 January 25th select board meeting, 2021. First I'll ask for an approval of the agenda and then I know there was an email from Bill that I don't know if we need to modify it. So I will take a motion to approve. I move to approve the agenda as presented so far. Is there a second? Second. Bill, do you need us to add a line for this? The Perry Hills partner. Okay, so we're going to add under managers item E or actually we'll move it to D and then we'll move hunger mountain down thumb. And that's for Perry Hill partners appeal for denial by DRB. All right, can I get, do we need to make a motion again? I guess, can I get a... I approve the motion as amended. Is there a second? Yep. All right, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, consent agenda items minutes from January 18th meeting certificate of highway mileage for the year ending February 10th, 2021 and the liquor licenses for blackback pub and sunflower natural foods. And the certificate of highway mileage was sent out by Carla unless there's any additional discussion I'll take a motion. I make a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented. Is there a second? Second. Can you further discussion? Yeah, Bill, did you want us to pull that highway mileage in order to make a motion to approve you to to approve it and have you sign it or is that okay the way it is? It's okay the way it is, I think, just as long as you know that I'll be signing it. Okay, sorry about that. Thanks. That's it, Mark. The motion has been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. General public, anyone from the public like to speak? All right, Francine said correct. You might be muted right now. I'm just here for the next session of your meeting in case- I'll put letter A under mine. What's that, Bill? She is here for letter A under the man. Okay, yep, we'll be on that in a second if there's no other public. I see we have a couple people here but no one chimes in. We'll go ahead and move on to managers items and we'll be on A, consider authorizing submittal of the Greeter grant application on behalf of the Friends of the Waterbury Reservoir. Okay, so over the weekend, I sent you a budget for this project that had come from Steve. I don't have it up on my screen so I can't share it again but this is a project that we've cooperated with the Friends of the Waterbury Reservoir for a number of years now and Francine is here on the call. I guess Chuck isn't able to make it. So Francine, if you wanna just briefly remind the board what this is for, the hope is in my recommendation is that the board will make a motion to approve the submission of a grant application for this Greeter grant and allow me to sign it. Sure, I can tell you briefly what it's about for, I think this is our fifth year doing this. We've been working with the town of Waterbury to secure a grant through the Agency of Natural Resources that helps us fund our Greeter program. The Greeter program is a program that is based down at two of the boat launches, the one by the Waterbury dam and the one at the end of Blush Hill where the people, it's also manned by some volunteers but currently we have one part-time employee who on busy days will go to those locations and help assist people in educating them about how invasive species are brought into different lakes often through boats coming from one lake and bringing it to the reservoir or vice versa, Waterbury Reservoir had an invasive species it might bring it to somewhere else. Primarily we're trying to limit exposure to the reservoir and it gives us a face and a really fairly high visible touch point for us as an organization and also has helped, I believe, in doing its goal. The budget we're proposing is very similar to last year. We still have hopes of hiring a second part-time employee for right now it's eight hours a week. We were hoping to put on another four-hour person just to help manage both sites because right now one employee can only be at one or the other on the weekdays, so. But basically it's a pass-through it doesn't affect Waterbury Town's budget. Basically they are there. I don't know what you call it Bill, but it's the money comes from the agency and after resources, Waterbury submits it to us after we've completed a lot of our reporting on what was done. Right, Waterbury is the grant recipient, the grantee and then the Friends of the Waterbury Reservoir are the sub-recipients. So this is like a $7,100 project I believe and the grant is about $32,000 or $33,000 and the Friends of the Reservoir make up the difference. We do have a $1,000 appropriation in our budget for the Friends of the Reservoir this year. So it's not a direct payment for this grant but it is something that the town will be paying for. And it's been very successful over the past number of years and unless you have any other questions, I think, oh, there's Chuck, I think we're all ready for you to either ask some questions or go ahead and make a decision on whether we apply for the grant or not. I got a little question for either Chuck or Francine. Looking beyond this program, is there any type of mitigation program set up in case of invasive species find in the lake? Is there anything that's set up to immediately try to deal with that or has the state looked at far ahead? The agency of natural, correct me if I'm wrong, Chuck, I know you joined us, but the agency of natural resources does also fund different cleanup projects around the state of Vermont. There are different programs that they fund under a different title. Some of them are, they literally hire volunteers or employees, go in and pull it out in various, depending on what the invasive is. Currently, I think the most prevalent invasive we have, and it's been here for a number of years is the Brittle Nyan. It seems to be relegated now mostly to the cotton brookend of the reservoir and a little bit around some of the shorelines, but some of the more pervasive ones we've been able to at least mitigate. We've, I believe our greeter did find some in some of the boats and you're able to educate. A lot of the program is to educate people and make sure that they know what you're looking for. Do we have the resources if it ever comes into the lake? I don't know. It would be, it would have to require a lot of more boots on the ground quite honestly. Yeah, to answer your question, Chris, no. You know, once the millfoil gets established, it's really, yeah, if we're able to isolate it, perhaps it's found, and we did that a couple of years ago, I thought it wasn't a millfoil. You might be able to catch it early, but you know, the chances of it, once it's established, once it's in there, it's such a big body of water, it'd be hard to find. So, yeah, since a lot of the boats are coming in from Chinatowne, you know, like Iroquois, a lot of lakes that do already have, you know, really infestation, the trick with this is to try to keep it from coming in. Right, yeah, there is some suggestion that the fact that the water levels are raised and lowered, given the current operation of the dam or the summer pool and the winter pool, that might be helpful in keeping the millfoil out, because, you know, when it draws down in the late winter for the ability to take the floodwaters, that, you know, that could freeze out the millfoil along the banks if it gets there. Now, we just, of course, had a meeting last week or so about the project that the federal government is hoping to undertake to fix the tainter gates. You know, it's a tens of millions of dollar project and it's probably five years away anyway, I would suspect. But once that happens, the plan, as far as I know, is that the winter pool will no longer be. It will remain at the summer pool level 12 months a year. So when that happens, they'll have to just be vigilant. The only comment I have to make is currently the Green Mountain Power is trying to maintain the lake level year round. They do lower it in the springtime pull up runoff, but we're not seeing the huge fluctuations in the lake that we used to. And so there's movement towards making the year round level the same all the time. And I don't know if that's going to happen with the tainter gates, but it is definitely there. Yeah, it's a run of the river operation now. So, you know, Green Mountain Power cannot store water any longer. They used to be able to have a, like a four foot, a four foot head that they could use. They could hold back water two feet above the summer pool level and then open it on demand to meet electricity needs and draw it down to two feet below that level. So they had four feet to make peak demand power. They can't make peak demand power any longer. It's at the summer pool. If a million gallons comes in today, a million gallons is going to go out. So they still make electricity. It's not as valuable to them as