know the library can't find the set policy I don't know what policy the cemetery does it doesn't have I might fundamentally disagree with Tom about like if it should spend it down or not but I guess I feel like the question within our purview tonight I just want to be careful about like what we kind of can't adjudicate I think that's a fair point I'll have the time report out for next year I think we can report in a parallel way for comparison as it's useful the proposal I see is a forty thousand dollar from this year if the cemetery commissioners are comfortable with it I'm not inclined to object to the recommendation but is it a broader word policy about do they have a set policy to be of concerns about their set policy are we touching no more than five percent of the principle of the year like I don't know but I'm just trying to figure out how we just are respectful of everyone here tonight and adjudicate this and then also move forward with the other departments we have there's that that's sort of the question yeah well I think it was just a addressing and counting issue it's just asking that we show the budget the way it was presented to the taxpayers last year on the budget it was presented to the taxpayers and I'd like to see it can that be done in a narrative way yeah yeah because I feel like addressing it obviously there is a change in the structure to the budget people might not know how to look for that or where to look so this isn't a town report this is oh yeah sure yeah so perhaps we just need to footnote this and we could even add a line showing that the track where the transfer was made I guess I would say like offhand I have a moment of pause around like the idea of spending a trust down forever I do recognize it's a vastly different operating model from the library but I guess in my limited understanding you know taking a portion of the earnings every year I'm just saying I don't I have no problem with this year's presentation but I guess that team is the other footnote is if there's a the broader conversation I think Kane's point maybe a little aggressive because I think we're obligated to take the going on business cemeteries but it is like the longer term operational model about how we do at what cost is you know maybe worth revisiting outside of this year's budget yeah my understanding is the reason we're in the cemetery business is that they don't make money and so therefore it becomes the responsibility of the town yeah yeah it's a better than say one one final point and and the reason why the $15,000 was in the general fund and showing the transfer into the cemetery fund was simply what we're talking about is that it was to show the voters that the cemetery is owned by the town that it's the town's obligation to maintain those cemeteries and by raising $15,000 of taxes and putting it into fund 53 the cemetery fund that's $15,000 that's going in which doesn't have to come out of the trust and you can leave that money invested and it grows more so you know and I'm not telling you that you should budget $15,000 to to send to the cemetery fund I mean Tom's got a tax rate that he's trying to meet there's all kinds of different ways to do it and I'm not suggesting that you've got to put money there but the $15,000 going from the general fund was to show the public that there's an expense a tax expense for the cemeteries and in time that line probably is going to have to go higher so if you just take it out some future year you're going to have to add it in and it's going to be a bigger expense than you know going from zero to whatever is going to be more than going from 15 to whatever so I just want to explain that the the trust fund was always viewed as something to protect if we could and not not take money out of that thanks appreciate it Alyssa I'm going to not try and ask budget and accounting questions of Bill and Tom in a public meeting because it's probably a poor use of all of our time but I can ask you know Bill a specific question about the 2022 budget I mean I think fundamentally it's about different ways of reflecting the things in accounting and being not an accountant I would like to hear their detailed perspective but I don't think this is the end the short the short version is if you I showed it on the tax levy page in the second page in your whole budget packet but the short version is if you take what's in front of you and you add 45,000 to revenue you've got about 62 grand in revenue and 89 expenses so your tax payer dollars are about 27 that's what we're going to the cemeteries in 2024 you can take less from the trust but you're then raising your tax rate like you just know that via a footnote in this thing but that's not what I want to ask I know we discussed last meeting about robotic mowers are we going to really seriously look at that because robotic mowers don't pay don't get paid health insurance we don't have to pay health insurance retirement etc etc you know I think it's something to at least you know it may not be economical but at least something I think we should look at as a municipality if it's a cheaper source yeah I think we should do it wasn't the main concern we can't prevent it from getting kidnapped it's part of the challenge but if you hire a service to do that they're responsible they may have some sort of a lock or something like that and that's not something I found yet is someone who does that as a service oh brings their own services that do that they're basically leasing it out to you as a you and I remember on Shark Tank they had a company that's doing it naturally perhaps you could look at some of the past editions of shark tank and identify I could agree any other questions on cemetery at this point we can of course come back and we'll visit this I think we have the issues in front of us right now okay let's move on to general government starting with the revenues tax interest and penalty 2024 numbers are pretty comfortable with 2023 penalty is applied once a year so that wouldn't wouldn't change as we finalize 2023 if the accounting done be the the 0.2 type 0.225 of 1% of school taxes that may go up a bit depending on school taxes but it's pretty pretty rational figure I think the village admin service fee is formulaic at this point that may change a little bit but that's that's time to e-fund money the pilot money so in 2023 we had a $40,000 surplus of pilot the the increase in 2024 is based on an estimate for a pretty conservative estimate for some of the new towns that are pilots that went in place over the past year so I think that's despite an increase from the actual on the big increase in the prior year budget I think it's pretty reasonable the forest and parks money and the current use money those are based on the actuals and those are pretty pretty set amounts every year the state has to appropriate them but they haven't they haven't not done that for a long long time and I think that would be a a sea change if they had those sources for towns despite their difficult budget because there's a lot of towns where it's a much bigger number than us although we are a sizable number going down a little further town forks fees those are reduced to be consistent with the