 items not on the agenda, additions and changes to the agenda. All right I spoke with Alfred and he didn't only have anything for today so now we're meeting and greeting Ryan Edwards. Thank you for coming and thank you for volunteering. I'm so excited to have a volunteer. Yeah, great thank you. I'm excited to get out of the house. I work from home so. I was screaming kids maybe? No, not yet. Oh, okay. That's in the, that's in the workshop. Yeah. Well, we'll be happy to point you to, you know, whatever. Right. Well, apparently planning also. You know, that's this first. Right. So, everybody has had a chance to look at the resume and welcome to Calis. Thank you. What made you pick Calis? Several things. I mean my wife and I actually, we grew up in war school. I went to high school at the U.S. Academy. I went to school in Boston. So, I was down there for a while. Then my wife went to nursing school down in Boston so that we were both down there for a while. And anyways, we just moved back in the fall. I don't know if Boston did you? Oh, yeah. No, I love Boston. But, you know, we're from Vermont. So, at some point, you're ready to come home. Right. And we're from a small town. So, you know, we're looking for a town. That was, you know, kind of close to Montpelier area because my, my work is a registered nurse at Central Vermont Medical Center. Oh, nice. So, this shortened her commute a bit. We were living in Elmore when we moved back. And what's your wife's name? Oh, Amina. Yeah, A-M-I-N-A-N. Interesting. Yeah. If you saw her name, you might pronounce it Amina. A lot of people do that. So, that'll happen. She's seen them all. Yeah. Well, I should have let us introduce ourselves. Go ahead. John Fairbeth. Denise Wheeler. And I live over by number 10 Pond. Okay. Cliff Emmons. I'm on the Cal State Board. I live over on County Road. And I'm Rose Pellchuck. I live at the top of Lightning Ridge. Opposite the school is at the bottom. And I'm at the top. My husband's also the forest fire warden. So, we have a sign at the end of the trail. Okay. I just drove on Lightning Ridge the other day. So, for the first time. He approves forest fire. Do you want to burn your forest fire? Right. Yeah. Yeah, he always does. Okay. It's pretty legal. I'm with Katie. I'm the Katie Lane person reporting secretary. Okay. Thanks so much. Nice to meet you. I'm Jerome Levani from Borca, New York. There's, I don't know. You guys want to introduce yourselves? I don't want you to do that. I mean. Yeah. I'm Jim Myers. I'm the winner. Okay. I think you go in and I'm here at the DRB. Oh, hi. Okay. So, why did you choose DRB this year? So, a little bit of background on myself is, previously, well, quite a while ago, I lived in one of the Vermont. I was on the Trails Committee there. I firmly believe in volunteering sometimes for community. Now that my wife and I are permanently back in Vermont, that's something I can sort of do in earnest now. And I felt that the DRB and the DAB were most appropriate. I'm a licensed architect. I'm familiar with, you know, building codes, energy codes in the state of Vermont. Slowly getting through the town plan and the zoning rights. Very slowly. It's very long. Yeah. 175 pages. Yeah. No, I just felt, you know, they were the most applicable boards, and I would have the most to contribute to those. And then, last but not least, I feel like my demographics are not really represented in town forever. Exactly. Yeah. So 15 years. Yeah. So, this is John McCullough. He's the chair of the DAB. Nice to meet you. So, I've asked a couple of questions. I'll see other board members have questions. No, I looked at his resume. It's good. John or Peg or Jim? Two thumbs up. Can I do that? Yeah. Thank you. Two thumbs up, you do. Come to the DRB board and not hers. Oh! I knew there would be trouble. So, Cliff, you had a question? Ryan, you mentioned that you had familiarized yourself somewhat, not completely, with the town plan and whatnot. You also mentioned you saw one of our challenges is that you wanted to make sure that your demographic was represented. What other challenges do you imagine we face? And what you familiarize yourself with, at least? Yeah, I mean, from a town plan perspective? Or anything else that's clear to your mind as you researched and thrown your name in the hat as it worked? Yeah. I mean, Calis is one of these towns in Vermont, which is interesting because, you know, in some ways, it is a veteran community, right? There aren't any large businesses here, so people are generally, they live here, they commute to Montpelier, they commute to Hardwick, Morseville, wherever. And I think it's how you try to encourage growth by getting people who want to perhaps start a business in a town like this, or work here and stay here as a way of generating tax revenue and whatnot. And I think there are opportunities within the village districts in Calis where, you know, there are opportunities to do that. But even a little East Calis where I'm living in. But, you know, it's Vermont, so, you know, things take time. And I think, you know, the town plan is the right step where you kind of just have to put the, kind of have a plan laid out such that you can sort of start tackling individual items piece by piece. And it might take, you know, five years, it might take 20 years to realize some of these large goals. But I think the overarching thing is just how Calis is a community where, you know, there aren't a lot of, there's not a lot of business here and stuff. So throwing that a bit. Did you review the zoning regs? I mean, I have gone through them. They don't differ significantly from all town zoning regs in the state of Vermont. But, yeah, it's a big, big end becoming. I mean, as an architect, I'm used to, you know, reviewing things as necessary. Yeah. And end up doing so. Very good. Hey, John. John, how often the DAV meets what probably maybe once or twice a year at the most? Maybe they've met three times this year. I don't expect them to meet again. Yeah. Yeah, two of our, uh, Judy and Barbara were talking. Yeah. That's an easy job. Right. They're like, you could be on all kinds of committees. Right. And if there's anything weird about being on DAV and DAV is the DAV makes a recommendation to the DAV. Right. And so I don't know how that works out if you have to review it. Right. Yeah. Well, we, um, we have some interesting things to pop up. Yeah. Um, not so much anymore. We used to be at least one or one time a month that we'd be meeting, but we're waiting until people do something. The last one we did was the town hall, which is over here. Yeah. And they still got to finish what they started. But, um, we pretty much have sometimes in the summertime, it's stuff that's within the shoreline. Yep. And in the wintertime, it can be almost anything. And, but people are not putting in their applications as much as they were before. I think money is a tight budget all of this. Right. I'm going to say reason this year. We're, um, but we haven't had any problems. There's four of us that are in on the DR. We've worked for quite a long time. And, um, and we have one new man who's just joined us this year too. So. Oh, great. Okay. Great. And it's nice to have younger people that are interested in coming onto the board. No, there's definitely a lack of people. Yeah. Sure. Well, I'll make a motion. We're ready for a motion. It would be 2022 for DRB. I make a motion to appoint Brian Edwards to the development review board for a three year term that expires in 2022. I'll second that. All right. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed hearing none. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Now DAB. DAB terms. Are they for a year or are they just like forever? I don't know. Because it doesn't say. I said appointed by the slacker. I can, I can look in my old records at home. Okay. Um, so I would make a motion to appoint Brian Edwards to the DAB for a term to be determined. Well, I know. All right. I'll reject the website. The website? What's the four year term? Four year term. Oh, water. So I would say 19, 2021 or 22, 2023. How many years did Ernie have left on his term? The term was due to expire in 2023. Does anybody want to make a second? Second. All right. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And he opposed, hearing non-Marsha Gehry's, don't worry, we're not going to forget your name. Put your smile on the face. I'll learn all of yours. Eventually. Eventually. It's in the book. Yeah, yeah. Did you get a town report from last year? I did not. I don't know if there's any left. There's probably one around here. Junior Barbara gave me a lot of stuff, though. I'm sure they did. They did, yeah. I was here like, oh, oh. I was just registering above, so. There you go. Yeah. That's what happened. Well, I also was here for lunch and then snowballed. There you go. Wonderful. Well, welcome to town. Yeah, we appreciate it. And you're welcome to stay, or some people do. Some people don't. All right, so do we have, are you here just John, just for DAB stuff? Yeah. Yep. And why do I recognize you? You sure? And Claude Felter, right? And you're here for? Why not? OK. I just wanted to make sure you had a reason that we didn't have on the agenda that you wanted to bring up. No? OK. Well, I think you could give us something coming in wines and help. OK. You smell like you're in a fire department. So yeah, thanks, John. Thanks, John. Take care. Join us. Oh, I have five Ola's in the car, chief. Oh, hey. We're looking for younger demographics in the car, please. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Well done. Ola, for your application soon. Yeah. My wife will be happy to have someone. It's a great bunch of people. They're looking for volunteers. All right, so gentlemen, welcome. So you are here to talk to us about an ambulance. Correct. And we have stuff in our older doing. Price quote. Most important. Here. Here we go. So I'll just back up a little bit for the price quote. So we had recently purchased the ambulance, the used ambulance from the West End for the $20,000 for the $10,000 outfit cost. What's the name of that one? That will be Rescue 4. That's replacing the other Ford. That's a 2010 with 78,000 miles on it. That truck will be in service, hopefully within the next week. So in the process of looking at the sale values and finding a vendor to sell Rescue 4, Larry was able to come across an opportunity with this dealer to purchase. Can I just back up? So the one that you were just talking about, the one that was $20,000, that's Rescue what? That will be Rescue 4. So that's replacing Rescue 4 and will be Rescue 4. OK, gotcha. Thank you. So this one would be the replacement for Rescue 3. This one with a proposal, we found a 2016 demo that has 11,000 miles on it for the cost of $175,000, which the new ambulances are going for starting costs of $225,000. And if you remember back in your capital plan, the capital plan reflected the replacement of Rescue 4 and Rescue 3, both showing Rescue 3 short of $205,000 and Rescue 4 short of $225,000. This was, people should have had a copy of that. It's up to you. Well, I don't have a recent one that I asked for. But so Rescue 3 was supposed to go in 2005, and we saw it. No, it was a copy of it. We could make copies of that. It's $205,000. Rescue 3 was scheduled to replace 10 years actual, so it would be 2023, possibly. But we don't know. That was a used truck when we bought it. Yeah, it's around this expected remaining life in years, it says. Yeah, so we just had an $8,000 repair we had to put into that truck for a regen system onto there. I spent about three weeks downtime up in. Yeah, you have to tell us what that means. So the regen system is part of the exhaust system. Newer trucks work in different ways. This one has a system where it runs off of thermostat control that actually burns off the particulates that are built up in the diesel exhaust systems. The thermostat part of it, the best we can tell, had failed, not allowing it to get to the higher temperature it needs to to fully clean it out, the thing was so. They had to replace several components of that system. So this is, I'm just looking at this. I think it's the same thing. Yes. It says Rescue 2. Rescue 2 is different. Rescue 2 is the fire side. Rescue 2 is a heavy rescue for the fire. So rescue. Rescue 3 and 4, your endurances. Yeah, Rescue 4 says, that's quite $20,000, $30,000. Right, so that one was just replaced with a used Wilson handbag. Right, so you can keep that one. And if you remember Rescue 4, we just put a $15,000 motor into that truck last year. Right. Right, so we're looking to replace Rescue 3. And you said that was $175,000. It's $175,000 for the demo model we found, versus a $225,000 cost for the new placement. Have you guys seen pictures? Yeah. You're going to have to paint it though, right? To match the. We probably won't change colors onto it. Again, a lot of this stuff is all decals laid onto the thing. It's fine. As part of the proposal with this, they're also providing the lettering, as you see on the slip up there, the