 We need to gather at 504 on Tuesday, December 3rd. Are there any amendments to the agenda? No. Welcome, guest, that is the members of the Budget Committee. Do you want to state your names for the record? George Longenacker, I'm here for conservation and budget. Bill Durigan. And we have someone here for the first item at 505 right on time, Middlesex Conservation Commission. Do you want to state your name for the record? Sure, Dave Shepard. Thank you, and you wanted to give us, tell us about applying for a recreational trails grant. Yes. So as you are probably aware, the commission over the last few years has been working on a trail on the town forest, which we are calling the Chase's Mountain Trail. And we have it marked and cut out, but it does need some rock work, some rock steps and some stabilization that is kind of beyond sort of your average volunteers' abilities. So we were hoping to apply for a recreational trail program grant from the State Forest and Parks Department to be able to hire a trail crew to do that work. Hopefully this will come in summer. And so how much is the grant that you want to apply for? Well, we have an estimate that it would be, and I hopefully can refine this a little bit, but it's sort of a ballpark estimate to get started with. It was that it would be about four weeks of crew time, and the crew is about 7,400 weeks. So it's roughly $29,000 or so. Oh, wait, is there something in here? Yeah, there is. Oh, sorry. That's on the second page, Mary. And the town is obligated to do a 20% match. So basically, you figure out the entire budget, you back 20% off, and that's what you apply for. And then the town makes up 20%, which can be realistically, probably most of that would have to be in cash. But we can use volunteer later to make up some portion of our match. I guess however much we could get. But how much volunteers could do in this project is not entirely clear. I'm sure we could do some. Probably limited, though. Yeah, there's certain aspects of it. The rock work apart, except for maybe assistance that they might need that's not too technical, you might be able to help out with. But it will be during the week, too. So people would have to be available to do work during the week. Or we might be able to do some stuff on the weekends that will be part of the whole project. Because there's going to be between $3,000 and $5,000. I haven't done my math on the 20%. The 5600 would be about 100%. Right. I'm sorry? 5600 would be 20%. Right. But some of that is going to be the in-kind labor that we provide. Tell me your name again. My name's Ross Leiblappen. Hi, Ross. I'm Mary Skinner. And do you know everybody on the board? I think I've been to one of these once before. So I've met people there. Edward, it is our pleasure. Yes, it's Phil here. Steve Martin. Nice to meet you. Hi, Ross. Nice to meet you. So would we be able to use any money from the conservation fund that you set aside? Or would this have to be cash from our budget? No, no. It could come from the conservation fund. It would be an allowable use. How much do we have in that at this time? Well, the last? The last? It's the randomer, remember? Yeah. We've got enough to cover this. OK. We should have. Yeah, the last number that we got reported to us was around 4,000. But I don't think that accounts for the last 5,000 that have been appropriated. So it would be around nine, which would be enough. So we could either do it out of our budget or we could do it from the conservation commission fund. What do we call it? The conservation fund, I think. One of the things that I need to tell you, because this is kind of important, is that it is a reimbursement program. So the town would have to pay up front and then be reimbursed. So we would have to be able to come up with, at one point, about the $28,000. And then in about a month's time, from having to build that, we would get reimbursed. So I wasn't sure how much flexibility was in the town's budget, because obviously we don't have $28,000 in the conservation fund. So we couldn't pay the whole amount. We could presumably do our match. But the money we would be reimbursed would have to come initially from somewhere else. So would that be a problem for us? Yeah, there is $9,000 in there now, $9,033. And no, at this point in time, I think we could handle it. We could actually handle it, yeah. Some of that you were talking about maybe a little help on some of the equipment? In time. Probably not for this project. Not at all. Yeah, because it's all foot trail, and it's not motorized, accessible. So it wouldn't, no, probably not. I think the equipment we had talked about was for the shady real project. Yeah. Which is the shady real project? I can't even remember it. It's the stream bank restoration. Oh, right, right, right. The one that we are not so crazy about. Right, yeah. That's a little beyond our scope. Yeah. Yeah, we knew that. Anyway, yeah? So one of the other questions that I guess I have would be in addition to whether it would be possible to be able to pay up front for the money we would then be reimbursed is that if the town is successful, if we apply and we get the grant, we would select the contractor. And like the. We meaning the Conservation Commission or the town for us, perhaps. However, we wanted to work that out. But an obvious candidate for that would be the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps. They do stuff like this all the time. I thought you would thought that that's who it would be. Well, that is kind of like who you're kind of thinking we would probably be. It's supposed to be performed by the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps on our agenda, so. Yeah, and that's the most likely. We've talked to them a little bit about it, so they're aware of the project. But we don't have to hire them. There are other crews we could hire on Northwood Stewardship Center, which mentioned that's another organization that has a trail crew. So I wasn't sure whether if the town is going to contract with someone. Is there any kind of requirement that we get so many bids or anything like that? Or how does that work? I don't know whether we have to do a bid on a grant, do we? Well. If it's a federal grant, we're going to have to do a bid. If there's federal money, yes. If there's no federal money, you're probably OK. I think it is federal money. Plus, we have to have a whole bunch of bids. Oh, right behind you, Mary. In separate records, kind of need to be kept for it, because we have to account for it in the grant that we spent all of it. We're also going to need to seek women-owned and minority owned businesses, first and foremost. You're going to have to send out RFPs. Certificate of insurance would be required. So you're going to expect to be audited by the feds. So it's complicated. Yes. The new thing that it'll say in the grant terms, too. No, quite a bit. Plus I. It'll say in the grant terms, as you're applying all that information, I don't think it would. I haven't seen anything regarding that, in that particular grant call. You could even call them, too, and just ask them. But Sarah and Brenda, go before you go. I have so many facts for so many things. We've done this before, right? We've had grants, right. We've had grants, for example, in the FEMA buyout that involved federal money. There were specific requirements that go above and beyond the normal municipal contracts that we have. So I think there was something where the federal government wanted to make sure that we had some sort of ethics policy in place. I don't think the board ever went through with that. That was one of my suggestions from the last time. But other than that, just what I said. But I mean, it's extra work, but it's not insurmountable. I would just call another town that's dealt with this. And all of that stuff will come along. If a grant is approved. Right. Yeah, I believe a lot of municipalities have gotten grants through this program in the past. So there would be some. Somebody's got an RFP package. So you're not supposed to ask us questions. We're supposed to ask you questions. OK, any questions by any other members of the board? Oh, and just also, we did have to do this pre-application form just to be able to apply for the grant. That was due October 31st. And did you give a copy of that to Sarah? Yes. Well, the blank form, I didn't have a copy of the pre-build-out form. Oh, you didn't? Yeah. Because there are three applications. I think I made copies for everybody over there. Bill, if there's a stack of stuff over there. I don't know if we need all of that, do we? You have everything in there. No, this is what we're going to check. Can you sign our petitions while you're waiting? I didn't sign them. Well, this one is for the WEC board, the law so I can call it WEC board. It's like, sign mine down. Who's the WEC? Who's the WEC? I didn't get any. I didn't get any. Oh, yeah, we got it. That's very nice. It also looks like you guys have my older version of the map. There's a newer version of the map that actually is now posted out the trailhead to the town force. I'm not sure. You got the old one now? Yes, right there. OK, so you've seen the map? Yes, there's a map that says that was the older version. So what are you doing besides steps? Benching. What kind of bench? So not like sitting in bench, it's like you have a sleep slope where there's going to be a lot of erosion. So you cut into the bank there and then you flatten it out so you wouldn't have as much erosion happening. Are you going to do any cord arroing or stuff to hold so that you won't have water running down that? Attention to all techs, thanks. Potentially. There's two spots that I think that were potential for that. But that was going to leave it kind of for BYCC to end up being the one to do it, to make that final decision. I think you signed it already. If it's mine. Dave, would you sign mine? Sure. This is this terrible mixing politics with this type of tab. It's the only way to get a whole bunch of people together. OK, any other questions about the middle sex conservation commission applying for a recreational trails grant from the Vermont Department of Forest Purse Recreation? No. Are there, by the way, Dave, do we know what our chances are of getting this grant? I don't know. I think they serve, say, on their website what the pot of money is for this year and how it kind of gets apportioned to different kinds of trail projects. But I assume it all depends how many applications they get in any given year, so it might be hard to tell. I mean, they might have some idea in the past of just typically what percentage applicants actually get awarded grants. So what kind of motion do we need here? I think we need one that says the middle sex consulate. Well, that we approve their application for recreational trails grants from blah, blah, blah. Sarah will put the language in. Is also being OK at fronting the money. Well, I don't think we have to do that. Well, it may be helpful for them in our motion that shows that we're going to be able to decide not to do that. Yeah. OK, I'll make that motion. Would you want to put a dollar figure there approved? And also paying upfront $29,000? Approximately. I think we should do it first. But I think it should also have how much that. Where's that? The 20% all the 20% will come back. Approve applications to this grant. It will pay upfront $29,000 and expect to be reimbursed all, reimbursed 80%. 