 All right, we'll call the meeting to order and if anybody hasn't signed in just make sure you sign in it. If you do want to speak at some point tonight just make sure that that you present your name. A lot of times we know who you are but just for the note taker as well as individuals that might be watching. I'm sure you state your name. So first on the agenda is approved the agenda. Is there any amendments or are we good to approve as written. I think we're good. Okay. Hey, all in favor. Hi. All right. So the first, we have two appointments tonight. The first appointment we have is with Windsor County Sheriff. We do have 45 minutes appointment and as you can see the agenda is pretty busy this evening so what I want to do is is kind of break it into thirds so the first third would be just for individuals that are in person or or on zoom is to kind of recap kind of what are some of the, what are some of our issues that we have when it comes to our current policing I know we went through it more at the last meeting was, you know, at this point we're trying to. We're basically saying that the console under things is not really working for us. But what what are those. What are those macro level issues that we're having in our community right now, like example, speed, something like that. At least we can get those out in the open. These are the concerns we have and then I what I'd like to do after we do that is just turn that over to Ryan, so that he can talk through kind of what the Windsor County shares department can or me, maybe, may not be able to do for us based upon our concerns. And then the last third, whatever time we have left and I'll determine open to longer comment if anybody wants to go on the record discussion so so just kind of to go through. I'll start in person and then we can go to zoom, you know what what are some of the, I just want to be I want to ask a couple contract questions before we end this session. Okay. Yeah, just remind me. So, so what are I know we've already gone over this to last meeting what are what are some of the high level concerns that we have with our current model that we have, or issues in town. Yeah, it's terrible up there. Speeding they come off that mountain. Looks like they're doing 6065 pass our house sometimes. I wouldn't be surprised they are we've been doing road construction up there after the flood. Obviously the sheriff himself had was had to go through there recently and and people are. You know, like put out today that we're going to extend road closure up there because of the construction is going to take longer. So many residents, people who live on the road are so happy, because it because you don't. It's just safe so campbrook speeding is a big one. So speeding and I know we have other areas throughout the town that you know we have issues. Not just campbrook but there are other issues that that come up at times other than speeding. And I'm going to, I think last time we, we classified it kind of like Bethel's kind of turned into the Wild West for the criminal aspect because there's no one to hold accountable. So it's everything. I mean, they're on the side of the road shooting up using dealing, you know, stealing. There's nobody stopping it. And as they figure out that no one's stopping it. It's getting a lot worse and really quick. Yeah, so accountability. Obviously we've had the issues with drugs, using and dealing. We also had issues with some. Well, a lot recently of theft, certain parts of it was certain couple of individuals but in random, you know, we do have an uptick in theft and then and then we have some vandalism that's that that comes and goes. So we run the receiving end the town. I mean, as you can see someone hit the, took out our sign and Oscar did get that person but so that's a $10,000, you know, seven to $10,000 fix the sign was right here on the town hall and then for somebody vandalized in the American, you know, so we had someone break into the town garage there. Oh yeah, yeah. You know, we've had a rash of break ins high speed pursuits. I mean, name it. Jordan's right. Police who are too busy and kind of get to it whenever they can. And they're not really getting to it. And I think somebody had said at the last meeting, just kind of that that hometown touch of that person. Maybe it was you at the last meeting but somebody kind of like, you know, not not to pick on the Vermont State Police but when we have an issue with the Vermont State Police we just feel like there's not that person will touch. So that when it reoccurs that become, you know, so pick up the phone saying, you know, you know that person one on one instead of becomes somebody knew that you're talking to or they don't know the case or Right. And I think it'd be nice to have somebody that we all know as a community instead of a random person another random person another random person and trying to learn 10 different people instead of having a community figure that is here to help and kind of build with us. Like a couple of regulars so everybody gets to know them. Yeah. I absolutely know what I was seeing. We want to be with them. Yeah. So any person didn't have that we have to deal with that. Becky bass and yeah I mean I think cover leads to the chunk of it I would just. I look at the experience that I've had to as examples, because I like concrete example, and I would absolutely agree you call the state police they either never show up to call you never get the same person twice. And it's at least on our hill we have a lot of sketchy stuff going on stuff that I have given up. And I'm getting the drug dealers are damn hill at this point, I would love for something to be done. But it's also that when they're approaching on my property or damaging my property or trespassing despite our keep out signs, and we call and nobody shows up. Nothing ever happens. Recently I finally got something done because I personally chased down the game warden and ran off. And I was emailing with her and it was the same person and something got done. But you know I mean it was a very minor trespassing and she issued tickets and. But something was done. Yeah, since the last meeting I did meet with Lieutenant Gordon from the state police commander, very nice man and he is saying the same thing that the commanders before him said which is, they are stretched you know people working double ships they're getting people you know from different barracks and they really need local towns to contract with, you know, share of departments or start police farms they really need us to step up ourselves because they just don't have the bandwidth and, and I will say this he made a really good point. I felt which is something that Chris Jarvis had said at one of our meetings and the last one saying some of it has has to do with people needing to write to their legislators because police officers can arrest somebody over and over again and you could give him a name and they could come in with a rap sheet to show you how many times they have been arrested and so that's definitely a legislative issue and you do have Senator Dick McCormick you have representative Kirk white so you do have people locally that you could write to about your concerns because they're the ones who write the laws that make the policing, you know, more effective, certainly and give them the police the tools that they need to do what the police need to do so. So let me go is there anybody online that would like to comment on any of the potential topics of concern that we have in our community. If you do either just raise your hand or you can put the hand emoji thing up and we'll grab you. Dave has his hand up in the shadow. Sometimes I don't remember this question might be in the next phase but is Windsor County going to be able to if the state police can't get help. Central's market can get help that's no nobody can get help. So when you need a more trained person. If we if we want to contract with Windsor County, do they feel that they can get help. They can get the qualified people if there's a opening. Yeah, well, yeah, that definitely like you were saying that Dave that'll definitely be on on the I think it's something I have to say. Sure, yep. So I think it sounds like money. You're muted. Can you hear me now. Yes. Okay. Hi everybody. I've been in my for a little bit I was away for a while. The question is it the number is it the the manpower or is it the hours like what do we need to improve. I mean, if it's 20 hours enough or is it a combination of more manpower, more hours. I mean, because there's a lot to patrol here. There's not just, you know, like, can't brook. There's, you know, it's spread out so what's the, what are we working on to fill that. Yeah, we at the last meeting Lenny, and maybe I can get you caught up to speed here at some point. You know, we I guess what we basically as a community at the last one decided that the 20 hours of policing that we set aside in the budget for the constables to do isn't being done right. They are busy doing their full time jobs don't have the time to help us. And probably just about all these issues. Well, a majority of these issues are probably as a result of just not having a presence right. And then what we started to talk about Lenny was kind of, you know, where do we go from here so it sounds like the constable and the things that had worked for us for so long isn't. There are new options and we basically boiled it down to the sheriff's department. And then the sheriff's department has different levels of care that they can offer us so you know, one level would be just doing, you know, fulfilling those hours that we currently have budgeted. And then we can go up the ladder on more towards what we'll call a full time type policing that they could offer us and I think that's kind of what we're talking about today is, you know, what are the what are the issues that we have in town. And let Ryan have an opportunity to speak on behalf of the sheriff's department to say, he, you know, we hear you and here are the things that we can do and maybe some of the things that they can't do. And then maybe what his recommendation would be, and then we have kind of behind the scenes have talked to Ryan and his department on some of the different levels of care that we can do. You know, where do we start, you know, type deal so. So, unless anybody has anything else. Jesse muted. There you go. Hi. I just wanted to add to the list of things I've kind of seen or heard about going around town and one of them is is just like domestic violence interpersonal violence and home that kind of thing that I know people. I see on the police blog a lot I know that happens around here and then also just mental health crisis people calling that need wellness checks on a left one or friend, family member that kind of thing. Okay, thanks Jesse. Is there anything else online or anything that we might have missed Joe just came in. We'll get your cop speed Joe. No matter what we do we're not believing that we're going to 100% solve all the crime in defense, but doing something is far better than let us just spiral out of control. Yeah, absolutely. I would add to it. I think that it would be whoever comes into this community to speak with the people who are here because we know the problems are in our neighborhoods I think what we highlighted is I know Christian Hill has certain people that are not helping we know over Gage Road has become notorious where we live, both at the top and the bottom. And we know where you should be looking. We know that you drag them in and they let them right out again. But you don't by no means do you have to look into the ether to find information on what's going on there's definitely people here who are happy to have conversations about what is going on in our neighborhoods because there is a community of lots of little different neighborhoods like can't brook is another perfect short and each one is has a little bit of different situation going on. Yeah, so I think we were all looking for this community policing so that you have a couple of officers two or three the same people that are always here. They get to know people that stop in at Central Market or you know the coffee shop whatever and kind of get to meet people and they're going to get to know people by if they're always the same one responding to calls and they're going to get to know people so we're all looking for that community policing feel and also just want to this ad we do case Ryan doesn't know we do have a pretty busy bar in town, as well as we do have a newly open, or will be open dispensary that's supposed to be starting soon so those will be those are kind of some other things in the community that, you know, that we do have. So I think what I do at this point is just kind of open it up to Ryan let him kind of talk through the shares department and things and then at the end whatever time we have left, I'll feel free I'll, I'll send questions or comments again so. Right. So, my first question, where do you want me to stand. Wherever you want. People can see you they're going to see you on camera that camera you can stand up if you feel comfortable. And it's like we're going to be curious. So, if you don't know me if you're so community is not in a day last campaign season, one I'd like to know that so I can fix it next time. Hi, Connor. Recently elected counter share over February was elected November so basically here. So fast years since the election. Thank you so much. Okay, I was all excited I was like I was gonna hold the mic. So, I ran because I care about role policing in Vermont grew up here. I saw that there's a deficiency and how world policing has gone on law enforcement where we won't call it in Vermont right, all of these complaints that you folks are having is the majority of every town out there is kind of saying the same thing right. You know, we've got whether it's a speed issue, whether it's, you've got a trap house set up that's causing quality of life issues, whether you come out and your cars missing its catalytic converter, whether your house was broken into whether your car got stolen. You know you turn on WCAX and all you see is violent crime the shooting the stabbing all these type of things right. A lot of that revolves around substance use. You know we're never going to be able to police our way out of that. How we police and how we evolve our law enforcement techniques will certainly help in that. And when I campaign that campaign kind of on this three prong approach right we need to work with young kids, kind of keep them from getting into trouble. We need to help those that are in either a mental health crisis or substance abuse crisis we need to be not just locking people up thrown away the key or giving them a hard time because they're driving their $500 power to work and you're writing $500 worth of tickets right that's not fixing it. We also have to be proactive in the way that we police right. I always. Yeah it's not super easy to hold somebody accountable let's say in Vermont right, but this idea that well we lock them up they let them out. You know, doesn't mean we need to stop doing our job right. If we're proactive, and we let people know hey you're not going to act like that here. And maybe they're either move or they change their behavior right, they're going to say, I don't want to live here and go somewhere else, or they're going to modify that behavior hopefully and we've seen that be effective in other places so I'm very much a law and order sheriff, but I really focus on community stopping in as you can see I like to stop in the local bakery or pizza shop and say hi. But being involved being an integral part of that community, assimilating yourself into the community so that we have conversation I think I had a conversation with you two at the school last year right and we're having the same conversations. So, being there, opening up to people and saying hey how's your day, or how have you been, and that usually starts the, it all comes out right well actually. So, being involved in the community. So, that's a little bit of the stump speech. Remember that 2026 and I'm kidding, but I just want you to kind of want to kind of introduce myself to you and my philosophy on law enforcement community. So, what we've done since I've taken over, we've expanded department I started with about 10 or 11 sworn law enforcement we're up to 23. If I had more work I could bring more people on so why that is I think we're just built we've built a good culture. I'm kind of a young department head it's kind of fresh exciting we've been lucky I've been able to to kind of use some relationships I've had people want to come. We're having a lot of we're having a lot of luck in places that we're policing now we're providing law enforcement service for now with the striking that balance between going out there being visible doing things getting involved, but also knowing when to write a ticket and when not to write a ticket, stopping into the stores interacting with the community, going to the schools schools are very important to me right because we need to change that cycle of these kids are in. All right, you see some of these places that they live they grew up the way they're treated. If we can be somewhat of positive influence in their life and kind of push them in the right direction. We're not going to save every kid but if we can save one out of five or 10 or 20 it's better than not doing anything right. So being more involved in the community on all sorts of different levels. That's super important to me. On your manpower issue. We have the folks that want to provide law enforcement service in the county of at 23 sworn law enforcement officers. We have the bandwidth to soak up, you know, some of those patrol hours. He just instituted a canine program he is deputy how who's a fairly local he's from Tumbridge. He taught the Sharon schools he then became a police officer along with Orange County. He's running our, or he's going to be our canine officer, we hope to have two or three of those in the next, you know, through this first term I'd like to bring on more canines for a plethora of different reasons tasers equipment all that stuff. So we were very comfortable in coming to Bethel and knowing that we can hit the whatever that criteria is whether if it's 20 hours a week, whether it's 40 hours a week whatever we work out that makes sense. We're comfortable and being able to provide that service. And then he talked a lot about wanting to know your police officers. We generally work folks in the same area. I mean, sometimes it just isn't the case like a somebody news going to come here but we're still small enough agency that you'll know you'll know the people work in your community. Right. And a big thing for me is being transparent being open being easily accessible. My email my cell numbers in my email. I'm not hard to get a hold of we also will assign a supervisor to kind of be the liaison for the day to day. You know somebody speeding on this place somebody doing this to quite coordinate law enforcement efforts on the operational tactical level if that makes sense. And then of course I'll be working on on our level on the more executive side to make sure we're providing service and so there's a lot of words and a lot of maybe sound like a lot of fluff but I kind of wanted to fill you in. In the short answers we can provide service we want to provide service here. We enjoy service because we've been in two pursuits through your town here on the last week or two so. I guess that was the. I would say quick but for me it was quick. Questions now. I think one thing before we over questions we had. Well, we there was a couple of different levels of policing that policing service that you had given us and like the first one was basically what I would call the basic service which was, you know, using that 20 hours that we think that we're getting that we're not getting anything now, just, you know, mostly on like a patrol basis. And can you just kind of go through what those was a three levels, three. Well, we can we can tell you the top level to half million was a no go. And that was just to throw it and say hey what would 24 seven coverage look like for the town. And so myself we get confused on is when you start talking about on call what what that means, there's, you know, Vermont State Police. Well, we've always been a Vermont State Police town, you know, the right there. So if you guys were here with anything change from that, or what how would that look like or. My goal coming in was to move the agency from a place that just wrote tickets for in four hour blocks. That's how we provide service you hired us in four hour blocks. We sat in your town for four hours at