 So, welcome everybody. This is the Rochester Select Board meeting of January 8th, 2024, not 2023. Yeah, we got it right. And this has been posted in three places publicly on the website and emailed to interested parties so we can move forward legally. And we're going to start with the minutes from the prior meeting of December 21, which I was not. No, I was on that. No, I wasn't. I see my name's on there, but it says absent afterwards. So I'll leave that to Pat and Frank to discuss because I wasn't here. I have right over the meetings. It was a short meeting that time. So, Frank, are you, are you with us? So you want to. I haven't read the minutes. So we may want to just wait until next, next meeting. All right, I'll table that. All right, then we're on the new business. Do we have folks on zoom from that? No, they're not going to get here till 715. So I'm going to. Talk about the town of Rochester fee schedule for the last probably a couple years in the budget. Meetings we've talked about maybe these fees are a little. Little light and we did some research from other towns and we're not talking. Exorbitant here, but like the building permit or zoning permit fees was $25 and we're going to double that to 50, which is not going to. Break the bank or stop anyone from building a project, but it will do. Give a very small nudge towards keeping our budget. No. In moderation and also in keeping in with what is realistic in today's building so I could. So a lot of these are set by the state so we really don't have much control but the zoning permit fees. We're talking about the building permit at $50 and $100 for a driveway permit. And a subdivision permit for a minor or major at $50. Conditional use waiver request permit. What is the conditional use waiver request? That's if you're having conditional use and you're like you've changed the use of your property from. That's it until like maybe now you have a business so it has to go through. Right. So things that aren't specifically dealt with in the zoning regulations. So it would be conditional use, which would cover, which would mean we'd need to talk about it. So that has gone up to 20 big time. And open trench and road boring in the town right away permit up to $50. And then for a municipal sewer water hookup permit, which is a little more involved, they're talking 750. I didn't, I didn't add anything to that because I haven't had any. You should have one for commercial one for residential. I didn't see that. They were. Okay, so 750 was for the. That sounds like 750 is for the water. And then the sewer was more than the water. And then you got the hookup fee for commercial, which I think that was 1000 or 1200. And the water part was. I don't know how to look it up. All right. So we'll have to edit that. So that's a start. We won't prove them tonight. But we're talking about these probably coming into play when the after the in the next fiscal year, July one July one. So that gives us some time to nail it down. The big thing with both of those, you're going to have to be there for inspection. I mean, you have to be there for the women. The main is packed and the other main gets packed. You have to be there to do an air task. There's a lot more to it. So in these paper. All right, well, we'll get that little more specific. I just wanted to check and make sure. That if I said that the board was going to look into making specific fees, you know, specific amounts for the fees and would approve them at a future meeting. Yeah, you could say that way. We're looking at updating our municipal fees. And we're going to. That's in process and we'll probably update that at a future meeting and hoping to make that change applicable at the beginning of the next next fiscal year. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, no problem. Thanks for doing the research. Dig up where we stand and relative to the kind of all over the place on state fees. And you know how fancy a town it is. So let's see that. So. The topic of the regional coordinator. That was something that came up at the meeting that I wasn't at correct. And there was a request. From two rivers, I believe. To a consortium of towns to fund a position. It wasn't necessarily from two rivers. It was from another entity. This regional coordinator was going to be. It was overseen by two rivers overseen by two rivers. Yeah. But it was, I don't have that with me. It was a whole different entity that is, that is a startup, I would say. And what they were looking to do was hire a person to be their coordinator for. It was 10 towns, a lot of different towns in the area. So it was a regional coordinator. Do you know how many towns there was involved with that? Is this for the area? Inter municipal energy resiliency energy coordinator. Yes. Inter municipal. Yes, I have. I have some new information on that as well. And as. Unfortunately, the number of pounds now has dropped. That will be able to Rochester Royal and West barely have not said no. Have not everyone else has said no. So that was five pounds. He just mentioned right. The town meeting. And they're because of dropouts. We see the divided cost increasing. To Rochester's portion would be $19,085. So basically doubling what they were asking before. It was 10. 10 this year, 13 next year. It's basically doubling. Yeah, go back. What was it going to coordinate? That was my question. Okay. So we're going to do the work of an energy coordinator in the town's end all rather than having a single pointed one. And many times actually don't have. Because they don't have anybody. You do it. Our town plan and the energy efficiency. Appendix follows the state's. Comprehensive energy plan. And I think the most volunteer and communities in the state to be able to understand. What needs to be done. I'm fulfilling the role of energy coordinator in the birth in Rochester as a volunteer that no pay. I don't want this new position at all. But if Rochester approves the position. I think we should continue to work for the board and assist the energy coordinator here. Well, that kind of answers my next question is, are you going to continue on doing the, the awesome work you've been doing as the volunteer energy coordinator for the, for the town. Even if. You agree that we should hire a region coordinator as well. Well, the conversation that we were having at the last budget meeting. After we successfully not the municipal tax rate from. 24% increase down to where are we at 13. Which was, that was a big stab and that. Was pretty much. Once we heard that the town of Randolph was backing out of joining in on this consortium. We anticipated that fee to go up. Yeah, but not as high as now that it's so we're. I think in addition to Randolph, there have been a couple other towns. Yeah. I think that we're. Contemplating being another one of those towns that would. Drop out of that. Yeah. Yeah. The only. I heard being made was to. The article out there. Right. Right. It was, it was going to be a. One of those at the end of the end of the. And, and. We don't think that we can recommend to the voters to even consider it. Especially now that it's twice what we were thinking. Which towns dropped out. It's easier for me to tell you which. Did not. Yes. Yeah. Is still in the works, Brookfield, Rochester, maybe. Royalton and West Maryland. So it says. That's not going to sustain that person's income at 150,000. Stop bridge. Randolph. I don't know whether you went up to. No. I think it was not going in. The Hancock and Granville where they. They were not doing. And stop. Bridge. Bridge is not. I think they. More involved, but are not. Well, I think that. Right. Go ahead. No, that's all right. We miss you. We listened to your. Yeah. Yeah. I think in light of that pertinent information, I think it's. The opportune time for us to go out too. If, if more towns were involved, I, I can see a path forward, but I don't see a path forward. With so many towns dropping out. Yeah. Personally, but. Yeah. Jeff, could you speak to what are some of the complexities of. What's asked of you by the state to, and performing. That. Well, by 2050, and I won't be around to see that project. By 2050, we're supposed to be having. Using 90% renewable energy for all of our. We have to electrify. In order to make electrification. We have to improve the efficiencies. Even on the. The town highway vehicles. Yeah. Okay. We had this test and a side. There are some, there are. Exordinately expensive. Yeah. Pilot projects out there. Right now. But that's going to be a hard nut to crack. Yeah, it is going to be. We actually put someone. In the middle of the road. Up fed them and gave them a place to crash the other night because his electric car couldn't make the trip from Middlebury to Hanover and back. He's headed back over Middlebury gap. And he's like, I'm not going to make it. And he came back and knocked on our doors. It's like, Hey, you guys. Can I plug my car in. And because his credit card wouldn't work on the fast chargers. That's. Yeah. He had a house guest with an electric vehicle. They went down there and my son went with them. And the machine said that you. And I may get this garbled, but there was something about having to be. A member with an account. You have to have the proper app. To run that machine. And if you have. Cellular connection. You can download that app and join that club and then run that machine. If you have Verizon. You don't have to set up the account for this. They're our house guest. Oh, so you were. Yeah. But that's a. Awkward. That's a, that's an issue. It is an issue. I had a guy come into the shop that. An electric vehicle. Well, in an electric vehicle. And he, I said, you said, yes, I'm using your chargers down there. Or I tried to use them, but they didn't, it didn't work. And he said, he makes a point of. Everywhere he goes and he knows where the seeds of charger, he stops and tries to use it. And he said, more often than not did they, he can't get him to work, which is. Wasn't able to get him to work. Either. Yeah. When he was here all summer. So that was a green mountain power. Initiation to do that, but they're not the company that's running. They don't. They contract with flow. Yeah. Do you know how fast is a fast charger. Charge how long does, I mean, how fast. Well, very dependent upon the vehicle and also the very dependent upon how much is this. And how much you're allowed to charge your battery as well. My particular electric vehicle. It's a battery. Battery call and they limited my battery to 80% capacity. Because of the fire risk. They've now done software fixes for that. And there are no problems experienced in a 62. 