it once was and they don't pay as many taxes to us because of it. And then when the tainter gates are fixed, then they're drying the pool down to prepare for winter spring runoff won't happen any longer. So I wonder if the lake being the size that it is, it's a good size lake, but it's not a huge lake by any stretch. And I'd be curious to know, you know, it's a mill foil get in there. You know, once they bring the water level up and keep it there on a consistent level and timeframe that if mill foil, what mill foil actually do to that lake, if it really got in there and took hold, if the benefits outweigh the risk of, you know, the reasons they're bringing it up to winter level and keeping it there or the full-time level and keeping it there, the risk of mill foil getting in there and really wreaking havoc with that versus whatever benefits they talked about by keeping the lake at one level as opposed to raising a lower net. Chris, what will help is that Waterbury is a fairly deep water body and mill foil is not that prevalent in deep water areas. You may see in some of the more shallow water areas that would take hold, but in the deep water areas, you typically don't see mill foil, you know, but that's still gonna be, it's still a problem because it's very pervasive and it will overtake, you know, some of the accesses where you have boats coming in, you know, you're gonna have a lot of vegetation and the best thing is to have the Greeter program to try to keep it out. I don't have anything further. Can I interrupt for just a moment? Yeah. I'm getting people in the waiting room with foul names and people like our last chance. So, given what happened last week, I don't think I'm gonna let them in. Yeah, I wouldn't let them in. I'm sure it's the same group that's finding out this public information and just. Aldo Sodras guy that I did let in, but we can continue. I'm sure we'll see you in a second. All right, so just to remind the board, this is the pass-through grant and I would take a motion. I'll move to authorize the submittal of the Greeter grant application on behalf of the Friends of Waterbury Reservoir. Your second. You know, I think that you have to authorize Bill to sign that as well. Is that correct? Yes, please. Yep. Yep, I would kick off that one. I think you're gonna tell us. You need to get a job. Good job, Carla. Thank you, Carla. I think there was a second, Katie, did you second that? Yep. The motion's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. I abstain because I've been asked to be on the board of the Friends. No problem. Thank you, Friends. Thank you very much, and good luck. Hopefully you get it. We're gonna move on to overall budget review. So I'm gonna be leaving, thank you very much. Yep, thank you very much for tonight. We appreciate it and all the work you do. Okay, Carla, you wanna try to let me share my screen? Yeah, I think you should be able to. Okay. So I sent out my detailed memo and budget reports yesterday and Saturday. And from my perspective, I think I did everything that the board asked me to do. First, let's just take a look. This is the ending library budget the commissioners met on Thursday after you folks agreed to add $3,000. I think I added $50 more. I hope that's okay with the board, but $38,550 for the taxes, they increased the amount from the trust fund from $14,255 to $26,365. In essence, they left the budget as far as the 2021 expenses. As we looked at it last week, there may have been a couple of things that came in between Monday and Friday. So this 508,175 might be slightly different than it was last week, but they end with a, if all this comes to pass, they'll end with a fund balance of $3 in the bank. So that was the library's proposed budget. Bill, can I ask you a quick question? You said, I might have been mistaken, but I thought you said 3,000. You added 3,000. 5,000, 5,000. I was gonna say, I thought we agreed on 5,000. Yeah, it was 433 last week, 4335, and it's 438,550. So $5,050, I'm sorry. Sorry. So everybody good with that for now? Yep. Okay. Highway budget, as I said in my memo to you all, the property taxes went up last week. It was 1,331,755. It's been increased by almost $97,000 now with the intent that almost all of that went into the money that was going to the capital improvement funds. I did decide after some of the comments that were made last week that maybe on revenues, non-tax revenues from the state, we should be a little bit more conservative than I showed last week. So I cut the state aid to highways by 11,660 from what I had last week. We received 138 in 2020. I had budgeted 96,660. I've cut that to 85,000 now. And the hope of course is that the legislature, especially on this one, won't cut nearly as dramatically as this. I'm hopeful that we'll get close to what we did last year. And if we do, any kind of gravy that we get from revenues from the state this year will build fund balance, assuming everything else all plays out as anticipated. And we'll be in a little bit better spot next year. I bumped this highway labor materials up by $2,000 from last week, really doesn't do much because it's coming out of our left pocket and going into our right pocket, but for the highway fund, that's what I've done. So the revenues are 87,160 higher than they were a week ago. And then on the expense side, all these places where I've got red in this column here, those are minor changes to the proposed budget last week. This was about 390, I guess, it was $965 higher than it is. So I made a few small changes to some of the expense lines. There were a couple of increases from what we had last week. I did bump diesel fuel up a little bit. We had budgeted 62,000 last year. We only spent about 31 this year. Part of that was that we didn't get a big increase in price in 2020, in fact, prices fell for much of the year, but we also had half the crew laid off for three months last year and we didn't use the vehicles anywhere near normal. So I bumped this up to 50,000, it was 45,550 last week. Fuel prices didn't go up this week, but they've been going up a nickel a week since about the first of the year. So anyway, I bumped that up a little bit. This engineering line, I cut out of the budget. I had $5,000 here last week. I removed it from here. I just moved it into the CIP, into the CIP for where we pay for culvert and bridges. This $5,000 is more likely gonna be spent to do an analysis on the culvert that is just passed Lonesome Trail on Blush Hill. If you go up Blush Hill, pass Lonesome Trail, you go down in that little dip when the low lives over there on the right-hand side and then just before you go up the hill, there's a culvert there and it needs to be replaced, especially if we're gonna repave the road and it's other size that will require a hydraulic study. And so I've just moved out $5,000 into the CIP fund. Chloride, I cut a little bit. It was 12,000 last week. I cut it down to 10,975. We talked about the salt and sand last week. I left it the same as it was, but those are down significantly from what we budgeted last year and even down from what we spent in 2020 as far as salt is concerned. I'll be meeting with Bill Woodruff and Celia tomorrow to kind of talk about this budget if you folks approve it tonight. And then the capital fund, even though up at the top, we raised taxes by the 96,820 because of the overall pluses and minuses here that add up those cuts in a few additions that I made. It adds up to a negative $3,000. So I was able to add $98,000 to the capital fund transfer last year was 849,745. Last week we were talking about 486. Now it's 584,755. So that's what I have for the highway budget. This 69% down here just so you know, 584,755 to 69% of this number last year. So when I get to the CIPs, I basically moved 65% of what we moved last year into each fund. So that just helped me do the math to get the right numbers. Any questions on this before I move on? Just one, Bill. And I know you're gonna meet with them. Can you say tomorrow that Celian and Bill? I'm just wondering if you may have had discussions with them here in the past, but whether or not they're being conservative now to see what in fact might happen by this spring as to what savings they can acquire by maybe changing the tactics a little bit to see those two numbers will work for them next year. You know what I mean? And I know weather is weather, changes all the time. Yeah, you can't predict, but. This is the number that we're, you know, this 45 and 48 for salt and sand is the number that we're planning to spend in 2021. The sand will be to replenish what we use. You know, there's the pile up there now and then over the summer we'll haul more sand in. And then, you know, the salt, we basically buy the salt as we go. And a lot of that just depends on what type of winter it is. You know, a