 I'm going to make a motion to approve the agenda. I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Motion second. Any corrections or additions to the agenda? There being none. If everyone could vote. The agenda is approved. We have a motion to approve the agenda. We have a motion on the consent agenda items. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda items. Nat, did you say something? I was going to do the same thing. Oh, okay. Would you want a second then? I'll second that. Thank you. Any further discussions on the consent agenda items? There being none. All in favor. Any opposed or abstentions? There being none, the consent agenda items approved. Is there anyone from the public that wishes to speak? Don't hear anything from the public. We'll move on to the next item. Select board items. Since I added. The consent agenda item. Agenda item a. I'll just kind of read. What was kind of recommended. By Moroni Minter. From the Vermont racial equity task force. As a. Potential motion. That would be your favor, but I'll read the. The declaration and then we could have a discussion. The town of Waterbury declaration of inclusion. Waterbury condemns racism and welcomes all people. Regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, or expression. Age or disability and will protect these classes to the fullest extent of the law. In the town, we formally condemn discrimination in all its forms and commit to a fair and equal treatment of anyone, everyone in our community. Waterbury has and will continue to be a place where individuals can live freely and express their opinion. Any discussions on the declaration. This is something that's being proposed to. You voted on through the town meeting process. Well, how does this work, Bill? Is this something that a petition has to be put forward for? Or to include you're muted there. My Mike, Mike forwarded that my. Reading of it was that it was being recommended that the select board simply adopt it. That is not going to come. Mike. Did you send that to you directly or what? Yeah, that was my intent. I don't necessarily, at least I don't think. Any open minded person. There's nothing in that declaration that I, I don't think anyone would find offensive. Maybe I'm wrong, but. And I was thinking it wouldn't be at town meeting. Possibly, you know, I like the idea of it being posted on our website as something that we stand for, you know, that we're community that condemns, racism and any kind of discrimination of all forms. And I think if it's on our website, it basically says something. I don't think we would have to have a town meeting resolution that would be a place for us, but does anyone have any dissenting views on that? I wasn't sure how the process worked. If that was something that just couldn't simply be passed by the select board. Whether or not it had to go in front of the people. People. Maroney did reach out to me. And I was out of town. I responded to him. I don't know a day or so afterwards. I don't know. Actually requested. Sit down. Discussion between him and I. Talk about, you know, what, what. This issue was and what it pertained, you know, the, how. What it meant, you know, what, what the structure of it was. What it was supposed to. I guess do. As far as. As far as, you know, what it was supposed to be. And it's reading what it pertains to, but, you know, what's, what's the background behind it? And, um, Or more of the motive. You know, what do you. Put something like this in place. To me, to me, it has to have a reason for it. And I was just curious what that was, you know, And I was just curious what that was supposed to be. And I was just curious what that was supposed to be. And I was just curious what that was supposed to be. What kind of corporations and stuff. Have. As part of their. Their being kind of like equal opportunity statements. And I think that's just a statement of kind of. Their being. Again, I think based upon law. I think we're all supposed to operate based, you know, on the law. That was nothing. Everything there is things that we have to operate. In terms of equal opportunity. It's, it's the law. And the common sense, isn't it? Not even common sense. It's the law. It's, it's federal law that, you know, you know, that. You know, we can't. We can't do that. We can't do that. We can't do that. We can't do it. We can't do it. And the only thing that. I might have added, you know, there are protective classes. One other class that is protected. By state law. Is. People who receive public assistance. has that's probably one of the biggest areas that people are discriminated against in Vermont is someone who's on public assistance gets discriminated just because they are on public assistance. Someone doesn't want to provide them services because they are receiving public assistance. That's against Vermont law. Yeah and it's clear all that's against Vermont law. I think the the critical thing this isn't asking us to adopt an equal opportunity statement. I mean it's in there but if you read the first word it says what we condense racism and welcomes all people. You can abide by the law and still be a racist. So what this is asking the select board to do is to call racism what it is and condemn it and say we're not going to tolerate that attitude. There are plenty of people that can stick up a poster that says we're the equal opportunity employer but they might still be racists and I think that's just asking you it's a pretty straightforward question. Why do we condense racism and welcomes all people regardless of all those things and as a town we formally condemn discrimination. So it's more it's a philosophical statement as much as it is to say we're going to obey the law. So I think the question asked by Moroni and the other folks the anti-racism coalition is to get the select board to adopt this statement to condemn racism for what it is. Why do they feel like they need to do that? Why? I'm not telling you why I'm just telling you what says what the reading of it is. I'm just concerned about what that means from a legal standpoint from this point on or if the select board agrees to something like that there must be legal implications involved that we don't know about. But if you have a business and somebody goes to apply for a job at your business and they're of a different racial orientation or sexual orientation or whatever and you decide that you know that's not the right applicant and they can turn around and say well you you didn't hire me because I'm this that or the other. This is where things are going and I think it's really important to consider when things like this come across you know. This is not a legal argument. I just want to finish my point. I'm really concerned about stuff like this. Understand. I don't think I think it's it's almost like an affirmation that we're making and it's just saying that we as Waterbury residents condemn basically the reasons that go into equal opportunity. And I don't I'm not a legal scholar but I don't think there's any negative connotations to what is is included here. Well maybe this is not a legal connotations because I'm starting to sense that there are. Why is this even breached? Why is the subject like this right now breached at all? You know we live in Vermont. You know this this is like the first state that was anti-slavery. You know you can't force people to not be racist. You're a hundred percent right. You know Vermont does not Vermont does have racism and bigotry. It's but you can't legalize that. You cannot. This is not a this is not a legal document. Let me finish. You asked to finish. Let me finish. This is not a legal document. It's a statement condemning a practice. It's not anything that says you have to believe something or someone else has to believe something. It's saying the Waterbury Select Board Waterbury condemns racism. Your example before about somebody applying for a job that's different race or different sexual orientation. Those as likes that are already protected classes. If you don't hire somebody and they're the different race they can say they didn't hire me because I'm x, y, and z race. They can file a lawsuit. Doesn't mean that you really did that but that's the world we live in. People can file a lawsuit if they think that you're civil rights. That's where we live. Yeah. I mean I wanted to just ask a question and it does pertain to me. I mean I was labeled a racist at the drop of a hat from using a wrong word. I think if you listen to my entire discussion about the issue that I was talking about it was clear that I was trying to solve a problem and put some ideas into something that maybe somebody else hadn't already thought about or you'd be surprised at feedback that I've gotten where people have said I agree with you Chris. In fact I had one woman say to me one day that if I had a police officer coming to my house I'd want it to be a white police officer. For me personally I could care less what color they are. They're police officers. They're officers of authority, of law. I would expect to be treated as such but the fact that when you said when you use the word racist that's in the eyes of the beholder. Whoever decides to say you're a racist and they pile on a bunch of other people on top of it and they never even talk to that person or have any interaction ever in their life and the outcome is horrible, disgusting. I wasn't brought up that way. I was always treated people equally across the board. I don't care. The color isn't an issue for me. Yeah I'm just concerned about this is like such a hot topic right now and it's like getting rehashed and rehashed and rehashed. I'm not a racist. Why am I considered a racist because I don't agree with something that maybe a black person says even. Do you know what I mean? I mean it's just getting crazy. Like why is it so important for the select board to announce this because to me this is like okay you announced this today then it's going to be something tomorrow then it's going to be something the next day. You know it's just getting I don't know. I have absolutely no problems as a select board member standing behind this statement. I'm going to leave that right there because that's my personal opinion and I am part of the select board but it's no different than the company that I work for having a website and publishing a mission statement. Okay that's their mission statement. It doesn't mean that every employee in the company is 100% behind that mission statement. It's it's who the company affiliates themselves with and I have no problem standing behind this statement from the Waterbury Anti-Racism Coalition because I think that it just I've got no problem saying to anybody that I agree with that statement. I'll jump on that. Sorry Katie go ahead. I said I'm jumping on that with Nat to me this is basically agreeing with what we bring up our kids within school the golden rule treat others the way that you want to be treated so to me that's what this is and your point Kathy of this is going to roll into something else and something else well this our job is to have people come to us with their ideas and we can either say yes or no or maybe have a different idea next time and come back and try to work together with something we'll cross those bridges when we get there but right now we're just talking about accepting other people like us just like us there's no difference to me so just agreeing with this is just respecting other people that's how I did Alec can you let me share this screen just I think it might be helpful to people to be able to read what we're talking about because it's not saying anything about legal requirements or anything else basically saying the statement of affirmation and I don't think anybody even if they are racist can't really justify that it's it's right I just I don't have any shoes with it really either Nat I'll be honest with you I just don't want it to be used as a beating stick like like what happened to me I don't I would hate to have any I agree that if somebody the wrong way they're going to consider you a racist or something you know it's just getting out of hand just read the statement and Chris I don't think that statement is going to be used because I think and and there are folks on both sides folks are on the anti-racist you know they're very quick to sometimes be very politically correct about different issues but I'm pretty comfortable with this statement because this is just our affirmation that we think people are to be treated equal I don't think there's anything in there that's going to bring on further things etc I think it's I don't know I I don't see any harm part of it's cut out bill by our photos there I don't know if you can move it to the center center of the page at all you can you can minimize your photo it's a photo thing so pretty straightforward and pretty plain on its face it's not not anything that is a legal requirement exactly we're not talking about a legal requirement I'm just saying you know things mushroom this is what I've experienced in my life okay you start with this and then becomes that why is it necessary to state this when it it's pretty clear in our laws and everything that you know it's this is almost like a mission statement as that refers to it that we're just very much in in favor of people being treated and I don't think it's you know it goes into legal requirements etc the law is the law this is not this just says we believe in people being treated right that's