 Hello and welcome to ongoing Town Meeting Day coverage on Town Meeting TV. My name is Bobby Lucier. This program is one in a series of forums that we are hosting in advance of Town Meeting Day this year on Tuesday, March 5th, featuring municipal officials explaining what you'll see on your ballot, as well as candidates running for local office. On tonight's program, we're diving into the proposed budget and ballot questions for the town of Williston. Some are joined by Town Manager Eric Wells, Select Board Chair Ted Kenney, and Town Finance Director Shirley Gidellacchi. Thank you all so much for joining us. So before we get started, just a reminder that you can call in with a question during this program at 802-862-3966. That's 802-862-3966. You can give us a call and we will hear your question live on air in the studio. So with that, Ted, I will hand it over to you as we pull up the slides here and hear a bit about what residents of Williston will see on their ballot and in their budget this year. Great. Well, thank you first of all, and thank you very much for hosting us. It's outreach like this is absolutely critical, and so thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, let me start off again by introducing, we have with us Eric Wells, the Town Manager of Williston, and Shirley Gidellacchi, the Finance and HR Director of the Town of Williston. I'm Ted Kenney. I am the Chair of the Select Board for the town. Just wanted to review a couple of things about the process here. First of all, if we could review the dates of the town meeting. Town meeting is going to be on Monday, March 4th at 7 p.m. in the Williston Central School Auditorium. The voting on major issues is by Australian Ballot, and that is the next day on Tuesday, March 5th, and polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Armory in Williston on Williston Road directly across from Williston Central School. Abyssin Tee and early voting is available in mid-February, and hopefully we'll get a good turnout and a lot of input through your vote as to where the town goes. The town budget is the main article for consideration this year. We also have two bond articles for improvement projects to municipal facilities. I'm going to turn it over at this point to Eric and Shirley and ask if you could tell us about the general fund budget this year, which is going to be article five on the ballot. Great. Thanks, Ted. So we'll hop into it and take kind of a global view first here. I always kind of say what is a budget? So in municipality, a budget is a spending plan. This includes the services to be provided. The cost to provide those services, and then the revenue to pay for the services to balance the budget. We needed to deliver a balanced budget in a local government in Vermont. The budget is the best revenue and spending model with information available. We're trying to predict for fiscal year 2025, so fiscal year that will end on June 30th of 2025, about a year and a half from now. So we try to make our best estimates with using the knowledge that we have with how costs are going to trend in the future for it to put this budget together. Same on the revenue side. We try to make the best predictions we can for how revenue will play out. Certainly sometimes reality doesn't match what we predict right now, but it's forming a budget and making that spending, that fiscal spending plan for the community. This process starts in August of September each year. Town department heads will draft a budget and deliver it to myself and Shirley to review through October and we'll deliver a transmittal budget to the select board in late November, early December. The select board will then hold a series of public meetings to review the budget with departments and hold a public hearing for feedback in early January. Debates on the budget throughout January and then setting the warning for town meeting a couple weeks ago. That brings us to where we are today. So I'll go over the expense side of the budget. By the numbers here, it's a $15.35 million operating budget for the town. It's an increase of about $1.375 million from the fiscal year 2024 budget. That's about 9.84% percentage-wise. The town's objective in developing this budget was twofold. First was to determine the cost to continue to provide the same level of municipal services that we provide today and also identify possible service enhancements to add. So then we look at what's the story behind the budget this year and providing these town services. It's providing consistent services in a challenging labor market. It focuses on the primary objective of sustaining our municipal services amid these cost pressures. It's providing services to the community as made possible by our dedicated town staff. It's working to attract and retain staff in the current employment environment as proved to be a challenge. There's about a 2% unemployment rate in the state of Vermont and in Chittenden County that's about 1.7% of the latest numbers from last November. Cities and towns around the state are facing these same challenges, competing for a limited number of a pool of staff. For example, in our police department it's been very challenging to fill some open positions the last couple of years. For a number of reasons, it's hard to recruit and retain staff in the police department right now. Many towns are experiencing the same pressures. If we hire someone new that needs to go to the police academy, it can take up to 18 months from their date of hire to go into the academy to gain their experience off post-graduate experience on the road with our incumbent staff. This budget contains cost of living and merit increases for staff continuing with what the town's practice has been there. Includes collective bargaining agreements with our public safety union unionized staff which affect us as well. We also see health insurance costs continue to increase. The town changes plan to soften this increase but it's still an over 10% increase to provide health care to our staff. We've seen the inflation of recent years cooling a bit but it's still affecting professional and contracted services, materials and