80%. Yeah, that's the motion, I mean. But I think that we should say approximately, because I mean, these figures always change. Yeah, we're fine. A little less than a rehearsal, boys. All right, you've heard the motion in any further discussion? If not, all those in favor say. She seconded that. I did. She did. I heard that. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye, and all those opposed say no. OK, we've passed that. So now are you making? One last thing on that. There will at some point be a requirement that Peter or maybe Peter, who is he currently chair? Yeah. Yeah, he needs to sign off on the final date. Right, yeah, that's, yeah. Well, that's, I mean, once we approve it, then we're obligated to take all the steps to make that happen. So Peter, we'll do that. So are you also speaking to us at 515, we're pretty much on target, about the amendment to the Conservation Fund Guidance Document? Right. Or are you speaking to us? I think that's the original document. I think these guys want to know. And I'm sorry, do we have a copy of that in here? You do have a copy of that in there. And there's just those two changes, right? Yeah, that's right. OK, we'll do that. OK, wait a sec. Where are the two changes? There's second place. You'll see the track changes, stuff on that. This is a pre-allocation form. Oh, wait, on this one? Page two, Mary, for drug activities and criteria for piracy and access to your sponsor. Oh, just for the lines? Yeah, yes. All right, can you tell us why the Conservation Fund Guidance Document is being changed? Yes, I can explain to you why we were proposing this. We were approached, and this may not even come to pass at this point, but you just think about it, we were approached by the Newsy Natural Resources Conservation District in relation to the Cheney-Rill Streamback Restoration. At one point, at least, it looked like they needed some assistance from the town, like a map or the thing, and asked if we could provide some. So we looked at our funding guidance here to see if that would be an option. And we thought, it isn't really. The way it was constructed, it could only be used on town-conserved land. So it would be OK for the town forest because of that. But it wasn't more broad than that for management purposes. So that caused us to think, well, that maybe we should get a little bit more flexibility should we want to use it by making the proposed change here. We did want to maintain the original purpose of being primarily to conserve property, not to spend all kinds of money on management activities on other things. So that's for our reason for the second change into the criteria. We wanted to just emphasize that the primary purpose is, in fact, the conservation of land. But we also did want to maybe create a little more of flexibility for projects that might come along to be able to. We would still have to go through the same approval processes that it has all along. And the approval process is what? Well, someone brings something to the commission. We review it and decide if we think it's worthy project or it might come from us, too. And then it goes to you, the board, for a final approval. So is this a prelude for Lewinowski Conservation District to ask you for money to do work on the shady real park? It initially was. But at this point, they may have moved beyond that point. But it could come back. So yes, it is a possibility that that may be. And would that be something that you'd be likely to approve? I think we were, I think I'm speaking for the three of us here that probably checked me if I'm wrong here. But I think we were generally supported of the concept. But we just didn't think we could, because of the way it was written, we couldn't really approve that. Now, since then, other things have come along. It might be things we need to use the fund for. So we might have to rethink that between the trail project that we're talking to you about tonight. And then I guess there's also the possibility of a new parking area past Brian Rimmins' house that that might also need to potentially tap into this fund. So we'd have to take all that into account before we. Well, I think if I'm not mistaken that we have told them that we don't have town funds to use toward that project. We did say no. That was the reason for that. So I just want to make sure that you're aware that woman came first upstairs, and then she came down again. Select Board, we've told them, because they implied that we had led them on. And that we were going to give them money. And we made it quite clear we weren't. So I don't want you to not be aware of that current select board thinking of that project. I would just add that meeting that I'm aware of. Just want to make sure. Can I ask a question on this? So when you're crossing out town conserved, does publicly owned automatically include town conserved? Yes. So that's why you can get rid of town conserved. Yeah, OK. Just make it a little broader. OK. So if there are states or some like that as well. It won't even fit. Federal. Yeah, OK. And all of them qualify as well. I was going to say about the Notch Road improvement, too, even if that happened, we haven't had time to really discuss it in the conservation commission. And we don't have the money right now to do three different things, the trail project is furthest. That would be a really nice addition to the resources we have. Once the people who climb Hunger Mountain find out about it, they'll probably be used quite a bit. It's good. It's starting out a lot of traffic. This year, we were amazed. I've been amazed at how many people have been up there. What's a nice climb? It is. Not as long as a pretty fast climb. Any other questions, comments about the Conservation Commission's proposed amendment to the Conservation Fund guidance document? If not, is there a motion to approve the changes? I'll make that motion. You got that, Sarah? Are you going to read it back, or are we just going to? Steve moved and Liz seconded approving to suggest the changes included in the little sex conservation fund guidance document and application fund authority. Oh, good. OK, you've heard the motion. Any further discussion? If not, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, say no. Chair votes yes. Good. We're whipping right through our agenda. Thanks for signing. Thank you for coming. Thank you for all the good work you do. You're welcome. Thank you. I was thinking I could look quite right. We have all these wonderful resources. Is one of those one? It is. How many are we supposed to get? My signature is 75. 75. 15? No. No, it's like 7. Oh, you only have to do that page. You only have to do that page. Yeah, 15. So could I just ask how this reconsideration for the fire department's out on the agenda again? Peter called me and said, put this on the agenda. And I said, OK. Gotcha. OK. So it's there. So it's there. So is anybody from the fire department here? Yeah, they're waiting. OK. Come on in, guys. Sounds good. All right. When do we have to have these signed for? Bill, would you mind touching my petition for select board, please? Well, you did. Yep. Hello. Have a seat. You did, George. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Hi. Peter did not make it back? He didn't. He never planned to be here. No, I don't think so. You know, it's such a long trip, and he hasn't seen his kids for a while. So I think he told us. The only question was whether he was going to call in. Now I remember he said, I can't call from Mexico. Oh, yeah. And I forgot that, because I kept saying, if you have another few minutes, we'll be running this. They may be expecting Jeff. Can we move to another thing that they're on at 5.30? Sure. OK. Well, let's have a how can we do the treasure report out of time? Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's only you want to step out? No. No, it's fine. It's just you're here for the budget. George was. George left. This is our only member of our budget committee. Oh my god. Did he remember that he had budget? Oh, there he is. Oh, how come you put your coat on? Didn't think we were doing any more budget. Well, we're doing it at 5.45. But Jeff's late. There's not a lot. It's just with the changes that were made at the last. Yeah, I'll stay. I sent out the final number, and I didn't have the budget committee's email addresses. So that's why I had Sarah send it to you guys. So we're down to all the numbers have come in except for. Is this your treasures report, as well as our budget workshop that we're starting? Yes. So that's part of that's what the treasures report was going to be, I guess. So there's four items left. We don't have confirmation numbers on. And that's the county tax. And they never come in until mid-January. Right. That's usually pretty late. There's last year's, right? I've got plugged in there the same as last year. Can I ask you a question? When they do, when they do it, just go up by, on average, like 3%, 2%, 9%? I think so. They just do it. I don't think they have a formula that comes in. We just call them up and say, what's the number? I think it's a, they have a formula they use to calculate it. So that's one of them. The other thing I wanted to bring up was computer maintenance. You guys had only initially plugged in a 10,000 bill. That's the last, the second to last category, the last line. The last line and the first in the under the administration. Yeah. Under, yeah. So our regular maintenance for support service for RV technologies is just under $700 a month. So right there is really most of it. Then we now, Ben Nemerick, just put in a price increase for their support service. And that went from 1,400 to 5,000, which they haven't had a rate increase in years. And to be quite honest, $5,000 is still a pretty good bargain for what you get from them. They should have done this incrementally. They should have done it incrementally. And that's what everybody's bitching about. It's still pretty good. Well, and you know why they're doing that? Because the state's going to drop them. Right. That's their biggest customer. Yeah. Which means when the state changes, pretty much all the rest of us are going to have to change. So that in the loan puts it up to $13,400. And we use nothing in the budget for anything else. And that means that if we're going to this new company, because we may not stay with RV. Right. We're not sure yet. And they may be a little cheaper. But I think we should stay with the number that RV gave us as a ballpark. So I don't know if you want to put anything else in there for future, whatever. But that's added. Well, I mean, all those computers we were supposed to buy. We're doing that this year. We're doing that this year. So we don't have more. But we don't have more to buy. No. So what is it besides the county