 an executive session for legal matters. I just wanted to bring up talking with the employee compensation, which is the first item based on the information that's in our packet that we better served in an executive session. I think it seems like there's at least one individual we want to talk about. Yeah, I've got a couple actually. There's a couple things that I need to discuss. That usually moves to executive, at least for the discussion. I've got two requests that I need to talk to you about. And we're probably going to take action on that. So yeah, let's come back out. Do we want to go first? Do an executive session to talk about the compensations and we'll come back in the session. Yeah, I think so, no point. No. Yeah, we can. Okay, I'm sorry, please don't. I'll let her go home. I'll let her go home. Yeah, we can, but it's after it was scheduled to be after his appointment anyway. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, so we can do that, so, okay. Welcome to that, so. So we will have graduates element powers. We'll stay at 615 and then we will go into an executive session to talk about personnel issues. And then we'll come back out to start right where we were at with the employee compensation area. Any other? And then finish the meeting with an executive session. And to finish, yeah. Any other additions or? No, I'll make a motion. We accept the agenda as amended. So, okay. Okay, all in favor? All right. Did you get all that, Lisa? I did, thank you. Well, since we've been nice to you on approving the minutes, we figured we'd just jumble up the agenda. Sure, yeah. We'll ramp it up a little bit. We'll open up to a public comment or inquiry. Do you think that's not on the agenda tonight? I'd like to. I'm the chairman of the board of the couple of relative waste management. And I've been selected to ask the board members of the couple why they have not passed or agreed to the solar array. If you can tell me yes, no. Guess I've done one part. Well, at this point, all that we can say in open sessions is that we have reached out to the Royalton Board. School board. Royalton Select Board to get a meeting, a joint meeting together that we can talk about in the executive session. We, I've reached out a week and a half ago to the Royalton Board. And we have not been able to set up anything currently. So at this point, that's all. That's all we're really to say in open session. That's fine. I thought my job done, I think. So we're working on it. Getting a meeting with the two towns and then we'll be able to discuss by there. Do you or the board have any questions with me or anything? I don't think so at this time. I don't think it really... I don't think the other members do it. I don't think at this time we have any questions. And we'll get to that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Yeah. I'll call. Any other public comments, inquiry? Anybody that's here for something other? Making it easy on us. And I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. All right, well, it is not 6 p.m. 15 yet, but Fred is here. The committee is also at the moving board for his appointment. So we'll move on, Fred. Thank you for coming this year, Fred. I know in the past, we've kind of... In the past, we've more or less had our audience and we've kind of looked through them and talked a little bit through it. But it's good to have you come and answer our face and get some of the comments from you that we should be looking at a little more depth. Yeah. I know the board has, well, I should say Greg, has worked very hard on looking through some past audits and putting into some policies in place where some of the recommendations have been passed on some of your comments. So... Yeah, now I see, Tyler, on the agenda too, there's some more policies that some of the people have been recommending. So that's movement, that's good. So I'm here, you know, answering questions. I'll give you a quick overview of, you know, the numbers are, you know, almost a year old now, so I'm not gonna spend much time on that, but I can just give you a general overview of what comes out of an audit and kind of tell you where we are now. So... And I think, well, not to interrupt you, but I will. No, correct. But I think, you know, maybe going through this would be helpful as, you know, maybe just kind of an overview of where the town of Eiffel is at right now versus, you know, you kind of know our history a little bit, what had been going on. And maybe just kind of put some comments in the place of where maybe we should be looking to go towards, where have we been and maybe some of the progress that you've seen in the family. So that'd be good for the townspeople here. So, yeah, there's been a lot that's changed over the last, you know, X number of years and, you know, the result is that at this point in time, first of all, we've given you a kind of, kind of anti-fansome statement. So, you know, one of the deliverables is the bond report that tells you where you stored the other ones, a letter of recommendations, and then the third is just a letter that we were cooperating with and the audit, you know. Could have gone smoother, but we were cooperating with them. They didn't ask what we mentioned about them. But it was a tough off-match here. There was a lot of turnover as you're aware of our transition, just a lot of things that needed to be dealt with and a lot of catch-up. And I know Teresa's worked hard to, and still working hard to make sure that this year you get a, you know, we walk into a clean financial statement and hopefully get you financial statements much, much earlier than in the past. So you have them at least by town, meaning hopefully by budget time. So, I mean, that's the goal. So that you have good work with members. Obviously you're all aware that, you know, your general fund is big deficit. And that's the result of a lot of different things, the flood, a number of projects that went over budget, like public work projects, public budget. The bottom line is that you're, you know, you're sitting there now, once you collect your grants, which is, you know, 230,000, it could be a million, a million one, at least as of a year ago, in terms of the deficit. As a board, you have to deal with that. And, you know, the thing that makes the most sense probably while it's, it's hard to swallow is really taking some sort of debt and paying it off over time. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't give you legal advice, but my understanding is the statutes say that if you have two choices, take out debt or raise the rates immediately. Raising the rates immediately, this isn't, you know, is infeasible. And so when other towns are in this situation, they've gone to the movers and asked them to be able to take out a bond to pay a little maximum of two years. And that's where we currently are at with the townspeople. So we went, we went before everybody at town meeting with that. Our number was higher at that point for the time. Yeah, and that was good. And that, that, that, for a government, taking out debt creates revenue. And because when you look into the general fund, you're really looking at cash flow. You're looking at the ability to pay your current bills. And so if you have new money coming in from a loan, and it's gonna provide you with cash flow to pay out for sure to a note, and then be able to, to at least get back to even. Over time, you'd love to see, build that fund balance up to, you know, somewhere $250,000. When you start thinking about that, your first taxes isn't due until August 15th. That means you're running without money for 45 days. And for the amount of money that you run through 45 days in your budget equates to like $1 million. So, you know, the goal will be that, you know, get back to that unit and then start to think about having a fund balance policy that allows you to develop some number. That's tough. You know, that's hard. If neither of you have any debt on the books, but as a boarder at the end of this time, what it allows you to do is to make sure that if there are rising prices, health insurance, fuel oil, another flood, hopefully not, but something that's unexpected, then you've got a little wiggle room in terms of making sure the tax rate is at least stated. And unfortunately it's gonna rise probably, but if you have some level of fund balance, then you don't have to try to hit that. It eliminates the spikes in the way. Can I get you to talk about this a little bit? It's an interesting situation because we've been not necessarily around this deficit, but in general, over the last four or five years, been trying to work on capital planning in a variety of ways and a few years ago, we started trying to put money aside for a capital fund. And we've got a lot of negative comments from people about slush funds. And as if the town shouldn't have quote unquote, undesignated funds available, and yet it sounds as though, I'm not saying it doesn't make sense, but it sounds like you're saying it makes sense. And it would be an interesting piece of public information for us to have in a way that we can educate our voters about the value of actually, I mean, we all have slush funds and we all know the value of them, but when somebody stands up in town meeting and starts saying, you mean it's gonna be a slush fund? Like it's got some negative connotation. It does. And I guess it's explained to you that it's a cash flow reserve that you don't have money for 45 days. I mean, they know when their taxes are due. And it'd be like saying to somebody, you're gonna have to pay your rent, start paying your portfolio as part, but we're not gonna pay you for 45 days. And they'd say, well, whether they have to borrow money or better have some money to start with. And so as a town, you can borrow money and pay an interest on that. And having some level of fund balance allows you to get through those days until the taxes come in. It's a one-time thing. Once you develop that first fund balance and get it up there, all you're doing is adjusting your funds. Like you're adding a little bit to it to stay in it. So that's why most towns that have developed a fund balance have done it over a number of years. You're in a position where you're gonna do what the deficit says. We got it. Yeah. We're gonna take it out of the hole first and then once you get to level ground, maybe you gotta start thinking about going forward. But it's a long-term proposition. It doesn't have to happen overnight. And the key difference, David, to us is policy. You can develop a lot of policy and see how we're talking about here and the group liabilities for payable. When someone gets done and they have this payout, Fred said, you know, that can be part of your undistinguished fund balance liability. So you don't have to budget for it after effect. Well, and actually, that doesn't become, that's how I'm doing it. And that's dedicating. These people are gonna leave eventually. And they don't wanna get paid for that, you know, that crew time off. And if you don't budget for it as they're earning it, then again, you get those spikes in the budget because then you get hit for the year when they leave and then you gotta replace them too. And so you kind of get a double hit. And so this is a philosophical discussion that every town wrestlers with. It's nothing new, nothing new in terms of, this town is nothing new in 40 years that I've been doing this. You know, ultimately the board has to make, you know, your decision in terms of good governance, in terms of what you think. Ultimately, the voters get the last say, they get to vote on the budget. And so you're right, it's a convincing process. It's an educating process. I'm making them understand