actual for this year a lot of that's driven by property sales and refinances and there's no inventory in the market no one's refinancing so I think it makes sense to to reflect the actuals the historical society is is tied directly to to their expenses it's been a smaller number in prior years in 2023 it went up they hired someone on a part-time basis that they are paying for so that person's in our payroll actually just today sent on the final 2023 bill I'm not entirely sure that's going to continue and that they have the money to continue that at least at the current rate but if that revenue is reduced the expenses reduced so it's a it's a net zero in the end the debt services is generally based on actuals the $50,000 shown there is is essentially the the skimming of the 5% from from tax stabilization but overall the real change of the revenues boils down to the big increase in the pilot some reduction in court fees and better interest earnings we go to in general government expenses is no substantial changes going forward I want to change some of the accounting we used to show the quirk and only the quirk and we have a quirk and an assistant quirk and so I want to show them together because I think that makes sense to really show the department more or less as one did include some ongoing expenses for Tom Drake's position so I mean his work is is going to continue into 2024 about 400 hours of his work so you know less than 10 hours a week on average but I think that's about what we can expect unless there's another flood in which case something else would happen health insurance is of course a very big number it's it's going down that's the luck of the draw and we get higher in the plans they take but it's still an awful big number no other no other huge changes going down I do want to know towards the bottom senior citizens are not asking for anything extra and I do want to know further down the the the money to the cemetery fund showed here is just showing in a different place in the budget in 2024 as we go into the second page that's just down so we we have we have a reserve fund built up there so we're in some prior years we funded the we funded the cost of this building that is line uh that is to mbof this 56,088 in 2024 which is just down from what we expected in in 2020 essentially but I'm just acknowledging that's proposing just covering costs not saving going to the next page the RW expenses um we had some of that planning development so it's out of our budget and and moved here just to sell it here in one place then there's big changes and that's the arbitrons that were used last year that came out of this year's budget on the public safety side I was actually going to meet with them this morning sorry go ahead oh I didn't want to interrupt you we have a line item that has no name it's just $20,000 but there's no sorry that's uh still street alleyway and senior kitchen should be moved up a line oh okay yeah good catch um public safety I was actually going to meet with the state police today to try to uh get some get some final numbers there but um Charles Quinn has the flow uh so that was that was delayed um but their presence the new officer presence has been felt yeah I think so I think the quarantine they have is really good I've got both positive and negative reviews so I think they're working they got a warning or a ticket or what bar they were frequenting so the police contract expires June 30th so the the increase would only be felt for the final two quarters of the year but nonetheless I give us a pretty healthy buffer I think do you have any indication that they will be asking for an increase I know that you you assume that they will but uh state police offers service to virtually every community in the state uh we're the only one that has a contract with them other towns have contracts but they're generally hourly based with a set amount of hours for things like the troll so there's a lot of contract models out there ours is unique in that it's you know two full-time people right now they think they generally request reasonable increases of other towns but we've had a contract for three years that effectively had almost three almost three years of zero in it right I guess it makes sense to try to try to hedge here and be a little careful the emu and service side is another pretty big decision so I've met with them several times proposal here increases their per capita feet of thirty five dollars per capita that's still that's up from 26 up from 26 so it's it's a big increase that's still pre-consistent with the range of cost you see statewide you see some some areas of the state there's a lot of emu and service consolidation and that's driven down rates a little bit but but not much that hasn't been without its its parallel in its own rate the ambulance is I think in in rural America not just Vermont but in rural America been in flux and change and struggling for a few decades now I think it's going to continue to be the case if the federal and state governments decide to increase Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates consistent with the rate of inflation um then we'll be able to increase our budget consistent with the rate of inflation but until that occurs which has not happened in a long long time the only other option was he has is to charge a town more um and seek other business and they are trying to seek some other business and they are pretty aggressive about that yeah but to give an idea um um you know this year they've had some um they've had some help they've they've got some extra funding unplanned for things like fascination clinics but if you were to strip that out of the budget because that can never be counted on to break even was he would need to charge us about 50 bucks per capita so I think that's a number we're going to have to work towards over the next couple years and it's really none of that is about their new building the new building I think is going to help retain staff and actually get some revenue um it's operational loss so you know another 15 bucks per capita would be 75 grand roughly is this I guess my fear with with trying to reach that $50 threshold is that it sort of works like inflation and like minimum wage right you know state house was like well we're going to be at 15 at this year but now our inflation rate has exploded and now 15 is no longer right so if we're at 50 right now we're trying to reach that just to say in a few years it's not going to be 75 I mean I think part of the challenge was they they charge so little for so long I mean if you go back even just to 2020 I mean they charge just you know less than eight bucks per capita um when I think statewide the average is probably closer to 30 because they were doing outside fundraising or what maybe 2020 is not the best year because I'm sure they got a lot of COVID money but in general their per capita fee has been very very well and waterberry got a great deal for years now we're catching up to market I think the other piece we have to prepare for is um and actually the DRB just approved their permit last week um but when they open their new building we get about a $20,000 um credit on the wazi bill because