 Okay. So, thank you. Being here, we do have a board quorum. Although we are missing Sally and will from Capitol far, but I'm going to open the meeting at 702. And right off the bat, I just want to mention to Brent that as host, we don't start to zoom recording because then it interferes with orcas. Something that I did last meeting and we want to not do again. Okay. The first thing up is the agenda. And the addition. One is to talk about our treasure. The audit, our chapter. And Montpelier city council discussion last night to considering to vote to put a vote to withdraw from central Vermont public safety authority on the upcoming ballot. So I'd like those three items added to the agenda. Anyone else have any additions to the agenda? Oh, there's Sally. Hey. And David. Welcome. Okay. With those three additions. Assume the agenda is approved by unanimous consent. Next is public comment for anybody who'd like to speak on something that's not on the agenda. Okay. Yes. Please stay on top of this. Trying to maintain ourselves within that. And that dream and that dream and a guideline speaking once on each topic. Go ahead. You're not showed as mute, but you're not coming in. Try that. Yes. Thank you. So Montpelier city council did not discuss. I think that's a good point. You can talk about that when it comes up on the agenda. That's fine. And I was going to speak about the audit. The executive director is a mandatory in that. I noticed that my comments last time about strict adherence to the charter. We're not reflected in the draft minutes. And yet a lot of stuff. That's a topic of something that's on the agenda. Steven, you can bring it up when we bring minutes up. If you ask and make an addition specifically to something. I'm trying to try to compose a train of thought here, but I'm having a little bit of difficulty. The. It appears to me that. Forces at work and I'll refrain from naming names are intent on running CV PSA into the ditch or out of business. I don't know if all of y'all saw the emails from. The Montpelier police chief to the city manager, where they specifically talked about dissolving CV PSA once they've got. A line on the money to build a radio system. I believe that this is subversive. I believe that are potentially our leadership is in involved in it. In violation of the oaths that was taken. I think it's a good idea. To support the mission and the purposes of this. Authority. So these are very serious. But we need to find out how and when I asked at the prior council meeting meeting. That this topic in this mismanagement be addressed. It was not taken up at that meeting, but then all of a sudden. Jack McCullough. I think that's a good idea. I think that discussion around room with drawing from the authority. Had been discussed in the background. So that has to have been planted. Stephen, you're back again and topic of something that's on the agenda. So we noted that you said there's mismanagement and there's concerned about the charter not having any. Demanding an executive director. Anything else quickly. Thank you. Thank you. I think that. I see some new new names on the agenda. I believe that we need to act quickly to amend the charter. To allow other towns to join. CV PSA. I select. And that should be done. All right. Thank you. Thank you. The next item. Anybody else for public comments. Brian Pete. I'm just, I would, you know, trying to, trying to make sure I can address that emotive and very rather inflammatory accusation there. If Mr. Whitaker bothered to talk about the rest of that. That email, which he hasn't the context there is to look at a type of. Managerial design. In which we can regionalize some of those communication efforts. Has nothing to do with. You know, trying to, trying to push CV PSA it's, it's, it's, it's all with the spirit of regionalizing and then having. Folks who are part of that communications and that first responder core take over and lead any type of regionalization efforts that we might go to in the future. So I'm very offended by that. Okay. Would you just like to forward that to forward it to me. We'll get it to the board. Yes, ma'am. I will do that. Thank you. Thank you. Next on the agenda is minutes of December 20th. Looking for a motion to approve. Donna, could I just comment on that last. As long as it's being discussed. I'm sorry, we've gone on to the minutes. And when we all have read this email, then we'll talk about it. Okay. Well, it's not okay, but if that's your ruling, I'll abide by it. If indeed, when we get to the end of the meeting under other business and you want to bring it back up, but I really want to watch the clock. We, you know, we tend to have had. Pretty long discussions about the upcoming budgets. And ballot, I think it's going to take a lot of time. If we have leftover time, be glad to go back to a Kim. So minutes. So. So. That Jim. Second, second. Second. There are some. And anybody and the board that has any additions or changes to the minutes. Donna, can you see me? I just, I think that the minutes should just be briefly reflected to include Stevens comments about. The CVPSA and his opinion not being in compliance with the charter, which I know something Steve brought up on several occasions, but I do think he said it last time. So I think it should be in there. Out of compliance with charter. I was going to go to him after the board had additions, but that's great. All right. Any other. Yes, Steven, I'll come back to you. Any other board member who wants to make an addition to the minutes. Yeah, I would second. Justin's comments. I think. I think it's important that. The minutes reflect what actually happened. They were the best effort. I was taking the minutes and hosting the meeting. So I'm not surprised. I missed some things. This is fine. To add an addition. Okay. So we have one addition about. Comments of being out of compliance with our charter. Okay. Now, Steven, I know you have some additional comments. Yeah, I believe that the, uh, the. The letter for the city manager regarding my mistaking up my laptop for a city laptop, uh, is. Appropriate to distinguish your concern about. Uh, city owned equipment. But, uh, you went way beyond that. To a lot of, uh, spurious allegations. Uh, You know, Character smear or whatever. You have no knowledge of how many times I have laid hands on city owned equipment. So I believe that your. To raid in the minutes, uh, Regarding why you refuse to allow people to share the video screens in the space. Or why you refuse to allow people to share the video screens and the speakers should be struck from the minutes. Or at least pared down to a sentence or two. Steven, I was speaking strictly from my own experience at sitting with you around that table. I'm talking, I put in the minutes, exactly what I've experienced with you sitting at city council chambers around the round table with you there. Fiddling with the speakers. And I'm talking about the public safety committee. And I'm talking about the public safety committee. And I'm talking about the council. And both at public safety authority meetings and at the Montpelier infrastructure, transportation infrastructure committee. So I'm talking from my experience. You want to read around. Yes, Jim. Is it not emotional. Right now. I don't know. Additions to the motion. For correct. Correct. So the motions was to accept the Senate's and it's and then. The motion was. And so. And now we're discussing the motion to make corrections. And so one has been that's that Stevens comments under public comments should be added that. Public safety authority is out of compliance with this charter. And the next one was Stevens request for me to change what I stated how I perceived his behavior within the city. Equipment and laptop. And I was explaining that I only talked about what I had. And then