it it's Mike it's a generic statement that says people need to treat everybody which is fine with here and here right and and to be honest Chris I think I thought how you were treated in that whole thing was reprehensible it was it was a lynch mob not quite as bad as the capital but it was for our local community it was a lynch mob I don't think that's good either this this is basically this is basically a blurb of the bill of rights yep so can you scroll down to the bottom of that statement what's the last thing that you can read oh okay yeah okay so are we looking for a motion I think we need to settle do we just want it on the town's webpage is that where we're going with that that I would call for for a motion to adopt this declaration a move second thank you seconded let's have a vote all in favor say yay yay okay any opposed or abstentions there being none motion carries I saw Mark's name there is Mark are you on yeah I'm on I have terrible in our head you want do you want to take the helm um sure thank you sorry sorry I'm late no problem if things happen all right second on the agenda is the review draft annual meeting warning have people gotten that I don't believe I've gotten a meeting warning and that we'll see it soon and I got it there had it to the desk we've got too many uh want me to try it though oh hang on I just had it I'm getting here all right now I'll try all right there it is sorry about that so um this is the warning that we put together if you remember we're going to vote everything by Australian ballot this year uh so these articles over here uh we're not we've got to fill in the blanks in terms of the numbers um we won't be able to do that until probably next Monday when you'll ultimately have to approve the warning um hey Bill yeah is it possible to make that any larger or never mind if you can't get that's that's as big as it is can get on my screen okay I'll just get closer yeah that's I can't make it any bigger than that sorry so the front office staff that does the collection of taxes is suggesting August 13th was the second Friday in August for the first tax collection date and then the first Friday in November because the second week of November it's right up against Veterans Day and we have problems with the post office so they're suggesting November 10th really the only thing I think that you have to decide upon you agreed last time I guess to have article eight on there shall the town authorize cannabis retailers and integrated licenses in town pursuant to 70s a 863 um um there are actually two questions in that in that statement and there's three options of what can be asked so the way that Carla has written it here this allows cannabis to be sold and also to be the production of cannabis to happen in the town um you can split this article into two if you like and if you want that other language I can try to find it'll take me a little bit it could be two questions one asking the town to allow production in the second allowing retail and one or both could be approved or denied if we leave it this way uh this is all in one and they can do both if this article passes if you think that the town might approve one and deny the other you would want the other language so to just get added to last week's agenda when I was when I wasn't here because I don't recall voting on it to get put on the warning the week before that it was last week I think first we didn't we didn't vote on it but I think in that meeting there was nobody nobody's voted on the board so that's why they added this we were asked we were asked to put this on for the select board's consideration you don't you don't have to vote to put it on a warning to be considered so if the select board doesn't want to ask this at all you just you don't have to make a vote you just tell us you know take it off but three of the board members have to say either leave it on or take it off or change it so there's been no vote on this at all yet except we've been asked to allow the select board to consider it so there it is consider putting it on the warning right yeah and that's what you're doing now if the board is one other article that that we're going to have to put on here but I don't have the language tonight and I can't talk about it in great detail but it has to do with with the child care court case and there's going to be a you know discussion between the parties this week and and then I'll be able to come back to the board next week to see if we need an article or not so you can't approve this tonight anyway because there's one more article that may be necessary to consider and we're going to have to plug the right numbers into these articles over here so tonight is just kind of look at this and see if this so far meets your needs and the last thing I'll say is the to collar in me anyway it seems that the select board was asking that we allow people to vote on each individual special article rather than just lump them all into one which would be like a $59,000 article I kind of like this I I always kind of didn't like the idea of I know it was for you know for to expedite the meeting to not have all sorts of small articles for all these little ones but if you're doing it in the in the voting booth I think that is where people get a real say if they don't really approve of you know some of these organizations it's a lot easier to hit their you know no on on their ballot and I think that's a reasonable thing yes people don't have as in town meeting someone will you know speak for an organization but this I think gives people you know the right to say no where I don't think a lot of people are willing to do that in an open town meeting thank you for opening up that last page I was wondering I said this can't be all all the ones and then you flipped it over I said where where was the $20,000 for the senior center now I see where all the articles are and again I don't see the last page here but it all seems to be appropriate I I personally don't wouldn't especially if we're doing it by Australian ballot it's much easier to have them voted on individually I like the idea individually as well just so we see if maybe there seems to be heavy support for one article versus others and it might just as we try to decide what we're going to do with special articles just to see if there seems to be certain things that might be falling out of support and just help us direct to the funds in the future but I agree I like the specific articles in terms of article 8 I don't personally feel like it needs to be split I think it's either gonna be a yes or no for residents of whether or not they want to support marijuana read or just business in town I think if we use the word integrated I can't remember what the other word is there because it went off my screen but I think there'd be some confusion on what it is I I think just putting it forward but I think it's an important article that needs to get on you know this round just because of what the state has set up for opt-in opt-out and the ability for people to get into this business that we have an obligation to let the town residents decide whether or not they want those types of businesses in this town so those who want to get into that type of business have the opportunity to do so Bill could you again show that third page I kind of just a minute I'll go back to that these are these are the options for article 8 so this one here is the one that is on article 8 right now shall the town authorize cannabis retailers and integrated licensees into town pursuant to 7dsa you can instead of that you can allow this one and this one so you can see this just combines it and you can see down here what the Australian ballot a cannabis retailer means a person licensed by the state to sell cannabis and products on an integrated licensee means a person licensed by the state to engage in the activities of a cultivator wholesaler product manufacturers so when I read this I I thought this one which was article 8 on the warning was simpler than having these two but it's really up to the board I agree Bill I don't think most people including myself would understand what integrated licensees are you know that's that's kind of a very legalese kind of term and I guess you know I think if you include both it's basically people know are you allowing cannabis sales or cannabis activities in town it's already legal to smoke and grow it you know for your own personal consumption right well I don't wish to see article 8 at all period and I think you probably know that by now oh just for the record yeah well that that's my opinion there may be others out there that think like that Chris and you know you're on the select board so you five have to decide whether it's on there or not people have the right to vote no I would say let the people talk I was like democracy yeah this is another question are we going to talk about um the the stipend designated to the senior citizens um before that goes on there officially here it is right here so last week when the senior citizens were here uh Justin the chairman of their board made made the pitch and asked for an increase of $2,500 we have a two pronged way of funding the senior citizens uh there's a $10,000 line there has been a $10,000 line item in the budget you know in the standard budget in the general government but um and and then this $20,000 special article after Justin was here last week I believe the board made a motion to uh well there was consensus anyway I don't know if there was a motion to put $12,500 in the budget and we need $20,000 here in the uh special article so when we get to the budget I mean you can talk about this now Katie if you want but uh that's what my take was last week that you wanted $12,500 in the budget and $20,000 at the special article I agree Bill did you have something that you wanted to ask Katie no I was just wondering um what where we ended up with that um so Mike Mike had lots of questions and Mike Mike suggested that maybe what you say it wasn't yo what's up excuse me I think somebody's hacking into our program here yeah yeah that's not muted how you doing someone leaked someone leaked your zoom it was you who leaked the zoom on twitter you guys can leave this if you don't come on do we have a waiting room for this meeting that we can man I've never seen this happen I won't let anybody know I guess I've heard about this where Carla if you open up the participant list you can also mute and cut off people's video okay another sign if they're if they're hacking into right here they must think that it's important enough to hack into why is that some people are just malicious for the sake of being malicious I've I saw something in a fishing wildlife meeting on fishing regulations that someone act in let's get back to order here um we were talking we were on the screen about the uh warrant right we're talking about the um the senior center budget the senior citizen center yeah last week Mike suggested that maybe this wasn't the year to increase anything there's lots of discussion and debate and ultimately I think Carl and I believe the select board said uh we'll go for the $2,500 increase and we'll do it by adding $2,500 to the budget and keeping the $20,000 special article that's what I remember from the meeting as well yeah if there's no changes on that no there is $2,500 the change the change is in the budget not in the special article right I mean if there's no changes tonight on it we can move on to whatever's next on the warrant there's anything of substantial change on the warrant that you wanted to talk about do you know of any substantial changes bill other than I mean the last the wording overall for the articles over the last few years have been pretty much the same is there anything that stands out to you that's substantial no I think Carla we put everybody on there that was on a year ago right and it was the one organization that went to fun during 2020 but all of these things that appeared in the past one way or the other I mean the standard one through ten or one through nine or whatever over one through yeah one through seven pretty much these are the standard articles we'll just have to put the right numbers in before we're done I think these are all last years so I don't have any issues with this warning at all um Mike's point earlier you know being this year is the first year that we'll have an Australian vote I think we'll probably expose a lot of information as to whether or not you know how many people will be more engaged on on an Australian vote and at a town meeting I certainly hope it doesn't get rid of town meeting uh is there a possibility on you know depending on the special articles how they turn out um if it if we find that a lot of people participate in those special articles well as the rest of it too but particularly special articles is there a way of putting those on Australian now there isn't separating okay no you uh a town gets to choose to act on public questions by formal or by Australian ballot um there may be a I don't want to say definitive no but I don't thank you to you Chris but you know that's a question for next year yeah okay now we haven't talked I know I think it's really important because weren't we planning on having some sort of informational meeting prior to yes we have to and we probably need to set a date for that sooner than later when we when we approve the warning next week you will set the date for that uh information meeting okay