tax? So well, it was the computer maintenance, the county tax, the other thing I wanted to bring up was Welch Park, Shady Rail, the swimming place. That is, yeah, the Wrightsville Beach. What was that number? That was a number that was in there. That's what I'm trying to find. It's on the last page, Wrightsville Beach News. Recreation, it's the fifth item down. OK, Wrightsville is the third one, the dues. Right. And that's not up to date. Well, I don't know where that number came from. So that's why I'm confused if we gots. Do you not have a copy of the budget? Did we get some room from that? I think that was something really early on. Was that what it was that came really early on? I'm confirmed for now. Wait a second. Bill doesn't have a copy of the budget. We're making do here. But thank you. We don't have the budget to meet you. So that was one that I was in looking at it. I'm like, hmm, that's interesting. So I don't remember. Here, Bill, I made an extra copy. Because I don't have anything in my folder where. But it might have been real early. And then what else? And then the last one was emergency management. And I just received that today. And that's actually lower. And I don't even know what the new number is, because I haven't been. But it is a little lower than that. But it is lower than. Can you say, like, half? He said he thought it was going to be about half. But we have everything else? OK, so it's on page. Health insurance is all in here. Everything is in the other. And then the other of the. Insurance is property insurance. And the fire department, mutual aid. Yeah, that one came in there. Yeah. Well, so the emergency management at 3705. That is correct. No, emergency management is going to go down a little. OK. But that just came in today after I had done this. OK, we're still searching, coming in, folks. So, and this is the bottom line on what you've got in your hand is with a 3% increase. And I sent you what it would be. For the pay. For the pay. And that is. Turns out it's a little bit. So it's a little bit more. So how many dollars between the three and the four? I mean, I'm not much. I mean, I sent it in the email. I don't have it on the email. Here, I've got the email. Let's see. Last year's anticipated. Let's see. Do you have the. A 3%, 4% would be, well, you just have the percentages. You don't have the dollars. On the sheet that you got had the dollars. It's less than $4,000. Less than $4,000? Yes. That's the emergency management. Oh, great. OK. Thank you, Sarah. So he's dropped it to 1,900, it looks like. Well, well, there's a little bit of savings there. 19, you said. Even. We're still talking about a double digit. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, there's no way we can. Yeah, go let's. And I think, you know, as far as I'm concerned about computer number. Yeah. You think you should be higher? Well, that just covers the actuals. That doesn't cover any unknowns. So with the NEMREC money, what's it? It pushes it's, well, maybe $13,500? No, the number in here is the number that she has. Oh, OK. It's just what we've got. It's just what we have. Those are. But there's nothing in there for hardware. No, nothing for hardware, nothing for repair. Is that maintenance? Well, it supports service and some maintenance. 7,000. So that's like 8,400. We get like two hours a month or something in support services. So if we had a major problem, you would eat up all of those two hours. So would $2,000 more on there be enough to cover extra maintenance? I'm not up on that. Or should it be more? Well, we're going to be in pretty good shape. We're getting three new computers that are all going to be current operating system. Have you gotten those ones? No, I'm having to set up a separate account. Yeah, tax-exempt account. So it's a little government account. It's a little tricky. So with two full listers and for financial management and then Dorenda, she's going to share with the listers what they need to do field work, which isn't that much. So then we're going to replace that one over there with a Chromebook. So the only two then that we have are Marika's and Sarah's. Yours runs Windows 10. Yeah. Yeah. And you know with Marika's, that also is. Yeah, that's fine. Those two computers are fine. Yeah, those are, yeah. So I don't think, so there's no other computer replacement that we're going to need that's foreseen. We're going to do Chromebook. Chromebook, OK. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think, is there any other hardware, servers, new? Can we use that screen again? Or do we want to use that screen again? We could if we, you know, I mean, it's a little laptop. But you know, yeah, we can probably do that. I don't think we're going to need anything really in hardware separate from the support and maintenance. Remember, we got $8,000 in discretionary fund, too. Although that's probably going to be cut because we didn't. Now what about our email? That's $700 a year. Where would that fall under? We're probably going to need a separate line for those kinds of services or something. So then we need to. I just did it. So yeah, that's $400. That was $400? $400, yeah. And that's for a year? A year, OK. So we're going to add a line on that? All the boxes. Yeah, probably that would be the best. The other thing is going to be the archiving. But that's, we're going to buy that software. We're not going to do a monthly subscription. Well, how much is that going to be? That software is between $300 and $400. So where do we put that? Office supplies? Yeah, probably somewhere in there. So we should add? But it's not going to be, it won't be in next year's budget. It'll be out of this year's budget. And then we'll load it. OK, the email as well? The email is an annual thing. OK, so we have to put it in. So back to the computer maintenance, do we have to add to that? So I'm going to just. Do you think you know? He says no. Round it up to $14,000. OK. There you go. Yes, that's a no. But coffee money. But that would cover that. The email. Whatever, that email thing, so you can. That would, too, yeah, sure. Well, it's a little short, because you said the email still 100 years. No, 400. Oh, 400. I thought archiving was 400. 14 even. 14 even, you got that? Have you got that, Liz? So that's another 6,000? We're going to take computer maintenance up to 14,000. Why did we take the mowing? I mean, the mowing is expensive. And we're going to put in the budget what this year's we did for this year on the mowing. Well, the mowing was a problem, was the guy retired. The roadside mowing? No. But the others? So there is mowing the town property maintenance? Yeah, that one. Liz, at $2,600, it was 2,000 last year? No, hold on. I'm looking at something else, then. That's where we moved it from that department to the other department, or look at that. Where's the other one you're looking at? Labor materials repair to cemetery? No, not that one. No, town. Mowing. Town or you are mowing, brush hogging, aerating. Oh, so that's right under Riceville. Do's. We put in what they had last year. I think because it's under the town property maintenance, because it's town property. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm looking at 2018-19, fiscal year. We actually spent $41.85. How come that came in at less than that? But I thought, yeah, I'm not sure why. That's what I'm wondering. But what have we used so far, I guess, for the 2019-20? So far? Have we used it all up? I would have to. That's fine. Just leave it. These numbers were based on what was presented. The mowing is all done by Mitch. And that's what he had in his budget. I don't even remember when Mitch gave us that budget. I don't know if I have those figures. But Mitch isn't the one who does the mowing, right? Doesn't he hire that out? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but I didn't care. Where is Mitch? He's in their total recreation. He cut some stuff out, that's why I don't think he's back. He cut some stuff out, I think. OK, here, I got my notes on Mitch. OK, because his hours are dead. Has anybody talked to Mitch about, didn't we raise the issue of his seminar and how we were paying for everything, but he's doing a lot of work for other towns for zoning? We haven't discussed that. OK, because my notes indicate that he cut down his hours for wages for rec recreation. He did. Yeah, yeah. But that was the issue of the dues conferences travel. This is his total budget, so he included 24 mowings at $60 for Walt Kelly and 24 mowings for the recreation field. And how much is the rec field? 110. And then there was brush hogging and the town clerk's mowing. Maybe it's the brush hogging that gets to be much better than that's why it went over. And Mitch does that himself? No, he doesn't. He hired out. It's just he provides the budget for it. OK. So there's no action on this, right? There's no action. It's just I wanted everybody to have the final numbers, because we will have to do some full searching. So Sarah, when is our next meeting? Are we meeting on the 17th? Or meeting on the 17th? Because I'm happy. You're meeting on the 17th. And then when are we meeting in January? Well, I don't know. I haven't had the calendar there, but I would assume it's the 1st of January and 1st of Tuesday in January, because that doesn't go there. We don't have it. I don't have to get all just up to my pulse. Wait a second. I'll tell you what it is. So this has to be finalized. To be the 7th. The 7th. 7th. We have to have all the town reports ready for the book by when the end of January? Yeah, like the 28th, isn't it? The larger issue is the town warning. So the town warning would probably be approved at your second meeting in January. And you should have a budget that you're in that. I think the voters asked for you to say, shall we pass a budget of blah, blah, blah. And I think that's what you did last year, and people look at that. So that's your biggest deadline right there. Oh. So we can do that on the 21st, you're saying? You'll still make the 45 day deadline for, I'm just going to double check because my age, I need to double check every one. So are we doing our soul searching on the 17th? Are we doing our soul searching on the 7th? Well, I think there should be. I think we do it on the 7th. Yeah, give me a couple soul searchings. I think this might be a couple of soul searchings. Because I'm going to be on the phone for the 17th on the soul searching. Well, you will have done a lot of searching by then. So do you need the budget committee back on the 17th? Well, I just what I mean, I think you guys just need to, if you have any input, which you more or less said last time you left that you guys were kind of in agreement and with what we have come up with. So it would be if the board decides to, I guess, reduce any requested amount that you wanted to be here to hear the reasoning for that. What's our percentage increase that right now with the 3%? Well, it's right at the bottom. That's the one at the bottom. 