 I'm going to call the meeting to order. Dave jumps on, he jumps on. Yeah. We need to add discussion and potential action. Or a replacement vehicle for the fire department. So we can just put that. After the, what do you want to do? Let's do it after the flood event just to give them time to get here. Yeah, so we'll do it. Make it the last item. We'll make it the last item now. The after. Yeah. That's, you can meet your new assistant fire chief. I'm not, you probably never met him. Or maybe you have, I know I had never met him. Yeah, that's what they said. All right. Just the emotion to approve as amended. Second. Second. All in favor. All right. Well, we don't know because of the accident. We're not sure he may just decide to turn around and go home and call via zoom. Yeah, that's what Jean said. Has the crow flies. He's good, but he hasn't called me. And he maybe is. Yeah. Okay. So, I didn't know he could have sat in traffic. He could have waited and then come around. Oh, the bell's not the, no, the burglar alarm. Is the burglar alarm. It's not like that. Maybe this is him. Yeah. Here. Yay, Dave made it. We were just worrying about you. We thought maybe you'd throw in the towel. I assumed you got caught. Could be. Well, She has the pros lies. You don't get it. No, he's telling her saying, I can't believe it. How many? I'm gonna give myself due to the camera. Wow. We can't guarantee they'll try to have it for X or N. I have no doubt. Wow, no kidding. No. Wow, but I mean, I think he's gonna go home and call. Shh, like the trigger man. Yeah, exactly. 187 cars. Wow. That's how many went by him before they let him go. So it was backed up. Sounds like the traffic person was doing the right job because they should let them all go through. I have no idea. They should just do like 30 or 40 and then let the other ones go. Yeah. Oh, no. I don't know. I got it. That's right. It's all that matters. All right. So we had called me in to order Dave and we had amended the agenda to include the discussion about a fire department vehicle replacement. As a last item. How was that? We were at, so we would open up public comments. So if there's anything received in that, isn't on the agenda that you'd like to bring up? Now's the time to do that. There's nobody in person. So the glimmer is on line. There's Paul Valley and Josh Wardell. So if anybody has something or just say hi, yeah, I just want to say hi and thank you to you folks for all you do. I know they say it's a thankless job, but I'm going to say thank you. You put in the time, you put in the work and it's great to see you folks again. Thanks Paul. Thanks Paul. I'm just tuning in to listen on. No comments. Well, thanks for coming Josh. So we will move to our first subject item, which is the internal financial control check lists, which we normally go over once a year. Yep. So Pam, we were talking, we get lobbed about it because we forget neither one of us right on our calendar, then the auditors are going to come and it's on their checklist. So I'm like, hey, do we do this? And she's like, so I couldn't see it. So I said, well, whatever. So she completes it and then, thanks, Steve. And then it just needs to be received by the select board. Did you sign these yet? No, I didn't. So it just needs to be received by the select board. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer. You need a pen? Does it need to be signed by all board members? Just one. Okay. Anybody? Yeah, we do it once a year. It's just once a year, Dave. That's probably, you just block it out. Yeah, I've been pretty good at that. Yeah, we do it once a year. And it's something that the state, Vermont State Treasurer's Office did a while back. I don't know if you remember, but a few years ago, Vermont was like the municipal and desolate capital of the United States. Did you guys get these? Yeah. And so the Vermont Treasurer's Office came up with it. And then it's something that happened, it came up after that. Coventry. Yeah, and then there was, remember, then a couple more came out. That was the biggest one, the clerk stare at Coventry that had inbuzzled money there on it. A couple more. And so, you know, if the clerk is driving a beamer and taking big vacations, you might want to check it out. Yeah, check the check sheet. You might want to check it out. See if it's all yeses on one person. I don't know if it's all yeses on one person. Or if it's your garage. And some of these where you said no, I would think that there would be a follow-up question. I know, I agree. And I can... I mean, like, not everybody has hands on the money. Right. Okay, who is it that has hands on the money? Right, and some of the questions are, they kind of answer as they go along, but aren't all its town records currently maintained by one individual? They're not because, which is good, because D-Tree balances the books, balances the checkbooks. And then, Pam writes the checks, but someone else, we approve all of our own bills. And then the trustees of public funds maintain their own money. And I don't believe Pam is a signer on their accounts because those are special rules. So that's kind of, I think, what she means, but you're right, some of them are big. Yeah. Should we another question? Yes, I agree. And it's funny too, like she says, have select board members attended financial trainings? She said, Trees, I don't know that. She's like, maybe some of them have, maybe they haven't. She said, I don't know. I said, well, hence the don't, we don't know box. So, but you're right, some of them are big. But again, this is the state of Vermont Treasurer's Office came up with this, so. Sure. Okay. Any further discussion in regards to it? I don't, it just says it's been received by, I don't think you need to. I think we just need to get someone to put a signature on it. Because you're just saying you received it. Did we have a motion on table? I