 Gus is going to be joining us, but before he gets here, is there any public comment on items not on the agenda? Hearing none. Addition or changes to the agenda? Hearing none. So assuming Gus can get here, let's take a look at, and I still do a ruler, by the way, somebody's ruler. What we have typically done is go through the warning, and I was hoping we might wanna wait for the warning to Gus gets here. But maybe Judy, you wanna give us an update of the town meeting, what you need, what you got set up. I know Cliff and I have been kind of hearing from you weekly. Yeah, we're in pretty good shape except that we need more volunteers to build slots, but Barbara has been working, she's even worked on that over the weekend. I think it's just hard for people to think about getting out and doing anything right now. So we'll work on that this week, and we'll fill those slots, and I think we're in good shape, it's pretty routine with the school, we have a good relationship with that, and I think it'll be fine. And we've got the daycare taking care of us. Daycare's taking care of us. And now Barbara's working on the lunch, she and other routine school meetings, that's at eight, we start at 9.30. Yeah. And we need counters and people to demand the... Right, Barbara sent out a big email, but I think we'll just follow up with phone calls and we'll get people to fill out. Yeah. Is that what you need volunteers for? Yeah, we haven't solicited from the select board just because we kind of hold you to the last, but... No, I'm thinking like... We need people for check-in, like to check-in. You have to be... What? You have to be an adult. Ready? I'm sorry. Here's like, back to the problem. Hey guys. Hi. Let's go to the chair. There's one right there. Okay. Yeah, I think ideally, or a mature high school person maybe, but I prefer an adult. Yeah. And there's some jobs that are, you just sit by the ballot box and make sure people know how to put things in. Right. Face now. Yeah. You know, some help with cleaning up at the end. The big one that's difficult is to get ballots delivered to Berlin at the end of the day. The U32 run. And does that mean whoever delivers them has to stay and help count? That's what I've heard from a lot of people who deliver this. Yes. I've never done it because I've been counting, but... Is it typically Dylan who has done that and she not responded? She's signed up for a different part of the day, but she does not want to do that. So I'm trying to do that. Well, and actually Barbara, who's a real trooper said she'd do it. Nobody else, which I don't... We're gonna start at like 60. Yeah, that would be a long day. That's not fair. And that happens at what time? Seven. Well, yeah, we just have to make things up. We... I can do that, Judy. Can you do that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm right around the corner. Okay. Yeah. Fantastic. Okay. I think ideally they're supposed to be... It's supposed to be 10 o'clock or something. 10 or 11. So, tell me now or send me an email. We'll send you an email. I got this. Okay. Thank you very much. How it should be. No, explain to you. Just go there. And they're really bad jump foods. And sometimes I would say they have... What have you done before, John? Oh, too many times. With size. I nice did it for years. I'm hearing my own, you know. That's the worst case. Yeah. But I don't want it. But you do it. I'm talking about the journey and the food. Really bad food there. Okay. Great. Okay. And that's a one person job. We're supposed to have one person just out there with ballots. So ideally there would be two. So, John will do it with me. That's good. That would be... There you have a date here. Okay, yeah. You can eat a divorce or at least separation. Right. Okay. So, thank you Gus for coming. Do you have any questions about set up or like Artie and Nancy are doing the sound again? Yeah. We have mic runners. It's one of our jobs to find mic runners. Okay. We decided not to have the elementary school students because we were... Do you want me to see if Polly can be a mic runner for the town meeting portion? My daughter-in-law? I think she kind of... Sure. She kind of did it last year just by default. Right. We're kind of breaking up into hours because it can't get really long and be tiresome. But that would be great if you wanted to ask. So, yeah, we have multiple shifts for that so that people can tag team. Okay. So, Gus, go ahead, please. I don't... I mean, I think the room setup has been fine the way it's been divided into three sections in the front and the bleachers behind. Okay. I think the only thing that... If we do have a division of the house, who would cancel votes should be the justices in peace. But I don't know. They've always been available. Right. Right. And I rather than a select board member's doing it, you mean? I think that, like, my understanding is that's who's supposed to be doing it. It has gotten kind of chaotic in the past. I was wondering if there was a different way to do it. With, you know, like, I haven't just seen how other towns do it. You know, we have the little clickers for the cards. And, of course, at the meeting that we were at last week, people actually have to get back in line and check in and get a ballot and put it in a box. But that requires people getting out of the bleachers. But it was maybe more orgally than having these, trying to punch with a hole punch a card and multiple people doing that at the same time. I think mostly the issue for me has just been who's counting and who's counting which section of the room. Right. When we're counting. Right. I had tried to do a handout with assignments last time and that kind of didn't happen. So. The other thing I'll add to that, having been very recently in the audience side of things, is making really clear to people out there that there is a plan for counters. People don't need to stand up and volunteer and start counting. Oh, okay. You know what I mean? Like just announcing staying in your seats. The counters know who they are. We don't need help. Cause that just contributes. The problem with the JPs is that they're coming in shifts and we don't necessarily know exactly, but why don't we start with the JPs and then we're, why don't we, I'll create like a sign up, a structure for them, how to divide up the house and who it would be and where they would count and we'll see how that works. And related to that, I was gonna say something. Are you moderating the school need? As far as I know. So you're gonna have a long day. So hopefully the school manual gets done. Before town meeting starts, you get a chance to like get some coffee and you know that kind of stuff. Yeah. But there's nothing actually voted on at the school meeting. No, I mean I, the last couple of