 First, we're gonna do additions or changes to the agenda. Does anybody have any? Okay, well, I have a couple. We've received from the Central Mont Regional Planning, no, from the Department of Public Safety an addendum to the Kent Hill scoping contract, which we've already signed. You'll remember that. What this does, apparently in the last one, it said that we could pay salaries, but this is an amendment that says now we can pay contractors because it's quite possible we'll want to use outside contractors. So that's all it does. It doesn't change anything else. So I want to take a motion to sign that. We may have some things on Curtis Pondam. We may have a vote on about refusing the bids. And we'll get to that when we get to Jamie's report. And in addition to executive session tomorrow night at the end of the meeting, in addition to talking about what's listed there, we're gonna talk about a personnel issue, which I'm not gonna announce. Okay, so we're also going to executive session under 313A1B. Okay. And with that, has everybody met Cory by now? So we... No, they've met Rose. I've met everybody. One minute ago. Yeah. So I'll just say hi everybody. I'm very excited to be here. If you don't know, I'm from Calis. I'm a graduate of Calis Elementary in E32. And after living other places for many years, moved back to Calis in 2019. So I'm very excited to be here contributing to the town and particularly helping with this new role, which I think I've talked to most of you about this, but probably the most frequent question is what is your new job? And there's quite a list, roads, responsibility for the... Cory, why don't you put the flow chart up? Oh, yeah. Let you do that, okay? Cory's gonna introduce himself. So this is a organizational chart that Anne put together. And basically shows that the voters select the list here is the select board of the town clerk and the select board is responsible for most of the staff paid and unpaid. And they have created this town administrator job to help with all of the paid functions. And so that includes the highway department. We are in the process of hopefully hiring a full time road foreman that will help with the daily operations. We have other paid staff that are sort of very part-time and seasonal, I believe. Barbara's position of assistant town administrator, which he also serves as the assistant town clerk. And then we have the treasurer function, which includes Barbara as the assistant treasurer. And one of the things that I need to do right off the bat is help get trained in what the treasurer functions are and then evaluate what is gonna be the new model going forward. We don't necessarily need a full time treasurer, but that's something to be determined. So, helping the select board administer the town business is really the nature of the job. And also, I've worked for a board, I've worked on boards. I take particular pride in helping the board do a good job in this decision making. So, helping with agenda planning, research, making a recommendation that's appropriate and then carrying out what they decide. So, anyway, very happy to be here and I hope to have a fruitful career. Cary's been on board for two weeks and my shoulders feel lighter already. That's been terrific having Cary. Welcome, again, welcome, welcome. Thank you. And in case you don't know, in Cary's last job, he administered a budget considerably bigger than Callas's budget. He had to work with a constituency considerably bigger than the constituency of Callas. And there's one other thing that's very good. Oh, he managed employees, a lot more employees than we have in Callas. So, I can't believe our luck in getting somebody as experienced as Cary to help us with this. Okay, has everybody had a chance to look at the, thank you, Cary. Does anybody want to ask Cary any questions? Let me allow that, okay. Can I just say one thing? I really enjoyed working with your wife for the now. So, very very much. And I really was saddened to know that she had to leave the board, but I'm sure. She was adding to it. She really appreciated that. Please send me my best regards because I truly enjoyed working with her. You haven't seen the last one. Yeah. And can I add that we had four meet and greet events through town over the last couple of weeks and they were really well. People were so receptive and interested and mostly just wanted to know where does he fit, where does town administrator fit in? And so, the purpose of the work chart and that they used just very well received. So, we want to thank you, Cary, for stopping out. Yeah, my pleasure. All right, has everybody had a chance to look at the minutes? Any changes? So, I'll take a motion to approve the minutes. So moved. All in favor? All right. Board orders. Do we have a board packet? Ask for your time to get it, sir. All right. So, I do have it. One of the things that was suggested to me right off the bat is there a different way to do board orders, the challenge being, I believe to look at all the invoices while you're trying to conduct a meeting. So, I suggested that we try a new format whereby we share with you ahead of time the summary report so you can see the vendor and the size of the invoice and dates and that sort of thing. And then if you have specific questions, I will bring the entire packet with all the invoices to the meeting and you can look at them for the meeting during whenever you would like and then ask that you take a vote. And I have reviewed these and I'm recommending that you approve them. But however it works best for you, this is the system that we use on the school board. Any discussion about that process? Would you like to try it? Anybody? I think it makes sense it was helpful for me to see the broad strokes of it ahead of time and then know if I have questions. It's always seemed awkward. We have to technically sign them during the meeting. And it's really hard to effectively read them while also being in the meeting. So I think this is a good path forward. I did ask other towns what they do and there were a lot of them who said they scan them 24, 48, 72 hours ahead of time so that everybody can see it online or that they just make sure they're ready the Thursday before and everybody tries to stop by. At a time those are kind of the two most common ways. Do they scan just this or do they scan the whole packet? They didn't clarify what that was because that was the question that I was wondering about but it was a poll I put out on a listserv so I got a bunch of different sort of answers back. And then some of them just said, yeah, we all show up half an hour before the meeting to make sure we have time to review it. So those were kind of the big three of the answers. And others said they do, this like word does it at the very end of their meeting and basically by that time, audience is left and then they just sit and do it but good golly, at 9.30 at 9.30, that makes you tired. Yeah, I'm a ranger of habit but as I said, obviously it seems more logical to do it that way. I'm just a pest into doing it the other way. And I'm happy to have you review these. Whenever it's convenient for you. So Kari, usually we have four or five of these things to sign. Right, I don't know what the story with that is. I asked Sandra and haven't heard back. I thought she said when we were reviewing payroll last week that she combines payroll board orders and once per month, is that not accurate? I don't think so. I think we get them every evening and usually there's a bunch of. Usually there's four signature pages. Yeah, and are they not in that package? No, just the one. I didn't do payroll last week since I was not in the office. Sandra and Barbara were together to do these parts. So Sandra is the one who put together your packets. I don't know. I did it the way I was taught but I don't know if he does it in a different way. So that might be something. Well, that's fine. So this is the only one we have to sign. Does anybody will have any questions about this sheet that they want to ask Kari about or anything they want to look at? Let's pass that around. Absolutely. Thank you. As you all know, Kari's got a lot to learn right now and the roads are huge and we've been talking with Toby about being assistant road commissioner for a while, interim assistant road commissioner. He would sort of change his title from highway grants administrator and he would do it under the same stipend that he's doing it currently the highway grants administrator and he would take on the job of training and helping Kari until such time as Kari's ready to let him go. And that's fine with Toby. It could be a few months, it could be a year we don't know yet. I just really appreciate that. The road and all that encompasses the road system is the most daunting part of this job and Toby is, from what I can tell, he's got the big picture on the road except for regular meeting time. Yeah. So any discussion on that? Well, I wonder if we should be compensating him when his stipend is like $25 an hour? Well, it depends on how many hours it's just a stipend. Okay. He thinks he can do it in the amount of time he's been doing it because Kari will be doing some of it too. It's not like he's gonna take on the whole job that you do. So there's a signature change that we have. I'm gonna be signing. Right here. We're signing up so I sign it too. Oh, okay, got it. Okay. So does that sound? I mean, if he's amenable with it and he continued doing the groundwork and this would still be a 20 hour? It would be whatever it is, but he's not asking for more money. He's not asking for an hourly wage. He's just asking for the stipend and he's not asking for an increase. Okay, it sounds like it's considerably, if he was doing approximately 20 hours of grant management and now that and helping Kari learn. Yeah, winter's coming and I guess there's not so much grant work right now. So he thinks he's fine. Okay. Yeah. And I'm not gonna need a tremendous amount of his time. I think an hour a week would be a lot. Then he'd be able to provide oversight down at that. Yeah, and I'll pick up some of the things he's been doing. Any further discussion? Then I take a motion to appoint Toby. So moved. Second. We ask for clarification. In the agenda, it was Assistant Road Commissioner, but I've also heard you say to not interim Assistant Road Commissioner. Yes. To appoint Toby, I should have said that. Interim Assistant Road Commissioner. Okay, thank you. Barbara. I wrote it anyway. Yeah. So the motion is to appoint Toby as Interim Assistant Road Commissioner until such time as Kari feels ready to handle everything by himself. Do we have a second? Second. Okay, I'm in favor. And it's also come to my attention that we have no, we pay about half the Woodbury Fire Department budget, including, and Scott and Charlotte are the ones who brought this to my attention, including the new station. And yet we do not go to their meetings and we have no say in their, therefore we have no say in their budget development. Oh. So I'm from the Woodbury Fire Department. I'm the president of James Daley. You do not pay half of our budget. You do not pay for the new building either. But we're paying for, okay, help me out there. You pay for our operating costs and our capital replacement fund, which goes toward large purchases, such as trucks, airpacks, any large equipment purchases, basically. And then our truck replacement fund, which is just to cover two payments that we currently have on two loans of trucks. And we're not paying for any of the new station? You are. Oh, okay. I beg your pardon, I'm misinformed. So, but- I'm misinformed, I'm sorry. What I was gonna, where I was going with this is, it seems to me we should have somebody attending your meetings and just participating and understanding what you're doing and reporting back to us. Not wrong. We have our business, our monthly business meetings on the first Tuesday of every month at six o'clock. Okay, great. And in that case, I would like to suggest John McCullough has, yes, John. Planning commission on the first Tuesday of every month. Oops. Rats. Rats. Well, I am a member of the town of Calis. I'm happy to come to a select board meeting every month or come to every select board meeting and answer questions or give you guys a report, however, if that works better for the town. We just felt that it would be good to have somebody, a taxpayer of Calis on the board, just tracking it from the point of view of Calis' interests. Well, he's, that's what he's saying. I understand, okay, I understand. Non-biased. So, I completely understand. Yeah. Talking to you. Maybe, I'll just- Okay. That sounds like a plan. I don't think you'll need to come every month, but if you just check in every once in a while. Yep. We are really great when we don't want us to pay half of your budget. That's the best thing. Yeah. In fact, you're on the agenda, so when we get there, we can talk a little more about that. Yeah, of course. Do you guys want to ask any questions at this point? Yes, or somebody else? Are the meetings generally open, like if one of us happened to be free on a first Tuesday week? Of course, they are open. They're open to the public. Where do we meet? We're very down-hauled, aren't we? Yeah. So, I'm wondering, do you send out a monthly reminder of the agenda and advance and so forth? Yes, we do. We send out our treasury report, roughly, our treasury report and agenda, roughly a week prior to the monthly business period. Okay, so would you like for him to ask- Yes, please. So, if you wouldn't add our select board to it, let me give you a 30-minute address. It's simply select board at Palace of Mind, like that. Perfect. I believe I have saved already quite communications with you, Barb. That would really help. That would be a good solution. Thank you, James. I'll just go out. Okay, I'll take a motion. We'll come back to this in a minute, but I'll take a motion to sign the Cantill scoping project at Endham. No, I'm sorry, to authorize one of us to sign it. I moved to authorize Manchester to sign it on our behalf. I'll second. All in favor? And unless we're talking about it later, we have a site visit scheduled for Wednesday morning. Is that right at 9? Yeah, that's right. 