 It's 5 o'clock. We're calling the meeting to order. Calling the meeting to order on Tuesday, December 5th at 5 o'clock. We have Peter and Bridget on the Zoom. We have Orca Media here. And we have Eric from the road crew and Darinda and Steve as our very welcome guests. And George Longenacker. Oh, George, I'm sorry. I didn't see you back there. And George Longenacker. Thank you, George, for coming. All righty, so approving. And Vic is not with us tonight. So approving the minutes of the November 21st, 2023, regular select board meeting action likely. Did anyone have any comments about the minutes? OK, here they are right here. Let's see. We had all of us present, so that's good news. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes? Sure, a move. OK, Peter, and a second. Bridget, OK. Moved and seconded. All those in favor of moving the minutes of November 21st, please say aye. Aye. OK, they are approved. All righty, reviewing, amending, and approving the agenda for tonight, December 5th, select board meeting action likely. Is there anything that we are amending, Sarah? I'm not to my knowledge. OK, Peter, do you have any amendments? I just have like a two second Welch Park update. OK, a Welch Park update. I'll put that there. I can forbid that we have a meeting without talking about Welch Park. Yeah, and I'll quickly also just talk about a little correspondence I've had with BIA, also for about the town hall. All righty, so do we have a motion to approve the agenda? OK, thank you, Randy, and a second. OK, is there a second? All righty, we've got Peter seconding it. Oh, I haven't read it. OK, all those in favor of approving today's agenda, please say aye. Aye. All righty, great. All righty, so we are ahead of schedule to get Peter to his dinner at 6.30, and we can go over the budget workshop with the highway. Are we expecting anyone else from the budget committee? Sarah has zoomed in. Who has? Sarah. I think Sarah's on the agenda. Oh, Sarah, OK, great. Was Mark going to attend? I thought Mark was planning on that. OK, so maybe we just give him a minute in case he's planning to attend if we're a little ahead of schedule. Do we want to zip to the Highway Department update in case Mark is on his way? Why don't we do that? Eric, would you like to give us a little update on the Highway Department? I'm sure. Oh, here comes Mark. OK, well, let's rewind. Rewind, Mark is here. Thank you, Mark. So we are going over the Highway Department presenting your fiscal year 25 draft budget and any other budget updates, action unlikely. So I submitted this and then found some errors. So it's not completely 100% error proof. I really was only increasing only a few items. Road salt, obviously, because that's gone up to $90 a ton. To $19.8, it was $15.8. What line item is that? That's the first one. First one. Yep. Trucking for winter sand usually is what we use that for. I increased that some too because it cost us more this year than anticipated by $5,000. So Mark, did you repeat that error? The road salt has gone up to what? $90 a ton this year. And it was $88, I think, last year. Can you guys hear Eric OK? Peter and Bridget, OK? OK, not super great. OK. Yeah. Let's pull that mic out. Wait, that's for all of them. Let's see. Tire chains. I added an extra $500 on those just because the prices of those have gone up so much as well. Road gravel. I didn't dare to go any higher than adding an extra $20,000 on top of what we had to $50,000. Wages, I was shooting for a 4 and 1 half percent, and I think that is it as far as. The only other thing I see, Eric, is just you're used to oil recycling. Yeah, well, that's because we never had that before. That was an item that we just barely brought in this year. I don't know why it's not. I didn't transpose it over, but remember, we added that last year. Yeah, we added it. It was in last year's budget. Yeah, I just kept that the same. It's just moved over there. OK. So this budget doesn't have anything to do with all the FEMA work that's going to be done? No. No. And there isn't an overlap in any way? Excavators. OK. You envision, I think, and this might be part of that note that you said was from a residual from last year, but I just see a note for bulk oil and DEF here about anticipating rising costs. But it looks like we level-funded. Yes. I don't foresee it going more than what it has, much more than what it has this past year. I could be wrong, but it's a gamble. There is, Peter, I mentioned something about the excavator. There is a grant opportunity out there that I'm applying for for new diesel equipment through the state, so hopefully that will help with that purchase. And that's not what we've heard of. And that's not what we've heard. I just anticipate, and I think we all do, that getting our roads back into shape is going to involve more maybe than we think, a lot. And any extra money we can find or save, we need to put into that this year. And that 20,000 of gravel is just a drop in the bucket, but it's a big drop, so that's good. And also, we haven't had a discussion about wages, but it's good to know that you built in 4.5%. So I have a question regarding the excavator. Like, I know that that's coming in the CIP, but in here for equipment purchase, and I'm imagining that this is used as something different. But line item 69, it just has $1,500. That's for small tools and things like that. Is anywhere in this highway budget include funding for purchase of an excavator? No. Is there somewhere else upcoming to the other select board members that that would be captured in that? Our fund, our equipment. Capital