 I'm going to admit everyone, but you're okay with that, Mr. Chairman? Yeah. Okay? Yeah. They are all joining. Excellent. I'll let you know when they're all in. Hey, Mr. Sawyer just joined us as well. I was just going to say, I see Dave. Good evening, Dave. Hello. How are you doing? Good. Can everyone hear us okay? Yes, can. Good. Justin and everyone from the waiting room is has joined. Excellent. So we'll call the meeting for January 17th. I believe we have myself, Brad, town. Flow Smith. Dave Sawyer joining us. Correct. Yes. All right, Vince. Any, any additions or changes to the agenda? Yes, one, one item is the review of the select board report for the town report. But that was it. And that will need signatures as well. So anything, there's, there's several documents that need signatures tonight. I will ask Diane to send them for electronic signature this week. If that can't be done, I'm happy to meet you somewhere to have them signed as well. You have the select board report. You've got that prepared. Have we seen that? I don't remember seeing it. Yeah, there was a revised one sent out. Thank you to flow for that comment. She did comment on it and I made some corrections based on those comments or some changes. There's a couple more small edits. To be done, but you do have the. Okay. It's in our documents right here. Okay. I'm going to send you documents. Hopefully. Or on a separate email. I had to send several. I saw that to see if I can. Pull the agenda back up. This is exciting. So now let me see the agenda that I decided. Public comment. Hearing none. Let's just throw the Alice deal with the select board report right now. I'm dealing with us. Flow made you made some changes. Yeah, and Vince went forward with the changes and. There were just a couple more that I had and one was to include. How people could put in for wanting to be on commissions and. Boards and things of that nature. But otherwise the content has been revised. And I think it covers most everything and Vince did a good job. Doing the adjustments. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We can't hear you. Yeah, I had a chance to look it over and everything looked pretty good to me. And I just made some minor changes and gave those to Vince today, which he can adjust as he feels necessary under town staff. We were notifying the town of his. Start date, et cetera. And I just mentioned there to include his name. And I just wanted to make sure that. Everything was fairly minor except that section that I thought would be good to add, you know, in terms of how we changed some of the process regarding. You know, commissions and boards, but just to encourage people, you know, because we always appreciate everyone in that regard. I guess we would entertain a motion to approve it. We can. Must need to have. Must have a deadline for it, right? Yeah. Okay. The other person has call captions enabled. Please start speaking. I make the motion to approve the select board report as presented with just a few minor changes that Vince will incorporate. I'll second that. Any discussion. Those in favor say aye. Motion carries. Okay. We have a time road discussion. So we talked about this a few times. Back on the agenda. We think that how did we left it at the last meeting that the board was going to put some additional thought into it and figure out where we stood. What we thought. It was something that we were looking for. I would say. That they had asked potentially for us to. Maybe not require paving of that road. I'm David pointed out that a section of. What we had looked at for potential policy for that. Showed not necessarily that we had to pave an entire road. Or had. In order for us to take it over the entire road need to be paved. But there was maybe a 40 foot. We looked at, we had had some discussion about how many dwelling units were going to be up there. Does anybody from the board remember, or Vince remember any other discussion or topic items that came up that were important that we haven't discussed or anything that maybe we missed or anything like that? The only thing I would add is I did have a resident come in. There's an additional, I think it's, it's on my desk actually, approximately 300 feet off the right-hand side of the cul-de-sac that was overlooked that they also want to have considered. It goes up to the first plot there on the right off that cul-de-sac that they also want to consider. 300 feet, is that a one resident drive at that point in time? It goes up to the first resident. There is another resident further out at the end as well, I believe, but this one goes up to the first resident's house on the right. I can, I can, I may have sent you the map. I'm pretty sure the map is, yeah, it is. It's in the package. Yeah, I'll pull it up right now. I just wanted to, This is Ray, if I could speak. Go ahead, Ray. Is actually, that furnishes three driveways for lot six, seven, and eight. And that little bit of a spur goes to just beyond the second driveway so that the driveway to the last house would be a driveway, not town-owned. Right, so has, with my question would be, you know, with like, Tim, has Tim been up and looked at that and looked at where we would turn our trucks around if we were to do it, you know, like? Not that I know of, Justin. Right, so I think, you know, I think that right now we would have to have Tim involved again if we were going to look at it by adding that in. I think just because it's a new addition, it's new, you know, I mean, I don't think the board could probably say, okay, well, let's add it even even if it made perfect sense without knowing, you know, what we'd have for access with the town vehicle. And I hate to speculate for Tim. I think that the town was, I think that the board may have been ready to make a decision with what we already had there tonight. But I don't know, I don't know about if we're adding that piece on if we'd be able to do all of that tonight. So. No, there's no great rush anyway. There's a number of items that you folks want fixed with the road that we're gonna have to make do before you take it on anyway. So take all the time you need, Justin. I think where I just might share my thoughts is that I think the board was definitely leaning towards taking that road over and maybe not requiring paving it, just maybe paving in a little bit off the existing blacktop for a transition this there. I think that John Quinn brought up some valid points that not all roads need should be paved just for maintenance over time, things like that. So I believe we were leaning towards that and there's definitely some other things that we need to do, but that doesn't mean we can't come to an agreement prior to all of those being done and then have something set for you. What may have, what I hate to see happen is if there's a transition in the board and you've been working with one board on this and there's a substantial transition after town meeting to have any delay or frustration for anybody since both parties have been working on this pretty hard. So it would be good if we could get Tim's input and get something done before March meeting. Right. I don't know if it's an all or nothing for this particular road or how the residents feel up there. We had a meeting and all the residents are in favor of the town taking it on. Right. The only problem was the issue of paving that struck out, that was a silver bullet. Yeah, I don't know that it's necessary. I mean, that could be an issue down the road for the town too. You know, it's not as expensive if we needed to repave that road at some point in time whereas the right ditching and right grade on that, all of it should be relatively maintenance free throughout the summer. It's not like it's getting a tremendous amount of traffic. It's all pretty much fairly residential. So we've only got one house left to build and all the 10 wheeler traffic will come to an end. Hopefully. Right. So I guess just with that new addition, that new piece being put in there, Vince, I don't know if Tim's been made aware of it or if we can maybe get his thoughts or if it's real, I don't know. Yeah, he has been up to, we haven't been up to look at it like we did the first section where we took the photos and looked at all of it, took the measurements and so on. I will talk to him to see if we can do it. I don't know with the snow or not, but I think we can. I don't see it happening prior to the March meeting because I mean, if we were to do our due diligence from the town's perspective on that piece, we