a time. And basically wrote tickets that's all they really did. And it was a revenue thing it kind of worked out for the town worked out to reimburse the police department. We shifted away from that. July 1 we went kind of live with this idea of providing a more fluid schedule that hey, we were billing you for, you know, in the case of Bethel for basically 20 hours a week, we would say hey, it's $65,000 a year. We're going to hit 18 to 22 hours a week. And we're going to split that time up and kind of provide what I call omnipresence right. If everyone knows we're only here for four hours. You know, Monday Wednesday and Friday. Well, the rest of the time is game on right so setting up patrol districts or regions however you want to call it. Maybe they're in Sharon for an hour or two they slide up this way they make a big loop. You know, bouncing all over so that we have deputy similar to what state police does, but making sure that we're checking off those boxes for you. And that has been very successful in the towns we provide service for now, because again they're seeing us at different times. We only ran a day shift when I took over. We're just been able to kind of get into working more night shifts so I almost always have people on night shift now, sometimes till, you know, one 2am so we're, we're very competitive with state police on that. We're putting multiple people out on patrol so that if there is an issue, you know, let's say there's an issue in Bethel will be able to slide a couple people up and help with that. So my goal is to really turn this into a full service countywide law enforcement agency and we're pretty close to that now. So with Chris's ask was basically explain the different just options I presented and it's kind of, you know, is presented kind of like an all cart thing but we're hoping to have people on 12 to 16 hours a day. If not later. And we will take the calls for service if you're contracted with us. That's our goal is to take the majority of calls for service that might sometimes bounce the state police and certain timeframes and we'll work with that more to figure out the nuance of that and what the town can afford but in that 20 hour a week, kind of what you're doing now. So we propose that cost the town about $65,000 30 the calls for service that I think is a catch phrase that kind of gets people goofed up so when I when calls for service or calls that you receive when you're not here, but those are not included in the 65,000 right those we build at an hourly rate. I think it would kind of come out of your goals it would come out of your 20. Yeah, and we have people, you know, my goal is to have people are on patrol in the northern region. I want to break it up in three or four but we're kind of in northern southern region right now. So he's in Sharon call. You know how long it takes but the goal is it kind of works itself into your patrol hours calls for service or calls you're answering when you're not actually here is that what you mean by calls for when you're not here or we're not okay all right right so here we're obviously taking the call. But my deputies are going to be in a patrol zone and adding these extra hours helps us everyone kind of pulls it together and it comes out and wash is kind of the way we've seen it. All right, thank you. So when I say call for service you call up and the police respond. I mean, we have kind of been running it. We've been probably over providing service. We're also we use, we have governor's highway safety grants. $200,000 for the coming year that were that the federal slash state government pays us to to run traffic to go out and stop cars so Bethel would get a pretty good chunk of that. I mean, I don't want to make any promises of exactly but radio service seems to work well here it's busy or guys would probably like that so it's kind of we're supplementing that coverage as well. So we're going to focus out on doing stuff but sorry john. So right now, well for the most part we just wanted to get Ryan to kind of go through some of the potential services that they can offer us, and then I'm going to open the floor but it's up to to any questions at the end so So federal highway safety grants, those are like click it or ticket. Yeah, so that's why people call sometimes the town office and say hey, why is your cruiser here why is Royalton and Bethel and sometimes that's why they're operating under a federal highway. So there. Yeah. Oh darn. Yeah, so that's why when you see cruisers from different towns in different areas they're probably doing what Ryan is talking about participating in like a federal highway click it or check it. So basically the 65,000 that we currently basically have budgeted would be kind of more of a regional type policing that you would not put us into the piece. 65 grand, but a cop in your town 20 hours a week. Right. It, could you, could you then kind of explain to us the, the step below the Cadillac so if we're in the, I think it was like a hundred and quarter which was like kind of what you call full time like yeah that that basically, you know, so 32 hours a week 100 grand. We bump up to 40 hours a week to 125 is where we would come in on that. And so when you when you're talking 40 hours a week is that would that be continued to be like an individual that may be well spending 40 hours but they could be another community where that be more like hey you got one person that's really in your community for 40 hours. I would not do the one person, I would split it up a couple different people, but people are working different shifts, because the goal is, you know, so if you have one person their day shift. You know, hey, we really like him. All right, well, but all you're going to get is day shift coverage. Right. Right. So I think with a 40 hour week position or 40 hour week contract, we would, you know, because nights weekends and holidays are good times to have people on right. We would, we would bounce that around there wouldn't be, you know, there may be four or five people that would work this area, which is in line with, you know, the average small police department. So you're not getting that many, you know, 300 hours of service, but you're getting 40 hours from us in your town, deputy in your town 40 hours a week for 125. So based based upon the concerns that you heard that we kind of listed quickly. Could you just briefly explain to us if we went with the 20 hours a week, what that may look like and what things we might be able to check off this list here versus if we wanted to get more things done where that next level is look like. You forget some of salesman so 20 hours not going to do anything 40 hours. No. I think it's right. This is a tough budget season. Right. You know, schools are going up property that everything's going up tough budget season. You know, doubling your police budget is a big ask. I think that, you know, my personal belief is that Bethel probably could use at this point, the 40 hour coverage right, but 20 hours is better than basically the zero that you're getting now, plus or minus. I, you know, I think there's a lot more in Bethel than even like the amount of calls for service that you have looking at our computer program. You have fire emergency service calls. You're running about 900 calls per year, that's including traffic stops. So it's a busy little town, and that's without having. I mean, because how many of you kind of give up calling, right. Right, you know, we need job. Um, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, really, you think about that. And I know that you're, you're half kidding, but, but, but think about that what position that puts somebody in that you're like, Hey, I'm sick of it. So 20 hours a week is okay. You know, do I think that you need a half a million dollars 24 seven? No. But I think somewhere in the 32, you know, that's why I put them on there. I really do think that my honest belief is that to kind of turn back the tide a little bit that you need more. More than 20 hours a week. When you do do the math on it. I mean, it's a little bit. Five days a week. It's even less seven days a week. You can get a lot more out of the 40 hour coverage obviously. But it is, you know, almost 100% increase over what you're spending now. So, you know, it looks like having a car in your town. You know, four or five days a week for, you know, five hours, four or five hours a day. And that could look, you know, or one hour blocks or, you know, maybe they're here for four hours straight, but it's certainly better than what you're doing now it sounds like with just the And also, one of the things that's we're able to bring now some economy of scale like they were saving you a little bit on your vehicle, you know, you don't have to worry about that. You write me one check and go this is what we expect. Now it's on me to fulfill those hours. So if I've got to work on myself. That's what I'll do. But also you don't have to worry about buying tires you don't have to worry about paying gas bill you know, you push that all off to us. And it just it's simpler on your end, I think. But also the liability somewhat shifts away from the town I mean you can always be sued but it really puts the entire liability on us, especially with a console force it's very hard to make sure that they're where you need them to be if they especially if they weren't working other places. Right, that's the net we talked about. Was that obviously liability and making sure that the criminal justice training council that everybody has a great training and and you're right it is a big thing and you would just want to say to that the sheriff had said that obviously we have money in our current budget. And the sheriff did say that if the site would want to he'd be willing to come in and supplement hours because we've only spent $2,400 out of our, some of out of our labor line so that you know certainly, you know, just want to let you know that sheriff did offer to pick up some hours sooner than July 1, which is where this budget would hit. And, you know, part of that also is for you to go wait a minute. We don't like this guy. We don't like his team. Like, all right, now we need to, you know, at least you have the money budgeted but then you can kind of transition and go. This isn't going to work for us. So I think it's a good way for you to kind of feel out. Hey, are they really providing the service that he's been up here, run his mouth about as far as services that can be provided. But we're everything short of a homicide, just because that's not the way the protocol works in Vermont, I think that we have, you know, we're doing everything from. I mean, I don't know if you saw us on dealing with the whole Kyle Pickett issue where, you know, stolen car we found was in Bethel. Yeah, that was a three days I was supposed to be off but you know, we found out there's a stolen car in Bethel. We came up to get involved. We were out serving civil process and I can dive into all the things that we do, but when I hear things like that. It's like no put the effort into it. So we got a violent felon off the street sees three stolen guns in that process. Two of them were loaded in the car that I was chasing around. So, we really can provide basically anything for when you think of modern law enforcement service. We can provide that. I have a lot of some very young guys, they're new and fresh on the job and year to learn. And I have a lot of folks with 15 to 30 years of experience that are really good mentors. And as we pick up more towns, I've got people that want to come work. Again, I don't know exactly why that is but I think we're doing a good job. I've started paying a little bit more. We've got good equipment and just the culture and the ethos of the department is making people want to come work here so. So one or the thing that will happen is if we go away from the gospel thing is we have to pick up the animal control piece of it. Do you offer that. Yeah. Okay, we do to make it easier and we do have a contract with the local vet office right down here. Sure. So that we kind of use them as that's where they go so they get care and then they're released back. Not that we have a lot of. We haven't not those cases that kind of hit or miss but yeah, you know, it's a service that we'd have to fill somehow. Yeah. Yeah. And that's. I mean, that's just part of, you know, when, when, how I look at these contracts is that we are your full service law enforcement where your police department now. And these are part of, you know, the tasks. Are we going to maybe come out free in the morning because somebody's dogs barking, maybe not, but when you have, you know, nuisance animals, dog bites, all these things, you know, or animal cruelty cases. We're certainly equipped to handle that and that will be part of our normal duties, how I look at it. So that you can't do. I mean, I remember when they kind of limited like if someone was a to eat, they couldn't investigate like a homicide but obviously you are a full certified law enforcement officer but other things that sheriffs can't do like you still do on time. Yeah, we have death investigators. So, that's an individual officer thing. That's what I thought. But as a group. Yes, that's what I thought. Yeah, there's lots of us with, you know, I've been through FBI crisis to go to your school. I'm a certified death investigator as firearms instructor. I've been through NASRO, which is National Association of School Resource Officers their basic and advanced school resource officer classes. Lots of training. So training has been a huge focus of my agency. That's great. We brought in interviewing interrogation course we sent a couple of folks that dealing with people, folks with autism in crisis. And we sent three of our folks to that the other day. Just huge, huge on training. So, even though some of her. There's two certifications or month there's a level two, and a level three. And you're like war is level one well they never made it, but they put it in the books. So level two officers went through a much more condensed law enforcement school call it for two weeks. So level three officers spent, you know, 16 weeks or the equivalent in now State Academy. Level three officers can investigate, you know, all felony anything, essentially, level two officers have some restrictions on what they can, right, they can still respond and go hey, this is an aggravated assault somebody hit somebody with a hatchet or Well, we're going to make sure that there's a supervisor there that is, you know, certified that can investigate the crime so we, we can check all those boxes. Yeah, no, it's a valid question and some people have concerns about that but we're, we're making sure that our level twos are very well up to speed. Yeah, you mentioned with sort of the model of the 40 hour a week that logistically for you it would sort of break down across maybe four to six people right. Would that be a similar breakdown if we went for a 20 or a 32 hour a week or would it end up being a sort of smaller subset of people that would patrol this. Yeah, I think four or five was probably maybe I'm five certainly was probably on the higher end. Generally, certain folks work certain areas and they kind of get involved. Like I said, our patrol forces still probably the ones that majority work patrol because we also cover courts and so we'll process and all that. But it's maybe 12 or 13 that are really doing a lot of patrol. So even at that number, you would start to really get to know the community. But the goal is that my folks are involved in the community and they're, you know, it just seems like it's worked very well and some of the feedback that we've been getting Sharon wrote us a nice email about, you know, the interactions we've had there. One of my guys stopped somebody wrote him a couple of tickets, but like was very kind and like gave him a lot of good direction on how to fix his car. The guy wrote me an email and said hey it's going to sound weird. I got stopped but it was really fantastic experience he's very kind. So that's that, you know, this dichotomy is like hey we want that Andy Griffin kind of model, but also we're not afraid to if you know kick in drug dealers doors and do all those things I mean we've been involved with search warrants and Sharon where we pull we secured seven stolen firearms from a burglary. We, we've done that in, you know, we work with killing to federal partners. All total this year I think we've got somewhere around 30 stolen guns off the street. So I mean we're touching all parts of law enforcement but my goal is that I don't want my team to be some sort of occupying force I want you to be comfortable. Going up and saying hello to my team. Hey, I've got a problem. And that seems to be the culture that has tripled down from the top. So we have about. I mean, realistically get a little less than five minutes but I'll probably open up to like five or 10 minutes of comments I know john was last the party so I'll let him go first on a comment. Anybody online has any other comments they want to do just raise your hand and then trees will keep tabs on people online and I'll keep tabs on people in person. I don't know if you've checked the boxes have given a call. So last time we called there were, I guess kids on ATVs ripping around in the woods and occasionally high caliber shots and stuff. And so I call and I got, I'm talking to a dispatcher in Springfield or something. And then she switched me over to 911, I guess. Did you call 911? Yeah. Okay. So I had to go through that extra step. And then when I got to someone there, they said, well, you know, we don't have anyone in your area, and I can try to get them to give you a call before they go off shift at five o'clock. It's, it's kids are going to come up. You know, you're well and try to get an identification of their, you know, whoa. I got one like I don't want to go up in the woods. And how that feels, right? You tell time to call, right. And that's the response you got. So terrible. Yeah. So all I'm saying in some ways is that there needs to be, you know, I know you're coming into a job and they're certain events that we see in it and other things you're working on to make your mark on it. But that's great. But I think at the same time, it's really important for people to know that a situation is going on. I don't care if it's a state truer or a game warden or whoever, but someone is going to say, this is something that needs to be addressed. Yeah, and I hope. You know, I can't promise every single time. I don't want to be in a lot of but when I hear stories like that. Right, because you took the time. It's all it's never comfortable calm. Right. It's never like a fun thing. It makes you feel comfortable. You call and then it's almost like you read it. And I hate to be dramatic about it, but I mean, it does feel like you're kind of victimizing that. So customer service at the end of the day, a lot of customers service. And I'm pushing very hard to make sure that you provide the best customer services. Not sure if that's, you know, we've achieved that yet, but as we add more towns, as you know, hopefully it's more contractually, but won't be problem control. That is the goal of those things going to happen. And I can't promise you it will be 100%, but my folks want to take calls they want to go out and investigate crime or want to be busy. And that's the push from the top, you know, that I go out and chase cars or people go to calls and do things when I want to can so that's the culture that we're building is, is to take care of things like that. And I know well the concept of triage. Right. And obviously, if there's a crisis going on, it has to be not 20 minutes with the dispatcher in the spring field. Yeah, you know, it needs to be on one. Yeah. Again, I think that's where we're at in the direction that we're headed. Sorry, that's, everyone's got my old stories and I'm sorry if that's the case. Hey, anybody else? What are the towns around here? I know you said Sharon or any other towns close by that you're contracted with and then when does the clock or 20 or 40 hours start taking to start when you leave Sharon on a call to head here. When you hit the town line. It's just kind of how we're keeping track of it. So we're not charging for travel time on that. Rochester, Sharon, Barnard, Opera, Plymouth, and Bridgewater were back and talks with Hartman. And I think that's. Yeah. So you're in some of this around I'm just thinking like a response on it. You don't have somebody in town, you know, be somebody. Yeah, around here. I know I've seen you going over camp Brooke a lot more lately. Yeah. Well, you know, there's a section that's closed. I watched it twice that day. Yeah. I should go out and