we pay the full dispatch bill for the town and that's that's prorated so their their share of that is an essence reflected in this number so when they move to a new building we have a $20,000 cost increase for that amount and that gets paid out of which budget sorry I got confused it's the dispatch doesn't change we get a credit because we own the building there and now so we get sort of a lease credit if you go okay so that's where the 20 grand arises from the dispatch will stay the same all right thank you last my question came thanks no problem so you get the same thing um and then missbow building um so the auditors um requested that all debt be consolidated in the general fund and that's what's in the operating funds not a capital funds and that's what's been done here so this will building um the debt that was in there last year is in different lines in the general fund and split between the general fund and the library um based on um I believe based on square footage it's roughly 50 50 but not quite um so that that expenses out but the the short way to think that it's about building fun is um it's about 122 grand to maintain the building um it's funny because at this time last year we were dealing with heating issues or we're going to blow the budget um sort of having that same thought right now because we're still dealing with heating issues beginning of this month we had essentially no heat over there and now the heat won't shut off we're hoping this week they'll find that balance and get it right but it's been a it's been a bit of a stream of challenge bill Woodruff has said to me that um the thing that keeps them up at night is not necessarily another flood or a big snowstorm it's at this building doesn't give them his his share of headaches and a heartburn um so hopefully we can iron out some of these issues I I tend to think you know we're we're past the warranty period for the heating system by about a year hmm I tend to think if we get another truth be told over the summer it was fine but I tend to think if we get a third winter under our belts and we still struggle mightily with the system we're going to have to rethink things a little bit and maybe have a capital project that's beyond maintenance I don't know what that means at this point um it's not quite sure it's what we had we have pumps that's they're super cheap and efficient when they work but the problem is we've had a couple a couple leaks in the vacuum seal and those are expensive part of the problem is heat doesn't work or it doesn't work for part of the building and it goes double time than the other part and and Woody goes upstairs and and you know the machine has a code and the code says you know z197 and he has to call the technician in Texas who has to figure out what code z197 is and then find a local tech to fix it and it's it's I don't know that it's over design or not I'm not expert in these things but it's it's quite complex let's put it that way so it's not something we can fix you know the library today that a little cooking thing and they tricked a circuit because they had six waffle irons plugged in we can fix that for the circuit that the building's pretty tough so that's that's a and then on the final page here is the helping human service kept some money in there for the community service officer which is where we pay an animal control officer if we can find one or if we want to find one which is a different conversation and then the which is minimal but we struggled to find that position for a lot of years so I'm I'm sort of assuming that my success will be no better than no one else's the big expense on the bottom the public health expense that is funding for Washington County Mental Health but in the end it's a pretty minor cost center after the dog control hearing we'll redouble our efforts to try to find an animal control officer and do what we can to make some strides there and I was in Karen and I sat last week and tried to figure out some potential updates to the ordinance that might help us on the fees we'll see what brings something back to you hopefully around the end of the month and not okay and then we are on to any questions on this public health the washington county that's above and beyond what their special article request is I don't think they have they don't have a written they don't have a special okay I thought they had a special article they have a page in the book I know they're in the report yeah but they're they're not a special okay thanks on the recreation side broke this out into different cost centers pool had a had a difficult year this past year generally due to the weather so we're assuming our our pool revenue recovers to about this historical average and we've we've spent a lot of time and struggled mightily trying to figure out the pay issue and we've even discussed which I don't believe we're going to do but we've been discussed having pool hours without staff which some of the pools actually do aren't sure hates the idea but some polls have essentially a sign that says we'll make our own risk and they have certain hours for instance just for adults where you yeah it's like adult swim yeah but we're putting pressure there I'm trying to be reasonable about about the staffing levels you know the pool manager to her credit wants to run a really top-notch program and wants to make sure people are a thousand percent safe you know I've made the argument that you know the pool was open just for the swim team for example presumably they're pretty capable swimmers and presumably the coaches are pretty actively involved and so maybe one lifeguard is playing so we've had those conversations to to try to control costs but the pool in essence in your average year is probably going to cost about 50 which is what we budgeted you won't find a municipal pool that some are only in Vermont that operates a profit or break even they all have some cost basis to them and that's just the reality of running any pool we talked about last year and we were talking about now trying to trying to work hard to expand hours and increase public use but in general that that's been tried a lot in the past and hasn't really worked all that well we'll keep trying doesn't mean we won't try but I don't think we're going to dramatically exceed our revenue number by by figuring out some magic formula of staying open at certain times really the pool is fundamentally about the day camp program when it's loaded with kids going down a little further showing the revenues for the non pool programs numbers are a little above 2023 actuals but we think very achievable and we've also had a lot of conversations about rate increases in part because now we we've found the executor and have two full-time FTEs but I also think that with the staff we have we're going to deliver a higher quality program so I think this idea of you know essentially a hundred dollar per week for what amounts to 50 hours a week for your for your child to be in rec campus it's going to have to change it's not going to have to change dramatically but it's certainly going to change and then above the rate of inflation and I think similar things for after school program they're also working