I quoted directly from Bill's letter for the rest. So I don't want to change that part. The board modified my motion. I'll modify my motion to move that the minutes be approved as correct. With. Which, which part. The outcome. Anything that's not in debate. Someone wants to. Go ahead. I'm saying is I want to. Does that include. The. Modifications Justin requested. Yes. The out of compliance charter. Which has no, yet nobody disagrees with. The minutes were presented. I move that we approve them. Other people asked to have things addition added to it. And I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. There was no objections of moving them as corrected. Unless there are objections. If there's objections to the specific. Corrections. Then. We don't. You continue the debate. Well, I object. And there was another motion to. Amend them to reflect Whitaker's remarks. And I think. Accepting those as corrections. Oh, all right. Okay. So I'm just going to be real clear. Maybe Brent is clear. About the additional. Equations. What I have at this point, I have two corrections. The first one being. Client clients. That Steven may. And then the second one relates to the use of city owned equipment. That Steven has made as well. And that's the one I object to. he's accepting the change that there's no objection to, which is out of compliance with our charter, and not accepting the change to my language about the city equipment. Is that correct, Jim? I was accepting all proposed changes to move it forward because I didn't assume there was any objection to it. We have objection to a vote no or continue to object. We're going to make an amendment. I'm not trying to complicate things, we're trying to move things forward. Well, I object to changing what I've experienced, which I put in there. I'm going to make a motion and approve the minutes. We have a motion already on the floor. You want an amendment? That's okay. Yes. Okay. I want to make an amendment, the minutes be approved with the suggestions that Justin made to include Whitaker's comments. About the compliance of the charter? Yes. Okay. Somebody wants to second that? I'll accept it as a friendly amendment so we don't vote on that. Okay. I think we've got some problems with Robert's rules. We've got a motion, it's been seconded, it's been amended, and now we have another motion on the original motion that maybe has not been accepted. No, the amendment's not going to be added yet. Jim was trying to bypass that by friendly. So you're right. Again, it can be very specific in your amendment, Kim, because Steven's comments are both that changes that weren't challenged and they were changes suggested that were challenged. So your amendment includes both or one? Kim? My amendment just includes suggestions of Justin Dressler. Okay. All right. So is there a second to that amendment? I'll second. Thank you, Justin. I'll give it to Justin. All right. Any other comments about that? Let's vote all in favor of accepting the minutes as amended with the compliance related to the charter, say aye. Aye. Those of those who say nay, it passes. Now the motion reads to accept the motion, to accept the minutes as amended. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? passes. Thank you. The next would be the announcement on the treasurer. Bev Hill has resigned. She is mailing me a letter maybe at the post office. I didn't get there today. She was very upset. She felt that she had been harassed and challenged that she was not fulfilling her role as treasurer to Central Vermont Public Safety Authority that Steve Whitaker expressed these complaints to how she was fulfilling her role or failing to fulfill her role as treasurer. And it's particularly about it. Bev Hill went to build Frazier because Stephen came to her at her place. Bill Frazier explained that indeed our charter reads that the board will have an audit done. It is not our treasurer who does it. And I believe tried to explain this to Stephen, but all I do know for sure is that that's what it says in the charter. But Bev really was only doing this as a favor and she doesn't want to have in any way her integrity challenged. It's her professional status and trust is very important to her. So we are now without a treasurer. We can do an ad for it. It's a bit of an odd position. It cannot be a board member but to find somebody with base accounting skills who's willing to give their time and become involved with us. So if you know someone that's the best way of getting somebody, but otherwise we'll go forward with an ad to seek someone to fill that role. Any other comments? Yeah. Don, I just want to point out that this came up a year ago and I solicited all the accounting firms to bury in Montpelier. See if anybody would do that on a voluntary basis and not a single person was willing to do it. And I didn't try to figure out a cost. What we did do was figure that the records were kept by the city finance department and CVPSA only deals from the city finance department as control of all its data. Judge City is audited. That requirement was satisfied. I admit that it's somewhat open to discussion but that's how it was resolved a year ago and I'm sorry Bev is leaving. She's been a wonderful volunteer and very helpful in somebody that I can rely on. Yes and you sort of skip to the next topic which is the audit and that indeed not only the year ago but every time the audit comes up we say that the board has voted to accept Montpelier's audit as ours. We could direct the Montpelier auditors to look at our books within their audit of Montpelier. It was more clear that they were touching some of our records because when we had Poy-E we had paper and they went over a lot of paper records and with an audit as you all know or not the auditors go over lots of sheets of paper and they pull out some and they examine them and anything that jumps out unusual they do further examining of so that only within payroll has our paperwork been really looked at so it's true that our regular checks for our small amount of bills don't get a clear examination so I would suggest that maybe we look at an audit form to come in and do a what they call an accounting review and that would at least get us a statement and Brent you have that background what would you think if we did that and then the board could accept the accounting review as an audit or we could get an audit it's just out of proportion to our small finances this year. Well that's what that's what I was going to say Donna that's why I had raised my hand because um I mean I don't no firm is going to is going to do an engagement for free just because that would be a conflict it would jeopardize their independence um so there's a lot of independence considerations here so we'd have to pay for whatever engagement we were we were doing um that being said since CVPSA is its own entity its own legal entity I don't think we can go under the city of Montpelier's audit unless there was unless there's some sort of fiduciary uh responsibility that Montpelier has with our funds which you know the argument could be made that since the our treasure is employed with them that that could be I think it gets sticky um but I mean there's there's three levels of assurance here if we need a full audit then that's going to be costly and really a review is is pretty much about everything the only thing the review doesn't do is that the auditor can't give you the highest level of assurance so really you're paying just for an extra level of assurance that those financial statements are materially accurate um I mean I think review would be fine in some cases they do a limited desk review and that's even has less assurance I would say that if we were going to at some point apply for larger grants or we were going to um do some sort of bonding or anything like