was totally didn't need one. We know you didn't need it. Just because you got received it. It's the better for people who received it. Yeah, exactly. It's in the packet, so thank you. And then we had the updated San Hill roadway and stormwater project. So I brought the plans in case anyone wants to see them, but Tonya 750,000 doesn't get you what it used to. So, you know, seemingly it doesn't, it's crazy. So, Mike Mainer and so the drawings were at 30% and Mike Mainer came and met with Morgan and Richard and myself to go through and look at the existing stormwater. He was obviously interested in what was going to, we were going to find in the hole at the base of Sand Hill. And so Aldridge and Elliot sent somebody over from the other job that we have going now. So they could take a look at it once we got the hole open and just went through what we were going to get. So basically we'll get a full road rebuild up to or just past Bicentennial. And then from there up, it's going to be, you know, we'll do a, we're just going to add a, I'm not going to, it's not skim code. It's a pavement overlay. Yeah, we're just going to overlay. So I talked to Morgan about that. He thought that was fine. So that's where we're at. We also talked about the possibility that a resident has some property they may want to develop on Sand Hill. So we talked to Mike Maynard about that and said, you know, if five places went in there, you know, what currently we know what size pipe it is, what would we have to do and that sort of thing. So we chatted about that a little bit. So hopefully we have more information about that before we get to a final design. And then, you know, obviously we're talking about all stormwater. It looks like we're going to need a temporary construction easement on one property. So we'll have the town attorney deal with that. Mike was going to draw some map to be hooked to the easement. And so we'll do that. But really just because of where the stormwater is on their property already. So we just need to go in and make that. Right, as we know that the stormwater there is, you know, failed. Some of the systems are on people's lawns and in the past, the town has just kind of backed up and filled them in. So we will be, you know, dealing with all that. So it'll be a thing of beauty when it's done. We're obviously a little concerned about connecting into the existing pipe base of Sand Hill. You saw that. I guess they want it. Yeah, but they'd like it to be bigger. But, you know, we just definitely need to get done. That's for sure. But I don't know if we'll, who knows? Maybe, I don't know, maybe between now and then I can come up with some more money. Like try to find more money to extend that. Cause how far does that, does that pipe comes out of Sand Hill? The piece that we connected to goes down Church Street. I'm assuming it goes all the way down the Church Street to the bridge. Well, someone thought it crossed over to the, to the, to the rec field school property. But I don't know. Oh, I don't know. I'm not sure. So not sure where it goes, but we will see. But so far that's where I'm, we're on target for that deadline. Of course we've, you know, all the permitting, et cetera, is crazier. This work is happening this year. No, it's going to happen in the spring. We had hoped to do it this year, but I just, we couldn't get, I couldn't get this part together. And then, thank God we didn't because of the flood, because of the flood. And then I have wrote the letter to close out the grant that was going to do Pevine. So we'll keep the temporary bridge in there that we're renting at $16 a month. And we're transferring that money to Camp Brooks. So thank God we didn't do it. I was, we'd be, we'd be really hoes then. So anyways, but in the spring, Heber is currently on site. Obviously they're willing to bid on it. We can't just give it to them because it's, you know, EPA money will have to go through, you know, the process, but we are considering, I did talk to my commander about bidding out pavement separately. So we'll see. Yeah, so we'll see how that goes. It'll be very similar to like the Christian Hill project we just did. Yeah. Other than it'll be a new stormwater system in it. So. Yeah. So this is where we're at. So if you have, I don't have any questions on that. Like I said, I brought the full plans if anybody wanted to look at them. But so we're still at the 30% design, but they kind of sorted out where they wanted a couple of Richard and Morgan talked to Mike about where a couple existing storm structures were and, you know, where they could relocate them, where they felt that they would do a better job. Obviously they'll be ditching and so on and that sort of thing. So it'll be great. Denise will be thrilled. Yeah. But once it's all done. Right away should the water. That's right. Yeah. But we won't be touching that. I know you're just begging to get your driveway paved somehow. And I've told me that it was the responsibility of the town. Did he? Was that in your deed? Prove it. With the easement to the water and said it's... Oh, I'll have to read that. Well, let's do that. Oh, because I have no idea. You would say it. And I was like, what is she talking about? It sounds like looking at Hebert's schedule there that they'll be finishing the water role. We'll be probably doing the water project next year through June, maybe. Yeah. So. So you're probably gonna want them, I wouldn't say, I guess it depends on who gets the storm water, but ideally it'd be nice to do it all at the same time because the water typically is just underneath the storm water system. Right. So you have to move the storm water in some cases to get to the water. I actually asked Mike, it's on the opposite sides of the street on Sandville. Yeah, he said... Well, at the bottom of Sandhill it's right in the same area. He said we'll be doing two trenches that