100 miles and I'll be fine. And can charge 200%. But if not, they have to replace the battery. That's with Chevrolet and there's a class action lawsuit. I mean, $1400 back. I didn't get the mileage they promised. So by 2015. It's also winter time. Nicole, right? Yes. Yeah. The Chevy Bolt that I have is the worst. It loses habits. Other cars that there are other cars out there that do much better in terms of battery. Yeah, I'm sure they'll continue to improve, but I'm not sure about trust in our. Plow trucks to that. They're not ready yet. No, they're not ready yet. But so if there are problems with those two things down there, that none of us really know about. Shouldn't somebody in town know what's going on. Or should the company know? Should there be some kind of. Directions. There should be directions because there are places to access free Wi-Fi in town. So even if it's in the middle of the night, someone could go out in front of the library and hook up to the Wi-Fi, but they would need to have to. The proper instructions to that some. Because what good is it if it's just pissing people off? Yeah. I can. I can give a call to the GMP and bring that to their attention. And see if both of you gave a call. And what the heck, you know, make him make some noise. It'd be interesting to have a report to see what kind of. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Any. I've seen just recently. Yeah. No, I've seen people using it, but they must. There's. One of the things that was really messed up the department of energy when this all started to. Standardize the plug in the socket. Yeah. That'd be too easy. We have all these different proprietary charging systems out there. What is down here. They're really, even though there are four. Cords. You can only use one. At a time. So we can charge two. I'm saying this in a confusing way. You got two pedestals. Each has. Two stock it's one is a. Oh, gosh. It's a. Japanese. It'll work with that. It's what it's called. The other is the CCS. And I forget the. But basically you've got the channel system. And you've got the CCS. Most of the cars in the market today are CCS. And Tesla is a completely different. Yeah. You can get it. An adapter for about 150 bucks. For your Tesla that will go into the CCS. Yeah. GMP was all over the map kind of in terms of telling us what they were going to do and what we wound up with. And I guess part of that is because of the public utility commission. I mean, you know, I mean, I'm not sure what they're wanting. Even though the. Number of cars that are using the chat. It is much, much smaller. The public utility commission didn't want to leave them. And the large. So. What we got. Are there enough instructions down there that. An uninformed person who was coming into town needed charge to figure out this. No, it doesn't look like it. Yeah. Part of the issue is generally. Most people are a little informed about what their car is doing. They're not. They're going to run into an issue. You would think that they. They would. And then having the lack of. Of. Other carriers and AT&T. I mean, we're all used to have an AT&T because we know it works here, but a lot of people don't. And then they're. You know, they're not going to get in. Like, in the wild west. Yeah. Interesting. I think it would be great. Frank, if you called in Jeff, if you called too and. Heck, anybody else wants to call too and say, hey. They'll probably just. Say, I'll call flow, but if. GMP is the one that. That chartered that and recommended this company that I should get the feedback that it's some. It's problematic. to speak Canadian or something. I think a lot of people too when they come off north and it's colder in the winter they have to run their heaters and so I know that there's a lot of electric vehicle owners that now have blankets in their cars so that they don't use up their battery on their heater. If you can park it in a heated garage that probably would do I know you're driving out into the cold weather but just starting with a warm battery would probably help. I don't know if that's the environment. It takes a projection as to what your range is and that's in part based on the temperature. But if you start with 80% you're already dead. If you start at 80% then you lose half of that that's essentially my experience with it. However I still get 90% of my travel my driving done well with it and I charge in my own garage. Remember in the right direction. Just have some growing pains. And you know trucks the F-150 that will be the first thing that we see plowing. F-150 is not a flat truck. I know it's not big enough that you posted the job here but that one is got a very significant battery range and that would probably be the first thing. Are you still are you still buying a lightning? I think you want something. No, I don't have that bracket. My son did and he's been very pleased with it after one kind of hectic ride. After that he's figured it out. What I've done is I've done 90% of my travel with the bold PV and we just recently traded in the escape we had and got a Ford Maverick which is a hybrid and it's front wheel drive hybrid that's rated for 42 miles per gallon. So that will be my long term long distance vehicle until such time as the charging systems in this country. Ford Maverick. I got a ride in a Ford Maverick from Chicago to Anchorage, Alaska once a long time ago. So we've got 26 years until the state's going to keep their current projections. They're going to want us to have 90% of our energy in the municipality renewable. The issue with the regional municipal person is this is a big job. It's a huge job and I'm willing to continue doing it but I don't feel like I'm scratching the surface. Yeah. And that's after 20 plus years in the industry. Matt, are they coming out with the electric ambulance? Not yet. Not yet. Would the solution seem to be solar charging? Is there any hope that that would come about at all? Not the fast charging. Well, I mean, yeah, but it would be a very significant draw on the system, the fast charging. On the sun, the solar charging? Well, it wouldn't be happening right now. What are the wrong parts of the world? Actually, I think that will be in the U.S. island. Well, the resiliency is going to be the solar battery backup of the... Well, we really appreciate that you taking this, you know, because it's some... Keep working the bugs out of the systems. Yeah. And we're not expecting you to like, you know, bend over backwards to do everything you can to fulfill that role, but you're steady progress on identifying projects and tackling them at your pace is much appreciated. I mean, much of what it involves is assisting other people to do changes. I mean, and we're seeing quite a bit of change in our market right now. I don't know if anybody is aware of it, but the whole barn up at North Hall of Barn on the west side is covered with PV panels, and that's believed to be sufficient wattage up there to cover all of their operation. Yeah. And it's also surprising when you look at the mod energy atlas and see how many people now are using solar and their own properties, and you must see it in the real estate business, places you never thought of. I just took a course on how to present efficient houses and how to measure a house for its climate, climate footprint, solar, yeah, you'll be able to rate a house on a scale. What's that? Did Craig Foley teach that? It was online. Yeah. Yeah. So they actually come out with a scale so that your house is rated on a scale like we could 1 to 30 about how efficient it is. So with the solar panels today, what is the expected longevity of a panel? Oh, 15 to 20 years? Yeah, 20 years, and they're not done at 20 years, then their production begins to fall off and they are recyclable. So I would venture to say that we would remove this option to join up to partially pay for this. We have to this year. We would love to reconsider it in the future, but this is not the year for that. Well, you mean we have to say no this year? Oh, I thought you were saying we have to pay this year. Yeah. I'm another year we can maybe present it, but with the education as we have also expected to go up substantially. Do you agree, Frank? Yes, I do. I don't see that we have any choice with the other towns dropping out. I think it's especially in light of our budget woes this year. And I think a plan going forward would be to entertain it again in the coming year. So you remember that it went up $4,000? We had the general 11 this year, and then it was going up to 14. So this 19 would be going up $4,000. All right. We have, Terry, we're waiting for some folks to zoom in for the emergency services discussion. So you want to talk any about the plumbing and sewer and all that stuff? Everything seems to be working. Nobody's complaining. Martha, you have a question I hear. I was just going to say when I zoomed across the top, I see Daniel Sargent is online. I don't know if he's the person you're waiting for. No, we're waiting for members of the select boards of Hancock and Granville. Yeah. Okay. I just, wait, when you said emergency services, I thought because of him with it. Yep. No, that's part of it, but we're not there yet. I believe we've got half an hour to kill before they connect. Yeah, Granville is having their select board meeting, so that's why we will push to 750. Okay. Okay. Yeah. We have a different timing. Don't have anyone here from the library to speak? No. Jeff? I'm just going to say, we don't have to go through any of this material about the changes, and without any analysis or, I don't know what the right word is, but no problem with your decisions. I'm going to go on to do it. You don't have to ask me to do this. Thank you for coming in. Okay, with the decision, I understand it. But the more we push down the room, yep. Yeah, sure. Keep knocking on the door. Keep waiting for technology to get a little