10. Is it 10? No, it's 9. So I've set aside time to attend that. And I just wanted to make sure anybody else wanted to go, so it doesn't turn into a long meeting situation as anybody else can. I was planning to attend. Do you want to go, Jamie? I could, but I don't feel. OK, do you want me to? I think you do, I'm fine. I think Toby said he'd be there, didn't he? Yeah. Yeah, I'll be there. OK. He's worried about Trace Elect Board members. OK, I'm sorry. I didn't catch what you were talking about. This is the, I spoke about this when I added it to the agenda. This is an add-in to the Kent Hills Scoping Project, which enables us to work with contractors instead of just people who sell it. OK. Can I look at it and just put the right names in here? I don't think you'll get it. It's CBPRC. Well, this is actually with the Department of Public Safety. OK. It's a contract with the Department of Public Safety to do the Kent Hills Scoping Project that we've talked about in the past and approved. And it's an add-in to enable, which will enable us to use contractors and not just salaried, as opposed to just salaried people. Thank you. OK. Public comment. Anybody wish to speak? OK. In that case, Kelly. Oh, he was getting the last bullet. Yeah, we're on. Oh, it's, you know what? The bullet didn't print out online. That's right. Oh, yes, a sad, a sad one. We're going to, Gabrielle, of course, has tendered her resignation. She did that on the same day that Carrie signed the contract. And I guess we have to officially accept Gabrielle's resignation. I don't know if we have to vote through that. So would somebody like to move to accept Gabrielle's resignation? So moved. Second. Second. All in favor. Aye. And now Gabrielle was ARPA administrator, and she was one of the liaisons to the Curtis Pond Dam. So Carrie will pick up ARPA administrator duties. And Jamie will be fine. But I think on her own, unless somebody would like to join Jamie as liaison to Curtis Pond Dam. OK. Moving on to the budget. Is the Kellogg-covered laundry representative here? OK. Do you want to come up and talk to us? Can the callus representative be born for the laundry? I brought some impact reports to hand around. There should be enough for the sidewalk and maybe a couple of extras, but also on our website. It's been a busy year at the library. I want to say that we're so grateful for the calluses support and for all the incredible patients that we have in the callus. In the last year, we had over 500 patients from calluses and more than 518 patients who borrowed more than 15,000 items from our collection. So the library is certainly popular. For those of you, I'm sure you all know, but we serve six towns, the Central Montpelier, Birmingham, the Callus, East Montpelier, Middlesex, and Worcester. We have representatives on our board from each of our towns, and Jeff is our callus representative. And we like to think of the library as being both, of course, a physical space, but also all the services that we provide both online and out in our community. So we really make an effort to come out and do programs for all of our towns, including programs that we've done here in Callus. We also make recordings of most of our programs available on our YouTube channel. We had 22 children from Callus doing our summer reading program this year, which was great to see. That's always popular. And really, so I'll put the flood aside for a second. But the biggest change that we see at the library is inflation, which I'm sure is something that you're dealing with here in Callus as well. Earlier this year, we signed a new contract with our staff. We have a union for our staff, which includes fairly significant pay increases to maintain market rate and set a big wage of $20 an hour for all of our employees, which I'm sure you know we're competing against everyone. These are professionals, many of whom have certification or even graduate degrees in librarianship who deserve to be paid for a wage, certainly for the remaining services they're providing. So that is definitely on our budget, in addition to all of the increases that we're seeing in costs of benefits and things like that. We got a 14% increase in our health insurance premiums for next year, which I'm sure is something you're hearing about. We are also trying to, we created a new strategic plan last year with a great input from all of our communities that we serve and working towards achieving those strategic planning goals, one of which that we're working on is making sure that we're communicating all the great things that are happening in our communities, increasing our outreach and building efforts and making sure that our programs and collections reflect the diversity of our communities, that's something that's really important to us as well. So we are, after not asking for an increase from Calis or any of our concerns last year, we are asking for an increase this year. We calculate our municipal contributions based on a state standard, which is a per capita contribution. Last year, we increased $18 per capita, more requesting an increase to $20 per capita. We're actually also asking for an increase in Montpelier, even though they increased last year. We're asking for a $4 per capita increase from Montpelier. That $20 per capita in Calis will compare to our $55 per capita increase in Montpelier. So we do understand that certainly Montpelier being geographically closer to the library does utilize our services more. So we request significantly more from those users. Our budgets this year is just over $1 million. It will be just over $1.1 million. Looks like projected for the next fiscal year, one of the July year. And I'm trying to see what I'm going to say. Oh, the average statewide per capita support for libraries is $136. So you're actually getting great value compared to the steady average. Oh, and I should mention, of course, the flood. So obviously, you all know the library was significantly impacted by the flooding. We had eight feet of water in the basement of the library, so basically just below the ceiling of the basement. All of our mechanical systems were in the basement, elevator, HVAC system, electrical, hot water heaters. You name it, it was there. It's a big building with complicated systems, so they're all expensive. Right now, it's looking like somewhere between $1.3 and $1.5 million worth of damage. We had a flood insurance policy that covered about a third of that, which obviously will need to revisit that limit. And then we've funded about a third of the total and we're working with FEMA to make up the remainder of that part. So none of our five requests for next year reflects any cost related to the flooding. And I think it's worth noting that we only stopped providing services for a week and then pivoted quickly to providing curbside pickup services. In the three months that our building was closed to the public, we managed to provide about 60,000 items to patrons via curbside. So that was staff hand pulling books off the shelf based on a request, bringing them outside to a table with someone's name on it. And in fact, we didn't have overhead lighting in the building for two months, so staff were using head lamps in the building to find books. I guess mention that because I think it reflects the commitment of our staff and all of us to providing services to the community. So we are now fully reopened. Our elevator is not functional yet. It looks like six months out for that, just with the supply chain and then labor availability. But we're really committed to serving the community. And again, grateful for all your support. And Jeff, do you have anything to add? I really know what to add is that Dan was appointed executive director of the library very shortly before the flood came upon us all. And he's done a remarkable job, I think, from the perspective of the board. He's been really appreciative of Dan and all the employees at the library for stepping up. He's done an enormous job with other employees at the library of fundraising. And I think one of the reasons we don't have to ask for money to help the repairs from the flood from the town surrounding is because of the work Dan and others have been doing. So I really appreciate that. And I'll add that only about half of our budget is supported by municipal revenue. So we are fundraising and passing it to our endowment for about 47% of our global budget. So your dollars are going well. Thank you for the report and for the work. It's an awesome community resource. I'm curious, having dealt with other flood-related issues, in the replacement of those mechanicals, they're likely going to have to be moved somewhere other than the basement, right, if you ever wanted anything covered in the future. But otherwise, you could put them in the basement and they just won't be covered next time. Is the library expecting to have to do some expansion to either displace things into new sections of the building? No. We are planning to move almost all the systems up from the basement. The one system that we know is staying is we're on the Montpelier Citywide District T plant, which involves a series of pipe, I don't plan to be a building expert, but a series of pipes and pumps that are located in the basement that would basically require re-plumbing the entire building to change. So those will remain in the basement, but we're looking into waterproofing that room. And then all the other systems are moving up. We're mostly utilizing some closet spaces, some attic space that we have, and trying to minimize the impact on any public spaces. So we're not expecting to have to do an expansion. And in fact, we're hoping for some silver linings out of it, including creating some small meeting room spaces, which is something that was very demanded at the library, especially with remote work, and potentially also being in state recognition in the library as we have to replace our HVAC system already. And if you've ever been on the second floor in the library in the summer, it gets up to 88 degrees in there. And with climate change the way it's looking, it's something that we need. We also serve, I think, something that maybe under-recognizes how much we serve in the house community and everyone up to your welcoming space and cooling center and the summer and heating center in the winter. So we'll allow us to better serve that. Other questions? Okay. So you're asking for an increase of just under $4,000 this year is what you're asking. Okay. Right. We'll be picking that up when we mark up a budget. We'll put that in for now. Thank you. Thanks for all you do. Thanks. Fire departments, do you want to let should we hear from Eastmont? Eastmont, can you hear first? So you sent us the fire department and the ambulance. Yep. Thanks. So this is my first year doing this. It's our first year too. It's our first year too. Yeah. So I don't know what the expectation is. But we know that we did some cost splitting in the budget so we're trying to balance out the dispatch and this program was all paid by the fire department. And the logic was if the ambulance went away, that expense would be a fire department expense exclusively. But then we thought, you don't want to go anywhere because they fire an ambulance service. So we decided to split it and equalize that, split that cost between both the fire and the ambulance budget. The other increase that we put in there was for the stipends which goes to the firefighters. It's been that amount as long as I've been a member, 9,400 or 9,300. So we raised that up to 15,000. And we try and develop a budget that comes across appealing to the towns, both East Montpellier and Calis. But a lot of our expenses are things we can't control. And I just priced out a turnout here at $3,000 for just the pants and the coat. You throw boots, helmet and all that stuff, you're closer to $5,000 for one person. And we all know fuel is getting more expensive. And so we try not to raise it up dramatically. We feel that we can cover it in other ways. Questions you might have for me? Albert, what did you say the cost of gear is? Approximately, the pants and coats are 2,000 or 3,200. You throw an helmet, boot. Face mask and all that. It gets up there close to $5,000. And that doesn't include SCBA. How many volunteers, firefighters do you have right now? Oh, that's a good question. That's a good question. 25, 23, 24, 25, 27, 12, 25. Do each of them get the $9,000 statement? No, it's done on a... Kind of an error. And yeah, it's like you have to attend 50% of trainings and drills and workloads to be eligible. And then what we do is we take the officers get a stipend as chief deputy chief. And then that comes off the top. And whatever is left, let's say six or 7,000. And we take each attendance and all up. So let's say there's 400 attendances. You take that 7,000, divide it by 400. And each attendance is worth $2,000 per sentence. So you came 10 times, you get 10 times two fifths. You came 12 against 12,000. And that's how we split it up and give it out to everyone. Also partly how we work on retention, just to give some thanks back to folks that are putting in a lot of hours, I think a lot of times we don't get paid for things that we're doing, but we're doing it for the officers above and beyond responding to fire calls and responding to EMS incidents. All right, you didn't speak much about ambulance. Did you have anything you wanted to say? I mean, I noticed you have a payroll for ambulance also. Yes, the ambulance payroll we have not raised as a fact wrap. But pardon me, I was thinking about that truthfully. And whether we go back and revisit that at this point. Because salary is always our challenge. Last year we struggled to use the entire salary line item because of empty shifts that we just couldn't find people to work. This year though, we are going to be a lot closer if not maybe going over on the salary line item. And a lot of it is even just overtime. Because we're relying on the same three or four folks to cover all the shifts. We are struggling to have people step up and to work that. And that's something that we've got to probably think about going forward in the next couple of years to how we staff that during the day, Monday through Friday. Working on it. Nighttime, we can get the coverage. Weekends, we can get the coverage. And it's during the workday because per day of model everybody has a regular day job. And then they come and help us out when you're free. Now we rely on some firefighters that have days off during the week so they can augment us on a weekday. But it's not sustainable model for us moving forward. And some of the usual I think is I don't really have the figures for what are the challenges of paying but other places pay a little bit more than we do. So we try to deny climate ladder but sometimes I think we're going to have to. Your overtime is an issue. Getting personnel is an issue that always has been. And it's nationwide. Volunteers, we struggle to get folks to come in and do stuff. We've also got a new program called VIFRS. It's a different level of EMS training. The qualified folks with a minimum of EMS training to at least drive in the ambulance. So we can have a crew member staff in the back in the ambulance with a patient. And we've got to be qualified to drive. It can also assist with things. If we need a higher level of care, advance to a paramedic level then we