they'll go through and they'll do a trench for water line from back, close up then they'll do a trench for storm water, but they were implying it was on the opposite side. So unless I misunderstood, but it said, no, because he said they were gonna trench it twice. So. So it just looks like you'll have, maybe the end of June to finish the water and then start the storm water project after June. We started the site work, the pump house off-bound. Yep. They have, and then what they're doing too is the, is what they're also doing, Dave, is they're gonna build the pump station or part of the pump station for Crystal Drive and the well house for Pleasant Street. They're gonna panelize them over the winter in their garage and then bring them in. So that was part of their thought process that that's what Jimmy said at our last meeting. All right, all right. So as far as the current, we should talk a little bit about the current water project. We have a financial snag. I submitted a requisition for 300,000 and some change and I got a reimbursement of $3,000. So needless to say, called a few people and ended up last week calling Neil Cayman, who like runs the drinking water division called Patrick Monk, guy down and then talked to Cindy, our person. And no response, nobody called engineers. The next day I sent an email to everybody and I did get an email right back from Neil Cayman who runs the whole division and said that he apologized. It was a delay and he said, he told me what he could say and then he said, I can't say any more in that tree. So I'll be in over my skis, he said. So some in the meantime, the person in charge of our loan, there's been like firing back emails and we submitted our loan application in April. So it's taken a while and to get our requisition and I have paid out 200,000 to Hebert and then another, I think 30 will be the next one, just $34,000. And I'm trying to figure out the cash flow. So I said today, talked to him today, is what's in the check and account and what's in the suite? Because now all of a sudden, I wrote to them and said, this is unacceptable. We're a small town, this will cripple us financially. If I have to get a tan, tax anticipation note would, but so I'm looking at the numbers today because between that and FEMA and Camp Brooke and so I'm hoping that they're gonna turn around our loan pretty quickly, but I may move forward with a tax anticipation note, even if we don't draw on it just to have it in case, because all of a sudden we're gonna be sitting on some big numbers, we're paying FEMA bills, you know it takes a while to get that money back. Federal highways, that number is gonna be huge. Although I did talk to Chris Hunt, he is managing the federal highway and I explained him that, I don't have the money to foot these bills for the state basically because we know we're gonna get a hundred percent. So he was submitting a grant agreement today, wasn't sure how long the turnaround would be, but then I could submit for everything I'd paid out. And so hopefully that comes around, but I may start the ball rolling, means you sign a tax anticipation note next meeting, just because I just don't know how fast the turnaround's gonna come for the cash flow. So we, calling a bunch of people and sending emails, the state's now responding and responding, she seems to be responding very quickly. Now all of a sudden things are happening and I'm signing stuff and they're sending out, so a lot of things are coming out, but our application was in in April. And so we, you know, I, even if they have a staff shortage, then bring in some kind of help or something. But it sounds like, even without the drinking water, snafu piece of it, that we probably were gonna need one anyway, just based upon the FEMA pieces that we're paying out right now. It's hard to know. I mean, I was gonna take, you know, six months to two years to get your money, you know? So we're already paid out. I don't know how much you paid on the emergency end, but the final work we've already paid out like, or will pay out like, I mean, I estimated 300,000 there. I estimated 1.3 million when I went through and did all the damage, but I'm not sure. But you know, we have over 2 million in a sweep. So I'm not, you know, but I just, but like I said, I think we just need to have the tan just in pace. Did they say anything about, because it's their screw up, would there be any reimbursement if we have to? They told us no, that we would not, the line of credit intro, because Jason talked to someone at the state, Jason Booth is the engineer for Ultranality at doing this project. And he, and he wrote to someone or called someone and said, look, this is so not Bethel's fault. If they need to get a loan for this, because we did the whole 2.8 million without one, we would, I, you know, I'd submit the, pay the bills, submit the requisition. They did, and it worked. I mean, 2.8 million and we went through it, but I'm like, you know, this is too much. So anyway, so it looks like we'll be looking at doing tax anticipation. No, hopefully we don't have to draw off it, but just to have. What's that note like that go for it now? Oh, it's generally been 3%. I wouldn't even hazard it yet. I bet you it's not three right now. I don't know. Municipalities generally get better rates, but that's why I'm hoping we don't draw on it. Mortgages are up around the time. Yeah. Even for that? No, he said mortgages. Oh, mortgage. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know. I haven't called because I was still, it's been an ongoing thing all day long. I don't know if they're similar. I know we were talking at the school meeting because we're looking at some potential bonding at the school and the bond bank right now was about 3%. Yep. At the school. And now I don't know if that's, it comes out of the same piggy bank or not, but that's what kind of what we were told at the school right now. Three, three and a half. Oh no. So. All right. I'm sorry. I have to go to town. I don't know if it's town and business, but. Well, it sounds like everything goes well. It's the end of next year. We'll have San Hill completed. It's hard to believe, but. So everything goes well. But that, that will get all done. So yeah, that will be good. And what's next? Well, yeah. Well, I mean, I think. Three, four, five of the water plan. We need some new vehicles. And how about a grader? Yeah. I mean, we've been pushing that grader for a while. Yeah. We got the Gilead thing to figure out. And then, you know, we have. The whole camp road that needs to be tackled. And they started on where they had the lights way up top. No, not yet. They just opened up the bids Friday. No. Wednesday. Is that going to be done for this year? Is that like going to be up all winter? No, no, it'll be done. It's supposed to be done by, well. The engineers put it in there for like 15th of December. We asked them to be done by the end of November. It's not a page. Yeah, because, because if it doesn't get paid before the end of this year, then it's, it's likely to be on our dime next year and pay it. So we're trying to poke them to get it done. And then we have the little one that's down by Doug's thresholds, just, just on the back end of his property. That that's ours. So that same contractor is going to. Grab the, we'll call it temporary culvert from the district, but yeah, there. So the idea is to have both of them done, you know, by mid-December. So, yeah, so. I mean, July flood event wise. So the things that I know of, we have finished. So like Lillisville's done and Whittier's done. They are broke or Thayer and Ringe is done. We had sunken culvert and campbell road that we fixed and Brink's done Woodland, Woodland's completed. And we, yeah, if that doesn't hold up like that, I just don't know what to tell you. I could put a lot of effort in. We're going to have to, we're going to have to, we're going to have to, we're going to have to, we're going to have to put a lot of effort in that one. And I know that, you know, I know Mr. Townsend put a lot of effort into it. And it's way, way more improved than it's ever been. So if that thing blows out again, then it just was meant to be, I guess, because we have upgraded that thing as much as possible. Woodland, we did a little bit at the bottom of Sugar Hill. We got to finish the guardrail there, sometime between now and the snow flies. Yeah, Mackintosh is done. That wasn't necessarily flood, but through the grant, that's all done. That looks really nice. They did a good job up there. They were on Dunham this week. So Dunham road's coming along. And that will be done with that contract. The, um, Derek, he started the P vine stuff late last week. So he's done a small culvert and he's doing the big culvert today, which is, yeah, I mean, the big culverts all in most of the roadways. And they're going to touch up some things tomorrow. And then they'll, they'll work their way back to the P vine Sandhill intersection and start going back up Sandhill. And then we get a little bit more to do. And then we get a little bit more to do. And then we get a little bit more to do. They're on P vine and around the bridge there. For the winter. So. That's coming along probably by. You know, maybe. Mostly by the end of this week, that would probably be done. And then. As soon as Gilman gets done on Dunham, he's going to head to Cleveland brook, which will be supposed to be later this week. We'll start getting some stuff done there. I mean, the week after Derek will be done on his, and he's going to move over to Abbott and old route 12 to do those pieces. 17th. Yeah. 15th or so. Yeah. They're moving along. I mean, it's. Did you cover camp brook? Can't brook as in. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I have a meeting at 10 a.m. up there tomorrow. To sign the contract with J mcdonald and. J mc. They also have agreed to do the. Power. Peace. So I'm going to talk to them tomorrow. Looks like I got their notice of like their start date. And it's. November 1st. So I'm going to call. I'm going to have the 10 a.m. meeting. The boards or they put in the boards out to close the road. Yeah. Yeah. Since their deal. Hopefully they do it tomorrow. So there'll be a lot of action up there. And I don't know how long that's going to take, but pretty much the month of November between those culverts up there. To get them done. So. So yeah. So they're, they, yeah, they had till the middle of December. Okay. So. First of December. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's about the end of the year. So. Great. I mean, right now, most of the. Most of the flood repair stuff should be done. By mid. November at the latest, other than the culverts on. Camp Brooke, you know, that'd be the end of November, let's say. First of December. So we were in pretty good shape. I mean, that's, I mean, we're going to get. One or two early snowfalls. Yeah. Happens and. Yeah. And. We were going to do the same thing for four months. And so. Right. It's the time for us to stay long so. Exactly. So we. So, yeah. So I'm with me with him at 10 and once I hear from them about their style that I'm going to call Dylan. Dela McCulloch is going to do the four items that we need done on camper also as part of our, the DDIR, the. The fancy thing for the federal highways. So there's four things that they're going to do. Sorry. We haven't separate accidents. The only thing I didn't mention is we still have the culvert someone was hit by a car. No, in front of the town office. Did that happen? Just now. That's why I got the phone, so I'm trying to manage now. We still have the culvert to confirm, but yeah, just waiting for the culvert to come in so that we can, they know that issue, right? Well, where we're at with that is, right, so let me