equipment fund. But that's just a fund, future purchases, not to necessarily... Where did I... Like, how is that captured? Is it truly through that capital fund? I'm wondering, is the capital fund its own little budget? It is. Remember, we turned it into... Yes. We added it to our budget as line items, and I think that's four things like that excavator, that we wouldn't also have a line item to add to the excavator. I think. Mark, that's a question. Yeah, I think that's direct, Les. Mark, yes. I just wanted to make a comment. I think we have submitted to the select board, if I'm not mistaken, a capital budget for the next budget year, which includes, among other things, the excavator and a dump truck and something else. So again, what generally will happen is, and Dorenda will correct me if I'm wrong, but if we purchase them in the next budget year, for the next budget year, the first payment is the following year. So we'll finance it. It won't hit the budget next year. It'll start hitting the budget, the following budget. Correct. As long as that's... Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that it was accounted for somewhere. But I don't think you have presented to it. This is not only our second week of presenting. So I think, though, again, my senior brain might be lacking here, I think I submitted after a budget committee meeting sort of a one sheet wonder on what the capital budget looks like for fiscal year 24 and 25. And no, we haven't discussed it yet, but we will. OK. But I think also, and am I wrong about this too, is that the capital budget, are you talking that those are the actual line items of things that we need to include in our budget or just the capital budget? So those are line items. So remember, the capital asset inventory that Randy alluded to is think of it as future costs. So we've picked the excavator and a dump truck, I think, out of that. And now those will be moved into the actual operating budget for the next X years. As well as those funds that we fund every year. Yeah, so this is what was submitted. It hasn't made it to the select budget for the agenda yet. But Mark has submitted it to say that. So that can be worked into this process. So we could choose, in financing those, to take some money out of, let's say, the new equipment fund to put it down payment on, depending on what the interest rate will be at the time. Yeah, gotcha. To lower the cost of it, right? Yeah, OK. Perfect. Thank you for that explanation. Mark, we got a nice fact around. Wouldn't that be nice? I don't know to try. I have a question. Yes. You haven't spent any money during the current year the last I looked on gravel. So are we intending on spending that prior to end of year and then adding for the following? I mean, because that would be $80,000. Because there's 30 there now that you haven't spent a dime on. In this current budget. Correct. In this current budget. Now we have from April to July. That's what I'm asking. Which we're probably going to be using. I would certainly hope we are. And it won't be FEMA gravel. Yeah, I mean, we've got roads that aren't necessarily FEMA issues that still need to be attended to. OK. No, I just wanted to point that out. Yeah, absolutely. There is that $30,000 that we're sitting on. So can I ask another question about this FEMA road budget and then this road budget? So I understand that this is like our regular maintenance road budget, right? But I think are we planning to, so we have to spend the money on FEMA on this. We have to spend the money on these people, right, that are doing the repairs for FEMA. So I think we need to have it somewhere in the budget. Like that this that we need $2 million to pay for the rest of the repairs. Because we still have to pay for them. And we still figure out how we're going to pay for them. And I'm not saying, like, let's present to the voters. Our budget's going up by 200%. Like, that's not my intention. But I think this does not. If I were a townsperson, I wouldn't understand that this is just us and not the whole FEMA piece as well. So and it could be it's own little separate budget that we say. But the reality is we do have to pay for it before we get reimbursed from FEMA. And that means that we may have to take out a loan or do the bond. Well, I think it becomes a special question that I don't think. I personally feel you don't want to mix it in with your operating budget. This is to just maintain our roads as we do from year to year. It becomes, yes, we need to. It's a discussion the select board needs to have prior to going. Are we going to ask the town to authorize something different? And I'll bring up under the treasurer stuff that there is the state is now putting out a low interest thing for us, for all the municipalities, and which would cut what we're currently paying in half. But what we would have to do is pay off this $3 million or wherever we're at at that point. With that money. And I don't think we have. The other piece of this is, and we better not forget it, is that damn FEMA match, which is going to be a huge chunk of money. I mean, the buyouts are one thing, but the FEMA match is another thing. We've got information on that. We can share after that later in the meeting or whatever, too. OK, but I like the idea of creating a special one-time portion of the budget, which shows that. And I would hope that any money we expand next year, we would be reimbursed in that year. So it would only be the net that we should show. But I don't know whether it's fair or realistic to do that or not. I hate to show the total