few weeks ago it was pretty lousy winter as far as salt was concerned because we didn't have much snow when we got it. You know, the temperatures were all over the place. You know, last few days it's been pretty cold. It's staying cold. But I want to have the conversation with her now just so she knows these numbers. And, you know, we have tried to talk to them about conserving already this year, but I want to get the message across that, you know, this is a number that there's select board. They're not just throwing it in the budget just to keep the budget down. They're hoping that we don't have to spend more than that too, you know. I just want to mention a couple of things. My son-in-law works for the state agency of transportation. He manages some of these multi-million dollar jobs. Last year I think he managed either four or six of their, some of their biggest jobs throughout the state. During the winter, he substitutes as a driver up in Orleans. And he was telling me a little bit about the changes that they've made even on the interstate. They're not allowed to spread salt on both sides of the lane. They have to spread salt on one lane. They have to let the traffic break that up. And then the plow truck will come along and move that salt and the material that's in the first portion of the road over to the second portion of the road and allow that to work on that side. You don't have the authority or the right or the budget to go up one side and down the other, dump and salt. And I don't know, you know, what the practices are here, but they may have to consider something along that lines if they're not already doing it. Yeah. I mean, most of the time I believe, Chris, that they just try to hit it once in one direction. That they try to dump it on the center line and then just let traffic spread it across. So, you know, but we'll have that conversation tomorrow. Any more questions on the highway budget? I think I'll move on to the CIP budget. So this is the CIP budget that I hope we're able to execute this year. This will be the one that we put into the town report. So this is the paving fund. Last week I had a $200,000 number in this grant line item, but the maximum grant is 175. So I've adjusted that. The transfer to the highway fund from the highway fund is now 308.880, which is 52,450 higher than we had last week. I'm still planning on only $20,000 going into this fund from pilot payment. Whatever pilot payment we get from the state this year, you know, last year we got like $330,000, I think it was, and we put a hundred in here. This year we'll put 20 in here. If we get any extra, we'll just put it in the general fund because that's the fund that has the big deficit coming into 2021, the deficit that we have is in the general fund. So we'll put it there next year and that will help build that fund balance up. If we get more than we anticipated, it will go into general fund, help build that fund balance up and then we can re-dispersive a year from now. The hope for paving itself, this class two paving, Stow Street is a class two highway. If we get this $175,000 grant, we will spend $305,000 to pave all of Stow Street from the bridge at the top of, you know, Lincoln Street, all the way to Main Street and then we'll do, likely we'll do Swayze Court and probably North Street and all together we'll spend 405. This is the debt on the Perry Hill note or bond that we have. Let me quickly, well, let me go through this one first. So infrastructure, again, very similar to last week, the transfer from the highway fund, I've increased it to 174.360 by 29,610 from last week. This is what it was a week ago. This loan proceeds is just telling me that of the loan we took last year, 145.80 was assigned to this fund. In terms of spending, this is the change I told you that would happen with the Main Street fund. When we looked at this last week, this number was like 181,000. It actually went up to 189. And then the E-Fud has paid about, I think it was 60, it got down to this 157 here. So this is the number that we're carrying forward as spent from last year. And then 65,000 I think will be the net for 2020. And as Chris pointed out last week, that will go to zero after this year. So that will be finished. Sidewalks, the sidewalk in front of the senior center with a granite curb to match Stowe Street and the Wienewski Street sidewalk. The bridges, the dry bridge and the bridge on Guppel Road, right by the Hensley's house for this 96,000. This is that $5,000 that I talked about. I moved it from the highway fund for the engineering to upgrade that structure on Blush Hill. Now that structure, there's $5,000 in here to do the design for that structure. It's highly unlikely we're gonna be able to replace that culvert this year. So on the other scenario, if it turns out we have to pay Blush Hill, we're gonna skip over a couple hundred foot section where this culvert is because there's just no way they're gonna be able to design this so we can replace it this year. So I'll talk about that a little bit later. This is for the siding in the roof, on the highway garage in the greater barn. We had intended to do it last year and we didn't. So the 46 last year was for the roof and some of the siding work and for the lift that we put into the highway garage we did buy the lift. This year we've got a little bit more money for the siding work. Now, this green area is where I told you last week and I'll show you right now. I guess it's easier than coming back. This has changed a little bit from last week, but last week I was showing you in fund 71 that we would have to pay this principal and this interest to pay off the, to service the debt on the note that we're paying for ourselves that is this amount, $12,500 last year is what we budgeted, $12,515.40 is what we spent this year because we lowered the interest rate that we paid for ourselves. If we paid off that million dollar loan in five years this one would have to be $41,700 down here. Down here, this one would have to be 80,400 plus interest down here in the fire budget, it would be 242,100. So I made this note, if we refinance or refund that note we can lower this dramatically. So I'll go back to the other screen and show you again. Looks like I closed it. Let me get that back up here. Might have asked a couple of questions while you're doing that. Yeah, go ahead. 70,000 for the sidewalk replacement there on Stowe Street. Are you still including using phone under those as well, under the sidewalk? So that's 70,000 Chris was, here we go. That's 70,000, let me share my screen again. Everybody seeing this now again? Yeah. Okay, so this 70,000 that's for the sidewalk in front of the senior center and a portion of the sidewalk on Winooski Street. I'll have to check with Woody, Chris. I believe we have sidewalk, we have foam under the Winooski Street sidewalk but because McDonald is gonna do the one on Stowe Street I think he said we're gonna do the same specification that they have on the other side so there won't be foam under that one. Anyway, going down to the fire budget here, you can see this, this is what I told you last week if we did not refund any of that note, the fire CIP would be paying $242,100 in debt principal and I didn't put the interest in here but it lowers it significantly as you can see and this assumes that we, this is what we borrowed last month in December, 1,366,880, I propose that we refund $1,000,000 of it and turn $1,000,000 into a 15 year note. So we would pay a little bit of interest this year on this because we'll have the 1,366,000 outstanding until probably July or August when we get the proceeds from the bond bank if we go forward with this and then the principal payment won't happen on a million dollars worth of it until 2022 and then this year, 66,670 is what the debt service or that million dollars will be over 15 years. So it's a pretty big savings to us if we do it and I didn't show you on the other one but you can see that year-end fund balance if this comes true, if everything on this page comes true it's a $405 million fund balance to the good and I'm not gonna call C up but the other one where we have to pay all that principal and interest that I was talking about would have a fund balance in the $100 something thousand dollar range at the end of the year. So anyway, this is what I hope that we can do. So for, we did the paving, we did the cap, the infrastructure CIP, the highway vehicles, that's this one here fund 72. This is what we talked about last week. This is the wrong one again and somehow keep losing it. I'm gonna stop sharing for now. Let me get that back up again, let's see. Bill? Yeah. I don't wanna beat a dead horse but going back to Chris's question about the sidewalks I thought in a previous discussion about the highway budget is that the sidewalks for