that we would want to get an audit just to kind of cover our basis because a lot of funders will look at that um and how we're handling funds but I think for all intents and purposes right now I think a review is probably the best way to move forward and given the size of our budget and what we do that probably would only cost between 500 and probably $2,500 right I thought it'd be under like 3,000 anyways well uh would it be with the board uh some I think I think I think solicit um estimates from firms for a review and come back to us with some names and numbers and then we could look at that if do you want to come any form or is it okay that Brent just does it some moves that we go ahead and do it okay so Doug is of is making a motion to approve Brent well actually I don't know we need a motion for that but uh Brent would you do it if yeah yeah I can do that okay that'd be great thank you see now if you weren't on the board you'd be a great treasurer that's what we need somebody to just volunteer no we already had a good treasurer we did I know but I mean for the next one to fill this vacancy to fill this vacancy congratulations to Steve Whitaker for getting rid of it uh okay this be nice let's be nice um I am being grossed a lot more okay so yeah yeah I won't say that so that right now should take care okay got it got it the next thing that was I added to the agenda was the mom for your city council touched on discuss oh yeah Justin I'm sorry Steve has a quick comment he's assured going to take 20 seconds I didn't do that I'm assuring you that it's only going to take 20 seconds so correct the record because this is starting to get uh distorted beyond recognition I went into the city clerk's office where there are witnesses and I asked Bev who was sitting there in her typical chair if the Montpelier audit included CVPSA she told me she did not and that she was tired of doing the work and it was shady and that she was likely to resign there was no attack or harassment or blame or anything and then I asked again last night at the city council meeting of the auditors to be sure that their audit that they were presenting in draft form did not include CVPSA and I was assured it did not did not so so you've been lied to again by your chair chair sorry sorry Stephen you brought up the audit and our treasurer several times at Montpelier city council meeting which Bev says reflects back on her okay anyone else we'll move on to the next item Montpelier city council they just discussed they did not discuss there was a discussion yes there was uh about whether or not to vote to consider putting on the ballot for citizens to consider withdrawing from the center of Vermont Public Safety Authority it was a very short discussion and one that they thought people should be thinking about they wanted to bring in their two appointed representatives Justin and Doug and for for their discussion and it'll be reconsidered it'll be actually more fully considered on the 20th so one I want to make sure everyone knew that that that was that was a float and I guess I guess to discuss it what's people's feelings about it I mean there's pros and cons you can say the voters that will be out there and they'll show them that they want reasonization and give direction to the council and and the city staff or the voters may say no we don't want it and then we'll lose a member and we will cease to exist well ultimately there's a whole bunch of steps I can go through with you that comes from the state statute about what happens when members withdraw but ultimately that's what would happen we would cease to exist without having members and you need at least two to exist can I just clarify something Donna yeah sure I was talking about putting in a next year's ballot or this coming uh like uh town meeting day this one it takes a year for it to take effect after your community votes out so I understand so the actual vote would happen in March and then the effect would be a year from now yes yes yes yes Doug Doug you point yes I will attend the meeting on the 20th and I think effectively uh whatever happens at the march meeting will determine what uh what happens with the public I mean do you think it's a good thing do we encourage discourage I mean help me out here do we want to figure out where the voters are with us I mean where is our support I mean if it's not with the staff and not with the city councils is it with the public so I I agree um put it on the ballot have stock at it um you know and and what happens happens okay I have I I'm sorry that I didn't collect all the hands up in order um but I know that Brent has his Justin has his and brand it's brand brand brand token okay okay maybe you should go first because you're in a new brain to me thank you thank you yes uh I I'm sorry I don't have my zoom light I can't figure out how that works in any case um I'm I'm uh attending the meeting um outlying towns that use dispatch uh and I was the former select board chair at Plainfield um and I was involved in in government there um we are facing exponentially rising costs for dispatch and emergency services and uh my interest in attending the meeting is to better understand I think there has to be a collaborative way to address those spiraling costs and I think that there is a um a difference between the interests of um you know the citizens of Montpelier versus maybe some of the outlying communities that are facing this spiraling costs so um I'm not I'm not playing in on whether Montpelier should or should report at the of the system but if there is there's a way that there can be uh some assurances to the outgoing towns regarding um costs going forward that's my concern so that's it okay thank you uh Brent your hands up yeah so my question uh what uh how did this conversation begin with Montpelier like what what's kind of the what's the rationale behind wanting to put this to the voters I think part of it was the fact that um that was in the budget that right now we've told them that it's likely that we're going to put 14,100 dollars on the ballot and they're saying you know what are they paying for when our efforts unfortunately are not strong stronger three members are not a stronger coalition so we've struggled study done and now when we've asked the cities and capital far to come on really strong and make a firm commitment very city in their last letter to us very clearly said we're not interested in following the recommendations through they're stepping back Montpelier and capital far very much interested in pursuing radios and simocast and extend I think an invitation Sally you can correct me Doug uh Hoyt an invitation the public safety authority be possible assistance to that what do you say Sally yeah I know I think it's going to be a discussion for our next mutual aid meeting which is next Wednesday night I believe just as far as what our plans are going forward with the radio system and the the quotes that we've got that type of thing so I think we'll have a better idea after next week what the plan is okay and just related to what the rent has said I'm not missing you Justin any any comments about what the rent has said okay is that sort of answer your question as far as I know it yeah yeah that's great thank you Donna okay uh Justin whether it's you or Steven your hands up it's going to be me for like 10 seconds and then Steven I guess I just view this as a it is what it is situation like CVPSA has no say in what happens at that meeting and what Montpelier puts on the ballot and so like we can be sad about it or we can be happy about it but I just don't see all that much to discuss about it because Doug and I will go to the meeting we'll inform them what we you know what we think is members but um I don't know I just don't think there's much to discuss amongst the whole