don't have it on the truck. A lot of factors I think to play into but it's just difficult around the state. It's difficult around the country. We have these conversations about recruitment, retention, what to pay, how to keep people active and be with us. And it is difficult, like Albert said, on a per day basis. It's always before we work 10, 12-hour days somewhere else. Is it common for departments to start working with like hybrid models where they've got like daytime shifts that are salaried positions and then other shifts that are covered by volunteer and per DM? I'm not sure about that. I think for us everybody is paid. Otherwise I don't know how we get people to come in at three o'clock in the morning for free and then get back up at five in the morning. I think across the country again I think there are conversations about how do we do these things and it's such a common problem that other hybrid things are probably in conversations. Just kind of curious. Yeah. Back in the day when we were just a fast-quad and we didn't get paid, we'd come out on a day and night and did things. We weren't transporting that sort of thing. At times, change in our call volume was increased and the acuity of the call volume was increased and necessitating us to frequently call in for advanced care. Sometimes a helicopter too. It doesn't cost practical respect. It's just the level of business that's out there. Firing and getting that stuff. Having you here remind me, you must leave a meeting coming up soon, don't you? December. December? Yeah. I've got it on my calendar journey. Oh, good. Somebody will remind us. Okay. When is it? Just so I know December when. You know, on a little bit of calendar too. Okay. I know it's in December. Okay. December 11. December 11, you think? Yeah. Okay. Other questions? All right. Thank you. And thanks for all you do. Thank you. I also would like to thank you folks for your assistance during the flights because it took one phone call for me to reach out and all of a sudden I was in the loop and Paul was brought in the loop for Woodbury and getting those regular updates and emails was very much appreciated with regards to roads that were passable but bad and not passable. It was a challenging time to go on. So we do really appreciate that. It helps us out dramatically. That was the man who largely made that happen, wasn't it? Yeah. It got wasted upon me but I did my best. It was very much appreciated. I gave it a go. Yeah. It did work. I mean, it really did work because there's often times we'd wonder if there was a road open yet or not. After a minute they would say so-and-so is passing, but it's blocked. You still can't get through. Hopefully by Tuesday it'll be all full of good gum. And then contractors blocking it and then I quit making it. So we appreciate it because we can spend many hours cruising streets trying to figure out I don't know how many times I drove up Singleton just to see. It's done. It's done. Paul went, I'm going to get to it. Talk about a crater. I didn't realize it was a full site. Let's get her to the bottom. Oh yeah, go ahead. Yeah. We did work with the community members also at the tail end. Ann was largely doing it at the beginning but at the end we started working with somebody to develop a map that was kind of a real time resource which is something that we're hoping to kind of massage into a more permanent feature. I think there's a lot of happens when you have a front porch flooring and it's a small community and people are pretty open to communicating. I've got this need, I've got that need and that's really one of the good things we've had here is that kind of communication of directions. And you know to hopefully get the town of East Montpellier maybe to get into that program also would be beneficial too. I mean, you know. Calistar licensing out it's why don't you know how that works. At the time when you brought it up you asked if it's possible to get multiple groups involved in that map system. And I said I think it's a benefit to have something like that. But it'll be if I look down the road because we're not done with floods. And construction in general I mean with the culvert replacements even if it's just for a day or a night I mean those are really important notices to get out. Was it Woodbury that was that also had somebody or Hartwick there is somebody who I think we already had one that they had. Yeah, we started to kind of mesh them together but we have similar resources to develop something like that. Could be helpful in my seat too. Yeah, yeah. I can do a lot of educations if you mind. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Do you have something to give us what you've been getting me? I think I did print off extra copies. You did email it though. Somehow I couldn't find it. Yeah. All right. So those are all of the things that I have emailed. I might have just sent it to Barb which would be on me. You didn't ask me about it. Somehow I couldn't find it. So I sent it to you and Sandra and it's in your Google folder. I think I did. I did. Sorry. You don't have to know. Yeah, I do. I don't. I'm just here. Sorry. If I could find it. If I could find it. Sorry. But Jamie didn't get one. Yeah. And then you and I have to share this one. You don't have another one of these. So I read it first of all. I realized that the budget that I sent you did have the percentages of increases and increases for each category like it normally does. So I apologize for that. But I do have that information that I can provide. Well I can quickly see it's about $4,000. Yeah, that's a total. Yeah. It's $3,496.91 for the operator. Okay. And then I see you've written a couple of articles. Yeah, so early in the year Julian sent us an email requesting to see what it would look like if we were to submit our budget to be in the town budget. I know that it was one of you who did this thing. You guys held out and I know that stretched you out. Because you guys always put it in your in the town budget. And a couple of years ago they moved it into an article which I'm not sure why. So I put together both versions of the town meeting articles and it looked like it was the same last year just with different numbers. And then the other one is the your town budget. If you chose to go that route. So, talk about which one you prefer and why. You asked about why. I'll give you what was explained to me because I was at that meeting. And it just if it was that the fire department both Calis and Woodbury are not part of Calis town government. Or an outside agency just like the library and any other group. And so those are all warned articles that are outside. That's how they explained it to me. We had to go with it because that's what they decided. To me either way it doesn't matter personally. I like it when it was in town government budget. But if it's outside the town government budget so be it. We'll just work through it. I think it just causes a certain amount of uncertainty that's what happens to you know, I know we all get stressed about the cost of things and financing but it's a really important service. For both services we're a third and half of some of the capital items. If they were to be shot down and you needed to know like right now so we're done with you guys. We wouldn't know to add that to Woodbury but we would get to town meeting. I think we're in the same boat but if the articles were to fit. And again to start we've had very high success 98, 99% positive both of you when they were so we were well supported and I hadn't heard that part of the conversation but by 27 the select board was the chair in Woodbury. Our board always has a scope for the voters which I never liked as the chair because the board has no say. Literally if you look at the select ones handbook if it's voted and it's not a specific ours it's given the fire department 100 grand you simply can write the check so my content was always it would give you some oversight and it gives us surety. And you're surety because what would you do with no service. So that's kind of we would obviously prefer to negotiate and talk directly with the view instead of putting them. There's some comfort there I think on both sides that we the services you've got a service I kind of look at it as not a caring for a needed service. It's kind of how I look at it how I look at it and what we're doing. No, the other two members never agree with me so. That's very persuasive. Scott has something to say. I really appreciate what you guys are doing but the the select board is accountable to the voters and the select board budget is accountable to the voters. The fire department is not so this is a way to put it as an article is a way of making the fire department accountable to the voters otherwise they would not be. So I strongly encourage the select board to continue with the what we've always done to have an article by article. We are perfectly fine with giving it that way. We were asked to present it this way so we present it. It's not an issue for us to submit articles every year and a representative will always be at town meeting day regardless of whether it's put in the town budget or not. Currently as the president and a resident of the town of Calis I will be fire department's liaison at town meeting day so I have no issue either way. When you all came to town meeting and really talk to us about what's driving your budget and how hard it is to find people that was so helpful. I had no idea what kinds of things that you that are your issues so I found that really really helpful and I really recommend you keep that up sometimes. We can always go to town meeting either way Yeah you've always sent somebody but I think last year, some year, we just got a lot more detail than we usually did You know what it was? It was this full day work session on a Sunday that the select board did right after you were all elected. That was the day that big in-depth conversation happened. Really helpful. Yeah but did you spoke at town meeting didn't you? Yeah I spoke at town meeting half of the time. It's been two years that they've done some of our goals. Prior to that we always did There's a contract in service because we've had quite a struggle this year with flooding again. We were well decimated. We're somewhere between $91,000 and $125,000 in the image to the station and then another seven years so in content so we still have isolation. We still have to settle the insurance because we're kind of rubbed our eyeballs like you are with FEMA I was wondering none of that is reflected in this. We don't know what we're still in that question mark what it's all going to look like when it all triggers off. We hope we have insulation pretty soon. One of the things that kind of strikes me as kind of a liability maybe increases the liability to you guys to include it in the budget if for whatever reason any of those items that get included in there stirs up enough turmoil then the entire budget would likely get voted down for the entire town which would potentially disrupt quite a bit and I don't so far in my very limited experience having them broken out not only affords the opportunity to speak to them specifically in town meeting although it would be a little inefficient it seems rare that any particular budget item is ever whole hog just kind of voted down. It's never never happened because everybody largely supports a very necessary service but also even when we've had debate during town meeting about a particular article or budget it ends up being more of a negotiation where something's being reduced or increased or relative to a particular need but it seems like I think it's a really interesting conversation I see the merits on both sides but it strikes me as a potential risk because if there's enough uproar about a budget particularly next year we're likely going to be seeing a pretty significant increase in the town budget in general um right? I don't know we're all wondering but I think we're all happy for the next summer we'll all see what sugars are and then we're going to deal with what's left trying to make a quick point I'm not agnostic about actually both sides but from my point of view consistency is really key to bringing it back into the town budget because it's a large item it'll make things look bigger and you'll have to explain that so my point is unless this board is very clear that that's the right way to go I would just probably leave it as is until you're very clear that there's a compelling reason to make a change Scott do you want to add something? I was totally mistaken this is going to pay for the part of the garage of the new firehouse and that's good news but how are you paying for it? So what are you paying for the new station right now? Denise was on our design and production planning process throughout the whole thing then we were setting out to get funding and just way too many moving parts so we kept the budget as it was $1.3 million we should be able to start construction in the spring we'd want to have a conversation probably this year about looking at how Calis might participate that was kind of the thought back when Denise but with all the flooding and our question marks we just thought maybe next year's better to have that what that might look like So Calis would vote on the bond No, what we would what was the thought process was you wouldn't open any of this debt as long as you had a contract you paid for part of the payment through this percentage of service contract if you don't have any money it's just to be part of our operating expense and again however we present that it's a topic for another day We already have a approval for a bond from the town we're simply waiting for two pieces of the bond It's been a nightmare I've been trying for a year and a half to get this building we're over budget on that so I just don't know what the numbers to run up we're in a construction loan right now we'll find out after it's built and then we'll have a real number because I gave up on the real number a year ago We do know about that We've been trying to build a dam It's been a terrible frustrating so we've got the number I've got I don't have to do some cost overruns to our voters this year hopefully we'll be able to because if I don't get the contract signed this year we won't be starting next year this is a they're paying a third this is our overall so this is my fault I guess but I'm seeing this for the first time what is this mutual aid thing and why did it go up so much like thousands of dollars mutual aid has gone up from 800 to 3000 374 I'm in charge I'm in charge so the capital fire mutual aid has been going to they were supposed to have had a grant from the state for a $2.4 million upgrade to our radio system you got it back up I don't know so mutual aid is we had a