finish the camera. So once I hear from this date and start, then we can go to, we can, I'll get Dylan in to come and do his stuff before they start, and then they'll put out their road closure signs. The contract agreement said that they would, that we had to give X amount of days of notice because Federal Highway is going to require that. So before we close the road. So, yeah, so Dylan is also hopefully going to take care of Purrum and Findley Bridge. We'll do Findley Bridge first. That's a higher priority for that section. Then I do not know if I have the culvert yet, but worst case scenario, if I don't get the culvert and I can't get to Purrum, we will fix the road damage and we will leave the two temporary culverts on top of the old one. It'll be fine for the winter. FEMA will have already bought the structure and we'll just install it in the spring. If we have to, that's just a backup fourth case scenario. Trying to figure at this point, if we have trios or anything, that could be one of them, but hopefully that's not the case. If we can get one from another source. Yeah, I don't know. Morgan was working on that today, but he was going to, but he was working for Dan, working with Dan McCulloch as they were prepping Sandhill and North Road for pavement. So I did tell him that he was so calm that day and I said, if they don't have it, Ferguson, they'll have it canceled it and I'll order it and have it in three days. They've had enough time to get it by now. Yeah, so I just don't, Morgan to have probably have time to call Ferguson. So he doesn't. We haven't communicated today. I haven't spoken to Morgan, so I don't know where it stands. So that's a worst case scenario. Just trying at this point because it's getting, you know, I just want to have a, if I can't get it in the ground, it's not the end of the road, a world right there. So we can deal with that if we have to. Hopefully I don't have to, but you know, if we do, we do. The other thing is to also made a deal with the town of Rochester. The road foreman over there has agreed to plow from their end about a mile down, because where we're going to have the dig, the person, the people that were bidding did not want to be responsible to maintain the town of Bethel, Camp Brook Road to Rochester. So I talked to the road foreman, John, and he was going to meet Morgan up there and make a plan for a turnaround, but it was very nice of them and didn't really appreciate that. So they're going to plow that section for us and bill us obviously accordingly, but that would go to a federal highway. When is that closing? When do you think this is going to end? First week in November. First week in November, or maybe October 30th, something like that, because he has to have noticed out for a few days and we're meeting tomorrow. So next Tuesday would be Halloween. So then they can start mobilizing now. They just can't close the road. You know what? It's better for them to go 107 anyways. The road is better. It's flat. It's recently paved. They've had a lot of work done. So 107 is so much smoother anyways. It'd be the best way for them to go. So that'll be fine. The whole stretch is all paved, but Rochester down. Exactly. People who live over there. Then they know how to get around it. So it'll be closed for at least a month. We're saying a month, but that's the plan. Rochester's happy. We're always happy when they close it and they're happy when we close it. So Rochester is going to plow. It'll, I'll just, I'll let them know because they'll have to. And there's going to be massive signboard at the bottom of Rochester Mountain saying as well as two. So there's a hint. So anyways, so we're still on target there. I will work out some pricing tomorrow with Jay McDonald. They know what the budget is. They know what we have for money. I did Ryan Slack today, came by. Luckily he verified that Rochester has the 10, the pipe. He was going to White River. So he said, I thought the college went right river, but there would stock. He has all the bolts. He's going to get the collars for us. So that way we will have all the material or all the culvert material. We don't have, obviously Jay McDonald's going to put in their own stone, et cetera. Jaren Bourg, we're not being held up by a river permit because it's not a whatever. There's some terminology that it's not like a important stream. I can't remember the word, but anyways, which is good. He just said, just don't let me hold you up. He's like, just go for it and we'll permit it later. Like great. That's what we want to hear. So I should be done. And did you tell me, so Chris has, you have guardrail coming. You tell him that for Sugar Hill, right? Yeah. So. No, I mean, we're moving along pretty good. Yes. It's kind of crazy. Better than some of the neighboring towns. It's kind of crazy. I'll tell you that. Well, I mean, Royalton, I heard they awarded everything to one contract. I know. I told you that. And then one contractor backed out and now it was our favorite person. Yeah. And so now they're scrambling. They were trying to get two of our contractors that are on our jobs to go do work from there. Like, sorry, we're busy. So, but so yeah, we're plugging away. And I think the work that we've done in a lot of cases has been improvements. So yeah, in some cases, there's a few areas where it's just going to happen again. Well, he was a couple of those. Are you just like, yeah, well, Whittier, a lady who lives on Whittier called and told D tree and said, she doesn't know who who is who did the work. But it was wonderful. Paul Valley, which culverts are these again? Have to be more specific. Paul, I don't know what you mean. She's talking about the campfrog ones. It's the camp campfrog culverts. Yeah, the one the one above Doug's place that has the stop lights at right now. And then there's a culvert that it's just marked with a bump sign right now, which