years of school meeting is mostly their report on what's going on in the school and I could see people having act 40, 60. Right, right. I think that's gonna come up. But it's a discussion. Yeah. Since there's nothing to act upon. Really? Around that. I mean somebody could promote of an advisory motion of some sort. Right. Well at town meeting, I suspect at some point a discussion will bring up roads because that's been a big issue lately. So just so you know, I think I mentioned this to you. We're looking at people's opinion, getting people's opinions, doing some more outreach meetings of other parts of town. So we hope that people will be respectful. We're kind of still learning with these weather changes how the roads react and it's very different. Like we just had this discussion with Toby about the roads, the hard packed ice and the sand just kind of falls off the roads. There's not a lot we can do. So anyways, I was expecting that people will wanna bring that up and we're trying to kind of channel it into we're gonna have more meetings to get input ideas, suggestions from improvements that kind of stuff. And here, just I might wanna look at these ahead of time. These are some notes I made. Some notes that the office staff made. If some questions come up, obviously we can answer the questions but just so you know ahead of time going into the meeting what might possibly come up. That's different than what we was out in the drive to create it. I had it for that this morning. The list that I made? Well, I've created a document, you had added some things, I added some things. Oh, I didn't see where you had it. Did you just hand out the talking points that you guys gave? And then I had just created these at like four o'clock. And I did the talking points document that I had and I didn't see anything in there that you created. She just added two. I just added to the one that we, I thought we were all gonna work out of one document. Yeah, that's what I did, but I didn't see yours, so. Well, and I didn't see all this. Oh, no, that's totally separate. That's not what I was saying. That's not what I was saying. That's totally separate, okay. Because I didn't see talking points, were you? We can be in time. I made some changes over the weekend and I made more today. Oh, I didn't see them actually in the weekend either. Yeah, I had a question in there somewhere. All right, well, I don't have to figure that out. Gus, are you hearing from people because people have reached out to me and actually I met with one person who asked to meet with me because she felt really, she just wanted to talk about how does somebody bring up an issue at town meeting? And I met with her certainly, but I'm hearing, I. Nobody's called, so. Okay, I'm scared. I'm happy, I mean, I did this one. I knew Doug Moley was upset a few years ago. Right, and that's what I said, you know, here's a way to think about it, but I'm just another person at the meeting, the person you need to coordinate with and talk to with Gus. So hopefully they will still do that. Okay, and if I haven't heard from anybody in a couple more days, if you want to tell me who I should call, I'm happy to make a few phone calls and just say. About roads. Yeah, it's about roads, yeah. I mean, she was wonderful, she wants to be very respectful and very productive, what's the word, productive, yeah. But she still wants her concerns addressed. Right, and that's where I think when you know that we're gonna be holding more meetings, looking for ideas, input, you know, that will help direct people to, you know, we're gonna give people plenty of opportunity to speak. Yeah, I mean, I think part of town meeting is this isn't also their opportunity to express whatever frustrations they have, so they may not want to wait until and have to go to another meeting to tell you what they think. Is Toby gonna be at the meeting this year? Ooh, we're gonna ask him that. Ooh, we should make sure he is. I'll send him an email. I mean, it's fine with me if you guys have to answer all the hard questions, but. Some of them, you know, he definitely knows more about it than we do. So, okay, so on this topic of, well, nevermind, but I don't want to go down the rabbit hole right now, but maybe before we wrap up completely, go back to the meetings, because I have, I heard something about that that I want to make sure, at least it's to let words aware of it. Okay, but it doesn't necessarily have to do with town meeting. Okay. And what is on the, I mean, I didn't see anything really controversial on the warning, did you, when you looked at it? No, I mean, we don't have any big advisory issues this year, you know, there's no nuclear plant to shut down, there's no wars to stop, there's no revolution, no war. School meetings probably gonna be relatively, more lively than the slumber it is, generally. Yeah, although it's really, so people have to get out of bed. Right, what I've learned though, is a lot of people get up way earlier than I do. Those that do, have just gotten a charge of coffee going, so. I think people are gonna have an issue that they really want to raise. Do we have one of these bigger ones for Gus? Oh, sure. Money in the wall. Yeah, I mean, there's really not a lot. The one controversial thing is probably gonna be the Woodbury fire department, where they want this $31,000, they've already put out a mailing to all the residents about it. Because when we met with the Woodbury fire department, we said, you know, this is really a lot. We'll put it on the warning, but, you know, expect some pushback. And there also will be, not sure who it is, but they would have someone there to speak with. Yeah, I think it's gonna be Chance. Chance Payette, he's the, forget what he is, but he's one of the top fire department people in the area. So see if you, even if you're blind, you can read that. It's great. We beg Eva to make the books larger and she like push back away. Any budget items, Gus? Yeah, oh yeah, we heard the possible. I mean, not from my perspective, but I assume there's still no advisory committee for the social service article, or did one get recreated? No, no. So there's nobody really to speak to it. We basically, it was really hard to get an advisory committee together. So what we did is we just put in what people requested last year minus Doug Lilly's amendment. And is it any different than this year's? So there are some that are different? Um, just a couple of them, I'll slightly, if you could probably note it off the top of your head. If you can let me know, just. Yeah, we can let you know. I haven't written down, I just didn't bring it with me. So we have sexual assault back down to your original number. Circle? That's the circle. Well, we've always done that. We've always done that. No, I know, I