pretty hard to to do little things and identify new revenue sources you know simple the simple one they're already working on is um school and service days where we can be open and take kids at our rent facility snow days are are tough enough to crack because they're unplanned and we sometimes need the high school kids and since they can't plan any better than schools can we can't necessarily be open but planned in service days we can we can work around that school schedule and and snag some revenue that way but the salaries um so the salaries are reflective of the two full-time year-round people we have now um summer program pay is above 2023 budget but below actual because um our our second full-time person is going to be full-time managing the summer program to be there so that's a big that's a big part of it um then the mini camp pay is is pretty consistent with with last year's budget um some of the um summer program pay i think we're going to make an accounting entry in 2023 and move it into mini camp um but overall the the payroll for for grant non pool programs um it's about 315 grand 320 grand so pretty pretty big number um but pretty substantially all set by the by the revenue the way i the way i tend to think of these programs is you know at our at our peak um i think we enrolled 168 kids last year that doesn't mean they were all involved for the fully weeks but that was that was the peak in theory of who could show up one day that's probably a bit high um but then the last 150 160 kids and you're talking um i think good quality safe fun and child care for what amounted to 100 bucks a week last year that's pretty darn good deal right the last one label the private market um so it's not going to be 100 a week this summer but it's not going to be 200 it might be 115 a week the other piece we're trying to figure out is that i guess i guess it's two years now where our system crashed the day parents registered their kids and so we have and and this past year was actually done on town meeting day when registration opened so one we're not going to open registration on town meeting day and we're also going to work with the vendor to see if we can stagger registration and perhaps have water very residents get first bite at the apple we didn't turn away anyone last year but i think there was a production from a lot of parents that the system crash couldn't register again they thought they would be walked out and wouldn't have a place for their kid to go for the summer so i don't think that'll be the issue but i'd like to find a way to give you know perhaps water very residents a couple days to register and then open it up to non-residents should not having registration on town meeting day no because all i did was get phone calls on town meeting day then i couldn't answer so you i was at the school getting phone calls yeah so it's a not a great idea that deviates from years and years and years of that so i just don't think it's a good practice maybe cat arena will convince me but could we do it before town meeting day i think we could i think a week is it's gonna be fine that would avoid getting the lots of complaints at town meeting yeah yeah i'm not just to add to that i'm not so sure matters what date is it's the it's the popularity of the program it's the affordability of the program so no matter what date is yeah there's going to be issues around that that software crashing over the years in the office we've had all kinds of conversations about how to stagger it by age group or last name but then you get families or have kids that may have two last names may have two age groups so i think a change is warranted for sure because it's crash two if not three years but i don't think it's going to matter if it's town meeting day or the friday before or what it is just a just a popular program yeah just a popular program and affordability is one of the key elements of its popularity i'm going down further to the next page um no no big changes in the rest of the the record temperatures the amount in line uh i believe it's 84 that we're sending to the capital fund is just sufficient to cover the fund expenses but we're not we're not building that fund there's no um in part because um i like the idea of building a capital fund um if you're gonna pay cash or make a meaningful down payment towards something but in rec um no the big thing facing us is going to be the pool and you know building an extra 20 grand a year for a couple of years um and that decision funding is almost going to be a rounding error in the context of whatever the pool costs um well i guess it's in practice we've used that for a lot of other things in the past like lights on the ball fields and things that are yeah and the capital fund has a balance yeah so so we've got some some money there if needed um not too worried about that in the short term and caterina is pretty aggressive about applying for grants onto the onto the parks maintenance side we essentially budget here a half time half time of the public works employee to do parks maintenance all summer and some part-time pay um we've got some money in there it's less than last year in part because we strove to find people so we feel like it's a reasonable amount to put in there just based on the labor market what we can do and find um and then the grants maintenance of 20 000 is it's pretty consistent with our historical costs um in general just materials and and and stuff they need for haul the ball fields uh related to that um it's not in here is the soccer field up at the ice center we own the field we are going to um put some work out to bid for that field um in a few months but the the current plan is that that's a FEMA project the town owns a field and the soccer club would cover the town's match uh-huh so it shouldn't be shouldn't be a town expense related to that and I think that's essentially part of the least permit we have for them going down um a little further um we've got some some new lines in the parks budget which are just maintenance items so they're removed out of the the recreation capital fund because I view them more as maintenance and not capital so much um but nothing huge that the short version of parks is about 100 000 dollars to maintain your parks and I think that's going to stay relatively consistent over the years um but perhaps see some increases if we add parks which we've actually had conversations about going down uh so so just going down if I'm still holding on to that uh park maintenance uh but they are they indeed are they're holding on to the park's maintenance they have any plans for that spending yes yes they indeed do I realize it's a different municipality but I'm just curious eFUD had uh sharp rate increases in 2023 um my preview of the 2024 budget is there will again be a need for some rate increases not quite as sharp but eFUD has some financial needs so I I think um I think it's probably a pretty hard ask for eFUD to give up that that amount um and then yeah it's um let's just leave it at that we'll have to go ahead um so so the way to the way I think of rec is if you go to line 117 on the final page the net the net impact of all programs um is 311 000 in the budget very consistent 