that this isn't money that they've been spoken for. This is just trying to make sure that you don't have to all of a sudden the number of big spikes in their rates. Maybe that's worse, I'm not, you know. Well, it's exactly what happened is we went for short-term loans to cover spikes and then we didn't pay back the vote. And it's built up, that's right. And then we melded them together and built them. Right, right. I mean, basically. And they were all, everybody had good intentions but it never, you know. Right. It's like living off a credit card and taking out a new credit card to pay off the old credit card when it gets bigger and bigger to the point where now it's, you know, it's a million dollars. But it took a long time to get there. It's going to take some time to get out of it. I mean, it's nothing's going to happen overnight. The debt will make you at least back to be as solvent. And though that, and then at least you've got a plan then that debt service payment can be budgeting over the next number of years. And so, and that's the convincing you have to do the voters. So the carry is that it's good policy. The stick is if you don't do that, you're supposed to hit them on the tax check. By the way, that's when they don't get a second. If they can hit the budget, you still get to separate some of the bill for the whole deficit. So you've got to convince them that in approving this, in which I understand, they've already been there, and it's a good point. Well, we have to keep bringing it back annually and making it more and more clear and boosting up the policies. Right. So, yeah, good fund-downs policy is, again, it's a goal. It's just something to strive toward and there's lots of good reasons to try to get there. Is there any sort of industry standard on what that number should be? Yeah, if you look at the GFOA website, government finance officers, they say 20%. Well, I don't know that you need 20%. To me, that starting point is usually when the taxes start coming in. So for you, that's 45 days. Then, you know, that's 12 and a half percent. So I think if you were shooting for that, that's a good start. That doesn't take the time off. That doesn't take the capital. You know, and the argument on the capital is, well, you know, while it's nice that we won't have to go borrow the whole thing, why are you asking this current taxpayer to make for equipment that will be used for the future? The other hand is that, again, it's a rate, it's trying to make sure that you get those rates scaled. So there's a trade-off, you know. I can see. It's just being conversant enough so that we can have the conversation. The first step is having a good capital plan. At least you think you know one thing's going to have to be replaced. And then, you know, and that plan is fluid because, you know, something's going to happen earlier and, of course, something's going to be back. And that's the nature of capital plans. But having one at least is a great start. So I mean, you've done that on what that's good. So currently, we're collecting heavily on our past taxes and utilities that are due. Is that an opportunity for us, as we're collecting those, to put towards the fund balance? I mean, is that, would that be the right opportunity? You do that now. For the utilities, they're already included in fund balance. That's money that's owed to you. It's already in your mind. All that's going to do is change it from a receivable to cash. It won't change your bottom line later. And the property taxes, that's different. If you can reduce that to linked lists, that will help you. And, you know, what we always see is when people make a real push on property taxes, they kind of get that one influx. There's always going to be a bonus. You know, what you want to do is keep it to that level where it kind of, you know, stays at a reasonable level. There's always going to be some, but you want to get it to be a reasonable number. And, you know, having a good dealing with tax policy that's consistent helps to do that. And so it sounds like that's what you're already doing at this point in time. So the tax money will help. The utility money will help cash flow, but it doesn't change where you are. And the question of taxes, too, could actually help us. It's going to help cover the deficit maybe far less than November, which will help over the long term. So what questions do we do now until we clear up that, you know, and fund that short term to a long term note, there will be no one that doesn't make it on that. Right. Anything you collect now until August 31st comes to our last year, right? So we'll give you 60 days to make that collection effort. And you're right. If you can reduce that to linked lists by then, yes, that will help that fund that. So, okay. By whatever you can make it less than last year's, we'll see what that is. I don't know anything else. The financials, I don't know if you want to talk about some of the recommendations or? Sure. Excellent. So I know you've had management letter. The way that it's structured is that the things that we think are most important in our label and material analysis, the things that we think are next to report the significant efficiencies. And then we've had them all early on in the end, just as other recommendations. August, the one that was the most critical from our perspective a year ago was the recognition of the downsheet cuts. And that's how we started. And so that's just a matter of like at home, we all try to reconcile a checkbook. So I was through more time than others, but, and that's where it wasn't happening. Just the accounts weren't being reconciled. Someone wasn't going through and saying, I got to make sure I reconcile the cash amount. I got to make sure that the receivables was a list. I got to make sure that the payables works. I got to make sure that it's just a monthly process that needs to happen. And what that does is it makes sure that from an audit perspective, when we walk in, we've got a clean set of books. More importantly, when you guys get monthly reports, it gives you the confidence that the department heads that what they're looking at on the budget status report is accurate. So you, I mean, accounting isn't for us and a year later it's for real time. It's for you and the department that's making decisions about what do we have left? Do we need to slow down the spending? Do we, can I finish this project? Do I need to reallocate money from this project to that because this has been a new priority? So, you know, if that monthly reconciliation is done, that should give you more confidence that the report should get an accurate report. And one of the things that we had done, well, as you already know, you know, the system that we had here in place was usually a, we had town manager and assistant town manager. But, you know, even though some of the responsibilities for each one of them was the financial portion, it was never really someone looking at the financials 100% of the time like should have been. Yeah. And that was, you know, the main reason of, well, Greg coming on board and then, what we were seeing was the same thing that Greg had recommended, which was to advertise for a finance director about, you know, Therese happily accepted. And so now we have somebody. Happily for us. Now we have some full time looking at the balance sheet at all times. And that's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, so we expect that to be taken care of. The town clerk comes already dealt with, he offered a new general entry that I think is going to happen or has happened. A lot of the other recommendations are things you've already talked about, you know, policies, investment, banking policy, good procurement policy, a disaster recovery plan, a fraud policy, which I think is only to take it. You know, doing a fraud risk assessment, then when you're done documenting it all, you know, once you have good controls in place, just doing that documentation, reducing the number of cash accounts you have to deal with this, but there was too many. And I know I think Therese agrees with that one, unless you have to deal with it, but the accounting system you have can handle multi funds with a single account. And so, unless you have the better return check policy and then just making sure that someone's following the outstanding checks to make sure they get paid, if you can't find who they're sent to, then it's a responsibility to send those to the state as a guarantee of property. So, we've talked to everybody about those. And so, I think a lot of these are already processed or will be done over time. Anybody else? Any other specific or any other questions? I don't know. Great, yeah. Yeah, I hope we're processing here again sooner and, you know, we'll put 18 days out, so. So, in another, you start in August on your... We've already been in and spent a day looking at the Julie books. We've given Therese some homework to do. I think we scheduled already from back, not at this point. So, when she gets to the point where she's comfortable, we'll schedule to come in, but it'll be in the fall, it'll all be in the spring, I can promise you that, yeah. Great, thank you. Any other questions? It's great we've established a rapport on a regular basis about the amount of money that was spent for the office, as opposed to having some... Well, that's the way it always was and that's the way we do it. Just when the books got to the end, we just, you know, yeah. It was a new construction at that point. It was remodeling the unknown that's in the walls, so, yeah. Yeah, well, thank you for coming. You're welcome. I know we have been reading and going through these recommendations ever since, well, most of us haven't been on the board too long. We are, hopefully, the townspeople will see that we are in a positive direction. Well, the very fact that we're having this meeting now, that's beautiful, so it's about... I think it's coming out, that'd be good to annually have Fred committed to spend 15, 20 minutes just explaining where we're at or what we can work on. Yeah. So, thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions that you have? Anything Fred brought up? Oh, that's good. Yeah, that's great to hear that. Great to hear that. So, I will entertain a motion at this point to go into the executive session to talk about personnel issues. So move. Second. Go on, David. We will make this as quick as possible, so hopefully it won't be too long. I don't envision it being too long, so. Me too. So, our next item up is to talk about the annual employee compensation. Greg had passed around his spreadsheet in regards to the annual paid increases. Everybody had the opportunity to visit that. So I would entertain a motion based on based on great synopses of appropriating funds to accommodate the employee wages. The wage adjustments. Wage adjustments. So move. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Tax and utilities. They've done. Theresa, do you want to speak with us, or? Sure. So I have given you, so you have the policy already that was in place, and I'm just, I'm just going to hand it, basically. So what I gave you in your pack is what you're just doing policy, and then the policy that I'm going to hand it, which is very similar. It's still eight percent penalty, which is still the one percent interest office, and, but what it talks about is a little bit more about, you know, obviously it talks about what we're going to apply to market holders, but I believe it gives you a little more wiggle on. I think one of the things that said in your own policy was that while taxes, that you would accept tax payment and utility payments with post marks, tax payments, yes, but utility payments, that was not happening, and I don't think it should. So, but it wasn't happening, but so you had policy in place, it wasn't being in your 20s tax. What do you mean by post marks? Your policy said that basically if your tax payment is stamped by bank, by postal office, and it's the 15th of, what, August 15th, whatever their taxes are really, stamped by August 15th, and you don't get it until the 19th, we still consider it on time because you accept post marks. So, I personally disagreed with that, but that's not a miracle there. But anyways, he was doing, and he also said they could do that with utilities, but nobody, we didn't do that with utilities, nobody before me was doing it with utilities, and so it seemed like that's something we should have taken out of that policy, and. Meaning that if a letter was sent on the day that the utility payment was due, it was counted as late when it arrived, even though the policy said that it theoretically was. All right, and why do you think that that doesn't, what is your opinion on why that isn't appropriate policy? Well, for, I think for taxes, I mean, sometimes you accept post marks for taxes, so we'll take taxes out of the equation, and that's fine. But for utilities, it's hard because if you're trying to do collections by a certain date, say we say, okay, utility bills are due by the 15, and so what we're trying to do is get everything out of the mail into the deposit, process the deposit so that we can kick out the bills so that we can stay on interest and collection. What happens is, if you're collecting and using post marks, then you have to wait three or four days longer until whoever's payment shows up or the process that you have to go back and reverse the interest. It just becomes kind of cumbersome, and also if you, you know, I mean, you're a utility, you're just like, you know, think about your amount of power, they're not gonna give you a, they're not gonna accept post marks. So it just seems like it makes it a little cumbersome. It's manageable on taxes because it's four times a year, but I mean, it is for utilities, but it's just a little difficult when you're trying to stay on a collection schedule. And the way the software works, I'm telling you if I'm wrong, but the way the software works is that the interest is, the penalties all assess at the same time. So if these people keep all these payments coming in later, then you're having to reverse all those transactions. And so what is the rationale for accepting tax payments late? I think that you've voted on that. No, that's not what I'm asking. I don't think there is a rationale. I don't think they should. All right, so then why should we, then why should we not change that as well? Because I don't think you can as well. I mean, it's like, I understand it's like you send in your, let's see, what are the other examples? Like an application for something and the due date is September 1st. And you send it in, you get it in the mail for, like an administrator of a bureaucratic thing, but financial, I totally get what you're getting at. I mean, it's like the date that it's due in the office is the 15th. Because if I mail my tax payment on the 15th and have a postmark, but you came in and paid, so you have to be there on the day, but I bought myself a couple more days. So if I'm waiting for a check to clear, I just bought myself a couple of days. And the reason I didn't change it in this policy is because I think that my guess would be that the voters voted on that at some point in your history, so you would have to. Well, if it was in the policy, the select board voted on it. Okay, I would guess that you had done it via town meeting, but so I want a short car. But we can take it out, I'm all for that. I think it's the assessment. I mean, I think the way I look at it is everybody should have at least the opportunity to pay for something in more than one manner. So I'm just envisioning myself as, let's say, can't make it into town physically or something else. I can't physically make it into town and I'm relying on the postmaster to deliver that. And let's say you can send it out two days prior to this thing, but it didn't get there until two days afterwards. I mean, should I get penalized on that? Well, you're gonna open your credit card, you're gonna open the GMP, somebody else is gonna send it to you. But if you came in and you would probably wait that way, you could reverse it. Yeah, but why can't I pay on one? Because we can't, well, that's where I'm getting at. Well, why can't we pay on, if we're gonna take away the postmark and we should give them electronic payment? One thing I've been thinking about is we... Pay online. Oh, okay, good one. What is he saying? You know, one thing I've been thinking about that we, and I was just thinking about the last week right since my water, I tried to get down there every day. I had something going on every day. I could not drop the water well off, but I couldn't put it in the postmark because it was gonna be passed anyways, right? Had I been able to pay online and pay to everything else? You know, through Western Union or something, you guys would have had it three days ago. So I wonder if maybe, before we get into any college, I mean, if right now, if it says that we are okay postmarking by that date, because there are other things that you can do on, you know, a yearly or a monthly basis, as long as it's postmarked and let you have it, maybe until we get to other needs. That's gotta be the only rationale, is that with the post office, you can put it in the mail on the 12th and it could get there late. And it's no fault of anybody, right? Weekends and holidays, that's what I'm saying. And we can look into taking payments online, but what happens is that you can pay something online, but because we're a municipality and we can only, you know, the majority of our revenue is gonna come from taxes, you're gonna have to pay a convenience fee because we're not gonna eat, we can't afford to eat the 3%. And there's no saturation in the market for taxes, like once in a blue moon, someone wants to come in. So we actually stopped taking the credit card because once you come in to pay your taxes, and I said, that's crazy, Mr. Jarvis, and that'll be 3% on top of your taxes, you leave. And you go get, you know, a check or whatever. So there is a way to do that, but it would be a responsibility of the municipality. And we need to, even if we had to, which again, I think what I'm just looking at, in many different ways, I mean, I can pay whatever, a power bill online, you know, through Western Union that doesn't cost me anything. Now, maybe it costs GMP some money, I don't know how that works. Maybe we'll look into that. Yeah, because if you stand a used-like credit card or a debt card, it costs the merchant, is the one paying. So, but I can tell them- But maybe as a consumer, I mean, if I can't physically get out to pay something and I know that, okay, well, if I pay my water bill, they're going to charge me 3%, which is whatever. I mean, it's an extra $3, then I'm going to pay the $3 rather than be late and then incur $25 late to payment. Right, exactly. I mean, I just think before we go and change some of the payment policies that we have in regards to method of payment by a certain date, so I mean, we've got to have some more options for people. I mean, that's just fine. That's a good point. That's fine. I don't want to profit that. I personally would like to see some sort of easier banking with the town because the last thing I wanted to do was anybody to have to call and take a payment over the phone because that takes a long time. Yeah. You know, people are going to be able to do it electronically or through the mail or- Yeah. So then you want to add back a policy that would set post-march for utilities. I mean, I think it needs to be- It's not something I do to- I don't want to do it to the market. Yeah, because it's not really, I think that it's not, as much as you could say, it could be premeditated that you have an individual that wait until the 15th, put it in the mail and then it's two days to get there. I think the reality is that there are people who mail in their tax payments and the reason we accept post-marchs is to honor the fact that they might have expected the mail to be faster than it was. I don't know about it. Particularly with our own car. Well, there's a lot of money state tax payers, too. I mean, they send it in and most of your water rates are local. Did we get a comment or a question that we have? Do you guys send out reminders in the mail every month or to these water customers? We send out delinquent notices every month. So people need to be on top of reminding themselves to pay this bill every month. It's monthly, there's water. No, water is quarterly bills. They get quarterly bills. So they do get quarterly bills, reminders. Yeah, they get quarterly bills doing 30 days. I mean, I'm just thinking because we just enhanced our collections policies. Right. You know, the penalty is a little more stricter to make sure that people are paying us. And I think maybe we gotta be a little lenient on the data once you get here by certain methods so we can identify other methods that might be more beneficial for people. But I don't know if we're ready to act on the following. We just got it. We're taking it in tonight. So we can talk about it. You might be, I would think that there might be a field that you could add, custom add to your accounting for those utilities that would be a postmark date, a post date so that when you collect those funds, you just enter them, if it was mailed by the 15th or whatever the date is. Yeah, I'm telling you reverse any interest that's wrong. That's, I'm not talking about software. Yeah, I'm talking about in the software program. You don't have to do it physically. You should be able to add a field to your, to your tax database so that when you're entering the payment from that taxpayer or utility payer, that if it was paid by mail, by a certain date, you check that box and it automatically kicks back your late fees and an interest. It shouldn't be that difficult to do. Maybe not within the office, but somebody should be able to do that. You might be able to do something in your software where if your date is the 15th, that you could have the clock start on the 20th or something. You know, so that you're not, so you're not getting paid on that same date. It's cumbersome, that's all. We'll just wait for you, you know, we'll just wait. You know, the last thing you want is to be reversing entries, too. Right, but what I'm saying is it's not a big deal. What we'll do is we will just wait instead of saying, okay, if we're due on the 15th, we usually give people a day and then we do it. So in this case, we'll just give people two days to see what the postmarks look like. I think at this point, the first baby step into the pool is actually getting people to pay their bills. They've got to worry about a little bit more on the odd timing of things. Yeah. Getting it caught up and then they might have any other questions? No, but otherwise, look, one of the things that I'm curious about is in the last after abatement, the first number bullet is a three. Where are we going in two go? You may be in, I don't see one, too. She just starts at three. Oh, I'm figuring out, right, one, two, one, two, one, two. What is one, what does one say? No, wait, okay. What is tax for the person who died and solvent? Are we definitely missing that? We don't have the, we don't have either one of those. Oh, that's funny, I don't know why it's on my copy, so I'll go look up. Teresa's just trying to sneak those ones in. Yeah, those are good. I don't know, so I'll make sure I don't