come back down in a hurry. But, you know, so my goal is to eventually, you know, provide service and all this. And all the surrounding towns have a full time. Yeah, odds are that there'll be somebody in a fairly close town at that point. Yeah, and I guess it's, and I guess at this point, if it's a half hour, 40. minutes, it's better than nothing. Yeah. You know, and I'm not, I don't mean that to be facetious, but I think as we get, we build this. I think we're, you know, is it going to be a five minute response time for the barracks that used to be no, but it's going to be a lot better than it is now, I guess. And I'd say the 30 to 40 minutes to get here, if you're willing to follow up on it as opposed to they come by and they're like, well, we'll drive down that way and that's that, you know, is a lot different than call you for here and now let's try to figure out what happened and see if we can find that. Yeah, so, so two things on that right. One, I haven't met a camera I don't hate so I like me and Facebook on the news for doing positive stuff with the department, and I like to put the bad guys in jail. So for us, the follow up on these things is very important. Is this important to me. So like, go out and make cases. And when you're saying hey I've got neighbors, you know, on this man and that man and now, you know, well, all right, let's put a stop to it. I don't want to do stuff. So on those issues, like, I think that you'll see that we're against back to customers, right, following up and having the same people work kind of resident deputies, making sure that same people are working those areas not one person. You know, you work Monday a week or something. So, you talk about one of the folks online to talk about the domestic acts right. That's a really important one to not stop off and it's actually follow up and make sure that you're you're investigating all the way through those and not going to ask there's one good state, like there's a lot more to interpersonal violence and domestic violence so putting the effort into those falls. These are over these the newer wasn't that on your, I feel like that was on your bio. Yeah. So, do you have a rapport with like the VA or people that you feel like if you if you had a veteran who was experiencing some rough times PTSD or acting out or some do you have some, I'm assuming that you have some sort of normally as a vet so you can certainly work with them coming from the same background but you have, do you have contact where you can help maybe refer them to places where they can get the assistance they need. So, yes, as I said that myself, certain, you're a reserve, I racked with their athlete, and then when I'm in that switch units that can add the international garden to that. But, um, there's a little bit. So, yes, we had character. We had a character that in one of the neighborhood fans that got super repeats and everybody knows and creates a little habit. All right, prices. Let's go from VA as we're really hard and talk about this. But, um, this idea of helping people in prices, not reading the government. We've done really well in several situations, and I just kind of get here and sell, sell, sell, but it happens very well in those situations. In the last decade, right, we're seeing a lot of our law enforcement has maybe not done great or done what was trained into them as the right thing at the time, right. And we don't want to be, you can just name all those different scenarios, but as we realize as a profession that we need to evolve. That is well here with my group will use trying to fund it for prices and budget and social worker scenario. So, yeah, that's what I wondered if you had people that were, you know, just as an outside report, we're certainly seeing more of that now where people that this mental health crisis and maybe the need assistance, obviously the VA isn't that far away. So it's nice to know that you have a report within it. That was a situation that arose. Thank you. And a couple of things. So, I mean, being in Bethel, I know when, you know, we would say back in the old days, but, you know, we've always kind of been an umbrella town for VSP and not only was VSP, but you know, in our backyard, but we often had residents of our town that worked for VSP. So there was always like that, you know, even if they weren't really on duty, you know, like, like Mr. Feeney, you know, he used to show up at the school for the first hour of the morning to see kids, you know, come into school or once in a while he'd give a kid, you know, a ride to school, you know, all those different things, the blue lights and, you know, having that community involvement. And back then, you know, what we used to have for actually patrol time was like 10 hours a week. That's, you know, our, our constables were 10 hours a week. I think our budget was like $12,000 a year. But we, but we had all this other extra, you know, just from being, you know, in the same area with them. So, and where I'm getting at with us is so we used to budget 10, 12 hours worth of time. And then the reason why we're up to 20 hours of the budgeting now is because, you know, that normal community policing of 10 or 12 hours started taking 18 to 20 hours because God forbid you hold over somebody on a DUI, then he had to follow up in court and paperwork and all this stuff. So if, if we are doing a sign on with you guys for either 20 or 30 hours or whatever, does that, does that account, does that account for all the behind the scenes court trips and, you know, all, you know, all the red tape and stuff that comes with everything nowadays or would that be, is that extra or I think what the exclusion will, the way we bring it in for our podcast and the exclusion, like, complex criminal investigations, first of all, pops up a lot of testified law in court, just because very few cases were tried in the long. And so there's not generally a huge expense for that. Obviously, if somebody has a DUI or as there's a lot of people, they're going to see this and they're doing that. They've got just part of the process. You're going to pay for that if you pay behind your own police department, being a contractual organization. The county isn't funding any more, unfortunately. So every all the cops and she out on duty for me are taking contracts. So there's a little bit of that. I think it all comes out a lot. That makes sense. You're so great. I mean, that was, I mean, I know we kind of said it's 20 hours of control time, but it really always was like 10 or 12 that turned into 20 because we had, you know, behind the scenes stuff if it was a DUI or, or more or training, you know, if you had to go for training for the day that might be that or you're paying for somebody to go somewhere. Yeah, it's your bills. The exception like major case. It's up some of your budget. The training my wife quickly. Okay. Individual back. You know, 30 hours to get caught in last 30 hours. That's just an end toward the minimum training. So that's kind of already put into mind. Okay. I mean, as far as a contract that's something that you negotiate. I assume in each town I know I've negotiated with other sheriff's departments before and we're, we couldn't ask you for targeted. I couldn't ask him frankly, frankly, but if we had like a targeted patrol area if I was getting a bunch of calls and I wouldn't say, Hey, look, people are going nuts on Cantwell or Gage or something. You know, you wouldn't be able to do a little bit of target or let your person on duty know that we're getting a bunch of complaints work. Here's my opinion. No, I don't want. Right. You need to do this. Right. Also, two things, right? I'm a politician. I want to keep my constituents happy and I want me to be like, right? Yeah. And then to work with trash organizations, basically almost entirely funded with new contracts and customer service. So if I'm not doing what you're asking me to do, you're not going to happen. Right. So for me, the whole idea of this is a community process. You have problems. You tell us what the problems are. I was telling us, I was checking with town halls, especially in these small towns. Town halls is the best that you know, but you're telling me, Hey, these are the problems. Go fix it. And if you're like, Hey, we're having problems from the school at 7am, you know, right. So it's not, you know, it's a very big contract. But I'm looking directly at you or whatever. You work with a truck to check on the boxes and make sure the file starts to make sense. Then can towns also contract with you outside of the contract? Say we were doing a construction project and we needed lights on a project for a couple of days. Is that something that you outside of our contract, not our 20 hours, but outside of that. Yeah. Yeah. That was something that you did because you were too busy. We will be trying to always. Every once in a while, we just need that. We need, it's a dangerous area. Yeah, that's right. It's always in the bottom. It's always in the bottom. It's always in the bottom. It's always in the bottom. As a town where she's doing work in a dangerous area, and it's like, you just need, you need lights. You need a train. You need an officer. I think why she says that is once in a while, if there was something going on, and back in the days when we had a console in and around, you could just say, Hey, could you go hang out there for two hours and make sure they get that done. So no one gets killed because they're running, you know, and they're running for a long time. So that's why we're doing that. Thank you. So we appreciate you coming out and spending time with us this evening. And hopefully we were able to. Get all the feedback that, that you needed. And I know the board and myself. We'll be kind of going through weighing the. The levels of potential policing that we can do and looking at the budget and looking at what our constituents want us to do and see. So. Theresa probably reach out with you with any. Yeah. Yeah. Great about getting right back to me if we have a question. So, and we did in this draft budget that we're going to look at later. We did put the $65,000. In, in this budget, we had about 57,000 and change. In the prior budget. So this is 65,000. And then there's still some in their traditional signage and things, but we may be able to. You know, reduce that. I mean, we bought like a speed cart dolly that was on Christian Hill. And then we also bought more of the flashing lights that come into town. So we've talked about buying those. And those are like seven grand, but that may be something that we. You know, skip over next year. I'm assuming the sheriff's department has. Speed carts on dollies or whatever. We only have one, but. Yeah. But anyway, so, so we did just so you all know that are here online. We did. When I did the draft of this budget, I did put the $65,000 amount in there. So we have something to start. Starting point. I thank you so much for coming. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Drive safe. Thank you. So that was, so that is in the budget. So when we get to budget discussion later. Just so you all know, it's, it's something's in there. All right. Alex. You're up. Alex. The way we're running. There's flipping the. Use the same road. We've been. Running for the winters and all the deal season. The map. I don't know. It is. It's on file the town office. I double checked. I didn't know it was there. Basically everything's the same. But it hasn't been the last. Five years. With any of the trails or any. He tours that you'll have this year. Is it? No, we actually, we put a lot of money into. A lot of. I was on an excavator. About 45 minutes before I got here. Still working on it. Now we've gotten just about everything back together again. Davis road. We put a bunch of Davis road. Woodland road. Both of them. Got. Fixed up on. That. There's a few others up on top of the hill where. A bunch of. Water fires. Any of them. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. We're a little bit. A bunch of water fires. Any of them. That that has been compromised for that. So. Most of that's been taken care of. Yeah. No, we're actually in good shape. Well. We're. For us to follow us this summer as well. So we've been. Oh, wow. Adding that to the next bridges, two bridges. Some other issues over there. For every five. but I'm just, I'm just spinning to the class board. Yeah. They ask a lot of the trails that we use there, well, a lot of the roads are on class four roads. So we run a quite a few class four roads with the snowmobile trails. We also run some class three sections that go in the grade group, have to run as a connector. Yeah, over the Interstate Bridge on Christian Hill, we run that a little bit up on Hooper Hollow, short run there. But we do run quite a bit of class four roads in addition to a lot of private property too. So I've got two, one, and there's quite a bit of our property too. Okay, where? Christian, though. Okay. 10, 20, seven, where the gates are. Okay, I haven't put in any stuff. I just went and put some, no ATV signs up. I saw people going around them, you know. Yeah, I went and put some lockers up there and some signs and I went down the road, turned around and came back and they had already run right through. So, I think that person was coming off of McCulloch Run. So I think that's where that ATV was coming from. There's a couple of dirt bikes up there that were hauling around, Steve. Yeah. Great. And about, I mean, that was sort of what I was referring to you in the episode of the morning of the fall. There were, you know, like, there were obviously alcohol and all, yelling and screaming and littering and all that stuff. And so, when I hear class four roads, because we have a, it was a class four road that goes across from your hand pane. Yep. It comes up there and it comes and actually the two properties of ours and his and then for a long stretch, it's just ours. And there's a, there's a gorge. It's probably five or 16 feet in one section there. There's trees down. I think the last person to ride a bicycle from there was probably John Dunn. And that's, is that on what we ride? No. Okay. I don't want to, I don't want to, because that last four road then comes out to Christine Hill. Yeah. To our front yard. Okay. And so that obviously, you know, that doesn't make this even more impressive to think that you guys want to say, yeah, this is a class four road. Therefore, we should be able to know when the machine's on. Yeah. No, it's not. It's pretty much only certain ones that are. And the other piece of it is that to me, you know, I think it's sitting there about the same place in this room in 2017, when in extra additional business, I stood up and said, you know, we as a town would be good if we endorse the, you know, non binding resolution to get our state to 90% reduction in carbon stock by 20 hip now it's, you know, people in the first three or five or stuff. But, you know, it's a concern to me in some ways. You know, it's, you know, we have been totally, it's great. We had like the snow machine there. My wife walks on it and it's packed out and stuff. But sometimes people going through there midnight or two in the morning, you know, yelling. And, you know, I went for a number of years. I've been skiing and had river. You know, I'm down in Snow Bowl. And last week when they got two electric snowmobiles and with Regen and stuff, they can run all day up and down the hill. And it's quiet. Yeah. There's actually one guy in the club that does have one of them. Yeah. I think that's the way it seems to go. And, you know, we have never, anyone who's ever asked for permission to hunt. It's always short. Thank you for asking. Yeah. But it's the people that we don't want to hunt. Yeah. Well, and unfortunately that's the same thing with their bikes, wheelies, slabs. The ones that ask permission are the problem. And aren't the ones that are, you know, the one that ran right past the no easy B sign that I literally just put up. And I don't know if you saw what I had done. I took a couple of dead blocks and put them up. And I mean, literally, I literally, I drove down and I turned around at Dave Eddix and I came back and the guy had come down through. I wish I had been there another three minutes, you know? And, yeah. And, you know, it's an interesting time. The other thing is I just wanted to mention again in this town meeting that the class four road and oh, I don't know, before the year 2000, there was a moment when Dave Eddy and Mo Brigham and someone else, Carl Russell was the select chair. And he held a meeting up there because they were saying that the class four road was on our property. There were two farms, Wallace Farm, Eddie Farm, and then the Davis Farm, which is what we have now. And we went out there and they're saying, oh, yeah, no, this is the road. There's a big stem of stone wall that's the dividing one. But when Bob Dean bought the old Wallace Eddy place, he subdivided it. And Boris, I can't remember his name. And the first there, they said, hey, no, that road is on your side of the wall. And it was actually, Jean Berm took me into the vault and we found an atlas of right-of-ways in the town of Bethel from, I think, 1830 or something. And it was very clear they had signed right-of-way from the family of Wallace, not from the family of Davis. And so, Carl got that and said, no, if you wanna struggle this, the town is not gonna hire a lawyer and claim that it's there or something. But, you know, and I think that's also, the Class 4 roads are different. And on the original atlas had the farmer Wallace who signed it. He said, I'm giving it a right-of-way, but if I've got a cropping deal and I don't, and I'm not ready to harvest, I can close it anytime I want to. So I think that, you know, the Class 4 is, you know, very important, but it's not just a blank check. It's the other thing that I'm doing. So you guys need a motion to read the blank or are you good? A lot of work, a couple of thoughts for you, yes. Correct. So it doesn't have maps on file. Yeah. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Well said, Dave. Yeah. Okay. All right. Good deal. And then I'll just open up to public comments so anything that wasn't on the agenda, anybody wants to talk about something now is the time to do it. I'll look online first. If there's anybody online that wants a public comment. There's a few people just even, big turnout. Just Paul, Paul's just saying hi. Paul's just saying hello. Anybody in person, anything that isn't on the agenda that one would like to talk about? No, I wasn't just saying hi. Oh, I thought you were, sorry. No, I just wanted to thank Sheriff Palmer for coming by. It seems like a natural, unfortunately, a natural progression that we've, that we're going through with our Constable Department. I remember when we had, you know, Constable lived in town and worked part-time and everything was nice. And he was my oil delivery guy on the side. And then we moved into the pattern where we had to, we shared a Constable with two other towns. And, you know, things are getting a little more heated at that point, but obviously it wasn't working. So we went to the model of actually hiring a Constable. And that seems to have run its course. So it's great that we're, it's, unfortunately we have to move in this direction to look at, starting up with Windsor County to help serve, you know, what the residents of the town are looking for. So yes, it's going to be a little more expensive, but it seems like that's the path that we need to go along. So thank you to the select board for bringing this conversation out. It's been a long time, you know, in the works and it was great to have them there tonight. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks Paul. Anybody in person? John? What's the next step for picking hours? Go ahead. Next step for deciding on a package. So it's in the budget and we'll get there in a little while, it's on the agenda. Yeah. I said I threw the 65,000 in there. Obviously this year is a tough budget year, as you said. We, you know, hit some insurance, health insurance, all that sort of stuff. So it's something that we, so I put it in at 65 because we obviously all agreed that we weren't going to do the half million. And so I'm not sure, you know, one of the things that in my mind is that if we're at the 65, we bring them in sooner to start to pick up Oscars extra hours, put them at the 65. We know we're going to benefit from the other grant money that he's getting, the federal money that he's getting, cause he's going to come in to do clicker ticket and other things. So we're definitely going to see an increase in hours just because of that money as well. So it makes me wonder in a way if we start with the $65,000 budget, we get a little extra hours because we know we're going to benefit from clicker ticket and the federal highway ramp because they get points, which means they get more money and then see how it rolls, see if everybody's happy with them. And then maybe next year we segue into more hours, but that was just my thought, but you pay me to be conservative with your tax dollars. So, but we can still discuss it. Yeah. And we'll get that. We'll be starting to break through some of the budget items tonight. And it'll be an ongoing discussion between now and mid-January cause mid-January. Now we have to have the budget finalized. By the second, third week in January, we have to have finalized so we can go to print with it. The other thing we could do is ask him if he's at 20 hours, he gave us a 20-hour price and he gave us a 32-hour price. So we went from 65,000 to 100,000. Is there a 25-hour price? You know what I mean? Like, is there maybe there's between the 60 and 100? I don't know. Yep. And then there was the full time, which was the half mill. The 40 was 125,000, 32 was 100,000 and the 20 was the 65,000. So as he said, he's a salesman. We all knew he was gonna push the bigger package, which we knew that coming out of the gate. But I think to go from what we have now, which is, you know, not much, to having him here, he's gonna want more hours, as he said, that just showing the colors is going to make a huge difference, I think, in the community. But... Can you ask him while he's testing which one? He could use up some of that money right now. Excuse me? If while we're deciding which package, can he get here and use some of that money now? He said he would. Yep. He totally agreed that he would do that. So maybe the next coming weeks, we'll see him around. Maybe the beginning. We haven't talked about whether or not we're gonna pick him up. I mean, it was kind of, people, it's like we wanted to hear what he had to say tonight. Because the only people that had met with him prior was Chris and I. This is the first time the whole select board got to see him. While we decide if we go with them or how many hours, he can come in and hang out for a little while. Yeah. We don't see why not. I mean, we obviously have the money and the budget that we need to spend. And so we need to get, it would make sense that way too, people can get used to him and see him if they've seen him a little bit. And then he comes on in July, people kind of get more comfortable with him as well. Alex. The ticket revenue from writing tickets. Does that go towards? The town gets a very small percentage of that. It's almost not even worth mentioning. I tried that last time. I don't know what the percentage is, it's very small. That was the last time. Also depends where they write them. If they write them on a state highway, we don't see any money. If they write them here, I think we probably get 30%. I didn't change the budget number for tickets because obviously we're looking for community policing and stopping people. Sometimes there's really good drug busts happen that way by pulling them over. And so if that ticket revenue went up, that's something we could increase next year, but it's hard to know out of the gate what we're gonna get. And like I said, we get such a small percentage of the ticket anyways, even if it happens here. So it would not upset them. No, no. No, no. That'd be a lot of tickets. They used to. Well, I mean, if they do the parking, they can brook Friday afternoon, start talking to people about new things. Oh, they could sit on Christian Hill on that new paving and could be the building. Yes, John. History is in my mom's very interest perspective. Last night I happened to hear a program where you go and it had to do with Mayor Long from Boston. And she decided to take a look at why people are not utilizing the Boston team as effectively as they should be. And she took three longs and she said, we're gonna make it greater. So there's no longer, there's no longer someone delivering the dollar, the backup line waiting to get on and stuff. And the study showed that what they wanted to look at was what's the annual budget for these three lines. And it was a lot of money, like a billion dollars. But of that, the percentage of that was funded by fair payment was almost zero. It was like less than 2%. And then it's kind of like in a lot of these things to me, but you're policing, you don't really want your tax dollars going towards court appearances and stuff like that. And I know that was talked about here, but I think that what we wanna see in most part is where are we serving the communities in the most effective way? And how can we be smart about whatever it is, whether or not it's electricity in the community or all of these different things? And anyway, I just think it's important for us not to simply always be focusing on the salesmanship part of it, the revenue policing or those other, those are all interesting, but they're not really advancing the way we look at how we handle municipal resources. And that's gonna put a lot of times on whatever it is that we might collect revenues on in town. It's a very fraction of whatever it costs. So like, for instance, the pool thing, revenue that we collect for the pool is just a fraction of the cost of the pool. It's kind of more of a, you know- Community service. Yeah, yeah. So- If you look at it and say, well, if we weren't charging that little amount of money, more kids would be there more often. And so we look at that and say, is it really worth it for us to charge something because there's a cost to the collection of the money? There's a cost to that policing and will of that service? And so this is just a comment in the making. Okay. Anything else in person? Yeah. I really appreciate that there's so much for tonight. And so I'd like to announce that I am not gonna run again. I've served three terms on this board plus a little bit because I was appointed before the election. It's been really a great experience and it's been a really hard decision to come to. Unfortunately, a big part of that is that my work now takes me away from town for almost half of the year. And it's just made it really hard to be a more active member in the way that I would like to be. And I think that there's some, you know, hopefully maybe somebody in this crowd, but I think that there are other citizens who have the ability to be more present than I am right now. And so I'm hoping someone will step up and step into that role. I'd say no. Oh, yeah. There's a rejection. I think on the floor, we're gonna say no to that. We'll negotiate this. We're gonna see if we have a petition passed right now. That was a good thing about the floor votes. I just said, got you in anyway. I think part of what's important to mention here is because we no longer are doing floor votes, if somebody is interested in running, you need to start a petition process now and have that in. I don't know the exact. I don't know either. Talk to Pam. I can't remember. Seven Monday or seven Mondays prior or whatever. I would hate to steer someone wrong. So just talk to Pam. She can give you a petition and like, no. So, but I just wanna say thank you so much for your service. Thank you so much. Thank you. So, so yeah, if you're interested, you'd have to talk to Pamela. I'm not. I completely forgot about the floor vote thing. And I guarantee a lot of this town has. So can I make this suggestion, that you put something in front for a little bit before that deadline really starts to happen in January so that people can know, because that's gonna, I think that's might catch some people out, especially some of the people who may not, might have very busy lives and might not be able to pay attention as much as others. I could ask Pam to do it. I like to think that if someone wants to run to be a select board member, that they would have taken the time to study the rules. So they'd be as brief as the running is that. But I would certainly ask Pam to do that for you. Cause I don't know. People are the best. The things happening as soon as they would, as soon as you nominate me when we get to town meeting. And then it doesn't happen. You're like too late. No, can't do that. Exactly. So I'll tell Pam, I'll ask Pam to post on front porch forum about the deadlines. Because there are deadlines. Because people will just be expecting to show up at town meeting and do it the way we've always done it and that won't work. Yeah, they'll see the town report too. But so I could say petitioning for articles and Austrian ballot. Well, Jean had his hand up. He said, but I will have Pam do it. Well, listening to Linley, I think it is appropriate for me to let you know that I am seriously considering not running for a second term as well. So there will be plenty of opportunity for people to serve. It's an important effort and something that people will enjoy. Well, thank you, Jean. So we will do, I will pass Becky's request on to Pam so that Pam can get the information out for people who are interested. I believe that she's handed out two petitions so far. So there are at least a couple people interested. And Lylee is messaging me in the portal saying, hey, Becky, she wants you to know that there is the town meeting committee outreach committee and that she said is working on engagement. Please let Becky know. So they're also putting stuff out too, but we will definitely, since Pam is the keeper of the rules, we'll have her do it that way. I don't want to be misguided because I'd have to go back and look. And she can also point people to like Secretary of State's office or whatever they need to do. So we'll make a note. But if anybody wants to just chat about it or what it's like, my experience or anybody else's experiences, I think we're all open to that. It was really helpful for me. I sat down with Carl Russell when he was chair and talked through it. And it was a really informative process and helped me come to the decision to run for the Slack board. So by all means, reach out. The other thing I can say that, and I said this to Denise and obviously she's sitting here. I've said it to other people that I know are running now, which is if you were interested in being on the Slack board, it's a great idea to start attending the Slack board meetings on a regular basis because you may have one particular issue that's your issue, but it's bigger than that. It's a bunch of stuff. It's always the business of the town. So I've encouraged people, if you want to run for Slack board, you're interested, start coming to the meetings. That way, if you get elected in March and you roll into it, it's not all Greek to you. There will be stuff that we do that is that we've talked about that maybe we haven't recently because we get stuck in warnings and budgets and stuff. But I do encourage people to come. Also, if you're running and you're talking, it gets your name on camera. People get to see you, they hear what you're about. And so it helps through the election process. So when Joe Russo starts passing his petition around to get on the Slack board, he'll know. People will know him. He's a mayor. So, all right. So that's probably the comment. Is there an update on the opening of the book? It's going to be extended into January, possibly. I'm saying the 10th. I think it may be open before that, but I'm not committed to. I don't have a date yet, but it's definitely going to be extended. Yep, so we apologize. But I think the ride around is much nicer than the ride over anyways. In my opinion, I've ridden to Rochester a couple of times recently and going over Camp Brook Road can be rough. And the ride around, state take, remote care of that road is so, so we're looking for maybe into the 10th of January, so. But I just put a post on front porch forum and Facebook today. So we apologize for any inconvenience. All right. Did you let the comments off of that? Yes, ma'am. For everything. For everything, yeah. On the, when he does, when he does feel that supply, what's going to happen to the vehicle after this? Well, it's like we'll get the, runny to make it. They're going to take turns. I mean, probably done. We're not going to be invested money into it. We're going to have to make this stuff like that. So. I think what Theresa and I were just kind of kicking around first is. Again, we, you know, if it sounds like we are going to sign up the sheriff's department, just got to figure out how many hours. I think it'd probably be in our best interest, at least just leave the vehicle alone for maybe the first year. Just, I mean, because last thing you want to do is sell the vehicle and then find out that that didn't work. And oh, the greatest person ever just moved in the town that could have been the constable. And, you know, so maybe, maybe there's an opportunity for us to put it up for a year. Somewhere. So if anybody has a place that we can park the vehicle for a year and then if everything seems like it's going well, the sheriff's department that we could look into, you know, unloading that, I think at that point. Cause cause we found out that those cars. Well, they're, they're very, well, this was before the whole automobile issues, but those cars in general are kind of hard to find and we can't afford brand new ones. So we have to find like halfway decent used patrol car, which, you know, that those are very hard to find. And even at that, we, I think we paid what 10 grand or something for it. So, and then, and then, then you have to upfit it with all the equipment, which costs a lot of money and, you know, that's how much you could spend on the batteries. Fractal so many lights, so to say. But some of the, some of the, there's, you know, where we didn't go to, you know, letters, you know, lettering and lights and you know, all that stuff. So I think that's what we talked about, But if somebody does know of a place that we could store it for a year, you know, it doesn't have to be a warm, you know, somewhere that's sheltered. That's right. So it's something I'm thinking about. Gene had his hand up first. Okay. First Gene. Yeah. And then, yeah, I just, I just want to say I'm not sure. I agree, Chris, that putting a vehicle in storage for a year is a good idea. The dam or the wear and the vehicle will suffer from lack of use and be worth less a year from now than it is now. Now I'm not saying go ahead and sell it this week, but I am saying that I think we should consider, if we're going to move to a different kind of arrangement, I think we need to think that that's going to be more likely permanent. And so I disagree. Okay. Deli noted. And Paul had his hand up after. Paul, do you have something? Well, yeah, kind of echoing Gene's sentiment, but I'm more concerned about the equipment. We've got thousands of dollars on the worth of equipment in there. I'm going to excuse me. So what's going to happen to that in the time that it's saying, can we do something without equipment? Yeah, we didn't plan on leaving, yeah, we didn't plan on leaving like the laptop and a bunch of stuff in there. I haven't had a chance to talk to Oscar about it yet. This is just a conversation that Chris and I had off the, you know, outside of us, like we're meeting a couple of weeks ago or so. So I haven't even had a chance to talk to Oscar about that. I figured he would be able to be the one to give me good advice since he put it together. He could let us know what we could remove, what we couldn't, that sort of thing. And you could leave it on the side of the fire station. That would certainly help slow traffic down. Joanne Marshall, Joanne Marshall says we should put a dummy in it and move it around town. So people think, you know. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yep. I don't know if you remember or want to think back to 2020, but a lot of us had cars sitting for a long period of time and you'll find the brake rotors will be basically worthless in that time. So there's just a lot of different things, especially if you leave it out in the weather. Right. And you don't get someplace dry. It's really good to have. That's why we're talking about finance sheltered area. Yeah, like a nice leave it outside. But yeah. Where's the listers? Well, just remember those new automobiles that you buy on the fancy dealership plots, all right, have usually been sitting on a lot for over a year before you buy them. There's a lot more. I can tell you, but that's where it works. Send that puppy in and we had to pick it up that they got there. Well, just think about all the ones that are sitting there waiting for the chips right now. Right. All right. So we got to get moving along. We have a bunch more left here. So I'm going to close the public comment and we're going to move forward. We have a, so put our cannabis control board hat on. We have something wicked cannabis company to approve a retail permit. Yeah, which I mean for us is pretty much a rubber stamp. So it is, we cannot, we cannot, we cannot say the location. So that's part of the rules that the cannabis control board from the state sends down, but they are in compliance with all zoning regulations. So there's nothing to stop you from approving it. I move to approve. Okay, David. Okay, question. Yep. Sorry. Go ahead. Which is so I think I believe it was a state that was responding to you that was saying you can always, like if there, there, there were questions about the individual or the business that we could dig into that further. And then what we were given doesn't include any information. So exactly. There's a disconnect from what the state's saying we are able to do and what we're being given. Right. What the state is now is saying is that we, I mean, we could, I could have reached out directly to the person and I did that not with this application, but with a prior one where they had like a growing license, but a small one. Really all, you can really all you can do is make sure they're in compliance with the zoning regulations. You can't do anything else. So the applicant tells you right on the permit that they are in compliance with their zoning, which I know they are because I'm the zoning administrator. So I think that what we thought originally would be the things we could do are no longer case. We certainly have, you know, if you get read the memo or the stuff from the cannabis control board directly, you can't, you can't do anything. You have no authority here. Once it's, the zoning was approved by the citizens to say that they would allow this, then you, that was it. It kind of took that out of your hands. The only way you could do anything would be to see if they didn't hear it as zoning, but they do. And being this is the first one that we've done, I'm just trying to think back on like the, on the alcohol and tobacco end of things. When we get the alcohol and tobacco ones, does it tell when the retailer is located on those? It does, but this is. So I guess I don't understand what the difference would be between them. Because I believe that this. We keep one a secret when it's a public briefcase. I think because I was surprised that this one was because it's a retail space and they obviously will advertise, but the, the growing ones, it's for the protection of the owner. And that makes sense for the growing ones, but for a retail space, it's a public space. And I think to Chris's point, similar to alcohol, consumption and sale, you're going to have the owner's names, the business name and the location. I know. Why would this not? It's all public information anyway. It's like, if someone wanted to call the office. It's public information, but I would not release the location. I can't, it tells you right on the. No, no, but I'm saying state law. So it is weird. I think they did a blanket thing, Lindley. I think they did a blanket, no location for everybody. And they didn't stop and think about it. Because as legislatures like to say, they cut out the whole thing with a broad brush, you need to be adjusted. And, and, you know, in a lot of ways, maybe a little more equal if you're going to have one substance that's controlled and another substance that's controlled, but they're operating by exactly really different. So it just, yeah, it felt strange that the, the state was giving you a certain set of advice that was then completely different of what we were also being exactly. No, no, I appreciate you explaining that with an updated, you know, information about it for camp, for local cannabis control boards. And you can't, you know, you can't change your zoning. You can't do a tax on just that. You'd have to do a TIF district for everybody. I mean, there's basically, they have given you the authority to create a cannabis control board, which we did, and they've given you no authority. Yeah. No, basically your job is to rubber stamp or yes, whatever they. And that makes sense. I just don't understand why they're treating them. I don't know either. I thought it was odd, the location, because obviously. And again, I see the growers versus retail. And I just don't think that they specified in the statute. So they got to do, but I don't know. You're asking me to explain the state. Well, and that's, I just, if you had insight, that would be odd. I don't, I don't, I had written to them before about the last permit because they were giving them information. And then when I wrote to them, they referred me to their attorney and then he wrote to me and said, Oh, thank you for the catch. We're referencing the wrong statute in the letter. But this one had no, you know, was no issue. So, okay, so just need a motion. So Dina and Gene, Dave moved and Gene seconded already. Okay. All in favor. All right. All right. They're saying yes. Okay. So they are the license of the owner tomorrow. Hey, man. Are you leaving? No, we're trading spots. Yeah, information in regards to. This is like a Chinese fire drill over here. Well, I don't know what they're doing. Okay, so we just have the loan agreement for the Vermont State Revolving Fund. Yep. So this is the approval for our phase two water project that we're going through right now. So it's 0% interest with a 2% administrative fee for 32 years. The general fund will pay 23% of this. That was our, that was our what we came out with to the voters. Originally, we passed the bond that 23% is in the budget. We're going to discuss next. So it's a two parter. So you need a motion to authorize the chair to sign the loan agreement. And then you're going to need a second motion to approve the general authorization bond and resolution and certificate that the rest of the assign. Question for the first one, Denise, the motion authorize the chair. So is it Denise is a one and Lindley is a two. Okay. Question. I have a question. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I have a question to the 23%. Do we think of that as like a copay? No, I'll share the prep with what's I don't understand that. The 23% when we when we advertise the bond vote for the 2.5 million dollar project that we're doing right now. We had told the voters in the literature that we sent out that the town would that the general fund would pay the portion of the bond that would cover like road construction, pavement, et cetera, something that we would have normally paid for anyways. That way the whole enchilada didn't fall on water sewer users. So I had the engineer do that number for us and it turned out to be 23%. So I, that's why I came up with the number. Thank you. You're welcome. So you have a. No, I'm good motion and a second. For the. Motion to chair for the chair to sign the loan agreement. Okay. All in favor. Aye. All right. And then you'll need a separate motion to approve the general authorization bond and resolution certificate that the three of you will sign that are present. So. Second. Second. All in favor. So I have this, I have this tab up for you. So. Okay. So you guys are the, so the red tabs or the select board, the green tabs are Pam a lot as the treasurer. And I think, and you're going to be just one of the tabs is just you, Chris. Remember, even after you won't be on the board, then you still signed your life. That's right. So you're the red tabs. Yeah. Very Christmas coordinated. That's right. I didn't even realize that till just now that's funny. So in the interest of just kind of speeding through things because we got behind a little bit so that the next item. For Dave and Jean that are remotely was, we had talked about, we didn't really do anything last year, but two years ago, remember how we did a survey to town. And kind of see, you know, what are some things, either there were some things that we were mulling over at our, our level or some other things that had been hot topics in town. And we've gotten, you know, pretty good feedback. I feel. So I think this placeholder tonight was just for us as board members to start. I'd like to do is if everybody could kind of start thinking about. Well, I guess one, should we do another survey? And if so, what would be some of the topics that we'd want to put on that survey? And between now and the next meeting, and then the next meeting will take that up kind of more of a, as a full item, not just a discussion piece. And that sounds pretty good. Yeah. I just put two items on there as a draft, but just to throw something on there. So feel free. And I know some people have brought up to me already some things, you know, some items that they would like to see might be once again, um, Rediscussing the future plans at the rec facility. Um, some other things have been about the town library, you know, the library in town. So those are some things that some other people have brought up to me so far. So, um, but at the next meeting on the 18th, the next week, so that's not a lot of time then. Yeah. Um, so we can go over that and, um, Just email me your thought email. If you have a question, just email it to me and I can put it in the new draft. So it looks like I'm going to remove the one about, I'm definitely going to remove the one about parking because you guys have to make that decision yourselves. This winter. So it kind of makes sense to get that done prior to possibly prior town meetings. So, um, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It was just draft. We'd mentioned a survey. So I tried to make up some questions. So. Or we might get here a week from now and say, we really don't have anything. Yeah, we don't want to do it. I guess. Yeah. But at least we can do that because we'll have to get that. I get it going. Print it up and stuff. So. Yep. It takes a while to put it through a survey month. So we have, um, draft budget in hand. And then we'll have to get that done. So we'll have to get that done. We do have a couple of questions that are going on line by line, but I'm happy to go one by one. I think, um, And, you know, if anybody, if Dave or Jean. Remotely, or anybody in person, I think what we'll do is we'll just go. From a high view of, you know, the revenue high view and then the cost high view. And then we can dive into a individual department. Sure. With any questions that sound good. It's only up 0.71%. Obviously, it's, you know, non-tax revenue is hard to come by. So I did increase. I worked with DTRI on, since you've approved the rec area, past increases. And a lot of this, I just try to work on a two or three year average to see, you know, what rental fees are or something like that. Overall local revenues were down a little bit. Talent score fees are really hard to, you know, to know whether or not you're going to have a lot of recordings or not. So I budgeted a 3% increase for highways for class one, two or three. I don't know what now, what the state is currently thinking for an increase for state highways, but I just kind of put that in as a placeholder. So there's nothing really jarring or shattering that's going to come out that's changing in the revenue budget. So it's really just up 0.71%. So sorry, we have to come up with some new non-tax revenue sources. Then overall, if you look at my proposed budget, we flip onto expenses. My overall budget for expenses are up 2. or excuse me, 1.8% over last year. I have yet to talk to Rick Benson, because he is currently our assessor, you know, managing the Lister Office. I feel that there are some zoning permits he perhaps has to see to increase some values, but when I went to look at the grand list, it's currently flat. So I'm not expecting, I'm not, I'm always hoping for some growth in the grand list, but I don't know the answer to that. I hope to see Rick this week. So I've included in this budget, there's a new Vermont payroll tax that becomes an effect in July. It's a childcare contribution tax, it's 0.44%. The state law allows us to put 25% of that or 0.11% on to the employee, and we would take care of the rest. Obviously, you know that the budget also includes a increase in medical insurance, so that's in here. I don't see a projected increase in retirement, and I had had a higher price tag on that last year, so I actually reduced that a little bit this year. In the road budget, I've kind of made some adjustments where less salt, more gravel, that type of thing. So some of those numbers are we're kind of just moved around a little bit. I did increase our ERAF because we're going to have to pay off almost $12,000 of Pinello Bridge, plus then start paying on our July 2023 ERAF, which is, you know, 1225%. I just want to say we have not bid Pinello Bridge out yet, so my estimate on what we are going to be on the hook for for our ERAF or Pinello could change once the numbers come in. Hopefully it's less. So that's a change there. So the highway budget is obviously the biggest. The fire department budget is only up 0.85%. I met with the fire chief and the assistant fire chief. The constable budget, I added the $65,000 in contract services. I left $8,000 in for more solar signs. That is something you could take out if you wanted to. Also, in just a thought, if you decided you wanted to sell the cruiser, there's money in the capital cruiser fund as well as the cruiser. If you wanted to go to a higher end, you want to do more than the $65,000, you could supplement for one year at least. So the recreation department, I put in a placeholder of $10,000. Last year they had wanted $40,000. So that budget looks like it's down, is down almost 30%. Because last year they wanted $40,000 for the skate park, but I don't think that's going to last time I read in their minutes was they didn't really have a next plan for their capital project. So that's down. Parks and public places, I have increased that is I'm budgeting, I put all in one so that I could manage easier. I'm requesting one full-time person year round to do all the mowing in the summer. To do all the building maintenance, which includes the gazebo, the fencing, the band shell, anything I need done at Town Hall, if I need the lights replaced, if I need this or that, because currently I also do the building maintenance unless I contract it out. So that person would also do sidewalks and work with the road crew in the wintertime. And they would, if Richard had a break in the summer time, like had a water main break, they would work with Richard, they would flush hydrants, that sort of thing. So, So would that be to that some of the contract work that we've had done like mowing and ditching instead of having a contractor do that? Well, ditching we've reduced anyways, because we have done so much ditching in 20, you know, after the flood, but, and also this time AJ and Morgan came to me and said, look, we'd like to rent a ditching, a bigger machine. And we worked out a way to do it by getting some grant money that we already had by doing a place piece on Dart Hill and then we could rent the machine and they could do some other work as well to try to make more efficiencies there. But this definitely would take care of the mowing. I contracted out the mowing this year. And excuse me, the guys did a great job, but I'm also paying them 65 or more an hour. So when I needed like fence work done or this and that, you know, yeah. I know I've seen it, but that contract and labor, would that be under public works? No, I put all of the work that I'm talking about under parks. No, no, no, the way that we have had it in the past. So not this new proposal with a full time person. What we did before, yeah, is we had the cost so that some of it went under public works, some of it went under parks, some of it went underwater, some of it went under sewer. It was. And because I, for ease honestly for myself to ease instead of divvying it up and I wouldn't charge any to water sewer, I would just charge it to the general fund. But the winter time would come out of the highway, but if the select word approves it, I can make those changes, but I didn't want to keep, it's just it's time consuming to keep recalculating every percentage because it affects health insurance retirement. So I thought if I threw it all in one, one spot, so I'm also going to make my pitch for this right now. So let's keep in mind, I'm the town manager, I'm the zoning administrator, I am the delinquent tax collector, I do the building maintenance and I am the road commissioner. So the select word likes to say, you know, trees, you get stressed out, you got a lot going on. I need help. And for me, help would be somebody who could manage the parks, manage some building maintenance. I mean, I was in here earlier taking light bulbs out so that I can order them to get the right ones to come back to install some light bulbs. Also, too, if, you know, if we get the Merp this grant for energy efficiency at the town office, if we qualify for that, it would give me somebody to oversee some of this and to be proactive like when we had Adam that summer we were able to paint some fencing on Main Street and now it's like if something happens like the gazebo is vandalized, I have to call a contractor and get them to do it whereas if I had somebody down there every week mowing, they could, you know, take a look at this I have some small work to be done at the fire station and I just feel like I think it's outside of your skills and they could be the federal contractor. Exactly. They could find like it. Do you know how long it took me to find someone to replace our repair sign. You know, because somebody from Christian Hill decided they were going to jump the curb and take out the town hall sign. So that's what's all in one budget right now it's a full time person year round. So that's in their municipal office the only thing that really changed there since the tree will no longer be the pool director absorbed some of her hours in house. That's really all that changed their town hall is like a reallocation of insurance their insurance went up so I'm looking at that number again between now and next week. I'm going to talk a little bit more about the state officials, St. State similar the listers. I've talked to Rick Benson about this, and I've talked to someone to contract assessing work with possibly NemRick they're the ones who are doing our townwide reappraisal. They're the office of listers that we hire someone to work in the office 16 hours a week. They won't do any of the valuation. They will just do all of the paperwork the PTT ours etc. We will have an assessor all budget for four hours a month at $95 an hour because that's what the fee was I got from NemRick. And then we do have the whole list of the super still drops the budget overall for the listers. Then we have somebody coming in outside of Bethel. That is a professional assessor that is valuing properties. According to those rules I also think it'll be nice because if you bring in a professional, they're going to be taking over from a professional will have just had a townwide reappraisal. allows us to open those positions up so now we can look for people outside of Bethel that have the abilities you want. You may even get somebody that works as a Lister in another town that is familiar with VT PI, that's familiar with Nemerick, familiar with Cama, that may be just looking for some office hours and you know we could benefit from that. We have to have a separate item on the warning for the Lister's piece. We will yep and then government operations are up you know five percent that's just a combination of stuff, appropriations, we have the numbers in here so far that we've heard that we received from the Human Services Committee and you can tell if I've received a letter for somebody about their dues. That's in here under debt service I added the DWS RFPs which is the 23 percent that's $13,940 so overall with the budget and the increasing in the capital equipment fund, increasing the appropriation to capital building funds, increasing the appropriation of capital highway funds, my budget and my proposed first round out is up 1.80 percent in expenses so I'm looking at an overall of a 2.1 percent increase over last year in the budget and I know we obviously always try to stay under 3 percent so for my first stab I feel pretty good about it so we'll see so that's the quick and dirty version so that's Gene Krauss has his hand raised so it's like two two point four cents yeah go ahead Gene so I I looked but I did not see any any suggestion for the interregional energy coordinator requests that came in last time and I'm encouraging or suggesting that we either include it in the budget or as a special item warning the town of Rochester is going to have it as a special item in their town meeting there are other communities that have voted to go ahead the only thing that's in the budget is the same thing that was in the budget last year we have that contract labor line under the town manager's office it was at 15,000 last year only used 3700 of it because I had I was contracting with two rivers to work with the planning commission and I'll use a little bit more of it so I did drop that to $10,000 so there is $10,000 in the budget under contract labor you know for grant writing grant assistance whatever kind we kind of had gotten to that point last year so that I left that number in there and figured you all would have a discussion about that so if we were to add this coordinator at us $12,000 for the first year we're in a ballpark with that line line at him you are yeah especially if we were to go up to 15 or even 20 so that we have a few dollars for the town in addition so I I'm just suggesting that that's that we might want to add that in so I put it in at 10 because you know I was always looking for money so I was looking so that's so there is a $10,000 in there and we've used it the last couple years to cover up you know if we needed grant writing I think last year you'd even talked about the possibilities you were seeing where this was going to go with energy and then I guess that I've only used some of the money to pay two rivers to work with Eric Webb and myself and others for the planning I think this is a good moment I sat with a lot of what we talked about in the last meeting around the energy coordinator position and I I think in a lot of ways we as a board very specifically and very clearly tasks tasked the energy committee with doing the research and coming back and they have done that and so sort of to Gene's point it it is now on us to do the due diligence of considering that and so I think it should be in consideration within this budget whether or not it's included and if it's not going to be in this budget it should by all rights go to the voters because I think this is sort of the bigger scope of the questions are not just within our town it's state mandates we're acknowledging every single meeting and uptick in catastrophic natural events we're discussing increased costs of energies we're discussing that within this own budget and this position is directly and quantifiably going to help towns address those exact issues we can't quantify how much or you know to what degree but we know that we're continuing to see this uptick we're continuing to see the bills from these issues and if we want to get ahead of it and be proactive and I think it also even though there's no guarantee it opens us up for avenues of funding just like you were saying with the energy efficiency on the town offices it's like that kind of stuff the more proactive Bethel is on the outset the more amenable funding agencies are to these things and so I think by putting that task out there to the energy committee the energy committee in conjunction with two rivers did their due diligence for a couple years now and you know it behooves us to at a minimum put it into the consideration and have this conversation I think the piece that really stuck with me was just kind of trying to wrap my own brain around these thoughts I ended up talking with a couple different entities and when I when I said you know I don't really know where the board is landing with this it doesn't actually feel like we would be leaning right now in the direction of saying yes to this they said well then can it go to the voters because we would want to see it as a valid item and so I think that if the board is ultimately going to say no to it in the budget then we owe it to our citizens to put it up to them to make this decision I think by having 10 000 I spoke to two rivers directly and they're bringing somebody else on and that they're going to start gearing up to do part-time um to do some more work that we could do we could also contract with them if Bethel had a specific need um that they we could also reach out to two rivers obviously I'm dealing with harry right now and but they're already they're