know. Other years, things have gone up, but that's great. But Circle is the one that Doug increased to 4,000 or something last year. But they did not stay at that level. There was another group that was increased and they did stay at that level. I think it might have been independent living, but I just don't remember. Yeah. That asked for the higher level. That asked for the increase last year and then they continued that level. I mean, the main thing is what you've printed here is what people asked for. This is exactly what the organizations have asked for. And in the past when we had that committee, which I facilitated or helped facilitate, we'd spend hours and hours and hours processing all of this and we'd prepare a recommendation and then it was usually shot down. So it was sort of like, you know, why are you doing all this? Some years ago, I said, well, thanks for making it. And the other piece is the cemetery budget is going down $10,000? From what it was last year. Okay. So, and the cemetery commission will speak to that. And as far as people to be elected from the floor, we don't need a town granger has kind of been done away with. According to Jim Barlow advised us, we didn't put that on there. Did you tell the correct town granger? That was Tina. Yeah, did you let her go? She knows, yeah, she knows. Yeah. Town grangers wings have been clipped to be precise is what she said. And the town town agent is what we always put down as town law agent. This is the correct term. The term we were using wasn't necessarily correct. And I think, who's that? Is that you, Judy? Or is that Tina? I thought that was Tina. Tina, yeah. And then trustee of public funds. I don't remember. Now lose term. I think it's Steve Kellerin's term is up. I don't assume anybody's stepping down. And then cemetery commissioners, John Simanski is correct. He's soft open. Yeah. And then the whole thing about property taxes, Jim, Sandra pointed out some issues that she had this year when she collected. So she kind of reworked the wording. We ran it by Jim Barlow. Hopefully it's all very clear. Oh, we'll never be clear. No, never be clear enough. So other than that, I can't really think of anything. Like I said, it's a pretty... It's also the shortest agenda we've had in years. Right. I think it's going to be about roads. I think it's going to be about roads. It's going to be about roads. Yeah. That's what's going to come up. And I think we can take that up with our discussion up under other business, right? You could, but it will probably come up just on the budget. Yeah, I'm sure it will. I think it was motivating to say, you're not doing a good job today. And they may want to increase the budget. They may ask to increase the budget. I think that's what happened. Yeah. Wow, really? For sand and gravel. Well, that's not even personal. Yeah, we haven't. That's personal back. You're saying another position. Well, and I think that we heard that last Monday night when we met the 11th. But I think there's some evaluation and some things people may not think about when they're saying, well, just add another person. There's more to it than just adding a person. There's a lot more to it. There's like, so do we need another truck? And then you've got all the employer piece of it. So it's not sound simple, but there might be more discussion needs to be had. And I think that there's an awareness of that. From the conversations I've had, people are fully aware that it's not really their place to say increase here or increase there. Instead, the interest is in creating a little bit of headroom so that as these meetings proceed and we start to do analysis and look at different options, there's a little more money to play, but not directing it at town meeting. Well, that's, I mean, that's conversations with like three people. There are how many hundreds of people out there who have probably other opinions. Right, right. But not everybody thinks that they know exactly how warm money should be spent, which is good. Yeah. Or everybody thinks they don't have more money. Yeah, that's right. I remember waiting a few years back. As I was leaving, Dr. Bradley said to me, well, you just moderated a meeting in which you had 200 drug commissioners attending. Yeah, and that's basically what it's like. So, yeah, right. So, anyways, I'm sure it'll go fine. You'll do a fabulous job as always, and we thank you very much for that. And if you think of anything in between, let us know. I mean, I think it's pretty straightforward and we just have to be welcoming to people and welcoming to everybody's views and opinions. Yeah, and I think we try to do that this time again. Right, if I bring the snag. Okay, anybody else? No, can you think of anything else? Do you want to talk again about putting something out front porch form on process? I've been, I've just not had a lot of time to edit daily, so I'm still going to take a crack at that. My general feeling is to send something relatively short and as I looked at the thing you sent me, I'm not sure I want to encourage people to think that they, although they can, speak for 10 minutes. No, absolutely not. Right, so anyway. No, that was. I know those are the rules, but anyway. So I'm just. And that's not really our big problem. You know, when I looked at that too, I thought we don't really have a problem with people. Tree across. Well, you know. Using up 10 minutes and wanting more. No, but if you're really strict, you could interrupt a lot of people and say, could you return to the point of the question? Some people can go all around the barn and make their point and tell stories and. Stand up front. Oh, yeah. So anyway, you know, and in the moment, it's, I mean, I don't know if you were at the U32 meeting last week, but similar sort of circumstance for better burns team got up and called the question and she let him do it. And you'd be able to stand at the moment. I know I was maybe that I was really bothered by that. Well, and maybe that's the thing to post because that's the thing that comes up. How do you call the question? Maybe it's a simple that if we were only going to post one thing that people need better behavior on it is absolutely that, but it's also, you know, when somebody's standing at the mic and they've already talked twice and somebody else is standing up who hasn't spoken, what do you do? Who do you? Well, yeah, but that's where under the rules, you actually have the authority to skip the person who's already spoke twice and go to somebody who hasn't spoken. But you write it to people who just speak anyways. Yeah, all I'm saying is in the moment, it's just. Yeah, I mean, I thought she actually did quite a good job the other night. She did a very good job. It was a tough. And I think most, I mean, the