few fires in the palace this year when we call other towns they come and they don't send us any bills for the service so it's a mutual service mutual aid also owns and operates the radio infrastructure which is currently nine towers it's going to be twelve towers and there's a lot of moving parts in that in the last two and a half years we worked with the state we were supposed to get a two and a half million dollar grant to pay for a new simulcast radio system part of that grant was they were requiring a capital fund to do maintenance and replacement so another fellow I moved to every town met with every select born and we created a capital fund and I think Woodbury's contribution is they'll hold me to this $2,300 it split $2,300 and that's what so that was a separate line in the previous year I think it was $2,100 well it was $2,500 in the previous year it was in a separate line that we just combined it into the mutual aid dues because we get the bill with our mutual aid dues now so it was the same amount of money kind of just moved into a different spot and that still has moving parts because I know the state has kind of pulled that funding and I don't know where that's going so it came out of one of these items so direct yet below you see simulcast at this back $2,500 yes oh I see here because now we get the bill that comes for our mutual aid payments it includes the capital payment so it's just really just moved from one spot to another but it's a good question we've been working very hard and now they've taken our money away so we're we're in dire straits with the radio system because it's so old and we're having a lot of failures we were down to one tower during the flooding because our station was flooded we were standing on an umbrella in flood water trying to respond to calls and we couldn't hear us and it was not a good time so well speaking of that how are your trucks, I noticed that truck maintenance is going way up too we've had a few, one caught on fire this year embarrassing we saved it we've had some breakdowns I don't know why this year has been like I really want to forget this summer because as you might everything's been ruined and flooded and everything seems to be breaking and call volumes are through the ceiling we're almost 180 when our general call volume is around 115 so we're it's just been that kind of year we're going to get through and move on is what I hope there's been a significant amount more of wear and tear on all of our equipment due to the increased call volume and as you guys are all painfully aware inflation is not helpful in any of these categories it wasn't embarrassing to have to call someone to help you put on your truck and in my driveway it just never floats I looked into the truck burning away oh no take it away and then Bill Powell to this interview say that again Bill Powell was asking to join the zoo meeting oh the zoo where oh my gosh that's awesome so that's kind of our pain through the year I don't know where as far as the new fire station we can have a conversation but I think we all want to wait a little bit I just want to know what and I stated it in our email or in email chain a few times just so everybody's clear these are not finalized the budget or the articles or anything our membership does not vote to approve our budget until December we presented to them in November they have a month I don't think they're going to change what I think but it could happen it doesn't usually change from what we present to our membership but it's just not finalized and on that again our current building is also in for the buyout program I don't see how we can stay there almost over three feet of water but through and moving 20 miles an hour it is currently yellow tag it's yellow tag we didn't get a red tag so we got a yellow tag but again we've talked about the changes happening in the environment it's to think that we want to pour $200,000 worth of repairs and equipment back into this building it's why we wanted to move in the first place so we're working with FEMA on that too so that's really again I tried to do it down this road in 2011 some folks in town thought that other things would be more important and we didn't give any support that was destroyed I predicted it would happen so we need to get out of there we can't stay there it's not a wise decision to keep pouring money into the building it's going to flood again I'm sure can I ask a quick question both groups when we attended the earlier meeting several months ago they had a pretty nice breakdown of how the call dispatches were breaking down relative to what it's kind of anecdotally do you have a sense of what is driving the increase call out it's a little bit of everything there's a very high usage so we respond joyfully to them first respond for medical calls that's been going on we also had an increase in fire calls Calis has had in the last years had two very serious fires and three people badly burned and I don't pretend to know there's a lot of societal things that drive our responses unfortunately there's a great book if you ever want to read it from the 1970s calls report from engine company 82 written by Dennis Smith it's about firefighters but it's about the social problems firefighters and EMTs are constantly involved and one of his comments is I can't get anybody else to come there's a whole fire alarm box firefighters show up and solve my problem that's kind of what we're seeing there's an aging population there's an addiction problem there's a mental health problem all of these things are driving are driving this I actually work for them too and I work for Harvard Rescue and it's not limited to Calis Woodbury seeing it Harvard Rescue is seeing it it's a huge problem the legislature's kind of looking at it as a money problem and it's even way beyond a money problem it's a lot slower than that I think it's interesting to hear it's easy to kind of get wrapped up in one particular dialogue or the other but to hear that it's that's kind of like everything coming up at once Berlin is sticking up right now but it means socially our communities the same issues are occurring just in their percentage smaller but it's we're having I don't want to say it because usually we say something absolutely we've had stabbings we've had people beating each other up hurting themselves those things very serious we'll be able to motorcycle crashes people are driving like maniacs wouldn't you say or 30 under the speed limit yeah it seems to me you're seeing either very minor car crashes or super severe there's been no in between and it seems like we're having to spend a lot of extra time and energy with our members of the mental health services to make sure our members are okay because of the things they're seeing this stuff takes a toll on the folks and it's important that you don't lose your trained capable folks because of a call we do spend a lot of time on that too we work very well together in the CMS and fire field we're training a lot together you're seeing very unified front it's taking all of us very lucky and grateful it is really a little bit of everything that's just going up which I can put my finger on exactly some falls on a wet porch floor to get drug overdoses and accidents just cracked up a little bit and we aren't a lot busier we're at 625 625 685 685 we're having a weekend where we're going on seven and eight calls between Saturday and Sunday because we're out pretty much all day so there goes your weekend interesting to include another day we had a call and somebody drove up to my station and I was trying to get the truck out and there was a person dying in their vehicle so I'm having to split my crew well I'm trying to get this guy breathing as they go to the first call I'll take care of this call and get another end but this was Friday night it was a very serious radio communication issue yes we did due to our radio system needs to be replaced well thank you and thank you for your Friday night guys I think I've written to you I think you did a phenomenal job with the flight it was very good keeping well thank you to all of you too I mean the number of times I've seen you in your personal vehicle James hey nobody one love at a time because I live in Calis I respond directly from my house we have two to do with that ease my pillow your hand and folks out to go make sure Hillside's not going to fall off or finding some path to a field or whatever very well thank you thank you you'll let us know about seeing us again or what you plan to do yeah it'd be good to stay in touch a little more maybe just a report every once in a while yeah I can come once a month whatever works you guys I'll make sure that our report gets sent out every month when we send it to our mother thank you thank you as Woodbury said this is an unapproved budget we follow the same timeline in December the board approves it in November membership approves it in December and we present it to both select boards a couple weeks later thank you thank you thank you Jim hello sorry sorry did we talk to Toby about coming he's not here he got the agenda we spoke this morning he planned to be here okay maybe he'll show up Jim's got some things to say okay I sent you all yes the latest and best of the amendments to the zoning regulations it's really called land use and development regulations but anyway it's a file that's labeled 11-7 because that was the planning commission had their final vote and we passed it on to you and all of the necessary reports and it is now your purview to call the public hearing for the second legislative hearing of this of these first regulations but first we have to accept it so does anybody have any unless you want to talk about it does anybody have any questions would you all have a chance to look at it and accept it I feel like you're talking about it a lot I feel like you're talking about it a lot I feel like you better accept it there are things that are going to be put on the next to-do list so we have the planning commission to do lists for the next revision well plus a couple of us went to the last meeting and thank you for responding to our concerns so appreciate that I didn't know I did send a the horse in the mouth yes you did but anyway I have to share with Jan some feedback we got from the board of civil authority a little earlier this evening it was at the summer meeting that when we were looking to set the election back on August the 1st that they asked for a more clarified simpler version of an explanation of what this was all about they just really gave kudos for the work you did on that they said that was effective with Charlotte thank you Charlotte for the work that you did on that and we just really wanted to acknowledge you thank you so much for that that was really important alright in that case can I have a motion to accept the latest version of the zoning regulations well come on I don't want to move to accept now second we have a motion and a second to accept the zoning regulations all in favor aye thank you Jan and now we need to set our public hearing and of course we'll put it on the warning for town meeting so I'm not sure we need to gather some documents well you've sent us all the documents haven't you I've sent the documents can you tell me what your date is that you want to hold the hearing we count back 15 days so that's when the warning for the hearing has to be issued I can just send you what we have here it's exactly the same and then you could attend the meeting and be ready to field questions yes so would you guys like to choose a meeting now to hold the public hearing I'm thinking maybe in January because we're going to be working on the budget for the next couple of meetings and I don't know how busy that's going to make us we probably could do it maybe in early December do you have any rules about how soon before or too long before the vote yes I don't have to check but you've got a lot of time that you could do it but if you want this on the vote for March you have to be done whenever it has to go on to the warning that has to be printed so therefore your hearing is going to be done and then we're going to come back from that so if you hold something in early January as long as there's that time I'm assuming you're going to take it to the public yes we will take it to the public okay here it is so adoption we can you read this faster than I can I'm not familiar with this I think oh here it is legislative body not less than 15 nor more than 120 days following submissions so we've got 120 days to hold our hearing um and then then we want it so we've got plenty of time yeah my concern was that I don't know what I don't have the key deadlines for the town meeting right here but it certainly is end of January I mean that's when the petitions have to be and so you can't print it so we've got until the end of January it's pulling it up right now we could hold it in early January although I think we could probably hold it in December too if you wanted to do it that way when will you have a clearer mind no I just don't it's just that we've never been through the budget process before we're gonna start markup at the next meeting and then we'll probably continue markup in our December meeting but I think we could probably hold when when's our December meeting Christmas day not that one I would suggest either December 11th or January 8th would work January 22nd is the morning and so the hearing we would we would have a motion to send it to town vote I'm assuming other than that I think the last time we were talking about this the concern about having it too close to a deadline would be if there's any pushback or modification there wouldn't be any time for doing doing that so that I guess would we've already now circled back on it again so it seems unlikely that there would be anything substantive there but I'd get nervous I guess about doing it in the beginning of January and then have some pivot happen and then not have time to I hear you although I don't remember how many people really came to the planning commission hearing it was only like 10 or 15 and it was you two were there and then the rest were all part of conservation and lakes and streams and so they're they're fully built into this so I'm not too worried about that unless somebody all of a sudden reads a report and realizes there's certain things going on I don't know I doubt it my reality is people aren't reading this anyway shall we aim for December 11th then? I think we could probably do it because I think as you say we could do it at 6 we could even do it at 5 if you want let's see by then we'll have a pretty good idea of how much time we have to spend on the budget and we can just plan to meet earlier for the hearing if we need to so if you're going to have December 11th we