amount of the expense when we know we're going to get reimbursed. Yes, Sarah. So I assume we're going to have a town meeting that's going to be in person, correct? And budgets can be amended from the floor. I mean, you can get there with the town meeting when you have a floor meeting. People can get up and say, why are we spending this? Slash it. They can cut it from the budget. So my question is, what happens if you put that on the budget to vote? I don't think we do have to put it on the budget to vote. I don't think people get a say in whether or not we repair our roads that have been destroyed for FEMA. No. But what I'm saying is, if you put it as part of your budget, you could put an explanatory article. But if you could put that on, you're going to have someone who's going to say, I don't want to spend $2 million on the road, screw it. What if they say no? Would we do that? Right, I guess. But the reality is, we still have to pay for it. When we accept that FEMA money, we're contractually obligated to that map. No, no, Peter, you're missing the point. No, Peter, Peter, you're missing the point. My point is that if you put something on the budget that goes before the voters, and there is a section about road repairs that will be reimbursed by FEMA, that part of that budget can be voted down. Do you understand? I understand what you're saying. What I'm saying is, number one, I don't think we should show the total amount of the road repairs. We should show the net amount after FEMA reimbursement, I hope. And then the question is, do we include that as an informational section, or do we actually include it in the budget? And I agree with you. If we actually put it in the budget, there's some risk that it'll get amended or voted out. And then what do we do? Because we're obligated to pay that money. Randy has a comment. I would just suggest that it's issued as its own informational piece, with the full budget of the expenses showing a line in that report, what FEMA is contributing to, and a separate line as to what our potential match is, and not tied directly to the operational budget. I do believe it should be separate, but the town folks should absolutely get all of the information put out in an informational report here, I believe. Like its own report, like not just our select board report, but like a FEMA report. Like a FEMA report, yeah. Good question over here. Mark. Yes, Mark. So by definition, this seems to be the money that we're spending on the roads. This seems to me to be a one-time capital expense, if we think about it that way, because we had a situation, we had flooding, our roads got hammered, we're getting reimbursed by FEMA. This is sort of a one-time expense that we're making, and everything we're putting into the roads has a useful life of more than a year. So I think we just need to think about how we're gonna couch this to the voters. This is a one-time act of God, whatever you wanna call it, right, that we have to do. And we're simply, we're getting this much from FEMA, as Randy said, and we expect we're gonna have to chip in this much. But this is a one-time deal, this is not anything to do with our operating budget year over year. And there's a cost, which is the match, even if it's a small amount after everything is all said and done, do we budget for that? I think this will come up in the Treasurer's Report, I think, based on what she was saying just a minute ago, but that low-interest bond opportunity that the state has developed for this, and I don't know a whole lot about it, but it sounds to me like that, our match essentially would be fit for that, and it would be able to be spread over seven years at a much lower interest rate. And I think that's what essentially the town has to authorize, right? I mean, they would have to authorize that or no. I don't know if the town even has to authorize this, because, I mean, they don't even have to authorize us buying a truck for the highway department because we're obligated to repair our roads. And so we can buy a truck without their authorization. I don't see, and I could be wrong, I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but I would think that we're under an obligation to keep our roads in repair, and I think we, whatever it costs to repair them, we have to cover that expense. And I don't know if you have to go to the voters for that. We can figure that out when the time comes, but my understanding, I followed the stuff on that state loan. I listened to the governor's press conference, and at the very least that provides a bridge for us. You know, at the end, maybe we have to borrow some money. You know, who knows whether we can pay it off in seven years. There's also still a lot of talk that the legislature is gonna appropriate some money to reduce that match, even more, not alone, just an absolute grant. So if that happens, that could help too. We've just gotta let it play out. There is something just for, we did it in 2021, we went to the voters, 24 VSA 1786, we spent a new grader in a mountain on to exceed $290,000 to be financed over a period not to exceed 15 years. So there's like a time period there. I remember that. Right, that's, you can only borrow for the useful life of what you're borrowing for. So. We had to go to the voters for that. Because it was over a certain amount. That's one true match, I remember. Yeah, it was over a dollar amount. It's over, like, it's over, like if you do it, if you go to finance over a certain number of years, I think it's okay. Yeah. But. Okay, so back to the town highway budget, just the regular highway