I think we're all set mark we want to move on yeah do we need to is there a motion to be made or we need that don't need any ratio because it's all set move on to manager's items library budget and here's the library budget uh that I sent out to all of you over the weekend and the library commissioners are here and all me and all of the library director is here so I'm gonna let them take it away I'll move up and down this page as necessary but I think that's about everything right there you can see it all oh can everybody hear me if you can okay excellent thank you my name is Shannon DeSantis-Guyle and I'm one of the co-chairs of the commission this year um so I say the commissioners are pleased to report that in spite of the library closure at the start of the pandemic our circulation was 73 of what it was in 2019 86.5 percent of what it was in 2018 and we boasted a 156 percent increase in circulation digital materials ebooks and audiobooks proving that our community needs the library more than ever while it has been a difficult and challenging year for all of us we commend all me and her library staff for rising to the occasion their ability to provide library materials through curbside service pivoting pivot offering to virtual programs virtual tech support and continued phone support following the library building closure at the start of the pandemic has been nothing short of extraordinary all me and her staff have worked diligently to keep library services available and robust while keeping taxpayers and her staff safe following all the necessary health and safety protocols we realized over 40 000 dollars of savings in 2020 for the library for the town by cutting and spending and staff hours and that will carry forward for the town in 2021 this budget reflects keeping the library at reduced staffing levels until April 1st when we will determine whether it's safe to open the building and allow the library staff to return to the full hours and bill has numbers up on the screen we are welcoming any questions. Bill I have a general question was the budget that we're seeing here was it the same as what you had sent to us? Yeah okay so this this budget and I explain this to everyone up here this is the recommended tax amount that I okay at the top of the page the 433 535 is the recommended tax amount that I came up with because you know my charge from the select board was to keep the tax rate at 51 cents and I've got three operating budgets and six capital funds that I've got a fund and this is the number that I came up with after a long kind of iduous week I left in here the 14,255 from the trust fund which is the same amount that they transferred last year from the library trust and then put together an expense budget that is 507,830 dollars and that basically is the budget that Almy and the commissioners had asked for I filled in a couple of blanks that we didn't have last week the $61,015 for the two MBOF and a couple of other small things but the 507,830 is pretty close to what the commissioners discussed last week so in a normal year that those revenues and those expenses with last year's fund balance which was $41,028 would bring that budget into balance but here as I said in the memo yesterday the 2021 budget ends with a $16,562 deficit so one of a couple things can happen you can just leave it like that and plan to have a year in deficit and see what happens at the end of the year and typically don't budget for large variances from zero but you could just leave it the way it is and allow the deficit to be on paper and then see what happens at the end of the year or you have to cut expenses or increase revenues to balance this so you could you know cut $5,000 out of the budget and add $11,000 to revenue and balance the budget but that's really up to the commissioners to do the select board's role is to tell the commissioners how much taxes you're going to support in the budget that's really all the select board has to say about it the commissioners certainly can explain what they want to do with their money why this budget of 507,830 supports their program but the select board the only decision you really get to make is how much taxes you're going to support in mind if I ask one of the commissioners whoever could answer the question that 14255 which comes from the trust fund is that a fixed number or is that can't be a percentage of of the overall gain of the of the trust is it I mean that would that number would fluctuate if it was based on a percentage so that must be just a fixed number that you guys kind of calculated somehow to draw out every year as a consistent number can they hear me Bill I can speak to that a little bit it used to be a formula that we would apply based on how the fund did we had moved away from that in the past couple of years because the formula had us contributing more in years where things were good for both us and good for the town and it didn't have us contributing when things weren't good for us in the fund and weren't good for the town so we you know I had talks over the last few years about making that number something more fixed so that we weren't giving more in years where the town didn't necessarily need it and giving less when the town did need it so hence why we moved to something more fixed you know the commission I think has intentions to maybe discuss the merits of that again but that is the reason why it went sort of stayed flat in this budget they understood yep overall I don't think the budgets you know a 16 000 deficit I think that can be dealt with through the avenues that bill bill had suggested I don't see anything that's outstanding that's 61 15 that's just for the uh just for the loan apparently the bond their portion of or what is that bill the two mbof that is just how the library pays its share of the expenses to maintain and operate this building so I've got a different budget for the building fund 76 uh and the library we agreed when we came into the building that we just divided that on a square footage basis so the library has 53 percent of the square footage in the building so the library fund raises 53 percent of the money so that 61 000 gets sent over to fund 76 just like the debt service line does the library pays 53 percent of the debt service for this building because it's most 53 percent of the size of the building when it's built right uh so that goes up and down a little bit every year so that was the only number that I had to plug in this past week that the commission has really hadn't seen before um this weekend like I always you know I want to commend the library and the commissioners for doing a great job keeping things under control under the circumstances it's been tough for everybody and I don't think we're I don't think we're out of it yet and we'll probably won't be any anytime soon uh we'll keep up the good work my my concern is I'm looking at it's really the fund balance is not really the 16 000 plus that's shown at the end because there was a beginning fund balance it's really uh we have a more serious uh fund balance and I'm a little bit concerned to approve a budget with such a large gap I'm going to ask the commissioners point blank are there areas where we can shave the budget down a bit to come closer toward a balanced budget I'm not saying there can't be any fund balance but if you really take you know we're really in a not a negative 16 plus we're really in a negative 57 yeah well just just before they answer like and just so everybody remembers if you look at the left hand column last year they were supposed to have five hundred and three thousand dollars of revenue they actually took in uh almost five hundred and five thousand so they got a couple thousand dollars more in revenue than we had budgeted the library commissioners and the library director from the very beginning of COVID understood the need to try to save money and the the goal was because the library fund just like the highway fund gets all its tax money every year that's how fun the county works we reduced the taxes the tax rate by four cents that all was that reduction all happened in the in the general fund which isn't up on the screen the library got all their tax money in 2020 they worked hard they furloughed staff they cut back hours and everything else you can see here the regular pay you know they spent 90 percent of what their budget was and that was mostly due to furloughs so they ended the year with a four hundred and seventy thousand dollar expense which was about forty thousand dollars less than they were approved and the goal was to generate a pretty big fund balance on a percentage basis you know it's almost uh what is it um um forty one oh twenty eight ten percent uh eight percent something like that of of your budget so this this fund balance we really tried to make a bigger fund balance the plan was the library was going to end the year with a with a uh basically a zero balanced budget that's how we always budget to zero so you're correct Mike that this year the revenues are you know fifty seven thousand dollars lower than the expenses but that's because for the third year in a row the select board has directed me they want a fifty one cent budget and we i mean a fifty one cent tax rate and we all get that the library's four eighty four four thirty last year represented about eleven and a half percent of the total tax dollars and in order to get to to maintain a fifty one cent tax rate um you know i did a lot of things and said all the funds are going to have to take some hit either in reduction in uh spending or in reduction in revenue and this is this is what i came up with so this is really what the select board needs to concentrate on tonight is is this number good enough it's you know can we live with this um i told the library commissioners over the weekend if i were them i would ask you to you know can we increase the tax rate a little bit they haven't done that yet and i'm not sure that they will but um you know if if we if we said we could live with a fifty two cent tax rate instead of a fifty one cent tax rate um you know that's uh that's a one point nine six percent increase that would generate about seventy six thousand dollars and if the library fund got eleven and a half percent of that you could increase that that tax line by eighty seven hundred dollars or so and and that would drop the the negative fund balance at the end of the year almost in almost in half and then the commissioners could decide are we going to add some revenue from the trust or are we going to cut something i think that at the end of the day the budget that goes forward my preference would be that this number here the ending fund balance for december twenty one would be zero that would be our goal to get back to a balanced budget and if we don't we don't but i i really don't like the idea of just leaving the six and five sixty two there uh and see what happens but that's clearly an option yeah well based on your narrative bill that you sent out to everybody um in your request for them for the commissioners to uh somehow take that sixteen five sixty two and turn it to zero i was kind of assuming that was all that was in their lap uh and was assuming that that they were going to deal with that either now or suffer the consequence of having to deal with it as part of next year's deficit um that's why i guess i'm i'm happy with you know the four thirty three five thirty five uh you know that's i guess through this whole general conversation about the this budget um i guess that's kind of why i was wondering back when we'd set the tax rate there in the spring you remember i had mentioned whether or not the select board was willing to meet halfway on the difference between the fifty one and fifty five cent um that we were on right i remember that chris and then and the board decided to go to fifty one right then two months ago when i asked you what you wanted for a tax rate the board said again the goal is to leave it at fifty one so i i understand you know we cut the budget last year and there was some thought on the select board you in particular that said well maybe we should just cut it back to fifty three or something like that but the board made the decision to cut it to fifty one and the board two months ago when they when we said this budget process told me let's keep it at fifty one so you know based based on your narrative bill i mean your projections for twenty twenty two you know i mean that's i guess that's what kind of got the hair up on the back of my neck is that we're going to suffer down the road perhaps um light of making this fifty one cent factory i understand and i i'm not i'm not advocating for the fifty one necessarily i'm i'm i'm just done as i was told and if you want no i didn't say you were doing it you know that's what this discussion's for yeah so we're we're specifically in this part of the conversation talking about library um i guess my question is is we're now halfway through january what's the expectation of the continuation of the savings on the expense side of the library budget at least through i'd say quarter one maybe quarter two and then is that 16 five found during those periods because it looks like the budget for 2021 is matching 2020 but really we're going into a continuation of this covid era of business and does that mean that we're going to find some savings that will match what we really spent in 2020 and then we should be fine i don't i don't necessarily think