looked pretty thoroughly at that section of road that we were looking to take over. The engineers report that you guys sent us Ray, I don't know that that piece was included. Yes, yeah. That wasn't it. Was that included in the report that we received? Yes. Yeah, we refer it to copy, but a number of copies. Right, but that section, this new 300 foot section or whatever was that included in it? No, no, no, no, it wasn't Justin. I'm sorry. It's understood. Right, so we would probably require that. Yep. Mike, I would probably suggest to you guys that for right now, if you wanted to try to get something done prior to the first of March, that maybe we look at just sticking with what the existing piece is, the existing road that we talked about and then go from there if you guys were comfortable with that, I'm not really sure how you feel about it. It's definitely gonna be a while with it. You know, it's not starting from square one, but it's definitely, it's definitely, certainly gonna have to follow the same process that we did already with the rest of the road to get that section up to speed, if that's what we're gonna do. Okay, well, maybe it makes sense then to hopefully get the first part of it approved and see if we can add that to a 300 feet on at a later date. Yeah, I think that that would probably be the ideal. So if we, from the board's perspective with everything we've looked at with the original section, not including the additional section that was included for discussion tonight, so Brad, Dave, do you have any comment on that? Well, I'm just, after looking at that report and stuff on that, all the items that were pointed out in that report, is that those items would be corrected if we were to approve this, those items would be brought up to the standard, correct? Absolutely, wait, just gonna wait. Good weather. So Dave, the idea was with all of those items that on the list that we went through prior to the town accepting that as a town road, that section, those would be brought up to those standards, they'd be improved, and otherwise we wouldn't take it over. All we would be looking to do is saying, okay, well, we would accept this as a town road if all of these are brought up to the standards that were specified. And until they were brought to those standards, the town wouldn't accept it. Exactly, and you would be coming up with some kind of transition between the intersection, I would think, between where the paved is, and then going into the unpaved, there would be a certain amount of footage that would get paved. Right, and I don't know what that was. Okay, well, as long as there was something that's in there, because I don't think it would make sense, it's not gonna maintain, the road will be deteriorated if you didn't do that at some point, so. Right, so what was it, you would point it out, what was it that it stated in that then? So do you remember how far in off the edges or off on the apron we needed to go in or whatever you'd call it? I'd have to go back and look at my notes on that one. I believe it was 40 or 50 feet, but don't quote me on that. I'd have to go back and look at it. Right, so I could see where the board could approve that road being taken over with that recommended apron or transition, whatever you wanna call it, without it being paved, because I think it'll be easier to maintain in the longer. I could see where the board could say, all right, we'll adopt that as a town road once all the standards are met. We could put that forward so that these guys, these guys would at least have that accomplished. If you guys feel the same, I'd entertain a motion or discussion. I don't see if that's a problem, Justin, we can add that to it, it's not a problem. Yeah. I know that we had paved the entrances to the trailer park, and I think the state standard was 25 feet, and we added 25 feet, only because of the stopping and starting. So I think that the total we did was 45 feet, it seems to be holding up real well. And I say we at the Western's trailer park, before we were having some significant potholes being developed because we didn't have that extra 20 feet, now we've seemed to correct that by going to 45 feet. Right, plus it allows for the transition for like if they're salting and things like that to not be. Correct. So I think Vince, I think it was probably 50 feet, honestly, Vince has that, Vince'll deal with that. But it was written in that, it was already written into the policy that we didn't adopt the policy, but it was kind of a general policy we were looking at from when we did, I think Partridge's firm, so yeah. Yep, as long as we have that and it's brought up, I personally would enter, yeah, I'd be okay with it. So I don't know if you guys wanna make a motion or not. I'd be willing to make a motion that the original amount of roads to the town adopted as long as we went to the standards that Vince had bound on the paving and not to include the additional 300 feet. And I would add not including the paving at this time unless that's determined down the road. Right, so we gotta stick to our original motion. And he didn't have the paving included in there, only the transitional flow. Perfect, then I second that motion as presented. Thank you. There we go, any discussion? Those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. There you go. So well, if you guys wanna look at that other 300 feet, we can look at that at a separate time, but at least we've got that handled for you. And I appreciate all the development and tax dollars and everything that's going on up there. Hope everybody's enjoying it. Yeah, it would seem to be anyway. Thank you all. Thank you guys, I appreciate it. Yep. All right, conservation commission recommendation to the board regarding a land sale request of a parcel on Belknap. Who do we, we have the conservation commission with us this evening. Yep, Mr. Willard is with us tonight. Good evening. You have the letter in your package as well. Yep, starting to pull it up right now. Hey, Tom, how you doing? Very well. Got my driveway shoveled anyway. I haven't been able to get out of my driveway all day, but I'm driving a rental vehicle from Florida. So while I'm pulling this up, I don't think they had made us any firm offer on this land or any specified monetary amount, but what is the conservation commission's opinion? Well, I think I can't add a lot to what Wendy Bowles put in the letter, but a recommendation to the select board is that the town retain that 17 acres for a number of reasons. I can go over them quickly, maybe. One, that 17 acres is adjacent to a map deer yard. I walked the area with Phil Gentilly and Wendy Bowles. There was a considerable amount of white-tailed browse all through the 17 acres. There was evidence of a lot of other wildlife use. My first, I think, is probably important for a wildlife corridor being sort of wet between the interstate and the pond and your pond road. There is significant timber stand there. I think we talked with a couple of the recreation board members while we were flooding the heights and they thought that there was potential for, on that side of the watershed, the class four road that comes up, I don't know if the name of it is anymore, but. Belknap? Yes. Belknap Road, that that could be a, if not a mountain bike, a hiking, any kind of a trail on that side of the mountain that would go to that particular parcel. That parcel does have spectacular views over toward the Sugarbush mountain range. So it is kind of a beautiful little 17 acres. So basically for those reasons, the conservation commission strongly suggested that the town retain that parcel. Okay, Rob, I would think that the town at this point would want to retain it regardless. I think that those are all incredibly good reasons why we'd want to continue to retain it regardless of an offer. I don't know how the other board members feel, but to me, I mean, it was, we just got asked, would you be interested in selling it? And so we forwarded it on to you folks and based on your input, I would say that the town, it's my opinion, I can't speak for the rest of the board, but I don't think they can speak it up. I just, I wouldn't be interested in it, but. I'm a favor of retaining the property as opposed to selling it for all the reasons that were presented by Tom this evening, as well as the letter that we received. I feel the same way. Oh, and I guess that pretty much solves that. It doesn't require a boat or anything. So, since we haven't had an offer or anything like that. So, yes, that's that, right? How do you feel then? So we handled that, Tom, do you feel like we've handled that appropriately for your needs on the conservation commission? Excellent, I think that conservation commission certainly would be grateful. If the board, because. If my understanding is correct, Justin, the board's telling me that the land is not for sale and I will notify the person that's interested in it of that. Absolutely. Thank you. Appreciate it, everybody. Don't stay up all night doing this stuff. Thank you. We appreciate you being here. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we got town meeting schedule about discussion. Yes, once again, the governor has loosened the requirements so that the same rules apply that did last year. So it could be conducted as it was last year. So I've got three different scenarios. I'm happy to read out that Rosemary presented to me for that the board just basically needs to make a decision on which way we want to do it. So the first one is everything is normal and in-person meeting on Saturday, voting on Tuesday, absentee ballots for the town, the school and the CBCC ballots mailed by voter request. The second scenario is all by Australian ballot with an informational meeting within 10 days prior to March 1st, voting in person on Tuesday. Absentee town ballots, school ballots and CBCC ballots mailed by voter request. And that is the preferred at this point from Rosemary as well. And then the third is all Australian ballot, informational meeting within 10 days prior to March 1st, town ballots mailed to every unchallenged voter, absentee school ballots and CBCC ballots by voter request only. So again, the school ballots, I'm not sure that Middlesex has voted yet. They were the last ones left out there. So I don't know where that stands. I'd have to find out. And the CBCC ballots can't be mailed unless they're requested by the voters. So even if the town and the school ballots are mailed to everyone, then the CBCC ballots will not be at that point. So those are the notes that Rosemary gave me and her recommendation is as follows. I recommend that we go with number two above, as I mentioned, with no in-person town meeting, the absentee ballot sent by request of the voter. And she also recommends that we send an information sheet to all the unchallenged voters to let them know if the changes that there'll be no town meeting and in-person voting on Tuesday. And they will have to request their absentee ballot if they choose to not vote in person. So it'll be quite a lot of last year. Yes. I would think that that would make the most sense to me at this point in time. Okay. One other thing before you move forward, Justin, on that for a vote, she did also ask me to mention that the Grange has again requested tax exemption this year. And that should be a floor vote. So the select board would again have to put it on the ballot for a one year exemption as it was done last year for the Grange. So that should be part of the motion if you decide to go that way. Well, either way, if we decide to have that be part of it or not be part of it. Right. Right. It's a separate item. I will assume. Rob. So that- I would make- Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Dave. I would make a motion to go with option two and including the items for the Grange that Vince just described. I second that motion. Any discussion? Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. All right. Support, dedication, discussion. Excuse me. So what happens with the school ballots under option two? Absentee, I'm gonna read it again. It says absentee town ballots, school ballots and CVCC ballots mailed by voter request. Yeah, but didn't you authorize the school board to send them automatically? Right. Dave, they're still waiting on- Right, they're waiting on middle sex and middle sex meets tomorrow and I don't know what middle sex will do but if middle sex says, yeah, go ahead and do it. Then they'll, the school ballots will all go out from this, yeah. So the school ballots would go out but the town ballots would, if middle sex says yes. That's my understanding of it, yep. Okay. I just wanna make sure I understand, thanks. Yep. Good question. So, where town report, dedication, discussion. Yep, I think Flo would ask that to be on the agenda. She wanted to talk about that, I think tonight. Yes, I had asked for it to be put on the agenda so that we could put some names out and thoughts and we could make a decision in terms of going forward with that and who we were gonna propose. Okay, I'd just like to throw out one thing that the staff had a recommendation to me about having Henry Lague, haven't dedicated to Henry Lague this year. I would, that was the name that popped right into my head and I've already been thinking about it this year myself. I just wanted to put that out there for the staff. Yep. Does anybody else have any recommendations? I had some additional names for recommendations based on all of their involvement with the town and do you have the list that I sent to you? I wanna make sure I don't miss anyone that I suggested but I had suggested Carlin Neweazel, Brad Town, Robert Warnick and I feel it may have been another person that I had recommended but the name escapes me right now and I apologize but Vince has the list as well. Like you put some thought into it Flo. Typically, I think we get into this pattern of recognizing people that are no longer with us and that's a shame so I can appreciate the idea of, personally the idea of having it dedicated to somebody while they're still here. I think a lot of people, all those people you listed have put in a tremendous amount of time and energy and moving the town forward. Another thought that I had is we could do sort of a half and half and that doesn't necessarily mean two people but we could have Henry Legue and then we could have the other individuals under the cohort of moving the town forward. Yeah, I mean you could do like a special thank you and you could have a dedication but then also have maybe like an exceptional thank you section if you wanted to I suppose something along those lines. I think Henry did a tremendous amount for the town over the years. He served on a lot of the boards. He did a lot and I think I personally feel like if there was ever a year where it was pretty obvious to dedicate a town report to somebody this year it would be Henry. That's just my opinion but I wouldn't mind adding, thank you for your service or the time and energy you put in for a lot of these volunteers that are out there. Absolutely, across the board. I don't know, is this something we need to completely discuss and have an answer on tonight? No, I think we still have, well actually yes because the town report has to be out to press before the next select board meeting. So yes, we will need a decision. I'll let the board decide, they know my thoughts and they can make a motion and decide what they want to do and we'll go from there. Just waiting on somebody to tell me what they want to do. I personally make a motion to recognize Henry Lugue this year in the town report for the board, yeah. Second. Any discussion? Those in favor say aye. Motion carries. Town manager versus town administrator discussion. This got tabled at the last meeting because they felt that you should be present for that discussion, Justin. So this is all on you, I think. I'll take all the blame. So what I'd ask them to do, well honestly let's look over what the advantages and disadvantages were from a municipal management standpoint of the town manager versus the town administrator position. And I'm sure there's pros and cons to each scenario and I assume that I just didn't know. So more or less some of this information on it and then having a discussion briefly with the board about it because I think it's something that as the town grows and develops, I mean, when you look at some of the larger municipalities in the area, which we're not even close to yet, but we do have a lot more business than some of our surrounding towns that we handle on a weekly basis. It may make sense to take a peek on and see whether or not it's feasible for us to adopt that model of government for our town. So just to jump in, Justin, I did put in your package a town administrator or a town manager presentation. There's a PowerPoint. I'd like to say I wrote it, but I'd be lying if I did. I plagiarized this. I found it from something that another town had used that I thought fit very well. There's a lot of facts in there that