budget. Are there any other comments or questions for Eric? Linda? I'm good, I'm good for the time being. I think we've got to keep track of all these other parts and bits of this when we go along. But yeah, good job, Eric. Thank you. The overall increase of 5%, just under five. We always could be a little different than that. Cause I guess some errors. You got some errors. It won't reflect all of the stuff that I didn't know. Taxes, unemployment, all that kind of stuff within wages. That's all just carried over level. Okay, right, yeah. The only increase was to the wages itself. But all the stuff that's attached to that. Yeah, I have no idea what that's. Alrighty. And it all trickles down. Yes, it does. We're gonna have a good increase to the health insurance. Yes. Okay. Alrighty, well thank you. Back to the highway update. Yeah, highway update. Right on time. Five, 25. Let's see, where are we at? We had some equipment issues the last couple weeks but we got through. We managed to manage the storms fairly well with the breakdowns. Our new truck is down at the dealer with a coolant issue. For some reason it's losing coolant. We don't know where. So we have that going on. Oh, let's see. What's about it? When you talk about breakdowns, was this the breakdown that you were referring to, like coolant issue? Well, there was a couple hydraulic issues on Kenworth, a couple of blowing lines and just nuisance problem stuff. Yeah, but we're all back to capacity at this point. Short of this truck? Sort of, yeah. That's good. Yeah. Yes. Any other questions for Eric? Or yeah? I don't have a question for Eric, but. He's got some information. I do have some information on the FEMA work. The FEMA work that we have left to do that we have presented the roads to the FEMA people. I've done some budget estimates in here which comes out to about $2.6 million. And I'll be going over everything with Eric and Vic just coming Friday where we've got a meeting set up. And I'd like these, I've got all the bid information that will go to the bidders, whoever asked for it. But I'd like that to go out immediately after that meeting, sometimes the first of the next week so that the bids can, and I have it in here so that the bids would come back in on the 8th of January. So that we would have time to go through the bids to our work, whatever we need to do to present to the select board at their next meeting on the 16th. For spring work? And that will be all for next summer. Next construction season. A meeting that you have with Eric and Vic, that's this Friday the 8th? Yes. You're muted, Peter. Peter, you're muted. Just to be clear, that's additional work. Yes. So we're gonna be at like 5.6 million minutes. Yeah, this is just, this is an estimate on this. I mean, where the bids come in, that could be a different thing, but. Oh, no, I understand, but I'm just saying now our estimate of the total amount of the work is 5.6 million. 4.6. Yeah, we've spent two with us five. We've only spent two, so it's 4.6. Okay, 4.6, okay, yeah, okay, thank you. It's a lot of money. But at a 25% match, that's a lot of money for the town. Yeah, 1.2, something like that. 1.2, right, exactly. Do you think it's worth talking about the L.R. Chapin stuff, man? Yes, you wanna? She wanted you to do it. Well, you've got you. I don't. You're the expert. No, I'm not the expert. I don't have her letter, email in front of me. Do you have it there? That would solve everything. That would solve everything. We had a discussion with L.R. Chapin last week, our representative. So let me just get into this. Yeah. All right, so Ella asked, called here and wrote me and asked, you know, what our challenges were with these clubs. And I said basically the biggest challenge is the fear of this match. With the hazard mitigation program, with our hazard mitigation plan overdue, we were looking at a 25% match. Ironically, the hazard mitigation funding was just approved Monday. But anyway, so the bottom line is this, she checked into what is available for towns like us. And she said, good news, Vermont is almost definitely going to qualify for 90% FEMA coverage of expenses for all towns within a few months. So that's good. So we're past 75%, we're now looking at 90%. So we're now looking at a 10% match. But wait, there's more. This seems inevitable given the estimates of statewide flood-related expenses, which are astronomical and which will be more than several times the threshold that qualifies our disaster declaration for the higher cost chair. So after a minimum of 30% of the local match covered by the state's ERAF program, you could expect at most to be covering 7% of the costs sustained. So, but Ben, that's Ben Rose, thinks there are other ways that the ERF portion will go up and middle sex might likely end up at the 70% level. So in other words, it's still in the works. But what we're looking at is, first of all, the FEMA match will not pay 75%. They're gonna pay 90%. And then there's a whole bunch of other stuff that'll kick in. At the very worst, we'll have to pay, we'll have a 7% match, but maybe even less than that. So we're looking at, that's gonna be very helpful. 322,000 net, that estimate. For 4 million. For the 4.6 million that Steve estimated for that, that work plus what we've spent. Right. Right. And she mentioned something about what during Irene, like how that match was sort of built into like our taxes in a bond or something like that. Like it was something. One way that could happen is if the legislature passes a bill early in the session to cap local match and ensure ERF covers 75% of the match for all towns. So in other words, we're looking at now the 70% of the match. Of 10%. Right, of 10%. So it could be that we won't have to look at $320,000. 