committee and then Steve you can go well again first I want to correct the record there was no discussion last night about this at the city council meeting uh it it was clear that Donna had ceded the chair to try to raise it and get it discussed but there was no especially from the other member city councilors who has been asked and asked for the prior meeting to put the mismanagement of CVPSA on the on the agenda and they didn't decline to do that so this being there's there's no there has been no discussion except through the emails that we discussed that uh where the city manager and the police chief are attempting to basically steal the thunder or cut the legs out from under CVPSA and build an owner radio system and increase their monopoly power over all these small towns so the only way to revive CVPSA is to get more members in and basically break this monopoly conflict of interest with the city of Montpelier bringing in four hundred thousand dollars from these hostage towns uh could not be more uh flagrant and it apparently uh our city councilor uh chair is uh playing to the city's agenda rather than the oh she took to the CVPSA agenda so I want that record to be clear this that's that's your opinion steven thank you but that's not true I've had no discussions with brian peep about this at all I haven't even read his email I'm sorry I probably should have it's probably the stacks of emails that I missed that I was copied on okay uh any other some hands up uh Brent Doug Brent can you hear me now yes sir okay um I was just curious it's about the comment that you just made about the city of berry going on record um that we were against um this or you spoke about the the letter the letter that you got roughly three weeks ago was from both the city of Montpelier and the city of berry was signed by both of the city managers and by both of the city managers um after after speaking with the fire chiefs the deputy deputy fire chiefs the police chiefs and deputy police chiefs from both cities uh yes I'm sorry I felt that it was better off for the yeah so I just I just wanted to correct that for the record the audio record is everything else it wasn't just the city of berry and I was it was both cities jointly decided that and unanimously decided that so if that in in fact sends a message that's the message that we were trying to send but I wanted the record to be reflected that it was not just the city of berry I'm sorry if I inferred that it's unanimous among public safety officials from both communities so I and Mr. McKenzie is having trouble showing up on the screen tonight he just he just um messaged me a minute ago so I wanted to make sure to correct that that's it that's all I had to say no I don't want me out because you're right it wasn't letter letter within that letter very statement very distinctly different I read very distinctly different from Montpelier's that use that I read that berry city was saying they did not want to continue to be involved in the simulcast but they did want to uh but Montpelier wanted to continue working with capital west on simulcast that's what I got out of that letter and I'm wish I had it in front of me so I will reread it I didn't mean to I I wish I had it in front of me too but it was meant to say that for the two cities the radio issues that we have we're wanted to go on our own capital west and again I'm not speaking for the managers who wrote this but I believe that the intent was and I'm just speaking to what was said at the meeting that we all had together was that yes Montpelier needed to because they're in a little different position they have customers um their customers are the mutual aid system so they're going to go to court in support of what the mutual aid system needs to do to do because because the televate report as well as the comments from the public safety chiefs have carved out that the needs are different for the two cities versus the mutual aid system yes as far as technology goes the needs are different right and I I perceive that and um what that letter meant to say was that for ours our cities would go their own way and on their own would without CVPSA but the Montpelier would stay in the discussions because of in the sake of their customer base which is the mutual aid system and that is what I meant to say by my comments thank you for the clarification that was that made it much clearer uh Doug I really appreciate that but that was my intention the cities have decided to go on their own on their own radio issues and Montpelier will continue with their customer on theirs okay okay thank you thank you for the occasion uh Steve you can see anything you want to add add to Doug Brent's comment comment you're in and out in that process yeah um I think essentially uh Doug is correct that we both municipal the big municipality of Montpelier-Berry uh view the consoles and the radio uh procurement as something our two communities have a mutual interest in and we can proceed on that on our own and we don't um we don't see any particular advantage to try to do that with the with the authority Doug correct me if I'm wrong I don't think that that basically said so so we're turning our back on the larger project I think what we were um or the regional project I think really what we were trying to emphasize that for the for the immediate future um we want to proceed to address the immediate concerns that we have consoles and radials that that is correct okay uh Justin hand up it's Steve um and then so I think just to be perfectly clear the city council of Montpelier has not adopted the position that is reflected in that letter in fact when I got the letter it had not even been signed uh so I still don't see signatures on the copy here so it's it's important not to represent that these are decisions made by the city the city managers might have their recommendation in their intent but Bill Frazier doesn't run the city uh the city council takes makes these big policy decisions the city council has not become educated on this issue nor have they decided to proceed go go their own way uh so I need that to be clear right okay that's your opinion all right all right anyone else oh I'm sorry you're it blends right in with that corner of your room color okay yes go ahead Kim Donna I think the reality of where we are today is that no grant money will be available unless there's a regional effort and I don't think two cities hiring their own uh funding their own consoles the problem is they won't have any customers if there is no simulcast system for the people that they are serving they won't have any customers and the only way they're going to get a regional system is to get a grant and the only way to get a grant is for everybody participating to have a stake in the grant and I think that's what's going to happen at the state level there's plenty of money out there but nobody in his right mind would give a lot of money to one to the towns to fund their own project without being in a regional cooperation okay I'm going to ask you to stop there Kim because you are making I'm not I'm not going to stop there well I'm going to ask you to because you're totally off topic it's no I'm not off about the topic was how do we feel about my failure with drawing and what I'm saying is okay it's cutting off they only suck they'll never get to maintain the customer base and it's so excited and it doesn't take into account the realities of where we are today and that's what we need to think about instead of individual self-interest we all hang together or we fail together okay so then within the the the board's approach you see it as a negative for them to put it before the voters well what you're saying that's what look it's always an item for discussion the question is how well are we prepared for the discussion and until we