so mark i understand the question but this 211 445 in 2020 had the staffing level that almi has now with her staff in april of 2020 uh two people were supposed to have hours increased by you know four or five hours a week uh that would trigger you know retirement benefits so that was supposed to happen last year the first quarter of 2020 was uh at a lower rate and then the last three quarters we were supposed to ramp up we didn't do that those hours did not get increased and then of course people got furloughed so we cut back here this 210 for this year as you can see is 1100 of 1400 dollars less than it was last year at this time this maintains those two staff numbers at their current level of hours which is the same level that they were in january of 2020 and this contemplates going up in april there have been a couple of staff changes so um i don't think that the savings the the the staffing and the operating schedule that the library has right now um unless they don't increase that staff hours it's going to pretty much be this 507 which is two thousand dollars less than we budgeted a year ago so i think the answer to your question is no the current covid situation unless we furlough people again is not going to get us anywhere down close to this number i'm going to say unless you see a huge resurgence in this covid and people really get sick to the point where the library's going to get shut down completely um for some time i don't think you'll see too many changes the only thing you could hope for is that maybe somebody donates a little bit to the library let me let me ask a question um another big item besides payroll is books uh we're still in a covid kind of situation are people still caking out books or using more online resources or um i can speak to that this is almy that book a line item even though it's called books actually covers all the materials that we purchase for the taxpayers to borrow so that includes all of our digital subscriptions magazines streaming digital books all of that and all of our print collections and non-traditional items too so it's a little bit of a misnomer to call it just books but that's kind of the simplest thing yeah um i also would like to just clarify one thing that uh that bill said is um this budget for the staff line includes reduced uh somewhat reduced hours of staff through April 1st um as Shannon mentioned the very beginning of our discussion um and and one other thing is it's only one person uh one staff person that was scheduled to have their hours increased by four last year that's the technology librarian whom we are desperately in need of this year as you can imagine with all the virtual things that we're trying to do um but the other person was already at uh above the level that required um retirement benefits uh and she was reduced during covid to below that amount so it's not really a new person getting that it's it's a current staff person going back to their regular hours just wanted to clarify that thank you it is a misnomer because i was going to say in this year of books you know digital materials are probably if that covers a lot of that that's that's really important because i would say if this year if if it was more hard books i would say this might be a year to cut down purchases but if that's digital media yeah and i i collection purchase if you want yeah i did uh i did transfer uh a fair amount of our quote unquote print book budget into digital resources when the building was completely closed and we weren't even doing curbside once we started curbside i really saw the demand for print go back up people wanted all those new books their favorite authors the bestsellers so i had to you know reshift things a little bit at that point michael you're that's the question before too are there any places in the budget that seem to be i guess low hanging fruit or places that could be easily cut i think you know given the work we've done and bill gave a very nice summation just now of where we're at i think um there's nothing that can be reduced in this without feeling it um feeling it somewhere um so i guess our we we were um we would like to get a better idea of from the select board what your position is on moving the needle a bit past 51 cents to close this gap or at least do something to contribute to closing the gap well you probably have to hang around for the rest of the meeting they end to get that answer unfortunately the answer tonight i mean whatever the answer is will be communicated and then we can act on that yeah that's what this discussion is all about and we we have discussed that kind of before and i think you know with every with all the community feeling the pinch of covid i think the sentiment of the select i can't speak for every member of the select board but i think we were it was a strong consensus to hold a line on revenues that we collect from the community i think with people hurting to ask for more to balance i'd rather see i hate to say everyone's going to need to tighten their budget if someone's without a job they're doing that already so i think we as a town need to follow suit yeah Curtis Osler i'll just just to simplify i guess what dan was saying is where so what is your decision where is your decision on the hour proposed number what is the select board seeing what are they suggesting we do i'm happy with it for right now you know we still got a lot more to talk about tonight but i'm i'm satisfied with what i'm seeing i'll have the rest of the board thank god question for you is there a way that they could take a loan out from us and then they would pay us and then we would keep their interest in everything too um well probably not kidding typically you know you don't borrow money for operating expenses if they if they were going to uh you know have to do something real expensive in terms of equipment purchase or something like that the you could consider that i i've contemplated that in in 176 the the line the budget that this 61015 goes to i told the board a couple weeks ago we've been having some heating problems so rather than put the full i mean the full $20,000 that we probably need this year to pay for that problem is in that 176 budget but in that budget i have proposed borrowing that money from ourselves just so we don't have to make this 61 in the library's budget if we did it all in one year it would have to be like $11,000 higher so i've already done that somewhere else but directly into this budget that would not make sense what is the balance of the trust fund $565,000 i think my concern is the obviously the the negative number at the end and then ongoing the concern of what happens in 2022 and we don't have a balance to carry forward um i i think i think mark everybody has agreed that the 165 62 deficit won't be there so if we i think what chris has said is he's happy with what this looks like in terms of the 433 in terms of the 507 830 and he would be willing to lead it to the commissioners to figure out how to close that $16,500 that correct that is correct yeah i guess i'm just hearing from dan wondering if we would be willing to um try to increase what is in orange i think that'll shake out all the rest of the discussion that's kind of why i'm anxious to go on to some of the rest of it so we can get to that point didn't mean to interrupt you there mark yeah i mean it as long as i'm not hearing a lot of concern about that i'm happy moving forward from this discussion with that number but i am starting to feel like once we get into the discussion surrounding cip and other fund balances that we might need to consider moving off the 51 cents but um i at least i feel like uh you've done a very good job trying to control costs this year and i would assume it would happen again in 2021 but i don't i i just don't like putting anyone in a situation where they can't do do their programming because we're underfunding them either so i'm a little concerned there does and i know that we haven't made that decision yet and i'm sure the library commissioners says uh as um incredibly entertaining as this discussion is they probably don't want to hang around for all the rest of it does everyone kind of just so the commissioners have a clue if if the select board decides to increase the tax rate from 51 cents to something are you all also okay with doing that proportionally in other words the library fund gets 11 and a half percent of whatever whatever increase is yep that's an if yeah yeah i understand it's an if might but if i i'm just trying to set the table so they understand yeah because you you couldn't say sure we're going to increase the tax rate two cents and tell me to put it all in uh in the cip and you know that doesn't get anything so i'm just kind of let them understand what we all agree the rules of the game are if there is some more tax revenue can we can we also look at in the trust fund because i'm sure if their investments are anywhere like most investments this was a pretty good year when it came to the end to where investments would be as to possibly as part of the solution to bump up that trust fund contribution just i think i already touched on that earlier yeah the commissioners have that role the trust did well this year you know it's been really well given that if you looked at it in uh in april you know it was down a lot but right now just so everyone knows the library trust fund what was the increase this year that's what we wanted to 2020 with a 496 thousand dollar fund balance i mean with a 500 thousand dollar fund balance 576 was the fund balance on December 31st 2019 they gave 14,255 and the trust increased by 79,000 so the fund balance went up from 576 to 565 so it increased 65,000 dollars in 2020 no and as recently as 2018 i think the contribution was 35,000 but as dan said the library commissioners along with the select board frankly you know kind of talked about that the select board decided with the tax stabilization fund to go to the voters and ask for the ability to take out up to five percent of the ending fund balance of any given year the library commissioners have not set really that policy they moved away from the the old formula that they had under the old formula they'd probably be you know giving 35,000 dollars and this might be the year that that old formula really worked well because we had a tough year in terms of our budget but the investments did very well so i just like to speak to that if i can i understand the temptation to say oh there's this big pot of money there just take some of that the fund is there to be in perpetuity and this isn't even a retirement fund where we know we're holding it until we retire and then we can start spending it the idea is the fund needs to be sustainable so yes it is certainly an option to look at taking some more money from the fund if we need to but if we keep getting into that every year we lose more and more of the fund it's not sustainable we need to look at this as a sustainable fund current is this point too once if we go too far down that road we also start masking the actual costs of running the library um those two concerns i think make us be very uh cautious with with that number i don't think anybody's you know we're all aware of that possibility and uh i think under the circumstance that nobody's asking to down that rabbit hole taking larger larger amounts and sustaining taking those larger amounts i think this is a one-time consideration at least in my perspective um just to mitigate this year's issue all things can change here in our near future i don't want to get into speculating but but if i could if i could clarify then that what this like board is asking us to do is account for that $16,562 deficit and zero balance is that is that what you're saying unless the tax rate goes up and then maybe things look different correct i think i think you know to say that your hope solid to that number right now is uh premature um again we need to get through the rest of the budget discussion come to a landing as to what we're going to decide on a tax rate number uh then those that decision particularly and along with some others will be firmed up at that point you know and then then we take the ball and run with it from there oh i think it's premature to get too worked up about that this is just a draft of what is possible uh and by the end of tonight hopefully we can either mitigate some of that or we may end up finding that that along with those other proposals are our I guess our best option we won't know until okay and it's getting later as we go ready to move on yeah i think we can move on to the overall budget review if that's okay with everyone okay okay thank you all thank you library commissioners do you have any other thank you the library does a great job thank you thank you for your support okay so i'll put the highway budget up first um and you know you can you see here at the top of the page to get to the 51 cent tax rate and you know cutting the library's taxes as significantly as we did we still have to get there between the highway fund and the general operating fund and as I said in the uh in the narrative you know in one sense we're very fortunate that we have over a million dollars that's going into capital funds and that's funding those capital funds all of that money is not going to be spent in in the year in you know 2021 uh it's it's funding capital expenses down the road as well and for now I took the approach that you know in order to have a tax