they brought up. They did mention some of the pros and cons as well. And even I think a couple of things about what the statute say with regard to it as well. So it's a pretty good report or presentation with some useful information. At this point in time, we're pushing pretty close to get it on. I mean, I don't know how we were looking to just have an opinion vote on it, right? Because this would require a charter change. Right, right. It can't be done for March now. And we talked about that in the last meeting. We'll have, there'll be another, there's an election year coming up. So there'll be one in August. So it could potentially make the August one. We'd have time to warn it and get information out. Should that be the direction that wants to go? My fear with this, with any transition in the board is that they're, if we start, I mean, we're gonna, if we have a conversation tonight and there's not gonna be any chance for action prior to the town meeting that we could, I don't wanna have a conversation start from scratch, but that's basically where we're starting right now. So I'm not sure what the board feels and how they feel about continuing this conversation or whether it honestly gets tabled until after town meeting. Because it's gonna require a significant amount of, I mean, it's gonna require some time on behalf of the select board forward, right? I agree with you, Justin. I don't believe it's something that we can act on, you know, quickly by no means, nor tonight. And it will require some time and review. And the reason we tabled it at the last meeting was because you had suggested it and John and I were questioning some things around it. So this presentation that Vince did is very helpful and informational, but I'm not at a point to make a decision on it at this time. And I think it will require some significant time. So I'm in agreement with what you just indicated. You know, okay. Yeah, I mean, I think that was more of my thoughts on it. I wish it could never seem to get everything done in time. So I feel like, unfortunately, this is such a large item. And then, you know, if we're gonna take a look at having to make a charter change for that, there's probably other items we may wanna look at at the same time from a board perspective. So we can tackle it all at once. So to me, it would help make there's some obvious things that are potential questions as far as maybe staffing and management that seem to come up. I've talked with some other surrounding communities and their board members and they feel as though most of that is not an issue. They've never seen issues by changing to the town manager form. But I know that that was one of the concerns that a lot of people have is just staffing and control and oversight of the board, I guess, to some extent for town employees. But I think that a lot of that hinges on your relationship with your town manager. So I think that makes it so that it's easier for the board to manage one individual potentially and it allows the administrator or town manager to not feel so restricted and be able to take action and make some decisions. I'm sure not speaking for Vince, but just if this for when it comes up in the future, I'm sure that coming from the private sector Vince is somewhat frustrated with how long it takes to take action on things in the current model. So I think that the town may be pleasantly surprised with the production or the level of efficiency from not only the administrator or manager, but also just overall with projects in the town should they adopt that model. That's all. That was my biggest concern is that it doesn't, I think it could be much more efficient for our community and make things happen faster and more timely for the town. But I guess it sounds like we should table it, unfortunately, until after town meeting. Anybody else have any comments on that? Vince, any comments on that? No. All right, audit review with Diane. Okay, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, good, okay. In looking at the audit and you have some of the paperwork that Vince sent to you, the general fund had an increase of 554,000 last year which is significant. And a lot of that has to do with a lot of money, well, we received a lot of money, not ARPA money at that time, but we did receive money for different plans programs that we had, we had grants for the CDRP grant and we had a lot of other grants that received. Now, some of these grants, we have not spent the money on yet. So in other words, we got the money, but the work is not gonna be done until FY22 and a lot of it has been done in FY22. So that is part of the increase. The other part of the increase is that we did have more revenues that we had not anticipated. For instance, the money that we got from, just look at this quick here, the records restoration for instance, that we made like 20,000 more. So there's an awful lot of money coming in. And also we didn't have a complete staff. So there was a time for nine months, we did not have a town administrator. Our police staff was never full and even the highway department was down. So there was not as much expenses in those departments. And also we did not do some paving projects that we had anticipated doing. So that is why we have such a significant increase. Now, the audit is not complete yet. We get the first draft which has been sent to you and I think they're still working on the notes. So when they are complete, we will have somebody come from Belinda, Mullen, they'll be coming from Father Gell and Sigali and just going over the information. But I wanted to give you a heads up that, so far this is the information that we have. Okay. Thank you. Well, that's it with the audit review. Public works position discussion. Take it away Vince. Okay, thanks. So in your package, you'll see a job description. That's basically a comment provided me from the public works board. They're making a couple of recommendations here to the select board for consideration. One is this specific job, which is a public works board supervisor. The details of that are laid out in this job description with the duties and responsibilities and such that you have. And the second one is that they're looking for the board to consider moving towards a public works department. Right now would be a one-man department with this creation of this position. So I just want to put that out there as well. I don't know if you need me to go through the duties and responsibilities. If you want to take time to look at it now or if you want me to put it on the next agenda for further discussion into the details after you've had a chance to review this, unless you've reviewed it from the package that was sent already. I'm reviewed it. I'd like to actually, Vince, I'd like your perspective on what you believe should be in the best approach for the town based on how you've seen it, what you think we need operationally, what will be the most functional position, how it will be best handled. I hate that we add on a position, but the efficiency of some of it, ultimately you'd have to keep an eye on it for the board. So your perspective and your background, I think would add a tremendous amount of value and help guide the board in that process. Okay, thanks for that. I'm happy to speak to it though, Justin. Again, it goes back to a little bit about what we talked about in kind of the retreat when we talked about the structure and as the town grows, right? Then we all know the town's growing and it's gonna continue to grow. Are we at the point where we need to start considering this? I'm thinking so quite frankly at this point. We have a lot of projects that are in the works. We have a lot that still need to come and it seems to make sense to start in that direction to me to have that public works department, someone responsible looking over that, following it up, taking the actions that are needed on our water and sewer systems that keep expanding and growing and need to develop. Vance, those services right now, those are contracted services, aren't they? They are, yes. And do you know roughly what those contracted services are costing the town annually? I should, I had it, but I don't have it on my notes in front of me, but Diane might be able to pull that out. She's the one that writes the checks, so she may be able to give you a closer number than I could. I think that's okay for this evening because we're gonna end up bringing this discussion up at another meeting. Let's just have that information at our next meeting, if