they're kind of staffing up um to take on some things I think it's hard for us because you don't know what you're getting it's hard to quantify to the voters because we don't even know what our need is whereas we are going to start working hopefully sounds like we'll have this discussion Thursday night with the planning commission which is trying to land another planning grant uh to go through the start work on the a full redo or full review of the town plan and I'm wondering if once that review of the town plan is done and we do it in conjunction with two rivers is that going to give us more of a concrete list of things that we need to work on I don't know I'm just asking because to me it's a it's hard for me to quantify if someone was saying what are you going to get for this money I can't tell them which is you know it's very difficult for me but I think it's and this is one of the ways that I wrap my brain around this of if somebody were to say well why are you doing accessibility and pedestrian studies in your downtown we know that there's no payback the payback is the safety of our families our children's our loved ones absolutely right and so is this realistically any different we don't know a quantifiable number but that doesn't mean we can't support it in an understanding that there is a bigger and better potential out there for what it can do for us and I think that can be and this is where I say like it really is from from the top down it's it's in our own town plan currently that we will work towards energy energy efficiency it's mandated from the state and while I don't I'm not going to profess to understand what the state mandates are and all the the trickle downs the reality is it's it's there and we get those report cards once a year and they're dismal right and they're it's almost it's almost pitiful to look at them and know that we could be doing better but we're not actually even making an effort at the moment to do better and so this to me would be a way to start to figure out how to do better because I think none of us on the board have a clue as to how to do better we need an expert to come in and say here's what makes it that quantifiable number that next year we can justify it to the taxpayers because we now have an expert coming in and helping us understand what's what's achievable for us what's accessible for the individual citizen because I think of this I mean at least the way I read it was this coordinator position isn't just only for municipalities it it has the trickle down effect to the individual citizen to help them sort of sort out what what's accessible to them what's available yeah that I guess maybe someone else could clarify that because my impression was it was just for the buildings that we own but I do want to say say this and I kind of came to me today in a conversation with someone was I I want the select board to think about and be proud about the work that we have done every time we did we did this 2.8 million dollar water project we're doing this 2.5 million dollar water project now every time we do that we are saving resources we're saving water we're saving energy we're making our systems more efficient and and we're allowing we're giving our citizens better water better so every time we do these projects you know I feel like people keep saying oh we haven't done anything we have done things every time we buy better highway equipment it's probably it's better fuel it's less it's less hydraulic it's less oil so I do feel like in the last I mean I can only speak for the last four plus years that I've been here let us not discount the work we have done because those 2.8 million dollar projects and a 2.5 that's a lot that we have done for the planet for our own you know community and resources and we already have partnered with green mountain power to try to do this big push for them to make you know the resiliency within the grid and they're gonna do more work too but I did write to two rivers as promised after the last select board meeting and got a message back from Harry and he sent me on to somebody else to find out what that other consortium or whatever was doing and I have not heard anything back from him because I did write them and say hey we're kind of talking about this issue can you tell us what you have done what have you accomplished have you gotten a payback or you know my biggest fear is that we have somebody come and their priority number one is and you know this better than anybody is that you've seen it people writing grants to keep their own job first whereas if we add $10,000 or so to the budget then we could reach out to two rivers for specific needs as we felt we had them but it's hard for me because I when we get those report cards they are dismal but one of them is electric cars you and I aren't going out of dang thing about electric cars that's going to be the state issuing more tax credits more we can't get people me again be able to buy electric vehicles so some of it I feel like when they judge us is unfair because they're not looking at the work that we have done since we came here obviously or since you know since we've started tackling all of our infrastructure issues and all the stuff that we've beefed up and yes all those floods I think I mean advantage of it all the work that we did at the town office I mean I did we changed out I mean Dave will contest it we changed out all the lights to led lights town I mean there's there's a lot of things I mean they're not flashy that the report card picks up I'm not saying we haven't done anything you know I'm also saying I think that this is a bigger it's a bigger systemic issue and it's not just a state level and not just a town level or an individual level but it's actually the partnership of all of them and I think the big thing for me was that we taxed our energy committee with this task and they did it they came back to us with info and for us not to give it sincere consideration and have these discussions as part of our budget discussions is a bit of a sock on the face of them it was multiple years of work under a directive from us so I think that for me was the piece of like yeah we need to give this due consideration and if we don't feel it fits in the budget I think we owe it to the citizens to give them the ability to consider this and say actually we we believe this is worth the extra you know what 75 percent of a cent um yeah or no we don't and we'd rather see that money go to x y or z right and so I I just wanted to vocalize that like I you know I know I know that you you think about these numbers so deep but then it's not it's not a lie but I really appreciate the way that you word it and and like I said I was having a conversation with someone today and I'm like man I'm sick of this like we're being the bad people because you have done so much that you deserve a little pat on the back for all the work that you have done and that you know while we talk about energy when we talk about water and all the other things that we're not coming out of the ground to mention I mean think about all the resiliency projects that we've been doing like when I got on this board I mean our our gravel budget was basically nothing we didn't have a ditching budget we didn't ditch roads I mean so we in grant those are going to show up in the fancy state of remonts report card for us right but there are a lot of things that we have been doing you know well they're going to show up in the not having the expenses from major flooding events right it's going to happen ways of saving not right what money we make back and I think that was sort of last time our discussion got so focused on what do we get out of this and I think sometimes it's not quantifiable things it's not what the state tracks and just exactly to your points of like there are all these things we do that don't get considered yeah I mean it would be sort of silly and blindsided of the board to say well if there's no direct payback then it's not worth our investment because I think your point of you know doing additional ditching upsizing culverts when we can afford to you know those are the proactive thinking things and I think as a board we have been actually really good at being proactive thinkers and it just felt it just felt incongruous with some things that the way the discussion went last time and I sort of it took me a bit to wrap my brain around it all so I just wanted to say so I think for me the clarification is and Jean can certainly explain this was my impression the whole time has been that the energy coordinators number one focus is on town-owned buildings obviously we're all in favor of window dressers and any sort of thing like that that comes in that helps the the resident but so Jean is that incorrect thinking on my part that the energy coordinators main position would be to focus on town-owned buildings am I wrong in that I could know it well there are two two things that I would say to that specifically one is that this position is not limited to the town as a town it is it is also involving education and involved making resources available to individual citizens so that they can do what they can do as citizens to winter weather eyes put in air pumps and so on and so forth sometimes that's simply making resources available and publishing that in a way that the citizens themselves can take advantage as so it's not just an and even as a town it's not just town buildings it's energy writ large so we we have energy that is not related to heating our buildings we have energy in terms of all the equipment that we use and so on third thing that I would say is that the committee that would put this together spent a great deal of time talking with harry at two rivers and trying to decide in fact whether or not logging tying this into two rivers under two rivers model was appropriate what I just said about involving individual citizens is not in the two rivers uh bailiwick there uh well what what we heard from harry and that was checked with peter gregory uh that was that we are looking as much for a community organizer as we are for a grant writer this is not simply somebody to write grants for us but it is someone to uh to work with volunteers to support uh volunteer efforts to reach out to the citizens in addition to helping the towns themselves uh and every one of these towns has done has taken steps to uh enhance or to deal with the rising energy costs and and to address climate change whether it's been you know open or and and advertised as such or not but the question is whether or not we are so this particular person was specifically designed to supplement what we are doing through two rivers not to replace it but to add some components that two rivers simply does not do uh and so I hope that's clear um thank you so what I'm thinking then is this if the you have a four thousand dollar grant that's sitting in there that could be go to this and then with the ten thousand dollars in labor there's fourteen grand to cover it so I guess what you could do if you chose to do if you had three slept remembers to support it you could put it to the voters I guess for the twelve thousand three hundred sixty dollars knowing that you have ten in contract labor in the four thousand dollar MIRP grant to cover it the four thousand dollar MIRP grant is part of what makes that first year twelve thousand dollars okay so I mean okay so that that enables us to okay it it drops down the more people that commit to it Denise was what the more people that sign up so okay so basically it would have been sixteen thousand but the four for the MIRP so we're about twelve thousand three sixty short okay I thought I had something there Jean twelve could be eighty well I wish you did but that was that was part of the thinking yeah okay thank you yeah all right we're saying yes to this year right just like those other towns could drop out we could also choose to drop out you couldn't right yeah I think that's not a that's not a logical argument to say no to one year because it could go up next year and I just don't have a hard time buying I like your I like you thinking just like a climb this because it goes up one year doesn't mean it's going good that's right so the um so there is ten in contract and um anyways so okay so there's please beat the horse on this one so there's something to think about anyways that that there is ten in the budget and jeans for uh for the MIRP so so you just would be looking for two grand extra so so anyways that was just a high overview of the budget so so I think some things that we have correction a correction we cannot consider the MIRP twice no I know lower the lower figure of twelve thousand for the first year is because it is a pilot project funded in part by the communities that have that are dedicating their four thousand dollars towards this right that yeah so we so we would need so this program needs an additional was it twelve thousand well there's ten thousand if there's ten thousand in the budget under contract labor you'd be looking for an additional two thousand three hundred and sixty I think right right if yeah if that's how the select board wanted to do it within the budget yes sorry no no that's fine and hopefully we have less on the docket for next week so we'll be able to push the budget up higher up the yeah I don't I don't know if anything else on the agenda for next week off the top of my head so hopefully it can be mainly just solely a budget um meeting we won't have to share here for an hour so can I ask a different question of course not energy related yes um no no under the fire department yep there was almost five thousand dollars this year in dispatch yep and nothing budgeted right explain that short um it comes up every couple of years I feel like they change the person in charge at the state level for the department of public safety and every once in a while I've been there's multiple times in the last 18 years they talk about we're gonna you got to pay to dispatch the fire department you're gonna pay to dispatch the fire department so Dave and I go through and I do our deal Jillian so we get a letter and we budget it and then nothing happens and that new person just came in so we have we didn't get any paperwork so we agreed that this year we weren't gonna budge anything for dispatching because if they even came in to do it now it wouldn't take they wouldn't make it take effect in our next budget year watch it but so we have we actually we've spent no four thousand eight hundred we've never under actual we've never oh then it's in the wrong line okay sorry okay I'll move that so we have never uh four thousand eight ninety one so that's what was budgeted yeah in the wrong category that that's explained that well it's very strange that we spent almost five thousand dollars oh actually yeah no okay thank you yeah I'll move take a little arrow thank you okay cool because yeah we we haven't spent any and and we won't budgeted this year either so I'll make a no thank you you get typing away you know and you I know I mean I also think it should be said that you you do a stellar job with this it's not the point that we're able to just come in and have productive discussions and make decisions I mean the fact that we're able to do this in December and I'm not stressed out about it because I know I know you've done a great job oh it's thank you trees pay me for so I guess that's a little bit cool yeah but um so yeah so there's a high overview Dave did you have a question I know I was gonna make you a copy because I know you like it on legal size paper but I can make you one if you want to pick it up um no I don't really pick it up okay well I will uh I will talk considerably more hopefully next time because I will be there uh there you go and um but I will make you a bigger copy for um so you think you're gonna come in person next week yeah and god willing and the doctor says it's okay god willing and the creek don't rise I'll make sure um I make you a bigger copy thank you you're welcome that's my that's my plan as well hopefully okay yes absolutely so I think one thing just kind of looking at the budget on a high level that we have to be careful because we're getting away from this quick because is we we currently are spending we're on year two over five years spending of the extra monies from the transfer station yep so remember it's um three years down the road that money is gonna dry up and that's that's about two cents on the tax rate that either we have to cut yep or we have to fund that's right so and and from what I keep seeing and we're just we're adding layers to this thing so um so even though the budget's only up right now on this draft 51 thousand dollars which is 2.4 cents you have to understand that we're still carrying that 54 in there so our really our two yeah two and a half cents is really four and a half cents when we start thinking out a couple years from now absolutely and we also have in this budget it's remember last year we had a proposed budget and our proposed budget carried pretty much what we normally see for increases yep but then at town meeting day there was a bunch of bolt-ons that got added to this thing and we were still carrying some of those in this we are so our budget is is it in theory is is way more up than the 2.4 cents because we're still even though the recreation department last year we added 30 000 extra for the skate park that's been that that's back down to 10 but we're still carrying the increased funds for the library that we still 27 500 which they had promised us that they would do now we would see a long-term planning of what are we doing with library because because when we had the discussion last year at this time a we were told that a library of of this town size should have a funding of around 125 000 to 150 000 to be a you know efficient library for all of us to use the tools and we're still funding this thing on a shoestring budget and i think we as board members correct me from wrong but last year we had said you know because they were basically saying hey we're going to close our doors here in like two years right and we said well what do you need to bear minimum float this thing until you figure out what the long-term plan is and so we added the 22 000 750 or whatever it was and here we are we've we've we've increased our budget for that and we have gotten nothing for them i just got a letter you know so it just feels like to me that we're just and i would love to see a library in the town but it just feels like we're just throwing cash at this library that probably still closing in two years because they haven't figured out what they're doing yet i will say i got a letter today from the library that obviously didn't make it in your packet but we'll go into your packet next time because your packet was already out and they're they did say and they're they outlined some of the stuff they had done but did say clearly that because i reminded them in an email that they had promised us long-range planning and they said oh they're going to tackle that in 2024 so they still want their additional 27 500 so their whole ask is still 35 000 and you're right we did add 30 000 last year for the skate park and just to back up and i was only i don't know three years ago we were funding the library at five grand five hundred dollars so um and here we are we we have we increased it both in our budget but then a bolt-on at um town meeting day and you know now we're funding funding this thing seven times what we were two years ago right with no clue what the future looks like right so i guess that really good means good for us and and what do we get for we get a library that continues to serve the people right we're just talking dot dot we're just trying to quantify how the budget has gone from one point to another gene so i'm a huge library thing myself i understand i understand but we are the ultimately the the town is a service provider for the community it is not a business so we have to pay so what we are getting for all of our tax dollars our services provided to the town whether it's in a form of water or sewers or roads or whatever uh so i think that i just want to say that i think that these are uh yes these are expenses that we have agreed to take on and i say good for us that's what the town voted a year ago well i i guess my argument on that is exactly what i just said five minutes ago is that we are being under service with our library in town they they sat here and told us that a fully functional library for our town so it should be 125 000 a year and right now they are funding this on a shoestring budget which is not adequately giving us the services that our town deserves and we are right now blindly throwing money at something