2023 budget and I think we can achieve that through pretty careful management of of the summer expenses um and trying to balance out some reasonable rate increases for the summer and then also the rec staff pursuing every little opportunity they can to get extra money like the you know like can we expand and do snow day coverage and other programs like that um and they're working hard at that so I think that's an achievable number but the short version is that's what your that's what your rec department calls you um I think of it a large part is as a child care subsidy mm-hmm um going down a little further um the capital fund that $26 000 in the revenue that goes in is just money from the rec budget um and then we have uh in here the the big item for the year is where um we've got $20 000 for accessibility improvements and that would be matching funds for hopefully a successful grant application and if not we could perhaps just start that project on our own or wait for a future year and try to buy again for other grants but that's the that's the hope um and the rest is smaller smaller items um which are relatively consistent the prayer here is um sometimes the capital items are things that are wise then of course you can but hope Davey is is the first phase hopefully the first phase given there was a study done I think we're in pretty good position to get grants based on the study so that's the hope and um do we uh know when we're going to hear about that grant application I don't know I'll have to get that I think it's a couple months like not before April all right other questions uh Lisa I just want to pick up a little concurrency about the recreation camp sign up on that I want to change it real bit I may do my my rec staff might disagree with me about oh I totally I totally get it to move it before town meeting day would probably not be a great move because school break is that week the first day back to school is um town meeting day this is the day after town meeting day so like if you put it in that week of school vacation that would think I'm not putting it during the school vacation would probably be a good idea I appreciate that yeah yeah Lisa? Off topic, Bo Rack is March 1 when we're talking about March 1. March 1? March 1? Yeah my only thought in terms of me uh opening it before uh town meeting day would be to lessen the burden uh and uh if people were paying attention uh they could be the early get the early bird special. People pay attention to that once you're in the system we can send an email blast everyone in the system. Yeah I mean I appreciate the fact that people be on vacation some people will be here but uh it would perhaps dissipate the the big flood of sign ups and if there we're taking everybody that applies at least we have this past year uh that isn't a huge concern that people are going to get frozen out. Yeah Mike I just want to give a big shout out to the REC department I think they're doing a great job and our town's folks should be really because I think they're getting the service for a relatively reasonable amount of money I know some people think it's expensive but I look at it compared to daycare it's probably cheap but my thought is that any programs who should have town residents because the town's paying for a lot of these costs town residents should always get preferences. And I would also just note especially with our new director there is a lot of programming that addresses all ages just to say as a 28 year old like there's yoga and ear making and painting and just I also just want to caution us to not conflate this entire budget to child care while recognizing it is largely that I just think especially now there is more emphasis on serving all ages and also including parks that serve a huge number of residents. Okay now still a lot of the Brisbane's Barbers Center was spillage I just want to do it sounds like you're volunteering for four days a week right now You're only doing the summer. I think you'd get a bigger crowd. And Tom, you're still available to meet with the rep committee. On Thursday. Yep. Talk about Anderson fields. Planning. There are some conflicts. All right. Any other questions on anything that Tom has presented on the budget? Here we go. Let's move forward. I guess this is the part where we were looking to have discuss Tom's testimony on behalf of the town to about flood recovery. So Senate government operations. They essentially want to know, was the government flood response effective or interaction? Levels of government smooth. What could be done better in the future and how we can make government itself more resilient, et cetera. I have 10 minutes max. Who's the chair of that committee? I don't know because I think it changed. I'll certainly know by Wednesday. We don't want to make this constructive, right? 10 minutes of complaining probably isn't going to be enough. I think the biggest point I want to make is, and Brian brought it home. There's a complexity to all the state programs and all the funding sources. We might miss out on some funding in the short term. It's nice to get things off the ground now because of that complexity. We don't have a full-time grant writer or anyone who can step into the void. So the focus after the flood, after the cleanup was the FEMA click, which is its own challenge. I think what I might want to say is in our ideal world, it would be nice if someone from the state came to Waterbury and said, tell us your story and brought the team of a half dozen state employees and said, OK, well, these are the funding programs you want to apply for. Here's your deadlines. Make it a little bit easier for you given we don't necessarily have any staff to do these things above the beyond staff that are full-time employed. So that's, I think, a big part of my message. The other part of my message is we're six months out from the flood. And there's been no regional conversation directed by the state about the flood. I feel like that's a little bit overdue at this point. So several people during Brian's presentation talked about a regional approach. But I think the state's got a lead with that. And that, thus far, just hasn't occurred. I know they've created a, I'll call it a flood czar position. The gentleman I've talked to is in that position. It's great that those are, I think, the big challenges that I see. Having worked in a different state where there's county government, I kept thinking that over and over during this flood is it's easier to deal with these natural disasters when there's one entity that has a real broad geographic look to the region and coordinate all the resources. On the glass half full side, I thought Brian's presentation was excellent. Yeah. I really appreciate him coming prepared, presenting us very clear opportunities and even giving us sort of a roadmap for moving forward. And to be clear, he's not state government. Yeah. Just say it out loud. I just want to say it. But, you know, maybe that is sort of a vision to what's possible. And I think that would be where the mention, Denny. Tom, I noticed your last on the list of the agenda. So I don't know if you're actually asking. You can leave a big, a big impression. I think, you