get the legislature to decide what they're going to do with the millions of dollars it's available to parcel out to have public safety communications and I am certain it's going to spare regional cooperation and I think that will be clean sometime in this legislative session if I'm wrong then maybe CVPSA doesn't have any function okay uh Brian Pete you have your hand up and then Doug Hoyt yes ma'am I just just I don't want to belabor the issue but the the consoles our responsibility of both agencies to make sure that we have for for the peculiar police department is incumbent upon us to have the equipment that we need to service fire and police dispatch EMS as well as to to capital fire mutual aid system so it's something that we have to buy for the organizations that's just just a piece of equipment that we have to buy that we're making sure as we move forward that it's going to work towards any regionalization efforts okay that's a fair we have to buy for our agencies it's a fair comment okay okay Doug Hoyt yeah I guess I'd like to see the comments that Kim has to make and anybody else forward them on to me I think discussion on the 20th I will certainly advocate for it I don't want to spin back on all the topic but you know I've talked with Steve McKenzie about this the talk with Brian Pete you know the work on the consoles at both Barry and Montpelier have to occur no matter what it's got to be done two years ago and that's probably not long not long enough both consoles systems and everything else they're failing people such as Valley and Grand have to have these box consoles and they were late in late years should not wait any longer you know what what the city of Barry and Montpelier are doing to resolve that is perfectly fine in my book and I wish them the best of luck safety authority with the public safety authority it would be my hope that along the way of trying to get that work done that somehow city of Barry and Montpelier recognize that in fact the public safety authority could assist them in making it happen to captify our mutual aid system you know and it's sub-organization capital west I've been at the existence for what 25 30 years Sally say yes no right and a lot of people have a lot of work into it and what Montpelier has done in terms of its relationship with captified mutual aid and specifically cap for west is is a critical to the operations of public safety services in the surrounding communities it is right trying to get everybody else on board has been the real hard pull but let's let's go talk to the city council in the 20th and let's try to get them involved in this process a little more than they are and who knows who knows what will come on I'll be quiet now okay yes I mean our main purpose tonight of our public hearing and making decisions about our ballot need to be done so I'm going to close the discussion on this topic and and on to the discussion of the proposed three-year budget I'm actually going to open the public meeting the budget went out as sort of cleaned up but still with the FY23 budget reflecting 30 000 request to the two cities divided between Barry and Montpelier and with FY24 with $50 000 requested again we have to do a three-year budget so that's just a projection but what is on the table is to finalize tonight the FY23 budget and any ballot requests that we have are there any comments and especially from the public related to this budget and from our members Barry, Erie, Montpelier, and Cavalofar about this budget how do your organization see it Justin I think Doug I'm not sure if your hand's up new but I'm going to do Justin first and then come back to you Justin it's Steve he'll be here okay well he's going to wait until the board gets okay okay you want to do board first oh no you're right no no no you're right I said public I was thinking no it is a public hearing for our members but it also includes the general public all right Steven thank you madam chair the budget it's somewhat farcical to call it a three-year budget as it has been carved down below the bone now we we spent 40 40 50 000 on the televate needs assessment that was that was to be followed by an engineering design so that so that an RFP could be issued to purchase the system and a key question that still hasn't been addressed is are we going to take advantage of the federal money available by designing integrated LTE cellular because that's the future of public safety broadband complimenting the LMR radio and so that to design the cellular LTE service while you it's put it design the LMR is the most cost effective way and it allows the available federal broadband dollars to pay for hours and generators and fiber backhaul in a way that significantly reduces the cost of the public safety lmr system so this this has been laid out and ran in the newspaper and ran in digger and sent to all of y'all and no one seems to have understood that but now is the time to take the needs assessment and move it forward with an RFP for an engineer design design but that requires 100 000 more or more above the 50 000 budget that's being proposed so i'm not suggesting we ask for that money from the two members and we have no ability to ask for it from the third member but i am saying that the budget should include room to bring on new members and that would require board action tonight to vote to amend the charter to allow members to vote by select board to opt in then those towns can bring some of their ARPA money in to supplement the 30 000 that will that's being asked for from Barry and Montpelier so the the towns that are served by this dispatch system have the most at stake the the best way for them to control their cost is to have a seat at the governance of how those costs and they may be able to fill dead zones in their cellular canopy all this radio technology and expensive trucks doesn't do any good if the person who needs help is in a dead zone and can't call for help so it's important that these these technologies are inextricably linked so i'm advocating that we structure the budget to include other as yet unidentified sources of funds but limit the i won't try to overturn the 30 000 limit of the budget ask them for from the two towns but it's important to understand that only by getting new towns to join will we overcome the dysfunction of this board and uh be able to fund the integrated planning that's necessary thank you steven you're you're way over three minutes thank you all right anyone else want to make comments on the proposed budget justin justin i just i just want to tease out just to make sure that i understand what steven is saying and just give me the head thumbs up or thumbs down is steve i think what you're just saying is that in terms of the budget we're we can approach we can envision a larger budget without asking for more money is that correct yes okay with regards to that comment i i don't think it's a bad idea i don't think it's a bad idea to dream big at all i do think it's a bad idea to ask for the voters for a hundred grand or whatever 150 grand but i don't think that having some sort of long-term plan is a bad one i also don't think it's necessary at all because when we vote on the budget next year we can just change the f y 24 it's only you know but i'm also interested in knowing what the um what the well definitely knowing what jim is about to say and the the select board members of the people who have been on these these and these surrounding towns okay thank you jim i agree that it's important to have a bigger but when you propose a municipal budget it's kind of it's going to be balanced you can't propose a budget but you don't have a funding source if i'm not mistaken well i put a line item there as grants and i have offered the board the chance to put money in there then you go after grants so there is a