rate in the 51 52 cent range for three years in a row without gutting uh real operational services the only way to really get there well it's not the only way but the way that I thought best to get there was reducing our contributions into the capital fund and because so much of the capital fund um transfer comes out of the highway fund uh you know about 850 thousand last year versus about you know 180 or 200 thousand out of the general fund that in the highway fund it was really the place to go to get the money so you can see there's a half a million dollar reduction in taxes going into the highway fund that looks great except if you look at the general fund you know the taxes going into the general fund are significantly higher a couple of things and I pointed this out in the memo as well Bill Carla wanted something are you are you intending to screen share something didn't I no no I'm looking at my other screen to get the information there there's nothing on this screen all right hang on I don't know why it's not I don't know why it's not there hang on a second I apologize I was actually was hoping that you'd go to the general government first but well I can but I gotta my computer is freezing up it's not letting me do anything I'm our internet went down so I lost most of what I had typed but that might put us back up now yeah I mean it's going to be brief yeah so I'm out of everything all right let me try to get that back again I had to close out of everything you want to do the general fund budget first Chris yeah I kind of would like to start there if we could if nobody has any objections well I can't wait until we can have regular meetings in person again you ain't kidding something must be wrong with our computer system Carla because I can't get into anything maybe it's got the COVID and the settings are the same as they were an hour ago remnant you want one of us to try to share and we can navigate it while you talk about it yeah I can't do that because I can't get anything on my computer to open no idea how to do any of that I try to share but I'm going off my cell phone and I have a feeling it's not going to work for you okay can you open it all right are you seeing my screen now yes doki doki yeah which one of these bell gg in general government you can see at the top property taxes last year were 1832 and we actually collected or bill 1522 or whatever that is it's time to read and so about 309,000 210,000 down and that was the reduction in the tax rate from 55 cents one cents this budget for the general fund is proposing 2,129 in property taxes so 309 is not delinquent then no that 309 is just the difference between what we wanted to build and what we built between the 51 and the 55 yeah yeah so the 55 would have built out 18 1.8 million the 51 build out so anyway the tax rate or the the taxes here even with 51 cents and you can see over on the right this is what I proposed for the for the three funds two one up at the very top here on the right 8212, 2129 for the general fund 1.33 for the highway and 433 for the library and that 3.894 is the total that we raised in 2020 and we'll raise again in 2021 if we get no increase in the grand list so there might be a little fudge the grand list might increase a little bit but it's estimated the tax rate for 21 at 51 cents so so Bill can I I need to just ask some questions okay while you're going through this so the 2129 that's proposed for 2021 that's out of 51 cent tax rate as well yeah okay Chris can you see the little chart there on the right yes I see that Bill is that based on a grand grand list if 2020 I just explained it Chris 22129 plus 1.331 for highway plus 433535 the library that comes up to 3.89429 that's what we raised last year that's what we will raise this year with a 51 cent tax rate now the grand list might go up a little bit so if we if we budget 3.894 and divide it by something a little higher than 7.635 the tax rate will be a little bit less but right now I'm planning a zero percent increase in the grand list and a 51 cent tax rate and it comes up to 3.894 divided up those two ways by the three plus okay you understand that well do you I mean don't get mad Chris I'm not the one getting mad okay I was just trying to figure out why the huge increase in the property taxes themselves from 2020 if the tax rates are the same why why the huge jump in tax revenue I didn't know if it was from a grand list increase or am I missing something you're missing something the deck has been reshuffled last year we raised three million eight hundred ninety four thousand two hundred ninety you see that number on the right side there I do okay last year that's what we raised last year that three eight nine four two ninety was one point eight million for the general fund it was one three three three one for the general fund last year it was one point eight million for the highway fund last year it's 484 for the library last year this year it's just split up this way 2.1 in the general fund 1.3 in the highway fund and 4.33 in the library fund it adds up to the same thing 1.3 now that's because of the half million dollar reduction in the highway that we looked at just earlier that's why it's down to that number right and I was trying to explain before that it's because I used the general the shift to the the I lowered the transfer to the CIP's and most of that money comes out of the highway fund so it's just the deck is shuffle that's all yep I understand okay so between the three funds this year let me see if I can get my narrative to come up so I can just read it anyway if not I can pull up dual screens up here too though I got it so anyway the the library fund and the highway fund ended with significant surpluses at the end of 2020 the general fund ended with only a $25,000 deficit so the three funds together our fund balance coming into the year was about $150,000 and as I said in my narrative in a normal year if we came forward with $150,000 to the good it would be a pretty easy budget here but what you have to remember is that last year's budget over over on the left hand column there for all three funds needed 55 cents to operate we came in with an operating surplus of $150,000 even though we collected 305 or filled 305,000 less in taxes and these things that are in yellow are really the big question max so if you remember at the beginning of COVID I wondered what is going to happen with our payments from the state I think in my memo what was it like $700,000 that we that we got from the state in in 2020 we got $334,000 of pilot money we've got a hundred and two thousand dollars of current use money 91 92,000 of forest and parks money 113,000 of highway fund money I don't know what's going to happen with those intergovernmental transfers from the state I'm hoping the highway fund the forest and parks and the current use will be maintained at their 2020 level because they have a general fund funding source the pilot money though we know that revenues for rooms and meals taxes in particular and sales and alcohol are down so what I've got right now is I'm figuring last year we got 234 in pilot payments and we put 234 in the general fund and we bought 100 in the paving fund this year I've got 175 coming into this fund and I've got $20,000 going into the paving fund so that's 195,000 which is which is about 60% of what we got last year and you know a week ago I was figuring that we were going to get 40% so this number is already a little bit on the roll the dice high side I think and we won't know we're not going to know any answers to these kind of questions for several months yet probably on the pilot we won't know until October we won't know anything else on these state payments at least until the state budget is far ahead of where it is right now so these are just kind of placeholders and I'm hoping that we can get this amount okay if you want to go down please stop at the bottom of the revenues right there so you can see last year the difference were $276,000 in revenues which means we actually did better in a lot of revenues than we anticipated that pilot in particular island coast speeds which are up a little higher we did a lot better on that but the total revenues were still down by $276,000 and you can see here that the revenues are up a lot but that's that kind of because the deck is reshuffled on the taxes so it's really not a good apple to apples comparison. Katie's go up a little bit here up a little bit so does the board have any questions about the service fees that I've budgeted here most of them are rec program numbers we talked about that a couple weeks ago with Nick and the right the rec program's actually because of the grants that we've got this year they weren't as big of a loss a loss either as we anticipated but we still have a net expense for all rec programs any other questions all right go on down to expenses Katie go right to the bottom of the general government right there so the general government budget is up by about $12,000 from budget to budget you can see they're yellow last year we budgeted to transfer $15,000 to the cemetery fund we ended up not sending them anything I'm proposing sending them half this year I think it's important that we continue to fund the cemetery fund even though they have a reserve fund of their own so it's the power's responsibility to maintain those cemeteries and if we go back to not funding it at all out of the general fund then when we have to someday it's just a big increase so it's a small amount of money but I think we can get back to the 15 incrementally I talked about the county taxes that's up a few you know five eight lines from that last week it's up $21,000 but that's only because we didn't send them the $21,000 we owed in November they told us we could wait until April so that's really a wash there's not much else go up a little bit Katie so any questions there at all let's say of course you don't know I was gonna say it pilot isn't going to be determined till October I mean cemetery fund I hate to say this is that is that on the table well of course it's on the table you you can do whatever you think you have to do last week I had that at the full 15 to return them to what you know what they've historically been getting it's been $15,000 since we started funding it it's not ever gone up so you know if we were increasing it by the rate of inflation even it would probably be up in the $35,000 range now we didn't give them the money last year just to kind of try to save cash if you want to cut that out we can I don't know that we need at this time but yeah so Katie go on down to the to the next budgets public safety I have been in communication with major Jonas of the state police our contract expires in at the end of June I I've been working with her on the language for the new contract and I tried to incorporate what Chris asked which was to provide a little bit more flexibility on the hours that maybe on occasion we could get some you know Saturday daytime coverage in the light I've got a response from her and she said we're not going to be able to kind of give you an answer until we get a lot further along in the state's budget process that's a little bit scary but even if they said no right now I think our answer would be we wouldn't have a police department at all and that would be you know that's what would happen for 2021 I think I kind of think that given the state has a challenge with its budget that you know they don't have more personnel because of this contract with waterway they're just dedicated to people to cover waterway and I would find it pretty amazing if they decided to give up a $300,000 source of revenue without making the corresponding cuts but this this 383 year that's a 5% increase it was a three-year contract we paid $365,100 all three years they have not communicated back to me yet so it's really a placeholder right now and it's pretty likely we're going to have to just carry whatever number we think it's going to be and then react to it later we'll just have to pay the bill so any questions on the police thing okay keep going okay talked about the fire department last week and I talked last week about the fact that the the siding on the on the station that we need to fix we should fix that out of the the fire stations funds which is one of the capital funds and this proposal is to put $20,000 into that fire station cip and Gary's estimate to do the work on the building was $5,000 and I'd like to have that $15,000 in the fire station cip going forward you know if we were putting $3,000 a year in from when the station got built we'd have about you know 24,000 or 27,000 I think by the end of this year and we don't have anything in there right now so we could cut that back to one 177 if you wanted to send the 7,000 or 5,000 to the to the cip fund and spend the 5,000 and still have nothing to reserve the reason I left this here you know initially I was going to trim this down and trim it down proportionately from what I do in the in the highway funds but the fire contract that we have with Duxbury speaks to the the expense that we have for our operating budget and if we didn't have this two capital funds lying here in the operating budget that's pretty wouldn't be paying for any of the you know ongoing equipment and you know infrastructure expenses so we show this here so that it's part of what Duxbury pays us and I don't I mean I would be willing to move that back down to 177 for this year if you wanted to but