Stow Street we're gonna be part of the Main Street project but maybe I misunderstood. Well, Mike it's a government project so Stow Street Kinda goes around. Stow Street was not part of the Main Street project like Main Street is. The elements on Stow Street that were included. So Stow Street got hooked into the Main Street project basically because of the undergrounding of utilities. And in order to do the undergrounding of utilities on Main Street to bury all the overhead wires we had to go up and we wanted Stow Street up to the drive bridge to be included in that project. Right. There's nothing happening under the road on Stow Street it was just the overhead wires that had to be buried. So because they had to put a conduit up on the WDV side of the road we convinced them that that sidewalk and that curb would be included in the Main Street project. But the sidewalk and curb on the senior citizen center side was not included. So that's up to us. And if you look at that sidewalk and there's no curb there it's just the reveal of about six inches of concrete it's not a curb. That sidewalk is in horrible condition and it would be a crime to leave that sidewalk in that bad shape given what Main Street and the other side of Stow Street is going to look like. So we put that into the project. Fortunately for us back in October or November when the McDonald's crew was putting a conduit under Stow Street to go from the American Legion across so they could hook up power from one side of the street to the other. They hit or they made enough vibrations that the old cast iron water line that's been in there for a hundred years started to leak. So while the water and sewer lines were not part of the project we did convince VTrans to let us do a change order. So the utility district EFOD paid $70,000 last year to replace the water main. And then this spring under the other side of Stow Street they're going to replace the sewer line. They will pay for that a hundred percent how we'll pay anything for that. But then that road will be ready to be repaved and we can repave it if we get this paving grant. So everything will be in good shape at that point I hope. That really helps, Bill. Back to the polls of what I was talking about. This is C's again. You're smiling for Katie. You think you're thinking you want me to do that for you, Bill? No, I'm not laughing at Bill. I'm laughing with Bill with the tech difficulties we've all been there. The joys of technology. Yeah. Can't everybody wait to when we're back together? I do have one more question, Bill, before we jump chip on this. Let me forget. Go ahead, Chris, I'm listening. I'm still trying to get where I need to go. I don't just, I didn't want to distract you again. 45,000 that you had penciled in there for the greater burn. Garage and roof, yeah. Yeah. Have you gotten, is that a fairly recent estimate for that or is that, because I know materials, building materials have gone crazy. Yeah, it's, I just didn't want to make sure you didn't change yourselves. What do you and Celia gave me that? So I believe it's good for what we were proposing to do. I'm gonna try one more time. Yeah, all right. So this is the one that, we're back to the one that I'm hoping that we approve. So here's the vehicles, which we talked about 42,990 is the new debt service for this one. Last week it was 80,400. So again, this assumes the refunding of that note. The fire vehicles, there's no fire vehicles being purchased this year, but this debt last week was gonna be 242,100. Now it's down about 105,000. The $20,000 is coming from the fire department into the fire station, CIP. 5,000 is still the number that Gary and Woody are telling me, Chris, for the siding on the one recent fire station. If it turns out to be more than that, we'll have enough money. We're putting 20,000 in here. If it costs five to do it, we'll have $15,000 to carry forward and try to put five or $8,000 into this every year. But if this turns out to be higher, we'll have enough money. So I'm not too worried about that one. I think I'll probably reach out to him and find out what the game plan is on that. What is the roof on that building? What's the type of roof on that building? No, we're talking about the fire station. Yeah, I know it's siding. I just... Oh, I don't remember. Chris, what's the roof on that? I'm pretty sure it's shingled roof. Yeah, I think so too. Probably a 25-year roof anyway. But so my hope is, and I've got a note here somewhere, but in this CIP fund, I'm hoping to put this kind of money in it for a while to get the fund balance built up. So when the roof does need to be done, we'll have some money and we won't have to necessarily go out and borrow it or raise it all at the same time. And then this is the recreation CIP. I increased the transfer in here last week. It was $3,000, I bumped it up to seven. And this donation here, this is the donation that came from Shaw's that we talked about when we talked about the van a few weeks ago. So they did pony up that money. It's arrived and it's in the bank. So anyway, all of that stuff together adds up to $993,000, almost $994 of revenue, which is almost wholly transfers from the operating funds. There are a few donations in here. $1.2 million worth of spending, which leaves us a slight deficit for the year. But we carried 626 forward from last year, mainly because we borrowed this money to put more money into the fund. And we'll end up if everything on this page is correct at about a $400,000 fund balance going into next year, which is pretty huge because a couple of years ago, our fund balance and the aggregate for the CIPs was about $35,000. So we've done well and we did use borrowing, but as I said, we can judiciously pay that. If we borrow that money for 15 years, we had authority to finance the fire trucks for 20 years. And if we finance all that stuff over 15 years, especially because the interest rates are so low, we'll pay a little bit higher than we would if we financed it over 20 years. But then in the end, I think whoever is sitting in these chairs 15 or 20 years from now will be happy that we did that. And the 405, 277, that's the sum of the savings created by part of the REFI and other revenue donations and whatnot. Yeah, last week, when we first looked at this CIP fund, the first time that we looked at this a couple of weeks ago, I thought the aggregate balance in all these five funds, the Paving Fund, the Infrastructure Fund, the Highway Vehicle Fund, the CIP Fund, the Highway Vehicle, the Fire Vehicle, the Fire Stations Fund and the Recreation Fund, six funds. We looked at that and it was a negative $210,000. I recalculated a few of the numbers one at a time. When I first did this, like mid-week, I had it down to 209. And then last week, when you folks decided that you wanted to have a 53 cent tax rate instead of 51, that got another $100,000 into the CIPs. And then I factored in the savings for refunding this million dollar note. And then a couple of the numbers went down significantly. This number here last week was like 189 that we had spent, but now we got the money from EFUD and this number was 160. So when you put all the right numbers in now, it flipped us about $600,000 from a negative 210 to a positive 400. So everybody okay with that for now? Yep. The final one that I wanna show if it's still up here, let me get the, okay. And then the final one to look at is the general government budget. Now, this is basically what shows us what the tax rate is gonna look like. So this is the general fund property taxes that we need after all the decisions we made last week. So I'll come back to this in a minute, but you can see here between last week in this, I cut the anticipated pilot payment into the general fund from 175 to 160. So last year, we took in 234.033. This year I've got budgeted 160 here and 20 in the CIP. So 180 and last year it was 234.033. So, you know, it's down about, I mean it was 334.033 last year and it's proposing 180 this year. So it's down about 155,000, about half. On the forest and parks and current use, I did the same thing. Last year we received about 90,000 for forest and parks and almost 103,000 for current use. I had budgeted 36 and 41.195 last week. I reduced it to this. So I'm hopeful, you know, and there's no way to know. I'm hoping that all of these numbers are too low. I think I made these too low enough that it really can't be any lower than that, but time will tell. So I've tried to be very conservative with this revenue given that you said, let's raise the taxes two more cents. So I didn't all put it towards spending. I put that two cents towards, you know, helping to replace some lost revenues. So still I think a pretty conservative budget. Down here in the service fees, you know, the town clerk's fees were way up this year compared to what