bit more involved. Nobody from the library, the highway crew is resting up for tomorrow probably? There's been some issues there. They broke down a couple of times. The 550 is down again. Same issue it's had ever since we bought it, transmission. John broke down with his truck, was able to make the repairs. He blew a hose and his bed chain broke for the sander, but he repaired it and hopefully we'll have a little better luck going forward. So he is talking with Ford about the transmission on the 550. It's run over on the hours for the warranty, but because this has been an incurring problem, we're hoping that they'll honor their piece of equipment here, but there's no telling what they're going to do. So, but he's got some numbers and he's going to make some calls and we'll go from there. It's about all we can do. Yeah, this next storm might be a little heavier. Yeah, we supposedly have a good blow coming our way. Yeah. Make sure their chainsaws are working. Yeah. Yeah. Kristen, you got any updates on Grant? I don't. You don't? No. All right. Well, I can. You submitted a grant. Yeah, tell us about the grant you submitted. Oh, yeah, Lois. You and Julie did. I'm just trying to use up time. Oh, is that it? Oh, mute. We submitted a grant to the Urban Forestry, UVM Urban Forestry. It's a title about this long and it's to address the canopy on the park. They want the canopy to be diverse species. So we have talked with Cobble Creek Nursery. We have seven or eight trees that we have earmarked that are going to favorably grow over there. We also had the arborist come and review the trees on the park to determine the ones that were dead, dying and need to go and those that perhaps can get by with the pruning. So this, do I understand correctly that we think a lot of the younger trees on the park are ailing because they were not planted, the root ball was not broken up suitably. They're one of two that have been circled. And it could also be where they came from. Yeah. Yeah. Because if they're not planted in the root spread out, they'll encircle the trunk. Yeah. But the trees that were planted last year from the grant, they're all doing very well. Thank you, Frank. Frank was the main person who kept the trees alive last year, watering all the time, keeping track of his time. Isn't it great to be retired Frank? He probably wouldn't know. He also went out and cleaned up all the dead branches that have fallen down in that one of those December storms. I didn't get them. Although it's still time then. This is a one grant where we've put into $5,000, which means that we also have to supply at least $5,000 of volunteer work. Okay. And just kind of looking at it quickly. If everybody cooperates the way we hope they will, we will be easily over $5,000 we have to volunteer out. So always looking for new volunteers to help keep our park the most beautiful in the state of Vermont. Yes. And the safest for people who are using the parks. Yeah, right. So we've got the 2024 mileage certificate for Rochester, which is due February 20th. We've got time, but I don't believe there's any changes on that, are there? I believe so. You believe so changes or you believe no changes? There's a change. There's a change. All right. So we'll work on that. Yes, I got to reiterate that with the state, but I think there is a change there. All right. That will be on the class three section on Drusland Hill. The maps are being drawn up. The new maps are drawn up here. They should be in the process now. And we did have a change on that. We upgraded the Drusland Hill from Rocky Road to up to where it ends, which is up by Stuart Browns. But I have to make a double check on that to make sure that that went through. There was no need to bring it to the town because it was considered a class three road to start with. It was just considered a nuts road. So it was a change in how we address it. So, and I'm not sure if that adds to our mileage or not. I have to look at that to make sure. We got a month, a little more in a month to figure it out. So yeah, then I'll take care of that. So I have something I could share since we're still waiting for more people to show up. You guys remember Abe Collins, right? We grew up in town here. Well, he's very active in the realm of agriculture and healing. Well, healing our watershed, healing land. He's been designed a piece of equipment. He calls it a rip sower. It's a tool for going in and kind of regenerating topsoil. It'll cut down deep and actually dig into the hard pan and distribute seeds and fertilizer at the same time and as a way of regenerating topsoil. And he has with the help of several other organizations put together it's a land care Congress, which is actually happening in town as we speak. And they have a public dinner open to the community tomorrow Tuesday night at 6 30 at Pierce Hall. It's a healing our watershed home, a toast to Rochester. And this is local steak and potato bar. I've never been to a potato bar, maybe I'll stick it out. Sounds good. And sides. And there's a suggested donation of $15 to benefit Pierce Hall. And Abe is representing the Land Care Cooperative and Alvina Harvey is with the White River Natural Resource Conservation District and our CD, if you don't want to say all those words. There's Christine DeSound from Harvard Law and Katharina Pistor from Columbia Law. They have about 40 people gathered doing workshops and brainstorming about how to go about addressing climate issues. And it could be an interesting dinner. I think there'll be more than just food, but probably some talking. I think you have to pre-register. I didn't know that. When I handed me this and said, Hey, I mentioned it at the select board meeting. I think you have to pre-register. So they know they know you're coming. It doesn't believe a list again. Yeah, I don't see any phone numbers. I'm sure that you could track. Oh, White River and RCD at gmail.com. That's a White River spelled out and RCD gmail. So yeah, it should be a if your power goes out in the storm, you could go on down to town and get fed. As long as that power is off there. Yeah, right. So it's just designed for farms? It is predominantly predominantly agriculture and agricultural and farms, but it could be anyone with some land that they want to start to reclaim. And a lot of what they're talking about planting is for pollinators to support pollinators because there's a lot of concern about the collapse of pollinators. And if they go, we'd probably go too. Yes. Yeah. Anyway, I thought that was worth mentioning. I think Martha had a question. Yeah, Martha. Yeah, I mean, obviously, it's going to be over with before the paper comes out. So I can't publicize it. But I just wondered if if I called you at the shop tomorrow or something, you might have Abe Kahn's his contact info, like an email or something? Or do you know where I get it from? Just I thought maybe he could write something for next week. There's still there, right? Dona has all that. Oh, Becky, Dona would have all that because they've been working very close with her. But if you can't get it from her, I'm sure I could get it with you. They're in town through the storm. Yeah. I don't walk around too much if it's slippery because I'm scared to fall in because of my walker. I'll contact, I'll email Becky Dona. I have her email. Thank you. Sorry to bother. Okay. Great. That was the one little extra credit thing I had to add to the meeting. How about you, Matt? Got any interesting ambulance stories to share? Where was 50th year? That's right. I saw that in the paper. It was pretty good. Senator Welch came by last Friday. So we, whether we see it compressed through an ounce and we build a good question. Ian Rocksville. I saw him just briefly, but I didn't know what he was doing. I heard him saying he was there. It's a bill that they're presenting for patients that we see that are no transports. One of the ambulance services will build for no transport. So this bill will allow us to build Medicare itself. If you don't want to assist somebody or don't need to be transported by email. But you still had to roll. But we still roll. Yeah. It's a nation issue. And so hopefully it goes through because it should help the budgets drastically. We did 375 or something last year. Real fast. And if the bill went through. No transport. Wow. 398. So you, if the bill goes through. They didn't put a dollar amount on what we'd be able to. But you would be able to bill. Directly through Medicare. Yeah. Oh my God. That's great. Even if they were not a Medicare client. No, it would be only Medicare client. There would be a big start. We have a large population. Yes. And right now you don't, you're not allowed to bill anything if there's no transport. We used to in the past, but we never saw any revenue from it. And they would go to collections and then we'd bill for $50 for no transport. $30 in collections and they would take like 35%. So by the end of it, it wasn't, it wasn't worth the effort. It's hard enough to do that. 15 years. It's always since then. Yeah. Because of the different ambulance. The hero did a great article on it. Yeah. Yeah. This week's hero will have an article from Friday as well. Thanks. Because of Peter Welch or just. Yeah. And that's where he announced. Do we have anybody else on there? Scott Gillette. I'm watching very cool. So we could jump the gun a little bit. Yeah, but no. Bruce, Bruce was between seven and seven 30. So that's why I shot for seven. Oh, geez. But they're having their, their select board meetings. So it's budget season for them. They kind of take care of all of their select board meetings. And their select board meetings. Yeah. So that could run on a little bit. So the next budget meeting, do we have a meeting tomorrow? No. Wednesday. Wednesday. Yeah. Tomorrow's Tuesday. Okay. Yeah. Feels like Friday. All day plowing and you get all spun around. Yeah. So we're getting pretty, pretty close. And when is the, just the book need to go out to the printer? The 20. Not before the 18th of January. Okay. I have it down for the 22nd, Monday, the 22nd, two weeks. Yeah. Okay. Oh, we got it down. So you haven't forgot your report. I mean, I got the agenda for this meeting. Yeah. For tonight. I heard that. And in it was the tax sheet. Well, I'm pretty