I wouldn't want to go below that because the whole point of the contract with Duxbury is to have them pay their fair share of our expenses for the fire service and were they I missed obviously I wasn't here last week so I apologize and ask this question but uh contract with them how did that compare to year before that it's uh did we give anything more away I guess last year the contract from Duxbury was 114,075 and I think it's uh it's about 113 something this year actually going down yeah it's because it's because our spending it's a backward looking um contract so if you can see here because we cut spending in 2020 we only spent 97 percent of the fire budget so the contract is based on what we spent last year and because we cut the budget a little bit it goes down a little bit but it's it's an incremental reduction so go ahead down Katie we're all set there I guess all this stuff is pretty pro forma I did include money in here for the animal control officer last week it was I think 10,400 and that was the $500 a month plus an hourly wage rate of I don't know 16 or 17 dollars an hour they had to go out for calls but we're already halfway through January we don't have somebody the 6500 would do that from April to the end of the year figuring that we're probably not going to get anybody before a town meeting so I cut that a little bit last year you can see we budgeted 500 I know Mike has been kind of strong that we shouldn't have to pay too much for this but we don't have an animal control officer and we've been advertising you know it's been advertised several times I had somebody reach out to me about three weeks ago right before Christmas saying that they were interested they told me they'd get back to me right after new years and I haven't heard boo from them since so it's not a job that too many people want I guess continued down we talked about the pool budget you know I've mixed feelings about the pool we've got the pool over there we don't run the pool we actually you know the pool costs more to run than we can take in on it but the rec committee and Nick feel that having the pool is really a big plus for the rec program it's about the same cost as we budgeted last year so that's that continue down talk about all this revenue stuff I mean all this recreation stuff with Nick a couple weeks ago and a lot of the line items in the programs up a little higher you know there all these expense lines are dependent upon how many kids sign up and if enough kids don't sign up for that mini camp line we just don't run the camp so there's a pretty good revenue stream that backs up the rec programs continue on Katie you know they would like to go back to kind of more normal operations you can see here that I've cut that down in a normal year we have a part-time guy that helps in the parks and we budgeted 19 five we didn't hire that part-time person last year but we didn't have any all means going on so we didn't have to maintain the parks as much as we have in the past we just did it with our standard crew we didn't use the highway departmenters as often to cut so that's why you can see that regular pay we only spent 14 000 instead of the 22 that we budgeted regular pay that's one of the highway guys and that just kind of shifts his expenses around from a department department I put the highway person back to what we've been doing the last several years but I cut $6500 out of the part-time pay line name and then at the bottom in yellow I cut the transfer from the parks to the capital fund from 5600 to 1200 just because that's a place that we can we can cut expenses go ahead Katie planning budget we talked about that with Steve a couple weeks ago um that's uh slightly down and scroll down just to hear more Katie so you know that's down $8400 some of that reduction is because we moved some of the grant line item work out of this budget to the cemetery budget because that's where the tree stuff is going to happen but the revenues also went over to the cemetery fund as well so this is down slightly we're still we we almost met our budget with planning fees this year we budgeted 24 we took in about 235 the staff is recommending for 2021 no increases in fees again just for the sake of expressing we know it's tough out there for people okay that's it really Katie go down the debt management I cut the interest rate down a little bit I looked back last year we came into the new year with about a half a million dollars in the bank this year we've got 1.7 million dollars in the bank because of the big amount of borrowing and debt right at the end of September I mean right at the end of December so we shouldn't have to borrow as much in anticipation of taxes we overspent that interest line you can see there we budgeted 5800 we spent 12-8 mainly because we didn't have a tax collection in August and we had to keep borrowing right through until we started collecting money later in the year for taxes and this year I budgeted a couple thousand dollars less than last and it's about nine thousand dollars less than we paid special articles is just special articles when we pass the budget Katie just for your information this 56900 special articles will actually not not show up in the budget because they're not really budgeted until the people vote to do it so that this special articles budget is just assuming they all pass and if they all pass it's costs 56900 dollars which is about five sevenths of a penny on the tax rate if some of them don't pass it will be a little bit lower but they can see we ended the year with a 25 000 dollar scroll up a little bit Katie right there we had up a little bit we ended the the year with about a 25 000 dollar deficit in the general fund we did have a little bit higher beginning fund balance that I anticipated that always changes when I do the budget I'm pretty conservative we get to we get to post expense I mean revenues that we received through the end of February back to last year so we did pretty well on the collection of the link with taxes last year between January and February so when we ended the year we had about an 85 000 dollar fund balance but by the time we got to where the auditors post the fund balance it was really 40 000 dollars more so that helped us this 25 099 frankly I think probably we'll go down a little bit from here it will be less good than it is right now but I can't say that for sure it's it's a little tough this year to collect the link with taxes then it has been in the past just because I think more people really don't have the tax money to pay it's not that they're being lazy they just don't have it so the fund balance may drop a little bit but anyway that that fund balance gets carried forward and we end up the year right now with 800 about an 800 dollar proposed surplus for the end of the year go all the way back up to the top king all the way up to the top of the whole spreadsheet there you go so if we didn't have this taxes at 2.1 if we had the taxes only at 8.8 like we did last year you know would be 300 000 dollars in the whole given what this budget looks like and part of the whole is not knowing what this revenue from the state is the pilot money and the forest and parks and the produce um I think we'll get 175 but will we get that other 20 that's going into the paving fund if you had asked me last week I had budgeted I think that we were going to get maybe 140 all together so this is a little bit more um risky than we were a week ago Bill do you have any indication of what this either through VLCD or somebody there what the state's contemplating for education taxes you know I keep hearing this 9 increase yeah that's what you've heard Chris is the last that I've heard um they just they just convened last week on Wednesday so they're not really very far into it um and you know they they've had all kinds of revenue problems as well you know the whole state's budget obviously is funded by income taxes sales taxes rooms and meals taxes fees and everything and all of that's down I did hear last week that uh the the actual numbers are looking less bad than they they were projecting a couple of months ago but you know I'm sure it's nowhere near what they had what they have built their budget to take it well I also was talking to a gentleman today whose wife works for the state and apparently they're having conversation about about their pension issues um that that's becoming a real problem for him too so they're saying that the state employees are going to have to cough up more and oh I'm I'm just I want to be prepared for first case scenario from the state you know your pilot your pilot projection there you know I think is I wanted it to be Chris yeah I'm I'm I'm guessing the same thing you know and uh to your point on the the state pension the state treasury came out and recommended through the legislature last week that they actually cut the pension promises made to the state employees and to the teachers and I think if they do that they'll try to cut the promises to the new people that they're hiring not change it to the old ones but I don't know that for certain fortunately the municipal pension system it's all funded by the state's municipalities the state doesn't put any money into the municipal pension system and of the three pension systems the municipal the state employees and the teachers the municipal pension fund is the strongest of all three um it's not a hundred percent but it's it's up there so uh anyway Bill and Chris there was an article uh today on vermont digger in regards to that um treasurer pierce was indicating more of existing retirees weren't going to be affected but you'd probably see is that there's going to be a change to what the benefits are to people who've not retired in the state and again it seemed like the bigger cut is going to happen to the existing teachers funds because that's the biggest nut to crack so I would take a look at that if anyone hasn't seen that from on digger article it's pretty interesting she talked about no colas going forward right no costa with increases um so to your point chris that's and and while the library people were here um I think Chris and mark and I to a degree expressed well maybe we can incrementally push this up but I think the other the elephant in the room always is that education fund and I think you know the select board when you told me two months ago to target a 51 cent tax rate I really didn't push back because I'm concerned what's going to happen on the education fund and it all comes out of our same pockets um and we do you know I don't like underfunding the the capital funds to the degree that I've proposed here uh I think we can stand it for one year as I said uh last week when we looked at the capital budgets let me see if I can get my computer to work again I want to put something off if I can Katie you can take that one down if you want yeah she already did yeah I can get back in hang on let me get that capital phone up all right and you see if I can share the screen here so here's the cip fund so this is the paving fund last year we had a hundred thousand dollars from pilot going in here this year I've got 20 and I've cut the transfer from the highway fund into this budget from 447 to 655 from 447 655 to 256 430 and we already talked about that grant if we don't get that grant we'll have we won't be able to quite pay as much as we've got here but anyway the paving fund is not too much changes but remember last week and this is where I think we can make some adjustments in this infrastructure fund you can see here the debt principle of 12 five that we budgeted in 2020 and the 2,500 of interest that we budgeted that was to pay the loan back to us so we borrowed 125,000 dollars and from the tax stabilization fund we're paying it off at 12,500 a year we lowered the interest rate last year after COVID so we went from a four percent interest rate to like one and one and two quarter percent or something like that but you can see here in 2021 the debt payment is 41,700 dollars if you go down here to the vehicle fund this is the same thing 28 four that's what we're paying to the tax stabilization fund but in 2021 it's 80,400 that would be 80,400 we'd have the 28 four still going to ourselves that's 52,000 dollars there of the 1.3 billion dollars that we borrowed for all the fire trucks and the roadside mower and everything else if later this year the select one allows us to refund that note the note was one million three hundred and sixty six thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars right now we're planning on amplifying that thing over five years so it's about 250,000 dollars a year if we advertise it over say 15 years instead of over five years we drop that payment down to 91,000 dollars so this cip budget right now even with this reduction of the transfers you can see here into the highway vehicle fund we we were scheduled to put 149,395 in last year we did so that was the same budget that I was planning on carrying forward this year but I cut it to 85,575 here and this budget with the things that we decided to buy and spend on right now these consolidated balances we ended 2020 with six hundred and five thousand dollars almost in the cip fund we were when we reviewed the cip last week this ending balance was about 365 for the year now because I've cut so many of those transfers and reduced the pilot money if we keep everything here exactly as it is we end the year with 181,377 but this 181,377 includes making a 253,000 