value of the $5,000. They're giving us also the trade value. They're giving us on the two trucks was $39,000. The two trucks. Right, they rescue 3 and 4. So both used the end nuts. They actually split the end yesterday. I thought you were keeping a rescue 4. No, there will be a new rescue 4. The rest of the end nuts is a new rescue 4. The old trucks, they would be retired, Rescue 3 and Rescue 4, the old trucks. They're going to take both. They will, which is a really good deal, to get the $39,000 out of both of them. And they flew somebody in yesterday from Baltimore, and he looked at the trucks yesterday. And then they also have a contingency for $1,000 in there to fly us to Baltimore. So to drive it back. Yeah. I'm sure it's hidden in the price somewhere. I don't know if he's hiding in that price at the $175,000. That's a really good deal. The truck has not been in service. It's just been a show truck for them. Floor hardware, the stretcher, striker, the antlers. Yeah, that's the anchoring system to anchor down. So one of the things we would forego, as you remember when we talked about the truck we bought from Williston, one of the new safety features or the loading features is these new loading systems. Again, it saves back injuries, but they're $40,000 to $60,000. I was just going to ask about those. And that's included in this. We would forego that as part of it because of the cost, because we feel the value of having a reliable truck that's a new truck. It's full drive. Is it better investment for us than? Maybe we could have a spaghetti supper and raise $40,000. So the total price then would be trade-in at $136, not $175. Correct. And how much money's in the capital reserve? So in the capital reserve, there's over $100,000 in there. However, we would not be looking to, on the current asset sheet in your capital reserve, there's 100,853.81. So we would not be looking to, obviously take it all on one payment in a truck. We are talking to North Country Credit Union. And they currently hold the loan if you look at your long-term liabilities on your rescue pump reserve. We have a current note of 146,000 left on the rescue pumper. And that's a fireside? That's a fireside. So there's basically three years left on that note. And what we're proposing is that we would refinance that note to five years and we would finance this for five years, combining the two. For a total combined loan of 282,000, higher interest rate. It's a 4.0 interest rate. What's the current interest rate on that? About the same. Yeah. And what that does over the five years that it takes your payments, our current payments are $53,896 a year annually. And then it would take it to 62.5 approximately for the new annual payment. Okay, so you wouldn't have to pay it out all at once. So you'd be looking at 62.5 right now, there's a hundred and. But so you're actually paying in the rears because you're gonna be earning the ambulance revenues on the way that paid for the payments of the truck going forward. So. This is ambulance equity, 32,000. I think that's your asset value into, I have to see that one sheet that's on top of that. Yeah, I think that's your asset value of the one truck that's getting replaced. Trucking, I mean ambulance. Yeah. Without the data sheet behind that number, I can't tell you specifically what that number is. But we're getting 40 for both trucks. So the other trucks are really only worth. We're gonna get 19 for one and 20 for the other. But I thought the asset value that was higher. I don't think that does not reflect in the same conversation, yeah. All the costs will be absorbed in the capital reserve fund. You're reading Bruce's report too? Yeah. I sent it around to everybody. I don't know, it's long. Right. Well, that's why I'm asking, because this says all the, because I wanted to make sure that we weren't gonna get hit up with another payment. And that's what I asked. So there's actually zero cost to the town because this is all paid for by revenues drawn from the ambulance. So the loan will be paid through the capital reserve fund? Right, from revenues. Just like Rescue 2 has been. And the previous trucks. Yeah, it's too bad you guys can't get that power. The cotton's looking stuff would be a lot better for you. It's more important. I keep an ambulance that doesn't have the lights go out and they wanna go down. So those guys couldn't give you a deal that all the striker would lean around and take it. Yeah, no, they don't just lay around. Are there any out there used or you have to buy a new one? There are used ones. So strikers. But some of the situations of used ones is striker will not stand behind them. So they in service of their, because again, it's some companies that have picked them up or taken them out of a truck. And a striker got into some real hot water for some of their life support system equipment. So everything they do is really scrutinized now. So that's why they won't support any used gear. Oh, wow. How do you know all this stuff? I sell parts to striker. See, he's one of the sub vendors. They don't supply parts that go into the list system. So I can't get a system. I'm just saying, do you have enough parts that we can show you? I'm just trying to figure it out. And then are you also, do we have any fire engine replacement coming up? That's gonna also come out of the capital reserve fund? Well, there is a engine four is slated to be replaced. It's not as 25 year lifespan within 2020. Sorry, you're gonna be coming to the towns. Remind me how we do that. To the towns, asking us for money to purchase a new fire truck? Well, we have to, I mean, that's a conversation we need to have going forwards. That truck again, it's out of this NFPA standard for a lifespan of 25 years. We've had some minor issues with that in terms of frame, broken frame mounts and things like that that we fixed. I'm just thinking tax dollars. Because that's what we have to do. So the last fire truck we've asked for out of tax dollars was engine two and 2002. All other apparatus and trucks since then have been 100% fully funded through the revenues earned from ambulance revenues. Are anybody, other folks have questions? Anybody in the audience have a question? To me, it sounds like a good deal. It sounds like a really wise deal. I mean, to be able to get this ambulance at a lower cost, it's never had patients in it. You can also unload the other ones. Yeah, that's a big deal. That is a big deal. So I'll read you the motion that used to not kill your hand. I moved to authorize EMFD to commit up to 136,000 plus associated loan costs from the EMFD capital reserve fund to purchase a 2016 demo ambulance from FESCO emergency sales to replace rescue three. Paying off the existing loan on rescue two and consolidating loans for rescue two and three into payments of approximately 625,500 annually for five years as requested. Is it total number though in the after 176, I don't hear that. The total to commit up to 136,000. Okay, okay. They reflect the number after the. All right, right after the trade. That's right. Okay, I'll move to that motion. Okay, and I'll second it. Is there any further discussion or questions, comments? All those in favor can say aye. Aye. Any opposed hearing none? Good work. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, thank you. When do you think it will be? We'll be here, we'll be here. Probably by the time we do the loan date work I think we'll probably be in a couple weeks or we'll take it, but. You're pretty confident in North Country. We've already talked about it. Yeah, okay, great. So who's driving the two down the Baltimore? That's that problem. You're going to. They're probably going to. Greg and Albert. Drive us back. And Greg. Okay. Greg and Albert. Yeah, well, thank you for. Yeah, we just, you just passed 600 incidents this year so far. 600? 600 what? We're at 600 in total. 200 is your. Yeah, it's over in October. October, in the October. All right, well, thank you. All right, thank you for all the work. Thank you. Thank you so much. December, the first week of Sunday. Is December the first? The first Thursday. I don't know, but we have it written down. We'll compare it. I asked, I asked where it was like nine minutes, five times a year. What was our baby at? And I had mine in a plastic sleeve with big red on it. So that. Thank you guys. Thank you, Albert. Good night. Thank you guys. Thank you. Okay. You say it's November 7th? December. December. Oh, I didn't. December yet. All right. Onward. She's gonna be browning. Thank you. See you. Thank you. December 5th is the 12th, this is the second Thursday. I know what you like. Yeah. I think so. I think so. I think so. I think it was the second Tuesday. It used to be the third, I think. But. Okay. So. We have it at home. All right. All set? All right. So let's move on. School bus tires. We had a joint meeting with John and I were on by phone. Alfred was there in person. And I sent a follow up email documenting what John and I recall from the meeting. Did I send it to? Yeah, I sent it to, I don't know if I sent it to everybody. Oh, I should have sent it to all of you. Anyways, basically we've asked them to put it on their next meeting agenda to keep pushing away because guess what? Snow will be here next month or at the end of this month. So we would like them to make a decision and we haven't heard back anything of you. Anything more than her? This is the unified school board? Yeah. We asked them to put this on their next agenda because we think it's really important that they get going on this. They've said that they would get back to us by November 1st. So they've got a little bit of time. But I don't want to let this just kind of do nothing. You want to add anything? Wait and see. Yes. UVM Capstone Roads Project. Cliff and I and the office staff had a conference call with them last week on the 14th. 13th. 13th was the 14th. I don't know what day it was. Oh, the 11th, maybe? The 11th. Yep. Just to check in, they like to do a monthly check in. Sorry. And I included, I think the email is up on the packet on the line in the folder. Don't see if they've pulled it up. But they came out and met with Alfred and the road crew. They sat in the trucks. They took a ride around town and they planned, I suggested that they really should come back at a time when they can actually ride in the trucks and see how different it is to be in the truck as compared to a vehicle when you're riding on these back roads. But they're working on our project. They're very excited about our project for some reason. And they think that whatever they do for us, they can replicate it for other towns. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Yeah, small budgets, lots of dirt roads. Yes. So yeah, so they're working on it. They're really excited. Expect to hear from them in a couple of weeks. What was the thing that we talked to them about that they were gonna replicate with other towns? What was that? Well, I think it's the rodeos and the like. Yeah, trying to develop a way that could be apples to apples comparison are, you know, one of the questions we're asking them to look into is are we sufficiently staffed? Are we sufficiently loading in advance enough additional resources, be it equipment, be it materials for the makeup of roads we have? Now, because all the towns are so different, it's very hard to create an apples to apples comparison. So they're gonna see if they can find data points that could be manipulated so that towns can benchmark against each other and learn and benefit from each other. They're also, it's always to be looking at if there are apps that are being used by other towns that we could utilize in our highway department or our planning for that matter. A long look at our roads maintenance plan and whatnot. And if there's changes or updates that could possibly be discussed with the roads commission. So, and the next steps basically is they're gonna start collecting data and develop design ideas along with alternative scenarios. So if we do, if they recommend a design to say if you go down this path, this is what you could expect to achieve. If you don't go down this path, this is what's likely to happen so that we can see both sides of the proposals that they're bringing to us. And they've been given copies of all the minutes from the roads means we had last year, copies of our winter operations plan, the roads committee, road standards report to have all that. So, and as I pointed out, I think it was Todd Eaton from V-Trans that came to one of the meetings and said that the six hour rodeos are too long. So they're going to take a close look at that which would affect staffing. So. Yeah, one of the things with regards to that was looking at the origin points of the current routes that are established and the proximity to the garage, the start point, the end point, can we avoid deadheading in one direction and maximize our point? Right, one of the things was this, could we, instead of ending further away from the town of the garage, can we end closer to the town of the garage which might mean changing the plow routes. So they were going to look at all of that as well. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting to think if it's done, still the way it was done 30 or 40 or 50 years ago, you know. Right. This is great. Yeah. Yeah, we're really lucky we did, Mac. I'm sure. Great idea. Yeah, it was a great idea. Cool, that's where I thought it. Kind of where we're at with that. On that, let's see, anything else? No, I'm just reminding you that it's pretty much summarized it, yeah. Yeah. Great, let's talk about the budget process. I sent out a note to all the chairs and vice chairs, letting them know that it's that time again, but I'm all on notice. And I got a lot of positive feedback last year from the office staff and from the various people on the different boards and commissions about the way we handled the process, having them come in, kind of give us a clue of what they're doing and if they're gonna do something that's gonna cost money to be thinking about how much that might cost, so on and so forth. So we need to come up with a schedule. And we typically met almost every Monday. So here's some thoughts we can do it that way. We can schedule a budget retreat, collect all the data, and then pick maybe a Saturday or a Sunday, whatever day, for the board to meet and hash it out and go through it until we get it done. Or we could meet at six o'clock and an hour before a regularly scheduled board meeting, but I know sometimes that- I can only do that every other Monday. Right, but that was why I was gonna try to catch up with you to see what your, for instance, next Monday the 28th. I have a hard enough time keeping up with my own schedule, so do you work that day, the 28th? Well, today's the 14th, right? But so every other week, so the 28th, you would be available at six? Yeah, yep, yes, Madam Chair. So formal, so formal. But say, for instance, November 11th, is that good? That's a number of other. Yeah. You. Rose, let it go. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Okay, and the 28th, the 28th, the 25th, in the yoke. Yes. Okay, but are we definitely, can we go back to the options? Yeah, I was just trying to get in my head whether something like that would work. So those are a few options. Maybe other folks have other ideas, but I was just trying to think outside the box. I like one meeting. Go through and hash it out. Long get it done. I mean, I get it would be a day, but we'd rather do one day than- And dribs and grabs. Yeah, because we also lost, we lost truck of stuff. I did, yeah. John, what do you think? Are you willing to devote a day? What time of year? Well, it's gonna be in the, it's probably gonna be in December. Dear season. This is how it works. Me, there's- January, let's say, it's not gonna work. I mean, I'm gonna need downtime. We're gonna have little bits of budget stuff that we have to do in between, but coming up with the final one that we wanna print in the town report, you know, I could see that maybe even happening at the beginning of your town meeting is March 3rd this year, so it's early. We have to get stuff for the printers like a month ahead of time. I think it's gonna be hard to do it all in one day because, you know, we're gonna, it's gonna be like when you go to a job with all the parts and tools, and you're like, you need this answer and this answer, and Sandra's not gonna be there, necessarily. We can ask her to be there. We could, but- If she's there, if she has access to every month of checking. I'm just wondering. Yeah. But we should shoot for that, and if we come up short, we might have to reconvene. Well, if we do it in December, Denise will start to say, oh, we could do it in January, and we could. We could. But then we're hitting up, well, we're hitting up jobs because of we're all- I'm gonna kill a Saturday, because that's what we're thinking, right? Well, but like every other Monday, I'm on for the whole day, so we don't have to wait until six o'clock at night. We could do it at four or five or, I don't know. I work for me, I would make it flexible. You're a little flexible. Yeah, I'm flexible. So it sounds like what I'm hearing, it may be that we need like two half days, because as you said, we might have stuff that we don't know an answer to. We could try to do it even on a Friday, when the office is closed, but Sandra is here. And I'm off every other Friday. Is it the- It's the Friday before that Monday. Before the Monday. Yeah. So that could be a possibility to maybe shoot for that. Katie, what about your schedule? I can't work day-time, so I'm sorry. So we won't have anybody to take minutes or notes. That might not be such a problem, because Sandra will be here before- Well, what if we did Friday? What if we, what is your daytime and- So in other words, what are you available? So you're not available to sit. What if we went five, so you're done at five, so you're gonna get yourself a seat. So we're talking about two days. I bet I can make like four o'clock work. Just not regular- Yeah, so we need to do that at like four. But then Sandra really gets done at four, unless we ask her to come in later. Well, it's a Friday, she wouldn't be here, right? She's been working Fridays, because don't forget she's- She's full-time? Yeah. She's full-time now. So if we don't have, because we're all gonna turn to toast, turn to pumpkins, eat toast, whatever. If we've spent too much time on that? No, no, no, if we start to wait. Right. And as your level is gonna sap, we're gonna have less- Well, we could ask, we could get sandwiches or something to brought in. Jan? I'm trying to remember in your email to us, did you give us a date? We have to have the monies back to you? No, not yet. That was just to give you the heads up, that we're gonna be starting to work on budget and asking the different committees, boards, commissions to come in with their requests. But I'm hearing that you wanna do this work in December, we better have our numbers done by the end of November. Is that what I'm hearing? Right, well I couldn't tell you, right, I couldn't- We haven't got that far yet, and we'll have this discussion. I still like Friday, I like the idea of Friday afternoon, and I realize we're compromising- We could ask four to eight, like four to eight on a Friday. But that's only two hours, I mean, when you think it- No, four to eight, four to eight is four hours. Well, okay. So we do that twice and we get it. Right, but that's, when you think of the time we're trying to make up, how many hours do we spend on this? If we meet every- If we've been, like last year, we met like almost every single Monday. Right, start, and I think I remember, like in October. Yeah, that's why I'm- So let's say we have eight to 10 hours, at least, right? 10 to 15 hours of budget process, which includes hearing from everybody. Well, that's gonna- No, we're gonna hear from them on our regularly scheduled meetings. Okay. I guess that's easier, I think, for the other groups to come in. Okay, all right, so we're not- So we'll have all that information. Okay. Probably more efficient, too. Yeah, we'll be more efficient. We won't be, like, digging deep, yeah. So let's say we have, all right, eight hours of process. Right, so we'd have, like, two Fridays where we would do- Four to eight. Four to eight. We can have sandwiches brought in, you know, from Maple Corner or East Calus, and make it a working- Yeah, I know. We have, you know, that's not- Are you up for that, though? We're planning this around you. I am, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's much too. Yeah. No. That's what we would do. All right, so that sounds good. So now I know how to try to help set this up for everybody in the work. And now we're thinking- Thinking of December. Well, we're gonna do December. We might have to have one in December, like in the middle of December, I didn't bring the December calendar, huh? Okay. I know I can't do the six, so that probably is not good for me, but the others- 12, six is a no for Karen. Yeah, what about- For me, it would be either the sixth or the 20th, that you can't do. That I can do. Those are the two Fridays that I'm off. The sixth and the 20th. Even if we got four, yeah, because you- Yeah, because I worked till six or six, really. Okay, and the other Friday is the 20th, and that's right before Christmas, 12, 20. Yeah, but the 20th, 20th. You're okay with that, right? On the 20th, yeah. I'm not excited about that. December is between Thanksgiving and Christmas gets crazy, right? A Friday night right before Christmas. What about the 13th, something fun was going on? What about December 13th? Rose can't come. Yeah, I can't get here till like seven. Okay, look at January. Friday, January 3rd, and the 10th. I've got to break out my new calendar. I can't know what it should be, God, by the way. You buy the third, you know? You're getting started, and he's talking about it. Yeah, that's- I'm getting a wimpy in my elbow. I'm fine with it. So, one, three, and then one, 10, 20, 20. So, Sharon can guess for both. Rose, which one's gonna be? She could do the 20th. What, are we talking about Friday? January 3rd, 2020. Third, yes. 17th. And 17th. No, what about the 10th? You can't do the 10th, Rose, right? No. Not until 7th, PM. She could be very first. Okay, I'm just, because we're gonna have to watch out and see what the- Yeah, I could do the 30th. Printing. All right. Schedule. Well, what's wrong with the 3rd and the 17th? The 7th, because I'm thinking it might be 17, might be too late. Okay. Because if you don't let the 10th work, what if we do like Friday the 3rd and Saturday the 11th for in the morning? 8 to noon and Saturday the 11th. I'm not coming here at 8. All right. Whenever you want to come. 10 to 2. I could do 9. I would kill the day. All right, 9 to 1. Okay. Okay. All right, wait a minute, wait a minute. We can't you come at 8. Yeah, it's not worth it. Not, you don't want to drag morning people out. Not 9 to 1 to 2. 9 to 1 to 2. 9 to 1 maybe would be done by noon. Roads, you're available on Saturday the 11th. Click. You're gonna find love on your face. I always make it work. And I'll have to check with Judy and Sandra about the printed scotch tape. A lot of them might be pushing it to me. I'd like to throw this out there and then if we can consider a Saturday then we could also consider Saturdays in December. That's right, that's right. That's what I'm thinking too. Yeah, though, that's fine. I like a Saturday morning generally better. And then a Friday? Yes. We can ask Sandra to, if she doesn't have something, we'll raise her. Yes, you can do Saturdays. Not the 7th, I organized reef making. No, I can't do the 7th either. I can't do the 7th either. Yeah, at least we all can't do the same thing. What about Saturday the 14th? Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. Okay, so a yes is all. And that's nine to one? That would be, yeah. And we're scratching whatever the Friday we were talking about. Yeah, and it may be good to have that break and do the next meeting in January because that'll give everybody time to, in the office, to pull figures together and all that because, right. And we'll be hearing about it at the Monday night thing. Right. So what is the regular meetings in between? Can we go to January again? Because I want to see what's the Saturday in January if we're looking at Saturdays now? 11. No, we were worried that was the 4th. The 4th, Saturday, one, four, 20, 29, so one. Is everybody, does that a good day? Not the 4th, I have to work the 11th, I'm sorry. Please, you work your butt off. I work every other weekend. So when I work the weekend, I have Friday and Monday off. That means we're not gonna be able to visit the week apart. We're, we're great. But you're available on the 11th, Rose, you said, right? Yes, yep, that's my weekend off. And we'll just fill it up with all kinds of fun things. All right, so we're back, I'm ready to go to the 11th, back here in the morning. Kate, you're okay on the 11th. The 11th is good. All right, well, let's shoot for those dates and I'll come on Judy and those guys and you can think about the town report schedule and when we have to get it to the printers and all that good stuff. Do I have to decide who's printing it? It's usually, well, last year, I forget now who we have. Oh, Jet, was it JetServo sample? I see what my puppy did. She didn't want to get this union thing's gonna complicate budget insurance. It may because I think that, I don't know how the union's gonna weigh in on anything yet. They haven't said anything other than we got that confirmation. I mean, maybe you can attempt with how we've approached our workforce. Our workforce may be at issues, which is why they were sent to the union, so. Why don't we, I mean, why can't we be proactive and say, hey, you know, we're starting our budget process. Why are you guys gonna show up? Yeah, I can do that. I think it's a fair question since we haven't done this before. I didn't put on my to-do list that I will contact that. And if they have a generic contract line, which they'd