that's okay with you. I think that makes sense only for serving on that board, the public works board there for a while. There's a lot of information that if we don't move in that direction, I feel down the road that there's some knowledge out there through the contractors that are currently doing that, that if we don't capture that information and these individuals retire or go out, that we're gonna be at a great disadvantage. But to your point, you're right. And that's one of the points that they did bring up as well, Dave. And they have a timeline that they'd like to move through with this, as far as starting to interview prospective qualified candidates and making a decision to get somebody in around the believe the March or April timeframe so that they can spend the next two to three months working with the consultants that we have to do exactly that, gain the knowledge, the tribal knowledge that they have around that before they are up and running on their own. And then in the following six months after that, they would be up and running on their own after a few months with the consultants. So you're right, Dave, we should, and Justin, we should have this, if you have questions that you want me to have, we should get them out and I can get them answered and we can have it on the next agenda and maybe even have someone from the public works board here as well to speak to it if you'd like. I personally think that would be a very good thing to do is to have those numbers, know where we're at and then have somebody from the public works board to do a presentation, at least, because they're hands-on, these guys are, they know what we need and I just feel that it's a direction I think we should be heading in. All right, so let's do this. We can email any questions or any information that we want for our next meeting when this is gonna be a topic to Vince. One of which will be our costs currently. And then we can invite the chair, obviously, of the public works board along with any other members that would like to speak to that, because, and they should be prepared to give us some sort of recommendation, which, and have a kind of a question and answer tech conversation, if that makes sense? Absolutely. Okay, Flo, did you wanna add anything to that? I know you said you reviewed both of them. I did, I just wanted to add in that I did review the paperwork that we had in our packet that outlines the position and the duties, qualifications, skills and abilities, et cetera. I thought it was well-written, I thought it touched on everything and I think that that's in a good stead. So if we put it on the next agenda and do everything as you described, I think we'll be in a really good position. Excellent, thank you. Thank you. All right, are you ready for some budget review? All right, let's get that rolling then. Yeah, again, I sent you kind of an abbreviated package, right, it has the overall overview, it has the numbers that were presented last time and then it highlights the changes that were made based on the request that I was given, the direction I was given. So I can quickly run through that if you like. Well, I wasn't at the next last meeting. So yeah, if you don't mind running through it real quickly and showing us what it looks like, telling us where the changes were that satisfied the recommendation. Yeah, I'll start off with where we were. We were at 7.8% on the initial presentation of the budget to the board. So that was a grand total of 3,988,809. All right. So looking at it, we had a fair amount of conversation around it and most all of it made sense. But I did wanna drive one point home again that just with the cost of expenses that increase that we have little or no control over, insurances, benefits and those type of things, that increased by $111,151 over our 2022 budget. So that was 3% of our overall budget that that increased. Right? Which is expected. I mean, everything's going up. So that's... Yeah, it's high, but it's expected to go up. So that being said, I put that back in the numbers and because again, it should be part of the overall increase, right? So we took another hard look at the budget and we took $50,000 out of the administration budget. So what does that $50,000 look like out of there? It's $40,000 for the office person that we were looking at hiring, right? For next year. My backup proposal to that would be, let's look at getting a temp and use them to do sewer and water work that Diane is currently doing to relieve her of that. That would take a large portion of it off. Again, it would probably start out to be a part-time position and see the impact that that has. And then look again, maybe it next year, if it's worthwhile hiring that other staff administration person. And also, the other 10K comes from removing the computers and equipment that we need to upgrade to and putting those under ARPA rather than in the budget. Use ARPA funds because they're qualified for ARPA funds. So take that out of the budget and put it onto the ARPA. Okay, hold on on that one moment. So this administrative position that we looked at adding was to help alleviate or eliminate potentially some of the workload. Have you done some, you spent some time doing time cards and looking at that and from your perspective, you had made the recommendation to put it in there. So I'm just assuming that you thought it was important for the town to have that position. From a management role, how do you see that impacting the town by not having that position? I was just trying to think, I mean, just have that position in there because we felt like adding a position. No, that's correct. And again, that position came about, again, based on some of the discussion that we had at the retreat about the structure of the town and it's growing. That's why I'm, it'll hurt a little bit, but again, everybody's got a tighten the belt, we get that. But adding, if we have the okay to move forward with the town to at least take that portion of the work and again, bear in mind, that portion of the work will also be paid by the Public Works Board because that's the work that they'll be doing. So it'll start out part-time. That'll give us time, kind of, especially Diane, to catch your breath and have a look. We can reevaluate a little bit more and fine-tune what we really need going forward. So that would also fall under the Public Works Department discussion that we're gonna have in our next meeting as well, I would assume. It'll have to be brought up there, yes. Maybe we should be looking at that in there at that same time, just for conversation. That would be good. Okay, so you think the temp is a reasonable alternative. Now, what do you have for a budget for the temp, isn't it? Well, we don't have, I mean, it's gonna be in the town budget. So when you say it's coming out of the town budget, a portion of that, it's coming out of the town budget, but then the building of the temp would go under the other fund. Public Works. Public Works fund, so that that wouldn't, yeah, okay. So the temp wouldn't be added back into our municipal budget, that's that. That's right. Correct. Okay, I'm sorry, I just wanted to clarify and want to make sure that that was on our radar for our discussion with the Public Works Department conversation, right? Okay. Yes, please. Okay, so the next we found was the assessors. Again, it's gonna be similar here. We were, we could be able to remove another $2,300 from the assessors. If, again, part of what we do for them is computer upgrade. If we use the ARPA funds for that $2,300, that comes off our bottom line budget. Town meeting and elections, again, we were able to come up with maybe $1,000 there for meeting and election ballots. If, you know, we're going to be, we reduced it by 1,000 from six to five. That's gonna be pretty tight. The only advantage that we may have is if we do the school ballots, we'll get reimbursed for that. So that may cover that 1,000 anyway. And then we go down to other boards and commissions. I think we took $1,500 out of the recreation board. They had initially asked for 6,500. They're, you know, planning on doing a lot of things and starting a lot of programs. But we took 1,500 out and brought that down to 5,000. Town offices is the next big expense. I've lost my sheet for the town offices. We took 10 grand out. And that was four, if I can find the sheet, town offices. Page 20. Yep, it was under equipment contracts. Again, that was another $10,000 for the fees for the polymorphic software when our trial months are