dollar debt payment to pay off that 1.366 million dollar loan and if we drop that from say 255 or whatever the number is to 91 like I just talked about you know that that would go up by 164,000 dollars right there alone I think you've got to refund that note Chris you weren't here last week but of the 1,366, we wouldn't I don't think we should refund at all there's some of that stuff that we bought like you know highway trucks that have a five or six year or eight year life expectancy and you wouldn't want to refund you wouldn't want to pay those over 15 years but the fire trucks you know you could refund you could pay those off over 20 years because they have a 20 year life and I thought when I was talking last week about this that that I would kind of do it in such a fashion that we could that we could we could let the note help pay that off say in 15 years instead of five can you yeah but that 1.3 million that included the two fire trucks the tractor yeah the two fire trucks the tractor a couple of pickup trucks you can see here so the way here's the 1.366 million that we bought right and you can see here 11,000 went into the wreck fund and that paid for the roof on the on the pool building and that you know that's a legitimate capital expense that you could refund that over 15 years 950,000 of that 1.3 went to to buy those fire trucks you could legitimately refund those over 15 years 260,000 went here into highway vehicles and the the roadside mower was 116 of that and then this tandem truck which we haven't finished paying for yet because we don't have it yet was the other so I was thinking that we were in the up here in the infrastructure fund this 145 is basically paying for the main street project which is a legitimate you know expense over time so you know I haven't I haven't recommended the amount to refund Chris but maybe what we would do is take the 1.366 million and and let's say pay off 300,000 of it over five years and pay off a million of it over 15 years but we can decide that later we don't have to decide how much we're going to refund now but all I'm saying is that if we refund that note all of these debt service lines that are contributing to this $181,000 deficit down here right they all can be reduced and we won't be in such a hole yeah well at this point I mean I I agree I don't mind amortizing what vehicles we can out to you know not necessarily to their entire life expectancy but the short of time period that we need to and still be able to delete that 181 my bigger concern is not to use all our powder dry powder now use what we need to to to eliminate that deficit and save whatever we can you know if we happen to have a need to do that similar well I don't know if we can next year because we'll have you need a larger you need more more substantial items to be able to go to the bank and say hey can we amortize this out further but I mean we there are things that we can borrow by note we're in pretty good shape ourselves you know we still have the capability of borrowing from ourselves you know the tax stabilization fund you know performed performed well this this year despite the big you know loss that we had in spring early in 2020 but you know that fund is still even with the reduction of $50,000 that we took out this year the fund was a million 1000 at the end of 19 and it's 997,000 now so you know it's down four or five thousand dollars from last year and we're paying that back you know we're we're we're paying all these loans back to ourselves it's at a lesser interest rate than it was but it's still a reasonable rate of return so you know we're in an okay position I do think you know I hated to reduce the transfers into the CIP by as much as I did but to get to the 51 tax rate 51 set tax rate we needed to do that I think this fund can stand this reduction for one year and next year we would have to go back and next year of course you know if we go back I don't think anybody expects the tax rate to stay 51 cents forever you know we'll we'll have a little bit of an incremental increase but it's a it's a challenge to keep the same tax rate for three years in a row I think we were 52 cents in 18 or in 19 and then we dropped to 51 this year now trying to stay there again I'm talking to a few friends today there we all agreed that we'd rather see incremental increases in our tax rate than huge jumps how any given year uh even if it means even if it comes with a little bit of pain but well the inflation rate right now is um running at about 2.1 percent the last I looked the other day if you multiply a 51 set tax rate by 1.021 it goes to a 52 set tax rate so the 2 percent increases one penny on the tax on the tax rate um if we were at 55 cents and this is what I said in my narrative that we're in 55 cents like we had planned to be in 2020 and it increased 2 percent that would be up to about 56.25 or something like that so we're still behind the curve a little bit but I hate to push it too much this year um 51 maybe 52 cents a 2 cent increase 51 cents would be a 3.9 percent increase Chris I I agree I I don't like the idea that um we get through this year at 51 and then most likely jump back to 55 or hopefully not beyond but I just if we already got approval from the voters prior to COVID to go to 55 cents we took aggressive measures and dropped down to 51 I really don't like seeing these fun balances as low as as they are and potentially in the negative without this restructuring some debt I personally would rather see us go to like 53 cents and take all of that additional funds into the CIP to just protect ourselves from whatever might come down the road and and not hit everyone hard in one single year but you know we're still we would still be under what we were approved last April to bill out but we're at least protecting ourselves financially then I don't know that's that's my feeling on it I don't necessarily know if I want to offer any of those additional increases to the library necessarily um through our discussion but I do think that we should consider a higher number than 51 cents this year yeah I I agree I hate I hate deep you know I'm the last guy and I've said it a hundred million times before the HC increases in taxes uh but I think we're going to be feeling the pain of this damn COVID for another couple three years and hopefully things will get better with the people that are really having a tough time um whether they're slowly getting back on their feet or they manage to jump back back into things it's not going to be any less painful to them if we have to jump huge tax jump you know next year or yeah I guess I'm willing to take the gamble I I agree with mark as well uh you know a 53 cent tax rate is still obviously it's two cents lower than we set for a year ago and it's it's about three point three and a quarter cents lower than it would be if we had a two percent increase on that 55 so you know you are even with a couple penny increase you are in effect holding the line still I think we have a better chance of holding a line whatever it might be if it's 53 cents next year if we go to 53 cents now if we use like I said if we use all our dry powder now we get into trouble next year where the hell do we turn I'd rather take roll of dice and I mean what's worse worst thing that's going to happen is they're going to vote us down at Australian ballot and we'll be back to the drawing board um just circling back to the library a little bit and I know nobody you know bound you to swear a note that you are going to share with the library the increase just so you know if you if you increase the tax rate to 53 cents a two cent a two cent increase on the grand list is going to get you somewhere in the 150 let's say 152 500 just to kind of split the difference you gave it 152 500 if you kept all of that and put it all into the cip's like you're suggesting that would be that would be my preference as well um 11 and a half percent of the 155 or the 152 152 5 11 and a half percent of that would be 17,530 to the library which is even a thousand dollars more than they need I might suggest rather than live by that formula of 11 and a half percent that if you decide to go to 53 just tell the library I would give them something if I was gonna say I'd give them five thousand bucks five thousand dollars and say you know uh we we can't afford to give you the whole 11 percent but we'll give you five thousand dollars of it I think they would be good with that do the other members of the board have I I mean I know Mike you had mentioned earlier I don't know if you've changed your position on this but I'd be interested to hear from you Katie and Nat what your feelings are on like somewhat at first I was really wanted to hold the budget at 51 cents I might be I still I know you're talking about 53 I might say like go to 52 have somewhat a little bit of an incremental I don't want to give I think we have to keep a lot of the department's budgets somewhat in line because we're in a very precarious situation and by increasing numbers you know via taxes that kind of give some of the department signals all week you know we could restore ourselves and I'm I am concerned about that especially I like the idea what was just said about the library throw them a bone give them five thousand dollars and you have to find find the rest so we could have a you know somewhat balanced budget I don't know I you know I was at first I was going to say I'm sticking hard to 51 I could see a little bit of an increase so if we do have future increases it wouldn't be so much so bad but 52 cents looks a little kinder in in my lexicon so you got a hundred and eighty thousand dollar deficit in the cip right now well that's where I'm looking at most of that coming from is where you will we could restore a little bit into the cip budget I think probably it's going to still stick bill back in the the the mindset that he's going to have to something else in order to make up the difference just remember though the 181 deficit in the cip if we refund that note it's going to it's going to be more than 25 thousand dollar range as far as the deficit is concerned not it won't be 181 without doing anything I still think whatever you raise should go to the cips I agree because that's where you know not it's not just alliance here almost all of the cuts were made to the to the cip I mean I made some incremental changes let me put one other budget up here because I want to make sure that Chris in particular because that's that's the easiest place to get big ticket numbers where some of the other budgets harder to get you know those big reductions needing to keep taxes in line bill did bill did you ever have a rule that you try to set as cip balance as a percentage of overall budget and you would try to get to that every year because I do fear that obviously cip mark cip seems to be the easiest place to pull funds from but the whole idea behind this is to continually try to fund it every year for large expenses and I know we've had some large ones in the last couple years but as we all know there's other large ones coming I understand that mark and the answer is no we've talked about it a lot but you know we've had we've had kind of several things over the years that have ordered us from doing that you know we we had the financial crisis in the late 2000s I am muted bill we had the financial crisis in the late 2000s then we had the flood so we we've always kind of done this three steps forward one and a half steps back kind of thing with the cip and we've never we've never had a policy that we're going to have you know five percent of our budget or any percent it's we've just never done that let me put one more thing up just so Chris can see this I want to ask you another question Bill that two percent are two percent of the main street construction project that ends this year yeah in that number two I've taken the cip number down but I put that in the narrative that number will also come down I think I had a hundred and sixty thousand dollars in there again for 2021 it's going to go down there's only about two million dollars of the whole project left there's some things that are not participating that we have to pay the full freight on but you know two percent of two million dollars is 40 so I think that that 160 that I'm carrying in the cip right now for the main street project can drop down probably to 50 or 60 thousand dollars but I want to check that with Woody and Barb first so that I'm glad you remember that Chris that's another place where we'll pick up some money well I guess my point is we don't have it in our lap next year right right it will not be there anymore so that that'll be a big boost to us yep so here's the highway fund budget and you can see I've done I don't think this general aid to highway is going to go down like the pilot payment is what I have budgeted about a 15 percent decrease here just because I know state revenues are down that's probably a conservative number my bet is it will be higher than that because I think for January payment and April payment we're going to get what we got last year because that was from their you know FY 21 budget and they're working on the FY 22 budget that will start in July this year so that 96 6 is probably a little bit low but I wanted to be conservative here the taxes are way down if we increase the taxes by two cents this is where we'll go up so we can fund that cip basically out of the highway fund that's where that will go but if