know why I need to get a coupon or else I'll make a note. Otherwise, isn't that all? Yeah, those are just standard because by law, I don't want to do a tax that you have to notify people to get out on time. Other than that, good. The notices that we send out, are those done with registered, certified, or anything like that, or just regular? Regular mail, yeah, certified, if you want to send out like that, you're looking at at least six dollars a year. So no, it'd be something that you'd wait and do at the very end for notifications of like tax sale. But in the meantime, we're also still trying to locate a couple of people, so. Any utilities that the statute requires to be observed, kill the paper? It's pink paper. Yeah, the statute. So just from an editorial standpoint, I was thinking it may be under abatement that it would be taxpayers may be entitled instead of you may be entitled. Okay. Don't have to make it impersonal, but you don't, particularly since it's gonna be a policy, not necessarily something that. So all this review, do those things and get it back to you? Those three, so all of them. Yep, yep. So next thing. Next thing is fraud prevention. So we've gone over this last time and we had one edit of memory. Everybody have a chance to pull in the revised copy? We have two, one for the residents and one for not for a long term play. Yeah, that was the problem last time at the which was our great point was fraud prevention policy. I thought 40 was for town employees, officers and like officials by town, but Carl was like, you know, what about town residents? So I did, your whole PLCD, we spoke to the attorney called Anders there and read some statutes and then I sent Carl so that he could get a feel for it to see if it was part of the right review or not. And so this is what I came up with. So the premise from a long time is still the same and then this is the one for residents so that residents have to feel that they have a. They do have. And it also lays out how the town can or feels they shouldn't respond to those kinds of approaches. I think they're both, we're probably, this is a policy we're at the point that we could approve those both. Would we approve them both as one fraud prevention policy? I would do them separately, one is a policy and one is a procedure. Oh, all right. So, well then I'd make a motion that we adopt the fraud prevention policy for town employees, officers and less of the officials. Second. And yeah, I'd make a motion also to approve the fraud prevention procedure for town residents. So you completely left yourself off the schedule? No managers report. Again. Talk about that. Talk about that. I'm filling the library down and see what I do on twice a month. Yeah. Do you want to just take us through a little review on it? I'm thinking about just doing them the first to be the same, you know, stuff. I think you may have some high points. Sure, I have some. Go out to four corners. Go out to four corners. That's my high point right now. It's on at seven. That's a six o'clock bell. Four. We must have gone through a 12 or something. It didn't go because it's exactly the same walk rate. Great. Huh? I said you're one for two so far. Yeah, well, I don't wonder where did you go the first time. So do you want to take us through with some of your high points right now? Yeah, I can quickly go through just a couple of things. I put on your desk some stuff about the American Recovery Blood Drive. So the employees, mostly some of the employees are going to be doing this blood drive. And they're still in dire need of more people to get blood. So if anybody would like to do that, it's going to be June 28th from 1230 to 530. And it's going to be at the White Church right here. So they'll have their little, I guess they have a bus or a van or something that pulls up. Additionally, if anybody wants to have their picture taken, we're going to have all the townspeople, people from the town that are donating meeting at the White Church at 430 to do a group photo, kind of do a PR thing that we'll put on our website. I kind of get out there. So if anybody's interested in getting blood, June 28th at the White Church. I have an appointment at 2.45 to give. So I may be gone by the time. At 430? Yeah. You might have already passed out if you'd like it. Yeah. We're doing a substantial amount of work. If you get a chance to go up to a four corners area, I think that's Lilyville and Dark Hill and that whole area there, there's a lot of, well historically it sound like there was a lot of issues up there with Eurasia and it went to rain. There was just a lot of problems. So we got a grant through two rivers. It's state funds actually to do a lot of work up there. The guys have been up doing recutting of ditches and lining with rocks. We're doing some culvert up sizing. They're gonna be putting down the road base on the road, rebuild the ditch so that we can get the guard rail back up where it belongs. Just a lot of work and again, it was done through state funds. We had in-kind and we had a match, but that was easy to do. It was only 10%. And we're doing all the work. So we're basically gonna get reimbursed 90% of the work that we're doing. Greg, how do you prioritize those? We have a report that was done right before I started. We had a gentleman come in and there's a gravel roads assessment report, I believe is what it was called and get outlined all the different roads, all the issues we had on all of our roadways. And then the state also, well, two rivers. Actually we have a representative of two rivers that we work hand in hand with to kind of help us out with that. The only caveat with this grant is that it has to be on a hydrologically connected road. So that report that we had done actually went into that also. It talks about what roads are which are not hydrologically connected. So typically that's what we use though is that report that we have and then any input from the state that we might have any input from two rivers. And then just kind of what we've historically seen. And then, you know, more idea also it's a matter of how much we can get and how much bang for a buck. That project initially started out as just doing some rock lining and then we saw the guard rail started to fail. So I went down and took a look and the culvert had failed, the ditch had failed. So there was a lot more than we actually added to the project. I made it into more of a whole project. I mean, it worked out really well I think. So we haven't got a project for next year yet. We will be looking at that same report and kind of going through the same process to try to find what is kind of the next in line. I would like to actually put in, if I could, any historic information we might have from issues in that area. There's people that have been here a lot longer than I have. So I'd like to kind of listen to them too and just see if there are areas that have more issue. I just know talking with a lot of people that that whole dark hill area has always been a significant issue all year long it seems like. Does residential density count at all towards the assessment? No, it does not. Not necessarily. That's a whole another ballgame you're talking about. I do do that whenever I do, when I will do our paved roads assessment, we actually have an assessment done. I don't really, didn't care for it too much for our paved roads. I do one based on a ASTM standard methodology and that is part of that. Because that's typically your paved roads or in your more populated areas and density is a concern. But for this study it was not. It's just basically based on, I'd have to look and see how he prioritized it, but I think it was based on the immediate need. I don't think the level of traffic had anything to do with it. I think it had to do with the immediate need, cost, and then the connectivity hydrologically. I think we're the three main pieces that he put in. The hydrologic is easy. You can't swim in a dead cat and not hit a dog. You're right. You're right. But there's grants. But the grants. Grants are great. The grants are related to the hydrologic. Right, I mean, you can't really do work up there or not, hit a creek somewhere. But my point being, living up in that area, that part where you got to do work, there's some houses, there's a bunch of camps. And if state funds are limited, I'm just wondering how you assess, well, will you state funds here when it's not really that populated versus using it someplace else? It's just also, I go out, we have a bunch. Right. You know, in population, it needs to be a piece of it. But something else that we need to look at is, what's the biggest thing for a month? What's costing us the most money? Where are we concentrating our efforts at? You know, in the wintertime or in the spring, whenever we have all these issues, where are the guys spending all the time? I think that's another piece that needs to be added to this, is we want to nip the areas of the problem areas. We want to be as efficient as possible, so we want to take care of the areas that we can take care of first. I would say that the amount of population being served by the improvement should be a piece to that, but just a piece. And I think your point is that the entire population is being served by it, because this is where we're, it's a year, we're working on a short section of road, but these are year-round highway department issues that are being ameliorated to this process. So we're getting water out of the roads. We're getting water out of the roads in the winter. We're getting water out from under the roads in mud season. And so it's, and part of what we have to do is protect those parts of our infrastructure that have got more capital, so to speak. You can't let something go because it's, that was kind of part of the, one of the odd things about the highway prioritization is that you don't fix the worst roads first. You fix some of the better ones first so that you can maintain them better. Because it's, if you say, well, that's better than the worst one and you leave it, then by the time you get around to fixing it, it costs you more to fix it than it does to maintain it. So this is the sort of the ongoing process of maintenance that is where we really spend money. Right, and again, that's another one of the aspects that needs to be involved with this is, is where are we dedicating our time in the front? If that's a stretch, if there is a stretch that we're dedicating a lot of time and power to, that's something that needs to be taken care of. It's because we could use that, you know? We're very limited on the resources that we have. So we wanna make sure we get the areas fixed up and move on to the next one. If I remember right, Greg, on those, I mean, you can take that grant money, you can use it on four different roads. Sure, you can use it. It doesn't have to be that one road or that interconnected road. You could, we get a lot of the amount of money grant. I don't know if it's a 90,000 or something. Well, this was the first year for this grant. So it was kind of a trial area, if you will. 90,000, if you will. It was about 20,000. Yeah, about 20,000. And they think it's gonna be about the same next year if we've already applied and we'll receive it. But this was kind of, I don't wanna say our trial run, but this one, yeah, I think two rivers had a little bit more say in the area that we chose just because it was, I don't wanna say it was done, kind of low-hanging fruit, I guess. There was drainage issue, there were, there were all sorts of issues on the road. It wasn't just one thing. So I think moving forward, we'll look at it as a whole and just try to figure out which road has the most need based off of a lot of factors. We haven't