know, I'm just bringing up like with Bill and Liz and Tom, we're sort of talking about is like that half work of available funding. And that even our most knowledgeable and dedicated folks are volunteering are still feeling like they're running around in circles. And so I'm not sure, you know, the direct succinct question, but just the mention of like how difficult it is without that coordination. And that's just the funding piece in particular that have come up. And I suppose if I could look back, in a perfect world, I probably would have gone, would have come to the slide board in July or August and said maybe we need to hire a position to grant right to go through all those things. I feel like now we've got a better hand on it. So we can get it done, especially with Brian's help. I wish in retrospect that that's what it was something I would have brought to you. I feel like that was a mistake in my part. Doug, you had your hand up. Yeah, I just want to walk an observation. I've been on the Regional Planning Commission now for several months. And in the course of reading staff reports every month in preparation for our commissioners meeting, at the very granular level you'll see the town names of what the Planning Commission staff are doing for the town. Not all of the towns appear there. The Regional Planning Commission is a resource that not all of its members take advantage of and has the ability to do the sort of thing that Brian did for us this evening. So I would encourage this tent to be, I don't want to say aggressive, but to be cognizant of that resource and use it in ways that we can for this time. Melissa. I don't know if this is within the scope of the testimony but I want to keep the positive framing. But I guess to borrow a bit of a Ted Brady conversation from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, he always talks about towns are being asked to do more. And I guess kind of my, one of my big takeaways, both in July and December, was kind of the dichotomy between community sentiment and community needs and capital M municipal government needs and sentiment. I mean, maybe most pronounced in this most recent December meeting where kind of you gave the like 24 hour municipal update, which was, you know, yep, roads are in good shape, culverts are in good shape, kind of we're fine. And then we have volunteer coordinators saying, there's imminent needs with 60 households. And, you know, I want to make sure we frame it in the framing of state government response. But I guess it's figuring out, you know, I think towns or at least our town, at least in July, took on the purview of providing more support to a lot of that through incredible volunteer resource. And I want to honor that and then say that, like, my reflection on how state engaged with that is that maybe they didn't always recognize that, you know, there was systems of the RPC calling you to ask about roads and ask about damage. And I don't know that that just as municipality, I was struck by you have these kind of two separate systems with two different needs. And I don't know that there was a whole lot of coordination in general, but to the extent that there was, that it recognized those different roles. And in my view, kind of both sides could be strengthened. There's the piece you're speaking to about rating. And I would also just frame, I think like water break, like we have more capacity than most towns I work with professionally. Like the fact that we have a, you know, town manager. So the fact that you're still saying there's a huge need just really strikes me, you know, knowing that like we're not a volunteer. So we're doing it all on our own. But yeah, in terms of things on the ground, I think like there was volunteer resources or things and we've kind of had conversations about whether everything going through an emergency management director makes sense. But I guess my closing thought would be around transparency around how the state wants us to coordinate information or use resources. I will say in this last event, I heard more clearly in the press conferences and maybe I just didn't hear it before, but like if you have needs, they need to go to your emergency management director and they need to go to the SEOC. But I think about instances like not knowing they were using cleanup crew or putting 211 in data. I think if there was more knowledge of how the state operated and what systems it's used shared by all both municipal and volunteer in our case or all those other things, there would just be more thought about how you could plug in effectively to the system. That's me off the cuff. So I also just want to like say that personally, I'm comfortable with you also having a conversation with like Liz Schlegel and getting her thoughts, not to say take them all, but I guess that dichotomy is what I strike from a municipal perspective. Tom, you and I met with Liz last Friday. One of her points was that she feels that there's a general lack of awareness about 211, how it works, why it's important, and one of the impacts of that was that Washington County was left off the most recent request for FEMA emergency funding in the December incident. And that's going to have an impact on us as a community. Bill, you had your hand up. Yeah, to that point Roger, Tom Drake just posted on front porch forum in the last couple of days asking people, please report to 211. It's not too late to do that. So folks should. I think Tom, you're being a little too hard on yourself in terms of going back to last summer and deciding that we need a grant ready or whatever. I mean, in the heat of the moment, so to speak, you do what needs to be done and there was a lot of things going on. And thinking back to Irene, what I feel is different and I'm not intimately involved except through crew is that there's not been a lot of disaster recovery initiatives put forward by the state yet and talked the other day about the disaster recovery fund and their kind of still haven't got any money in the door yet, but we weren't able to get, you know, by or far. I think it was 2013 before she started. The flood was in 2011 and we buy for CEDG, the air grants and things like that and we didn't get that funding until late in 2012 and 2013. What we did have and I've asked this question before is, you know, AmeriCorps and VISTA volunteers, that program, they haven't really stepped up to my mind as to what they did the last night and we had three excellent young people that provided big assistance to the municipality and I wish they would get, you know, something to help that could be used to help because they were tremendous staff resources that, you know, we paid, I think it was like six or eight thousand dollars a year for 40 hours a week for those positions and we had them for three years. So that's those are the things that I think are lacking right now. So Tom, I just want to clarify, you're testifying in front of who? Senate Operations. Okay. I was going to keep this under the lid, but for what it's worth, and I don't know if you can use this to our advantage, I received a phone call today from the Secretary of the head of the agency of transportation in reference to my concern about the aggregate