like to put on the table, you know, if they're gonna borrow a language from another town, and if they're comfortable with it. Yeah. Let's just start looking at that, and mark that up. And Sandra, let me know, or let us know on Thursday that health insurance is going up 12%. The roughly shield was. Mm-hmm. There are. Insurance? Mm-hmm, yep. It's everywhere. And there's our new FLSA rules, which I'm sure will be on the union's radar, that we'll probably have to look at it. We're doing salaries and all that. That's gonna be tough to absorb, you know, because everyone's home, everyone's insurance, and they'll be here. I'm sorry, back at home, the tax payers are incurring those same increases. And we're only gonna have to be cognizant that, you know, the tax property tax bills went out significantly this year because of the Act 46 debt issue. We don't know how the Supreme Court's gonna rule on that. We had hoped that they would have a decision already, but we don't. They haven't had a hearing. They haven't had a hearing yet. So we don't know how that's gonna, play out as far as where the court's gonna make any decision on Act 46. So I just wanna make sure when we're looking at all of this insurance increases, whatever benefit package might be requested or market factor adjustment stuff are really gonna have to be cognizant of the tax payers because they're the ones paying the bills. There's, I've got some intense dark chocolate. Somebody just needs to open it, pass it around. Go for it here. Thank you, sir. For two. No, it's not. I did not come on an interesting time. Okay. All right, good. So I think that's good. So the two dates that you have, Katie, are in the minutes as potential half-meaning days are December 14th and January 11th. Mm-hmm. Okay. I'll make your hair curl. Curl it, or mine already is. Like it dark. All right, so moving on. Do you want to do the, Do you want more? Oh, I'm sorry. IT discussion. Do you want to do the IT discussion now, or do you think that needs to put off at the end? Um, I can say that in our discussion with office staff, they would very much like us to resolve the. No, thanks. Make a decision as to who we're gonna move forward with. There's been a lot of work upgrades done. We've probably seen some of the emails or not. We have had RV Tech do. They're very pleased with the outcome of the work that's been performed. I can provide everyone with an analysis of, not ready to do it tonight, but I can put this together for everyone if you would like to see it based upon some of the recent work they did for us, what it cost us and what that cost might look like if we move forward with the proposed contract that they gave us. We have other vendors, of course, who have also submitted proposals in good faith. And I would very much like to find a way to have this stuff coming up on the agenda every time. We had, the last time we talked about it though, we had a really clear next step. It feels like we've lost kind of what that was. We wanted to make sure that all the information was in that folder that is on the shared guide for all of us to review. So if anyone had any questions or whatnot. I think that's where we left off. That's where we left it. So it's all in there. If everyone is wanting to, has had a chance to look at that and wants to have a deeper discussion then we propose that we go into an executive session to have that discussion. Because no, we're talking about specifics of these contract proposals. So I would suggest that we're gonna do that. We wait till the end of the meeting and get through other things first. Exactly. All right. So, stuff I've been working on. What did you get? What did you want for your class? It did it. Oh good. It did it. Let us know. Thank you for all your work. Thank you. Pre-dry stuff, Jen. Yeah. So how did you see? I will. She's taking some kind of a class and one of her assignments was to hear our talk about budget stuff. I don't know if she's gonna show up these budget meetings. She's fine as she does. And she lives here in town? It's JC's wife. They have a corner. JC's wife. Oh, oh, I guess I never knew that. Yes. Okay. We're very far apart. And that kind of got stalled out over the summer which was fine to not have to go to another meeting every Thursday or every other Thursday because they were waiting to get a variance from their DRB for the setback and the roads and all that. So that's all been done there. Excited they're now looking at the one where the house is. Yeah, blue house. I think it's blue. Maybe it's gray. It's next to the old store that's gonna be torn down. So they have their variance. They work, their zoning administrator is Bob Martin. And he helped them go through the process. I guess they're, they've got their permits. They're all set. Two conditions in their permit. They have to do with a snow removal plan so that it's not, you know, coming onto Route 14. And the rain run off onto Route 14 because they're gonna have to make the roof such that the pitch in the back makes the rain run off the back. They have, they're not gonna use a gable roof because it would drain onto like 14. And then they're supposed to, they're looking at swales and catch basins. So they put a lot of, they put a lot of work into it. They don't need a state stormwater permit because they're under one acre. They have to get an asbestos testing done. John McCullough and Patrick Cain are the architects on the project. And within the next few weeks they're supposed to come up with a drawing, a more detailed drawing. If you remember several years ago, what was it, three years? Two, three years ago. They had, they were gonna buy that property in Woodbury and the total cost of the building was approximately gonna be $3.1 million. That got shot down in a big hurry. Now they're looking at coming in around 750. And they don't know yet what they're gonna do with the current building across the street, whether they're gonna keep it or they're gonna try to, if they're gonna sell it. So anyway, so that's kind of where things are at with them. Our next meeting, anybody wants to join me is October 24th at seven o'clock and that's at the Woodbury fire station. So Barry Verdenstein has been coming to some of those meetings but not on a, you know, when he's not out of town. Town office roof. Do you have any, can we talk to Andy about that? You know what's going on? We'll ask, you reported something about silicone, right? And then we're gonna- I was gonna get it buttoned up for the winter. Yeah. I'm gonna put it up to the stream, that's... What you need to put out my to do is to check in with Andy on the progress on the fixing the roof for the winter and the auditors, I thought they were gonna come tonight but they're not ready. So that's Solomon and Powers and they're gonna come on the 11th. And there's some documents in the folder from them. They have a letter, their engagement letter, they call it. For the next three years, it's going up $500 for FY20 modern. I think it's 300 going up the next couple of years. So we'll have to keep that in mind. I'm sure Santa will put it in the budget. But overall, I didn't read the line, the management letter. Oh yeah, they need policies. Right. Some of them we're working on. Some of them are suggested ones that I'm making a list of that we need to think about implementing. But overall, there was no significant deficiencies. And as we talked about at staff meeting, it's like they've been doing it a couple of years now. So now they're like, they don't have any big things. So now they're kinda poking at some of these other things which is fine. It's all good. So we will strive to meet their expectation with some of these policies. You saw the certificate of voluntary recognition from the union. The planning commission is interviewing Ashlyn Shannon. Tomorrow night, they've already met with Bob Martin from Woodbury. Ashlyn. There should probably be a third interview. It might be on the phone, I don't know. But we'll meet tomorrow night. Another person? A new person? Quite another one. Yeah, we have to, he's officially applied. So we have to at least honor him with an interview. Is that the guy from Newbury? Okay. So I assume these are not, this is the names they're not asking for confidentiality since we just. No. Okay. No, it was Bob Martin. It's in their minutes. Okay. And it's on their agenda for interviewing Ashlyn Shannon who lives in. She lives in Berlin. She's moving to Montpelier. She works at central remote region. That's it. And with Jan, Jan and I already talked about and she's contacted Bonnie to see if it's a conflict. She works for CVRPC. She got the zoning job. Would it be a conflict? And Bonnie said no, but she wouldn't be able to work on CVRPC projects that are in Calis. So, and then we have this other person whose name I can't remember. So you want to become. I doubt if he'll come. I think we'll do a phone interview because there's several things that he wants that I know we're not going to meet. Yeah. He wants mileage while he's driving. We don't pay mileage, period. It's not in our budget. So, I mean, there's, we can probably, but I think we need to have a phone conversation. Yeah. So you're meeting tomorrow night, which is the 15th. And then you would meet again, oh, not until November, right? No, I'm just trying to figure out the timing on when you're going to come to us with a recommendation. Well, we'll be until November at least. Yeah. Probably act November. Yeah, John's not anxious. Donna is more anxious than John is. And the reality is that whoever we get is a ZA. There's going to be a three month training, minimum to six month training. I'm sure you've got one. It's a true smooth one. Yeah. I think what's interesting, just so that to be aware of some of this is that a couple things that are coming out, if we start looking at people that are not living in town or in neighboring towns and they think they can do this job, we're going to have to have permits online. We're going to have to have a lot of other things that are online that we do not have. So it's all things that we're talking about. Right. And yeah, and I guess. I'm going to ask the patients. One of the questions is how available are they during the day to meet with applicants? You know, we can have weekend hours or anyways, there's a lot of little detail things to work out. But I just want to give you guys the update on that. So it's moving along that town government pace. Then I know as part time, what is the anticipated schedule? You mean of hours? Yeah. Right now, I think. The ZA? Yeah. Is it like 20 hours a month? OK. And we pay $400 a month, which is more than Woodbury Pace. I think Woodbury Pace $500 every six months or something. Nobody's going to get rich on this job. But you know, it's a good, it's a good learning. I mean, it's worth it. And actually the time of year isn't bad because it's not going to be as busy with applications in the winter. It balances out. There's probably not that many applications in the winter and there's much more in spring and summer. But it balances out that it's 20 and average of 20 hours a month, according to John. Well, and that person would also take over Dot's role of scheduling and the administrative function that Dot is currently doing to schedule DRB hearings and get notices out and documents out. So that's where we're at with that. I talked briefly with Jan because it was brought to my attention that perhaps the Listers, this is why Ed's here, I figured, the Listers right now are elected. It's a job that is ever more complicated, time demanding, computer training. What else, Jan? Very complicated and complex. And what do you guys currently work now? How many hours a month do you usually work now? I probably work, I don't know about Wilson and John. You'd have to ask Sandy, Sandra, what the hours are. I work probably 20 hours a month. I mean, it depends. But you often all three meet together, right? We do when we want to discuss some things. Inspection, we'll be starting inspections, I hope, soon. And that's an all three-some type of thing. And that adds the time frame because we're all going to be looking at things. I don't have off the top of my head how much we budget for the Listers. You budget 12,000 salary. Salary. So my question was because they're elected and I don't think anybody's up this coming year. I am. You are. I think I'm up next year. And are you planning? Who can call it up? John, I think, was up last year. Was he? Wilson was finishing Laura's term. Maybe it's Wilson, I don't know. Wilson finished out Laura's term. Did we have 20 months to end it? It was he ended. It's me. 2020, yeah. Wilson's 2021. Yeah, Wilson's 2021. Are you planning to run or do you know what I'm planning to run? I'd go and run more term because I finally think I'm learning more. I'm supposed to have more time. It takes three years to know a lot of questions to ask. And then you can start doing stuff for three years. Until that time, it just is so complex, right? It's so complex. The book says that, excuse me, that your term expired this year in 2019. So