we had budgeted. There were a lot of property transfers, I think early to mid-year. Carla, you can tell me more. Was it transfers? Was it refinancing? Was it both? It was both, very heavy. Okay. And, you know, so I budgeted less than we received in 2020, but significantly more than we budgeted in 2021, I mean, in 2020. So this is kind of split the difference number here, but it's pretty close when you look at the total 293 last year and 291 this year as far as budgets are concerned. And we were low on some of our recreation stuff. That's why we were about $25,000 or so short here it's because of these lines in the rec program and the swimming pool. Swimming pool income was way off last year. So the revenues, 306.7195, it's really the big differences here in the property taxes and we'll come back to this. Bill, going back to the swimming pool income, can you remind me what was that this summer, the programs going to the reservoir or is there more to that? Yeah, so in 2020, we didn't open our pool. So we did not take, we didn't sell any memberships to the pool in 2020, but 9666 was money that we had taken in early in the year to do swimming lessons. And then some of the lessons, we did do swimming lessons at the reservoir and that $9,600 was a combination of those two things. So if we opened the pool this year, we're still being conservative with this number. It's less than we budgeted last year and less than we took in in 2019. I believe this is the non-tax revenue. I don't remember without having my formula there, it's hard to tell. Yeah, I think that's just the non-tax revenue is down a little bit from what we budgeted a year ago. On the expenses, same thing as I did before, I went through here and I did some incremental cutting. I looked for every penny that I could find. So some of the payroll expenses are down about 28, 2900 from what they were a week ago. I reduced the cemetery transfer. We were supposed to give them 15 last year, we gave them zero. Last week I had this budgeted at 75, I cut it to 5,000, which I think is important. We need to try to get that back up to the 15, but I think they can wait another year or so to get back up to where they were. Still no word from the state police on how much they want us to pay per year for the police contract, the current contract that we have as I told you last week expires on June 30th. Hopeful, they're not gonna surprise us and say they don't wanna do it, but that's the number that I've carried right now. And it will be what it is. And I'm hoping that this number is actually high because this is, I think it's a 5% increase over 365. Yeah, this is a full 5% increase over this number. And for the first six months of this year, it's gonna be at the 2020 level. So we've got a little cushion here. I wouldn't change this number in case they say they want a higher increase, but I'm hopeful there's a little cushion in that. Did they give you a time? I didn't kind of timeline on that. They haven't. I've been in communication with Major Jonas who lives here in Waterbury a couple of weeks ago. She asked me to send me the contract and the comments. I've done that. I'll reach out to her this week, but I haven't heard anything. I'm taking no news as good news Mark, but I'll try to reach out to her and see where we are with it. I feel like I remember, and maybe I'm wrong on this, that there was some conversation that the initial budget was a little higher because of equipment they needed to go out and purchases. Was that not the case? And are we expecting it to be as high or higher? I think that what they included in the contract was all the equipment that they need, but the equipment gets replaced on a regular schedule. So I'm not sure it's gonna come down. If it does, that's great, but I wanna see first that I wanna do it before I ask that question. I made a few minor changes again here to the fire budget. I reduced the part-time pay, which is the on-call pay by $945. I did cut out $2,400 here on the new equipment line. I haven't talked to Gary about that yet, but I think that they can probably stand that cut. And social services, I just adjusted this animal control officer down a little bit again. Cool, minor change, $500 change in the equipment maintenance budget. This is all the same as it was for the summer program. I added $7,000 to this transfer. It was $3,000 last week. We talked about that in the CIP a minute ago. And the same with this one from the parks. It was $1,200 last week. I put it up to $1,500 to try to increase that transfer. In the planning department, this red number here really is for my use. It was about $4,500 lower last week. I had already more or less carried it forward. This is a, remember the guy who did the history for the Ferraris addition down there at Butler and Wallace Street area that we heard about a couple of weeks ago. There's a $4,500 bill that we had post back to last year. So this is a different number, but it really doesn't affect the bottom line too much. And then here's the special articles and I don't know why that didn't show up. There's been a line cut off here, but the ending fund balance, let me tell you what it is. So all these expenses with the revenues that I showed above, the total expenses is $3,023. The revenues minus expenses is about $44,000. We're showing a $44,000 deficit right now. So going back to what we were looking at here, there should be a number right here that says 11. That's the year of the projected fund balance. So we have a projected year in fund balance and the general fund of $11 if we raise $2,172,485 in taxes. So this is the budget that I'm proposing. Here's the tax for the general fund here, $2,172,485, the 1.428 million from the highway fund, the $438,550 from the library, which is a total taxes to raise in 2021 of $4,039,610. If we divide that by the grand list that we had last year, this number here, 7.625 divide the 7.6 into the 4.039, come up with a tax rate of 52.9 cents. And if we set the tax rate at 53 cents, there's an incremental, very incremental, like maybe $7,000 to the good. But what I'm hoping is that the grand list goes up a little bit, we had a lot of activity last year. There were a lot of building things going on, additions and stuff like that. So if the grand list goes up a half a percent, we get a 7.674 million dollar grand list as opposed to 7.635. And if we got that and multiplied that by 53 cents, we would generate 27,632 more than what the three budgets together need. If we have a higher grand list than that, we can collect a little bit more excess money or you can lower the tax rate. When we get to the warning, I'm recommending the article will authorize the select board to set a tax rate of up to 53 cents. And my expectation is we're gonna need all of it. But if we get a grand list that's significantly higher than a half a percent or so, then the select board will have the option. You can either still set it at 53 cents and the excess will come from new building that has happened over the year because the value of my house hasn't gone up. So if I get a 53 cent tax rate because the grain list stayed at 7.6 or if I get a 53 cent tax rate because the tax rate went up to 7.674, I'm not gonna pay any more, but somebody who put a new addition on their house or built a new house, obviously they would get incrementally more. So we can decide that down the road. So anyway, I think I've done what you asked me to do. This little chart here shows you in 2020, this is what we transferred to the CIPs from the three operating funds, 172 from the fire, 378 from recreation, 5610 from parks, 849, 745 from highway. So last year we transferred a million 65 from the operating funds into the capital funds. Last week I had us transferring 682, 955. We added 98,000 to it. So it's 788, 255 here. So it's better than it was a week ago, but the transfer is not as much as we paid in last year, but because of the borrowing that we did and the refinancing that we're gonna do, even though we're $276,900 short of what we put in last year, that borrowing really bullied the CIPs. And if we refund that note over 15 years we'll be in good shape. So anyway, I'll stop talking, see if you have any questions. Bill, thank you very much. The only thing that concerns me are things that are gonna be related to the income side of things like the recreation department and not knowing honestly, nobody knows what the hell's going on here and if we're gonna get a second wave of this COVID or how, I mean, how confident are we that let's just say, I can't remember what the number was, but you had cool income at like 40,000. 