have to have it in the paper by something like November right after Thanksgiving I counter that something like that yeah okay so you have a written warning have you so we need to do that right but I can ship that to the TV and then she can get it out Barbara then language is pretty much the same except it would change the date and I would need to know the time and I'm assuming it would be here would it be part of our regular meeting or would it start it well I was thinking after our next meeting which is what just after Thanksgiving November 27th we'll have a better sense of how much more time we're going to need for the budget that is not enough time though is it we have to I think it's about let's just do it in January and then yeah maybe that's safer then given that we can't we don't know do we know what we're doing for a second December meeting since it's on Christmas day it would be Christmas day would be our regular meeting I'm assuming we're not going to meet do we we have not made a plan for that no I'm hoping we can skip it I'm by then if we don't we may plan another meeting you want to do it January I guess we're better than given that so we'll end for January 8th I think it would be better to be comfortable and be sure okay and we'll know after the next meeting it's January 8th okay thank you thank you Toby you're our new assistant road commissioner by the way congratulations oh what was that I'm not sure which answer I have so everybody seems to budget worksheet so we're already the chair is I'm sorry why does this always happen to me do you have an extra one I don't seem to have of Sandra's copy of Toby's it doesn't matter I know I printed it out I seem to have three of the general and none of the highway can I look at yours Jordan so the first first section is ranging benefits and under highway wages it it proposes $25.40 a week for 52 weeks for false employees so and it also calculates overtime for those four people so essentially it was 210 in 24 it's now 238 most of that is driven by the fact that they're now getting $25 an hour that's where the increase came from the 800 essentially the 819 hours is a historical track of overtime over the years roughly 200 per person for four or less than 150 so that's where that number comes from the temporary that's part time employees that would be either or add that only really covers one position for a part timer so until we get four full times some of that full time will cover a part timer that's not on that line ever a road formula which we're all hoping for starting at $27 that 56 does not include any overtime for that position so if you want to adjust that to show any overtime that might show up and again with a five person crew the formula is actually going to be out plowing and so going to run up some overtime you can figure out essentially 100 hours or 150 hours to add into that particular line so how much would that be because I think probably we are going to do that I'm not sure that hasn't been calculated so it's 27 times probably 100 hours at least overtime the time and a half of 27 so it's going to be another thousands of dollars the grand administrator if I continue to pursue my career here I'll stay flat mind I will not ask for a raise no but we're changing your title so you're now assistant road commissioner right for how long that lasts until we go back to being grand administrator so that $16,000 is a good number everything after that is all going to be based on how many employees we have what their benefits are did they get a family plan or not a family plan so that's sort of that's all Sandra's numbers so all of the next items in wage and salary are wage and benefits the only thing I noticed was there's a benefits contingency number of 15,000 and that's probably she hasn't figured out what the benefits package for everybody combined is going to be and if you notice the total wage and benefits the increase is $15,000 so literally the only change that we're really looking at all the rest of the stuff is all pretty much Toby it looks like that's in 24 as well though that shows up for the first time there oh yeah okay so that's again that's a level funding kind of thing the increase is really the raise to $25 an hour for the wage the road crew guys we have questions on all those first items again that's all benefits and health insurance e-mer's uniforms the one thing that the MRGP fees that show up there there's also a permit fee so essentially there's like a $600 fee to fill out the application for the permit plus the $1,500 so there's another $600 that may show up there I think it's $640 if the fee permit why is this under the wage of the benefits there's no idea, I'm just telling you that Sandra threw it in that line item so essentially it's but just so you're aware we can either include that or not include that I don't think it's critical because $640 can just roll into something else so then the next section is road maintenance and the second item is roadside model so essentially we had $5,000 that does not cover rental of a roadside model for four weeks in the spring and four weeks in the fall so the number there is $28,000 that's a big change that's the big hit so Dana did most of the mowing this fall for three weeks we probably got I would say 60% of the roads mowed so I think it definitely needs a four week and if you need it twice a year it's going to be the $28,000 have we done it is that locked in well the price is $3,500 now I don't know what next spring the rental would be per week we've reserved it for next spring have we not yet we can lock in that again the other option is okay the next step is if we purchased and used boomer for $70,000 $80,000 and paid it off in three or four years it would be $28,000 a year but it would only be four years and at the end of four years that line item would go away so again so it's up to you guys to look at that whether you include this this is probably what you need for next year unless you decide you do decide to then purchase this is already in your budget to take that first payment I've got a lot more question I think existentially we have a lot of questions as a town to ask about our equipment but I think it's prudent to probably put it in there this is $28,000 in this thing you can either say it's for rental or it's for purchase so that way it's somewhere near the close number in order to start paying for you should purchase one as opposed to renting it for twice a year the other thing that that gives you is if you rent it for four weeks and three weeks it's pouring rain and it's miserable and you're not really getting an efficient use of machinery you're locked into that time frame if you own it you have the flexibility to spread it out over a longer period of time so the next item that went up is gravel so the reason I originally put an additional $10,000 in there is gravel has gone from $1250 a cubic yard to $17 a cubic yard so material costs have gone up but as I thought more about it and this is something we can you guys can decide because of the July flood a lot of roads that we might have put gravel on have already been repaired under FEMA and so the amount of gravel roads that need to be repaired or improved next year will be a lot less than we normally looked at so I'm thinking that that might actually be better left as a flat line and only $180,000 and it might even be less than that I mean we have had miles of roads that have been rebuilt and resurfaced and put back into good shape I don't have a total number of how many miles of road that we actually repaired but it's probably in four or five miles and that's easily what we would normally do about a year with gravel and repairing roads and washouts and that kind of stuff so I would say let's put that back to $80,000 it's tracked pretty much around that number last year's actual $490,000 $2,000 year to year but I think because of the FEMA issue because of the lie storms that we probably don't have to raise that even though the price of gravel has gone up I think we'll use less improved a lot of gravel we use is in the spring and mud season a lot of roads we've repaired so that mud season is not as difficult a project for us to put gravel in the spring can I ask a quick question about the gravel do you have a sense on whether or not we're potentially missing out on any negotiating or leverage in negotiating for bulk purchase of gravel during particular times of year is there an opportunity for us to save money there to figure out a way to store it so so we do do different pits so it's not always one pit it's okay we have 10,000 keep it there that's what we're going to do part of it is stockpiling too because if we don't have room for stockpiling it doesn't make sense to buy a whole lot of it and the pits make it as they need it for us working you know in the summer so I'm not really sure that's an advantage we do have a stockpile that we put up in the fall for month season in the spring so that we have an onsite pile but it's nowhere near what we would have stockpile for like our sand for the winter so I don't think we can actually purchase we might be able to purchase a lot but I'm not sure the pits want to deal with that if we're not taking all at once or in a period of time when they're repricing so we haven't done that and we can certainly look into it if you want to pursue that I think long term it you know I look at it kind of like the roads is like a capital plan almost you know and the long term planning what types of resources or space or capacity should we be considering you know I don't think it's likely that our need for materials is going to go down and the you know the people who are going to be the well best positioned to control their costs are the ones who are going to be able to buy the most and store the most when before it's needed otherwise you've got demand issues and the pits can only crush we saw that during the July floods that demand was everybody wanted everything and also the price went up and nobody had anything and we went where we had to go and we did a lot of driving to get materials to bring it back to town I can investigate whether or not any of the pits will actually consider you know a bulk purchase that we guarantee we're going to buy this many yards of gravel that storage capacity we do for the sand because we need it on site every year for winter we can't be driving to pick it up so that's not going to be a factor that's every year we build a sand pile up and that's sitting there ready for use all winter long and it's usually done in the spring before July 1st but gravel that's a hard it's a hard number to remember and again there's different types of gravel so there's base gravel there's top gravel so again you'd have three or four different piles and again the capacity on the site is probably not easily taken care of the biggest issue we're going to deal with coming up is trucking because the sand pile used to be a two minute drive behind the pit behind to the pit behind us and back now we're going to have to go somewhere to find sand all that and we can get a chance to tell you today they learned that Marshfield is having unwashed sand trucked to them and it's a better price than I think what we were paying for the washed stuff we currently get and have to mix rocks in and that's okay except that unwashed sand has a lot of clay and the materials in it that when you put it down on the road all winter ends up giving you a worse month because essentially you're adding all that sand to the red surface all winter long and in the spring if it's all clay and has other stuff in it it becomes worse for months so it's one of those things is is it better to pay a little bit more for washed sand and have a better month season in the spring again it's not all about price it's about product and I haven't talked to the guys yet about where we're going to get replacement sand from this year in the spring about who's got it and what's the price and how much trucking do we need to do that the other thing is so for the pit right behind the garage we use our own trucks because it's just there and back there and back and it's up the hill and dump into a big pile but if we go offsite to a larger pit somewhere else miles away it might make sense to hire somebody with a really big truck and have fewer loads and pay less money the big problem is how do they dump into our pile they might have to dump in the yard and we would have to move it into our pile so again trying to re-figure out how that works because our 10 wheelers can back up there and dump but a big long tractor trailer full of sand can't do that so it's a question of figuring out how we do that how we make that work and it makes sense to have just one truck the capacity of our simple trucks so we pay less for trucking but again it's how do we manage it when it gets to the yard so that and the wear and tear on the trucks you know I think that it's a lot to be asking and expensive both in that the labor that we have plus the wear and tear on the trucks to be sending our trucks to go out it's a lot of manpower and equipment that's on the road again that's the reality I'm lucky for all these years I have this handkerchief right behind us and now it's no longer real so I would say we need gravel at 80 sand what's 35 I'd say at least 40 because who knows where that number is going to be when we actually go by sand next year everything else so we get down to road salt I think road salt is going to go up so I did a percentage and just the cost of materials chloride again probably is going to go up again a small increase there we just have to ask what's magic salt so essentially when we do regular salt at a certain temperature it doesn't work anymore so when it's really really cold we add this chemical to the salt that we go spread and it actually works below zero when we do the county road it actually works instead of just dropping it there nothing's happening so it's an additive to the salt trucks when the temperature is that deep so again the bottom line is there's an increase of 40,000 so we can take 10 off of that so it's only 30,000 we do the gravel and then it's the question about 28,000 for the the mowing issue it's only really increased by the mowing factor any questions on anything else in there the road signs I guess are there a big chunk of signs that need replacing we could probably cut that in half if you want essentially it's mostly road signs and at some point a lot of the speed limit signs are retro reflected need to be replaced because they're just old and not doing their thing so there's not a lot of we don't spend a lot of time going out there and investigating which ones need to be replaced so the actual from the year before is all radar signs that's why so if you want to drop that back to 3,000 