thing about calling the question is you're not, you're not really calling the question or you're deciding whether to stop talking about the issue, which is really a reasonable thing for somebody after other people have spoken for a while. No, that's fine. But what the bad behavior that I would really like us to train out of our town culture is just yelling it from the floor, call the question, and expecting that that's all you need to do to, and then oh well, nobody else gets to speak and we're all done. That's the part that that if you wanna make a motion to cease debate, you do it by raising your hand like everybody else and we've got us to get to you. That's right. Right. Yeah. Well, we will encourage civility. Yeah. Thank you, Junique. There's a tree across Loose Road. Jim Barlow just called from the road to say. Oh. So I could get a hold of Alfred. I got a hold of Toby and Toby's gonna figure out how to get a hold of Alfred. Okay. Yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of trees down all over the place. That wind has been... It's ferocious. Yeah, it's been wild. I have a 30-mile hour guest on my little meter. Yeah. Okay, well, thank you very much for the large print. You're welcome. It's like, I was so excited. It's like, doesn't take much to make me happy. I was so excited. I like that I won't lose it as easily. Yes, that's true. I had to screw that it was gonna be 300-page document if we made the font big, but it's really masterful. Quite manageable. Yes. Nice looking report. Thank you. Collaborative. Okay. Well, thank you. All right, thank you guys. We'll see you, oh, a week from tomorrow. Yes. I can't believe it. You believe it's already... And you know, right up, tell me, it does get warm, is that right? Mud hits. Mud season. It's the end of March, that's always tough. Yeah. Yeah. We always get punched in the nose with full marks. Yes. Yes, we do. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys. Appreciate it once again. Thank you for... I don't have to sit here every two weeks all year or so. Thank you. Or more. Yeah, or more, right. All right, so Sandra and Judy, thank you for putting together these talking points. I did read it. I think what we were doing is just eyeballing the budget and seeing what jumped out as big changes, thinking that might precipitate questions. So these were the questions that we brainstormed. If anything significant comes up on it, you know? Yeah, I have no questions. Pretty straightforward. Thank you. Sorry I have to leave. You can't be careful on the roads. Oh, man. So sorry, go ahead. That's all. Just in... I don't know if you want to just... Thank you. We answer all of them or what? Yeah, I did read them. They sounded good to me. Hi, are you kidding me? I think what we discovered when we were creating them is there's just been a lot of staffing changes that might be confusing to the audience. So we tried to clarify all the rationales behind the changes and adjustments and salaries. No, this isn't something you're going to have really available to people. No, this is for your cause, yes. Gotcha. The second to last one on the back page was... I remember, I think Sandra telling me this, but I'm glad you put it in writing because I didn't remember. If you look at the budget, you can see where she literally picked up... Page 46. Page 46, you said. Which page? Oh, the liability insurance section. General government insurance. Page 46. This is just under insurance? Yes. Yeah, general liability. Decrease reflects and typographical error in FY19. So you're talking about the... The 27 to 12. Right. But it was just picked up inadvertently from the FY18 south, the typo. And so it should have been... Don't exactly know what it should have been for that year. I believe I was at town meeting and her intention was to have that divided between general government and highway. But that was somehow corrupted in the course of things. There's so much data to enter. So it's not really an insurance savings at all. Is that the same issue, Denise? There was a talking point around insurance. That wasn't where... No, I didn't remember about this when I was talking about insurance. Okay, so two different things, whatever. Yes. Okay. Did you... I mean, you've been through the budget as it's printed. Did you find any other errors or anything like that that the printers might have made? Oh, there's a $1,000 error that is not... It's my typographical error on page 52. Licenses and fees and income should have been 22, 385. Licenses, page 52. 52, licenses and fees at 23, 385 really should have been 22, 385. It will have such a de minimis impact. Oh, it's the same tax dollars. Yeah, it will have such a de minimis impact on tax collection and the tax rate. Right, so the real total income is gonna be 300,000. Yeah. Oh, 35, and so they don't want that tax. Which is very close to last year. Yeah. Okay, you guys haven't gotten a lot of phone calls other than roads. Roads. To a free today, yeah. Yeah. All right. Oh, here we go. What? Is this the, if we increase, if we, one of my questions was, if we increase the budget by $100,000, then... Different than what we projected? Yeah, I'm just saying, because I will come up at town meeting when people start offering amendments to... Yeah. Then having a, that's one of the bullet points that I... Oh, I see what you're getting at. This is in addition to... Right, so I can't do math that quickly, but does this, Sandra, with this, is this a basis for deriving what that number would be? Yes, the comparison is with last year. So the first number, if your tax rate is 2.3931, that is the tax rate without any of the additional warned articles, and then we're... It includes the service organizations as well. No, those are warned, that's a particular article. So this is just the budget. Yeah, okay. So if there was nothing but the budget to vote on, the tax rate this year would be 47.86, compared with 47.66 last year. If all of the articles are voted in, then the tax rate would produce a tax consequence of 4909. If your house is, that's the price at $200,000. Yes, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So then... Just to give an eye, a flavor for... Right. The significance of the warned articles. Because there could be any combination of warned articles, articles can be voted up or down. Yeah, you just... Yeah. It's just trying to get an awareness that the more you vote on, the higher your taxes will be, and here's what it looks like when all of these get voted up, if they get voted up or voted on past. So you would take the amount, the quick calculation, and again, this is an estimate, Sharon. The quick calculation is to take the amount of the motion item and divide it by that grand list number. And that gives you... The grand list number being