far from there. I mean, probably, you didn't take it because it was with what this version of the tax rate will be as of today. Yeah. What was that people? Not too good. Strictly out. 182, I think. Structure issue. We get them all at once. Stock rate was 198. You had some PRs. Yeah. He came to give in. Did you have that agenda, Pat? The actual first one. All right. It's on the agenda, the reports. It's go to tax. Okay. Go to, go to, not agenda, go to report. Yeah. To see PR. And then go down to tax sheet, which is close to the bottom. Day. Yeah. A day. All this. He did work. I'm above it. Yeah, that's a tuition. Oh, yeah. Looks like ours, but the numbers are bigger. Look at the percent of inquiry. Money, not money. What's the percent of it? 14.55. They're in the first one. They're in the third top of ours. Yeah, they don't like that. Oh, they didn't. Is that, is that direct to us or just the state? Take it and do one increase for everybody at one. The same. No, I think that's, that's, that would be ours. I think that's pretty much our SUD. But I'm not sure that they're going to approve it tonight. Good. But it's a draft. Enough to make it quiver. Which is why municipally we're doing our best. There's a lot of discussion about education going on right now ever since the news broke about the 18% increase. We need to separate it. We just said 18 to make 14 look better. I think it was 18 and a half. That was like statewide they were saying, right? Something like that. That's what the governor said. And the per pupil cost was going to be 25. I wonder if that's going to trigger another round of school consolidations. That's what he said in his speech. Oh, yeah. There are one there. There are one at preschool. We could both stop Bridgend Roffus or could be in Boulder. Oh, we could buy both buildings. That's a better one. We'll have to stand our ground about where we stand on that. Well, they talked a lot about the way that different towns had used ARPA money. And maybe they hadn't used it quite as wisely as other towns. Many towns put it into infrastructure rather than hiring more teachers and going on trips and doing things like that. Well, the schools got ARPA money and the towns got ARPA money. Our ARPA money was spent on our municipality, not on our school. They put in a pellet boiler. And they did. We started this week. We're seeing that they did some physically. But I guess it's like four students to every one, either teacher or administrator or aid. And it's the ratio is too small. It should be six or seven students per paid employee here in Vermont. It's one to four. Wow. It was like one to 35. One teacher in the whole class. Now you have a teacher and then you have, you know, AIDS and there's a lot of special education and all of that. So there's a lot of mandated things that are built in that perhaps should be revisited or high school. There were five teachers for Yeah, the same math teacher through every all the grades. That was math. So as we work through the budget and finance committee process, we're hoping to deliver the most favorable increase possible. I'd like to see everybody come to town meeting this year. There's a car pulling up as everybody's zooming in or could somebody be driving in? Somebody could be driving in. Or maybe that's my grubhub I just ordered. Oh, okay. Want me to get you something? I'm hoping the bed and breakfast I stay in has something when I get there. Oh, that's the best. He's going to have the best meal when you get there. So how did you get down here? I'm pretty used to the weeds. Sounded like it was going to be more than that. Yeah, probably further down. Yeah, nice and lovely. I think we're out of here. At one point there was all the money in there. Hello. Hi there. Hey, Bruce. Hello. Thanks for coming out. Thanks for the invite. Oh, yeah. We want to share how the big town works. If you could bring that chair right around over here. Just be part of it. That's okay. I just sent Scott an email so we can get going. We've kind of just been milking the clock a little bit. So thank you for the hustle. Pick off is about 40 minutes. So I don't even know what that is probably not. Martha. Hi. I heard this man's name was Bruce, but I didn't get the last name. Hi. H-E-I-D-E. Bruce, hi. Brownville Select Board. He's got it. Let's see if Scott's. You guys, Bruce, you're at a Select Board meeting just now, right? Yep. But Scott, no. He's not. No, I think there's our two states. All right. So yeah, give him a call. Maybe he's going to Zoom in. You guys still, oh, out of Zoom, don't you? Yeah, Daniel Sarge it is on Zoom too. Yep. We see him. Yeah. So it's on. Yeah, it's a. I could have done that and watched the football game. Yeah, I know. Oh, you can still do that. Yeah, it's still a story. We're all excited to watch out there. Good. Are you going to be dialing in by way of Zoom to our line? Amazing. What? Yeah. Football. Okay. That's exactly it. Okay. No, we just needed to know whether we were still waiting on you. I got to get rid of that dish. I know it's terrible. It's like a thing of the time. I've been trying to tell you. Okay. You got it. Well, if you wanted to come up, you could come in on Zoom. We sent you an invite. I won't send it up for it. No. I've seen you in action. I'm not going to do that. Maybe work somewhere. Yeah. I can change it up. Did you get your Wi-Fi password figured out? Yeah, I did. Okay. All by yourself, really. Okay. Put it in your iPhone. All right. You're running an iPhone? Yeah. Can you get the LG Note? Bye-bye. He's not going to be able to draw us. He's babysitting his kid. Babysitting his kid. Okay. Okay. Kids are allowed at the meeting. It's very late. And Bruce, thanks for coming. And basically, we wanted to start a conversation between, well, two out of three is not bad. And we've got, you know, the three towns. And Matt had really requested this, suggested this, that it would be good to have a conversation to really figure out where we all stand with the, you know, the. Emergency services. Emergency services. And I guess a question I have for Dan and Matt, if you guys had any conversation about possibly joining and getting underneath one roof in this situation? We have. I spoke with Dan, I believe it was actually between Christmas and New Year's. He had recouped their conversation he had with the state. And currently, am I wrong, if I'm wrong, Dan, but the state more or less implied that they'd like to see where we'll have the license versus trying to start a new entity to be trying to support it. And then we're going to start discussing it, but after I said it to budget me, and I think everybody on this side of the hill kind of needs to be on the same plan and maybe make some goals of two years, five years. And we're towards a transporting truck versus just getting a truck and parking it somewhere. Hope people come. The conversation that I had with the state, they've been pushing for larger entities rather than small volunteer organizations. And we discussed just between you and I what that's kind of done to the state and what we're dealing with now. It wasn't necessarily that they wanted WERVA to oversee the entire project, but they would prefer to have a larger entity manage it. Can I ask a question? When you respond to an emergency, you have a paramedic on? Yes. And when Daniel or anybody else responds, there's an EMT, hopefully, but that's about the level. A medical certified person, yeah, whether it's a Vermont first responder or a liar. But you have a paramedic respond to most all costs? Yeah, ideally we outside your class if you want. We have a paramedic on each truck. And that's important because if we have somebody critically ill, the paramedic can inject pain killers and whatever else they might be. They might have a much, much larger scope of practice. Whereas an EMT can just basically maybe stabilize and hold the hand, is that it? They can do quite a bit as well, but there isn't much for pain management. And some of the biggest things that I see in our area is being able to identify and get them directly to the facility and usually doing things, strokes. But EMTs can also do that. They just aren't going to get start that treatment to fix it before they get there. Right. They can manage pain with nitrile, being able to give them drugs that actually change the chemical with the highest health in the medical level. Because I know in some, up in the River Valley, they run their trucks with EMTs basically. And when they need to do a critical transfer, they've got to have somebody from Bowery meet them, I think, and transfer it first. We've intercepted a few times. We happen to be in that river, not from the so much ski area, but from the Gulf. Right. Everybody get the call us, intercept. But then there's always that time element. It's 45 minutes for you to get wherever you've got to go. And every time we intercept another service, we're down a truck then for that time frame as well. First branch and south route. And sometimes we can switch crews where the medical jump and we'll take one of their members. And then we still have anyone's in your district. In the district, there's five services, count them to first response services, Valley and Barnard. So at any given time, in their 16 pounds, we only have four trucks that are stuck. So quite often three out of four out somewhere. And that's gluten first branch, the south roads and Chelsea, Sharon, that whole area. So they have first responders. They have first branch and south road and they're both transporting the ambulances. Okay. Right now, there's a medical emergency. Somebody from the fire department or from the first responders respond whether it's in their toilet or whatever it might be. But they got to wait for you guys to come over to do any transport or any advanced care, whatever. Yeah. And Valley is an A level licensed service now and Barnard. So if there's an A or somebody that I can start ID's or they can start some care ahead of time. Okay. I'm not sure what Valley roster is, but. And your district goes from. It goes from Washington, essentially, I guess, the Middlebury or Ripton, left to right and then up and down, we cover Brookfield to Sharon, the district. You don't go down to White River? Nope, they have their own. Okay. I think I heard