established those factors. I haven't. This one was just kind of a first year bill. I'm just gonna fill it out and see how it goes. I think part of the hydrological connected issues also plays into raiding on streams. Isn't there some raiding related to which bodies of water are being affected? And not in the... It's just whether or not it's, whether or not that water from those ditches goes directly in right. Which is probably 80, 90% of it. It's a large number, you're right. But as far as the stream, a scoring mechanism or a score for the stream, I don't know where we're going. No, I just wondered whether that was part of what two rivers brought here. No, no, we just, on this, when we saw that we'd spent a lot of time on it, we saw that the grade and the amount of water coming down the hill was causing erosion enough that it was eating away the bank, the guardrail was failing, so there were a lot of moving pieces or a lot of aspects to it that needed to be taken care of before we had a huge loss. How's it being taken up in that neighborhood? I mean, I only know since I was coming down four corners and looked to the left. It's just not a ton of activity up there as far as I can tell. From a population standpoint. Yeah, it's like that. Unless, but there was two years ago when they were rebuilding 107, there were 18 wheelers going up over the music mountain and coming down to Dark Hill. Had we not done what we're doing now, there was a very high likelihood that after we rebuilt the ditch and put the guardrail back up, it would have failed again because there was significant grade coming down with absolutely no energy dissipation whatsoever in the ditch. Coming down to an undersized corridor and then just shooting out in the road, there was a ditch that was cut, probably five feet now. And where that ditch started, so it was right at this abutment for this bridge and it indulges the road in the way. It was gone. Had we not done what we did, I think it would have just been a band-aid on a bad situation. Right, completely agreeable. Because I noticed if you continue to go down music mountain, the permafrost issue, there's quite severe actually. And that road, I've seen people get trapped on that flat when you come up over the hill and then come down that flat before loose farm. Yeah. Where there's a real, there is another drainage problem and I think that's all probably wetlands or something. But it's still got the properties, isn't it? No, that's stuck there. Does that stop there? Yeah, it's stuck there. The line is right there before Dick Luna's garage. Got it. Well again, I mean it is the first official year and it's fun. I think to your point that would be nice to have a real defined methodology to try to decide what to choose. We're gonna pull from everywhere we can to try to come up with the right answer. Does that money go towards material or does it go towards labor? Everything, everything, yep. Because I mean as far as material goes from talking to culverts or stone. It goes to equipment, it goes to everything. So the total cost of the project, we have to pay 10% and the other 90% gets reimbursed to us. So if we subbed it out or we do it ourselves, it's a 90-10 split. And to be honest with you, if you look at the report, that stuff was in the report to be done eventually anyway. So it's almost paying us back for things that we wouldn't be doing anyway. Now it might change the schedule a little bit. But those are the types of things that- And it allows us to spend the money on that material in that location at this time instead of saying, well, that's good enough. We're gonna move on, we got this budget to work on. But to use proper engineering methods and to do things right, we all know that we have to stone line a ditch when the grade is extreme. We need to have culverts that are adequately sized. We need to pitch a row of the regularly, things like that. So those are things we're doing anyway that we need to be doing. And this just allows us $20,000 more than we'd have before. This is also putting us in line with X64, what was the act? Yeah, the stormwater general permit. I think it's the water quality. Yeah, stormwater general permit. That's another fun thing we're dealing with. But this is kind of a, this is sort of a funding mechanism for that, I think. So you're in? Pool's open, go swimming. When it warms up. It's a little chilly today. It's a little chilly, yeah. Kids didn't have to say we're having a great day. And yeah, any things like the rent facility, why is that, I think it's a prior, good to go? Yeah, I think we're doing good. I, like I said today was the first day. We will be purchasing a vacuum. We kind of already purchased it, but we will be purchasing a vacuum for the pool. So thank you. It's badly needed. That pool is, it's pretty nasty, or it was pretty nasty. So no, we're excited. We're excited to get that facility up and going and hope everybody comes out, checks out all the new programming that we have going on out there. Friday nights, we're having a swim. We've got fantastic programming. Pirate night, a luau night, all sorts of stuff. It's gonna be really fun. So come on out. We'll be bringing you a fee schedule. Kelly has been working on putting together a fee schedule, a town-wide fee schedule. So instead of having these pieces here and there of fees assessed for things that we provide, we're gonna have just a fee schedule that has all the fees on it. And you can improve that every year. So it's kind of a one-stop shopping kind of a thing. So I'm hoping to have that to you at the next meeting. And you have agreed to serve as the ultimate to the Board, to Rivers Board. Yes. And you need the Board to select Board to appoint you. Okay, I'll get that on you. I'm going to do it right now. You want to do it right now? Yeah, I'm going to appoint Greg as the alternative to the tour. All there? All right, thanks for doing that. Yeah. But if there's no questions, that's all I got. Can I ask you a question? No. So I noticed that the speed study is ongoing in downtown and that's to Rivers, right? That is. Do you know or do we get any say about how they do that or are they doing that and we get no say? I think we could have a little input if you had something in mind. Yeah, so basically where they've put them it's sort of near the hardware store and then just past the LaVear block. And so they're in just this one stretch of the downtown but we have a much longer stretch of 25 miles an hour. And I think that people actually slow down in that stretch because of the cars parked along the side but where they're still going quickly coming in or out of town, going out this curve people tend to pick up speed going over the bridge and it's still 25. I think if we want an accurate assessment I really help people are interacting with that full 25 mile an hour section. And they may be planning to do this. They started at those two spots and I was just sort of curious were they going to kind of bump them out incrementally and test it. So why were we installing these here? I talked to them about that and I asked them, can we do a speed study town wide? They said we really can't do town wide but we have, I think they said three sets of these speed sensors and they said we'd be willing to put them wherever you want. They can do it on the road, it's pay for roads. Anywhere we want them, I think they're willing to do that. We just need to figure it out. We probably definitely want something from Church Street to Pleasant Street. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Because that's where the fastest factor is. I think really what we maybe do is we just figure out where we want them and they're willing to accommodate us. So we can kind of add. Sure, sure. That's what I was curious about. Because that probably would be a good area. I mean, that's what we've been seeing most of our speed issues. Right. I think anywhere we want to go. Anywhere we want to go. The roads, the pay for roads. Yeah. Well, we've talked about sort of using this as an assessment of what we're going to do with the speed through the village but I think that that 25 mile an hour zone is much larger than it's being collected currently and so I feel like we'd be kicking ourselves in the, but if we did. Sure. I come back at it later and said, oh yeah, everybody was going 18 miles an hour through that little quarter but they are actually going 35 and just they round that bend. I come down and sit here for an hour before our meeting in probably 50s and people are going faster than 25 miles an hour. I was going to say, we get a couple that are going over 50s. Yeah, I mean, right out here. Tickets. Yeah. You can hear in the bridge. Well, why don't you, why don't the board as individuals just think about whatever it is you might be interested in. And I can share, they told me they have three or four of those things and they're willing to let us have them all at the same time. Well, I know the stretch from the bridge down to GW plastics is a hot area. Yeah, we're also looking at a digital sign out there too. So Mark has done some DUI enforcement and he gets some grand funds for that. So one of the things we talked about was doing some more digital signs. I don't want being somewhere out there by the school and then somewhere else but probably a couple fixed location signs and then a couple like we have now that we can move from position to position based on what do you see? What's the speed limit for our main street? 25. So do you want to lower that speed limit on our main street? Thank you. No, I'll tell you what you're thinking is logical but it's not how a speed study works. If you want to increase the speed from 25 to 20 or whatever in that area on main street, then they're the perfect spot because we need people going slower because if you move your cameras and what happens is the data shows that people are going 35 to 40 then you won't have the data to reduce the speed. It'll be, they'll say actually you have data to say you should increase your speed. So if you're wanting to desire is to reduce the speed just on main street then they're at a good spot because people are going slower so you could probably have the data to lower that section. Because we didn't want to lower the speed limit and we couldn't because people were coming so quickly and pulling over so every time I drove over I would creep over them to try to offset a speeder but in the end they said you could raise your speed limit but you can't lower it. So you really need to think carefully to manipulate the data to get the result but if the study is done right here in the immediate village then if we, you know, if they did get the information they wouldn't allow us to adjust the whole speed zone and we have to... Because it's all one speed zone, you know, for... From the town office all the way to GW classes is one speed zone. But there are different streets and each street has its own speed so the speed zone right here on Main Street goes from Spalding to the town hall and then it's North Main Street and then it's Church Street so you can all go in every section. To your point, because part of what they use is the average speed because they think that people are doing that speed they consider that a safe speed to go and so that's... They could actually raise your speed limit it's a weird deal but I've been in... I went to a place in Colorado where I came from where they actually asked for the same study and the state raised their speed limit by 10 and they wanted it lowered because that's what people can, in their minds they safely can go that speed and they are so that's one of the pieces that they put into it. So to Trace's point, let's... if you want to... we want low