if you just got reelected to four years, that means you're I didn't give, I wasn't on the ballot last year. John was. Well, then this is wrong. This is 20. That's the last time I showed it. Oh, right, it is, right. Yeah, it says John McCullough's term expires in 2022. Well, we don't have to worry about that tonight because we can ask Barbara Orr's duty to look into it. 2019. I wonder what last year was. This is two years ago, not last year. But on the website, you've got me at 2020. Right. So I don't know which is right, but we don't have to figure that out tonight. We can ask somebody to look into it. Just saying. I'm sure Katie will put it in the minutes, right? So anyways, I'll put it in the to-do list. Yeah. So anyway, by the time 2023 comes around, who knows what you guys are going to be wanting to do? And I think there's a problem. I mean, just like, who do you get? I mean, if you want to get somebody younger, and it would be nice to have somebody that wanted to do whatever, you know, more educational type things. We're at an age where I'm not interested in learning now that stuff. It might be nice. I don't mind going to the classes that the state takes or never it gives or any of that. Well, and I had asked Jim Barlow, because this came up last year. And I had asked Jim Barlow, our town attorney, whether we needed to update our charter. He said it isn't by charter, but it needs to be a vote by at the annual town meeting. So we need to put it on the morning. To make it an employee. To make it an assessor. An assessor. So effectively, you'd be moving the board of listeners, replacing that with an assessor title, assessor position. So all the powers and functions of the listeners have become that of the assessor. And that's one person. That's one person. And if you put it on your town meeting morning and it passes, you have to make an appointment within 45 days. Within 45 days. Holy smokes. So I'm trying to get this out there. That's tight. We need to be thinking about this. Find someone who's interested. Right, exactly. So that's why I'm bringing it up. Because I don't want to have it hit us at the last minute. I don't think we need to do it this year at the annual town meeting. Well, we might want to think about it. If we're going to do it, we might want to do it this year. While we have Jan and John still interested in being the listeners, we could point them into one of them into the assessor job. No, I'm not an assessor. Oh, you'd have to be a professional. That's a license. There's no license and requirement for that position. It really isn't. The state has put together a certification program. And there are four levels of that. The EPA 1, the 2, 3, 4. And there's always seven of us in the state that are four. That's it. Wow. And so there's no requirement that you have to do that. But if you have an assessor and they pursue that avenue, then it's the idea that, of course, she's talking about it. It's also to get to the level I'm at, for example, it's a seven-year minimum process, absolute minimum. And probably, I don't know, 8, 10 classes you'd have to have to go through the assessor. But you wouldn't have to have somebody necessarily certifying at that level. But you probably wouldn't want to have people that knew what they were doing. And that's where it becomes difficult. This thing is, if I'm not trying to take over your meeting, I'll just tell you to shut up. No, you're changing form at every lesson. You know, what's happened is that over the last 10 years, specifically, with the changes in income sensitivity and the changes in current use. And now what happens is that somebody withdraws two acres from their property enrolled in current use. Listers get notification of that. Then they have to set a new value on what is being withdrawn for that within the next 30 days. I mean, the value of the two acres of the Listers. And it's all done online. And so it can happen any month and any time. So the function of the Listers office or the assessor's office is really it never stops. It never stops throughout the course of the year. And so they invite you to October 15th. You have to have your final 411 on December 31st. You have to have everything to create. When you say you have to have it in, who has to have it in the Listers? The Listers do, to the state. Or the assessor, if that's what you mean. Or the assessor. So there's all these different time frames you have to meet. Then you can throw in all the income sensitivity, which runs to the amount of the middle of October. There's so many changes on this stuff. How are towns coping with it? Well, they aren't. I was about to tell you that I'm the assessor in multiple towns. I am. Do you live in Calis? I'm sorry. I'm misintroduction. I'm Ed Claude Felcher. I've been at every appraisal in Calis about $189. Yeah, he's had a lot of shit. So there were two towns that work for NEMR. And they're senior appraisers for NEMR. There were two towns that contact this last year that decided to go to assessors. And they hadn't picked anybody to serve in that function. And here they had their 45 days. So I get this emergency phone call. Can you come and do this stuff for us? I'm thinking to myself, I really don't have time. My staff, I have 12 people who work for me. I don't really have time for them either. But we're not going to let you flounder around out there. NEMR will come in and take care of stuff. And we can pull things off because we're really efficient at it. We know what we're doing. So that happened with two towns last year. And it happens every spring. After town meeting. After town meeting. Because they don't plan ahead like we're trying to do. Exactly. So it's something you want to think about, I think, a year or two in advance. I don't think it's wrong if you have Jan and John where they're willing to run for listeners that you have to jump right in on that. But at some point in time, they may come along and say, I've had enough. And then you can't find somebody else. If you don't have an assessor, are you required to have three listeners? You're required to have three board of listeners. You should have three and must have at least two. Because you have to have at least two to sign the grant list. I'm just thinking that, for instance, somebody didn't want to run and didn't run. And we were down to two. That would give us time to the next town meeting, put it on the warning, and hopefully have somebody in line for the position. I mean, is the state not going to do anything to help with this? I mean, this is just a list of jobs. It's huge. It actually has gotten worse and worse and worse. There are fewer people than it. There are a few. I went to the valamine two weeks ago. And there were some people that were like under 50 that were there. It was incredible. I think it was. Under 50. It must not be from Vermont. So there are a few that are coming along, but there are a few in far between. I think that over time, I think people are going to come in different lines. There's a lot of nice things here. We do a lot of great things. We're really expensive. My tax is a bad too, by the way. Yeah, no doubt. Yes, yeah. But I think there are things that can draw people here. And the young gentlemen here earlier, they like to get involved. It's a good, it's a niche sort of thing. And I don't see the property tax going away because we don't have any other avenue that we can afford. No. But we're not going to, I mean, if we had an assessor, a professional assessor, that's going to cost us more than what we're spending now. A lot. Like, what do you think we would be looking at? Well, yeah. I mean, we don't, we don't only be a part of the tax. Yeah, we don't need a full-time assessor. We would, it would be part of the tax. Here's the problem of meaning that assessor position that I run into is what you mentioned earlier. On the assessor to town, I really need to be there to get my physical work done, you know, four to eight hours a month. But those things that come in, that you have to deal with the current use issues that come up. Some correspondence that may come in. Keeping track of the property transfers. The phone calls, somebody comes in and got a question about enrolling in current use, predicting something out of current use. Who takes care of that? That's the problem. And if I'm this assessor, and I don't, I have, if I were a assessor here, I live here. But I'm not, I must have someone do that. But that would be okay, but if I'm coming from away, I get, so my, it's not, it's a four-hour job and now it's gotten bigger. So, it's not like you can just come in once a month and have that function done. No, I wasn't thinking that you would be able to. I don't have grievances. How does that work with the assessor? Yeah, that's what I was doing. It's only one other person. That's what I was just gonna have to do. The assessor, it's their show. It's their show. Okay. It's their show. So, we have a, a baitment issue. Then the assessor. Would be the person that would represent them at pass. It was their side of that. Okay. And I had a question because we had to do the charter so that we could hire a treasurer that wasn't a resident. So, would we run into the same thing that we'd have to have the assessor put on the charter? No, you don't have to do the charter. You don't have to be a resident to be an assessor. No, you don't. And Jim said we would just have to put something on the warning. The town would have, the town would have a warning and the town would have a vote. To switch from Lister to assessor. Right. But there's no residency requirement. But it's gotten very complicated. It's gotten very time consuming you know, I'm an assessor in the town of Milton, for example. And. That's a big, a way bigger town. It is, it's 4,400 parcels, yeah. But what's interesting to me, I have a staff, I have an assistant assessor and I have an administrative assistant that they're, they're out of time. But the things that I have to deal with there, you'll appreciate, it's all current use. It's just all current use. It's Milton. Milton. It's all I get done when I go there. That's it, yeah. Yeah, I believe it. And sometimes they get the answer in appraisal questions. Somebody come to the door lines. Right. And most of them are withdrawals of sections of larger lots. They are. That would be like five or six families there that are farm families and they have grandkids. Right. So they're always pulling something out or doing something in part, they're part of the business and it just gets complicated. Is there a better way, is there a better way, is there a better way to do that? That you. I'm sorry. The state is. Could recommend to the, to the state legislature or. This is the world according to Ed. The state does it completely wrong. Oh, okay. And they, but they just won a court case. I just think it was wrong as well. Okay. But nobody wants to listen to me in terms of how they, how they do their function. But I think as long as there is current use and I'm not, but I'm opposed to it. I think it does some nice things for us. I think it preserves. I think it does do preserve. Whatever models the way it does, right? I think it does. We paid dearly for it. But if we want to look at the way it was, was working in Barnett this past week, we're doing a re-prison there. It was absolutely gorgeous. It is. Absolutely gorgeous. It is a piece of Barnett. It is. Barnett. But it's been. Right, Barnett. But there's a lot of places that are enrolled there and can serve land in Sierra. It's a beautiful, beautiful. And Cal, it's a beautiful, whenever I go around the state, people say we're from that side from Cal. They say it's a beautiful town. I said it is. It's a beautiful town. You know, so, yeah. We have 143, 144 parcels in current use. Just out of 500. So 20% of Cal is in Cal. 67 and no. And I have 104 steps, so you have it. And so, yeah, that. And the other thing that's gotten better and worse, I think, is we have to do our sales equalization online after you've done your property transfer. You can't do it in one step. You have to do it in two steps. And so that's the other thing. And the equalization that has become, you know, more important than we get that right. And that's what happened to us, the last update that we did. You mean Cal's? Yeah. Oh, and that affects. My answer wrote a paper, a white paper for Val because the impact of the year before rebrizzles complete that the equalization must be accurate because it was not accurate in our case. It was no fault of the individual listers, by the way. It was a fact that we had a change of a lot of listers over the course of time. And things were just not picked up. And so therefore, the equalization was wrong. And that's where, is that the thing where it affects your CLA, that's what I'm looking for. So I understand that the common level appraisal, what it's really used for, it becomes a divisor for the education tax rate in the state. It's incurring use now. Incuring use. So when you are less than one, it makes the number tax rate higher. And if you're greater than one, it