Upper Valley. But still a large district. It's a large district. Including IE9. Yeah. I understand. Yeah. So obviously in our concern here and desire here is to have the optimal protection for people in our town and our neighboring towns. I know now Bethelmont Road being closed. It makes it even, you know, that step more remote that's going to change, but probably change back again in the future. Hopefully, Bethelmont Road. Yeah. I guess the, so the old White River Rescue Squad that was struggling for years and finally gave up the ghost. And that was, how was your relationship with them when they were here? Valley? Yeah, the Valley, Valley Rescue Squad. Wasn't that, because you've been here. There was no issues between the two services. No, no. But they weren't independent. I wanted to go back on that too. Yep. Valley was set up the exact same way where they ran that for Indian as well. That ended about 10 years ago. 2014. Yeah. Okay. 2014. Exactly. And they kept the ambulance on the side. Was there a personality issue too that you had? I, well I got off Valley when I moved in the Hampshire just before that. But it was volunteer based and then volunteerism kind of shrunk. They hired full-time administrators and then they hired a part-time driver and then they got the way they hired full-time attendants. But at least they had the workforce volunteers during the day because they had a little job. And at some point the cost just goes up together. You've got to justify it. I know you have a number of services in the state that are right there now. Yeah. So part of what has made it work for you over the mountain now is just that it is a large area that you're covering. But it's that... Our coverage area is a little over 550 square miles. So Grandville has the Valley Rescue Squad and it's incorporated within their fire department. So they seem to have personnel in their fire department that cross-train over. Do you see the other fire departments? And I'm going to be speaking about not just Hancock, Redville, Rochester. I'd like to bring Stockbridge into that conversation as well because they have a small, fast squad within their fire department. Is that the infrastructure that we should be thinking about moving into? This field is Stockbridge. You're both licensed under WERVA currently. They don't have their own license. Okay. So all their personnel are under WERVA for their licenses and so forth. So is that a direction that Rochester and Hancock should be thinking about? It's an option until the budget meeting. I thought it was kind of on the same page over here. But over, I started at pre-COVID and of course COVID kind of screwed everything up. But this last year, they were to finalize it with the state where we can license first responders in any of our towns as long as they're affiliated with us and then we could put first response in any of the towns we cover. In the past, the problem was you had to join the fire department to be covered under their insurance. And then you'd have to take all the fire classes with it. And the ones that were just interested in the medical side didn't want to do the fire. So a lot of those, Brookfield had a number of people that kind of started the conversation. So now we have it set up to where we can just, Beth will also do a first response. Then we just get the Vermont first responder reports, which we can teach now. We have some members that can teach it. And the biggest hurdle with that is just getting the right personnel toned out to the right town in my thought process. And I haven't talked to any really into the fire department that's very good, but if a town wanted to do it, we could kind of sister with their fire department because every first responder has been either paid a radio, personal protective equipment, like a coat and so forth in a bag. Then each town could invest into that, into their fire department, and then if they ever disbanded or they didn't have the members, that money's already back in their party silence for a little bit of radios and so forth. So we get a tone somewhere in Bethel. We would just tone out the fire department as first responders. We could even, or how would the fire department want to do it, I guess. But we could say, Bethel fire department first response, please respond to this address. And then we could capture those invested in that town. Because that was, we've always had first responders, something on this air inside of our coverage area, while we still do all the way down through Pittsfield and then in the Barnard, but the whole east side of our coverage area is just when we get there, where the first one's there. And so first responders. People that in Pittsfield and Stockbridge, do they go to like meetings to your facility for additional training? Not yet. That is the plan. I haven't sat down with them yet. But to be licensed under us, we have to have certain guidelines that they have to make for us to be able to license them. And there's certain trainings, the state has 10 or 14 e-learning that they require every year for anybody certified. So we can give that to the members and keep track of their training. So when it comes time to restart, we can just hopefully have a nice little packet for them that they could submit and keep their license going. Right. How does it work now if, I mean, Grandville, I dial 911 for medical emergency. Who does the dispatcher send that to? Both. As far as get where the phone call goes, or once at 911. Who's the responder? When I call 911 and I'm up there and have a heart attack or something, you know. They tone out both. They tone out both, Grandville and Werver. Yes. Okay. Yeah. I think most of the time it's Werver because that's when you license the transport at the state. But the 911 call will go to Rockingham and then they'll go from there to to us. To you. And then you would call Grandville? How does that work? At this point. At this point, we make sure that Grandville is notified. But for the most part, they get told the same thing we do. Okay. And that works the same way in Barnard and the other time? Yep. Okay. Whether they have an umbrella organization under you or not? Well, the towns that don't have any first response, they don't get another point. Okay. Just, you know, we get to go to Bepple because they don't have first response. We just go to Bepple. We need extra help. We'll call the fire department and we'll just get by the personnel that come for me and our or something like that. So when, so where this conversation is going kind of is we're concerned about the duplication of our efforts where we're signed up with, you know, Werver for a pretty significant sum for the real overreaching care. And then in Dan, you've got things started up in Grandville and it's um, and that's cost of that is ramping up. How to what I'm curious, have you know, have you given thought or do you see it in the future of folding in underneath Werver to get some, you know, would that bring us some efficiency and give you more support for what you've got going there in Grandville? Um, you know, that's Matt, that's something that Matt and I started to discuss. Um, and there's some questions that both he and I have that we need to do some research on. I think it, it opens up a lot of gray area. Um, and we just need to sort through those, those questions. Um, I, I think as a volunteer in EMS, I don't know as there's necessarily a place in White River for volunteers, but there's definitely a place in Valley Rescue and Grandville Fire for those volunteers, um, you know, and, and there always will be. We're, we're not going to be able to pay somebody to be on call. We're, we are going to have to rely on volunteer. And, you know, I, I don't see the Valley Rescue Squad effort in White River Valley ambulance as a duplication of efforts or services. The two services complement each other and we just live in a, in a geographically difficult area. And the challenges that White River and other ambulance services are facing, we need to ramp up the number of resources available so that we can maintain a level of, the level of service that we expect. Yeah, that's what I was wondering if you joined forces with them, if it would make it easier to ramp up that level of service and support or not. But I guess that's a conversation for, for you guys. We're just, um, yeah, that's what makes me ask that question because and none of the first response has been a monetary reimbursement. Yeah, they are volunteers. Yeah, we just help with the medical side. In the past we've done training. They come to our trainings and stuff like that. But they don't have any mobility issues with them. Do you want to give me this or anything? No. Right. No. Stockbridge is all personal vehicles. Pittfield has a first responder vehicle, so to speak, I guess, that goes to most of the scenes. And they do that just to have one place for equipment and everybody doesn't have a bag. And you have nothing to do with that question. No. No. The way it works is they bought the initial equipment, the disposable stuff like oxygen masks and tea collards and so forth. And most of the time we can just replace that off the truck when we're at that scene. So they use an oxygen mask, whatever they use for disposables, we'll just take it off the truck and hand it back. And it works out that way because we can build for that. And then what we are in the big part as well. Yeah. So it's just the initial, I think, would be the only the big expense of just getting the equipment the first time for each town or whoever town would want to do that just so we don't have towns that aren't in the program at work, but having to pay for another town for this. Yes. Which is why I kind of went for the loopway. Even up for the fire departments that way they can put some money back into their own towns with the radios. Right. Right. Which is basically how it would work with Grandville because they're already teamed up with their fire department. Yeah. Yeah. Grandville has their own license. So I'm not sure how the inner workings of that service is as much, but I thank you for the service or the town that didn't have anything. And then yeah. Do you have four ambulances? Three. Three. Who was that? Okay. One usually out of service. Broken down, but we do