supplies, everything from fuel to dump trucks to paper clips and everything in between, I'll say, some to more extent than others. So with that, I'll toss it over to Shirley for, oh actually, I forgot a whole section here. We didn't talk about the service enhancements, the exciting stuff. So we talked about some service enhancements to the budget throughout the process and some of the select board made decisions to add two new staff positions to this proposal. They're effective partway through the fiscal year. The first is adding an 18th sworn police officer effective January 2025. By adding this 18th sworn officer, it allows us to then backfill a police detective position with an incumbent staff member. This was identified as a top priority for the police department. The town conducted a police service analysis report with consultant Jim Baker that he delivered to the select board last November. The select board accepted that report earlier this year and tasked me and my role as town manager to draft a five-year implementation plan for the recommendations of that report. So starting in on the staffing side is looking to fill that police detective position as a top priority that's funded for halfway through this fiscal year. The other piece is adding a director of human resources that would be effective in October of this year. We had another analysis study looking at our HR systems by a consultant. This was identified as the top priority in that systems analysis as well. This would add an HR professional to support our staff of over 100 employees. The role is held by four staff members each having a piece of HR duties right now. We have identified this as a priority on our staffing and our central administration in the town. That's all being said, those budget enhancements cost about $140,000 in additional funds for the budget. This increase we spoke about of over 1.375 million is really driven by maintaining the current services faced with these pressures to deliver them to the community. So then we have a visual here. We like to break this down by object. So these are all different ways in our general ledger where we code every department in town and this visual striking can see wages, benefits and training is a small part of that really make up almost two thirds of the municipal budget here and then everything else fills in the rest of the pie in this visualization. Other high percentage numbers here, contracted services could be assessment to Green Mountain Transit, Winooski Valley Park District and other outside entities that the town funds for regional services. Maintenance costs as well, think of things like public works with retreatment or paving. Then our capital projects, our debt service combined make up about another 10%. Everything else is smaller percentages in the overall make up of this budget. Then we take another look at it by department and it's 65% of the budget is to deliver police, fire, EMS and public work services to the community. And 91% of the overall budget increase is to deliver services in these departments. These are departments with the most employees as well, unionized employees utilizing our collective bargaining agreements that we look to build into our budget. So that's a driver of this as well as other ways to look at the numbers here. So that was a lot I was gonna leave out so I'm glad I had my notes in the water. So now I'll toss it to you, Shirley, for her look at the revenue. Yeah, so Eric has talked about the cost of the programs and the services of the town and I'll review the funding sources that pay for those expenditures. So if you want to bring this slide up, Eric. So user fees, there are a variety of things. But to give you some examples, we have passport revenue, clerk recording fees, recreation fees, planning and zoning fees and ambulance service fees to name a few of the user fees that the town charges. State and federal grants, there's one state grant that is in our operating budget every year and that's funds from the Vermont Agency of Transportation for our class two and three road maintenance. Local options tax passed many years ago for the town. We collect 1%, the state does all the collecting of the taxes. They remit 70% to the town and 30% is maintained by the state as an administrative fee. Property taxes, we'll talk about that a little bit more in the next couple of slides, but in this budget it includes 8 million, just roughly 8 million raised in property taxes and then reserve and ARPA funds. So ARPA is the American Rescue Plan Act. Those funds came from the federal government almost a year and a half ago now that the town has been using them primarily for one time expenses and not ongoing expenses. In this budget, we've included $75,000 to help reduce the tax rate and then we have just short of 700,000 for various capital expenditures. Reserves in this budget are being used 563,000 to also minimize the increase in the tax rate and 167,000 for capital expenditures. In this budget, we always talk about the grand list because the tax rate is a factor of the grand list as well. We have made an assumption that our grand list currently at $2.1 billion is not going to change. We've had growth in the town, but we've also been finding some changes in our commercial property valuations. For example, Maple Tree Place in Williston just sold for $77 million and it had an $83 million appraised value. So we made an assumption with our contracted assessor to leave the grand list value unchanged for this budget. The next slide is just a visual representation of the pieces of the revenue and these percentages. So if you look at local options tax and property taxes and then all out, if you look at the chart on the right hand side, property taxes, local options tax are the first two. But all those other bullets make up about 18% of the revenue with local options tax about 25% and property taxes around 50%. And again, those have remained pretty consistent in the last several years. So next, property taxes account for approximately 50% of the revenue we raise, so how does that impact you? And before I answer that question, during the budget process, we do a lot of work