40,000, yeah. So here's that. So if we get shut down again, how confident are we that we're gonna be able to absorb that 40 into something else? Yeah, well, that's a good question, Matt. And the pool income is the most, is the most, although, you know, we don't know for certain. Right now, swimming is allowed, pools have been able to open. I think even indoor pools are, some of them are open now. If we have an extended COVID, it's hard for me to believe that it's gonna be as unwieldy as last year was. And last year, we budgeted 45 for pools and we didn't even take in 10. So we've cut the pool down by 5,000. So we've hedged our bet a little bit there. All the other things, direct program was down, but it was down 20,000. It wasn't down the whole thing, basically. The mini camp income, we were right on because those were extra programs that we did. So this line, the program revenue line and the mini camp line, I'm pretty confident that we're gonna come reasonably close to that. $40,000 is a little bit more than a half a cent on the tax rate. If our expenses go way down though, right? I'm looking at the record pool, we spent 22,000 this summer, we had budgeted 92,000. So we actually, the pool always runs at a deficit. So we actually, if it ends up closing again, if we can still get close to what we got last year. So that was exactly the next point I was gonna make. You can see here that the pool is a big loss leader for us, right? We budgeted 91.9 last year for expenses. We had budgeted $45,000 for revenue. So that meant there was a net cost of about 46,000 that we were planning to eat. That was part of our normal operating budget. We took in, I mean, we spent 22 last year and we took in almost 10. So our net, we were down by 10 grand as opposed to down by 45 grand last year. So if the pool doesn't open, we save all this expense in addition to lose that revenue. So the pool is not a big real problem. And that's why I said last week, it's kind of interesting, the rec committee is kind of talking about this. They really want the pool to open this year, but as I've been saying for all the 30 years that I've been here, it gets a lot of use. And I hate to think of what water we're in this summer is like without it, but it costs us money to operate the pool. It doesn't come close to paying for itself. So anyway, that answers that part of it. But I think what I've done here is what you asked for last week is to raise the tax rate from 51 cents to 53 cents and to use it to fund the CIPs, which I did basically. You know, there's $150,000 that you get from two cents on the tax rate, when I cut some of the revenues even more than I had before. So I think we're in okay shape in terms of what you asked me to do. Bill, with the governor's budget coming out tomorrow, are we possibly gonna have any kind of indication as to what's gonna happen to both pilot? And if we are gonna be able to have a state police budget or something like that, because those are two real big ticket items in our budget. And if we know something, or we may wanna go a little different direction, especially a pilot we know is gonna be weighed down, I'm hoping the opposite. Yeah, I think it's gonna be down. It's how much, and I- How much? I don't think we're gonna know enough tomorrow, Mike, to really make a difference. Okay. You know, the governor's budget, the legislature, you know, they say thank you very much and then they do their own work. Right, right. It's really, it's really tough- It all goes into conference committee. Thanks. Well, I just wanna say that I think you've done another terrific job again, Bill. You know, I'm completely happy with what you've presented to us tonight. I think we got enough buffer there in anticipated reductions in revenues from the state that I think you gambled, you hedged in the right direction. They can't just completely, they can't just completely renege on everything 100%. They've gotta, the state's gotta, they gotta do something in those line items. And I think you're probably pretty accurate. What I would like to know, what I would like to say though, if the board is satisfied with this, when this gets reported to the listeners and readers, that we're going up 50, or going up two cents, 53 cents, what I'd like our reporters, local reporters to recognize is that you go back to 2019 when we were at 51 cents in the spring of 2020, after our budget meeting and town meeting came, we were authorized by our constituents. It granted us four cents additional, raised the fact rate from 51 to 54. The fact of the matter is that we chose, the board chose not to do that. They chose the level fund through 2020. Now we hear going into 2021, but the same rate we had in 2019, when we were authorized an additional 4 cents, but we didn't use it. So going into 2021, we are asking for two cents more, but it's two cents more, it's actually two cents down from what we were authorized to add in 2020. So to suggest that we're raising taxes, isn't necessarily in my eyes the right way to put it. If anything, we're reducing taxes two cents from what we were authorized to spend in 2020. Right. So I want the people that are paying these taxes to know that, to know that Mr. Shepluck and the staff and the help of the board have this thing under control and done everything that we see that we could have done to help through this crisis. Let's just all pray that the state education tax doesn't go overboard. Chris, I did mention that in the letter for the book that everyone's gonna get. So it does talk about our choice of reduction. So hopefully, and it credits the municipal staff for helping us manage those reductions. So I think quite a bit of that is mentioned there. I'm not sure exactly how else we could get that out there, but I'm sure we're gonna afford them out. I just heard on the radio the other day that Waterbury was thinking about raising their tax rate another two cents. And that's just me, that's not quite how it should be worried, you know, because of the circumstances, we're actually down two cents from what we were authorized to do. And again, you know, my other big concern, and you know, as well, I keep harping on it. I probably will till the day I'm done. This is our infrastructure. God help us, we gotta get that under control and we're doing a damn good job. It held a lot better than we've done in previous years. Now, I was just gonna ask you, Bill, some of these bridge projects, especially the one right there by the ballpark there, that back row field, that we had gotta be going on close to a few years now, Mark, since we talked about that project and we kicked the can on it, do you remember? Is that a must do in the seven year timeline? Is that a must do or what's the story? It's one of the ones that I'm gonna try to get an update on from Alec and Woody, clearly, you know, with Main Street reconstruction and everything else going on. And it's still, it's just still a huge head shaker that the state couldn't have put that into the Main Street project and get it done because of the whole Act 250 situation. It's bureaucracy at its worst. But, you know, we will get another assessment of it. My expectation is in the next three or four years we probably need to do something with it. But Alec can tell us better after we have an evaluation done this year. I certainly would hope that we don't have to do something next year or the year after, just to give the Main Street folks a break. You know, they've been putting up with three full years of construction and a lot of other stuff. And if we can stretch it out, you know, maybe the five years from now, that would be helpful. Yeah, so I think timing, you know, it's day with our pavement projects, really big important ones. We've made some huge gains. You know, I was up Blush Hill the other day. That road is just horrible. And, you know, I thought for sure they were gonna be next on the list. Maybe it looked like if we get that pavement grant, they won't be until another year. And that's unfortunate for them. But, you know, we need to get these bigger pavement projects out of our hair because of these other issues, these other bridge projects and things that are coming. We don't wanna be handcuffed with trying to do both at the same time. Yeah, one quick one here. So here is, here's CIP Fund B and this for the, for the paving. This, if we don't get this tow street grant, no grant, still the same transfer and the same pilot money. But this, instead of doing all of Stowe Street, we would do from Main Street to the drive range. That's what this note should say. And then this would be Lonesome Trail in Blush Hill. And I couldn't agree with you more, Chris. The meeting that you were not here, I think we talked with Woody about this. And I had both Stowe Street and Blush Hill in this year. And Woody just said, there's just not capacity enough between our staff, what has to be done on both roads to get it ready and the paving to do both. So if we don't get this tow street grant, we'll do Blush Hill this year. And if we do get this tow street grant