that's certainly probably reasonable for replacing individual street signs and then touching a few so you might be able to make a savings there and now there was some dialogue around the speed limit signs relative to well for one we're not changing the speed limits in county at the moment and there's still some outstanding traffic studies to be done right and there was a little bit of dialogue on the roads the speed limit signs is not being in compliance but I can see for at least a year rolling it back a little bit so the signs are fine as long as you can prove they have no reflectivity so there's actually a protest that you can do on an existing sign I'm not sure exactly how that works whether it's with a flash light in a meter or something so essentially there are probably a lot of signs that have been up 15 years kind of destiny and not really meeting the standard so no one calls this into account for it well actually we said they don't like if they stop people for speeding if the signs aren't at the high end so the real issue is the sign has to so on a regular road the sign has to be five feet above the edge of the travel road and if it's less than that then it's not liable it's not reasonable if it's in a village setting it has to be seven feet and that was actually one of the issues in Maple Corner somebody came down there and then challenged it because he was from the agency of transportation and understood the rule and he knew the sign was not valid so essentially he got thrown out so the one thing you would have to do the real reality is the five feet seven feet more than anything then the reflectivity so essentially only for the road not for the speed limit we did get something from the Department of Public Safety at one point saying a bunch of our signs weren't high enough so again it's the five foot issue so essentially from the edge of the travel portion so if it slopes down it's at the edge and you go straight across and that sign has to be above five feet in order to be legal and I'm sure there's plenty of signs around town but it's not fine enough to do that but I think there's 300 plus signs well I'm looking at the financial report for September through October and I notice we've already spent $4,000 on road signs in this fiscal year and a lot of those then replacement of road signs of road signs it is important to know that road signs will get stolen with enough money they disappeared they greased the poles like you do for squirrels they've done everything they just people so they my father used to do that to keep this so they'd slide up on the brick beater they've tracked different things to deter people and they would just still cut the whole pole off and take the sign like random route it's a new sign it's not taking the sign not in my basement you know so that's going to cause a lot of trouble but we have had and that was in a maple corner had started with they wanted you know like pedestrians walking and those sorts of signs they know they've had multiple requests for yield signs at various kind of why's they come out on to the road in the East certainly they've been asking for signs about pedestrians so I'm just doing a regular sign that says street sign Moscow Woods is like $150 well this was apropos of you saying we could reduce this to $3,000 and I'm just noticing that we've already spent $4,000 this year and we're only a quarter of a way through the year hopefully the bandits have gotten all the signs they want you're sticking with your $3,000 I'm sitting in the garage right now that haven't been put up because I think they just feel so they're going to put them up the next day I'm not sure there's any way to solve that problem that's just the well again so each line item you can say we're high or low or whatever but it's at the end of the year if you're $20,000 under $40,000 over that's the only thing there's going to be a lot of other line items that we crystal ball there okay so that takes care of maintenance maintenance and fuel so we normally carry and again before we used to itemize repairs for individual vehicles we used to just keep it all at once so $60,000 it sort of covers all of the non itemized vehicles and then based on what we've done in the past on the ones that we're actually tracking so essentially the Volvo excavator $4,000 the Western Star dump is gone so there's nothing there $17,000 $2,000 from what we have in history $19,000 I put $2,000 in there because it's getting old in the international we've had lots of repairs on that so essentially if you look at so the other bottom line item is gas, oil, and diesel so essentially since we bought a diesel pickup truck there will not be all that gasoline going into the pickup truck so I reduced that by $5,000 and if you look at that we're level funded that line that group of line items question that desk control sprayer tank is that the chlorinator? right and then like right now they don't have a means to use it because they were down because they had rigged a dump truck so we talked about that and probably what we'll do is buy a new trailer in the future and put it on a trailer that's what the discussion is right now rather than putting in a big 10 wheeler okay and then they could just haul the trailer right they could just haul the trailer so it used to go into the 6 wheeler so it was a tank on a skid with a motor and stuff the problem with that is as you drive it down the road you're putting salt all over the truck and it rusts away and so it deteriorates really quickly so putting it on a trailer that might be a little moan is a better solution and from what I understand talking to the road crew the new pickup can actually pull that trailer we used to pull it with a one ton truck because the pickup did not have the capacity before now it does so essentially we have two options to connect that trailer so essentially purchasing the trailer next spring to start doing a core item we'll sort of be in the product so is the trailer in here? no it's not it's not in there so essentially we'll figure out what we have I don't know what the aluminum trailer will cost I haven't priced it out yet but when we look at a capital plan we can maybe throw it into a capital plan that may or may not show up town garage the next section essentially level funding everything in there there's nothing really that's going to change insurance again I don't know if VLCT is changing the rates for all of this stuff that's up to Sandra to let you know if there's anything new because she went through a new evaluation of buildings and materials and all that kind of stuff the one thing that's not included in here is the VLCT passive grant match so I've looked at that we can actually get a grant to put a fire alarm dial out system in the town office and I'm trying to figure out whether we can get 100% grant on that or what the number is so I'm putting that together depending on how much we pay VLCT for our insurance is how much the total balance of the grant availability is so right now I think it's up to about 2,500 that we would get in the grant and that alarm system is like 4,000 plus but if it turns out we pay more we might get 100% of the grant and have it all paid for so that's on the table but I don't have the details on that so I'm not putting anything in there is Sandra aware of that is Sandra aware of that so she'll catch it when we think about it so I reached out to her to find out what it is exactly that we pay because the grant says if you pay 70,000 you get 2,500 limit if you pay 100,000 it's 3,500 I don't have that number yet so we can throw that in and so it would be the differential between what the grant would be and what the town would have to pay in order to go in there Toby, is it a fire alarm system or a security system? just fire alarm everything's in the vault so if you get in the vault good luck there's nothing else worth stealing there except for all the computers Mountain View is there this afternoon take a look so at the town office there is no dial out alarm there's only smoke detectors at the town office when no one's there nobody knows it until it burns to the ground that's the point of putting a fire alarm dial out system in there this one, this million dollar building has a dial out so that's insurance, really no change so now we do the grants which of course I know rule something about so the can't tell French mattress so that's a project that costs $151,000 and if we hire an outside contractor we have to pay 20% so that would be the $30,000 if you hire an outside contractor the issue is sometimes the road crew can do that project and if the road crew does that project then there's no out of pocket cost so the question is I haven't quite decided whether or not so here's the theory if the road crew does the work and it's what they can do it takes them off regular maintenance for 2, 3, 4 weeks if you hire a contractor they're still doing work while the contractor is doing that but you pay the 30% you pay the 20% out of pocket instead of the match because of the July flood some roads have been repaired so there's a lot of maintenance that's been moved ahead so maybe next year the road maintenance can forward a 2 or 3 week distraction by the road crew to do this kind of work I really haven't quite figured that out yet so I've put that number in there as a placeholder for you guys to take a look at we could eliminate that and decide okay the road crew is going to do that because we're not paying a contractor that $30,000 we're just putting it into our budget at regular road work question is it possible to contract out just very specific I think the one piece of that project that the guys were most nervous about was the large stone meeting up their trucks yeah no you can do that but again so now you're paying a contractor so you've got to put some money into your budget if it's not in your highway yeah I guess I'd posit a couple of things in there I think the point well taken that a lot of roads got a lot of attention because there was wash out and we may not need to put forth as much effort in maintaining the roads and could maybe allocate some of that toward that but we have a lot of mileage of roads and those areas of repair were acutely focused in particular areas so I did as part of the FEMA documentation we had to actually track how many feet of repairs we did on each road so I haven't quite done a summation of that but we might be able to say nine and a half miles that we have brought up to snuff and that might be the total that we would do in a regular maintenance season so essentially until we'd sort of determine what that has already improved for us $1.5 million so I would sort of put this up in the air I can give you a report on what's there and again maybe a quick trip around town to find places where we think we need to do work and give you an update on saying this is what we see it's the maintenance schedule for next year you can make that decision whether to include this 30,000 or not 30,000 so leave that sort of as a pending contract of project just because that's the way you should look at it at worst case scenario yeah I think that's appropriate so the scoping study that's the study for this culvert over here we already engaged that that's an rant FY 25 $11,320 is what they will bill us for that as they complete it into FY 25 FY 24 so essentially that's a fixed number the other thing is the $10,000 is our 10% share of the east calis bridge temporary repair I've been chasing the the engineer over there to essentially help me put that into a big package so we can put it out in the spring and that's going to be a contractor issue the road crew doesn't do that kind of work so it's going to be a contractor so 10% of the $100,000 grant is going to be cost so you got a total increase of $21,000 and again that's all dependent on whether or not you decide that road crew can do that French mattress you're saying French mattress but you've got it on Bliss Road I'm confused no I updated that in a long place oh I'm looking at the wrong version it's a work in progress I found a couple of errors that Sager and I have missed the latest version is where we are so that takes care of highway grants capital so wood chipper principle and interest we still owe that $20,000, $23,000 Western Star that's the new truck that's going to be dependent for F-25 so and then the highway capital equipment fund I threw $50,000 in there so essentially we're still raising $100,000 for capital purchasing so we don't have a debt to pay in that year but we want to keep averaging $100,000 to $100,000 plus to maintain the capital plan in the future there'll be a greater there'll be another truck that we're about to order so essentially when we look at the capital plan you'll see that we grow from $100,000 a year to almost $200,000 a year of liability each year and we should be sort of growing that number so we don't want to go behind but you might even want to go $60,000 and get to $100,000 or whatever that number is something that you want to maintain and every year depending on what we owe the payments every year you may want to add $25,000 each year as you're growing to get to that number of $200,000 to maintain the capital plan over time so that gets us to a bottom line of $1,057,000 that's an increase of $74,000 which is an 8% increase from last year's budget so with a couple of changes in there it might be a little bit less it doesn't get down to maybe 7% increase over time a lot of that is salary and mowing and increases in materials so it's not a really big leap because we're doing anything out of the ordinary so if we did decide to go ahead and purchase the mower that could be done this winter if it's still available we could move the 28 to there we're going to have a discussion about that next week for our next meeting and I can check on that to see if it's the used one just so updates on what's going on we're meeting on Wednesday with a salesman from Charlie Boyce to inspect the new truck that we're going to purchase so hopefully get a contract in hand with price on that so we'll know what we're going to add and trade in on the 2014 the new western start 2023 had an oil consumption problem and it's now up in Charlie Boyce it's under warranty they think it might be a rain problem so essentially it's been burning oil because it's something wrong with the motor but it will be fixed but right now it's out of service so for the first storm of the year we had a hose break on the one time so that was sort of this half way through and then we had a freeze issue and so essentially they struggled with just two or three trucks so again having a quick look at work is the other sentence that's an important thing to spend money on and keep the other thing I noticed in looking at pricing for the new truck is so the