up. That does qualify for ARPA funds. So again, I'm recommending that we use ARPA funds for that. And then the next big one is the capital budget. And out of the capital budget, we took, bear in mind our capital budget, we had a huge reduction in that already. But we were able to find another 75,000 that we're gonna take out of that. 25 of that was for the UTV vehicle. It was discussed a little bit and it was kind of a nice to have but not necessary. So, and then the other 50 came out of the highway equipment budget. We had 300 in there. We reduced that to 250. We're hoping to offset that with the trade-ins on the vehicles perhaps. It'll offset some of that. But again, looking forward at next year, that 50, the intent will be to put that 50 back in there because again, we want that fund to build up so that every year we can pay for our vehicles with the trade-ins and not have to take out any loans and pay interest. And that includes the greater loaders in the future. So, we wanna increase that fund over time to be able to have the cash on hand to pay for the vehicles, not take loans. Absolutely. So, that all being said, there is an executive session tonight to talk about personnel and that is on salaries. So, I'm gonna leave that portion of the budget to talk about during the executive session with you. But once that's rolled in, I didn't hit the number I was asked to achieve but we're at about 4.06, so 4.1% increase overall from the 7.8 down to 4.1. So, I would recommend too that in the, I don't know how the board can do it, but it seems like we approve a budget prior to knowing what the school's going to do. And that can be a tremendous swing one way or another on the taxpayers. I feel like last year we were fairly level funded and then we had a reduction in the school taxes. And that's primarily what caused the Maryland tax rate to reduce. And if we had done that and kept it so that if we hadn't approved the budget until we knew what the schools were doing, we worry about a 3, 4% increase, which is fiscally responsible. But like last year, for example, we would have, if we had just kept it so that residents paid the same in taxes as they did the prior year without a reduction, we would have been able to put more in reserves to further reduce this year's budget and lessen that impact on them for an increase this year because we would have had that money set aside. So, I think we'll talk about the personnel stuff in executive session, but I really would like to, I don't know how we can do it if there's a way to do it where we can come in at a certain number and say, okay, we approve this 4% increase, but set something up so that should there be, I mean, I don't know how to do it if there's a substantial increase in the school, we can't really take anything significant out of our budget necessarily, but if there was, say, a reduction in the school, which I'm guessing there won't be this year, but if by chance there was like last year, we could keep the tax rate the same with the combination of those two and set money aside. So for the residents, it would have been a good year to have some savings set aside for some of these other things without it feeling like an impact on the taxpayers. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yes. So I don't know what the deadline or time frame is for the school budgets to be to us, but to me, that's also a pretty big determining factor in the town budget. And I don't know if we can work on making sure we work more in line with that or in line with that, not more in line, just knowing what it is before we make our decision. Is that even possible, Vets? That's a great question. I don't know. I believe the budget for the school board is coming up on their meeting this Wednesday, but I'm not sure what their deadline is if they'll be voting on it or not on Wednesday. And then their follow-up one is the first week of February. And you'll be in attendance for that meeting as well, right? On Wednesday, yeah, I'm going to be at the one on Wednesday. Yes. David, maybe you could ask that question for us. Sure. They've approved the budget already. They've approved the warning tomorrow night, but the budget's adopted and, you know, Berlin's, I think, a 7.2 cent increase under the worst case scenario. If the legislature were to throw all 90 million of the Ed fund surplus at property tax rates, I think Berlin raised about 3.6 cents, but that's not going to happen. So you're probably looking at some kind of increase, but, you know, it's not going to get worse than 7.2 cents. Thank you, Dave. Okay. Appreciate that update, Dave. I see. So we, what you're saying, David, if we were, we could do a better job is to select board of knowing that information already before we make a call on our budget. Why not? Okay. All right. Anything else on the budget? No, we'll discuss the rest in the final number of what that means after we talk about the salaries and personnel in the executive session. There was one thing I wanted to add, if I could, under the expenditure summary on page nine, I'm wondering if we could pare down the amount that we're increasing under town meeting and elections. You know, can you speak to that more? Well, what I understand from Rosemary, it's a two election year coming up. And so that it's just cost. Just a done deal. Yeah, I wasn't thinking about that. I was looking at such a sizable increase, but that makes sense as you describe it. This is an expensive year for elections. Right, right. Good point. All right, so we'll, that was, so you gave us that. All right. Anything else on budget review events? Nope, not at this point. No. Mask mandate discussion. I asked to have that put on the agenda. We had it on a past agenda and we postponed it for a future one and we hadn't circled back to it. So I just thought it would be wise. I also had two people approach me, one who works at a local facility in Berlin and another as a resident of Berlin, wondering if we were going to discuss it again. One individual, go ahead. Nope, go ahead. I was just going to say the one individual that works at an establishment had been approached by a customer who thought Berlin already had a mask mandate and basically there's other towns surrounding us that have put one in place. So I thought it would be wise for us to circle back and have a discussion, see where we stand on it, whether we want to discuss it at a future meeting or if we want to take action on it. So the reason that it got tabled until a future meeting was because we had a tremendous amount of, there didn't need to be any action. Right. Because we had a tremendous amount of people reaching out, not hopeful that we wouldn't adopt a mask mandate, hopeful that we didn't need to. We had talked to some businesses and talked in residence and we did have an overwhelmingly, it was the people that reached out to us was very much not in favor of a mask mandate. On top of it, I don't know how we would administer it other than it's, I mean, it's really, you can't really write anybody an enforceable ticket. We all have that choice. So we had tabled it until it was brought up again. So I don't know what action you're looking for flow tonight or if you just wanted to say, well, we tabled it, we hadn't talked about it. So I wanted to put it back on the radar, but I haven't had any changes in my perspective at this point in time. And I don't know if you have or if the other board members have, if they'd like to speak up, but we're more than welcome to entertain the conversation either way. Thank you. I think it's beneficial to have the discussion and get everyone's views on it. Times are changing and certainly there's been additional, you know, increase in COVID and Omnicron, et cetera. And also a lot changing in the news and other towns surrounding us. So I'd be interested in hearing the views of other board members and whether we want to make a decision or if we want to table it for a future discussion. Well, I think I just wanted to get your perspective flow and see what you were thinking. So I haven't formed an official decision or perspective per se. I appreciate your views. I just wanted to have a full discussion with all board members. And I know that we've had it on the agenda before and you explained why we didn't discuss it then. And also the views and the people that had approached us that were against it. There could be very many people out there that are in, you know, favor of going forward with it. So I just would like to hear everyone's views and determine how