line item blank right now you could put money in there and then say we're we're going to propose that money and then if that's how you put 50 000 under grants just not knowing the source you could then put the same amount around consultant so your budget's met balance as a voter i would look at that and say and what happens if you don't get the grant are we on the hook for the money and that's exactly what happened in very city when they put up the lights on the football field and they were going to raise the money with fundraising and they didn't and very city picked up another 45 000 dollars well i mean one would hope one wouldn't hurt consultants until you had the money but yes that's definitely an issue saying that was the same idea they were they were happy had a button and this is actually not the municipality but they were relying relying on money that was not actually materialized yet yep yep yep that i'm not again saying that we we have some bigger plans but i think we i'm assuming what goes to the voters has to based on something that is funded but i'm not sure how we're the three year plan comes in what is the three year budget committee is that what our charter says it was supposed to propose yes a three year yes and so when we started with this first phase of the need assessment we thought we would follow up with another 50 000 phase some of that has changed as the information within the study itself we received had a page all about what we needed under administrative assistance and it's pretty large uh so so this is your last chance again you have that have that line line item there that you could plug in some money some money and grants and then you go looking for it and you don't spend it until you get it um any other board members i see brame and doug brent tabin you're gonna go first yeah yes right i'm not a not a board member i was just a member of the public i i i think uh you know in terms of the specific item at hand regarding the 30 000 dollars i i think that's that sounds great reasonable i i just want everybody on the board to understand that for a small town with uh we we deal with numbers that are much different than maybe barry city or montpelier and the percentage that these items if you if you sort of project out um suddenly um you know a few years ago you know we're paying six thousand dollars newl came and it was 12 000 dollars eight eight percent increase per year when inflation was one percent percent i i have no idea what it is now i'm sure it's exponentially higher i really think that um the and i i completely understand montpelier and barry uh city and town all are facing real challenges and have to look out for their interest and i'm not criticizing i'm just saying that for the outlier towns this issue is really going to come to the fore because when you have exponential growth in a very small budget the taxpayer is really going to feel it i just want everybody to understand okay thank you uh doug brint thank you don't thank you don't i cannot be aware but you're speaking you sort of bubble out then you come back and you bubble out so so um right back at you i get the same thing on this end i hear party i'm sorry to say that so something i something i yeah yeah yep see if folks have noticed at least on uh and on doug's audio it does go uh blank for a minute but when it comes back on it picks up at the end of where it went off so you're not missing anything it's just a a very pregnant pause yeah i'm just never sure when it's a real pause or it's a technical pause so i've that same thing happens to everybody on this end too and i apologize so brent go and we will be patient okay so brent or me uh doug brent okay um so one thing that i wanted to raise as i raised at the last meeting what are what is central vermont public safety authority doing about recruiting new towns to judge because the questions that i get as a public safety official from the public that i protect is the question they come to me and say as fire chief do you support this request that cbpsa wants to put on the ballot again for more money and why do you support it or why do you not support it and it's it's a hard question to answer because they've generally prefaced it has anybody else joined and what are we doing about getting other towns to join to spread this money amongst all of them to make it more easy on everyone and lastly i would say if i was asked that question by my city council it would be a in a real hard decision to stand in front of my city council if they said do we support giving more money to cbpsa or not i that would be a very hard thing for me to do because i'm likely to say i'll be voting my way in the in the voting both as a tax taxpayer registered voter in the city of very very early voting no on it i just i i'm sorry but it's not that i lack respect for what has done because the two products that cbpsa has bought won the report from paco and all the work that he did and to the televate report i think that those we got our money's worth from those i know other people think otherwise but i think we got our money from those things but i'm not sure that i disagree with donna what you said at the last meeting maybe this is not the year to ask for money from barry and montpelier i that rang true with me and i had to have to ask myself that same question so thank you for your time i hope i didn't speak to long no thank you anyone else i'm going to have to respond to uh i was just going to close the public hearing and then the board have discussion for final decision is that all right kim i responded oh okay okay unfortunately we've only done part of the job until we get a whittaker calls it a engineering study televate calls it a high level um planning the basic idea is that somebody needs to say we need equipments that can do x y and z to make this work and we're going to leave it to the providers to come up with that equipment because we don't want to specify the equipment because if it doesn't work then we're on the hook we want the providers to have to warrant the equipment they recommend will supply the needs here in the high level study and until that is done we don't have any way to go to look for grant money for millions of dollars that are going to be available for just these kind of problems because we won't have the so-called shovel ready plan to go forward so with the 40 000 we have on hand roughly in 30 000 new money i don't know if we'll have enough money to do i'm going to just call it a high level plan rather than engineering but i think we're going to need to do a rfp to find a consultant and it could be tell of eight uh i'm fully satisfied but our charge requires us to do rfps so we've come halfway but unless we have the money to get to the finish line it's going to be wasted okay you sum it up please it's a well i'm just about i just dog i understand what you're saying but i think the job is only partly done and the money we're asking for i don't think it's enough but we won't know until we put it on rfp so donna he kind of made that statement in the form of a question so i will kind of answer it um so i will answer it this way i don't think of anybody that on that screen that i'm looking at tonight has chaired and project managed multimillion dollar radio projects i have i've done two of them the latest one has been on the air for over six years now never shut off one second we never hired an engineer for either one of the projects at all it was always always engineered through the vendor vendors because you ask for certain things to be able to be done you don't ask for certain pieces of equipment you ask for the project to be on the air and meet the five nine standard which it's on the air 99.99 percent of the time and unless they can meet that it doesn't matter what equipment they specify so i'm not going