extended warranty for seven years used to be in $5,000 or $6,000 it's now over $17,000 for the same price and so I'm reconsidering whether or not we buy the extended one or two or just put some money inside every year in case we do have a problem so essentially create a contingency fund each year that grows so that if there is a $15,000 repair we're not paying it up front and never getting anything out of it because essentially I'm not sure that we've had the luck of having the extended warranty actually work for us we had it not work for us once where disaster happened 30 days after the extended warranty acquired it cost us $15,000 so I'm looking at that and trying to evaluate what our history is of repairs and whether or not we should not do that up front but put money aside so essentially create an extended warranty line item and put money in there every year so that essentially that would help us cover those issues going forward still if you look at our history trucks that are more than seven years old start to fall apart really fast and there's a lot of repairs and stuff so we still should target that seven year not necessarily with the insurance policy so I'll let you know I'm going to add that I think coding expenses can be a really powerful tool and I wonder as we start adding different pieces of equipment and managing kind of different categories of equipment it makes let me get there Toby that's what I'm trying to get at here there's two things that I think that I'd really like to see and I've talked a little bit about this with Kari it's getting a little bit more transparency like where these costs are coming from and I think you're on a great track there to get for each of the different categories of truck what our average expenses are so that we're starting to build a capital fund relative to that categorization of truck what does it look like at the six wheelers what does it look like at the one time level what does it look like at the ten wheeler level and then you've got excavators and mowing equipment and that sort of thing that will have a different quantifiable operating cost and frankly to take it a step further it'd be nice to know what that is relative to the hours used not necessarily probably at the trucks but definitely at the equipment level you know excavators graders and mowers so there are folders that Alphie used to do so when he would do a service but it never got into the accounting side so essentially when these bills come in they just need to be coded for essentially there's a code for each vehicle they just need to be coded in order for us to track that kind of stuff and sometimes the guys do in-house service that doesn't get recorded and that's going to be the hard part when they fix something or whatever and again so so that brings me to the second point which is I think we need to be looking a lot closer particularly with the increase in labor costs and taking a better look at like what our cost of doing any particular work is relative to our labor costs, equipment costs etc. and comparing that to other ways the reality is that we're going to have a finite number of hours that these guys can work to do certain projects and I think it seems to be a little bit of a blind spot on how many hours we actually have to allocate. The quickest way to deal with that is to create a little pad that every time somebody does in-house repairs all of this, spent this spent two hours and then essentially that piece of paper can then go to whoever is going to do the accounting but that requires them to actually participate and record that stuff otherwise they just go in the shop and they do the work and nobody knows it happened and we don't know what the overhead and the repair costs are for a particular piece of equipment I think it would be willing to just have to create a form that's easy for them to do because it goes to the cost too of having equipment that's not in great shape in the amount of time and money and labor and hours they spend fixing it I mean half of the other day it was a Thursday they're up to like six between the hoses and having booties coming out so the unfortunate thing is they sent the one time down to Fairfield in New Hampshire and they were supposed to check everything out and it blew a hose the first time it went out after that so what are you getting for your money when you go do that I mean again some of those things are not things that you can see and they're going to happen and that's what happens we don't have a full time mechanic in there that's running under the trucks every day checking everything and doing inventory as they go out they check the oil and make sure everything's working then they go out and when it breaks they fix it in the field and bring it back and do the rest of the repair we just don't have some town highway departments have a full time mechanic and all he does is go over trucks all day long and take care of that we just don't have that resource so essentially we're fighting the problems when they happen not before they happen and most guys take pride in their trucks and they walk around and check everything and sometimes things just happen and there's not a lot that you can see that happen but if we if we do a little more tracking and make sure whenever the guys do a repair they code it and we get some kind of record that will give you a better sense of where we're at instead of just $60,000 for repair that time versus money it'll just show you what piece of equipment is costing you more money than another and it probably will tell you if it's seven years old get rid of it because it's going to start costing you more money and the biggest cost is not being out doing work and it's no start so instead of five trucks you have four and the guys are working harder and it's just not doing what we want to do I mean that was the point of having the spare originally it was if one truck was down we had another truck that was sitting the way down now essentially all five trucks are out there's no spare so if something breaks we have to reorient it the forward since now that I was Thanks Toby Yeah I did post the job descriptions for the part time temporary and in the form of the both mobile loads and the job and the lot job today so that's they're out here I'm not sure how similar here I am Yeah, okay, well thanks, yeah, any questions for Toby Thank you post anything through indeed for those positions Indeed it starts to cost you money These other ones are free and they're probably more local and we're going to find a local guy I don't want to know, we did have one guy come from Pennsylvania who's talking about true now so and I'm not sure where he got his I don't know that in the professional world we've for our labor pool we've had a lot of success with indeed and that the quality of candidate is higher it seems to be a place that people are going and looking for jobs as much as they are posting them and it absolutely comes with a cost but it's not outrageous from my perspective and it also has resulted in much better pools of candidates I would take a look at it, it's now completely shifted the way we're posting jobs I mean I would do the form and job but I would do the part time part time flow guy Yeah, well if you're paying for access you can go looking for people and reach out to them so without having to post for the part time you can still go looking for a part time One thing I learned from indeed is that you have to be careful what you're looking for and what you tell them what you want to see from them and what level of resume you want to see and that kind of stuff because once you ask for more they ask for more money and they send you something and they send you a bill so it may not be the person they're falling to think about and that's part of the problem indeed is that you get a lot of stuff that's not useful but you're paying for it but so sign up and see what the parameters are and just kind of limit the first scope and see what happens Donna complained about it she tried to use it when she was doing Treasurer and she said people just sort of hit buttons and then you get all these resumes that you have to sift through that they shouldn't even be falling You have to be very specific with indeed what you want to see in a resume what their qualifications are so you have to sort of put in this very limited scope of what their resume says and then you only get a few I mean when I did it was EMTs for the fire department and not a lot of people had all the skillset and so I didn't see a lot a lot of resumes but you have to be very specific about what your requirement is and what your parameters are and what your limitations are for what you want to see and then you only see a few because you have a very restrictive list of qualifications that you're going to look at instead of throwing everyone that's you know highway crew I have a shovel I'm going to see his resume no I don't want to go there well well Toby thanks yeah it's pretty simple for me that's amazing pretty easy we've been doing it for 15 years alright Kari is that you next yes Kari gave us a memo he's got four things he wants to talk to us about yes this was sort of a collection of items just to put it together just go through in the order here the first one had to do with well this is for budgeting purposes and Sandra wanted to know exactly how many full-time employees we should be budgeting for since medical insurance such a big part of the budget and so when we total it up we see four in the highway department and four full-timers in the office which would include full-time treasure that's a conservative assumption about what we're actually going to need to be aided the most but I think that's probably the number to budget for do we actually have to vote on that isn't that just something an administrative thing that we just do certainly could so a sense of the board would probably be fine at this stage I think eight at the right number probably the same with this next one about what level to fund all three investment accounts my understanding is we've always put in the max out-of-pocket until last year or the current year it was just left at the previous year and I don't know what the story was there but we wanted to go back to fully funding it so there are no out-of-pocket expenses I mean there are out-of-pocket expenses but this is for deductible and co-pays above the deductible that would be $2850 $5700 and the nice thing about the HRA is that it's the town's money if it's not spent so I don't know what the utilization rate is but it's probably below 50% so that's just something to put in the budget I guess and I think Senator's been waiting for some indicator that that's what you want to do may as well put it in and then we can talk about it at the next meeting so why don't you go ahead and put it in great and then just simply adding me to the check-signing account that is a function that we should do in action there so will somebody like to make that motion? so moved do you understand the motion Rose? it's just to add card the other names yeah as a trainer in our bank account yes to sign checks okay I have a motion do I have a second? I thought you moved it oh okay good all in favor? all done and then the last one was I was asked to take a look at the insurance policies I looked good I was happy with it particularly the flood policies I guess it's a good thing to be part of a large group of municipalities but there was a specific question of should we increase the level of coverage for uninsured motorists and when we dug into that there didn't seem to be any real reasons to do that if one of our employees is injured while driving they'll be covered by workers comp and it's only very specific cases where they see this additional coverage being helpful and it's almost levels of police and bigger claims for involved attorneys so you're recommending we stay with it and not pay the extra 340 to get the extra coverage is that all right with everybody do we need a motion for that just let it be are you gonna increase it or not increase it? not okay good wow so great that you dug into this and just did it an example of what I would hope to do for you so you can give feedback about that presentation no it's terrific did you guys did I miss it did you talk about the blue cross blue shield gold plan for this year did you talk about that bullet or did I miss that discussion no we only talked about the HRA okay so it looks like there's a possible after either voting to maintain or change the current plan yeah Sandra had mentioned that but as I read it well I guess it would be worth discussing but as I read it according to the union contract we are required to provide the gold plan or an equivalent equivalent yeah so I don't think we have any flexibility there at least with half of ours with the road crew that's right so that would be another budget assumption I would I think there's not much choice unless we want to do a lot of research and find an equivalent plan yeah and there's only three carriers in Vermont you don't have options so everybody okay with just we'll put that in at that rate thank you Barbara alright thanks Kari Shed V. Callis anything new to report not not at the moment though I will be circulating a document for everybody to take a look at and if you have any direct feedback I'd recommend reaching out to Ann or I that's about all there's to discuss about it so okay we'll find out what it is when the document comes I guess yeah I'll circulate it right after the meeting so if you can kind of provide any feedback by tomorrow that would be great by tomorrow okay Kim no rush is this something we can do yeah because it's even though we're not an executive session official yeah yeah so I don't expect that it will require any substantive conversation well maybe what we do is we're sure everybody just hits reply not reply all so it's not a discussion that's all right we'll pick up the phone if you have any questions about it there's no surprises there and we're waiting to hear back there was a status status meeting today with the judge and we're just waiting to kind of hear back what the summary was from them okay thank you question I'm not sure I know what you want the minutes to reflect I really hear what you were talking about we'll pass around a document share a document for review from who from me from you? Jordan is going to send a document he can't really tell us what it is right now because it's confidential information but he's going to share it with the select board members and we are going to each give him our feedback individually so that we're not having a meeting got it you have some things to tell us I have some things at the last meeting I talked about a potential design change for the dam which would save us a bunch of