is on the very bottom side of Doug's property near Harold White's place. Those are the two. One thing that that has come to my attention anyways from being out and about with all this is and somehow I think we need to start you know, informally addressing it with our private neighbors is a majority of the stormwater damage that happened came from private landowners. So you know, I don't know how we go about that in a nice way. But you know, and they're clearly going to be things that it's going to happen again. So like a perfect example, if you have opportunities to go up to go up Dunham and all the water comes right off this landowner's property, it goes right down the hill and then it overwhelms one of the culverts and it just blows out the whole Dunham road. And then if you're going up Whittier, all the water comes off the landowner, it's the left, which is you know, it's a logged forest that has a bunch of taps and stuff on it and the water just finds these different ways off their land and then it just blows out our road. And I've seen that over and over again that most of this really isn't our infrastructure failing, it's stormwater is coming off private landowners land on our roads and overwhelming them. Oh yeah, we've seen that in Whittier though, we had some culverts so we get that water out of the system sooner. Because if you just look at these landowners land, the water isn't managed correctly. So the water just finds its different paths by itself and then it just you know finds spots where it just overwhelms our area. There's still quite a bit of landowners out there that don't have drive culverts. So when you're trying to properly ditch the roads, you then get to their driveway and you're like, well, do I take a trench across that or you know, because there's no culvert there. So there's just quite a bit of that stuff out there. And I, Teresa and I had talked a little bit about maybe putting something informally together, town meeting to bring up maybe at the end of any other business just kind of and then we met with that addressing runoff on private landowners land of you know, just you know, how can we better manage this water that comes off of different points. And then we met with two people from the Vermont Law School and they, we were curious about some of the questions that we talked about. I mean, we talked about a lot of stuff about stormwater and one of the things I had said was it would be interesting to know what the landowner's legal responsibility is. And we talked a little bit about I was thinking, you know, if they could come up with some information, I said we'd, we, you know, once we've edited it, we could put it in town report and then, you know, maybe have a handout at town meeting. And, but you know, in Bethel part of I can think of a couple of instances in the 2019 flood where somebody's private drive goes like this and it's not ditched. It's not crowned. They're not managing their stormwater. So all this water comes down the road, plugs our culvert and then blows out the road. I saw it in Lilliesville. And so the law has changed now. So the miscipality, we can't just go pop a culvert in anywhere. We have to get landowner permission out because we can't divert our stormwater onto other people's property. So why should they be able to do it to a town road? Maybe there's, you know, if there's laws out there, I don't know what they're and I don't know how to enforce it either. So we thought it might be a good education piece to talk to. Sorry, I was trying to do a notification. And I think maybe at this point, you know, we just start the education process of or identifying maybe some of the more critical, like if somebody doesn't have a drive culvert, maybe we write them a letter to say you really should install a drive culvert here. Yeah. And the thing is, we can't force anybody or once they, you know, we can do if they're putting in property, if they're installed like Dave, he's built, he was building some, so he would have to have a driveway culvert or driveway access permit. But if it's in, you know, somebody who's, you know, been there for 100 years and never had one, we can't make them, I don't believe, put one in now. So we can tell they have to maintain their own. But we have an instance of that on at least one on Finley Bridge and where the people don't have the money. And the culvert is in bad shape. And so Morgan, I talked about they were going to be out there. And I said, well, you can ditch either side just to help and maybe you want to go through. But now how do we force people to do it if they don't have the money to, but we can't be responsible for every driveway culvert in town either. So anyway, so it'll be interesting to see what happens. I mean, we clearly have some rooms that run along streams and rivers that that we're going to continue to have erosion issues with. Yeah. But there's a lot of them that it's clearly just, when you look at people's drivers, there's a number. So due to the text messages, so there was an accident, somebody was being darted from the tenant office parking lot. They can land dart there? Apparently around the area anyways. So we were just back and forth about a notification who tells the family who does this, that the other. And so Dave Valdriguetti was who I was texting with. Well, I got a phone call from someone else and he called VSB because VSP was not on site, which surprised me, but they were there when I was. Yeah, apparently they left because we weren't sure notified the family that an injury had happened or that this accident happened. But Dave just messaged me. He called VSP and they said the hospital will notify the family because the hospital will know what the injuries are and this and that. So there was a little who wants to, who should notify somebody. So just in all the hull of blue, somebody with all the cars backed up, somebody