to argue this point but i will tell you that i've been in charge of those projects a third one was a 500 thousand dollar tower that we put up in south brunki and you can see it every time you drive up the interstate it's right on the golf course um and we have had never a problem and never hired engineers to tell us what we needed to put out in the rfp all okay uh always did the rfps rfps ourselves had no problem the first project was 1.35 million the second one was 1.6 million dollars five five thousand dollar tower project been there done that okay okay okay uh dug i have an answer in and i appreciate your points but i'm gonna bring us back to the board closing the public hearing and the board now looking at are they going forward with the budget as presented and asking this 30 000 dollars from the two cities this needs to be finalized and approved tonight it goes then to montpellier and berry to be on their ballots and the warning i give you a sample warning both last meeting and this meeting that the 30 000 dollars will be divided 15 900 from berry city 14 100 from city of montpellier entertain a motion and discussion i'll move the budget as presented yes okay a second a second a second jim all right for the discussion about the motion as presented yes jim and then the overview of the whole thing it comes down to where are we going what's our future and i think several people have kind of alluded to this um i i see value in the public safety authority continuing um at some level we're going to need to have the public support there's no question about it i i guess i'm against either city putting on ballot to to pull out but if we if they put a budget item on the on their the ballot each each city and it fails it it certainly is an indication of our support we could still continue to a certain amount of time 30 000 dollars 15 000 jim never ever that's not a lot of money and and there's hundreds of study committees and exploratory committees and whatever in the state legislature that they have funded for years that never accomplished what they set out to do but they spent a lot of money we're sort of an exploratory study committee is what we are you know and i think the radio project is a terrific project i'm still having difficulty wrap my head around who should own it who should buy it who should fund it you know it's it's just very much still up in the air capital west i think probably should be the likely ones to to do the whole thing because they're already in that position i'm i guess they don't have the bonding capability to do that but they they certainly would have to be able to be eligible for a grant i think but i'm not suggesting that that um we step back from supporting them i'm just trying to figure out a way that we continue the structure as we have searched for irrelevance and that's when we're sort of searching searching trying to find to find something you know i still see future issues down the road that that we could collaborate on and this this would be a structure for a platform to to create um you know a collaborative effort but um so i i guess what i'm saying is we we may we'll find out one way or the other whether the public supports us if they vote for this thirty thousand dollars if they don't well then we the writing's on the wall maybe maybe we should take our ball and hold but um you know we've got a we've got a couple of years or a year left before that's necessary but anyway that's just sort of a so that's basically a support of the motion it's in support of the motion but it's a convoluted response to i'm very frustrated i don't know where we're going i i don't know what our purpose is i haven't figured that out yet i i have in my mind when i think about it but but it's everyone's right one requires more talents requires a real regional effort requires agreement on what regional stuff should be regionalized and what stuff shouldn't be regionalized and and we don't have a buy-in yet from all the the stakeholders as i like to say anyway okay i'm going to go supporting the budget okay i'm going to go to justin first as a board member and then Doug brand i'll go to you uh justin jim i'm curious is do you think maybe we should just ask for more then if this is a true referendum is 30 small and then we just ask for more and like make it an actual referendum because you're right like 30 grand like maybe people are just like they don't even think twice about it and they don't actually think if this is something they want i'm just curious your opinion it seems to be more and more of us see if we get lucky or i don't know it's just like i just don't know no i really haven't figured out what the 30 grand is going to be useful and necessary i don't have any of that it's not gonna do about the engineering okay good oh no you know it could be a great deal of phase two not the engineering not stephen's terminology but what we had planned in phase two i saw it as a token indication of you know it has the well gone dry and you know do you want us to keep moving forward or do you want us to wrap up but in either event well we'll get well no i would stay with the 30,000 the answer your question thanks i'm talking about grand okay um i lost Doug Brent's picture is he still there so i had forgotten to take my hand down Donna okay all right now i just want to go back to the motion because i presented the budget and the warning and i read the warning division is that acceptance of just the budget this motion motion is really about the budget okay okay and the warning not only includes the budget number the thirty thousand dollars but it also includes to elect one at large board member to serve for a three-year term commencing march 2022 and it's a warning if it's approved then Doug Brent householder and i will need to sign live and get it to the cities okay i just want to make sure it was including both thank you secretary did you get that does that make sense to you okay any further discussion board members all in favor say hi hi hi any opposed for sustaining yay pass all right now the other thing that came up about the city ballots it's that your city council voted not on mail mail an automatic mail in all the ballots so for the public safety authority we will be integrated into Montpellier's ballot as usual berry city had not contemplating mailing to everyone so that wasn't an issue for berries for us in berry city but at one point we might have had had our own ballot in Montpellier but that is no longer an issue so that's good simplicity less confusion as well as less cost other business kim do you want to go back to your comment that i cut you off on did you get satisfied with what you said how about a minute in the chart that's one of the best i'm i'm ready to adjourn i think there's a we've got to see where we're going and then we'll pick up where we go from here okay and the other thing um there was wasn't from any committee board member does the board member one included discussion about the charter name change uh justin so steven has suggested um amending the charter to make it easier for other municipalities to join i know a lot of you probably haven't read the charter line by line but the way it works is that other municipalities can join us but it's got to be by um voter vote so there's this 90149 section and a says anybody can join us by a vote of two-thirds of us but then b says if we decide to let them in then the municipality has to vote on it if we just get rid of b that gets rid of those voting procedures and it would make it a lot easier for us to reach out to other municipalities if that is something that we want to do which it sounds like dug thinks that's probably dug Brent thinks that's probably a good idea i don't want to put words in your mouth dug but that's what it sounded like before um and it sounds like if it's