the... Well, the FY19 grand list. $2 million. Yes. And that will give you that tax rate, and then you would add it in, where I'm looking for a calculator. She's gonna figure it out for us. Yeah. So, you know, we could have done a live spreadsheet, but I think that just really puts a lot of pressure on and certainly a mistake in calculation would have made it at any point in time. No, no, no, you don't want to do that. No, we just want to have, if, for example, we were to... And I think we only need to have one number. If the overall town budget is one point, yeah, 100,000 is... So, 100,000 is a... It's a big number, but not crazy on a 1.7 million dollar budget. So, if there were a motion to increase by $100,000, and I'm saying there will be, it's just a round number, then that will increase the tax rate from 2.45, 2.45, which is what's in the total of all the warned articles. Two, or it has a, or it said another way, it has a, what is the number? It would be 2.4544, 2.4544 plus... 2.4544 plus... That's your last line, plus 0.0497. 0.0497? So... So that brings us to, I don't have a calculator. Well, so if we increase by $100,000, yeah, so what is that on a per $100,000 of excess? So then your total tax rate, let's see, I'm going to use this, it would be 2.50, wait a minute. On a time of 100,000... Can we go back to what the tax rate would be if the 100,000 was added to it? It's 2.45, 4.5. So if you take the, if you look at the tax rate that would be created by passing the budget as state, as proposed, and the warned articles as proposed, you would, your tax rate for the homestead tax rate would be 2.4544. You would add to that... 0.0497. That's the figure I'm looking for. 0.0497. And then the tax rate would be, total tax rate would be 2.5041. 2.5041, okay. Right. And if you're looking to do it on 100,000, you would just multiply it by 1,000. And then your taxes would be 2,504. But if you want to use this example, you would multiply it by 2,000 so that you could get an actual comparison. So if I'm understanding this correctly, Sandra, yeah, then an increase of $100,000 in the budget. Your tax rate would be 2.5041 instead of 2.4544. Right. On 200,000, did you... And your taxes on a $200,000 property? Go up by almost 100. It would, they would be $5,000, $5,000 and $8. $5,000 and $8. But the increase is slightly less than 100. Correct. So for $100,000, so if you increase the budget by $100,000, the impact for each $100,000 of assessed value is $49.70, $50. Right. So as a total, if you... Right, if so, the $200,000... So that's $100,000, roughly. Right, yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. So that's what, that has been really useful to know in the past. So it's roughly $50 per 100,000. Two 100s. If you increase by 100,000, if the budget increases by 100,000, then the impact to a one per $100,000 of assessed property is $50. It's $50. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So to some people on $100,000 and $50, they just, you know, it's not all that much, but to some people it is. But if we have that, then we can, I'll try to get, I can raise my hand and say, I can try to get comfortable with, as numbers are thrown around, getting comfortable with this, so that I can say that's what this would mean if it comes up. Do you know what I mean? Because people are gonna have different ideas about what they wanna propose, but this is the basis that we can do any math from there. And it would also might be helpful. They have, the lights keep flickering, don't they? Yeah, yeah. Is lights on at your house still? Yeah. Might be helpful to know, year to date, how much we have spent on sand and gravel, you're also gonna get us the figures or give me the figures which I can put on that cheat sheet that we're doing of how much over time, from November to the end of February, the road crew has done and how much time the spares or the part time people have worked. From November one. Right. And we kind of had a rough estimate of, it already cost us $22,000 or something like that. When we met the last time and people raised the issue and I brought, made people aware of how much was already spent. One thing that I'm sure you're aware of, but I just wanna bring to your attention again, the grand list changes from year to year. So these are truly estimates. They're reasonably close, but you would wanna count your, and that's a good point. That's based on last year's grand list. Okay. So the grand list won't be set again until after April 1st. So somewhere between April 1st and let's say August 1st, the listors will set the grand list. So it's an estimate and we wanna make sure they understand that. So the listors set the grand list in August. Roughly. Yeah, roughly it seems that way, yeah. Yeah, I mean, also we can go by is what we want. Absolutely. Absolutely, you know. How's we have? Yeah, absolutely. For information. Unless there is a terrible fire where suddenly everything is dropped into current use or there are no contracts, additional contracts coming up, the grand list should remain reasonably stable. Right. But you just never know. Right. Anything else anybody can think of? So we let these lovely ladies go home. Can we go to the, that one, that one was one of the things that I added to the talking points. That other talking points. That other talking points. I hope the stuff that I changed added today is there. Yeah, there was a bunch more than what I wanted today than what I was when I was there yesterday. Well, I couldn't see. Well, I can tell you why because I wasn't using suggesting. I just put my initials. Oh, so we've got your answer. Yeah, so that we can fill in the blank. Right, yeah. I think that was my big one. And, oh, and then the other one, there was a question I had that these guys will know me. Right there. Which one? Go back up. Yeah, go back up. Right there. I said a big one. I said, oh. What, so yeah, so my questions are what accounts for the reduction. Yeah, what counts for the reduction is we change policies, you remember? When we were working on the budget stuff back in the fall. Okay. We changed the policy, the insurance policy. It actually is less out of, remember we had a discussion about this? Maybe you weren't here. There was less out of pocket. There was less out of pocket unknowns for employees with this policy, but the premium, the premium is a little more, but employees are also paying 10% now instead of 5%. Who's a combination of things? So it's a bunch of things. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay. But I just wanted to get kind of a general out there, trying to get into the weeds too much with it. No, no, no. But I want to. Yeah, so you understand it. That's what happened. You want to talk about it further, we can. No, that's good to know. Okay, what's this then? Budget items. Okay. And this is again, weeds, and this is really more just for us in terms of how we think about things, but difference between things that we really can't control, like once you have an employee, you truly, we don't get to decide what the tax rate is. Right. On the other hand, we can take, we have to do the audit, but we can negotiate with the auditor, we can put it out to bid. Right, but nevertheless, we have to have the audit. We don't have to do it. Right, absolutely. Any, this was the email that I sent around everybody that we got from the local roads guy. I thought that was helpful. It kind of confirmed what we had been talking about with regard to the hard pack, and we just talked to Toby about it again tonight. So if anybody has anything else to put on there, please do. I don't know, you could cut and paste these if you wanted to, if everybody's using that one document or you can just have this as a handout, which is more about salaries. Yeah, well, we're not going to have this up on a wall anywhere at 10 p.m., so we're going to have to print it out anyways. Right, yeah. I'm just going to print them out, literally, just us. Right, I'm going to staple mine in front of my town reports so I'll have to do a split to it. And the, everybody has the job description stuff. I was unable to get Barbara's because she wasn't in today, and I think it's in her computer somewhere, so we can email those or we'll print them out. Yeah, I never thought to ask you if you have any emails, but just so people can read them before town meeting in case there's any question, I think it's helpful. I'm sure we're going to miss something that we don't see coming. Judy's going to be there. Are you going to be there? Are you going to Berlin town meeting? No, I'll be there. Berlin doesn't, right? I don't know. Berlin has a... We have an informational meeting night before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, just in case a budget item comes up that... Yeah. No, that's great. It's great. And I'm glad that we're not taking you away from here on. No, well, that's fine, I checked before I asked you because I didn't want to take you away from going to your own town if you needed to. Right, we don't want to be that employer- No. Let people go to town anyway. No, that would not look good, right? Although you added this? Okay, great. Recently reported. Yes. And we're working to evaluate, I'm going to have to take a clip out of the town report. That's why I said just everybody familiarize themselves with that section of the report. Because that's why I want to come up. Be aware of these articles that came up. Yeah. Understand that we were actually ahead of the curve in terms of addressing the potential issue. And while we were talking about it unbeknownst to us, it was brewing in the background. Right. Because the town of Calis's exposure to this potential breach, fortunately, it was minimal because they had it fixed just about the time we fully implemented. So it was going to be the thing we were behind the times. Actually. Well, the other aspect of that is we don't do direct deposit into employees' accounts for payroll purposes. And we do not withdraw from taxpayers' accounts. We do not withdraw from their tax payments. Maybe that's a good thing we're going to do. Probably we won't do that. Yeah. We recommended it. And some of the security breaches they were talking about were simply folks having their passwords taped to the front of their computers. Right. Or under the pad. Which was mentioned several times. So that does allow someone who wants to get into a computer to get in. And you know when somebody wants to get in bad enough? Just like you can lock your doors, but if somebody wants to rob you bad enough, they're going to get in by breaking the window. Well, we will be paying for our last NIMRIC module in 2020. And perhaps after that is paid for, I believe that's $1,800. We can look to going to the cloud with them. That will cost us about $720 a year. So our NIMRIC costs will essentially go down, but we'll have further security at that point. You think anybody will bring up the digitizing, the records? I mean, I don't think anybody's going to look at the budget that closely, but. Somebody might. If they do. We have. I think you know why they need to be done. Yeah, I mean, we did cover that in the report as well. Yeah, right. And I mean, we can certainly help speak to it as well. Should have a question come up. Just, this is the cost of doing business in the digital age. Yes, it really is. And it's a security issue if those cards were destroyed. This is how you would not be able to access the land records. And maybe you could send me Erica's email address if you have it tomorrow. Erica. Hi, Rella. And I'm going to say this so that Jerome knows what's going on. And maybe somehow you guys can coordinate. But Erica Heilman does rumble strip on WGDR. And she contacted Judy and she contacted me. They're looking to, she's looking to come to our town meeting and videotape it because they're doing some kind of a documentary. Did she contact you about this? Yeah. Okay, because she only briefly mentioned it as a slight possibility. Yeah, no, she contacted me. Yeah, I think it's definite. But she and I have been training phone calls. Oh, okay. So I'm going to ask, I'm going to suggest that maybe she wants to talk to you. Maybe are you going to be taping our town meeting? I expect. So anyways, I might, I don't know if I had your phone number, Jerome, but maybe it makes sense for her to coordinate with you what you're doing as well. Do you mind? Not at all. Okay. No, of course that collaboration is my thing. She's doing video, not just audio. Yeah. Yeah, she's working with her. She's a Hollywood, yeah. And they're looking, there's some kind of documentary or something there. She lives in Calis, so yeah. What's your number? It's 223-6805, but my email might be better. Okay. And you have that. Yeah, I do. Yeah, yeah, okay. Thank you. I just want to. 223-6805, yeah. So, she knows that I'm aware of it. She knows I'm trying to contact her, so we just need to talk. My sense from talking to her briefly was that maybe they'd be running around to other town meetings too. Yeah, it did not sound like that. Okay, so maybe they changed your mind. But I'll get more information. Good. Okay, I'll send you. And I think, you know, she wants to make sure they're not obtrusive and you know that kind of stuff, so. The channel three guys last year, right? They're going to be obtrusive again if they're here. Maybe they'll find another warden that's got more on it. I don't know, they like Callas. They do like Callas. They're going to ours a lot. Yeah. Which is fine. There anything else on, tell me, do you have any questions