11.5. Yeah, it's 11.60 now. Did we also add in the listers increase? Our solicitors, OK. Wait a second. We just got $2,000 from having the emergency management go down. So that'll go down. Yeah, so actually it might go the other way because I didn't plug that number in yet. So the $18 number down. So you're not aware of emergency management. So were you saying that the mowing figure should be higher based on? I think it should be higher, but let's just leave it. You mean if you could solicit, but nothing goes up. It's just goes down. I'll go back and double check those. I mean, I would just be curious to see what we actually spent this year because I think it was more than that. OK. I could be confusing mowing too because there's a couple of mowing that are going on. There's two different ones. Well, you know the wall, Cali mowing is separate. That's $29.40. And then the other mowing is $35. So if you add the two together, maybe we're not overspent. Well, I think what you're remembering and Paul talked to us about, which was probably his budget because there was a guy that he used to hire to do that. Roadside mowing. Not the roadside mowing. No, not the roadside mowing. Retired. I saw those minutes that that sounds kind of interesting to hire some of the men. They were late to hire some of the men. They're still on the numbers. They're in the minutes from last meeting. And then the county. I mean, I think it would be fabulous to get somebody else to do that. So as we stand right now, it's $11.71. And that's with two items, which last year I was just looking at the increase in counter-attacks. And that was about $1,000. They went up last year. Which is like, and they have like a $25,000 budget, right? So from $25,000 to $26,000, something like that? No, it was less than that. And so, and just, I mean, I know we're going to do more soul searching, but in terms of the roads, are we, did we add in these weather-related damage mitigation, like did we increase? Who were you talking to about heat? What? Steve, did you and, uh, yeah, don't use, he's right here in the room. I meant, I guess I meant Paul. Yeah, I know what you meant. Yeah. I'm sorry. So did you? It was a smarty. OK. So does that show up in the road gravel? No, that. Or in hours or something? What we ended up doing, it shows up in a, find where we are here. It's under some remaining. And then you add in person in that for specialized services. Yeah, OK. We ended up with a separate section. It's the top of the second page. That specialized services, that added $40,000. OK, at the top of the third page. Yes. So trucks means like an actual replacement, like any other truck. That is hiring trucks, hiring some labor and renting an excavator. OK, good. I can't remember, is that for the ditching? Yes. OK, nice. We have to do it. Trying to get caught up. Yeah, I mean, we have to. And everyone has to understand that this is different, different day and age now, folks. Yeah, but the thing is, I think they understand that. Well, I think there's some other things they might not understand. But I think that they get that. I don't think that's going to be a problem. So you quit? The only figures you changed on this were tonight. I mean, just two figures, right? That's been so far, yeah. No, you only changed. I only changed the emergency management number and the computer maintenance number. We still got two more outstanding. Yeah, but you just, that doesn't make sense, because you went from 1155 to 1171, and you actually decreased in the amount. Yeah, right. You decreased the amount of emergency management. One and down 1800 and another. So it has to be below 1155. That's what I thought, too. But didn't we? We didn't. Those are the only two figures we changed, that the leader. So the only figure that's out now is the county tax. Is that right? The county tax, and I don't know what the story is with Rightsville Beach. Oh, that's. Sarah said that came in early. I might be wrong. I mean, I've just gotten there blur, but not something else. But I will check with them tomorrow. So did I plug in, maybe I put in 1900 for emergency management. So that went down. And the other one that I changed was the computer. That went up 600. It went up higher, because it went from 10,000 to 14,000. So that's a 40% increase on that. Yeah, but it's only a $600 increase. Point being, $600 increase and an $1,800 decrease. We should be more like 1.5%. It's still, we still got to cut. Yeah, that's probably pretty close. What's our target? If we said we had one officially or unofficially. We didn't have an official. What did we have last year? Does anybody have the book? 2%. I think we were shooting for, weren't we? Or 2 and 1 half? I think so, yeah. When we started, can we build one? When we started. Yeah, I think so. Just out of curiosity, because I feel like the case can be made for these weather related changes, what happens if you take out that $40,000 from there? What does it then become? You took out the extra, and I'm not saying, I don't want to do that, I just want to go. I understand that, but let me make a comment. If you took out that $40,000, we would have to readjust some of our other figures. You have to readjust some of our other figures. It isn't like simply taking that out. Yeah, so it's not as simple as that, OK. So never mind. I'll have to go back and check the form. Think deeply some more. I don't want to. We're going to dig deeper. Show them the correct. Well, then we can make a case for it. You know what I mean? I think that we want to be smart about the communication at the time. Management went down 48%. Well, also, it communicates it. And 48.72%. Yeah, computer maintenance is 40% difference from last year. Something is. Something is in calculating somewhere. Yeah, OK. But anyway, those are the only two figures we can do. So those are, right. I don't know why it's easy. Because you were in at 13.4. Right. Right, so we went up 6 and down 18. So we're right. Well, let's just assume it's below 11.5. It's about 11.5 somewhere up close to that. So 11.45. OK, there you go. Oh, there you go. There you go. It was a little slow, wasn't it? It might have been slow, but now it says 11.45. Maybe they're right. Maybe that was just like a 3%. Maybe. Sometimes, you know, I do that all the time. I look at it. They have 11.45. I like that. OK. Now we only have about eight to get, no, nine. Between eight and nine. That's not going to happen. I know, especially. And what would our 4% be, the new 4%? You're only talking a couple of thousand dollars. What was it, Steve had to number? He said 4,000. 4,000, yeah. But I mean like a percentage increase, that's all. It's about the same. Like you're under the 4,000. 4,000 in there, you're not even, I mean, that's changing. That's the 10th. The sun's changing. See if I can do it. Why are you changing? Let me see what happens. How about a new 12? You're going to be a little over 12, I think. How about a new 12? Or just under 12. I think we got one there. Change 1%. We'll see how good Steve's not at this. OK, why don't I come over here? Should be under 12. Yeah, we're getting a greater after we're buying it after. 11.79. Wait, what's that now? She wants to know what you want with a 4%. The 11.79. Is the she anyone we know? Yes. Just like I looked over and couldn't think of your name. I'm going to put my hat on. OK, so I'm going to put this back. It is changing. Yeah. OK, so what we could get. OK, any other questions for that right now? How about you guys? No, I think you answered the question. OK. OK, so no soul searching tonight, huh? No. Got to sleep on a lot. But no, but seriously, I really think it'd be a good idea for us to be able to articulate at town meeting the increase in the road repairs because of the weather and say, you know, why the budget overall is increasing, because I'm sure a lot of it is the. Well, there's some weather related things there, but you don't want to say it's just a weather. It's not. Some of it is because of the construction project we've done and got behind on some of the general maintenance. But you also got behind on them because of the weather, right? Twofold, it's not just the weather. I'm just saying just so that we're. Well, I just left the WEC meeting and they kept. We kept saying it's not that there are more storms and it's that they're more severe. They're more intense. More weird or weird. Let's actually think that one's better. Well, we're using the word severe because our budget is going to be right. If you look at line item for a line item, you'll see more than just the highway department. That's really I mean, you know, we've been way behind on our computer stuff. Listers because of all the mandated stuff with that, that jumped like man hours just jumped ridiculously there. The support system for the computer is that was a huge increase. So we have a lot of individual line items that really not just highway. Well, wait a second. Why do we have 66% increase for the Conservation Commission? That doesn't make sense. Because they asked for consulting. Oh, because they asked for another $1,000 for consultants. What did you guys ask? You know, that was planning commission, sorry. Conservation was. It went from 1,500 to 2,500. I'm just looking for anything. It has a double digit increase. Yeah. The other thing, electricity. We were over budget in all of our electricity this year that just ended. Is everything green mountain power, or is it? No, Washington Electric and Green Mountain Power. They had a good sized increase, yeah. And we're going to have another one. I mean, you know, it's all these people doing net metering that are paying $15 a month, skillness. We lost almost $300,000 last year. Conservation, we asked for the same. It was just $5,000. Right. That's what it was, yeah. Yeah. OK. No other questions, comments? All right. So on the 17th, I'll be bringing these with me. And Dorina, thanks for sending it in advance. So if you are able to do that, then I could maybe print them out before we have the meeting on the 17th. Any changes unless the county tax comes in and, you know, you're talking one, the only other one is the Shady Grill Beach, which is right still, you know. I mean, right still, you know. But we'll know that. I mean, she's going to call tomorrow. So she can send a message. Right. But we won't know the county tax one. And the other, you're probably not talking a huge difference. Well, the right still. Right still. I know that one's not going to change. It's not going to have any impact at all. OK. So these are pretty much good numbers. Yeah. OK. Thanks for sticking around to us, guys. Thanks, Dorina. You're welcome. I mean, for getting your ear before you walked out. I'm going to stick around for the fire department. We had some budget stuff. We all try to forget. OK. Ready for the fire department? Oh, sorry. A fire department, Mark. Everybody, you've left your stuff here. I know. Like, we don't have anything from Briceville yet. You don't? OK. I don't know where that number came from, then. I'm freezing. Yes, just because you're on a slab, you cold slab. Oh, yeah, that's right. My feet are a little cold. You're welcome to my world. Sorry, Sarah. How's the rate on? Oh, you mean you're really rubbing it in? Well, I'm curious