numbers at the intent is to lower the speed limit. We want numbers that are indicative of that. Right, well it would be interesting if you do almost these little mini studies of each zone. So this is one study and then Church Street is another between offices and Spalding. You need to do a full small thing and it comes back at 35 in the state because well you need to raise it to 35. Has anybody had any other comments in regards to the bump outs lately? I know we had some initial reactions and I haven't really heard anything since but... It's really slowed down the opposite. One of the things that I wanted to say about the study is I don't know how those work but are they trying to measure how long it takes the flow of traffic to leave that zone? No. I mean why would you have one... Why would you have maybe... Because if 20 cars come in and only 10 cars go out for 15 minutes or an hour you get a... you can create data that shows the lag time that vehicles are actually resting in the downtown area presumably in a parking space doing business. I think the intent of the study is simply to see what the speed of the traffic... Between those two bracketed areas... Yes. The speed in the dead speed... The speed in the... It'll leave a count on it and it calculates the speed but it's at those two big points and you'll see what the speed is to... the mental. It's just at those two... Being that they're so close together... But those entry points are too close. You'll see some of these... Not so much that they're too close just I don't think it gives us the whole picture of... all the way around. It just gives us this point of direction and is unique from other sections. We're not looking for a speed study. We're not looking for people that are speeding necessarily. We're looking for what is the speed. One thought that I feel like we've tossed around is even doing more like a village speed. So, you know, church pleasant and further out this way would actually stay 25 but then dropping what's... the actual village for pedestrians for parked cars, traffic, things like that. So that... Theresa's saying that could actually benefit us if people really are going slowly. My second point to that would be I wonder how two rivers quantifies the data because people go insane speeds at night. I mean, I'm out on the street at night all the time here just walking the dog or whatever and the speeds through town at 11 p.m. are completely different than the speeds at 10 a.m. So... I think we just use the data for whatever it is. But I think it's... There is no way that they can quantify the speed between the two fixed points because they never measure the distance or anything. It's just, what's the speed here? What's the speed here? I understand what you're saying at night the speeds go way up so that could possibly skew that average speed. Right, and if they're able to pull out what that looks like. Right, and they can. That is all there. It shows the time and the speed and all that. But as far as in between the two there's no math that can be done saying that in between these two fixed points this is what the speed looks like. I mean, I guess we could. I don't think you could. But because they've placed them sort of where they have it not quite the ends of the village but sort of bracketing that we could potentially use that data if it showed that people were sort of forced to slow down through that section during the day when there are parked cars and more pedestrians. It could benefit us if we were going to try to talk about that. She was reading in charge of that. Yeah. So maybe it would be good to just I think we can use that for whatever we want to use it for. We just got to get it collected and we can keep these out. Maybe we can revisit this whenever those bumpouts go away and just see what we have. Do it again. See what it looks like with and without. Because that was the original intent and they just couldn't make it out here to get it put in before to gather that data. Cool. Everybody have a chance to review the constable's reports? Not a doggie. I was going to say a lot more interval activity. Only one speeder this time but there's a lot of dog complaints. Check ups. At least there's no escaped sheep. More chickens in the river. We had that last year. Yeah. Yeah. It's okay. It's one of those stories you don't hear very often. One of those. It does happen. Okay. Any comments on constable activity? Good job. Maybe it's just me. I usually see him quite a bit. I hadn't seen him quite as much in the last week or two. Maybe I just missed it. He's on vacation, I think. He was hanging out. Yeah. I thought he told me he had to go somewhere. He's going. Once there he was there was a dog in the car instead. Yeah. I think he's going to be out for about a week. He's going. He's either going to a training class or he's going on vacation. He's going to be out. But don't tell him. Everybody have a chance to review the select board minutes inside of May? I'm moving each of the minutes in 6-11. All right. All right. I'll wait. I can't see anything. What are you doing? How long is this? And then we have the committee meeting minutes. The red committee is in there as well as the constables. And the solid waste. Anything? Borrow down the solid waste board other than the solar agreement? Anything else? That's... Oh, are they? Not really. We just... It was three to two votes that we didn't agree with it, but we're not legally bound by that anymore. I think that's pretty much. The joint board being a part of the... Right. Yeah. And based on... Based on the area that we... Think in many of these. Right. And three of us felt that we could utilize that area within the next 20 years. Okay. And the replacement would be more than we're getting from it. I know some notes in here about the audit report. Yeah. Yeah. Any comments? Any comments to that? The chair didn't hand out the report until our meeting, so we really didn't have a chance to look at all of it. Okay. I did go over the financials and then I did go over there on the audit findings. Like, I was talking about talking about that. And for any of Royalton's concerns, I feel like I'd already addressed a couple of the issues that they had in the past, so I'd already handled those issues and went through, again, the explanation of the duty to be strong. You know, it's always this concern that you're beveling those transfer stations, transfer stations, bevel money, but I think they're finally made that clear. This is at that point in time whether, you know, we made both of them on your day-offs. We had to do paper, sort of paper or whatever. So I think that went well and looked at the audit and the subjective findings. And I think they were sure that they were also presented in January of the same, you know, because they wanted to get their fees under control. Fred gave them a notch of C which apparently they discussed and Chet said, but they didn't get voted on, so Chet's going to add that to the next agenda. So that they will also be in the same situation so there will no longer be time for people to, you know, put a handle on that. So I thought it was good. I hope that they had questions about brought out in the back, but they went through their current situation and where they stood. Has there been any, I know in the past, one of the feedback from the joint board was, or from the facility was not getting the financial information when they did it. In kind of a manner, does that seem like that's corrected now? That's correct. I'm getting, once a month, we're getting our report from the tree. They have a bunch of staff who are giving them a copy of their bank account that had been a concern for one of them, the RTS number, so that they could actually see their money a little better about it, I guess, so certainly taking care about it. Just like a, a checkbook balance Yeah. because now that they've got their own account, it's close. They can see it. Does anybody, in regards to the committee, where they're at, in regards to the skate park right now, I know they were, so, they've gone back, so the skate park, is that what they're doing or? Yeah. So the skate park has gone through a lot of refinement, I guess. By people that are very passionate about it. Last I heard the budget was somewhere close to $250,000. So it got me thinking, better be looking at it. Yeah, that isn't anywhere, where, where, where. So it got me thinking, Theresa and I think a little bit about back when they put together when the town voted to create, the town voted to create the facility, what's called facility maintenance. The recreation fund. Recreation fund, that, that fund. And, and start funding that fund. We look back and, and found that at town meeting in 2012, I think it was, that fund was, was created. And there was an initial payment made to that fund. And every year since, there have been payments made to that fund. But there's not any evidence of there ever being an allocation or anything approved by the, the board asked you how much of those funds are actually going to go to the skate park. The language in the funding. The, the language in the fund talks about, talks about maintenance, operation and maintenance of the facility. It doesn't say it's for the skate park. We have it. We have it in some direction. I don't think so. No, we have it. I, I think. So, so I'm going to go with that. We have a budget that we voted on. Did we vote on it? Did we just give direction? We were going to keep it under a hundred. We had, we had a $80,000 budget that we broke it out. And part of that was to get a $30,000 allotment to that rec fund that, that year, which we did, which is a year before you arrived. And that was, that allotment was based on that $80,000 skate park budget. So $80,000 for the total project or for the towns part of that. Because there, there, if you ask certain people on that board, they feel that they have $90,000 in the bank waiting for them in that fund. And I cannot find anywhere where anybody has said, okay, the town has approved, the board has approved allocation of $90,000 or $30,000 or whatever that. Part of that was in kind. This issue is going to come up. Part of it was in kind from a highway department or, you know, road crew, whatever. Our, our, our own cost we were going to part of that allotment was, was not cash. So what I'm looking for is somewhere, some number that says the board has approved an allocation from that fund to the skate park of something, some number. Because right now the board that fill the board being the wreck board fill that they, the balance of that fund is all skate park. And I don't know if that's the intent of because there's like $90,000. Is that I would agree that that is that is what because that's not the way the language was written whenever they open the fund up. No, I know but it's, but it clearly has been over the last several years that money that's in there now has been presented to the voters and discussed through the select board as allocations for the skate park. The, the options at the recreational facility wouldn't be for the voters in six years or so. The, the warning for the, the warning to fund they account just says do you want to fund us? Do you want to put 30,000 there? No, at the same time they had, they had different examples. There was two or three, there was a two or three examples of the recreation committee had done extensive time and went through three, I believe it was three. Yeah, there's a rec master plan. There were, there were three proposals that they had put out there to the voters to vote on and the voters picked one of the three. So the voters actually vote on that account? Yes. Yeah, it was 2017. Yeah. They voted on the, they voted on the master plan