we're going to move forward. Well, I think I won't speak for the rest of the board, but the reason we tabled it was because we tabled it with the opinion that if somebody thought we needed one, we would bring it back to the surface. So I guess, Dave, go ahead and speak to hear something. You know, I tell you, I've been traveling. I'm down in the thick of it right now. I personally, I think it should be left to the individual personal choice. If they want to wear a mask, they can wear a mask. It's the same thing as, you know, if you want to be vaccinated, then you can be vaccinated. Just trying to mandate people to, you know, to the government to mandate them to tell them what they're going to do and how they're going to do it. I just, I don't buy into that. And I personally am against being told that that's what I have to do. I've talked with business owners in town. I've talked with residents, you know, some are both ways. And some of them that are telling me, oh, no, we got a mandate, a mask mandate. And I ask them, are you vaccinated? No, well, I don't get it. And like I said, personally, I am against mandating for residents to have to or non-residents come into Berlin and have to put a mask on. Okay. Well, I don't know if Brad's still on. I know he's at home ill, but, but, but I, Brad, I don't know if you have anything quickly you want to add. I agree with Dave. There we go. He's back on mute. I think that we, we entabled it with the understanding of that unless somebody wanted to make a case to adopt a policy that would add a mask mandate. We had all the information we needed at this moment in time. Is there anything else you'd like to add, Flo? No, other than we have a person who's just joined us. I'm not sure if she would like to speak to this topic. We're talking about the mask mandate right now. Yes, I would. So there is a lady here and she would like to discuss the mask mandate. Okay. And your name, ma'am? My name is Carol Bandy. Carol Bandy is the lady's name. We can hear you. Thank you. Go ahead, Carol. Okay. Speak here. Sure. Everyone can hear you. So you can wherever it's best for you. Very good. Thank you. Masks don't work at all. At this point, the research evidence is very clear with strong studies that masks don't work. There are a few very weak studies that suggest mild effect, but they essentially do very, very little. And the kinds of masks that people wear are actually not recommended by the CDC as of two or three days ago. They said, don't wear the surgical mask. Don't wear the cloth mask. And those are the kind that people wear. So quite frankly, I don't think that it is the role of the select board to be trying to control viruses because you don't know enough about any of it. Quite frankly, it's a matter that is essentially outside of the wheelhouse of government. And I believe that the select board should stick to what it does very, very well in terms of taking care of the town of Berlin. The virus has mutated. It is now much weaker in its Omicron form. It's a cold. As a result, the death rate is going down steadily. So essentially the worst is already over with. And I see this as pointless and mass-destroyed compassion, empathy, neighborliness. And a mandate gives people the right. So they think to scold their neighbors and this is not good. Any kind of a mandate will lead to increased, not decreased conflict because individuals believe that they have the right to enforce in the absence of law enforcement and this creates conflict. So I strongly advise against a mask mandate. Thank you. Thank you. So I appreciate that input that continues to add strongly to the side we had just discussed where we don't intend to adopt one at this moment in time. And thank you for your perspective. So that's, we weren't, I don't know. I wasn't the reason, I didn't ask to have it put on the agenda, but I think we wanted to just have a conversation around it. And I think that unless we have some overwhelming evidence that it's significantly important for us to step into what I perceive as outside something that I could see it outside of our role, I don't have any interest in adopting a mandate for our municipality either. Next up, we have approvals of license permits, vouchers and applications. I have that in front of me. I can go over that right now. I make the motion that we approve payroll warrant 22-14 for payroll from January 2nd, 2022 to January 15th, 2022 paid on January 19th of this year in the amount of $46,240.12. Also payable warrant 22 G14 with checks 21708 to 21742 in the amount of $53,798.49. The December budget status report, trial balance report and delinquent tax report. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Prove all minutes under review of December 28th, 2022. I didn't get a chance to review those. So I won't make the motion on that this evening. Able those. Thank you. Round table vents? Of course, you're asking me. Well, I'm gonna smash you first to get the worst out of the way. Okay, thanks. I'll be quick. Again, this is something that I'll put on a future agenda soon to have further discussion and decisions on. One of them will have to be on the next meeting as well. I was asked to go out for an RFP on Round Hill fence with the quotes from Round Hill Fence and Security for the office security. So far, I've reached out to a couple of companies. They have advised me that it's gonna take some time and that also potentially, and this is Round Hill Fence is the first one that called me to give me this update as well. After the end of January, the cost of the electronics and equipment for these guys on the security side of things are gonna go up by 20%. So my thought on Round Hill is I did ask him before speaking with the board, if the board were to decide to split this so that it was less than $5,000 for each of the quotes that he provided, would he be able to, if we committed before the end of January, would he be able to hold his price without a 20% increase? And he said he would. He thought he had enough equipment in stock to hold that price, but if we go back out to bid beyond that, he can't hold his price, so we'll be looking at least a 20% increase with him as well as a couple of the others as well. So I just wanna put that out there as food for thought. The second one that I have that's gonna be coming soon is our highway crew cannot communicate from the town garage over to Riverton and sometimes over to Jones Brook with the current radio system that they have. It's not the radios, but it really comes down to a repeater. So to upgrade their system, again, I've got a quote from Burlington Communications. It's a little under $20,000, but that includes, well, first of all, let me back up. We're reviewing the need for about $3,500 worth of radios. The radios that we have, there's a split. Four of them do not need to be changed and four that they've quoted do need to be changed to be upgraded. But this includes getting located up on the tower so that they can communicate through the entire town from their vehicles and equipment and from the garage as well. Apparently it's been brought up in the past but never carried through. So I wanna throw that out there. The only thing it doesn't include that we're investigating is the cost for rental on the tower. They said it could be around $500 a month, but I've reached out to the tower people being a municipality. Burlington Communications recommended that I talk to them as a municipality, we may be able to get a better rate on the SBA tower and also to Velco because they're on the second tower up there and they give reduced rates to municipalities as well. So those are the two things outstanding on it but I wanted to bring that up again just to put it out there to get you thinking so that we can plan. There is some money in the budget already for this that's been carried over but personally I think they need to be able to communicate. Tim needs to be able to talk to those guys wherever they are in town and right now he can't do that. What's the carryover at present? I believe it's around 12,000. And didn't we look at maybe having a conversation with the emergency management team and communicate. Wasn't there something about our radios and not being a meeting to justify them that way as well? Maybe it was the police, I can't remember but I thought maybe it was this piece of it too should there be a situation where the emergency management team needs to be engaged in the town of Berlin that we don't have the ability to communicate throughout the entire town. I don't remember that conversation myself. I'd have to look back, Justin. Maybe I'm gonna pick it up. No, I'm sure there was something that was tied in. We talked a lot. I'll put it briefly there and I think that it may be, yeah, we were using that also as a reasonable means for justification because that seems essential as well. Yeah. Then you asked me for some numbers, Justin, as well, a couple of meetings ago. I have the numbers for the calls to, for the police and the fire to CBMC, the medical center. So from the police from, for this year from 1st of January to 23rd of December, they've had 139 calls to the hospital. And that's typically a two officer call, right? Typically, yeah. Mark, go ahead. Sorry. They have a house in-house that handles it until it escalates to a point where they need to call us, is my understanding. So we're over there, how many times? 