about setup and? No. Okay, are you doing the whole day yourself? I would expect. School too? From, yeah. Schooling, okay. Yeah, I would plan to do that. Okay. Sure. All right. Very good. And this person that you mentioned, she could coordinate with other Orca productions of other town meetings if she wanted to. They were covered by other people as well. Yeah, I'll let her know that, you know. We, yeah. The Orca year, we're being covered, but I just want to let her know, in case she wants to talk to you guys. Yeah. Yeah, okay. All right, great. Anything else, Katie? You got any questions about taking minutes? What, anything that would make your life easier? Nope, I'm going to be recording it. I don't know if that needs to be announced. I'll do an audio recording that I can refer back to in the afternoon. So Scott, you sure you got to do that? Yes. Well, I'm going to grab it. It's just around here somewhere. He said he'd leave it here today. Oh. I don't think you have to announce, you don't have to announce that. When Jerome's there with the camera recording, I'll run anyway. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm happy to. So I'll have the first draft that afternoon, and then I found it helpful that you let me make a few more edits before it went live. Right, but maybe it'll be faster this year because I'm a lot more familiar with it. Oh yeah, and we just have to make sure if you need something repeated or somebody's name again, just let us know. Okay. Let us know. And do we know who's taking minutes for the school? No. I have no idea. Go ahead, because Michelle probably can't take minutes. Well, she's not going to be around. Yeah, it's kind of up to them to figure it out, it's not. They asked me and I said I would ask Katie again, which I did and she still said no, she just wants to do town. And they asked me if I knew anybody else and I said no. So I really don't. Can it be someone who's not a resident? One of my girlfriends does the mitts for a school board in a ring town? Didn't they? I sent her her name. I know Lisa used to do ours. And she was, and she's from East Montpelier. Anything else? If I think of anything, we're going to get into the nitty gritty the rest of the week in terms of just putting boxes together and we'll print out the checklist at the last second so all of the... And you're not going to try to get stuff out of that? I don't think so, it sounds really... So the setup will be a little different in that because all of the voting booths are in storage in those metal containers, we're thinking of doing it the way we've done it here with a table and those divider things. I think it'll work. Yeah, I think it'll be fine. It'll be really easy to set up. But trying to get into those metal container things right now with this weather and trucks. We need a trucker at the end of the night needing to truck them out. They're awkward. And Chris Teller's going to be there. Yeah, I think it's going to be fine. I should talk about food for election markers. Yeah, usually we all print stuff. And then sometimes they even give us some leftover from the kitchen. All right. Anything else anybody has? Questions? Comments? Not for these guys. I have something else I want to mention. Okay. I didn't print the agenda. What do you understand we're doing in Germany? I want to talk about... Cliff has been going to talk about the RP thing. I want to talk about some of the other things. And my updates. So go ahead, Sharon. So... I'm thinking about how does to say this. So, one, if we're going to have more meetings on roads like we had in a select board environment a week ago, is it only a week ago? No, two weeks ago, that's why. I think we should announce that before town meeting because people have heard that we're going to do it. But then what they're hearing is that the select board didn't like the idea and it isn't going to do it. But we didn't hear that. That's what I heard. So... Because I have spoke... I talked to... Well, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I emailed with Heidi and told her exactly that and she said, thank you. So I don't know where this is coming from. So that's what I heard. And so, to get ahead of the energy, if we're going to do it, instead of saying, oh, we're going to it, town meeting when people heard three or four weeks ago, we were going to them. And then people are starting to hear that we didn't want to. Let's say, let's announce it, let's announce it, maybe even... Maybe I should do a posting on the front porch forum and pick some dates. Yep, pick some dates. And if it doesn't... Those Mondays don't work out, we can always change it. We can always change it, but getting ahead of all of that... Right, right, right. All right, so let me draft something up to post and maybe I'll run that post by you guys before I post it to make sure it sounds okay. Is that okay? I think that will help a lot. Okay, sounds good. I think that also might... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rather than saying, oh, we're going to do if we've already announced that we are being proactive. Proactive. Okay. Sounds good. Is that it? That's it? Okay. So I promise to try to get everybody out of here early. So here we go. Andy Felice, we met with Andy, the staff, Cliff and I last week. He's doing a great job. They have... I didn't bring everything tonight because I thought it might feel a little much, but they've put together this, because Cliff and I have seen this. You're the only one. I thought Rose and John would be here for this, but the staff has put together kind of this list of tasks for Andy to do and a little honey do list. Yeah, yeah, exactly, a honey do list. And then kind of a, you know, these are the things we need to do annually. Magnet's plan. Magnet's plan. So, and he's good with, I'd said we budgeted $2,500 for this coming year. If you think you want to charge us a little more for different projects, there's a, I don't think so. No, okay. Thank you, ladies. Drive care. Thanks. You're very welcome. Don't go down loose road. He's been very generous with his time and said, you know, he doesn't, he's not looking to make a lot of money. Wants to help the town. There are a few things such as the roof repair that's going to probably be more than, more than $5,000. It's not something he wants to do, but he's willing to help work on and assess RFPs. Good. Yeah, and make himself available to meet with people who wanted to look at it before they bid. Yeah. So he'll be like the sort of general contractor, yeah. So that, I just wanted to update everybody that it's actually, it's going very well. Good. Andy. Sandra has requested that she and I get a signature stamp because sometimes she had to come in one Friday when the weather was atrocious to sign a grant