73%, or am I getting that wrong? Yeah. Okay. So whatever 3% of... 4.6 million. What is that, Randy? 138,000. 4 times. It's not, it's not chump change, but it's here to what we were looking at. Quite different. Yeah, and if that factor isn't about the potential use of that bond over seven years, you might spread the impact. Right, right. That will only be raining. Yeah. Yeah, boom. Sorry, I said bond. Yeah, sorry. If we can't pin these. Okay. Alrighty. So it's all good news. Yeah, that is good. Let's just hope there's not another disaster. All right, any more? Well, the silver lining there is we're getting a lot of work done on the roads. Well, there's no other way it'd be done. Well, we'd never get to everything. We would never get to it, I know. They're just add one other thing in there, not put a damper on it, but. Well, no, but I'm just saying there's mitigation with this, with the FEMA stuff and we have done some of that already. Upsized from culverts, added some culverts. Well, some of the, what they do in their mitigation is 15% more than if say we put in a 12 inch, or there was a 12 inch culvert in there and it was $1,000. They're only allowing 15% more than $1,000 to upsize that. So there will be a little bit of money in there with a culvert that we won't capture in there. Okay, that makes sense. Alrighty, any other further questions about the roads or FEMA? Alrighty then, moving on. Thank you, gentlemen. Please, you are welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting. We're gonna set a date and time. Peter, you can talk about this. For a select board site to visit, how exciting and subsequent public hearing to consider accepting private road Welch Park Drive as a class three town road by deed and acceptance, action likely. Ooh, action likely. Well, you have to have more than 30 days. Okay. Oh, cause we're gonna set the date and time. Okay, yep. Peter, do you wanna tell us about this or is this a Sarah thing? He's muted anyway. Peter, no, you're muted. Okay, you're muted. He doesn't listen. Just fine, well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're on mute, Peter. Oh, it took a man to say that. Yeah. It is, I'll leave my app a little bit of a cough. I'm getting over a cold so I keep muting myself. But it is the next step in the Welch Park process and nothing else can happen until we take over that road. So the sooner we do it, the better. All right, so should we do it our next, no, 30 days. So in January, Sarah? Yeah. Like a January select for a meeting? I mean, it's literally gonna take five minutes to drive down that road and back and say, yep, there it is. Just what we thought it was, et cetera, et cetera. Good on the 16th of January. Well, wait, hold on, give me a break here. Wait. I mean, we got a certified mail, all the people who are involved in everything. Oh, okay. It's just not a rush. The issue is not how long it takes you to drive down there. The issue is that the statute requires at least 30 days notice and you have to certify mail everybody. And so if you could, just for my sanity, slow it to February. I mean, there's no rush on it. As long as it's done by the year end, by the end of June. Well, maybe we do wait until after-time meeting. I would just suggest if you could just give me to February 6th, if you could do that. We can. And then that'll give us enough time to notify all the parties because some of them are hard to track down, like some landlords. So we don't want anybody not to be informed. Okay, here we go. So we meet at Welch Park at five? Yeah, 5 p.m. 6th of February 6th. Do we need daylight to see what we're looking at? You just call it in the road. By that time, I think it'll be daylight. Oh, wow. You can just drive down. You're a hopeful person. You can just drive down it and you'll feel the road. And then have a public hearing. Okay, thank you. Alrighty then. So is there any discussion about this? Any further discussion? 5 p.m. to February 6th, while I'm on the hearing. And also, that's kind of a dead zone for you guys. You will have done, you have nothing to do in February. Oh, wow. Okay. Alrighty, so no further discussion. Do we have a motion to approve this? Okay, to approve the February 6th meeting and public hearing. Is there a second? Randy, thank you. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Alrighty. Okay, everybody approved, yay. Alrighty then, we're at 5.45, compiling a list of grants needs, grants needs, to submit to the municipal technical assistance program. Action possible. I really didn't get a chance to think about this. Did other people? No. Okay. You were the one who asked me to put it on the agenda. Did I? Yeah. We do need to talk about it at some point, right? I mean, we could talk about some things. So this is the tech, this is the one that Eli was talking about, the municipal technical assistance program. I don't know. There's no Russia, there's no deadline. There's no deadline, right? But this was them supplying us with technical assistance to help us figure out about stacking, funding, and adaptation. You're supposed to come up with some ideas of things that you need. Right. Of things that we need. Yeah. Right. Well, we know we have the town hall, some things with the town hall, but there's more than that. I mean, there's probably some things, road related, truck related, that we could be looking at. I don't know. Found garage related. Okay. Do we want to just Thank you. Pass