hit somebody and now they're being darted out. So a little gotten a little crazy. So I can. Yeah. So I'm going to make that pitch. I think I can help. I think I can answer the questions. So I emailed you guys and then I made you a packet. So you can see in the packet I did updated the 25 to 30 year apparatus replacement plan. We put it in the town report every year. I printed out from the website that Greg Timmons and Dave Valdriguetti sent me. Everything that comes with it. Dave told me that Tim Greg, Greg, excuse me, Greg has called at least on at least 10 rescue units. And as soon as they call, they're gone. They're gone. They're gone. You just it's very hard to get them. So what the their rescue currently that they have does not have like a bunch of big issues. But what the problem is is that the fire department has outgrown it. They got the rescue years ago. I wrote down for when and but it looks like yeah, it's a 2004 F 550 and they bought it. They got it used I think in 2009. Also a lot of the equipment on it is used that they got for free or at a very low price from the ambulance. So as you can see by there, the chart, I asked Dave today, he seems to think 25 to maybe 30,000 that he thought that they could get for the rescue with the equipment in it. I spoke to him that we could get seven grand out of his current budget. So that leaves that fund obviously in the hole by 43,000. But then I looked forward and updated their apparatus purchase prices again. And I need to have Greg Timmons was going to look at that too, I believe, but added I added $5,000 moving forward to that to their apparatus replacement plan. So if we if the voters approve that, then it's going to put their fund back at $5,000. If the voters or the select board doesn't agree to put the $5,000 additional into their budget next year, Dave is certain that he can find a way to cut it out of his operations budget. So when I did that, I did. Can you take us through the numbers like completely? Does I get lost a little bit here? So if you look at the top column, it gives you the fiscal year, then it says available balance as of June 30th. And then the next one is whatever their appropriation or donation was, and then their end of the year balance. So as you can see, right now we have 114,820. As of right now, we have at the end of June, yes, as of this moment, we have 114,000 in there. Then they're going to be getting this is their appropriation for the fiscal year from July 2023 to June 2024. If we buy the apparatus at 234,000, that appropriation hasn't gone in there yet. No, because we normally do it in quadrants or no, I have quadrants on the brain quarters. So out of that 38,000 have they received some of that money or no, but I can move it all tomorrow. I mean, no, I'm just trying to take a picture in my head. I usually do it. We kind of talked about doing it quarterly, but anyways, so just say it's in there because it is theirs, it'll have to go in. We take the purchase price out of 234, and then we add in, okay, if we sell the apparatus for 33,000 plus we can get 7,000 out of their current budget, it leaves the balance at the end of June 2024, we'd have a negative balance of 43,550. If and then the next year, you know, we would add in their appropriation and it would cover it because if we try to borrow for five years, it's going to cost us, I did hand reservations, yeah, it's going to cost us 37,000 in interest. It seems more like we ought to just borrow from ourselves. So the the vehicle's 234,000 with all this equipment on it. Okay, so I just want to go through that. Okay. So the it's a new, it's a new cabin chassis. Yep. With a used body. It says it's a new F5 4x4 with a 6.7 liter diesel engine. That's what it says. Okay, yeah, professionally remounted. And then from what I understand from this is they're getting the utility body, we'll call it, it's used and it's coming with all this hardware. Yes. Right. Okay. Yep. And I gave you 234,000. Yes. And I gave you some. So what about our vehicle that we currently have? Well, then we're going to sell that and with the equipment that's in it, or or. And that was going to be my next thing. If this one's coming equipped, do we need all the equipment that we have in ours? Can we balance some of that? Yeah, like can we if it's is, I guess, I guess my first question was, okay, well, it's our current truck $25,000 just for the truck value, or is that with everything that's with everything in it, with everything, all the tools and everything 25,000. Well, that's what Dave thinks. He said he would start at 25,000. But we I, we may be able to go to 30, because people are really looking for them. So I estimated at $30,000 is a sale of with it, with everything in it. And then 7,000 coming from Dave's current budget. And yeah, that's why I wrote the little note sale of apparatus plus from well, that's kind of where I got confused is the sale of apparatus tells me I'm thinking more materials that are in the truck that you're selling, not the truck, like the truck would be the truck and yeah, the apparatus is the truck itself. And so everything in it. So Dave seemed to think we could easily and we were it was a quick phone call. He was having a crazy day. So was I. So I'm, I'm estimating higher. I think that we could probably get 30,000 from it. But they also have I'm not too worried about that because also the fire department themselves has a bereavement fund, and they have some money. So I think they'd be willing to make if we, you know, maybe they'd make a $5,000 donation towards it, if we could only get 25,000. So I think that we can come up with this $37,010 from the sale plus, you know, the current budget, general fund budget for the fire department plus maybe from their bereavement fund. So then I had increased their annual appropriation. We were at like 38,000 and then kind of looking ahead with the cost of