analyzing and considering all other revenue sources in order to determine the amount that we need to raise in municipal property taxes. So the impact on the taxpayers is foremost in our mind when going through and creating the budget. So for this year, we're looking at a property tax estimated increase of $0.0398 per hundred dollars of value. And you say, oh, if it's a budget, why are you saying estimated? That again is because the grand list isn't finalized and won't be finalized until the late spring. And once that number is known, then we will look at the tax rate again and typically changes. So in regards to our FY24, so our current year is fiscal year starting July 1 of 23 going through June 30th of 24. That tax rate is 0.3362. Our medium assessed home value in Williston is 300,000. So with that assessed value in the current tax rate, the annual taxes, municipal taxes are $1,010. Our tax year beginning July 1, 24 through June 30th, 25, we're looking at an estimated tax rate of 0.3760. And that would be calculated to be an annual tax of $1,128. So $94 as compared to $84 last year per month. So what we're looking at is $120 annual increase or $10 a month in the tax to be assessed. And you'll hear me sort of say municipal property taxes because that's we're just talking about municipal property taxes separate from the school taxes, although when it comes time to vote, both of those things will be on our ballot. In the next slide, just a couple of quick points here. But I think this table reflects that we continue to be fiscally responsible and the tax rate and how we look at our expenditures and revenues, and that the local options tax, again, which is about 25% of our revenue, helps to minimize our tax rate, our municipal tax rate. And I'm going to kick it back to Eric at this point. Thanks, Shirley. So we'll highlight a couple other articles on the ballots, two bond items. So Article 6 is a town hall parking lot improvement bond project. So the question for the voters is to consider a bonded debt up to $700,000 for this project. The select board has committed $200,000 of ARPA funds. This is about a $900,000 project overall, we estimate. The town is also applying for grant assistance from Vermont downtown transportation funds. If that grant were to be received and this bond was approved, we wouldn't need to go to bond sale for as much money, but we won't know that until after town meeting. So we're planning to ask for that amount to round out the project, the $700,000 bond. So the project itself would improve our parking lot behind town hall and the police station by adding about 40 new parking spaces. It would improve some visuals here to help locate where this is. So it would also improve the drainage and lighting for staff and public safety. The image on the right, you can see there's this heave in the middle throughout the year where we get a lot of water ponding and it creates a lot of ice in the winter. We've had multiple people slip on that ice over the years. Our staff does a great job of trying to keep up with salting it, but it's something that we can fix by improving the drainage and the parking lot. In addition, there's no good lighting out here. We put a light on a joining outbuilding a couple of years ago to help, but especially wintertime with public meetings with staff here late with members of the public there late at town hall. It's certainly a safety issue. We're not having good lighting. People going to go into their vehicles to hit home. So this has been a capital project identified by the town for a number of years in our capital plan. But as we were looking at this over the last couple of years and thinking about it, if we're, the town's going to consider really ripping up this parking lots and improving it for the future. It's thinking about future-proofing it for needs as well. And that's putting in electric conduit for electrification of the vehicle fleets. So that adds a lot of cost to this project overall, but it would lay that conduit so we could have publicly accessible charging stations for electric vehicles. And we could also prepare to electrify our police cruisers at some point in the future, just have that infrastructure in place. Because we certainly want to get there, but I think it would be hard for us to spend a lot of money to improve this parking lot, repave it, and then go back and rip up to put the conduit in a few years later. So try to think of all those things when you're doing a project like this, of the scope. On this visual, on the left-hand side, the yellow dotted line is potentially showing where the project area would be. And this shed in the lower right-hand corner of the building, of the graphic here. You can picture that with police cruisers parked around it instead in a different orientation. The grass would be all filled in with additional parking here. So it's certainly a significant project. It would improve our municipal campus and also our village overall. Get a lot of overflow parking for events at the school, at the library. So this isn't investment in our municipal complex, but also investment in our village and its vibrancy as well. So I'll toss it back to Shirley for one other bond question that we have. Okay, so last night, there was a meeting of the Old Brick Church Committee and it had to do with putting antennas in the top of the Old Brick Church, but the meeting was lively and it was really apparent that the community supports the historic nature of this building. And therefore, this article is a proposal for the town to borrow up to $400,000 to install a fire suppression system in the building. So we were lucky back in 2007 when a lightning struck hit the tower that our fire chief happened to be driving by and so there was really immediate response and it saved the building from being destroyed. So since then, it's been a long-term goal of the town to put a fire suppression system in the Old Brick Church, which is on the National Historic Register as well. So it's a really important project that we're bringing to the forefront this year. And Ted, time for you. Ambulance? Is that it? No. Oh, I'm sorry. All right, yeah, I didn't think so. So