over. Pass over this. Anyone have any deep desire to talk about this? Okay. Alrighty, we'll move over it then. And we're getting closer and closer to Peter's being able to get out early. Treasurer's report. Okay, nice cute clinking in the other room. Yeah. Treasurer's report. Let's see. Well, we discussed part of it. I will send out forward an email to the select board if they're interested. There is a Vermont League of Cities and Towns meeting on December 12th, a Zoom meeting for more information on this municipal bond. But the amount is 1.3%, which is a pretty good rate. It's very cool. So that would be so, and it is for seven years. And they have three and a half million dollars to throw into this. So I will forward this to everybody. And I've already signed up for it. And if you guys wanna sign up for it. Wait, I'm confused. They only have three and a half million? I think it said three. The program, no, oh, it'll save tax pay is up to an estimated three and a half million. Oh, because we need to borrow like two and a half million. Yeah, no, it's. Well, ideally we'd borrow all of it. That's what I mean, we'd borrow all of it, which would take up the whole fund. State received 15 million in a loan. So. Interesting. I mean, that could be an issue that we don't have, that we can't borrow the full amount that we wanna borrow because they only have 15 million in other towns. Also had to borrow. I think we were one of the harder hit towns though, for sure. But that would be an interesting thing to ask, Dorinda, at that, if there's an opportunity for questions about like, is it first come, first serve? Is it? Yeah, how it'll work. That's why I'm gonna. I'm gonna plan to intend that. Anybody else is, but just to keep in mind numbers there. Yeah. But that is a great rate. It is a great rate. It was good to see that. And even to be able to take a million and cut down that loan we have would be amazing. Yeah. Let's see, there was something else I had to share with you on it. And now I can't remember what it is. We've got another school payment. You'll see in the orders tonight. So we have another big payout going out this week. Other than that, I can't remember what else I was gonna mention, but couldn't have done it. Oh, I know I have an appointment with, I had to cancel my original appointment with the other IT person. He's coming in next Friday and gonna take a walk through at the set up here. And then I will invite him to the next select board meeting. Could you hand out any signs that he believes? All righty. Any other thing that you wanna talk about, Dorinda? No, I think that's it. In terms of just a question about the loan that we took out from Community Bank or wherever that was from. Like is that, what is the payment process on that? We have a year to pay it. If we can't pay it down in a year, they said they were open to possibly looking at renegotiation. But if we're getting these bills and we've already have given to FEMA the first $2 million worth of invoicing, we have a handful of invoices, we have to add to it. But other than that, it's been submitted, they're already working on it. I would not be surprised if we don't see some funding. Really? Before the end of the fiscal year. Yeah, I would agree with that. For the end of the fiscal year, you said? I wouldn't be surprised, do you? I didn't know if you were being in calendar or fiscal. No, not calendar year. By June? By June. Oh, yeah. I think by June too. Yeah, I would hope, jeez. But so, I mean it's not gonna be, you know, so then if we have to borrow a smaller amount. Okay. And the municipal bond, how quickly, is that something that like has to go to the voters? No. That's not like a regular bond. This whole thing, it's like, and I don't know what the legal part of it is. Like I said that we had no choice, but to incur this expense. It wasn't like we went out and bought equipment or anything like that. We had to fix the roads. And we didn't ask the town to borrow the three million. Right, so I mean we had no choice, but. You don't have to do that. It's not a, the issue is going into indebtedness over after a certain period of time. That's the issue. Okay, yeah. And it's different for like fire trucks versus roads. Derinda's right, that the statutes are geared toward the select board making sure. Making all the decisions. Those roads run. Yep. Do what you have to do. And I think that the only issue about going to the voters is when you get into indebtedness over a certain period of time. Ask seven years, then you have to do that. Alrighty, that's cool. Okay. Any other questions for Derinda the Treasurer? Derinda the Treasurer. Yay, Derinda, thank you. How did the taxes come in Derinda? They come in pretty well. Yeah, they're coming in. Like I said, we're able to actually, we're paying actually sending out checks to all the small special articles in this weeks as well because there's enough money and I feel comfortable we can carry until the next tax payment is due. So yeah, they're coming in. Well, thank you Derinda for juggling all of these payments and bills and our budget. It's a lot of work for somebody who is quote unquote in retirement and giving up a lot of time that you aren't getting paid for probably. Well, I couldn't do it without the help of Cheryl and Sarah. And thank you to Cheryl and Sarah as well. Might the whole world know how great we have a town clerk and a bookkeeper and a treasurer. Alrighty, so other business orders, we have been passing around. Thank you. We'll sign those by the end of the day. Correspondents, Sarah. There was that letter from