makes the tax rate lower. And so that's why a lot of towns, I've worked in Charlottes since 94, they make sure that their common level is always right around one. And if it gets to down 95, they're saying, yeah, let's do a rebraiser because it affects the high end property so drastically because the tax rate gets artificially inflated. Right. So the legislature this year passed some laws that they changed the guideline so that a common level is now, the lower end is 85%. So if you go low 85%, you're gonna do a rebraiser. It used to be 80. And the other end is now at 115. And there used to be nothing there. So what happened is we had several towns throughout the state. They had a common level of 120. Well, 1.2 becomes the divisor. They get a huge tax break in the rest of us to pick it up. Right, that's not there. And a state-wide property tax. It is, so they put that, they negotiate with the legislature, go to 85 or long 15. In my opinion, I think we should do an update every year across the whole state. We'd never have all this big function. Yeah, right, right, right. I work in Washington state. And what they do in Washington state is they do change their base values every year. Really? Yep. New cost tables every year. They look at their lane values if they wanna change or not. Then they do a six-year inspection cycle so that every six years they're all in state. Or at a sale. Pardon? Or at a resale, right? I mean, a lot of states, when a property is sold, it triggers an assessment. We don't do that. We do not, it's not legal. Right, just actually, no, but lawyers work really hard to avoid that. They do. Does Washington state have current use or something? Oh, they all, every state has. Every state. Every state has something. Okay. Every state has something. We're not gonna crack this nut. No, no, I'm just trying, I mean, this is really helpful. I mean, I came down because I saw it was on the agenda because I'm not gonna take over this, this meeting. I don't have any other words of wisdom. But if it comes up and you need some resources, I'm just a mile off the road. Right. You know, so just feel free to call me. I'm glad to come down and talk with you about it. And I just, it's a big decision for a town. A lot of towns are making that decision now. Right. And they're struggling with it. I think a struggling is gonna be able to find somebody. Well, that actually leads to a question that I was gonna ask. What is the path? You know, if it sounds like something that lends itself to apprenticing, maybe. Like how do you get started? You get a, what happens is people just get elected. The person who's not there, it's voted from the floor to be a Lister. Oh, no, it's gotta be elected. No, it's gotta be elected. And then you get elected in March. And one week later, I'm going to a class I had with all this stuff. And I don't have no clue what I'm talking about. I think, I don't know if it was a NEMRIC class. She got to listen to me talk and I'm like this over her head because she has no idea what the language even is. The language. Why don't we cast her election? And then, and then the next two weeks later was something from the state. Yeah. Their annual learner, Lister. To tell me. To be meeting. You know, I do a camera seminar in February every year. And then we do a grand list seminar in March every year. And then the state does some of their stuff. Beginner Lister. Beginner Lister also in March. So you said you have a couple of people in your office that help you with doing assessor work for towns. Are you making that part of what NEMRIC has to offer now? We do maintenance and assessment work in 35 towns in Vermont. So. It's something that. So that's a resource if we go to that route and we need an assessor, we might contact NEMRIC to say, do you have somebody available to be our assessor? We have to appoint somebody in four to five days. If you did that, you would want to make that call. And I mean, there are other contractors around, but nobody has the resources that we have, frankly. You would make that phone call and I'm sure that somebody would make sure that you did. Your work would get done and you would get a grand list out. It would be better if you had a year's notice though. It would. Right. Well, we have to know. Right. We'd have to know budget-wise too. So I mean, that's why we're having this discussion now. So it doesn't slam us. And so you said it would be a significant cost increase. Well, I'm charging towns now at $85 an hour. Plus mileage to get there. So a town hour size with our level of demand. I don't think our current use parcels are subdividing as quickly as Milton say or you're sure a lot, but. But, you know, you have to create such a, let's activity here. If you have a big year that's a lot of permits coming out, you're probably talking, I bet you get your work done in five to seven days. Your field work. I was a lister here in the late 80s as well. And so Don and I would drive around on Saturdays and do Don Singleton and I would drive around on Saturdays and get all the stuff done. The inspectors. Yeah. So what do you think, 1,000 hours for Calis per year? I don't think it'd be that much to tell you the truth. I'm very less than 1,000. I think it'd be, look, I think you count on probably 15 days. It probably works up along those lines. And it wouldn't be full days. It's 120 hours. A year? 85 bucks an hour. Please come up with sure. That's cheaper than we thought it would be. I did six hour days. I said nine, six hour days. We're budgeting 12,000 a year. Day. I think you would cover that. I think that would cover what you're trying to do. You think so? Okay, well that's good to know. It would at, even at eight hours a day, eight hours a day, 15 is 10,200, not kind of expenses. Well, that's what it does include mileage. Right, but that's eight hour, eight hour, eight, 15, eight hour days. The other thing we spend a part of it at a time on is mapping. I mean like we just had, we had Christine here for six hours of work, four hours actually. So we try to keep up with our personal math. But if we could lighten the load on the listers and make it less unpleasant and less demanding, like I said, a heavy duty stuff, we could assign that to an assessor. Then what? A network and then the mapping and all this ancillary stuff, we could have listers. But you've still doubled your, well you'd be reducing some though. We'd be, well, just saying. It might come out. It's gonna be hard to get people like you and John going forward. It is. That's reality, and you guys are martyrs. But you don't know, we're just gonna come in and we'll just step up and say I'm interested in doing this. Yeah, I'm keeping Laura, I hope you call me Laura. I don't think she would. I thought that Laura was gonna be, you know, a keeper. It just didn't happen. And that happens all the time. Right, yeah, life changes. When she worked with James and I, we were doing the updates. She worked around with us. She was sharp. She was, she was sharp. So it's too bad that we lost that resource. Yeah, yeah, it is. But it's, it's. She still helps us with the town report. Oh good. It's not gonna get any easier and it's not gonna get any cheaper. Right, right. Is PBR gonna put out feelers at high school level? Like, you know, high school kids being assessors and stuff like that? You know, and they have. And I, I thought for a while, the thing that we should do in Vermont and I actually told the previous director of this is that it's not part of your meeting. I apologize. Well, let's do, there are several of us that are at a certification level and experience that we could teach at one semester course. Let's go to VTC or let's go to Johnson or whatever. Let us teach a one semester course or a pre-exil and then course based, course one on one. And then do a semester of an internship with somebody. Yeah. And so there's a one year program and that can put, it's a better way to keep people up. There's nobody who knows about this. No, that's just it. It's just like, you would take the edge off. Yeah. And they won't let you do that? You know, it's, the director I spoke with changed and so, yeah. So he's no longer there. I haven't approached Jill with all of this. I have to get Ernie's blessing and there's really only probably five or six of us that can teach that course. I mean, I've taught college a lot and so I don't have to set that up, but. Right. But there's, you know, it's a lot of effort. It's like it's an up-and-coming place for somebody if it's a year, you know, a year course, six months college, you know, six months in class from six months on the job. It's a really good way for somebody to get a career started. You know, I'm looking for free people. I would be looking for free people this spring who I'm collecting. I'm gonna be looking because I have, I'm turning away from all of this. These are full-time positions that pay what? Just trying to think the cost of power. $45,000 now plus benefits. No. $45,000 a year. Plus, plus in addition, all healthcare is taken care of. Wow. That's pretty good. In four weeks vacation. That's a great job. There's somebody just coming off. The problem is you have to work for me. That's the problem. Where is it? Well, you need really good health care. Yeah, right. Where is it? We're all over the state, but I'm looking for somebody at the Northeast Kingdom. I need two people at the Northeast Kingdom. Yeah. So you, no, no. Is JD still here? No, I'm just thinking about people I know. Would you like to have a minute? Yeah. I mean, what a great way to get you to work. I'm not looking for a job, but thanks, John. It's, you know, it's not for everybody. You know, it's, I don't do a lot of day questions. I have been in the last month or so. I have more fun going to the locker room doors and talking to people. It really, I've had a lot of fun, really. But I have some of my staff, but that's a scary thing for them to go up and do it. Just go, hi, I'm Ed. I'm working on the reappraisal for the town. And I'm gonna go through all our house. So not everybody can do that and make them feel comfortable with it. Right. Yeah, they hear appraisal, ding, ding, ding. My taxes are going up. My taxes are gonna go up. Yeah, yeah. You have to be able to dispel all that and make them feel comfortable. Yeah. And I teach my, tell my staff, this is a privilege to get into somebody's house. It's not an requirement. It's a privilege. It's great. They can run you out as fast as you can, as you can terminate it out of here. Is there any way to piggyback any of this career stuff with those looking to get a real estate license or like those people have? They're real. That kind of thing. Real estate association. Real estate association. This thing, but they're different. They really are. They're not quite the same thing. But I was thinking if somebody was a real estate agent and they aren't always selling houses, if that would be something. And there certainly are. It sounds like it's the same. There are a lot of, there are listeners in towns that are realtors. There are. It's a different mindset, so. You have the skinny on some property deals. Yeah. But then they're also limited one day. There's some limitations as to what they can really do without a conflict. Well, I'm so glad you showed up. I really appreciate that. Paul, no, no, no, no, no. It was very informative. Very informative. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. We have a video documented now. It's a class. Now. Atoy should be ready. You're on TV. You want a piece of talk for me? No, thanks. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Ed. Thank you. What's interesting is, we had this conversation in the context of Lister and Assessor. But we could have it around zoning administrator or even being select board. It's not the time, but the knowledge and just kind of awareness from everybody's part. And the fact that we have to do things differently. I think we have to do things differently from soup to nuts, A to Z, Assessor to Zoning Administration. A to Z. How convenient is that? Good job. Yeah. But we're either everything is going to become professional and not doable, or we're going to all of us retrain ourselves about how to do things differently, how to talk about it differently, how to invite young people, young or anybody. I don't need to say young. Anybody who hasn't been involved before. And make it doable. And I think it starts with, it starts with everybody being kind of where they are. How do we make this more doable? What are we, how do we kind of lighten the load for all of us? Streamline, yeah, bringing, having a class to just, here's what being a Lister is. Even if it's not your career. Just like, oh, how about knock that first three years of learning curve off and make it so much more doable? Well, I think that's why it's good that we're talking about this now. Because I think we're, you know, by putting things on our radar ahead of time, it makes us more able to understand and plan and put some feelers out. And I know I will only do another three years. I don't think I'll do another three years beyond. Yeah. And I would do this. And I think the same thing is with John. I'm not sure about Wilson how strong he feels. He's really good at property transfers, getting better. But, you know, I just, I know that there's going to be a break. And that's why, you know, that's why I'm bringing it up now. So that it's on everybody's think tank. You know, what are we going to do? And when? And maybe one of the things we do is try to, is try to do some, not just passing on the baton, but. Training? Yeah, training, shadowing, you know. It's not that class right now. Right. That would be such a great opportunity for the folks that, you know, they want some kind of a career path. And it seems like the league would sponsor that at BTC. There's time to, you know, to be able to do it. I know. Well, anyways, I'm glad it came. Yeah, I am, too, because I'm glad it's up. All right. That's all I was here for, too. OK. I could have moved it up by now. That's all right. I don't think you, yeah. I was here for the ZA and then. Yeah. Thanks, Jan. Thanks, Jan. Thank you. I'm trying to schedule a time to meet with Alfred. I'm waiting for him to get back to me. When we met with the office staff on Thursday, we talked about the new server, which has been ordered, and a keypad entry system. So that people are constantly losing their keys, and then Judy or Barbara has to come down on Saturday or Sunday, whatever, to let somebody in. So Cliffs checked out some keypad entry systems. Here, to the top. Yeah, just like anything else nowadays, there's so many different options available out there. But after talking over with the office staff, they would prefer a very simple keypad system that if the battery in it or pastor or whatever powers it dies, you can use a key to open the door of emergency. So just one that's installed on the door itself? It would be on the door itself. It wouldn't be internet of things. Smart type device would just be a basic keypad that they could assign different codes. You can buy that at all the shops. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what I told them. If that's all they want to do, we can do it for 100 or less. Yeah. How secure are those compared to? I mean, nothing's 100% secure because I can smash them. It's going to be every bit as secure as what you got there. It is. I mean, bottom line is if you've got a latch on this side and you've got a lock on the other side, somebody could pop that glass and reach in and open the latch. Right, that's what I mean. So either one's not 100% secure. So let you know how complicated these things can be. I was at a public meeting in Randolph at their town office. And the meeting ended at 5 to 9. And the conversation went out into the parking lot. And I went to open my car out of this remote where it senses I'm like, I left my key fob on the chair, locked. And so the person with the code, we had to call her. She was in Braintree. She drives a half an hour. But by the time she got home, came back. It was now 4 to 10. She comes back, beep, beep, beep. Wouldn't work because only certain people were authorized to open that building after 9 PM. And her code doesn't work. So I wound up having to find a place to sleep in Randolph because of that awful system. I would not advise that system. If anybody can do it, you can, John. I'm glad it wasn't me. I was not a happy camper. No, I bet not. No. So yeah, and talking with office staff, they imagine different scenarios. And that's why it came back around to just a simple system. And can you change? And this isn't one of those systems where different people would have different codes and this timing thing. All of them come with some degree of that. But after talking to office staff, that's not what they want at all. They want one code. And if for any reason they need to change it, it can be easily changed. If for whatever reason, somebody was coming in, everyone would have the same code. Right. Just because it has a capacity doesn't mean that you configure it to do all those things. Exactly. And if for some reason, one of the committees came one night and they punched the code in and it did work, Judy said, yeah, that's not a problem for her to come and use the key to open the door. But what it does give them is if things start spiraling out of control, well, now we don't know who has access. Who has the code? Who does it? They can just change it. Change it, that's right. Well, the problem now is because keys have been given out to different people over the years. So when they're no longer on a committee or they still have a key. It's a lot of people lose that key when they can't get in. In the long run, it's going to be less expensive to punch a new code in versus changing the locks every time. Right. So that's something Andy could put right in. Andy must because it's actually just a pleasure. So I'm going to send them a few links and they can decide design-wise what they like. So I remember we had that. Polish brass, nickel, whatever. Remember we had that issue on a Friday? I think it was when Sandra was here and the door wasn't locked and somebody came in. Would she, how would that work? Would you still lock it? She would still deadbolt it. Let me finish. So she would be able to still lock it from the inside. Yes. And because you wouldn't be able to code it from the inside right to be locked. There's a deadbolt to each lock. Yeah, I know, John. I know I'm just asking. All they would do is flip the deadbolt. That would still be there. OK. I guess. That's OK. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah, it functions just like the key works on one side or the keypad works on one side. Yeah. There is a manual lock that you would lock from the inside. OK. And the other consideration was would you want to have two lock system. In other words, there's the door knob and there's the deadbolt. And right now what we have is we have a deadbolt that uses one key and a door knob that uses another key. And the systems that they pretty much have decided they think is going to work for them, if the keypad would function on the deadbolt only, the door knob would only serve as a door knob. It would not be a key dot knob. OK. That's the difference. So we would only have one key. There's only one key to open the door. So you'd have to have a key and the code to get in? No. Just the code. It wouldn't be double. So you're going to have a separate security area. If both those are locked, you need two keys to open it. So imagine if the door knob, the thing that you turned, didn't have a key on it at all. Right. And all you had to do was unlock the deadbolt. Right. So if you're in here on Friday by yourself, you throw the deadbolt. That's my concern. I want to make sure that they're safe. Well, but then I imagine that the reason we have a deadbolt and the handset key is out of the security thing. Right. So it's for maintenance. So when the maintenance people need to come in or if there's going to be janitorial work or whatever, they have a sign they put up to say don't throw the deadbolt because those people only have a key to the door knob. It was recommended that we have both when the office was built because of the vault and all those kinds of things, all the valuable stuff that's in here. So it's harder for somebody to get in because they'd have to have two keys to get in. So that's why it was set up that way. So we should check with our insurance because insurance these days want a deadbolt. Yeah, we should check. We're going to have the deadbolt. We're not going to have this. But you have to enable. I mean, if the protocol is to not enable the deadbolt. That's not what I heard. We're going to enable the deadbolt and not. Exactly. Okay. But it does make sense to talk to the insurance company to see if there are other requirements. Right. Because now we have a two key entry system and we would be down to basically just the keypad. Yes. For entry. And that's my question is how easy is that? Or we can keep head of both. They could disable the keypad on one but if they down the road needed to for some reason lock the office down. Right. If we had a problem and just for one day they could have a different code on the other one. Right. You could have the doorknob as it is right now requiring a key. Yeah. And you just opt not to use it unless there's some special circumstance. So we can have a further discussion with them. Yeah. That's a hard conversation with the insurance company. Yeah. The problem is we have so many keys out there who has them. So we want to know your thoughts. Right. Probably not the best way to do it. It's so bad actually that you did this. That's probably the best way. There's probably somebody at VLCT that can pass it. And then the other consideration is do you do the same thing for both doors? Right. Because this door here, what does that drone behind you have? Yeah. See it has double. It's the same setup as this one. It saves lock all the time. Yeah. They even have it locked during the day. They only open it in bug season. Bug season, yes. But that one can stay locked. Right. We're not worried about how the problem, we only want to make sure we still, we at least still need to be able to have keys. Right. If we're concerned about the volume of keys that's out there not knowing where they go, very least you have to change these locks. Right. I don't know that everybody has keys to those anyways. It's the same key, isn't it? I don't know. I never tried it. I know a way to find out. Yeah. Actually, this one would be easier for somebody to break in. Yeah. Just around here. Anyways, so enough of that. Town hall, it's probably four to five weeks completion of this phase. I talked to John McCullough. He's going to come in hopefully next meeting to 28th. Do an update. Did you mean to skip traffic ordinance? No, I said that Alfred and I are trying to pick a date. Oh, that's what that was about. You should go over and see the town hall if you haven't already. There's some kind of a tour. Forced out, right? Yeah, it's, I think it's pretty much down. Beautiful one. Yeah. There's a tour, I think it's weekend of the, 20, I don't know, 26, 7th. I don't know, something like that. Or they're doing a tour around town, four different houses and the town hall. And it's a $25 cost. And the proceeds are going to Ernie Parrish's family. You know about this, right? C.B. Sundermutz-Logway's management district there. Budget thing. Budget thing. It says that they're not, we're not going up for F by 21. So you would have filled those to those. And he's on the executive committee. Right. I think I'm fiscal. You might be chair of the Budget Committee. Yeah. They're very prudent as compared to how they used to operate. Yes. Look at that. Yes, they are. Do you have any other updates on C.B. Sundermutz-Logway's management? All right, not me. Okay. All right. Anything anybody else wants an update on? I don't know. It seems like, I mean, there's a ton of stuff going on. So just that point, I know. That roof problem, it's not a leak. It appears that the problem is we get an ice dam and we get backing up. And there's a combination of reasons. But Andy Felice, our building maintenance guy. Superintendant, what do you call him? Building commissioner. He is speculating at this point and needs still, what he needs to do before winter or before it gets to the point of last, what it did last year. He just needs to get in there and scope out what's going on toward the Eve area. And he's of the belief. And as is Hutchins' roofing, I think they came out high ball that there's enough heat loss that it's heating the roof and causing the melt and therefore the ice dam. So it may be simpler than, we have damage, we think. Right. And it may be much more minor than we're worried it could be. But it may be a relatively simple fix. I'm sure that if you get air sealing it better and it might involve more insulation or foaming in there. But you might be able to do an insulation fix to get us to the winter just a quick. Yeah, I just want to make sure. It's going to be a better thing next year. It's just, it's been going on for like two years trying to get some kind of a fix. And so I keep bringing it up because I want somebody to do something for this season. And it's really hard to get somebody to do this. He's got a full-time job and because of his skill set, he's very much in demand as are all these people. And I think we lost Ernie, so there's a huge gap there that's going to be unmet to someone else. You know, those people provide a community service. I know. Ernie go livelihoods. Um, the only other thing was we had the Curtis Pond Dam was inspected by the state. Yeah. Did you read it? Yeah, I scanned it pretty quick. Yeah, I guess. In the same condition we always thought it was bad. Yeah. And they had some ideas which I thought were, that it's a different approach than before. They were basically saying don't touch, don't do anything. Mm-hmm. And now they're coming up with some ideas. But it's still not the town's responsibility. It's not us. Once we do it, we own. Right. You don't want to. Sharing a liability, so. So we're very, very careful about what we do. I know they wanted some topsoil, which Toby was trying to track some down to give them. But all they can do is dump it. And then. Put it in a pile and then you can. And they can do what they want with it after that. Yeah. Because they also contacted me about a tree. And I said. Yeah, the statement said tree cut. Yeah, right. There's a tree that they want cut. I guess Dan Westin came out and looked at it because it's technically a WEC problem. Because they wanted to know, they wanted to have the road crew come out and look at it. And I said, mm-mm. We're not cutting. Yeah, on what basis Denise, do we even bring soil over? Just as, oh, you need some topsoil. Oh, like I needed topsoil. And I got some because they had a pile. Right. Yeah. Okay. No. That's special. And they can, Don Heist can do with it what he wants. Topsoil. Okay. And WEC is going to try to come out and do something with the tree. Because like, no, I'm sorry, we can't do anything with the tree. WEC should be really contacting Father Gills because they own that. Yeah. I'm actually the woman who bought the Father Gills house as an attorney. And I said, whoa, you bought this house with all that damn stuff. Oh, I knew about it. And this is what she said to me. Eileen Simpson. Eileen about four or five, four years ago, 2016 told me that she made sure that she did not purchase that. Part of it. That aspect of the property. I don't know. I saw my, my guess is Father Gills to own whatever. I don't know how they did it. Yeah. They would just, it would, the deed would be clear what is not being conveyed. Right. Right. So she said she knew about it in advance and that was part of the negotiation. Yeah. She negotiated that out of the tree. Which is really interesting. Isn't it? Eileen Simpson. Yes. She was on the DRB for one hearing. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Minutes. One more thing. Business, business, et cetera. I, everyone probably remembers me or so ago. Larry Bush came in and invited us all to take a walk through the Council force. The Council force. A couple each weekend. I took them up on the offer. It was very informative having Eric there. Just talking about it. Yeah. He's the, he's the guy, as Larry said, who wrote the book. Take care of the force. So the reason I bring this up is because there will be some proposal or proposals coming from the Conservation Commission as to something they'd like to put on the ballot. On the morning. The old growth idea. I talked to Larry because I wanted to see if he was coming, wanted to come tonight. He said they weren't ready. No. It'll be a little bit before they're ready. But yeah, there'll be something to put on a warning. Let the town decide how we want to manage our town forest. Well, yeah, because Larry's goal is to have us not do anything with this particular forest. No cutting and just let things fall as they may. And things like that. Yes. There are experts who are truly qualified experts arguing on both sides of that equation. Is it better to just let it do its thing? Or is it better to manage management techniques and whatnot? The most current issue of seven days does have an interesting article about that argument. I don't know the history of this town forest. I do remember when I lived in Woodbury. There's a town, Woodbury town forest, at least one. And that was conveyed by the Lyre family. You'll know John Myer was a resident. His dad Hugo conveyed that to the town. His reason for bequeathing it to the town was he was concerned that regular folks couldn't afford to have a wood lot, but heated their house with wood and maybe if they had a tight budgetary time they could go get with a permit from the town select board, go in and they could cut marked trees and supply their homes with heating fuel. So then the Conservation Commission, not knowing that history, did the same thing. This is some 20-some years ago. Trying to make it more a natural thing and allowing it to evolve into a normal growth. And Hugo was still alive then and he spoke up and said that was not the intent behind me giving that, donating that land to the town. So I guess we just want to make sure there aren't any. Well there would be a deed or something, right? If somebody donated that land? Well, yeah, but I don't know if that was, and not all the stuff is always articulated. We just want to make sure. I don't know how long ago that was. I thought we bought some of that land from Stan Morse or he told me he sold, I think it was added to. Well we should ask the Conservation Commission if they're working on this too. They wouldn't want to check that out. We're checking that out, we can do that. I can put that on my list of just make sure that there's no regulation or somebody donated the land. Was there any questions? I don't know if there was an actual written encumbrance, but there was an understanding as to what it was originally for. Yeah, we should check that out. So we need to check both. Yeah. Might not be a simple deed search. I can remember that we did do some logging in the town forest. I don't know if we, do we have one more than one town forest? There's one on Pekin that we did some logging on. I know. Is that right? Where's that? Pekin? Town forest. Town forest off of Pekin, I believe. I remember that in my early days of being with this left board, I can remember. They did some logging because they talked about where the revenue was going to go. Yeah. That's in the early 2000s. And that was when Nick was on the Conservation Commission. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. Okay. Seems like I just had a flash of something else I was going to tell you guys about. I don't know. I forgot what it was. Maybe it'll flash back. All right. Minutes. The way things go these days. Well, if it was that important, I'll send you an email. Yeah. Minutes. We have to finally hopefully finish that August 5th minutes, but I still have a question about them. About the truck? No, no, no. This is about the veterans exemption thing. Because we specifically were going to, we're asking a question about the state and school property tax portion. And I think I understand now that if you exempt something, you got to make up everything. That way you understand. They make up the state education. Right. Right. Unless you specifically. Unless we adhere to the state level of exemption. There's a state proviso. Right. That's a lesser amount. We exceed that. But that doesn't get to the issue of town tax, state education tax. I thought, okay. And I don't know this. I've researched. But I thought that the state number was one where we didn't have to make up the education tax. But if we exceeded that. That's not my understanding. Oh, really? Because in checking on another item that might come up for exemption this year. You would have to specifically not exempt the school portion. If you gave him an exemption from the town. You can do it. You can exempt. That's not a veteran. But the veterans one is very specific in terms of the amount of state. Yeah. I don't know. Yes, that's right. I'm still not clear on Sandra's answer in the minutes. So. We need to know this. I mean, it's good. It's going to be good to have a documented in the minutes. And I'm sorry it's taking so long. But Katie specifically sent Sandra a question. But I'm still, she rewrote this. Right. But it's still to me is not clear. In my mind. But she wrote the green part. Yeah. There are 10 veterans or veteran survivors in the town entitled to receive veterans exemption on the property tax book. Council allows a $40,000 exemption. This means that if a veteran's home is assessed at 100,000, the tax rate is applied to 60,000. Right. That's the clarification we're looking for. The remaining assessed value is exempted from taxation to the veteran. The state of the world allows a veteran exception of 10,000 because council provides for an additional 30,000 in veterans exemption. The property tax is on the 30,000 of assessed value. 300,000. 10 veterans times 30,000 of exempted value must be collected from the Calis tax. That's what I was saying. Yeah. The 50 year, 20,000 of exempted value is included in a local agreement tax. But that still doesn't answer the question. Do the Calis taxpayers pick up the town and the state share of the property taxes that are exempted? No. Just the town. We eat it because we have a budget and there's less money going in, but it's the state piece we have to make up. The state's saying we're not authorizing you to forgive people of the portion of the state obligation. So I guess I'm saying it wrong because we eat the town portion. Yeah. We still have to come up with the state portion. That's what it says. To me, that's still not clear. So it shows up in the math. Set another way, I think, John, what you're saying. It shows up in the math. The state portion has to show up in the math. We have to actually... We have to hand over this money to the state. Right. Whereas the town portion... We just eat it. It just gets factored in. We don't eat it. It's just kind of baked in. It's just baked in. Right. It's differentiating because in my mind, there's the town portion and there's the state education tax. And I think... I would like to see a little more clarification in there. So somebody picks up those minutes and reads it. It says that the state education tax portion is not exempted. Well, we could add at the end of that second highlighted paragraph. Yeah. We could add, in sum, the town remains obligated to fund... The state education tax? Obligated to the state education tax associated with the $30,000 evaluation. Or you could just say, with these exempted veteran properties... Over... Anything over $10,000. Anything over $10,000. Well, I'm just thinking somebody picks up these minutes and they read them and are they going to know what that means? Well, that's what we're clarifying. At some point, they're going to have to be knowledgeable. They don't understand. They're going to have to come in and talk. Anything over $10,000 of assessed value for each property. Which is the concern. The town remains obligated to fund the state education tax. Okay. That's fine. There it is. That's what I'm going to say. So we got the... Yeah. I think that's really... There's language and we got your summary clarification. Yeah. I think that's important. There we go. So we don't have to delay. No. We're done. Is that was the only thing we're indicating? All right. Highlight's gone. There's nothing you can do now. It's all done. Highlight's gone. The highlight of my life is gone. It's too late. You can't do that. I don't have to move on. All right. So with those... With that, I would make a motion to approve the... August 8th, 5th minutes. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And the opposed here in non-motion carries. We have September 23. 23. And that's it, right? And we're up... Got up? What about the 24th? The 22. Yeah. There was a... Yeah. There was a small special meeting that night. Right. I'm ready to do both. I don't know if anybody else does. Sure. You, I think... I can't... Sharon, you did... I made one small change that I... And I think... You got it. You got it absorbed. Yeah. I think it was fine. I said... Somehow I... Somehow it absorbed and I didn't mean for it to, because I wanted everybody to see what you did. It was... He clicked some button and it went away. It went away. Yeah. You click a check mark and it accepts it. Yeah. If you go back... It wasn't a big deal, though. No. It wasn't. It was just underscoring... Oh, I know. That's the thing I wanted to tell you. Go back to... It was underscoring... Right there, around the process. Right. That was the thing I was going to update you on. I don't know. I think I forwarded to you that RCT bus thing was not going to happen until mid-November. Yeah. That was the thing that I thought of, but forgot it. Yeah, I just thought of that. So I think that's it, right? Anybody else have anything, Rose? Okay. Looks good. I'm going to move the minutes with the changes as accepted. Move to approve. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. September 24th. I think I made... I did... I made a clarification. That was it. So that was the change I made. It was... We know we got that $200,000 donation, but there was $20,000 in additional private donations plus another private donation of $5,000, but it's only... You can only take $1,000 every year for five years. I think that was it. Anybody else have any changes for those? Motion to approve the minutes of September 22nd. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Here are none. All right. We didn't approve the 23rd. Yeah, we did. We did. You said aye, too. Oh, that was the 23rd. Okay. Aye, captain. Okay. Any other old business, new business? That we adjourn? It's not going to suffer. Me, too. I haven't suffered yet. You haven't, either? But we're going to... You're always so... We're adjourned to the executive session. Oh, we are. Yeah. You're going to more chocolate, though.