thing. And if there had been a signature stamp that she could have authorized Judy to stamp, she wouldn't have had to come in on the Friday. So they would like to see, Judy can do this on her own because she's elected. But because Sandra's an employee, she needs to get our permission to order a signature stamp. We would have a protocol in place where there would be two approvals. Right. So in other words, if she was going to authorize Judy to use it, it would have to be seconded by Denise. Right. But that could all be done electronically. Right, right. So we would put together some kind of a signature stamp, usage protocol, I guess. And I don't see that happening that often as I'm usually around and can stop in the office if I have to. But it would be helpful to have those signature stamps. It's not an item on the agenda. Do we need to do a... Yeah, we should full vote. But we can discuss. Let's get the policy put together. Yeah, that's where I was going to go. Just like the credit card. It's like where it lives, who has access. Okay, so I'll get Sandra. It doesn't even have to be anything real long. Sandra, to draft something up for one of the next meetings. That makes sense? Yeah. Do we have some kind of financial protocols policy? Yeah. So we'll just go in that. Yeah, or it can just be an amendment to that. Well, for now, we could just do a one-pager that gets taped to that later on. Yeah. I told you about Andy. I told you about the videotaping. You wanted to talk about the RFP thing. Yeah, I think as far as any kind of vote. Well, let me back up. Here's our purchasing policy. And we have some exceptions. As everyone's aware, if there's gonna be anything over $5,000, it has to be approved by the select board. But there are exceptions. And one of the exceptions are recurring purchases. If you have a contract with a provider and it renews every year, we don't have to vote on it. Right. However, if we're going to make a change and possibly not renew that contract or potentially break from that contract, then we would have to vote to agree, the select board would have to vote to agree to vote to initiate a new bid process. So effectively, when we are ready to issue an RFP for IT services, we are going to have to vote to issue it. So we don't have to have that vote tonight. Right. But we will have to bless it properly before we put it out. So what I want to let everyone know is I've got the first draft of that. I'm about 75% happy with where it is right now. I hope to be able to put a draft of it in front of everybody before we reconvene at our next meeting after the town meeting so that everyone will have a chance to look at it and be prepared to discuss it. And this is the draft RFP. Yes. Right. I'm prepared to discuss it at our first select board meeting after the town meeting. We might have to play a little bit with the timeline. So I put out that rough draft of a timeline. The thing I want everyone to be aware of as well, we talked about it at staff meeting is the contract we have with RV Tech automatically rolls over on May 1st unless either party states in writing 60 days in advance or we're not going to continue. So that's coming up. Well, the thing is, even if it auto renews, what happens if we want to walk away from it, it's 60 days in writing. So we keep it in place and maybe it doesn't change ultimately because they come back and responding to the RFP and say, well, we propose we move forward with the contract that we have already in place with you and we end up this writing to award them, then nothing changes really. But chances are even if they ended up getting the award, we would have some change in terms. And so there'd be a new contract drawn up and whatnot. At any rate, the only potential cost that we would assume if we were to walk away from the Evergreen contract would be if we had paid a month in advance automatically renews every year. Oh, okay. If we pay them in advance the monthly fee each month and we broke away from the contract in the middle of a month, we would forfeit that portion of the month. That's not a huge deal. And that's in the contract itself? Yeah. Okay. But it clearly has a termination outside of the auto renew cycle. Exactly. Yeah. And so we get to maintain that contract and then if set point time comes where we want to walk away from it because we're awarding to someone else or we're awarding to them and renegotiating the terms, that's all in play. And it's not for cause for any reason. No. Okay. No. Can you just say, no, we want to terminate this? Because we'd like to go out, we want to go out to bed and get some other players. We don't want to have a leader where we're not. Right. Of course not. Right. So I just want everyone to be aware of that and as far as the vote, yeah, we can table that part of it until we are ready to vote. Yes, we approve this RFP, we vote to publish it. Yeah. All right. Do they know that we're doing this? They probably, they haven't been specifically told but I'm sure that they're probably, as any of you, they watched the news. Judy. Well, they have requested to meet with us before May 1st. And I wanted to talk to the staff about that after we got through town meeting to see if they wanted to have that meeting. It wouldn't hurt. Right. No. Because there's been some issues with the support that they've provided and some now maybe really wasn't their issue but it was a member issue as we found out. Right. So, but I think just even if they are, the ones we hire again, that our conversation really needs to be had. Yeah. I mean, it never hurts to be nice. Right. And they are neighbors regardless of what happens. And we could be going out to bid again in three years and be, and. Right. Right. So, yeah. So it doesn't, I mean, I think it's good if they wanted the communication open. I think Judy may have mentioned that to the woman who contacted her as well. There's some talk about possibly being out in our field at some point. Yeah. And I mean, they're business people. They've got to expect that. Yeah. I mean, what's what happened with them? There's everybody's being courted by everybody. Right. And Cliff's research that it's fairly common practice for towns, maybe not common, but you found other examples were not the first. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But we'll have to have this conversation again because Rose and John need to hear about it. Mm-hmm. So. That should be good. All right. Anything else we want to do tonight? We have some minutes to approve. Do you want to, I think we should wait until we hear from Rose. Yeah. Cause she usually, yeah. All right. So thank you, everyone. Look forward to this town meeting. Oh, yeah, motion to adjourn. All those in favor? All right. Any opposed? Anybody want to stay? No. Here we go.