the lawyer. I feel like the correspondence I have is that Ella Chapin. Yeah, you know which one I was gonna send you anyway. And also just to put into the minutes that for the board's request, the town attorney did draft a letter and send a letter by certified mail to Zach, lunch, and Evelyn from on Thursday. I think I sent you guys copies, but that's now part of the public record in case anybody wants to read that letter, restating or stating, confirming what our road policy is and what our state statutes are. So that has been done. Go on. Randy and I both had comments on that letter. Too late now. It's too late now. If it went out. If it went out, right. So hopefully it doesn't come back, but okay. But thank you for sending the letter out. I didn't send it. It's the attorney said. Thank you for the attorney. Accepting the planning commission's recommendation to reappoint Kevin Thompson as town zoning administrator. We have him here tonight, action likely. Okay, so do we have to vote about this? We just have to vote on it. It's a yes or no. It's the state statue says that I get appointed for a three year term. Do you want to be appointed? He has the answer. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Are you doing this on your own free will? No. It's not. It's under duress. Under duress. Okay, well, we thank you for, seriously, very much thank you for doing this work as the town zoning administrator. Because I know it's not, you have to learn a lot. You have to know a lot of stuff. It's easy to make mistakes and you don't. And that's great. So is there a motion to reappoint Kevin Thompson? Absolutely. Okay, Randy. Woo, motion. Who seconds it? So don't all jump at once. Okay, Peter seconds it. Got to be a little quicker branching. Yeah. All those in favor of reappointing Kevin Thompson as town zoning administrator say aye. Aye. Aye. Great. Aye. And thank you for your service to the town of Milisex. I'll be back in three years. Okay, great. Thank you for coming. Appreciate all the effort. Y'all have a good night. You too, thank you. Okay, so we have this. Oh, I guess you stayed, Eric, to talk about this. We've got the, sorry. Just saying thank you to him. Okay. I position it with that up higher. Yep. Approving a new access permit for 422 Center Road. Is there anything about this that you want to share with us? Okay, it looks like it's for, I don't know who it's for. So it's, oh, Tom Vickery? Yep. Okay. They already have a access to that house, but they need another access. For logging. Exactly, and is that right? Correct. Okay. It's for logging. Alrighty. So I can just go ahead and sign that, Sarah. You have to approve, yep. All right. Is there a motion to approve this access permit for? It would be permanent. 422 Center Road for Tom Vickery. And give Liz the authority to sign. And give Liz the authority to sign. Randy, makes that motion. Is there a second for that? Go ahead, Bridget. Got it. Okay, Bridget seconds it to moved and seconded to approve the access permit and for me to sign. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Delivered. Also, Eric, you've got to send that access permit to right above the door. You did? I had him sign it, because I thought he was going to walk away. Alrighty. So any other matters that may come, oh my gosh, it is, okay, I need to share these meetings more often. Yes. Okay. Are there any other matters that may come before the board? I heard you're buying it, stop. Any matters that come before the board? You were going to talk about your... Oh, right, quickly. So, VIA has been sort of nudging me about, because they're planning, they had to plan themselves for the year, what they're doing. And so I, let me just read what she said in the email. Would you like us to, this was back in November, would you like us to prepare a proposal at this point, or rather does it also make sense to wait for a successful bond vote? Because I had mentioned this was all previous that we were thinking about just doing a bond, and then prepare the proposal. We can prepare a proposal in pretty short order, and would prefer to not exercise consultants if there's any question about the vote passing. Since our current capacity won't allow us to start prior to quarter two, so quarter two for them I'm assuming is January. My sense is that I could reach out to consultants and request that they hold the capacity in their schedules and let them know that we'll work to prepare a proposal around town meeting day. Now, if even regardless, even if it had been say a bond or something like that, but if we're, so I basically emailed her back and I said, we've decided to put on a floor vote a request to the town to pay for a design review from an architect, right? And with potentially like a not to exceed amount. And, but we won't get that money till July one, right? Like, isn't that, or can we ask to have them do it and pay, like that doesn't make sense. I don't quite understand that the logistics around that. If we do a floor vote in March, the money doesn't really, isn't that a part of our budget? Like doesn't it, or does that, is that not a part of our budget? It's not part of this year's budget, no. Not this, not the current budget. It would be part of fiscal year 2025 budget, which is July one. So we really couldn't have them do the work until after July one when the money becomes available. Right? I'm not even willing to get paid after July one, which I'm sure they're not. I mean, we don't want to ask them to do it, but at any rate they may not. So I emailed her that and I said, I don't believe we could start the work. The only other question I had was, and I don't know that this is possible, if it passed, could we use like ARPA money to pay for it and then pay it back with the budget? Or does that not work? Is that weird? It's probably weird. I don't think you can. The problem is, is you've got to make that expense show within the budget year that they're holding on. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, you're right. So that doesn't make sense. Yeah, yeah. So anyways, she has not responded to that, but I don't think it really, so in the grand scheme of things, if we wait until after July 1 to do the design phase, I mean, we haven't even gotten our audits, our energy audits. This MERT money, I believe, is gonna be pushed out. And so then that could be a November vote for a bond. If they can do bond votes in November, I don't know that you, I think you can. What did they say? So you got two things, going to the bond made versus a bond vote. You could do a bond vote any time as long as you follow the statutory process. Shall we, shall we look at the pages? That's not the issue. The bond-baked stuff, that I don't know. It's twice a year for the bond. It would be like, it would be next winter's bond basically. So, but you can get author, once you have authorization, you have authorization. Right. But the bond-baked is gonna demand that authorization. You can't say, hey, we're gonna go for a bond. Right. Give us money. And this might be more palatable overall, because we might have a better sense of getting paid for FEMA, how much we're gonna have to pay. And you're gonna have the best voter turnout in November that you'll ever get. That is very true. We will. So, what do you guys think about that? I'm assuming they can do the work. I would be happy to continue with them. I don't see a reason to switch, because we already did this work with them. But if we get approved, then it would be July 1, and then it would be in November. We'd be able to do some sort of public meeting after that and put it on the ballot for November. Right. And if you're gonna have a bond vote on the ballot, you're gonna have to have a really official, formal public meeting as well. Yep. Yep. I would anticipate, I don't know how long a design study takes. Does anyone have an idea? Months? I'm sorry, what, Sarah? Like, Liz, how long a design study of our town hall would take? I don't know. Probably a few months. Probably a few months, yeah. I guess so. I mean, they already have, they've basically done all the preliminary work. You know, all the measuring and anyway. Right. So, let's say October. Does that give us enough time, Sarah? Yeah, you need 30 days. Not more than 45, not actually more than 30. You have to follow up to that window. Okay. Well, I think by town meeting day, which is the third of the month, right? Or something like that. If we know the answer then, we can schedule it. That gives them plenty of months out to schedule this. And the other thing is that if you already have your figure in mind, like, so the design is gonna give you a more detailed plan. But if you have a budget, if you have an idea of how much money you need, those are separate. Well, the design is supposed to tell us how much more money we need. But they can fall for it, right? Yeah, it gives us a better, according to Sandy and Dave, you get a better estimate of how much money you're gonna need. So can I ask that? Much better. Right, yeah, okay. I mean, I have a question about, we've had one kind of public notice about town hall, the town hall plan. But since then, I've gotten feedback from people about the plan, like, hey, how come there's not this office? Or why do we have that much space devoted to this? Is this too late to change this? No, not at all. Oh no, not at all. So we can, yeah. And that is like the, if there are, same thing about the food shelf, people are like, oh, the food shelf's tiny, right? Like, do we wanna have something that's a little bit bigger? And I mean, I don't know. I know, but in retrospect and in talking to people, I'm thinking there are some things here that don't work that we need more space for, like office stuff and less space for displays. Do you know what I mean? Like, to store our office stuff. Well, and I also think that there can be ways that it gets spread around the whole building, right? I mean, like a museum, right? It doesn't necessarily have to be. A much better way for people to see stuff anyway. Yeah, yeah. So I think that when we do that design phase, they do have further conversations with us. So it's not like we're set with that. Okay. But we did say this is what we like, and so this is our opportunity if we say, if she comes back to me and says, okay, yeah, that sounds like a good plan, I'll email her back and just say, okay, we have some thought, we've had some feedback from people and we've had some sort of second thoughts, like can that be incorporated into the design study phase? Yeah, that would be the time to change it. That would be the time. I would just keep a running list of those items. Yeah, I got it. Right, the further we get down the road, the harder it is to make changes. This is a very good time to make changes. Yep, excellent. Okay, so any other thoughts or comments that may come before the board? Hope, streams, celebrations. Hope we don't lose power for three days again. Oh, wishless freedom. I hope I have power back. We didn't have it today. Oh, you didn't? No. I mean, it came back probably. I don't know, I haven't been home. Okay, great. Thanks everybody for coming. Let's adjourn the meeting at 5.58. Woo-hoo!