if she sent it in. Did you send it into the state? Not yet. I already have a reader though. OK, you guys. You have asked us to reconsider our decision not to allocate $18,000 toward, I thought it was $13,000, toward the purchase of a used replacement rescue vehicle. Was it $13,000 or $18,000? $13,000 is for the vehicle. And then the cap and lighting brings it up to $18,000. So I put together a little sheet of what the rescue brings to the fight. So because we didn't get a really good chance to. We know what the rescue does for us. And we just made some assumptions that when we talk rescue, everybody knows what we mean. So the big thing is that unlike a lot of the other departments in the area. We have a small rescue, and we're trying to keep that footprint small, whereas other departments are enlarging there. So we're trying to keep our small. What do you say we're trying to keep our rescue small? Is this leaving like a series of people who are trying to go out? Or does this mean physically the vehicle? You want a small vehicle? The vehicle. OK. So when you say rescue, you mean the vehicle? Right. Yes. So the big thing that we want to keep the same is to take five to six people to a scene in that vehicle. And we're looking at whether it's this vehicle we get or one later down the road, a crew cab. That would be the crew cab and chassis. And then we work on what we put on the back of it. So basically what the rescue does is it brings extra people and all the equipment that we have on it to a scene that we can't. There's no way we could fit it on a fire truck. And fire trucks aren't meant to carry that kind of equipment, and we wouldn't try to want to build one that can carry all that equipment. Then the following is a list of everything we have on the rescue, wood cribbing, portable gas powered light unit, chainsaw, circular saw, gas for those battery and corded reciprocating saws, spare air bottles. You took these on every single mission that you go on? Every time that vehicle rolls, this stuff rolls with. How often does it roll? 38 times last year. I counted for you. Oh, right. OK, so 38. So every time you went out, or is this just when you off? So the trucks stay loaded in the bay in the station so that we just come and get in the truck and go. And we have everything that we need with us. Because when you're fighting a fire or having an emergency, getting coming back to the station to get something we forgot is not usually the truck. It's all ready to go. To give an example, when we had the fuel truck roll over up on the industry, and we called for AOT to come with a sign package to close off the highway, they don't have any trucks that are pre-positioned with all that stuff on it. So they have to respond from wherever they live to the facility down here. Load up that stuff. They don't even have a pre-positioned. They have to grab all the signs and whatnot, load it up on a trailer, and then get to the truck. So they're like a four-hour lag time for when we request a sign package from them to it actually being deployed on the interstate. We could never respond if we didn't have vehicles loaded with all this equipment. It just wouldn't work. So we have sign packages ourselves, single sign packages to help you about emergencies, ropes and PFDs, personal flotation devices if we have to rescue people. I mean, we've had people jump over the fence down in the village here. I haven't had to do any water rescues. We've trained with Berlin on doing water rescues. We've had to use the ropes for accidents that are over the edge on the interstate, or we've had to use equipment for cars that are going down in the ditch up from Steve's house. Pregnant woman that we had to bring out using her stoke stretcher. We also have a gas power generator. Currently, it's tied into the gas tank. We slide it out, and then we can do scene lighting with that as opposed to the portable one. If we have to do scene lighting someplace that's further away from the vehicle that we can't run extension course to, that's all we have the portable. The stoke stretcher is for carrying people where a regular stretcher won't work. And we have brooms for sweeping up accident scenes and woodland fire tools, tarps. We use those to lay out, like if we're using the airpacks and whatnot, we'll lay those out so they can't clean as a staging area and replacement bottles. Plus, if there's a fire, we try to cover up the home as best we can to protect what's left. I don't think there's a disagreement that we don't. I don't think that we disagree that a rescue truck isn't necessary for the fire department. I don't think that's. Well, I'm trying to get through what it is that it does and why it's important to have one. The other thing with our current truck is the last two years, we've averaged about 1,000, maybe 1,100 a year for fixing it. And now we're coming into it. We're going to have to do rust repair. We all know that rust repair can be expensive quickly. So now we're looking at the point of, are we starting to throw good money after that? And when we came to the budget meeting to present our budget, we had let you know this is what's coming down the pike. And then right after that, this truck kind of falls into our lap of, hey, this is a good deal. We're looking at value-wise. That's about a $13,000 vehicle in its present state. So that's the number we're using as far as our budget that we're figuring. One thing that we went back and looked at is as far as the lighting package, which is about $1,600, is money that we've had from various donations and fundraisers and whatnot. We could buy off on that, so that would lower the price. The other thing that we look at doing, there's an estimate of $3,500 for the cap. We could postpone the cap putting on to put that on later. If we talked about the Lawson's thing. What do you mean the Lawson's thing, fundraiser? The fundraiser that we talked about at the last meeting. Lawson's finest liquid. Oh, right, right, right, right. Did you ever apply for that? The day after I wrote a letter and gave it to Sarah. Yeah, I needed a lot of work, so I'm going to bunch it up. I got to feel there's a bunch of people in line for that. I'm sure there is. We're not counting on that at all, but we. There's also the Red Hen Bakery gives their tips. We have a loss until like $16,000 a month. So that's a couple thousand from our hand. 3,000 maybe? Yeah, and they would have a picture of what we're going for. Tell me how old your current truck is. 1986. And they have a lifespan of how long? Like 25 years? OK, NFPA, which is the people that write the fire instructions and regulations. 25 years. Yeah, 25 years, yeah. So this one has no airbags, hard steering wheel, it has a carburetor, and that cracks me up. I don't know, I don't even know. So your, but is that for fire trucks, or is that for these regular trucks? Fire up, fire up, fire up, fire up, fire up. And so with getting this, with replacing this rescue with a newer, newer vehicle, that's the last upgrade that we need for vehicles for quite some time. Because everything, even though engine 695, the reality of that is it lived on an air force base and didn't get abused on muddy roads or salty roads. Could you tell me again, I know you've talked about this at other meetings, but around the replacement of the air, the breathing apparatus that you need, and the cost that you anticipate, and whether or not that we required that to be a lump sum purchase, or it could be done over time. Because to me, that has to be a priority, because of the safety of you guys, in terms of what has to be done, and what that cost was going to be, whether it was partial doubt. We're looking at potentially in four years, what's happening with those airpacks is in four years, Scott, the company that makes them, is going to stop supporting that model of airpacks. OK, right. So what that means is for the company that inspects our packs and repairs them, as long as they have parts, it'll be fine. They can still be inspected and everything. So the earliest we would have to do in any replacing would be four years. The likelihood is going to be a couple years past that. The reason we want to go with a lump sum, which was, I think, about 53,000? 53 or 50 is somewhere in that neighborhood. But that's not in this budget coming up. No, I'm just asking. I'm trying to determine. So the reason for doing a lump sum swap is so that we all have, everybody's using the same type of equipment. Because the worst thing you want to do when you're going into emergency is have multiple staging of equipment, especially with breathing apparatus and how it operates. And the one that we've looked at so far, we haven't looked at a new Scott, but the MSA one that we looked at, it's sold locally, it's maintained locally. We don't have to get a company from Massachusetts to come up and do the inspections. And so had we talked about, because we know that this is coming in, say, four to six years, minimum, or the earliest four years, maybe a little bit later, have we talked about possibly it wouldn't it have to be on the town meeting as a separate voting line item for the town? Yeah, to vote, to set up a fund and to start saving money. Because I have a concern that in four to six years, when we're asking for $58,000, it's going to be a lot of money. We didn't talk about setting up. We didn't talk about financing. We gave you a heads up. This is what's coming down the road. The financing of it hadn't even entered into the conversation. We just gave you, here's the estimate of today's dollars, what it's going to be for six years. And is that something that could be financed over a certain amount of time? Can you buy it on a loan? Or is this something where you just would have to? It's not like a trot. The town has access. You would take a note out. You would take a note out to just buy these things. I'm just wondering if that would also be a way of doing it as opposed to having it be in the line item. And we'll also look at, you know, could we do notes that are that long term for that kind of? Yeah, that's what I'm wondering, too. I mean, it's not, I mean, that is. Should I do it for, yeah, 20 years? We wouldn't do it for that long. We wouldn't do it that long. We wouldn't want to do it that long. Yeah, like the four years. You should take a note out for something like that. Well, vehicles, we, it's supposed to be for as long like the vehicle for the life of the vehicle. Yeah. But, you know, do you would want to stay, I would say, four years or something like that? But you could take it out for air masks. Or you can take a loan out for anything. The, the, to us, the replacement of the vehicle. But we're treating it like a capital project. Is the first, is our first priority right now. Because we're starting to have to spend a lot of money on it. Can I ask you a question? You said that you could cover, are you done? With your friends? Yeah. Sorry. No, I just, I wanted to just, I remembered that we talked about that and that was a big purchase and I just want to see where it fits in in the timeframe of everything. That's why we want to let you know. You