have three. How often is it often that you have both of them out on a call? Yes. Yes. It is. Okay. Yep. So you rely on some of these other first responders? We do. It's often we have two out at once. It's not as often that we need third right down in the months. Right. We've got seven ambulances in our district with two being out of district coming in mutually. We're on 89. So one bus wreck would develop our capability in district men. That would be our district. Sure. Frank, do you have any questions for Dan or Matt? You're on mute, Frank. No. I think this is very informative. I think it's something that we need to discuss and figure out going forward what our path should be here. I just think that it's a good conversation to have and I'm glad that other towns were invited and the select person from Granville was there and we can take it as advisement and figure out where the town needs to go. I'm not sure what the fire department in Rochester is working towards or if they are working towards anything. I think that's a discussion that we need to have with them and we'll go from there. I think anyway that's my take. Rob, what do you think you're a Rochester advisor to the board of the Alaska squad? I'm probably the least informed here on this. It's very complicated. The state involvement is complicated. The licensing and training is complicated. I feel speaking from a position of power ignorance on the subject that the Granville project is kind of in motion. How it could effectively interface with you guys? I'm not sure. If they're all volunteer and you're not, what can you give? We don't pay for first response. How could the partnership benefit? I guess I'm not it. How could it benefit you and how could it benefit the first responders? If the discussion is how can you roll the two organizations together to save money, if that's what... Well, we have everything established already. All the training spreadsheets keep track of everybody's hours and that process. Ideally it's all about the patient outcome. You have to call 911. That time between anybody with medical training gets to you is going to help. I think this valley is in need of first response of one sort or another. All downs should have it early. I was going to say we're all getting older and we're all going to have medical emergencies. It takes 45 minutes to get somebody there. I'm dead, but the same thing happens to my house up on the hill. If it catches on fire, I might not go last one. Given the budget, the conversation was happening earlier. Dan is moving the project forward as far as I know and in a direction with a two-year plan. Do I understand that you guys wanted to have this conversation with Matt to see if cost could be lowered? Now I wanted to have a conversation. I have quite a few questions on it. At the budget meeting, it dawned on me that everybody was on the same page because I had calls from Hancock as well wondering if I knew what was going on with Valley and I didn't because I didn't know what was going on. I suggested to the Rochester Budget Committee that the towns need to get together so we can come up with the same goal versus two entities trying to do the same thing. Is that a conversation for the towns or for the two entities? I may ask when I'm confused. It's pretty complicated. So if you could wave your magic wand tomorrow, what would you do? Would you put the two organizations together or would you see this just operating as an independent satellite? What would work best for you from a professional standpoint in terms of health outcomes? I guess it doesn't matter who the first response is as long as they have a good system and they can keep the system in place. The question I had was the goal of the transporting ambulance in two years, so that's a good goal to have but in two years you might have an ambulance but you're not going to have the personnel to go on here running. So then you're going to be back into the cycle of paying somebody to also be there or shut it down. But that's an outcome we don't know because it had been two years. That's what you're planning on. So it was a little bit like Valley Rescue trying to run it as an all-in-one. Making another comeback again. I'm not saying it won't work but I'm getting at the station or from people. I didn't have any answers and some of them are town officials. In two years we're going, Daniel's planning on being on a billing platform as well. So that is a duplication of efforts because he's going to, there's a cost when you start billing and you already have that infrastructure in place. So is that a goal that is duplicating the efforts? It's just taking the care out of it. Just two billing platforms we would be paying for their billing platform and your billing platform and... No, only one ambulance service can bill on a patient. So whoever transports. So there won't be two bills if an ambulance service needs an interstatement. But he would still need to have that billing platform in place to do his billing. If he was a satellite under you, all of the billing would go through you. Yeah, there's many different... There's many different billing platforms. Some of them just work off of a percentage rate on whatever they bill. So if they don't build anything, they don't make anything. Right. And right now as a first responder, can you build insurance companies? As a first response entity? No. If we were a transport entity, then yes, we could bill. My understanding is we can bill for first response. But that's a whole other world to discuss. Yeah. But we're going down that road in a couple years. So perhaps the discussion should start now. Now, what's your opinion about the question? Two organizations versus one. What's your opinion? Well, I've been involved in emergency services now, serving the three-town area for over 15 years, almost 20 now. And I think my knee-jerk reaction is I would like to have a service that is exclusive to the three-town area. Yeah. I just think it's necessary to have an organization and a group of people that is dedicated to just our three towns to provide the level of service that we need. You know, it's water under the bridge, but when Valley Rescue left, the promise was that we would have an ambulance stationed in the Route 100 corridor, and that was taken away from us. Now, I think if there is a viable solution to have an ambulance, another resource in our area, we need to do it. So your vote would be to have two independent organizations rather than one? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And Matt, would you agree with that? Would you? I don't think you can afford it. You think it would be too expensive? Yeah. Valley Rescue shut down once already from it. Right. And the state's not supporting small. She just handed it out. Sorry, Dan. I didn't have a line, but I can be up to you. It's last year's call count. And at the bottom, I just broke out the size. And the three-town total, there were 159 calls. And I just noticed that actually included no transport into that as well. But that bill to help with our average bill rate, the gross bill would be $78,000. And at our percentage that we're recouping, it works out to be about $44,600. And the insurance not found to know? Yes. So that should be a little less than that because there's no transport in there. People don't have a choice either. I have a heart attack and you come pick me up. I can't squibble with the bill. It can be called a dart. Yeah. You don't ask if you're insured ahead of time. Right. The dart comes in. It's a $30,000 bill. So that should have a whole lot more, probably 50, 60 years ago. So when Valley Rescue left here, weren't we paying somewhere, we were looking at around $130,000 up over 120. And that's why Valley Rescue really left, because we could not do it. But Dan is talking about a volunteer organization. I mean, I think the original Valley Rescue... That was a volunteer until there were lack of volunteers. And there were no volunteers anymore for anything. Well, Dan's got a roster of people now. I guess my question is, are you trying to basically put a red flag about danger coming towards us, meaning in two years' time, you can't afford to do this? Is that your basic message? That is why everybody would be aware, because like I said, everybody in the state around if you're a volunteer, Williamstown just shut down the first of the year and they do almost 600 calls a year. Then you're going to get help to staff. So Ferry Town just took their whole area over. If you have the ambulance here, then you're going to be lacking having them paramedic coming on the road immediately. Again, the idea with what we're proposing is that we are still going to be the first response entity to manage the situation until White River Valley arrives. So you're still going to have that paramedic level care. What the idea behind having an ambulance in the Valley was to address the 10% of the time that White River Valley is unavailable for the emergency. That way, we are not left on scene for over an hour in some cases waiting for the next due ambulance service to come from Middlebury, Mad River, or South Royalton. That was the entire premise of this project. I'm not aware of a 10% non-response rate from WERVA. It's hard for me to get those numbers because we just don't get toned. They go right to Mutual Aid because dispatch is no longer allowed. So we'll just say get Mutual Aid, and we're not even sure sometimes who is coming. Typically, the Valley is either Middlebury, Brandon, sometimes brought up in depending on those reasons. So are you saying it's an unrealistic goal to try to have an ambulance on this side of the road? No, I don't think so, but you guarantee you're going to have 100 volunteers in the next five years? I can't guarantee that. I'm not against it or for it, but the question I'm getting is it seems like there are a lot of unknowns and what direction everything was going. There's also a fact that Rochester is closer to WERVA than Hancock and Grandvilles. So there's added 10 minutes to the response time for those two towns. So those two towns might have a different opinion than Rochester, but we've always carried Hancock and Grandville as our neighboring towns. So we've always thought of ourselves as the Valley. We would like to also