for and in that plan shows the staging in which they're going to do things and part of what was already done over there we were able to do with some of the FEMA alternate funds but there's, there's different things in there and I think you know, I might skate park was memorandumized the plan. The skate park came after breakfast but I think it was a combination of the funds that were putting what we allotted to put into that fund was based upon the plan that was put in front of the town but then the skate park came in as kind of an addendum to that piece but I remember right. Also the car into this presentation was Yeah, two years ago was yeah and requested the tone put in I think it was the exact figure was I saw on the screen with more than I was discussing with the town that we would put that chunk of money in there so that was the big issue that's going to arise is there needs to be a definitive number that the board has approved that well that comes out of that fund and goes to the skate park and that's where we left it the last time was that they were going to there were four or five people there that they were going to with this new approach they were going to come back to the board with their proposed budget and they're going to come up against the expectations that the board already laid out I have a Yeah, because they're going to be coming back to you with a significantly different and more expensive plan thinking they have $90,000 whatever it is in an account waiting for them and I just want to make sure that that is truly the case the total amount that we were looking at two years ago or a year and a half ago was in the $80,000 to $100,000 area but there was no total project though right total budget yeah and that was broken down there's the portion of the town that was whatever $15,000 or $16,000 worth there was the there was the recreational fun portion there was the black tie dinner that they did there were some other different things there was a Tony Hawk Scott Tony Hawk Grant so there was multiple pieces to that it was all laid out in a piece of paper to us so you would charge them they knew that they had X-Miles they had a fund raise they came to us a year and a half ago I believe they came to us they had two proposals that they gave us on skateboard parts two proposals if I remember right and one was one was somewhere in the $80,000 area the other one was in the $100,000 or something and I don't know if we voted on it but I know we gave them some direction on sticking in the $80,000 bracket not higher because a lot of this hinged on the Tony Hawk grant which was like $5,000 no it was more than that that they had right they had cancelled like $25,000 right and then they only got $5,000 so you do the math if you're at $80,000 they just lost $20,000 where you had $60,000 right so not high because you're trying to research this money when the fund was started the voters approved this the fund for a specific reason and after reading the warrants after that you were still allocating money that was being voted in your warning when people were voting did it say that it said $30,000 was going to this recreation fund it did not say $30,000 was going to the skatepark the advocate so obviously it's a capital fund and the select board has the right to to say that but I guess if we're going to do that in the future I think we need to be clear in the warning itself and say if we're going to have $30,000 and how much of your market for the skatepark and how much is going to have money to replace or for the next project or whatever the intent of the fund that started not solely the skatepark so I was just so Greg and me it would have time to work out together going we had these together history in five minutes and we were unsuccessful and I think the intent was to fund the rec master plan as a whole so what I'm concerned about here is the fund and give them all to the skatepark if so I just I need to know or does that max out because I don't know what's actually in the fund but if you look at the the appropriations that have been made over the years I think it comes up to $90,000 so I need some clarification from the board as to how much of that $90,000 is actually meant to go to the skatepark well I can tell you it's not I mean the intent of the the intent of the money in that fund is for the grand scheme of things the master plan yes and the skateboard part is one piece of this whole puzzle and if we Carl I need you to find in your imminent wisdom that date when you guys said this month much of for digging I will find it that money I want to say $50,000 I'm just trying to figure out you came in July of 2017 June 2017 so town meeting of 2000 so town meeting of 2017 we voted on it so the core must have been in the fall of December or speaking would have been in the fall of 2016 to come to the rec center rec committee yeah yeah yeah so so you think we need to be looking in 2017 no you want to be looking in the end of it'll be budget season for 2016 okay and you'll be looking in agendas for appointments appointments for committee right okay well we'll keep looking yeah so that's helpful at least we now have a time frame because we've been searching for years I have to go through my I only have that home somewhere if you do that would be great there was a proposal skate park at the center there was a break-in sheet that they gave us December 7th 2016 I just think here it is park of construction $140,000 $25 the town this is narrowing down on what yeah this is the breaking down what the town would provide what park of construction would provide this is an agreement where are you at what's the date 12-12-16 12-12-16 and this is in the packet this is that board packet so was there you're looking at do you have the minutes there too this is no I'm not going to okay this was the proposal that we then so there's option there's three options option A, B and C all with different price structures this is very detailed and this is what we kicked back to them to come back to us with with a specific because we weren't interested in the $110,000 we were talking about $80,000 so it would be sometime between 12-12-16 and three seven and seventeen somewhere in there so they came back to us with that broken down budget and we probably didn't vote on it but that was guidance that we were working with because we came up with a $30,000 we agreed to put a $30,000 allotment into the into the the agenda for the 2017 select town meeting and it was specifically for the skate park you don't have packets I don't know for that time Frank I'll have to look I'll look back I was wondering what I should do with these so the question is then if nothing was ever officially really voted on by the board would you be comfortable with me talking about setting some some number that you can then approve so that everybody involved knows what they're working with because I don't know how the rec committee is even trying to get a budget for this when they have no idea how much the town's going to get on they have no idea how much the town's going to get on how much the town's going to get on they've gone this has been the whole point was we had a rough figure based on these plans of what a budget was like we told them to go back we would get the funding from town from town meeting for the $30,000 the town would connect in with its in kind they were going to go do some fundraising and they were going to come back to us with a final plan that was going to be somewhere in the $110,000 range or something like that or maybe $80,000 with a maximum town the last two years that final plan has been amorphous and now it's grown again to $200,000 and so we're still waiting for them to come back to us with a final proposal for us to vote on and that would be I think if this is where they're coming back then they have to understand that everything's still in play so in your opinion there's only $30,000 that was appropriated specifically for the skatepark between between what we were going to put this fund and the in-kind was around $50,000 right right cash is $30,000 but that dedicated $30,000 was bolstered by the interest in the skatepark I don't think it was earmarked it was recreation fund right and it was presented to the voters that this is where these $30,000 would go because it's part of the rec center but no there hasn't ever been any kind of an agreement but I mean it's kind of the same way as the you know like the capital improvement fund we doesn't need money to fund but we haven't said that money is going to the town or to the new town office or something like that which is okay except you've got a committee that's working on the assumption that all that money's theirs and they're trying to they're trying to get the most things for the bucks they've done this before that the rec committee every committee in town that the select board appoint is the select boards of committee so while they can talk with you and engage with you don't you don't need to get distracted by that they should be coming directly to the select board so yeah I just I'm going to come to the next their next meeting because there are there's just some things that are happening that why don't you invite them to our next meeting I can do that we'll just check in and see where they're at and we can talk about where we think the budget should be that we don't put a lot of time into something that you know we're going to tell them to cut out because we have a master plan at the rec center and if we're just going to keep spending time trying to build a utopian skate park what's going to happen to our tennis tennis court exactly the green field and space yeah there's all kinds of things that could be moving forward I know but there's stuff I wouldn't invite them to discuss the status of the the skate park yeah that's not okay Adam I was just wondering for the disciplinary purposes is not an exploding date where this stuff has to be executed or it goes away why are you carrying this liability this asset which is not your asset on your books and these people are dragging their feet now the project has completely changed I mean how long is it supposed to be open yeah that's what we're just talking about yeah there isn't any there isn't anything like that but we could there is the only they have is for one of the grants they're Tony Hawk grant they have a timeline for that but I but as far as but we could the liability you're right the assets there but it's not even there's never been anything official that says that we have that those funds are even allocated to that use so I remember when he pitched this and the Tony Hawk grant was a big part of it and that came in far below expectations project quite frankly shouldn't scale down at that point not scale exactly that's what we're having the kids that made that very emotional pitch and I think in college now so yeah at what point does the town that's faced serious changes in its own fiscal position go back and say you know fish are coming they were here this is what you have right and you got two months to deliver something real or we have to allocate that and maybe that's a conversation for exactly when they were here two months ago we didn't get I mean we didn't get any we just got more ideas of how in scope how it was changing but it wasn't any what has happened is two people have kind of taken over that the control of that board and they are skaters and it has turned into this huge regional skate park thing now and it should be regional expense that's not going to happen but the other thing that you know maybe it won't be good to have talk with them because I mean we're allocating funds for the master plan not for the skate park initially but there are