said that you, you could cover the lighting pack of $1,600 yourself with, with the money you've raised. Have you, I mean, how much have you raised and what do you have? We have, between our checking account and, and money markets, we have approximately $1,200. Some of it's, I mean $12,000, sorry, I'm sorry, one decimal off. So we have, I mean, we've done the 50-50 raffles up at the station. We did a small fest, because I forget the name of it, but last year we're doing it this year. We've gotten donations when we respond to certain calls. No, we have to add in the records that we keep the financial records. That's not ours. That's the, our charitable organization's pot of money. You're 501C3. Yes. Have you shared that with us before? That amount? No. It's in the, I think it's in the town report, isn't it? No, not in the report. I thought it was in Bob's report. Oh, I don't know. It's not in the report I write up that I know that. Well, tell them what, I mean, we've been saving, you know, saving money in this account for, and we've run our fundraising for the past three years, specifically for, for the, the camera. Right. For, because we, we have a 15-year-old thermal imaging camera that the batteries are starting to not last very long, and it only does black and white. And we're looking at replacing that with a light camera that we have on our other engine that has six different screens of black and white and color. It has a temperature readout, so especially important for in-the-wall fires, and it also has a range finder. So like when we're looking up at a chimney, how far away is that chimney? Are we going to be able to reach it? Plus the batteries, they're lithium ion batteries. They last much longer than the nickel metal hydrates. And right now, there's a special on that we can get a really good package with the camera and a truck mount and a five-year warranty versus no truck mount and a two-year warranty. And it will save about $1,800, and we're looking at using some of our... How much would that be? Right now, it's $7,203. So we're looking at using some of our money that we've gotten through donations and some of the money that we have in our budget for equipment. So let me ask you one other question. You have a line on it for stipends, and have all of your people been paid for every time they've gone out on these 38 threats? Now, what happens with stipends is you... Not only do you have to go to the call, but you have to show up to 75% of the training meetings and the business meetings in order to get that stipend. So if you don't sign... If you don't come to or have excused absences for... You have to be to at least nine or have an excused absence. You're sick or there's family issues that doesn't go against your account. But if you just don't show up, then you've got to come and participate in the department in order to get the stipend. Stapends to each member will range, I think, from $30 to $300 for the year. It's a year of getting up in the middle of the night. So out of the $3,000, I'm just looking for... You spent, like, $24.60. That was all right? Yes. So I wasn't at last week's meeting, last Slickmore meeting. But I did review the minutes. And I mean, I think what I'm struggling with... There's a couple things that I'm struggling with. It's not that I don't think you guys need a new truck and that this truck is more than 25 years and it needs to be replaced, but that we're facing a really big budget increase right now for the rest of the budget. And to present, to add on even more to this, I mean, I have to imagine that there's going to be another truck available next year. And that I just... I don't know how we can, you know, add in another $18,000 right now. Well, that wouldn't go into... I'll clarify, this wouldn't go into the budget. They're looking to buy this, like, ASA. Oh, right now. Right now. So it would come out of this year's... The big thing with this truck is it's a known entity. We know who's been maintaining it. We know the condition of it. We know the history of it. It's already painted red. They've taken the lights off it. But the light package isn't that large of a cost to bring it and then to get the logo stickers for is... We can do that through the place where we get the E901 signs. It's $10. So where'd the money come from? Where would the money come from? Well, that's just it. It's not the budget. It's not budgeted. It would just be an over-expenditure. I have to say, unless we're... You've got a problem legally here. Because it's not... We haven't noticed it? No. You have a problem legally because if you're going to seek funds for this, if you're going to go into debt over this, they have to have, once again, they have to be voted on by the town voters because you can buy all the trucks you want in the town because the legislature has recognized that the roads need to be maintained. The legislature has not recognized that other improvements, if you go into bond for other improvements, even buying computers, that's a completely different story. I thought last... When they were here last meeting, that question came up, whether we could take a loan and... Well, not whether it was legal to take it. ...under $5,000. It was under a certain amount we could. Because as long as it's not financed for five years, but there is... I mean, you guys, if you approve it, you can approve it, but you might have to ratify it at the 17th meeting with some more legal, with just some legal research. Because if you're going to go into debt in the middle of the year for a non-highway equipment, I think you've got an issue. That would be the same with the air compressors, too. Is this the issue we ran into when we... With the fire department? We had to have... I'm looking at the statute now, and it's just that it... so it doesn't bore you guys, but you'd hate to send everybody down to buy a truck, and then not have the money. So... the legislative body decides that the necessity demands improvements, that the cost of this thing will be too great to be paid out of, and this is what you can decide, ordinary annual income and revenue. Yeah, it's too great to be paid out of... No, I don't know. Well, if we postpone the cap to either doing it with fundraising that we do out of our own, and we pay for the lights, now we're down to $13,000 for the truck itself. Right. I mean, you might be able to do it. It's just... we just want to be sure. So... and the truck is, what, 2004 with $25,000 miles on it or something? Would you like to see the truck? Sure. But... I guess my question is, so it's... 2004... 2004? Yeah, 2004. 23,000. Right. And so in 2020... in 2024, so in, you know, six, five years, it'll be 20 years old, right? It's not right. We're barely... Are you allowed... so are you allowed to drive these trucks? Yeah. It's the recommended... NFPA is recommendation. Now, like Mopilier or Burlington, they would replace their equipment more frequently than that. Number one, they get used more. So they wear out. Did you guys see these photos? The military doesn't do... they do a different thing where you pay a purchase price for a vehicle and every time it goes in for maintenance, your routine maintenance or whatever, that's subtracted from the value and when it gets down to zero, then it's sold off. It could be in perfect condition and nothing wrong with it, but it's because it's zeroed out in the accounting system and the big scheme of things in the military. So that's how we got engine six for shipping costs for pants. Why are they getting rid of it? Because they're upgrading or something? They're getting a bigger truck. One with a big, big back where you could stand up, they can change in the back and everything else. And there's no rust on it at all. So when you say that, yes, we can find another 2004 truck, we would have to go down south to find something without rust. You're not going to very often find something... that sits in a garage. It's called Chester Technical Rescue, so they go out very little with it. And it's been maintained right there in the garage. And if we go after a used truck somewhere else, now we're into the... going to like VTech and have them find the used truck and build it for us. So now we're out of that 13,000 for the truck and we're looking at anywhere from ballparking 30 to 50,000. A new truck, just the chassis and with a box on it was going to be like 53,000. So that's the kind of numbers we're looking at. Of course, if you used the private money you had instead of buying a camera to buy this truck, then all you'd need was another thousand dollars. But that would totally wipe out the money that we've done in fundraising for... What about half? What will we do fundraising by taxing our residents? I mean, you know, it's all six to one half dozen of another. And that money that we use for fundraising is we get stuff done in the department that we don't ask the budget to do like new chairs for the training room. So we have chairs that we can actually sit on and don't fall apart. We get t-shirts and hats for people to wear around at events so you show this is the face of the Fire Department, the Middlesex Fire Department. We have neighborhood... our town open houses and we invite the community to although very few people show up, but we buy the food for that. Trying to get... show people what we're doing. We put on the stickers on the... the doors of vending six. So we use it for things that we don't ask for in the budget. It's not money that we just... Yeah, let's have a party. I don't think any of us are suggesting that, but I think that it... I think what Mary's saying does make sense is that if you guys could contribute some of the money that you have raised on the side to support this truck, it's just... it's a big ask, you know, at the last minute when we just, I mean... I like to look at the fund accounts, but a lot of them are earmarked for certain things, too. People start off... I want to give $100... A lot of it's the FAST Squad money. We still have money in the JD account, which we were going to talk to the Picards about using and then use our sticker that has that little JD that we use on the E-911 signs, put that on the sides of the door and that's where the $1,600 would come from. But, you know, a lot of them people gave the $50-50 raffle because of this tick camera, which is a... a tick camera isn't a luxury item. It really could be something that would be part of the operation of a fire department because it's the camera that... if somebody rolls their car on the interstate and you just have to scan with a camera and you can find if there's somebody that was thrown from that vehicle and is laying in the woods somewhere in the dark. It's a... it identifies people. It's... that's a piece of equipment that would normally be put in the budget. But we're... we're trying to... Well, it's also an item we'd have to approve as well. You couldn't ask for it. Doesn't mean we would give it to you. What's the time frame on this? I mean, because we don't have Peter here tonight. I don't know that you want to have a vote with four of us that you know two of them are... We probably