that we don't know what the long-term plan is there and and last year the whole reason why we gave them the money was for for the people of the town and for them to figure out what is the long-term focus of that building is it because it's not a town library so anybody who thinks it's a town library it's not a town library it has no other than we give funding to the library it's not a town library so so either they need to find what does the path look like to be a fully functional library which might be asking the town people to give 125 000 a year but we're still just kind of it's limping along we're just throwing cash at this thing and and in long term it's it's a problem and in three years from now we are going to you know whatever maybe i won't be here at the time and i can sit here and say i told you so but in three years from now all these things that we keep kicking down the can we're gonna have to pay for yeah it's true so and if we don't start making these and won't say cuts or decisions now you know if we keep increasing this and you know we're because we basically said hey we know that our budget's increasing but we have these short-term funds that we're gonna kind of plug the hole for now well when the short-term funds state of Vermont with everything else yeah you know the day of reckoning is coming and three years from now we're either gonna have to keep our services to our community at this or we're gonna have to ask you know that you're gonna have to chip in another two two and a half cents that nobody seems to have right so and i think that's a point to be made while gene is correct that that yes we're municipality and yes we provide services um to people i think that we also we can only provide services to the level in which our in which our residents can afford it you know so if you're living on social security or a very fixed income it's hard to keep giving everybody everything um if we because i always feel really bad when i have residents that are you know retirees that are living on such a fixed income and then the taxes go up then you know maybe or maybe not they qualify for an increased pre-bate but then somebody is paying for that somebody who is paying the full boat of their taxes is now helping to pay more for the state level to you know because you're paying for somebody else's pre-bate so it just becomes yes i agree with gene that we do provide services but i also agree that we have to be um very cognizant of our lowest income residents and what they can i don't want to price anybody out of town you know certainly so what was that fine line and and this year's budget i mean we really gotta really look at everything in a perspective of the yeah it's going to get thrown at us at the local level sure but there has been a lot of things that have gone on for the last two or three years that weren't settled that we're going to start paying for you know and the governor had put it out there last week about a potential of upwards to 20 percent increases in property taxes yeah because this and and that is a that is completely uh instead you know the the state used covid funds to plug holes instead of addressing how do we fix education costs how do we fix the retirement right how do we fix Medicaid and they punted that they use the covid funds plug the holes and now they're here in this deficit so the only only thing that they can do like gene said is they can keep the level of services that people want yeah but now it's time to pay the piper right or they're gonna have to cut services which we all know that they're not gonna cut so and what happens is these decisions are made easily in Montpelier because it always becomes our problem down below right so it becomes the school's problem when the when the yield goes sky high this year um and it becomes our problem here in the town right because we're trying to right keep our level of services but now we we're having to increase taxes what do you think the do you have any prediction on what the school tax is going to do this here i know that the school board is working it's we're so early in it the three thing well the school is made up of three different identities so you have the common level of appraisals which continue to go down so that negatively in fact impacts your budget yeah and then you have the yield which the yield is basically after the state gets done kind of balancing their budget they they set the yield and the yield then is up to the towns to you know up to the schools well like for instance the yield is going to go down this year for a lot of different reasons one of bits that they are going to fully fund the food programs at school okay but that $35 million needs to be paid somehow right so that it just you know it weighs down the yield that and a bunch of other things so the yield is going to significantly go down this year as well the only thing that the school has going for is there's a whole new funding formula that the state has enacted that that's going to increase at least in our area the funds that um or how we pay for students right because you said they were they there used to be we paid by per pupil spending in there but in the word town was penalized if you went over per pupil price but now they're removing the per pupil price penalty say that three times fast per pupil price penalty so so the schools have how much you think their tax is not going I don't know we I might know a little bit better at this next one but again they have similar challenges that um well there's a lot of fun a lot of programming either at the superintendent's level or the school level that has been funded with COVID funds over the last three years as well right so now that you know that has dried up so it's do you want that same level of service or do you not want that same level of service or maybe they were paying for two of these people but now they're only going to pay for one you know so I guess we were lucky we didn't get any COVID funding so I guess we get a lot of people and I think I think the governor you know probably throughout the biggest scare tactic he could 20 percent I don't think it'll be 20 percent but there's you know a significant increase is coming to everybody absolutely but I just think you know here we just have to start thinking about you know three years from now I mean we we've said two years now but you know we're gonna have to come up with that revenue that we're gonna set out on yeah um that's that argument that is arguing for the the for like this energy position to take it to the voters uh like we took the library to the voters uh it wasn't a select board decision to fund that that was a voter decision uh I would uh argue that uh that that's uh that it's appropriate when you're quote adding a service that you ask the voters if that's what they want to do uh but yeah we are all concerned about the costs we are all concerned about keeping down the cost and hopefully that's one of the things that will result from uh some of these programs that we're trying to provide I understand what you're saying Jean but I respectfully disagree in the sense that you know the select board's job is to present obviously to present a responsible budget and last year for example we proposed a budget which I felt very much was responsible and then the voters you're right added on money for the library money for you know skate park money for this money for that um and there was not a single question asked not a single question asked on that budget at all and I find that unnerving and I don't mean any disrespect but I feel like we're not saving somebody from themselves because I'm not standing there with an old-fashioned mimeograph machine reeling off their tax bills right there so I think that people have really big hearts and they want to do all these things but when it comes August 15th November 15th and we're in the office taking tax payments um it's difficult because we not only collect municipal tax we collect school tax so it's hard when you see someone coming in who's really scraping together their last penny and I think that people don't always understand that when they're standing at town meeting in March because they're not going to see that bill until July and they're not actually they're thinking oh it's a this on a tax rate or that on the tax rate so I just think that sometimes maybe it's too easy to kick it to the voters because when have they denied you you know what I mean I mean and I'm just this is more like a philosophical question Gene but it's just something that I personally struggle with that's all. So I had a couple of just okay questions in the budget quickly so the gravel we have there's $35,000 an increase in gravel year over the year what what is that so I took I reduced my salt budget and I added the diff I added money into the gravel budget I'm a ruler and because and and let me say I don't think I think I level funded sand hang on and I add okay I added money from salt to sand but we have places in town that everybody knows where we have graded the road to a nub so I level funded chloride and I added there was savings of $30,000 in salt and I added that to gravel so the money from salt went to gravel and I level funded chloride so that's really what I did there um you see what I'm saying right yeah I'm just kind of going back you know yeah you know not so many years ago our gravel budget was 15 or $20,000 a year right last year it was at its peak of 50 and now we're at 85 so well because I was trying to move salt into gravel because I mean look at we can do a very good example would be um peevine I mean there's just roads that we have not put any material on and I think Dave I'm sure knows of multiple spots where we have just graded the thing to bedrock and it needs material on it now yes I've picked up as much grant money as I can and we can do hydrologically connected segments but if we have a piece of road that's not near a river then we're going to eat that out of pocket so it was just uh like I said the first stop of the budget so it was just a thought and I know currently we're at did it did did we not also change the quality of the gravel we changed the quality of the sand okay so but there was a cost increase related to that was there right yeah there's 7% increase for most materials this year so yeah and there was an increase because we switched sand last year from regular to manufactured right okay and I would assume that some of the 71,000 that's been spent to date has got to be some FEMA it is yeah and I haven't made the can't imagine that we've done no oh so some of that actual for this year will come off of there yes it's going to get moved I just haven't we were just I just had to pay it that way and then I increased guardrail because we do have sections of specifically of campbrook road that need to be done obviously if you have any ends those are a huge priority and and guardrail pricing has gone insane so I did increase that budget I noticed a fire insurance went up quite a bit I mean quite a bit as in percentage wise went up $5,000 is that a yep it's well they bought a new they bought a their rescue truck now and so now they have two rescues they haven't sold one and just you know insurance price increase but what is highway rehabilitation that's like a capital road fund okay so you're you put an extra 20,000 into that I did because the good thing about that is we can use that for matching funds also too I want to work on our capital we need to do a capital road plan and I was just talking to Chris once he has a little more free time I have an extra map and I want him to come in and so that we can highlight in one color everything we did in 2019 and then highlight in another color everything we did in 2023 so that we can build a capital road plan based on that what haven't we touched and where I know this summer where we're going to do some work on dark with a grant that I already have secured so part of that is sorting that out so this this line item is different from a capital fund where it would it would roll over like unfortunately if we're looking to invest in a new grader right we put something into a capital fund and then we can build that resource and that's exactly what this is this is a capital this is the same okay that's what I was trying to sort out in my brain was is this part of a capital fund so if we don't spend the full you know 175 yeah it rolls over here it rolls it yeah and some of that really is to try to get the peaks and valleys right right so there is some you know and maybe I could cut back on my culvert budget because we just did a bunch of culverts so again I think what's going to help me is having a conversation you know going through with chris and sitting back and saying okay look these are all the places we did culverts in 2019 here's all the places we did culverts in 2023 so maybe I can dial some money back there but you know when you're going through it obviously the highway budget is the biggest budget so I always find that they also have the biggest need and I will say they told me they want an increase in tools to like 6 000 I added another five just because of my first go round I was only a 0.48 so then I doubled back through the budget I'm like okay I want to put more money in capital funds and I need to put more money into like gravel and into some road stuff so those are obviously the biggest complaints as I'm just kind of rifling through some of these so now that the state has passed down the reappraisal timeline again yeah so how much money do we have to put aside for our portion of the reappraisal and now that they're saying what every six or seven years you're gonna have it now so is that is that eight thousand dollars we have in there is that gonna cover us yes we do it on a cycle of six seven years yep and I'll make a note here to give you that but yeah because I had I believe that I believe so off the top of my head so let me make a note next to that to look at my capital plan because where is that um it's government operation oh here it is reappraisal okay so I'm gonna say print out capital schedule so I believe that it is but I could be wrong it's I have to go back I usually do the budget and then double back in my sometimes back in the capital but but that's what I had in the schedule and then just kind of looking at this inspired another conversation of probably it'd be nice if the rec if we could get the rec committee to talk to us in regards to what's their vision is for the next phases because they rather than just arbitrarily give them ten thousand dollars like what is the next piece and how long are we out on that like if if they say our next piece is two years away and we need fifty thousand dollars then maybe we should think about 20 or 25 or you know or or add some money to the well if you read their their most recent rec committee meeting minutes say that they have no project well I know but there's still stuff on the plan I know but I don't know that's why I think it might be fun to survey maybe I'm recalling this not from a select board meeting but I thought there was a moment when Ellie said that that was in an upcoming meeting they were going to start they were going to relook at the master and they just meant I looked at their minutes and I didn't see anything in there other than the fact that they didn't really have an ex-focus that's why one of my questions on the survey was the rec because that is an old survey those people have moved out of town so I would like to see what that is and I just threw the ten is a placeholder I just came across an old rec committee master plan and it kind of made me chuckle yeah it's like oh yeah I bet this is nothing like what they're thinking yeah so I'll email Ellie because I know I know they've done a lot over the last three or four years but and maybe they're maybe it's time for a pause but yeah what is the timeline for the next one so that we can start putting some appropriate money aside exactly yeah so or asking the voter structure for the next yeah yeah because so that was why that was my question on the survey was my number one question was we've got what is that and I think that surveys my own opinion is that surveys too old to be referenced and they're getting limited space now that they've got the addition on the skateboard park exactly so much room in that area and that's right and this is small stuff but I see in the town hall insurance went up again it did and I actually like that's going up and up and up and up every year well I will say this this is what I've got I just got this and I was working on it yes because I mean three years ago we were at 6000 and now we're at 12 and here's the deal this is what you get so I went back through and the town hall was higher so I ended up calculating my contribution to the town hall that I had been too low but I started doing the math this afternoon again because I was saying 70% for the town hall 29% for the town office 1% for public places so I'm going back now because they send us this whole breakdown so I did a quick version and that's what's in here but I need to sit back and go through the whole pages of insurance information that yeah it just seems like that one's just it's double it is four years but I think we covered yeah you didn't have the correct coverage before either and you had to choose at one point where you're going to get replacement cost or were you going to get the other valuation and you guys agreed that no you weren't going to build a replica of this if heaven forbid it burns down but so that change also Chris is less of an increase in more of a read or a proper allocation but I'm just starting to work and going back through it again and then another question I had here was so we had increased some of the appropriation money for appointed officials last year and then we were going to get some feedback like for instance um like that that help oh the health officer even though the health officer chose not to take a pay they were going to give us some information like how many hours they're working and so that we could build that into a budget going forward um and then get any good any feedback in regards to the ones that we did adjust to that well it made a couple people happy so I will say that so I can email Chuck Davis and I will also email the fire warden and ask Gary how many how it's worked out for them and um I mean I was able to talk talk to Chuck um a little while ago and he was telling me that he was actually quite busy he is quite busy you see him very frequently in the office he was in the other day he and I had a meeting last week on the early week before so quite busy and he might need uh oh he dropped they might need Paul back now oh that's right yeah he might need Paul yeah he has his assistant which is his daughter Melanie is his assistant um but he is he's amazing and he does such great work that you're just so lucky to have him so um worth the appropriation yeah so I can email Chuck and Gary for um approximate hours so and then again like I said I cut the list or budget so that's down 13.65 percent um and and I'm just assuming that you didn't have the White River Valley ambulance one yet you just no it's in there oh well I saw you had an increase by this figure you just I what I had was I have their increase but they do remember they're um on a calendar year so I take their number and then I increased the second six months by I think I did who won yeah I did two percent for the unknown six months so I get a real number for half they had a significant increase last year yeah so I just estimate I just threw two percent at it because I don't know what it will be and then of course you have the 13,000 which is the new part for the phase two so I'm also sure I'm quite sure that you're not happy about my increase to the parks budget so so you know I just have to mull it over but um well I think I think the tough thing is it's not so much I mean I think I think in order to get the quality of life that we want to see out of town I think right that we need to have that it just it burns you when you look at how much it costs to have somebody on the payroll it does it like it's not just like oh their salary is this it's the oh the benefits are $50,000 like yeah I mean that's like it is it's tough between that and the retirement and and remember last year we had no applicants zero applicants for lawn mowing and don't forget that because of child labor laws you know to run a lawn mower you'd think you know you would think a 16 year old could run a lawn mower but you know how are the states concerned so but we had no applicants so then I had to put it out to bid and I had one bidder so I there you go he's going to get what he gets I put the other two sections back out to bid and