139 calls from January to December. Okay. So that's probably, I'm just trying to figure that out. Do we know the- What's the time of the month? Yeah, I'm trying to figure out the average duration. I wonder what the average duration of the call is and what that actually equates to for an expense on that services for just payroll alone. Gotcha. I don't have those times. The fire department was the other one you asked me for. Yeah. In 2021, they only had five calls. One was a vehicle in the parking lot leaking oil and the rest were alarm activations. Okay. So I thought it would be more of our police department anyhow. And did they join and share their five year plan? The hospital? Yeah. Not yet. It's not a one time though. Because I feel that their five year plan and whatever their intentions are over there without them contributing to the pilot or any of that, I feel like the town of Berlin inherits other communities residents and they go there and then if they need our services, it goes on the back of Berlin residents. Those services are an expense to the town of Berlin and not maybe I don't understand how it all works being a hospital town, but to me, because we have that draw on our services, it seems like an expense to the town, not. And I don't know if we think they bring in other things in our community for that generate revenue or taxable income or something like that offsets that, but I'm really trying to wrap my head around that expense to the Berlin residents and how to help try to curb some of that. Because as we look at our budget, you look at, okay, well, instead of a 7% increase, we can cut it down to four and a half if we cut this out or we cut that out. To me, a lot of that could be offset if we had places that were using substantial amounts of resources contribute to our budget that currently are or maybe figure out ways to better manage those places that are using those resources that are expense to the Berlin residents. And to me, one of the largest expenses right now that areas where we could use improvement would be maybe some of our police department funding because we're getting, we have the hospital, we have the hilltop in and those are pretty big draws on our budget before we even worry about anything outside of that. And those are all outside of our control and typically from other municipalities transferred to our community is kind of my perspective. Does that make any sense? So I'd like to see how we can as a board work towards maybe also with having a conservative budget also looking at being a little bit more proactive with asking or I don't know. I know we've had many discussions on it, but I hope the board continues to look at those options and maybe if we're applying for permits or have it be part of our planning, if the hospital is gonna do an addition, look at how it may impact the community, things like that or anybody, not just the hospital, but obviously anybody whether they're paying taxes or not. So yeah, have you asked them to come in and share that five year plan, Vince? Yes. And when are they on the, when have they said that they would be able to do that for us? They're not ready yet. They did mention it when they came in, I guess you weren't in that meeting and they talked about their expansion with the psychiatric unit, the beds that they were adding there, the building that they were adding. They did talk about it there and said when they were, they would let us know as soon as they were ready to come in and speak to that. It's certainly gonna be probably late spring at the, my guess late spring at the earliest. And has the town asked them where they stand on that with us? Have we ever asked them how they, I mean, when they used to give us money for a police department, we stopped it because I guess we couldn't provide the services they needed for the staffing. I just, I feel like we go too long in between conversations to keep a pace or build any momentum for people that may not be up to fire, including myself on all of this. But when's the last time we had a conversation with them about our police force or police staff and how they felt about it? I mean, regardless of their five year plan, maybe we can just have a conversation with them and say, hey, here's what we're seeing. Is there, how do you think you can work with us? Yeah, I haven't had one specifically with them with regards to those topics at this point. I did start, we started a quarterly meeting with them. We just had one before Christmas. So we'll be having another one in March. Maybe at that next quarterly meeting, the board could prep and have something ready for you to speak to on that and just ask or have a board member present to kind of ask questions on behalf of the town. I mean, I think that would be a good idea. Maybe, I don't know if Dave or Flo or anybody would be interested in doing that, but it's a conversation that could really benefit the town tremendously and the taxpayers, but it's gonna require a little bit of early involvement. I'd be willing to, and if Dave wanted to, that's fine too, but I do agree with you that I think it's important to go forward with the discussion and it makes sense to start that with the next quarterly meeting. And as to when we last had the discussion, I don't have that data either, but I know it hasn't been since Vince been on board. So thank you. Thank you. Anything else for round table, Vince? No, I'll be quiet though. Thank you, Vince. Not that you're gonna be quiet, but thank you for what you presented. Thank you for that information. I don't, I mean, I think that's the best way to proceed right now. Don't you, Vince, to the hospital? Yeah, I know, I think it's good. Just another, you asked me a question, I gotta give you more information, sorry. We are currently, Tom, more than myself, but we are currently discussing with the hospital. They wanna get on our water system. In a bad way and get rid of their tower because they're gonna have to sink a lot of money in that tower apparently to keep it functioning properly. So we are, Tom is working with the Public Works Board now looking at numbers, what their consumption is, what our capacity is, and do we have enough to put them on our system? So that's good news for the public works, right? That's a big customer, big paying customer right there. So that is, that's evolving as we speak. Okay, that's good to know. Anybody else, Flo, do you have anything for our table? I do not tonight, but thank you. Thank you. Brad, Dave, I guess that brings us to the point of time where we would entertain a motion to enter executive session for a personnel discussion. I make the motion to enter into executive session for personnel discussion. Second. Any discussion, those in favor say aye. Aye. All right, we're not quite yet. I've got to put everybody back in the waiting room, Justin. Have a good evening, Mr. Compton. Exited executive session and adjourned all in one. We can do that, right Brad? I just let the waiting room back in, so we're good. We're out of executive session. I make the motion to adjourn tonight's meeting. Those in favor? Aye. We're adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks, Brad. Yep. Vance. Yes, sir. On that discussion with Corinne. Yes. It's not up to us to set her salary. That's Rosemary's. Yes. That's where I was coming from too. In fairness, Rosemary has asked me a couple of times about making adjustments to that, that she thinks there should be something. She hasn't given me anything, but asked me to propose something. Well, that whole thing should be done. That whole thing should be done with her budget. Any increase for Corinne should be in Rosemary's budget.