consider Stockbridge as part of our Valley too. I'll say that again. So we're the ones that are here saying, what does everyone think? Because we're all in this together is what I'd like to say. And we want to hear it if it's the good, the bad, the ugly, or the facts. And we don't need to dance one against the other. We just would like to coordinate everything and get the right direction going instead of two directions or opposing directions or anything like that. We need a plan. Daniel, you just said that you would again, even in two years or whatever, still be the primary first responders, but not so much in transport? Right. White River Valley would still be the primary ambulance service. Now, our goal is to address the situations where White River Valley is not available for the call. That would allow us to initiate transport. Or it might be a situation where the patient is in critical condition and we need to initiate transport before Werba arrives and meet them somewhere between the incident and the hospital. This would give us a vehicle to make that happen, where right now we're just waiting on scene, as you said earlier, just holding their hand. So was that a complete ambulance service? You can transport now. If I have a heart attack, somebody can take me to the hospital, but you can't do that. Not right now. No, not right now. So tell me if I'm right and forgive me if I'm confused. Are you saying your concern is you don't think, looking two years ahead, you don't see enough volunteers accumulating to make this work? I didn't say that. I don't know about the case, but if you take a state average, no. We only had a couple of volunteers when we first started delivering first response to the Tritown area. And today, we have over 20 that are licensed, certified on our roster. So I think you do have to look at the trend and the track record that we have. We have been successful in recruiting and retaining volunteers and improving their licensure. And that's only going to continue to improve as time goes on. What do you think about that? I hope it works. Dan, what is license certified mean? So any of our people that are delivering medical care have to be licensed through the state of Vermont Department of EMS. So what I'm saying is we have 20 or so that are licensed through Vermont EMS to provide care. And there's five levels of licenses. Vermont First Responder, EMT, AEMT, paramedic and critical care paramedic. You have to be a minimum of an EMT to be in the back with a patient on a transport. Veefer's can first respond and drive. That scope for the Veefer, sorry, Vermont First Responder Veefer is very minimal certification. It is a good certification and it's a great stepping stone, but it's a limited scope of practice. You can't do vitals. There's limitations. But they developed that because now any EMT course is 160 to 70 hours. So you're getting somebody that wants to try something else and then you spend six months in a course and then you have the training to keep your certification just to find out that they may or may not like it. How many of the 20 and our EMTs? My memory is a little rusty. I believe we have six at the EMT level or higher. We do have one EMT-A. So that individual can actually establish an IB and deliver different medications. And we have three who are currently enrolled in an EMT class. They're due to finish up the EMT class in early April. Who pays for that training? The fire department, Valley Rescue, excuse me. Are there requirements to have a certain number of personnel on an ambulance? Yeah, you need to have at least an EMT in the back of the ambulance for the patient. And then the driver needs to be licensed at any level that the state recognizes. So two personnel total at a minimum. We've done the ambulance before. Yes, but I don't know the circumstances that the degree area takes place. So, Daniel, all 20 of your rescue squad personnel are members of the fire department? Grandville Fire Department? There are some who choose to only do medical and they're part of Valley Rescue. And there's others that are cross-trained so they do medical and fire and rescue. So Valley Rescue has coverage, coverages on those personnel that are not part of the fire department independently? It's all under the Grandville Fire Department. They're they're recognized under that entity. Valley Rescue Squad is a trade name registered to the Grandville Volunteer Fire Department. But you have members in all three towns, right, Daniel? Yes, that's correct. But they're all trained and go through your certification? Yep, that's correct. So, coordination and cooperation between the two efforts is extremely important, obviously. So it sounds to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you sort of have two different opinions working here. Dan has worked out a plan looking two years ahead. There's no guarantee that this will work at all, but he's laid out a plan. He's got some and you're concerned about that plan because you can't see versus you're not comfortable enough that a non-volunteer will veer down to the other way. Not him. I'll work to work. But if you look at the rest of the state and the number of services that are merging, shutting down, or going more paid and their budget increases, you're bet against the odd. I would love to see it work and I'd be a huge supporter and fan to have another ambulance in our district, but it's going to be expensive. So would your recommendation be to back away from it or to have a long timeline? I am more than happy to go either direction, but from the phone calls I've heard from every town, nobody was on the same page. Right. And that makes sense. I've had calls from our, well, our Hancock rep for White River Valley had questions on valet or Dan's budget and valet rescue, which I hadn't seen, but I told her that. And then I've had calls from, well, all three counts, just asking and it just it's hard to give an answer one way or the other. Well, and right in that budget and when and or what the valley wants. Right. But would you call that a planning problem or communication problem? I think you just somebody needs to have an initial talk and say, what do we want? What do we want to look like? And that's what we're starting here. Right. Yeah. And it's five years from now. You'd like to see an ambulance cover the five towns. Very easy to do, but I don't know what the cost is going to be. If you can get a volunteer base of first responders and yet 30 or 40 in the five towns, you might be able to put an ambulance over here and get somebody to respond or is available that day. But having two different directions from two different services and three different towns, you can't find anything. Well, you have just put your letter together for the town report talking about your aging volunteers. You'll be the same there ever. I mean, volunteers. There's not a lot of them that want to put the time in there. I mean, if he's got 20 on it, how many are really active? I mean, I can hear your calls and you're getting like maybe four to five different people internal. That's a long ways from 20. Especially during the day. Yeah, daytime is tough. I mean, that's quite works. I mean, our fire department has been really fortunate because during the day, we're still putting 10 to 12 people at a scene. Excuse me. I have to get off because it's time for me to take some medicine, but I'll check in with you ladies at the office tomorrow for anything else I missed. Thank you. Thank you very much. What is your total budget about? 1.8. And how much of that is taxpayer supported? 900. A little more than half is taxpayer and the rest is insurance and bill. Like you say, you only get 50 cents on the dollar when you're building. That's right now. But that's like $7.79. I think is what we get back from revenue. And then the remaining budget goes to the town. You don't do a whole lot of cookie sales and stuff like that. You're out on the ambulance. You don't need a certification for that. Just to be clear, I am not favoring one way or the other, but just the direction. Yeah. Well, that and how both services were working. Well, that was our concern is just to be, you know, committing to two separate services and wanting to make sure that they were spending, you know, spending the money wisely. I mean, the primary thing is that we're getting the best service as we can to protect people in these towns. But efficiency is key. And we've been down the road with, I don't know, if it's good that you, Dan, that you picked the Valley Rescue Squad as a name that's got the memories of the last one that kind of didn't pan out so well. But I guess we're just encouraging you to really keep the options open and be as efficient and practical as possible, you know, looking into the future. And some people have seen the budget from last year to this year go up by 40%. The number is not huge, but it was still 40% increase over what was requested last year. So if the trend continues to go, let's say 20 to 50% more each year over last year, five years from now, we will be down the road making a really hard decision. And we don't want to do that. We want to get on the plane right now. We haven't had a presentation of the two-year, five-year program yet. So I'm a little naive with that. But what would be the danger in just keeping it the way it is when we have first responders? And because if it's less than 10% of the calls, don't get an ambulance, is it really worth the expense to have an ambulance? They get an ambulance. It just might be from Middlebury. It might wait 10 minutes longer. Well, no. Our people have been waiting, in some cases, upwards of an hour for the next arriving ambulance to arrive. So yeah, it's only 10% of the time. But if it's your call and your emergency, that hour wait time makes a huge difference. When the time that you dial 9-1-1 to the time you arrive in a hospital is two hours, I think that is totally unacceptable. I would like to have another option at our disposal. And yeah, I understood that obviously, we can't just sign up for a service and hand over a blank check. I get there's budgetary constraints. And that's where our service is going to have to be creative and how we fund the budget. I think there is a path forward here. It might not be