then I'm paying 65 bucks an hour to put up a fence because I have no staff to do it so um it's tough you know I mean if I'm as into the next person interesting that you're a full-time person when you add all of the the uh the costs to the town that are not salary for the individual that whole position comes to $96,000 when you add in health insurance and all the rest so you're you're basically doubling whatever the salary is exactly benefits yeah you're right it's so yeah that's a piece that most of our or many of our citizens probably don't fully appreciate how much when you hire a person is not just their salary but you can their salary plus another salary just for benefits right exactly you're right no I mean if you're trying to give a livable wage and be competitive plus you're right we have you know and honestly sometimes that's the deal that sells it for me is the fact that we have such a good benefit package I mean I can't you know you can drive the bus right now you got a CDL for 30 bucks an hour man I can't compete with that rate but I do have better benefits so if somebody sees the value in those then you know you're good so yeah when I do the payables every other week and I see what you know just taking like one big pine tree down in one of the cemeteries and they didn't even have to cut it up take it away they just threw it over the embankment and I saw that one bill yeah that was yeah pretty hefty and then all the lawn mowing and all the other little yeah contracting so the budget for for that person to hire full-time year-round is not that bad compared to the bills every other week that I see coming through yeah for subcontracting it's true I mean it's it's hard and I get it and it's a hit to the budget so I don't know we can double back to and go back through I can look closer at some of the issues um the road and I can also I did not have a chance to update all of my capital land schedules the only one I was certainly updated was a capital equipment schedule because we've done that with the equipment committee and obviously that's a big one there is they really need more money because after COVID since salmon you saw it with just car prices or personal vehicles imagine what a town truck goes for now but you know that we had budget for x is now over here and I'm going you know at some point we're just when are you not going to be able to save enough and you're actually going to have to go to the voters and borrow to purchase something you know and the last time I looked at that was purchasing a greater and I was like oh my god I don't even dare to stand up in front of the voters and ask for this because it was such an outrageous amount of money so what do we feel when it comes down to the uh well we call it the constable budget but um so currently in the model that we show right now that we're doing the 65 000 which would be the contract of services for the 18 to 22 hours a week and then we do have some signboards in there again to purchase which seems like we buy signboards every year we have been we've been buying two to replace then two new and we were looking for two more to go all and yeah we could skip it this year so he does not have a speed dolly but we have one so but if we you know if we have a back to him yeah I guess two front like one if we are going to have an increased presence in town okay Dave had to go if we are going to have an increased presence in town do we need to purchase any more of those speed signs I would say no you could and then two do we feel that the 18 to 20 hours is do we want to do we want to you know tip your toe into the pool and see how things go and then you know maybe next year we increase our services with them or do we want to go up to them more closer to 40 hours you know the 32 or 40 hour take service for 100 000 which you know if you took the sign card you know if you took that 8 000 there I mean we're already at 73 and you're only well that's my thing is if we went to you only one more one more cent on the tax rate to get your full you know get your kind of your full service right you could also go to 75 000 I mean look he's not going to turn down any money so if we went to him and said look 65 hours is going to get us you know 20 hours we could add another 10 grand and maybe we get to 25 hours because he's right we have been beneficiaries of click at our ticket and do I checkpoints you see people and that is good money I used to help oversee those plans and they are paying the officers plus mileage you make money as a town off that so we will benefit from that then the following year if we sold the cruiser and then dump the capital I don't have my town report with me so I apologize but if we dump the we also have existing capital money in the capital cruiser fund so if we sold the cruiser if we took that got rid of that capital money next year if he works out at 75 000 and you want to go to 100 or 115 you'll have some actual cash so the value of that vehicle is maybe five seven grand with all the equipment in it plus the money you're sitting on but um right which then you gotta be careful because it gives you a quick relief but then long it's not exactly maybe RTS funds right anything it might be better just put it in fund somewhere and yeah transfer to another fund or something but there is some but I mean I think you could easily I think you could go to 75 000 in this budget and and maybe get to he'd probably do 25 hours I mean the other thing too is obviously you know he's been in other towns and and and I'm assuming that obviously anything is better than what we have right now and if we bring him on now to start once we set an hourly rate and I can come into an agreement with him on a rate we could supplement him all the way through with the remaining money that we have through July and he rolls in so I don't know I mean it you know I mean and that's the tricky thing is obviously we can put him on the payroll now yeah and they can do some policing but we can't really see how it goes because we have to put budget together right I mean so it's like it's like what what does this is a one-year contract I'm a big proponent of having them start on the sooner side I'm curious what that does to our current constables because are they good I've already had the conversation not with Justin but with Oscar I told Oscar that we were moving toward that we were definitely going to sign with the Windsor County Sheriff okay that we were going to bring them into supplements some hours and that Oscar would be able to obviously exit that would be the expectation that he would be exiting to give all of his time to Royalton and that we could kind of phase him out in a respectful way and he was very it sounds like Roylton's down an officer they are and he was very he's at least on board because you know I don't know he is just understanding at least that piece of it before we make this yeah so no I already talked to him about that so um yeah I don't know I mean what do you think we're sitting here do you know you you obviously have a good head for the number because you have a you understand a business so your budget so do you feel like 75 trying to get us to 25 hours or you want to go yeah 32 32 hours 40 was a hundred 15 a hundred 40 hours is 125,000 rough yeah but that really helps because I mean I used to see Royalton police you know either Oscar or one of the other folks in the Royalton cruiser popping people left and right when they're when they're in town like right by the school in the middle of the summer I saw four cars get pulled over within 45 minutes the other thing is too is is I could say without naming names is there's I am expecting an additional $40,000 um at least possibly in appropriations that people may be passing petitions for so I don't even have that addressed in this budget but we may be looking at an additional $40,000 into this budget that's that's not here right now this is draft one and I just just kind of heard about that so yeah and the way that so that could happen is either they come to the select board and the select board agrees or the select board disagrees and makes some petition and then stand up in front of the voters and I I have never seen anybody be denied in front of the voters when they're making a play so when they're making a pitch for money because everybody is a worthwhile organization you know absolutely so they can make a pitch directly to the voters and then our budget here that we're scrutinizing every nickel to is all of a sudden $40,000 bigger and next year we're going okay well now we're supporting this and we're supporting that and we're going to lose our $50,000 so what happens is it's unfair to us in the sense that now we have to start I'm going to have to cut a position that I want because I need to make wrong for an appropriation that I guarantee you the voters are going to give not that they're not worthy because they are but then if I'm losing 50,000 in revenue you know I'm you know it's hard uh-huh I don't know what they're going to do right now so I'll know next week but still so it's another possible hit to the budget or not onto the budget that I can't manage and that you can't either because if it goes to the voters and they voted in then it's next year we're looking at a budget that's $40,000 bigger that we've had nothing to do with and you know that's the challenge and I'm looking at cutting a position that I want not because I can't truly afford it but because we're giving money away to that you know and again I don't mean that in a just respectful way it's just frustrating because I'm charged with keeping the wheels on the bus and and I'm inherently it's a valid point because it's you know when people are put in a room with others if they if they agree upon it or not agree upon it very seldom does anybody want to speak out against things like that and it becomes tricky because your taxes go up and when your taxes go up there's typically less and less people or more and more people get burdened with those taxes that then have to a type of service that they're used to having they may not have that anymore and then on the flip side to that then then there's human services that we provide in town that then go up and up and up because you know when you can't provide it at home you have to get it somewhere else and then you know it's just kind of a vicious circle that you keep chasing it is you know your taxes go up and you can't provide that service and you know now they're you know getting the service from somebody else that we're funding yeah so then that goes up you know it's just kind of you're going around and and nobody at town meeting day is going to stand up and say they're against the food shelf or they're against you know because they want to be crucified but at the same time they're hoping that three months down the road that when they go you know to break out their tax check that everything's gonna be great but then they find out it's $300 more and and they're like ooh yeah what happened what do I not buy this month and it's very difficult you know I would like you know if you're in the town office collecting and you have a couple that's really struggling that you know is in a in a retirement situation it's it's it's hard it's hard and um to to do that and and whether or not they're gonna get a bigger pre-bate if you are paying the full boat because you don't qualify for a pre-bate then you're paying your tax but your tax is going to go up because now you're funding a portion of a pre-bate so because the state's going to give more money that's going to it's just kind of this crazy pool and I'm not saying that everybody isn't worthy they are but if the town is going to become a bigger and bigger and bigger social service agency then you know we need to find owners oh my god well the problem is it's it's such a vicious circle because the more services you add then the more overhead you need to manage those services right and and you just keep building it and it goes around and around the circle eventually you don't break it apart or anything you know you need to think about so I I understand I understand what you're saying uh and you're repeating yourselves excuse me uh I do want to uh request that you muted yourself jean you just died out I just okay at my wrist I respectfully request that you take a look at the animal uh animal control line uh before next week uh if we go with uh what's that going to cost us if we go with uh uh Windsor County because that will not be oh Lindley just pointed out you missed that part because you had another meeting prior to this that's included in a 65 000 okay thank you you're welcome well assuming it doesn't all of a sudden become just an animal control issue all right I never said that so all right so when I redo the budget you want me to so I'm gonna have to double back and go through some numbers do you want me to what do you want to do for the constable do you want me to put it at 75 80 go right to 100 just so you can see what it looks like next week what's the huh 80 he's not gonna turn down a nickel so I mean he's a salesman so you can dicker yeah I mean I think it doesn't hurt us to see flowers gets us a hundred so and if he's saying 65 gets us 20 if we get to 80 I don't think it hurts us to see a version of the budget with a slightly higher amount you know whether that's 75 80 you know but just just to visualize it because I think at least then we can have that as part of the conversation and I'd be fine with dropping the additional solar signs for this year okay yeah um and I'll I'll email Ryan a Palmer Sheriff Palmer excuse me notice respect and um ask him what we could get for 80 000 and I'll remove the signs and I will go back through I'll email Ellie and obviously I gotta go I'm still working through my insurance numbers and I'll go back through um maybe you could give me your thoughts Chris on the road budget is certainly up your alley and then um three trillion yeah and then now I can come back more fine budget and I and I know over the course of I don't know now maybe it's seven years ago I don't know what close to when I started here we we were trying to get to uh more of a bell curve budget because we you know the town for the most part used to be you know fun fun at a very low level and then we need something that would spike and then come down and spike and come down and we're trying to get more of a bell curve and I this was back when Carl was on and we had kind of looked at a trajectory of the services that individuals in the town had said that they wanted and the curve was kind of more of like a two to three cent increase a year you know kind of was the of course inflation was only like 0.6 percent at that time um so I think anytime that we can kind of be in that area of like right now the way it is right now we're 2.4 cents so you know with some of these additions we're probably in the three and a half to four cent increase you know which is I'm in line with that and then I guess if you added inflation it's you know um it's not unreasonable right I think um obviously everybody would like to have their budget as least expensive as possible but and it's hard to you know you can only come up with so many non-tax you know revenue then there's just certain things we can't control how many people are going to register their dog how many land records how many houses are going to sell you know that sort of stop but you know unless we're going to put up a tool booth on you know jerk camera we should do it on camera my god would make a mint okay so they slowed down enough under mott 30 to get a freaking buck into the slot we'd be like yeah exactly okay so we get a week to mull through that so um the lister I'm assuming that since you didn't buck on that you're okay with the proposed plan of removing the lister's office the lister's putting that'll go on the warning go in front of the voters so we can make that okay so yeah I think we're just at the point where it just is what it is it's kind of like us phasing out the gospel like it just the times have changed it is it is and you've had a get some history with your lister's office so I think just bringing somebody in now outside so yeah all right we'd benefit all parties to have a little bit of a disconnect me exactly all right anything left on how on how madra reports just wanted to remind people that um the progress is at the standstill at the skate park so there is the fencing has been reestablished bigger signs are up now so nobody should be on the skate park or in that area it's it's all fenced off it's it's obviously a tripping hazard and what people don't realize is if you are a skateboard fan then you should know that if you're walking through the mud and walking on the park you are yourself ruining your own park because stones and mud and grit on your shoes on that skate park are gonna damage the ceiling the surface that we just put on it so we're respectfully asking people to just leave it alone and the rec area will do a grand opening in the spring once we can finish the sidewalk then it finishes off our land water conservation grant requirements and they can do a big you know grand opening and do something really nice are there any signs i saw the fencing that's up like but are there any signs that sort of explain that to like here's the reason to stay off of this well i did ask ellie to put up some signs and they were going to be doing a push on front porch forum and facebook there's only so much that people are going to read i mean you know i think if there's signs right in front of you you know a kid that might not be thinking about it who just wants to jump the fence because it's fun might read it go oh yeah actually i care about yeah i asked ellie to put up some signs we didn't really discuss you know exactly wording but they had agreed to do sort of an educational campaign about it so um so that's good and um ellie's just sitting there with a shotgun our our roadwork is almost done i think we have a little spot left on camp you know finley bridge road but i got a culvert in on saturday on perum so we obviously have the delay on camp brook road but i believe that our fema work is really wrapping up so i'd like i said i think the only project i have left is a little bit of work on finley and you're done right congrats yeah they're in a couple pictures and some yeah that's a huge way to get up the wrench and say what will you do with all this free time it's coach bath sleep yeah so i just want to remind you this open for you exactly you're gonna remind you uh that or do you still need to meet at 6 30 on monday we were changing because i have a game until six so okay or just start the meeting without me if somebody wants to sub in start the meeting and i'll be there when something done i mean i think if it's mostly budget discussions that makes sense for you to like that we just started a little late okay if that's the bulk of our meeting i'm hoping so i do 6 30 on the 18th 30 with that 6 30 on the 18th yep yep yeah it's a special day so yeah i had yes okay that or christmas huh jeffy that or christmas while we're at it whatever all right okay that sounds good for minutes anything else select select board meeting minutes from the 27th move to approve second hey all in favor all right it was kind of some other stuff in here bean had asked me to put in the packet so that's in here the um the ic committee the ic committee had it's in here the solid waste alliance had minutes in here um so you know there's a kind of a thing that was about it yep all right anything else to come before the board i know it's a little bit later meeting of course usually during budget season they run later but we just did the whole pretty much the whole budget run through where normally we just run through like half a dozen departments at a time so yeah it's nicer to look at it one as much as more difficult to put together it's still nice to once i get to school and i was been doing they they give you like little pieces they're like oh we're gonna have this that's like whatever i mean until we see the whole number like yeah it doesn't matter sure yeah right sounds good exactly kind of works enough all right so and then what are we gonna set up for our date for um the budget public informational yeah it has to be the monday prior to town meeting okay but we usually do two and we usually do them at our regular February meetings we'll probably yeah we usually do them at our regular February meetings anyways but um it has to be the monday prior to town meeting so i i haven't got a look at a february calendar i assume that'll be the second fourth but if not we'll have to juggle a little there okay sounds good uh those two adjourned okay so nindian denise move to adjourn julie all right thank you