other things that you know maybe we do put a timeline to the skate park but there are other steps in this process that could be going on too we could be talking about the tennis court sort of something else that should be going on as well I know in the perfect world when they had made the pitch that they were going to start construction of the skate park this spring would have been that was the timeline that they were looking at the timeline you know not my little hide sound like it's two years down the road but I know when they came to us that the spring of 18 was when they were looking at the break ground all we did was we agreed conceptually about the idea of the skate park and that we were willing to contribute some funds to the town but it was going to be a Bethel scale skate park it was going to be something that would fit our budget related to recreation development and truthfully you know we can't have it be that rec facility has already gone from being the pool to being a recreation facility we don't need it to turn into the skate park there's too many other things over there that could be happening I think of meeting to clarify all that is hugely important to clarify the budget to clarify the timeline I think everything I think it's I guess we have to go back and see what it was that that Corey brought to town meeting did he go you had it right there it's right here did he have different options for the skate park or did he have the one that we had talked to him about I just got the same powerpoint right here but did the voters vote on one specific there wasn't a vote it was just information okay the only vote was on that fund so you didn't actually vote on the master plan itself the select board approved the master plan in 2013 I think there was a survey done the master plan did not even include a skate park but the voters the voters gave authorization to a skate park no was that it wasn't warned that way was warned are you going to fund this okay that's it that's it so as far as the the skate park came as an addition to the master plan and probably in 15, 14, 15 we had as Adam said there were or maybe Derek said it we had some at the time middle school or young high school kids came directly to the select board with a petition talking about the interest in having a skate board park be part of the recreation master plan and we cast the recreation committee with finding out what that would be what that would entail and it's taken all this time so being that I'm just trying to wrap it up I'm not sure that we even approve the skate park necessarily but we acknowledged that there was room for more going on at the because we had originally in the master plan a multi-purpose building that actually had to be stricken from the plan because of restrictions on the easement with the conservation water fund and when that happened then there was the opening for more potential other infrastructure down there so being that the so the voters the voters approved the master plan for no no the voters approved the initial recreational to set up the just yeah the fund the fund the voters never approved the select board approved the master plan the fund I don't think we voted on them we just we're talking about the master plan the master plan had master plan had master plan had three iterations and there were it wasn't a vote it was a poll at town meeting and that even maybe at forward festival there was a poll and it talked about elements what elements do you want to see and they sent that to the designers and then they came back with three options but it was never voted on people were able to file past the options and they made did the board vote on it eventually on the master plan the townspeople have simply voted on to establish the fund and to fund that fund and the language to establish the fund doesn't say anything about building any capital improvements at all really it's maintenance and operation I think so that's where it's it's just hard to kind of like get your hands around and now that I'm hearing that the rec board the whole of that account balance is theirs to use I don't know if I think that that's the intent the fund is as you say for the it's a budget placeholder in the budget for the recreation facility the master plan we specifically said that if they wanted to have town funds contribute to the development of the skate park that into the tune of $30,000 we would ask the voters that year to put the money in with the idea that it would be available for the skate park so I think that it's more in the lines of $30,000 plus the 20 or something we should circle back with them in regards to the initial budget they want to go those funds are there to fix the pool to put pavement on the parking lot to possibly put a tennis course down the road at some point the board is going to have to come up and improve the number when the board says skate park X number of dollars boom we approve it then that money is earmarked for that but at this point we have all we agreed on but I think the consensus with the town they're okay with having a piece of the recreational facility over there to be a skate park but even if Tony Hong himself walked in tonight and said here's a half a million dollars the intent is not to go build a half a million dollar skate park it's to build a small skate park and work on the other green space this is kind of looper thought we just lost our high school right we kids do you see riding skateboards up and down sidewalks do you see them looking for a place to ride on skateboards so I have a two year old we're not supposed to take her but at the skate park you know that's what we're all thinking about I know we're all on the same page here but if you're such a narrow window of kids on a skate park you could probably build a skate park half size of this town that's all we're looking at that's all we're ever looking at I will set up a meeting with him so we can discuss all these issues and hopefully everybody I think we're just on separate pages I think at this point it doesn't matter what the budget is why can't they use the pool during the season when we don't have water I have a mandate I'm going to a next meeting it's become this huge and it's head by these two kids well I know there are a lot of people concerned and I continue to hear concerned about free space down there yes well I just hear a lot about or other things some people want to see a basketball here some people want to see a basketball set we're part of the plan they need to meet with you they definitely need to meet with you because they've also, one of the other things they're going to spawn ranch to do a design well they've gone away from that design and they're using somebody else who knows AutoCAD they're not they're not professionals in the field but they can use AutoCAD this is the part where the board needs to reign in their committee because the committee is serving at the behest of the select board they need to be checking in with the select board and following procedures can't just be I mean I don't mind if they don't want to use spawn ranch but they can't ask us to fund that and then not and then change I will put them on the agenda for July 9th and if I can make it happen we have a question for you Greg they wrote a AARP grant for something did you write that with them? no that's a good question there's a lot of grants being written that I'm not really involved with a committee has got to go through either you or the select board to write a grant why are they running a grant? because they're moving ahead asking for forgiveness and not for permission under this guys of being a town affiliated with the AARP you're right and that's something Theresa I've talked about is that all these grants that are being written by all these committees that should all funnel through well maybe we ought to be sending a notice out that they can't do this I think I just need to participate in these a little more than I have you're going to be doing grant management alright yeah this is what I did find it current funds available $30,800 and this was in 2016 proposed budget with option comparisons current funds available $10,800 proposed request from taxpayers additional $40,000 Tony Hawk fund potentially $25 VSL fundraiser $5,000 projected total $108,000 $100,800 and so there were three options A, B and C A was a $5,800 square foot C was $4,200 square foot they went $116,190,000 they went cost per square foot was $20 for the big one up to $21 for the small one and over budget they had version C was a $90,000 total cost theoretically if this projected fundraising was did end at $100,000 they would have 10 more so the idea is that this was a budget that laid out to $90,000 is that all from that December 12th? stuff can you send it on? so the budget sort of laid out there but it's but that was based on them getting 40 more town a meeting date which they only were getting 30 more so that would be $80,000 that was $40,000 that was the $100,000 was based on $40,000 but they got a 30 so that would be $90,000 but they didn't get the $25,000 from Tony Hawk it's really $70,000 $70,000 from the town more like $60,000 we need to have a meeting with them but I'll send you this and here is a proposed timeline a proposed timeline I don't know I got bored 11,317 skateparkers over I'll have to go back and look it was proposed to be completed by November 3rd December so really it's an interesting this is a good date and they have they're assuming that every dime it's gone into the fund any other communications and it's not there no but this will be my last select board not now that we have your sole skateboard I can't leave the skateboard it's not there it's always about the end of June so there's this kind of exact we've got to follow this skateboard I'm going to download I'm going to bring it to the Gigabyte I'm going to download a Gigabyte worth of select package I'd like to put it in the minutes of the meeting all of the service over the time hopefully it won't be too far away I wish I might let it in the future and there thanks I take it seriously I don't think that a person should run for a board seat with a term and not serve out the term but I have to make the change I appreciate everybody that I've worked with it's been great we appreciate working with you good all right the follow up on the board position you've had to date two applicants I've had four applicants to date and because the newspaper had some issues they didn't get posted when it should have we've extended the date to the end to the 30th so the end of the month I believe it's 30 days till the 30th and then my intent was to after that I'll get you all the information and all the applicants so you can take a look at them invite them all to come interview with you on the 9th meeting and then you can go in executive session and discuss and either come out and appoint somebody or give me some direction okay there was an issue recently last night we were trying to post a link to the town website looking for applications for the position and there's two different dates on the section of the website so I don't know if I got fixed or not but I don't know it's not a big deal I just thought I'll check on that it's definitely the 30th I will entertain a motion to go into executive session to talk about legal matters so move check on that okay thank you everybody are we in the committee? hey Derek how's that go? that's hot okay okay thanks it's our no decisions today she's all paid up oh thanks how do you know how do you know to wear them a little skeet a little skeet a little skeet wow cut out of a skeet definitely oh good we're first we got one in there well no oh let's get it out of my yard okay good night