issue that we're faced with. I was told that they would pursue it and do what they can to try to see it through, but if you can, from your avenue, put yet more pressure on and it brought to mind the conversation I had with her was lengthy, but you brought to mind more issues that the urgency of having a quarry would help out with is during the flood the response time to repair roads and get aggregate to those damaged areas, you know, because we don't know where aggregate resources might be and whether or not they're even available because I know that McCullough is absolutely out of everything right now. And even if we've got a stockpile of river road floods. I mean, getting access to those other quarries in this distance the way they are, you know, be advantageous from that perspective to have power in place where we could get it. So if you can use that as any kind of leverage to kind of pile on from another avenue, the importance of that resource might open some doors for us. Okay. Okay. I think he's probably got enough input because we gave him 15 minutes and he's only got 10 minutes to speak. I'm going to watch it online as a note. You choose. Be excited. That's going to be tomorrow. Tomorrow? Wednesday. I hope we have the full agenda. Yeah, we're not quite at midnight yet, so. 1.30 p.m. on Wednesday. 1.30? Okay. Let's see. Senate operations. Okay. Let's talk about next meeting. I think the look is pretty full up. Well, maybe not certificate a five-way mileage, but. It'll be Monday, 22nd. Again, point of order. Danny, you were available to chair if I just zoom in as a. Innocent member. Yes. Okay. Coming in under an alias. Yeah. So. We've got Joe is ready as far as we know to make his presentation. I believe he's already sent a draft out to the committee. Yeah, the library will need some time. Mm hmm. I met with them today. How'd it go? They had a meeting continued after I left. But they're. They're struggling with their own. The library trust. Okay. Whether they whether they agree with a bunch of proposal or not. It's a good conversation to have between the boards. I think. And they're going to be there, right? Yeah, they're there. 20 seconds should be plenty of time for that. Okay. And then revitalizing Waterbury and senior center. They're looking for flat budgets. I highlighted them because I'm not sure that we need to. Yeah, if they don't want, I mean, it doesn't seem like it's a contested issue. Do you think dump? It's certainly not contested. So I don't think we need to have them here. If you, if you wanted them, they're certainly not to come. I don't feel like we need to talk with them if they're just asking essentially for flat budgets or. I've said this to Tom before, but I guess it's like we use the budget de facto to do kind of our annual updates. So I do. I like having been an employee for revitalizing Waterbury. Like they should come and present to us and we should hear about what they're doing. I don't feel it needs to be on January 22nd to defend the budget proposal. Or I would say Karen should come and she'd be mad at me, but I digress. But, and Ditto with like the senior center, you know how to ARPA funding for the kitchen. So to be clear, I don't have qualms with that outline in the budget. They need to be there the 22nd. Maybe I would propose for an agenda item on the 29. We have a conversation about regular check-ins with groups like them. I mean, again, they tend to set the six month update, but I'm okay with foregoing it in the budget context, but not in an overall annual checking context. I agree. Knowing how much we've got going on this month, it might be better suited another time. So it would help me with a more specific director. We're going to move them to the first agenda in February. Well, making sure Roger agrees before we. Yeah, I'm okay. In fact, I would prefer honestly to talk with them about their annual plans. If it's not specifically budget related. And we can spend a little bit more time perhaps talking about the economic development proposal because they essentially, you know, revitalizing Waterbury is our economic development committee. And then the senior center. Unless people feel that they are particular things that we want to know from them. I would say we should schedule a note. Go ahead, Mike. We should probably just keep them on the agenda, but really not have. I don't think they need to be here. I think it's better to be there, and just go over the numbers very, very quickly in cursory. And just say we all agree on what's there. And so just say as someone who used to work for an organization, if I'm on an agenda, I sure as heck am going to be at that meeting. Just person. That's my first. So that's fine. But if the intent is for them to not come personally, I would. I mean, we can specify that. We have to discuss the budget. Right. You have to discuss the budget. So they have to be on the agenda. I don't think you can just say, you know, flat budget don't include it. Even though it is, we all know that we're looking at both having flat budgets, but I think we at least have to acknowledge that and agree to that going forward with the whole budget. Okay. So in response to Karen's request, I would say we're going to keep it on the agenda. They're welcome to be here. Right. Speak to any issues that may come up, but we will reserve an opportunity to speak with them at greater length at another time. Yeah. Deal. Okay. I didn't write this, but I thought I think you took it off of the template that you provided, Tom. What are we talking about with special articles? Because I want to be prepared. Do you want to see the letters of request? Are there any changes? No. G-M-T-A-R-I, who I just finally got in touch with. Last you wanted to talk about it, but I have to ask three times for an invoice. But anyway, no, there's the tall flat funding. So I can bring the letters of request. I think, yeah, we just reviewed the last statement so last year, but if it's all flat, last year the conversation focused around the senior center and the increase, but also how much of it was in the budget versus has a special article on it. And maybe the decision, maybe that's the conversation this year again, is now that the increase is not an increase to just move it into the budget. Okay. That's your call entirely. On the 20th, aren't it? And then just to give where we're at in terms of the tax levy, the public works budget had that $30,000 for sidewalks. And the more I talked to Bill Woodruff and thought about it, we have no qualms about deleting that in part because it's a lot of work for his crew because to stretch the $30,000, they pull the old sidewalks. And they've had other priorities that are in the roads. And in part because the more linear a fee you can bid out, the better price you get. So it's nice to chip away at it and show some progress each year. But maybe it's something we save up for a few years and have it later on. But if that were to, so we have no, you could certainly leave that in and repurpose it. But if that were to come out and the library were to agree on the trust fund usage, your tax rate would go up depending on a half, which is less than 3%. Without the $100,000 bidon? Correct. Without Tom