with that 400 and whatever thousand that we would have in a fund balance, if everything came to fruition, hopefully we'd be able to move forward with Blush Hill next year. But if we don't get the Stowe Street grant and we do pay Blush Hill, you can see here the money that we'll have in the, at year end will be 115,000 rather than 400. And then next year we'll apply for the Stowe Street grant again. So that grant really kind of would give us $175,000 of additional revenue this year. And it would reduce our expenses because in this budget, we would be spending or paving over $500,000, be $520,000 here. And in the other one, if we get the grant even with the $175,000 grant which would only be spending about 405. So that's the contingency plan. If that grant does not come through, we'll do Blush Hill this year. So I guess in a roundabout way what I'm suggesting to the board is to, you know, at this time I wouldn't give up too many pennies. I think we need to stick on the steady path that we're on there and it all turns out well. All right, Bill, you don't need an approval because we're moving on to the warning that uses these numbers on an approval based on. I would ask that right now that you would approve, make a motion to approve the three operating budgets as they were just proposed. You don't have to worry about the numbers, but just that you're approving the three operating budgets as proposed and discussed on January 25th. And then the CIP budget option A. Option A is right with the understanding that, you know, if we don't get that grant we're gonna do option B. And it's really no way to put that into an article. I suppose when we get to the articles we could put the higher number in there for, and I'll have to look at the two budgets but make a motion to approve the three operating budgets as presented anyway. Can I get that motion? I moved. Is there a second? Did I hear a second? Yeah, second. Okay. All right, any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you, Bill. That was very helpful. Thanks for going through that. Excellent job, Bill. Thank you. Carla, can you put the warning up? Do you have that? I'll try. Can you pop out here and tell me how I find it? I have it, maybe I could share it. Wait a minute, I can get it. Just a minute. Sorry. Just a minute, I'll get it. You have to do, Carla, is being out into your regular desktop. You have to open it and then you share your screen. But I've got it here, so I'll do it. No, I don't. Can you all see that? Yep. Yes, we can. Can you still see it? Yep. Okay, good. Let me just quickly, okay. So here's the articles. This is what we looked at last week. The only thing is, is that article six, seven and eight, we've changed it. So to your question, Mark, let's just look at article seven here. This is what we would do for the operating budget. So necessary general expenses is the total that we've just looked at a little bit ago on the general government budget expenses, except the special articles, 56,900 of the special articles have been removed. So 2,115,585 and special in general fund, highway 1428,575, library 508,175, plus any monies voted affirmatively by Australian ballot on March 2nd, 2001. So that would be up to 56,900 of the articles that are there. And then this plus for expenditures and transfers of designated reserve funds, those are like the restoration fund and the Calkins fund, some of those small special purpose funds that we have, the veterans monument fund. So what I've done is, let me show you that. So let me share this screen here again. So here, can you all see this? No, I've got it up on another screen. So it doesn't matter to me, but I can't see it. Here it is. Can you see that? I can see Bill has started screen sharing but nothing other than that. I'm gonna try one more time here. Now you can see that. I bet you. Okay. So these are all the other funds that we have that you don't really see very often. So in the library donations, the library trust fund, the restoration fund for town clerk records, all of these different funds here, including the, this is the fund that we pay revitalizing water rate for economic development director. This is the fund that we're paying. It's part of the main street project. So all of these funds together, if you go back to the warning, I'm gonna screen share the warning now. If you go back to the warning here, this plus for expenditures and transfers of designated reserve and special purposes funds estimated at $265,000. So that's how much we're gonna either transfer in or out of those funds or spend actually, it's 265. This is the critical line for which no additional taxes are necessary. So here's all of the general fund budget, the highway fund budget, the library fund budget. And then this 265 is for those special funds. And then, so asking the voters to approve those spending levels and that the select would be authorized to set a tax rate up to 53 cents per hundred on the grand list for these municipal expenses and issue bills for collection of the necessary property taxes. So that takes care of the general government budget, the highway budget, the library budget and the special articles. This one here, Mark, article six, shall authorize the town to spend up to 1.563025 for purchases of vehicles, capital improvements, building operations and payments of debt identifying the town's capital improvement and building fund budgets. I think to your point, if we don't get that paving grant and we end up paving bless hill, we should actually change this number here at $115,000 to it. So that would be 1.151563025. So that would be 1.67825. And that would give us the authority to do the bless hill project rather than the Stose Street project. And if we get the grant, that's a maximum that we should spend. So I think we should change that number to 1.67825. Guarantee us a flexibility. Yeah, it just gives us the flexibility. Nobody comes back and ever asks us, I mean, it's pretty tough on those capital things because sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. If something, you know, if something really goes haywire and you got to go out and fix it, you don't worry about what the budget says, you know, you just fix it and cut spending somewhere else and then go back and try to finance it the next year if you have to. But that would be a number I think we should put in there. 1.67825. Okay, does anyone on the board have objection to that or we can make that change and continue? I think it makes sense. And then the only other change that I made, Mark, is in this article eight, this is what you and Noah emailed me over the weekend, something about October of 2022. I think I understood what you were getting at, but I used the language that we got from the LCT last week which is basically this phrase, the cannabis retailers and integrated licenses in town pursuant to BSA, seven BSA section 863, and that was where the period was last week. And then, no earlier than October 1st, 2022, subject to other ordinances and regulations that Kyle may have awfully adopt. So. Yeah, I think Noah's on the call. I was just kind of passing out. I'm not completely familiar, but I know that it seems to be a competitive advantage scenario that would be eliminated by doing this date. Noah, I don't know if you're at your computer. I can explain. Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to provide my understanding of it. So the current state rules, NAC 164 have a license type for integrated, they call the integrated licenses starting six months ahead of the rest of the retail licenses. And that those integrated licenses are basically only available to the current operating dispensaries, which is I believe it's five companies currently. And so there was a whole bunch of discussion, a lot of the people in the industry, small businesses, so on and so forth. In Burlington mostly, I think this was happening and the Burlington city council basically approved this exact language that I passed along. And then a bunch of other towns decided to follow along, which is basically leveling the playing field. So all the licenses, the town has the ability to say, well, we're not gonna start giving licenses in May, we're gonna start in October, which is when anybody would be able to get a license, presumably anybody would be able to get a retail license. So I guess I passed that along just because it seemed like not only does it sort of allow us a little more time, like that first six months, there's probably gonna be some rollout of this that we'll be able to observe and see what happens before just rushing into the first company that comes in and says, all right, I want my license. Gives you a little breathing room, plus it, I think it creates equal opportunity for whoever wants to apply for these licenses. Bill, are we gonna have to have any