have until the end of the month to go up for auction. This is trying to avoid that. I see. And are other people talking with them about it or not? Is this just... No, so far it's just us. Okay. Peter asked us to put it on tonight. No one here wouldn't be here, so I don't think it makes sense to wait to do that. I mean, and it is going... you know, there is that chance. We can gamble and when it does go up for auction too. And when's that scheduled for? They have one more vehicle that they have to get in service for the town and then they have a big lot of vehicles going up for auction. So I still don't understand, though, the funding piece, how it gets paid for. I mean, if it's... she was talking about a bond. Well, Sarah... Yeah, she's still doing research. Oh, okay. But if you didn't have a bond, you would take it out for some slush fund, right? I mean, that's what you would do and then you wouldn't have to... Yeah, you wouldn't have to... I'm just putting out the minutes from the meeting where we discussed that in 2017. So... Part of the reason I wanted us to come back was to address, you know, Peter said to me, what about your fundraising and to let you know that we do have fundraising and we do use it for things that we don't ask the pound for and make you more aware of that. Mary's question about how often it goes out and, you know, to give a little, you know, we didn't get into what it actually does and so... Thanks, Mark. You know, and to, you know, offer some, you know, some funds toward it. And like I said, when we submitted our budget, we were looking at one to two years down the road for this. And then it just kind of, like, and it just fell in our laps. This fell in our laps and it looks like a wise investment in use of taxpayer funds and saving potentially quite a few thousand dollars next year or the year after. I think this was in the minutes that there could be some value to the one you have now. Yeah, we're going to sell it. I don't know how much it would be worth. I'm guessing in the neighborhood of about 2,000 and that would obviously go towards whether it's however it's paid to offset that cost. The only problem we have when it goes up for auction is it's going to be national. They're going to put it on the website and everybody across the country will talk about it. What would it take for you to find out, Marge, what amount if you were looking to contribute if we could use some of that 12,000 towards this so that we feel like $5,000 or something. How to know what's at your mark or what they said. My personal opinion is that I would be supportive of this but I would like to see some support from the fire department as well. I would vote because I do think it's a good deal and I also feel like that coming to us as this suddenly it's an emergency when the truck probably could last another year or two yes, you'd have to put cost and this is a good deal. It sounds like something that is that kind of miles on that kind of car. You probably do have a long lifetime left of this new vehicle and I would buy it if I needed a fire truck. We're specifically going after gas engine because diesels especially newer diesels have to have the stuff put in them and if it sits it crystallizes and then you run into massive maintenance issues so we that fits another bill of it's a gas engine. It's also a safety thing. No I know. I don't disagree with anything that you're saying about this truck at all. Five years or less Five years or less it could voters need to do it. Over five years it needs to be treated like a bond vote. That was the key. With all the required posting and advertising in the newspaper. That's why we had to treat that. Oh it's still if it's five years or less approved by the voters. But the thing is it sounds like it's the same. It has to be approved by the voters. It's more than five years it has to be approved by voters. Well it has to be a bond vote. A bond vote. Every Tuesday or wherever you have three consecutive until no more, no less. And then they talk about useful life. So the only way that we could possibly do this is to essentially pay out of our pockets or else you put it on the town meeting morning as a special article. It's not going to be there. That won't be there. It's our meeting. You have the authority to vote to borrow. Right. What do you guys think? What's the sense? Well I voted against it last time. Yeah I did too. But if you guys could do five and we did eight for the 13. Well we can't do five and do the lights. And do the We said the cap could be delayed. So take the cap out right for starters. It takes a long time for eight firefighters to raise a thousand dollars. Or the 3,500. You have to look at the realities right now. You could talk to Red Hen about that. That would be a possibly like that's what you would be raising money for for the tips. And they do, there's thousands. It's a couple thousand dollars a month I mean you get on a wait list. But if we never asked before. I mean it's very early in our budget year but at least it would give us some time to look at where we are and where we think we might be. It's not a great situation. We were perfectly fine until last April. Exactly. So what's the sense of the board? Does anybody want to make a motion? Do we want to pass it over? What do we want to do? Do you want to pass it over until I can come up? We could also and then maybe turn it into a motion that's like we will give X number of dollars towards this as opposed to the whole purchase and then you know that gives. Well I mean I think we ought to vote on it. Peter asked it. I have a question. As a 501c why not? I don't know if anybody would loan to us because we don't have a regular income. That's true. You need to be able to pay back. Wait a second. That's not true. On your last tax return you said that the money you got from the town was your regular income. Isn't that right, Miranda? Well it counts as it's part of their income. It's not a guaranteed income unless it shows on their last tax return. It shows on the tax return that they put it into their tax return. 35,000 40,000. There's 60 whatever it is that the town gives you goes on to the tax return. So I don't know what they would consider that income or not. 74,000. 75,000. I don't think we're not going to borrow money. Yeah. We're a volunteer organization. No, but I'm thinking if we have to go to the, if it becomes a vote, but that to the, if the voters have to vote it in, but you're saying we would come in under that, right? Under the five years or whatever. Well, when I say five years or under. Yeah, but then if it's over five years you still have to. Yeah, so the voters have to be borrowing anything the voters have to do. So that's what it comes down to. I was just looking at if somebody had to go out and borrow you guys wouldn't be under the same obligation as the town. And that's kind of why that question. But with that I'm sure we're not going to, even if we were to go down that route, which I do not want to go down, but we were, we wouldn't get the interest rate that you guys get. We probably would be looking at 8%. Right. Yeah, it would be like a personal loan. Yeah. So if you, so here's the thing, I think at this very moment in time, I don't feel comfortable voting for the entire thing. Yeah. Unless there is some stake from these guys. And so I would propose that we say that we make a motion of that we will contribute $9,000 and you guys have to come up with four. Or and if you can't then. Four plus the 15 that we've already offered you. Plus you don't have a cap. 1500. Right. And the cap, well, you'll have proposing I'm proposing nine and you know, that's that's what I would say. And I would feel comfortable voting for that. And I do believe that there are opportunities out there that that I mean, I can talk to Red Hen. I know Red Hen. I'll talk to them and say, you know, this is the first I've heard that Red Hen does this. Yeah. No, they don't. They donate their tips every month. You just have to. Are you making that as a motion? I'm making that as a motion that we would contribute $9,000 from our general fund, I guess. And to support the purchase of this vehicle. Is there a second for the motion? Further discussion? No. So it would be $9,000 from the general fund? Where else is it going to come from? Wherever it comes from. But not out of bond. Don't you think we should have that in the motion somewhere where the money's coming from? I know someone's going to ask down the road. Well, where is their money? That's a good question. Discretionary funds. We don't have $9,000. We don't have $9,000. Yeah, we don't have it. It's all those rock and hard place kind of issues, you know. I just, I think it's, to me it's a compromise and I know that it's not a compromise that you guys like, but I feel like this is a good deal and you know, I don't necessarily, I mean, yes, there will be. What's that? I don't know if we could do that. Why? Take it out of the fund balance. Why not? Yes, you can. Why not? I mean, we've never done it for anything other than helping with our tax rate. We haven't. Well, if you overspend your budget, it comes out of the fund balance. Exactly. I'm really opposed to that. That's essentially what the money is. There's no other money. It's not there. It's over budget. Right. I mean, unless miraculously we don't have any storms this winter and our budget actually has such surplus. This money has to be provided for us with. I know. I'm just saying that the likelihood What are they putting it up to for auction at the end of the month? I would say probably the end of the month. End of the month? So do we want to pass over for tonight? We're not going to miraculously come up with any more money. No, we're not. But at least it would give us a chance to have a look. At the end of October's financials and you were looking at... Count that engine. Oh, yeah. Now there's an interesting... $50,000. $50,000 for the truck at the end. $52,000 actually. So I can already tell you what's an over expenditure. Right. Like I said, maybe we won't have any more snow. Okay, so there's a motion and there's a second. Are you ready for a vote? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say no. No. Yeah. I can't... I just want to say... I know you guys need this. And it's... the timing is just so bad. It's a good time for you in terms of being able to get it. But for the town and I think in terms of our responsibility overall when we just had this $50,000,000 bill to rebuild an engine on a truck to spend more money that's just going to drive our deficit higher it's just there's fiscally not sound, I think, right now. If we had the money, we thought we were going to have a surplus. I don't think anybody would have. Yeah, I mean I actually thought that was a good compromise and I think what you've told us Yeah, I mean that all that makes sense. This can more convince me that it was a good deal than last time but I mean we have a budget in front of us that's already 11% higher than last year and we still have this $52,000 on the engine from one of our trucks. No, we appreciate that, we understand that. And also the same thing can happen to our rescuers. You know, the engine can blow tomorrow. Yeah, we know that. And we're, you know... And we know that we're not going to get a better deal. I mean we probably are going to spend more. We didn't go hunting for this. We understand that. We do understand that. It just so happens I work there. Yeah. You work at the company? I work in Colchester. So that's the only way we found out about it. And it's like just like you said, if there's something comes down, come tell you. Ask him if it's $7,000 or $9,000. Yeah. Like an estimate. You just voted it down though. I know. I'm not taking my checkbook. I'm not taking my checkbook. Thank you guys for coming in. Thanks a lot. Thanks for all the information. Okay. Been a productive meeting. Okay, so anyone want to move approval of the November 19th minutes? So I'll move. Second. All those who are there say aye if you approve. I'll say the motion. All those opposed? Yes, have it. So 3 to 0. Okay, orders we did. Phil, town computers. Very, very quickly. I've set up 25 e-mail accounts in the last couple of days. I had to get a hold of Jared because I have to get some information from our domain registration and e-mail records. So the stuff we're just pointing for. And so for, I'm setting them all up so that they have the same password. And which, when any of us get it, we'll have to sign on and create our own password. And I found while I was doing that that they have some really, really nice tutorials on how to set up, retrieve your e-mail and use a web-based client. So I'll get those all together and send them out to people that says this is your e-mail address, this is your password, you're going to have to sign in, change it, and then depending on how you want to set it up. So that's in process. I'm going to order the Chromebook for there. And I was talking to Darinda. There's some really good prices right now. Pretty Christmas, I think. So that's why. So let's just do that. Chromebook for $80? What's a Chromebook? Well, it's web browsing. Chrome browser. But I mean you have, you can access, if you have a Gmail account somebody can come in, they can log into their Gmail account, they can get their documents. But other than that, it's really just a way for them to get information, cut something out on the web. That's all they need over there, right anyway. Does it have an automatic hotspot? It'll just connect. We'll probably connect it to our guest network. But I mean if you took it to places, you'd have to go into the hotspot of the different places. It doesn't come with one. No, no, it's not. This one is already wirelessly connected. Great. And I'm working with Dell to set up a government account and get our tax exempt information in. I've got the computers back. I was able to actually save a little bit more money on those because I just went back and looked at configurations and the ability to change something here or there. And we got good long-term support. Oh yeah, they're running a special right now. You get five years of support for the price of four. And it's the kind of thing where like if something fails, they send you a new one and then you send the other thing back or they hotswap the piece of hard drive or something. So that's where we're at. Email, I should have up and running later this week, early next week. The computers, I don't know, working, you know, working with big corporations accounts is not always particularly easy. And we're in between the holidays so it seems like everything slows down. So that's my piece. That's where we're at. We didn't know when we chose you that you're going to be such a help in this very complicated area. Let's go back to Sarah. Alright, so correspondence Sarah. Nope, I'm pretty good. Yes. Tomorrow I am going to Jennifer Evans' house down on Rich Road. She's still there? She is. Just got a note from Lauren Oates who's leaving FEMA unfortunately she left on Friday to say guess what, that buyout, that 11th and a half hour buyout that we did for Lauren for Jennifer has come through. So FEMA is now at the inspection stage. Wow, that's taken forever. It has taken forever but we were really lucky to get that under the wire and that is a really bad road. It's a town road. If Jennifer leaves and that means we can discontinue that road and Paul will be relieved but also that's going to be much safer for her. Some of the questions are going to be asking tomorrow from the FEMA guys is okay, so if the town gets this house do we need to deconstruct it? Is that the one that's beyond the local home? Yes, it's the one at the very end. No one should be living there. It's going right into the stream. So I don't know if you guys have any questions for me to ask you about that but right now there is no town match. FEMA's going to pay 75% Jennifer's going to take it or leave it and she takes it too. She might have a mortgage. All of that was in the application. Okay. So then the town owns it? I believe the town owns it then and we get that little piece of land. Last time they could burn it down as practice. That's exactly what Patty suggested and if our fire department will do it then Moortown or Berlin will do it. It's bright by the water, it's perfect for the purposes. I always like that little location hidden back there but it's not a good spot. So anyway if you guys have any questions I wonder if I'd sign it. I mean you might ask since there are the burning thing is appropriate if we have our town and maybe another town is willing to use it as a drill kind of thing. Okay, anything else? Okay on the recreation fund. Well now I'm going to move to the recreation fund. Didn't we do that already? No because he wanted $500 he being Mitch and we discovered that we because Darinda pulled up that we have this um did you get this list? These are our funds so we have funds it's already called the recreation fund. I did some research on this and it seems to me I'm unclear I doubt that the town voters in the past ever properly created a fund. It seems to me what happened was that you got a lot of money to create the multi-purpose area the warming hut that's when the Bill Kalin days up there and an association was created the first time that I can see that and you got federal money the first time that I can see that the voters ever gave money to that association was when you wanted to hire somebody $400 a year to manage that area and the voters approved it the following year said whatever happened to that $400 and Peter Hood said we never found anyone to manage it and I think that was the genesis of that fund. So where did we get the other $5,000? What other $5,000? It's this $5,000 in that account. Well I just think that the fund the question was whether or not you needed to create a fund that was specifically for paving the multi-purpose path and I think that we're covering or whatever it is Is there anybody who or is there any document at the bank that says what it is? So we could actually just use that couldn't we? I don't even have nearly enough if he's truly talking resurfacing. Yeah well that but we don't need to create a new one You don't need to create a new one So the question is whether we had the $500 to what's over there You're saying no we can't? No I'm saying the fund exists and there may be some lapses in the records where I cannot find formally where the voters said yes please hold our money and return it over every year until you have enough to do this I cannot find where the voters ever said that but I may have missed it but the fund exists and it's to oversee if it's for the recreation that's being used for recreation Exactly just for that one particular area Right we can't use it for We can't use it to do something shady real hard Right could it be used for that? Right got it It could be used anything to do Well we created there's a B.O.R essentially for you know You got a lot of money from this something like over $200,000 Well I think it's to build the tennis courts That's what that fund is supposed to be for that particular area Well so it works in perfectly with what he wants to do Right So what's your concern that we don't know whether it's a legal fund or not You know if there's stipulations it comes down to like the cemetery fund that they had you know was it something that somebody granted to them that could only be used for certain things but this had no every fund is that where the voters are saying I may not live here in 20 years but I'm willing to put money in now and you can just hold it over and hold it over that's where you have to have that approval and I can't find that in the records but as I said I may have missed it I think then we have to assume that Well we don't have to assume that we know it exists we know it came connected with that part of town for recreational purposes and I think that what we probably ought to do is use it for that and if he wants to re-service the tennis courts we have to find out what it costs and then decide whether we want to add to it but it definitely seems to exist Well that's what he was asking you for right though Well he wanted to create it We don't need it It's there so Well no but you could add that to it Just accept of course every 500 we take away it sounds great an increase in our budget So anything else that you want to bring before the board I don't have anything Anybody else? Oh I want to know why we're buying tea and water from $49 That was a tea and water wasn't just all $49 all together Well the water here is bad Okay I just And I think that Derinda said I could have a candy budget because I've been using my own money including all the money for Halloween and all year long every time so I actually slipped some candy into that too it must have missed that and people keep drinking the tea so researchers come in and drink the tea other people keep drinking the tea so I bought a box of ever been tea It hasn't even been opened yet Hey I mean you know a watchler to co-op I learned you wouldn't believe the kind of crap they have there that they buy Well I really the water here is always it's just really really good I'm just kidding Sarah Is this the water? This is the good water and everybody drinks it and everybody comes in and drinks it Oh yeah good water Well yeah that and I mean like people are coming you know from outside they come up they go hey you know throw a buck for a donation Donation cup out there Yeah right they always take the candy They'll buy the candy Alright forget the food shelf thing we'll do the town water and candy and tea no but just put it by this there's a difference between the two Okay I think that's a good idea Yes we'll do that reserve fun for that We're scraping the bottle We really are Times are tough But I think there was something else in that $49 I think that $49 is more in the water and I think there was something else in that name I don't know I just saw it and I'm like oh my god Are we ready? Alright are we all done and it's only 10 to 7? Hey we're not too bad We're 25 minutes off but that's okay Yeah well we gave the fire department a long time Alright are we doing it? Yeah I second In favor Bye Okay