presented a rate that was based on paying down $100,000 of debt from the general fund. Without that, you could be less than 3%. Keep that $100,000 dry and keep it dry and save it for a few terms. I guess my only instruct that was not on the agenda tonight and we're approving a $10 and I don't forget to agree which is just to say I have no problem with it but I find this RW Senior Center. Will they certainly be on the agenda? No, I don't think they need to be on the agenda nor do I think it's RW Senior Center. I'm not, it's not a hell I'm going to die on. And then on the sidewalks I guess I would just say I felt like, Roger, you said that as a passing comment at the end of the last meeting or maybe I interpreted the conversation wrong but just saying we're facing, you know, a lot of pressure with school budgets which is real and whatnot and what choices we should make. I guess I would just say like if there's a desire to change the budget by $30,000 and to be clear, I defer to you when Woody more than anything. So if Woody thinks it's a good idea, great. You know, he knows the crew and knows the people. I guess I wouldn't, I didn't feel like I was going into that conversation with we need to cut something in sidewalks is what we should cut. I felt like it was kind of an afterthought comment so if staff thinks it's the right thing to do I'm not going to advocate to put it against staff recommendation but it wasn't like leaping off the pages like wow that super extravagant maintenance of sidewalks in the village. It was something we had in the budget in 2023 and didn't get to do it. We wanted it in 2024 and then after some conversation Bill Woodruff and Celia you know, one of their, you know one of their complaints about the Main Street project of which sidewalks has been part of it is that, you know, they lose two members of their crew for quite a bit of time pulling sidewalks and they'd like to just have some more time for roads and especially to get some gravel road projects done. And don't they already have to do part well? They have to do some of that already. So there will be sidewalks done but it's already made for them. So yeah, I'd be happy to have the $30,000 disappear and keep our price, our tax increase as many as possible because, again, our taxpayers are going to be facing all sticker shock regardless of anything we do here but the more that we can reduce that the better for my standpoint. Okay. Will we have a copy of the, on the agenda draft warning will we have a copy prior to? Yeah. I don't know if this is narrative and you mentioned you drafted us like we're before it just strikes me that we spoke to Arthur really specifically and for the reference of Brian earlier tonight. You know, there is $500,000 of course we've accounted for it for our agreement. I accounted for it but I personally and the way Alyssa does accounting and budgeting feel that we have $500,000 that was originally ARPA and so I'm just thinking about either addressing that how we address that. I guess my sense is it's going to be narratively in the select board report but again just particularly in the context of our earlier discussion tonight like there was so much focus on it last year and we provided a plan that accounted for so at a minimum I think it's important that we highlight how we accounted for it for general government expenses but I think if we have intentions of using it for special projects in the future which I guess is my personal whether it's flood mitigation or something else again it's not part of like the warning but I think we just need to make sure we address that or have a response to that for a town meeting. Okay. And as I texted all the members of the board I am drafting a letter to go into the annual report and we glad to mention that if I think that we would say ARPA monies have been incorporated into the town so it's all part of town revenue now it doesn't have any special requirements in terms of being appropriated but that we're personally I'd be interested in directing at least a portion of that towards flood mitigation since it's one of the things that qualifies as a local match. So is this conversation going on the next agenda? I was going to just put it into the letter that I was going to submit to you since you told me I had a deadline of Friday and then also invite others to feed me and I can send you out the sort of like the outline of what I've got right now and then you can tell me if I'm missing something. That makes sense. It could be a status update too because there has been positive like this bridge work was done and this gravel will be happening this letter and this is how the recipe was accounted for in future plans. The certificate of pilot mileage I put that on today it doesn't need 15 minutes I think it just requires your signatures. It's an annual, it's a formulaic part we have to complete. Woody fills it out and I think I just have to bring it here and decide it is my recollection I'll change the times. I'll be in by the end of next week I'll be here for the meeting if you need my signature through next week. I'll see if I can get I gave Bill Woodruff the deadline of Monday the 22nd so I'll see if I can get it done. She's giving me a deadline but the budget's not done so I can't write the report. It's not fun. I'm going in storage relationship I know the real deadline. Just one last thing Danny has invited Skip to present EFUD on the 29th. Yeah I have that on me. One other final thing of the big importance I responded affirmatively and I've already got a couple people from Town Hall but I was invited to be part of game show night for Winterfest. It's like a town team. I think the library might do its own. So give me a second here to give you the date. It's February 2nd Friday night starting at 6th. There we go. Did we have to enter by the 12th? Is this what Natalie just told me to do? Yes. You should get yourselves registered. There's going to be... Your email to me just said Friday at 6. I thought it was this Friday. No it was the part you wrote at the top. Oh did I? I don't know. Well just maybe clarify because when I read it I'd believe it because I would be available. Friday is the second. Starting at 6.30 I think getting there by 6 would be helpful. And it's at the Legion. They have a look at what their bars are like. The bar is very open and reasonably priced. And there also will be a photo bench on the 10th. Kevin and I sent that to staff right? I should have sent that during public. I should also say speaking of venues at the Legion that you all should come to. February 10th there's a... What are we calling it? What? What event? Is it a volunteer appreciation? Yeah volunteer appreciation but I think the select board is all duly invited and should try to attend. What time is it now? I believe it's... I don't think I got that yet. There wasn't a nice other time for someone to staff. I think there's going to be some broader events. Yeah they're making like a town Facebook event and what not. I'm just really going to meet again to the 22nd. Yeah I think there was a motion to adjourn in the second. Yeah Alyssa made it in the second. Alyssa? Okay. You did but I don't know what to tell her. All in favor say aye.