you go down here I did make some changes here here this column is the proposed column and for 2021 Celia asked for $56,000 of salt again and she asked for $55,000 of sand Chris and Mark and I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago I have not shared this with Bill Woodruff or Celia yet but this is kind of the take away I had from that conversation which was if we want them to use less we have to provide less and I don't know if you're still all in line with that or not but I did make significant cuts you know 20 percent cut in salt and 11 percent cut in sand the diesel line up here this is what we budgeted for last year full year this is what we spent I've gone up to about 45 and that's because of how we're operating right now fuel prices though if you've noticed that I'm going up pretty quickly they're going up about a nickel a week or so for the last three or four weeks so you know I think this isn't a huge gamble but I did cut that as well and here's the big cut 362,000 cut from the capital funds so if we increase the tax rate by one cent this will go up about 76,000 if we increase it by two cents it'll go up by about 152,000 minus whatever we get for the library but any tax increase right now unless you tell me otherwise you've all kind of indicated this is where you want it to go so I yeah if up till now I just want to clarify something I know I know our percentage two percent portion of the main street project this year you're saying might be around 40 60,000 it's been what a hundred and let me see if I can find it again 140,000 160,000 it was a hundred and it was budgeted is 160 this year let me see if I've still got it up I'll have to call it up again I'm pretty sure you're right that's 160 that's let me let me call it up here again that's two cents on the tax rate um yeah so if we went to you know we went to 53 this year next year we don't have that 160,000 expenditure that's two cents that we're saving right there so that might might hold us at 53 next year you know uh yeah could well it was going a long way to helping us there right so here's the uh oh I gotta I'm gonna share my screen there we go so here's the main street so this 160 is what we budgeted right now it shows that we spent 181 943 but as I put my narrative um Woody and I are still figuring out the the village share or the e-fund share for this year so I think this is going to go down probably close to the 160 it'll be about where we budgeted I think they're going to owe us about 20,000 dollars this year and then this for right now I carried this 160 and I put this note in here so I think this will go down which will increase the fund balance in the cip that we're carrying forward this year and this will go down which will increase the fund balance for next year and then next year that 160 won't have to be there at all so I'm thinking that this number here this year will be in about the $60,000 range just to be sure I wouldn't want to go too much below that um and then that's it you know we're done yeah I guess and I'll say this last thing and then I want to hear from Katie and that if we go with 53 this year I believe that the pilot your pilot number is high I think the state's in worse financial trouble than anybody knows at this point oh I think they're gonna you know if they reduce that on us we're gonna wish we had that other penny um and if we can hold 53 cents you know hard to tell right now what's going to come up between now and next year but if we can hold 53 cents for this year 53 cents for next year I'm great with that and because in the cip Chris um I for 2021 I've kind of loaded all of the cip I mean all of the pilot money if it comes into the general fund there's only $20,000 in the from pilot in the cip this year I think whatever comes from the cip we would put 20 in here and whatever failure of getting that money we can let that be in the in the general fund because there are places if we have to um we can we can cut we may be able to it'll be easier to cut operating expenses in the general fund than it will be to cut this stuff because if we don't do the stuff that we have on this list in the cip this year and we didn't do some things last year we that's just going to put us not so much on the money but just in terms of being able to catch up you know whatever you're going to do the projects uh we're going to put ourselves behind the a fall yeah so I just want to pardon this as best as possible yeah and the other thing about the 53 cents is it kind of levels of play in field than the cip's um oh that's where I'm at um yeah I guess I'll go um like I remember a couple meetings ago I said we should think about maybe looking at 52 cents but if that's going to put you still in a pinch bill that I could see and understand why going to 53 would make the best sense right now if we don't want that big jump to surprise people in a few years and I think that if we go about it with the mindset that we can hold 53 cents for at least two years and share that with the community that that would be more positive and then the other thing to comment on with the library thing I'm fully in agreement that we shouldn't give them the full percent that they asked for the full amount if we just you know the six five or five thousand whatever we all agree on think is good not the full amount though I'm struggling with it I mean I mean obviously a while back I was I was one of the proponents of holding a lower tax line but as Bill you said the deck has been reshuffled and you know everybody's trying to figure out how to make do with what we've got I'm somewhere between the 51 and the 53 but I guess it doesn't make much difference if we asked for 52 this year and asked for 53 next year so we might as well ask for 53 this year and you know make make it a little bit easier on on the municipal services that were provided you can you can set tax rates with decimal points you know we've had we've had 43 and a half cent tax rates in the past you know you can set it at 51 and three quarters you can set it at 52 and a quarter you can set it you know it doesn't have to be a whole number we have had fractional tax rates in the past Bill can you remind I feel like I asked this every year can you remind the cost on the taxpayer per penny on three hundred thousand dollar in home value 75 something in it six um yeah I just did this for all of this afternoon so three hundred five so one penny on the tax rate 76 thousand dollars one penny times three hundred thousand a penny is 30 is it 30 dollars 300 thousand times 0.01 times 0.01 30 dollars I feel like that's an important part of this conversation is really understanding what these numbers mean to the taxpayer I really I think I'm gonna stand pretty hard that I think that it would be a mistake to push down too low and not I think Bill did a really good job of sticking to the 51 cent to try to make the the budgets work but ultimately it resulted in us basically pulling a lot from CIP and I think that we need to protect ourselves and also not protect ourselves from having a huge jump in tax rate by moving back towards where we were in the spring still well below that but protecting CIP put some money into those accounts yeah considering we asked for 55 and we got it like you said Mark and now we we reneged on that ourselves and now you know it'll essentially be two years later we're asking for only 53 I think I think that's that's an atta boy you know so last year in the in the town report we've got a chart on page 19 so a 55 cent tax rate on a 300 thousand dollar house is going to be 1650 dollars in taxes and if you make it 53 cents it's uh 1590 and at 51 cents it would be 1530 so it's it's a 60 dollar increase from what they had this year at 51 cents problem with this in all reality wherever we hold the line on our town taxes it's going to make a difference in the education tax because that's going if they're talking like what we're hearing what's going to happen to the education tax that's what's going to kill people's property taxes not not so much our town tax it's always been that way oh 100 but that's where you know at least we're somewhat accountable to the taxpayer but you know I definitely don't want to go to 55 you know I was sort of leaning to keep it where it is to say hey we're trying to help people during this difficult time I'm looking at we probably have to do something you know when bill gave the numbers on the cip that's where it kind of I said yeah we need an increase and I'm kind of you know I was kind of sort of brokering maybe a 52 per 52 cent rate was good but from what bill was saying it did do a heck of a lot to that what we could get back at cip 53 helps a little better well just just so everybody knows though the homestead school tax rate in 2020 was $1.70 $1.74 let's say $1.74 if that goes up 9% that goes up to $1.80 not $1.90 and $1.90 plus 53 cents will be a $2.43 tax rate for homesteads as opposed to 225 last year so 225 last year on a $300,000 house was $6,750 and if it goes to $243 on the $300,000 house it goes to $7,290. It goes to holy shit I can jump for a lot of people yeah well I think if you keep yours at 51 and then this goes up I know it won't it doesn't make a lot we're only harming ourselves you know I'll be honest with you people don't mind paying taxes as long as they're seeing something out of it and I think the gains that we've made in our paved roads in the last couple of years people are aren't to be thankful that that works getting done and I hate to pull a plug and start to go backwards on our CIP just you know for the sake of a couple pennies um yeah now of course you know that $7,290 I think about 75 or 80 percent of our homestead folks qualify for a state payment so I was gonna say the same thing okay um Matt where you at there buddy no I mean I'm I'm fine with it I'm fine with it I'm fine with going with the 53 seems like it's prudent and I hate to see it hate to see it I know the rest of you do too make you wonder when it's ever gonna stop you know never well just a little just a little tidbit from the program I watched the other day the the co-founder of Home Depot said that the not too near future here he'll be safe the industry goes up 200 basis points our national budget will go up over $570 billion a year in interest payments additional $570 billion yeah and he said at that point everything's going to be on the table it's you know we're just a drop in a bucket the only other solution is either move to Tennessee or become good friends with Elon Musk well when the national debt explodes uh yeah there's no gonna be no place to hide do we need can you remind me do we need to actually vote on this tonight or we just set you on motion so um I think that is everybody nodding do we have a unanimous consensus of 53 cents is are we in there yet I I would say that with the consideration keep the keep the library budget in line I don't want to give them you you you folks are in control of that as I exactly all weekend long the only thing the select board can tell you is how much tax money they feel you're going to get now we did kind of say we'd share whatever 11% but I think that the expectation at that point was that maybe you'll be increasing by a penny so I think you do need to tell me how much you want the library tax to rate you know how much on the attacks I think it was 433 well they tried to force us into an answer and you know I think they had it understood that we had to get through the rest of this meeting in order to come to a solution and I think whatever they end up with if we throw them a bone it'll be better than what they started out with I do think you need to ask you need to tell me tonight how much the tax appropriation you're going to get to the library because they've got to they've got to finalize their budget they can't wait next for next week for you to do yours so I think I think there was a suggestion of 5000 I'd be in support of that if the rest of the board is I would back to 5000 okay not a penny more I think I'm I'm becoming right of Chris all right but really the only line item that's going to change on this budget is that highway department transfer to cips is going to go up by about $50,000 that's the only change I'm making um can I you want me to leave the $7,500 there for the transfer to the cemetery or do you want to cut that one more year along myself I could run a lot more pretty good how is their investment portfolio doing as it must be doing as well as everybody else exactly yeah your suggestion though is not to cut that to get used to that payment I would leave it at 75 which is still half of what's right that's already in the budget that you presented to us right so I would be in support of keeping it 75 is reasonable okay 15 is not and Chris for the second meeting in a row that you attended I have I'm sorry I got a little frustrated at the beginning I've been working 20 hours every day I was going to say bill this time of the year your grizzly bear because of the hour you put in and I I appreciate it and understand it so no don't ever worry there's no hard feelings all right thank you well I think if there's nothing else in order I think we can call this meeting to a close motion to adjourn okay good thank you all thanks everybody thank you bill thanks good night all thanks for the hard work bill good seeing you mark yeah yeah we could see somebody somebody get me better internet up on ring road I'm dying on the vine up here you don't have to pay more taxes