going to be a regional authority we'd want and eventually i don't see a lot of things striking that part of the charter because it's just all it does is create a procedural barrier and and just so you know in the past we have failed getting past the select boards to get to the voters and this is this is mirrored after all districts so i don't i don't know how easy that would go through the legislators we have a lot of other amendments that the charter needs some really simple housekeeping ones as well as more complicated and any changes we propose have to go into the legislators to their review and their approval uh but the big the big blocks have been the select boards not the voters yeah i believe that but it's it's just like it's it's a logistical barrier in addition to an actual like having to get through these people it's just like you have to wait for an election time you have to run an election blah blah blah anyway that's what i'm saying steve uh steve's going to second but i see there are two others that have their hands up first it's uh that board board on their charter so so i'm going to suggest just just just in the problem with what the suggestion is for a town to become a member it has to be able to pay if if if a town is a member then in theory the board votes as we have tonight and we're going to raise so much money and that money automatically goes to the voters on a ballot to vote for you can't amend that part out of the membership because you're taking out the ability of a town to pay so this this is a lot of money just joining joining or has to include agreement by the electorate of a town to pay or at least a vote on an assessment that may be made so it's two steps so i've been a i've not been in agreement that we need to amend the charter to do that and i'm happy to have a little more detailed discussion with you but we don't have any members at the moment other than barry and my failure the towns are not a member they've never joined in my opinion they don't even have a right to vote on anything except dispatching and steadfastly they've refused to even discuss it as far as i know and i've been talking to dana about this for at least 18 months and what i wanted was a discussion with people either cap cap west or whoever it may be to come in and tell us there's a wonderful process in the charter it's all discussion and negotiations and try to work out a fair way to assess the the cost okay thank you any any other i think i think i advocate doing it but it's a much more complex problem any other board member want to comment on this particular charter change okay i see uh steve mckinsey's hand up uh yeah i uh so i'm i'm going to act out of my element here i'll be an engineer providing some legal advice so you can take it it's worth but my my my my suspicion is that those provisions are a charter are there for a reason and probably to to make it a little bit more difficult than easy whatever charter changes the board might be contemplating or proposing i i assume you would have a legal review certainly before i moved ahead to try to strike a provision of your current charter you'd certainly need that that reviewed by the attorney and i'm probably stating the obvious but my guess is that the the reason it's there is not just at the convenience of the authority but it may be uh mechanics of the state statutory state statute yeah whatever yeah i think it does have something to do with districts that select boards can't bypass their voters when they commit to an authority that can tax them okay i see uh jim jim ward sorry i think you just comment comment i heard you say it's the way the districts are all done are you talking like solid waste management districts and i'm talking about districts districts that have taxing authority this was what our charter was modeled after and we don't have taxing we don't have taxing authority do we yes we do have our members that's why we can put this on the ballot whether mom figure or barry wants to we can it's just a matter of our relationship with them when we do it when they don't like it okay so the city councils do not have to yes public safety authority has direct taxing power and other districts that have that go directly to the voters voters yes but whatever kind of changes like that we would definitely one make sure the board had to prove it and then pull in legal advice and then proceed talbin help me with your hand i guess i'm not a member of the board obviously i just since you weren't you were discussing select boards reactions to this issue i just wanted to give the perspective it is a knee-jerk reaction for any select board member i've been there that when something is proposed that doesn't have an obvious near term benefit in terms of expending dollars you're going to get a no but i really really don't think that people are as educated on this issue as they should be and i really really think that when the smaller towns start seeing this expense eat up a huge percentage of the budget you're going to get maybe the towns joining together and coming up with their own ideas and this is not to be disparaging about barry and montpelier you guys obviously have a lot of challenges and are doing the best you can it's just that in from our point of view the smaller towns um i i think that this this going going to boil over at some point and you should be should be aware of that so okay i i'd seen any board member want to make a motion that we should move forward to amend the charter relating to or seek to get information about changing the charter relation to membership uh just don't i don't i'm sorry see even wanted to make a comment and i caught him off okay see so this has been we've been talking about we've assigned a committee to you know or a board member to work on charter changes nothing has happened in six months on this and now it's make a break time to get charter changes approved by this year's legislature we've all acknowledged that we sorely need new members to make this a viable organization the only way to get new members is to not tax not tax the uh towns uh use a similar they just did this last year the legislature just changed the the fiber of the communication district to allow select boards to vote in without the whole town voting to get in so it's not rocket science here in the similar way that the memorandum of understanding that allowed uh capital fire to not pay a share of the costs for the first uh year or two years uh could apply to towns as well uh so my point is that if you're gonna if you're if you're not gonna allow this thing to to die of attrition for lack of funding and lack of participation and lack of good governance you're gonna have to get some new blood in here and the only way to do that is by following on the lead that the communications union district that's the way to explain it to the legislature it's expedient a public service is being expedited by allowing the select boards to join and then the select boards can put put the you know some of the ARPA money or whatever uh to the town to to to their budget process in order to fund the engineering that's needed to get this these systems up and running so this is not as complicated as it's being made out and it's the fact that it's at this late date and the we have a very limited window to get it to the legislature is uh nobody's fault uh okay thank you any motion from the board otherwise we're gonna move forward okay I see no motion from the board then uh any other matters to become before this body before we adjourn terrific we are on time thank you all for your focus and contributions truly appreciate it and Justin Justin thank you for being there anytime anytime your cigarettes necessary okay okay night everyone happy new year forgot that one our first meeting of the new year good night everybody