money that sort of changed the style of dam from an upstream wall to a downstream budget similar to what's there now and a secondary spillway through a piping system that's still a possible idea but the engineers have come up with another possible idea that could save us a similar amount of money so today I received and I put in the board folder I don't know if anyone has rather than a pipe is it just like a fountain that community volunteers with squirt guns so so today we received the official recommendation from DNK that we reject both bids that we received on September 26 and the reason for rejecting the bids is that they were substantially over our budget and we can't go with those particular plans and contractors and those bids specifically so I have a motion ready that we'll get to in a bit but that will allow us to have conversation one of the bidders has come to us with some ideas that the engineers really like that could save us a bunch of money and so we will go into a process sort of a value added engineering process they call it where they say hey we can't do what you want to do for the amount you have but we can do the same achieve the same goal for a project within your budget if we engineer it this way and so then we'll be able to have the engineers draw those designs and go through DM Safety and Michael of DNK feels optimistic that we'll be able to put together a plan that will come within budget or close to budget and be approved by all parties and we don't have to read and what do you call it there's a term it's the value added engineering right so I spoke with our attorney today who confirmed what DNK said which is we've been through the bid process we've gotten the interest that we're going to get it's met the intent of the town procurement policy and that once we reject the bids we're free to have conversations with a contractor to create a plan and a path forward without going through another public bid process is there a question coming with that sign I just want to make sure I'm clear I guess we're rejecting the bids as they stand but we're not we're not re-bidding but I imagine after we have the two we have the more open dialogue I would assume that we would have to put any finalized plan back out to each of them so that they can modify respectively or that has been true that's true as long as the bids are open once we reject the bids they each have ample opportunity to bring us their ideas but we're not required to actually allow to like if one of them has an idea and it's their plans we can't then give their plans to somebody else and ask them to do it cheaper they're actually contributing to the design of this new design exactly and Jamie did run this by Thomas who said that it's considered a value-added project and that's fun we are, it's okay and are there like added costs associated with the redesign or the is it likely that there are going to be conversations with both contractors probably not probably just the one who has planned and yeah your question I think largely what Jordan was driving at so we would dismiss the two but you would like to go with one or are we committing to a person, company not yet but by by rejecting bids we're free to have conversations with either of them and there's one in particular who has come to us with ideas and so we'll hash those ideas out and see and with those ideas that they have to go back to this whole exhausting reminding right, that's what we're being told is they wouldn't have to go back through that whole process we saw what you were saying and it's not a substantial enough change that damn safety or gypo or any of the people who have approved the permits the historical people yeah, it's all been a like every rock had to be put exactly exactly, exactly they never actually did say we had to do that we're afraid that they might see, I thought that was and so assuming we take this path then theoretically conversations will start quickly and it won't take them long to engineer you know, they have to calculate changes in volume of concrete and whatnot but we should be able to move through the design stuff pretty quickly and potentially be looking at contracts by the end of the year other questions? is the fountain idea completely out? yes all right, Jamie would you like to call it the callous geyser would you like to read your motion for Rose? and I can send it to Rose oh that's even better but it's, I would make a motion that we accept Du Bois and King's recommendation that we reject both bids received for the reconstruction project because the bids came in significantly over budget and that we begin conversations with a contractor who has ideas for a value added engineering changes to the design we being the Curtis pond association yes well we primarily being me and Michael from Du Bois and King but maybe what Anne was saying is clarifying who we is clarifying your motion who we is we would be myself on behalf of the town and the CPA along with the engineers in the contract is that clear everybody? and you'll send it to me sure would somebody like to make you made a motion would somebody like to second it? second it any further discussion Anne you comfortable with this? yeah I just I didn't know it didn't it's I got it I feel it's exhausting and I just was it going to be that easy? all in favor hi thank you Jordan we got anything on IT? no well I guess we had a pretty good meeting Tegan and I met with RV tech to kind of talk about future stuff now that we've got for jazzy fast internet we covered a lot of ground I think the big question mark was relative to the server setup right now we have like an on premise server setup that is a little bit more capital intensive because you actually have the equipment on premises and you have to back it up in a very particular way and you have to make a plan for replacing it the alternative would to have a more virtual server but that comes with its own its own costs relative to access and licensing of software to facilitate keeping stuff in the cloud and it's not exactly a wash but they're pretty comparable and relative to the needs of the town and our current investment in infrastructure the recommendation was to kind of stay the course on the on the physical stuff because we have kind of a nice backup setup that's already established so there's no significant change there we I guess Tegan's going to be working on making sure that everybody has the remote access that they need relative to VPN and just making sure that that still works the other kind of line of dialogue was relative to the viewers not viewers it's the airsoft NIMRIC right so right now we're kind of stuck with some limitations on the NIMRIC system and how kind of flexible we can be on moving stuff to the cloud relative to remote access and the server I think we're never going down the software base but all the software on our computers and use it that way some people use it cloud based online some other towns do not a lot of towns do because not a lot of towns have good internet like it's just not but it's a thing that we're looking at and if we have like if Kari and I are both going to be working from home half the week or our new treasurer was we might have to think more about it right now what we have I think works fine I don't see a big reason but Kari and I will keep keeping an eye on it and I'm sure our new treasurer would we have one we'll have input of some kind and then I guess the last bit which is a little less substantial but more immediate was we kind of pushed them to help facilitate the full utilization of the Microsoft suite that we have and help us more familiar with how to utilize the file sharing stuff and right now the impediment in addition to the volunteer time that would be involved in trying to get that organized is not really we've had a lot of ambiguity I think about like whose roles are what and how they're going to interact with different bodies and now that we've got Kari on board and some of that is coming into review hopefully I think we can have more educated conversations about how we want different folks to access different applications and who we want governing that access so we're basically just going to set aside time to hold them accountable for helping us make that transition kind of complete there's a lot of cool stuff in there that we could be using and we just either don't know how to use it or haven't taken the time to set it up and get it started so finding some time maybe after budget time next year progress I guess if anybody else has any other kind of pressing high T needs let T get enough for sure or Kari you had your day and I opened the supply room and I pulled out some things you needed I saved that's what my mom used to do I saved $100 I will say there's some real opportunities with making documents available in more transparent ways in more organized ways and revision controls and that sort of thing we've had a couple of weeks since that conversation now that we have kind of faster internet access we can maybe facilitate some of that stuff which is exciting and it would be nice to see if we can't push some of that to the website I think there's a whole other conversation to be had around the website which is maybe IT2024 objectives but it needs some massage for sure some of it's just it's not easy to change certain things on there it's like from a backside of things perspective it's not easy to put documents exactly where you want them to be no and I think that's a platform thing so I think we're going to have to look at a pretty it is but there's probably workarounds right with links I'm trying to figure out I've looked into it a little bit further and I know Tegan has as well and there are kind of workarounds but in my experience with websites like that you're just one workaround away from breaking a couple of other things and a lot of those workarounds aren't scalable and I think if we're talking about access to mapping resources or other things there are other platforms that are just easier on the back end to manage and I think we have to be really mindful of how easy that stuff is to manage as we're trying to do more with more robust stuff and fewer people it's easy to kind of overlook it and I see the platform of the website being hugely limiting and I fully agree anyway right, thank you sure so Tegan has asked if she could and I think it's a great idea if she could make a report to us every once in a while so I'm just going to put it on as a regular thing I don't have a whole lot to sign because I haven't been in the office for the last two weeks so my part is that it's really hard to do my job if I'm not in there for two entire weeks there's a lot of backup I missed most of Kari's new time being there but it looks like everything is great I came back to an office that's still standing in a great shape so that's good I know Barbara has been working really hard to make sure tax checks are processed as quickly as we can because she's got stacks of them around the office now since we're about to hit the deadline so that's kind of been the guiding guiding situation is people coming in with tax checks and processing tax checks so that's what's happening around the office we do remote deposit for that stuff we don't I don't know that we could we haven't talked to bank about it it's not really my jurisdiction what was the question remote deposit it might be a conversation with the next treasurer I would say because now it's the 13th of November yeah that's fair we do have John McCullough and I are going to talk with Tim Baker on Wednesday about cooling the town office some options for cooling it to keeping the server in the vault at acceptable temperatures so that's good idea okay thank you and Kari you may already have made your report do you have more you would like to say I'll make it really quick the big part of my focus has been learning this job and there is a lot it's kind of surprising to me how much there is and so I put together this draft plan of how I'm going to learn my job and so it's in there if you have any feedback or any questions and went through it and gave me quite a bit of feedback but I would welcome any suggestions you have about how to go about it it's mostly talking with people and then breaking down the job description responsibilities what are these components and what are the resources that are available thanks Kari you seem to be coming up to speed pretty fast so it's a lot I have a question is Singleton Road open? it is thank you a home I did in the guys when I did some more work on it last week because I did not feel that Jay Hutchins left it quite like he wanted it how long has it been open because I'm one of the reason I'm asking I'm wondering is it too late to post a different report or should we post a different report because we could call us at the office people are asking us all the time people have been driving on it it's been open for like a week sorry about that that's okay it would be worth posting it as part of a you know our final giant poll is filled more of the month of April so would you want to do it as our outgoing road commissioner and getting it done or do you want to post it as our new county administrator well it's it's fine I think at least the people in the area I think are in the know but I think it's important who's going to read the post oh you can't write the report that would be great people aren't going to take on more it's okay was that the last road yes they just had because that huge $80,000 car the bands were like two inches off and then they sent as expedited from Canada and then they were still two inches off so they had to like do all this stuff but they got it done that's the way I'm going home can't wait to see it we are not going to adjourn this meeting we're going to continue it to tomorrow night at 6 o'clock at the town office for the purpose of going we will at that time go into executive session for the purpose of interviewing we have three candidates for select board and the process is we're going to choose a person who will serve until the town can elect somebody at town meeting in March and we will also go into executive session for the purpose of discussing a personnel matter and Rose will take the minutes for that and just tag them on to your minutes thank you did you say five six and I've scheduled each of the three candidates to come in at six, six thirty and seven and we'll give each of them half an hour I would like to invite Kari to join us if you're able Kari is that alright with everybody I think that would be great and would all of you think about what questions you might like to ask these candidates and then we'll probably have a discussion afterwards about what anything else tonight then this meeting is continued until six o'clock tomorrow thanks everybody