yeah, I just wanted to reiterate for people the early and absentee voting elements. To receive a ballot for earlier absentee voting, you have to contact the town clerk and the number is on the screen, but it's 802-878-5121, or you can email her, it's Sarah Mason, so the email is smason, traditional spelling, at willistonvt.org. You can also visit mvp.vermont.gov to get the same result. Ballots will be available around mid-February, so again, if you can't make the town meeting, please do get an absentee ballot. And you would return your ballot in postal mail or you can use the drop box behind the town hall, which is very secure, or at the armory on March 7th between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., so you can actually drop your ballot off while people are voting inside. So a lot of options to get people to exercise their right to vote. Again, in-person voting option is obviously available as well. That begins on March 5th. You can go to the town clerk's office, as I understand it, and get and vote there in-person and just hand your ballot over. And again, just the franchise of voting is absolutely critical, so we're asking for a big turnout, however you vote. Please do let your voice be heard and vote. And thank you. So I'm gonna kick it back over to Eric, actually, so we can learn more about... Microphone fell off about town meeting and the budget. Thanks, Ted, and I just noticed the type of why I had in this last slide as we cycled from last year, but March 7th should be March 5th, town meeting days March 5th, so if you're going to get an absentee ballot and drop it off, it needs to be back to the armory by 7 p.m. on March 5th. So where to learn more? We've got a lot of information on our town website, town.wilston.vt.us forward slash town meeting. We have a special town meeting page to put all the information on. We've got these complete operating and capital budgets for review there. We'll have a copy of the annual report up probably by next week. A sample ballot and the town meeting warning will be up there. We'll have a public information hearing on March 4th, following town meeting at Wilson Central School, where we'll go through this information similar to tonight with a little more detail as well and take questions from the community. And the questions are always welcome and encouraged. Give me a call, stop by town hall. I'll, next slide here. I'm gonna be holding some just drop-in sessions. I'll, first one tomorrow morning on January 31st. I'll be a healthy living market at 129 Market Street in town, your Taft Corners in the cafe with a cup of coffee. Come and join me and chat about anything that's on your mind about this budget or your local government in general. I'll be there on the 31st and then again on the February 5th, February 12th, February 21st and February 26th. Then I'll be at the library for the similar. At noon time for a couple of different options here in the lobby, February 7th, February 14th and February 28th. So if you can't make any of those, feel free to give me a call, send me an email or stop by town hall if I'm free, I'll be happy to chat with you. That's the end of our formal presentation. Okay, thank you all so much for sharing all that. We have just a couple minutes left. If I could just ask, and I'm not sure which one of you could chime in on this, but just the tax increase this year, could any of you share some context as to comparison to prior years tax increases? You mentioned there are some big pressures on this year's budget particularly, but can folks, first of all, how big of an increase is this compared to past years? And then is this, do we have any ability to predict whether this is an increase, a similar increase would be coming in years to come as well? Sure, I can take that first. So last year's increase was, if we look at that median homeowner kind of monthly impact as a benchmark here, we're around $10 this year. Last year we were around $9. I think the year before that was $850 or $9. So kind of been a consistent integer each year of what that increase looks like. The next year coming, it's always hard to predict because there's all these factors of what the expenses may be. Somewhat optimistic thinking about a lot of this is tied to a cost of living that's tied to an inflation metric. We take a 24 month look at that and that started to cool the last 12 to 16 months. So I think our cost of living will be lower for FY26. So that certainly has an outlying effect on the bottom line. And you did hold a couple of public hearings on this proposed budget. Did you hear any input that resulted in any adjustments in the budget or have you heard any public input on this budget? I can, yes, we had a couple of hearings on it and people did give us their feedback on it. We did increase the amount of money that was going to the fund that we use to buy property in town as a way of preserving and conserving property. We also, but in general, frankly, a lot of these hearings are not particularly well attended. They are available actually on this channel in digital form now. And I do would encourage people to show up for those in the future, but we had those hearings. We're gonna have more reach out with Eric doing that. And of course, town meeting is a great time for people to stand up and come to the microphone and offer their input. And then, of course, there's the input of the vote. So. Awesome. Well, thank you all so much for joining us tonight. So you'll have the town meeting itself on March 4th, that's Monday night at 7 p.m. and then voting in Williston by Australian Ballot on March 5th from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., is that right? Yep. Awesome. And then you can tune into town meeting TV on March 5th at 7 p.m. just after the polls close and we will have the results from that election on town meeting day as soon as we can get them to you. So thank you so much for joining us, all of you, and thank you for tuning in to town meeting TV's coverage of town meeting day 2024. You can find this forum and our other upcoming forums at cctv.org slash 2024 or on our town meeting TV YouTube channel. Thanks for tuning in so long.