totally clear at this point. You know, the reason that it went up by 33% for all three towns is just because we are ramping up to be a transport service. To be a first response service, it could be scaled back. But if we are going to work in the direction of a transport service, then there's going to need to be some initial funding. And we can work out the budget, what our projections are going to be for the years to come. And of course, the all-important issue of how do we staff it? We are bringing a really clear plan to the table. I think that would put all of your minds at ease. So that's something that we can sit down and work on as we progress through the rest of this year. It seems to me, if you've been getting calls that you don't have answers for, that really you and Dan should be spending some time. So you really understand what Dan has in mind and you really understand the limitations you're talking about because you two are the professionals here. But I also need to know what the town want to do. Yeah. Well, I guarantee you, whatever it is going to cost more money. And so the question is, how much is that 10% worth? You know, it's my heart attack. I can tell you how much that 10% is worth. And I've had my life saved by maybe. But it's going to cost money. Whatever it is going to cost money. If you start hiring professional people, it's really going to cost a lot of money. If Dan can make the thing work with volunteers, as he's suggesting, well, that's another question, but it's still going to cost more money. It seems to me, if you two guys could kind of put your heads together and at least define the universe of money that you're talking about, you might feel more or less comfortable. I don't know. You might feel less comfortable. But you hear what I'm saying. I think if you two guys could then come back to the towns with what you thought was an option or two. Well, we just wanted to make sure that we're spending money on a coordinated, focused, well thought out system and service. And I appreciate your bring this forward and taking your time. I think Frank's got something. Yeah, I do think that we need to have some serious thought about how we go forward. And I think in respect to the other two towns also, there needs to be some open communication and some more thoughtful planning moving in whatever direction seems to go. I do think the costs are really going to be a major factor. I mean, you take a 10% increase or close to that in Werva this year coupled with this increase to puts us up to almost where we were with the Valley Rescue Squad originally already. So I, you know, we have to really be careful. We're not just duplicating what failed in the past. I mean, that's, you know, we need to learn from history here too. So I think some serious consideration needs to be placed whether how we move forward here. That's my take. I would say my experience with Dan in this project is that a lot of planning is doing a lot of thinking. I don't think Dan's out there in on his own pulling stuff out of the air. But I think the two organizations so critical that the two organizations really are on the same page that if you two guys can spend some more time together, I think there might be more clarity. What are you up for going to have a better that both parties be more comfortable with what a two year plan is or three year plan is a five year whatever it is. I mean, you want to put your heads together and the two year plan is unreasonably than what happens to them. But what I'm hearing for you is that you're not fully informed. If people are calling you up and say, what's going on? You don't know. You're not then you're and you know, Dan, I'm I've been spending time with Dan. I've a lot of confidence with Dan, but I'm not a professional like you are. So I just get get a sense that there may be a communication thing working there, whether the whole thing is a terrible idea or not. I don't know, but I do know that having an ambulance on this side of the mountain is a real good idea. Yeah, yeah, the chance of that happening through you guys is slim to not know putting an ambulance over here. We could do it. It would just be an expense for the three towns, the three times that they couldn't do, build 10 towns, put an ambulance over here. Yeah, well, that wouldn't go all the way. My question is if working with the energy Dan's putting in here would be a more efficient way to to make that happen or not. And I guess that's the conversation, you know, that you guys have to decide. Because the end goal might be if the end goal is going to transport and then transporting licensed service on its own editing, then it's going to take three towns from Warba as well. And then we went, Warba wouldn't come over, it would just be an intercepted medium. Right. Now, there is a different way that we can set that up, Matt. And I had already discussed that with you. Brando can have Valley Rescue, excuse me, the name change hasn't quite sunk in yet. Valley Rescue can have a small service area that would not pull the revenue stream from White River Valley. And we can still have an agreement with White River to first respond to the remaining service area and be that backup ambulance. So we don't have to sever ties with White River at all. This would just be an added service in the area, another resource. You know, and that's something that I've already discussed with Vermont EMS. So there is a path forward there. If you did it that way, that would take your revenue that you're anticipating on to help cover your budget. I don't think we're going to figure it all out tonight, but this is a good start to the conversation. But I guess I just really want to encourage you, Dan, to really look at the big picture here and really, I think that you could probably get what you're hoping to do. But if you could let go of the independence of it, it might be better in the long run. But that's just my take. That's why we're starting this conversation to get more information out here. And not telling you what to do. But that's why there's all these questions. Well, I think a lot of that, if we fell under White River Valley, a lot of that is going to come down to whether the volunteers are willing to do that. And that's where we need to take a look at White River and their setup and what that would look like as members of White River Valley. And I'm not saying that I'm completely ruling that out. Absolutely, it would make my life a whole lot easier if Matt just oversaw everything. There's a lot of questions that need to be answered before we can really commit to that direction. Yeah, but it's definitely worth investigating, I think, because efficiency kind of rules the day and, you know, the... Thanks a lot for being on it. Yeah. At least one member. So do we want to set up maybe a regular meeting of some kind over the course of this calendar year, just to keep this discussion going? Regular meeting, like this one or regular meeting with Matt? Probably a smaller group, maybe a representative appointed by each of the select boards, Matt and myself. Kind of like what we had started. Frank's not here. Well, Rob, we've kind of had that set up now with Rob as being our representative to Granville to meet with you. So it basically would be expanding upon that. The board member, we already supply to you, so you would be opening up to Matt. It just bring Matt into that. Yeah, just bring Matt into that. Yeah. There's a handcuff at the Granville guy. And then you have to the left board or the report back? Whatever you want. Just so then that way, they're kept in a little bit of a conversation alive. To be honest with you, in my sense, it would be a better use of time just for Matt, for the two professionals to hammer out what they're comfortable with. And I mean, they're not governed by open meeting laws. They keep them together and talk things over and work out certain details and then make a presentation or bring us in on that conversation when it comes down to it. Okay. Even if you took all the money that the three towns pay you now for our service, and we took that all together and put it into our three town ambulatory service, it would go back almost right away. Yes. We don't have the people. We don't have the resources to do it. And you wouldn't have to pay them. Clearly. No, it wouldn't be enough to operate on them. I mean, it's definitely a problem. I'm not sure as well as the whole thing. Right. Well, I'd be loved to be in on ongoing conversation, but I think that's really a topic that you guys should investigate. Because I mean, we want this to work, Dan. We just want it to work, to really work. Right. Yeah. But I think Dan wants it to work too. Yeah. No, I know he does. I'm sure you do. Yeah. We're lucky that we have two passionate guys here that have got the skills and the drive to do this. And we're, thank you both. So how should we leave it? You want to have it? So you would like to see options as... So, yeah, Matt, let's schedule some to discuss some... Under your umbrella. I think if you two guys, I mean, you know what the conversation is, and you guys are the professionals, if you put your hands together and you're completely honest and Dan's completely honest. I mean, maybe there's not a way forward. I don't know, but it sounds like between the two of you, you could at least come up with a couple of options. We could do this high end to low end or whatever you want to do. And we're looking at perhaps one budget rather than two. Well, I'll leave that up to these guys. Yeah. Let the professional guys make a recommendation and then... Well, they're asking us what we think. So I'm giving them what I think. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, Matt. Thank you, Dan. That's off to everyone. Thank you. And you want to have regular reports back on what Yeah, we'd love to know what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, over two years, three years time, whatever it is. Yeah. It's going to have to be regular reports. Well, we don't want to have to call 911 to find out what's going on. Yeah. But we're not afraid to. All right. Dan, thank you. Thanks for calling in. Yeah. Thanks for being here. Yeah. Move to adjourn the meeting. I second the motion. Bye, guys. Have a good night. Thank you.