changes to our zoning regulations to deal with cannabis retailers? Well, I'm not sure we have, I don't know, Mike. So I think the better way to say that is that just like any business, retailers are gonna have to be in a zoning district where retail is allowed. So I'm not sure we have to change our zoning, it's just that if somebody wants to do something just like they do now, they have to apply for a permit and be able to get it. So I don't think you could open a retail shop necessarily unless it's a home marketation, so. I just don't know if cannabis operations are any different classification than a general retail. That's what I'm basically asking. I don't think so. Probably the integrated licensees, which I believe we heard last week was growers. You can't regulate agriculture by zoning. You can grow, you know, you can have a fire more, you can grow crops in any zoning district if you have the land. So that wouldn't be, you know, I think that there's a long, a little bit of time between now and October of 2022 to look into those kind of issues, presuming this passes, you know, I'm sure there'll be some people out there that vote no on Article 8, but if it passes, we'll have to kind of get ready for it again. Thanks. And as we said last week, all of these articles, well, all of these articles will be voted on by Australian Ballot and these articles down here are the special articles. Each and every special article is a standalone vote. There's no consolidating. Can you explain Article 1 and why it's necessary to still say we're gonna elect a moderator if there's no meeting? Yeah, Karla has to answer that one. She already convinced me, but I believe it's just state law. So go ahead, Karla. It is, it's state law. It's kind of the same as it is state law and because it's kind of the same as conducting any other business from the floor, everything is going to Australian Ballot, including electing a moderator. So the special articles and anything that's done from the floor is now Australian Ballot. So the moderator has to include it. And just so everyone knows, you know, the meeting in March is going to be by Australian Ballot, but every city and town out there that has Australian Ballot elects a moderator by Australian Ballot and that would be the person that if there was a meeting that was open town meeting would conduct that meeting. So, you know, let's say it's October and COVID is done and somebody puts a petition into do X, Y, and Z and they call for a special town meeting would have to have a moderator. So I think did Jeff agree to put his name in for election, Karla, even though he told us last year that he was retiring? He did. Okay. Just go ahead, Karla. Were we going to include something about the informational meeting in this morning? Yeah, I think we probably should. And then somewhere up here, and I don't think we have to do it except to have the select board decide when that's going to be. You ever recommended time and date for that, Karla? Yeah, we talked about Tuesday, February 23rd at 7 p.m. Okay. A week before town meeting day. Yeah, so somewhere up here in the introductory language Karla and I will, if that's a date that the select board are agreeable to, we'll just work that into this introduction here somewhere. I think article 29 just got a little typo that you might want to fix, no big deal. One word probably take out of there. Yeah, it will. Yeah. Thanks, Greg. Yep. I know it's not a lot of money, but isn't there typically an article stating the compensation for the board? Or am I missing it? That's done in reports from the floor. Yeah, there's no, there is not an article that says that. It's always kind of a redundant article anyway, though. Hang on here. I'm not saying we need it, but I just feel like I remember it from years past. Yeah, it's always been there, but. It's included as part of the budget, right? It's in the budget, yes. Yeah, I would think so. Yeah, so because it's in the budget, we decided to leave it off in terms of the actual vote. Have we decided on the informational meeting, how that's going to be connected? Conductors are going to be totally Zoom? Yes. Okay, that's what I thought. Just want to make sure if some people are going to be in person or not. I didn't think so. No, it's not. Yeah, it's totally Zoom. I believe we've upgraded our license so we can have more than 99 people at that meeting. I'm not sure we'll have more than that. But if this warning looks okay, I would ask the select board to make a motion to approve the warning will change. This number, can people see this number changing here? Yeah, yeah. Okay, I make a motion to approve the warning for the annual meeting of the town of Waterbury on March the second as presented by the email from town manager and amended as per tonight's select board meeting. All right, Bill, does that work for a motion? Yep. Okay, is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All those... Who seconded that? Chris, are you not voting or did you want to vote out a favor? I vote nay because of article eight. All right, motion passes. Agenda. So before you move on, Carla, what are we going to do? They've got to actually sign the warning, right? Yeah, I don't know whether I want to just ask you all to try to stop in in the next, sometime this week or email you the signature page and have you sign it and scan it back to me. Which ever works for you. Which do you prefer? I prefer to have all of your signatures on one page. Maybe one can start and send it to the next. Does that work? Does everybody have the ability to print and then scan? Because if you don't, it's just easier to come in. Carla, what are the hours to come in? I think maybe that might be easier. Thank you for 30. What's that? Thank you for 30 this week. We have to make an appointment. I'm not happy with this. Even if I'm not here, I'll have the people know where it is. Thank you. I'm good for that. Right. Friday. We need at least three signatures before Friday. And since Chris voted no, he can't sign it. Oh yeah. Before Friday. I posted that day. We added an item D. The email that Bill sent about the DRB. Discussion. Yeah, so. Very hill partners applied for a permit for the building there on Stowe Street, the brand new building. They wanted to put a movie in there. It was turned down. The zoning administrator couldn't approve it. Well, no, that the zoning administrator denied it because it was not. Allowed there. They appealed to the DRB, the DRB upheld the zoning administrator's decision. This is the issue that. The planning commission and Steve is working on now. They have a certain period of time in which they can appeal to court. So. They have appealed the DRB's decision to superior court. And my recommendation for today is to simply. Approve the motion that I. That I sent out to all of you just to allow special page and pleasure to. Put an appearance for the town. And start the process forward. I'm hoping we don't end up going to trial with this, but it's. We have to protect our interests the same way that. Very hill partners are protecting there. So we need to. File an appearance to respond to this. To this appeal to court. Anyone have that email and can they read that? Yeah, I can do it. I make a motion to approve representation of the town and the filing of an entry of appearance. By stitzel page and Fletcher PC and the Perry Hill partners LLC zoning permit appeal before the environmental division of Vermont Superior Court. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say hi. Hi. Is that close that item bill? We're going to move on to the hunger mountain children's center executive session. Yep. Somebody have that double motion that we've had to make. This is the third time now. Yeah, you want me to do that one too? Sure. Okay. I moved to find that premature general public knowledge of the town's litigation strategy in the H M C C tax appeal currently pending in the Vermont Superior Court, civil division will clearly place the select board, which has control over such litigation for the town. At a substantial disadvantage. Second the motion. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. In light of this finding, I moved to enter executive session to include the town manager. And anyone else. Oh, Carla, I guess. If she wants to consider. Pending litigation to which the town is a party. Just, just me. Okay. Second. All right. Any further discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thanks, Carla. Thank you all for. Showing up, but you'll have to leave now, please. Anyone who's not in the executive session. Leave the meeting. Who was the, who's B. R. Y. N. G. I think he, he or she might be associated with H M C C. But I'm not sure. With what Carla? Hung around children's side. Oh, okay. Everybody's gone. All right, I'm going to stop recording bill. Hold on.