everything and the same problem we're going through with the capital equipment fund. It seemed like, you know, I was like, we needed to add five grand to this, just the prices of everything have so gone crazy since COVID. So then I just increased it by five and moved it all the way down. And again, if the select board didn't agree to do the five, I'm sure that we could get five out of Dave's next year general fund budget. So I feel like for the one year that we're going to have to float this or not even one year. I mean, if we don't get the thing till November by July, we could be whole again. So for the versus going to the voters, paying the lawyer to do the bond, pay the interest, this doesn't seem. And when would we take, when would we have this? I don't, that I can't answer for you. I know that once we, you know, they have it. That's all I know is that they have it. So if I had to guess, it would be, you know, a month or two. So. And how many miles does ours have on it? I couldn't tell you that. Hours currently? No. Yeah, I don't know. I couldn't. I mean, I just got to know the one that we have. The 2000. Because I mean, just because it's 23 years old. I understand that. The market for trucks right now is it has a lot of miles. I'm sure. Yeah, I'd say so. And they gave it to us. That's right for the fire. The ambulance gave it to the town of Athol. So you've got nothing wrapped up in this thing, except for obviously maintenance and some equipment, but you never bought the truck. And even some of the equipment Dave said came with it. So was this. So based on your replacement plan, I'm just going to go assume that this hasn't been sitting here to be planned out at this exact time. It was planned out for next year. So originally this was in if you looked in the Bethel, if you looked in the town report, it was bumped out a year, but they've been looking and they knew they had to start looking because they knew it could take a while. And like I said, Greg has already looked at 10 that were like no goes. And I've been involved with purchasing unless you're buying brand new and building it yourself. It's hard to find because there's a market for it. Do we know what the number we had been carrying in there where it was? For a purchase price. Yeah. Were we carrying $234,000? I think I was carrying, I want to say, I should have printed my original and I almost grabbed town report. I want to say, maybe it's on the website, I want to say that I was carrying like 165 or two something. And let me see if it's on the website. So if we don't, so basically what this, I'm just looking at the big picture here. So if we did do this, then what this does do, because this is approximately $80,000 more than what we had budgeted, right? Yeah, but also remember we, that number was old that we had. I'm not saying it's not worth that. No, I'm just saying that. So the next replacement piece is 2031. Yeah, which is a, which is a 2001 freight liner, which you're gonna have to borrow for, right? But now we're gonna have to borrow 234,000 rather than, well, don't forget. I've also, no, because I increased 80 sounds. No, because if you look, let me just look at, because we also remember I updated, I increased the appropriation by $5,000 be just less lovely, but we don't know if we can afford that. Well, no, I mean, I'm saying, because it's the cost of crazy. Well, I think, I mean, I haven't even looked, I know, I mean, we haven't looked at the budget, but you know, we were already tipping the scales last year, we have to remember that we have some monies in there that we did some one time things last year, we got, you know, $50,000 that we're getting for the transfer facility sales that only goes so long. So we have to get ourselves back a little bit. So if you look, I had 165,000 in here, but I only had an apparatus sale of $10,000. So down here where we're now at 234, I was at 223. So we're looking at, you know, $8,000 difference. And like I said, we were, because Dave asked me today, he said, what do we have in for a price on the freight line or on the, excuse me, engine one? And I said 450. And he said, good, because anything they had been looking at was between four and 500,000. And the last time I purchased a fire truck in Bristol had to have been 10 years ago. And it was, I believe, pushing 375,000. So what's the timeframe? Did they say what the timeframe on getting one of those trucks is? Like, if we wanted to get a plow truck, it's going to take us two years. Oh, I don't know. Is a fire truck two years or is it longer? Yeah, it's about 18 months to two years. Because you generally, in that case, So we'd have to order in 2029 to get it. Right. Because you're buying it and you're having it built. So I'm sure we're all going to be here at 2029, right? I mean, in the same and the same seats. We'll see only who draws the short straw. Dave's saying, absolutely not. So, you know, and I will say that we have built this budget around keeping a fire apparatus, fire trucks 25 to 30 years because they're so expensive. And, you know, it depends on how many miles I have things, but they sit too. That's the other thing. But you were also lucky with, and Dave makes a good point here is they, you were given this vehicle that you're going to try to sell for 25 to 30 grand. So anyways, I knew they were looking. I had no idea until I got a bunch of emails or phone something on Friday and just said, well, look at it Monday and punch the numbers. So it's devil's advocate on this. So if, if we didn't move forward with a new vehicle, it sounds is the vehicles other than, other than from what you said that they're starting to outgrow the vehicle. Is there anything wrong with the vehicle that all of a sudden next year just say, oh, put a bunch of money into it or, or we have to get a new one because he just looking down or he said, um, he said, really, they had outgrown it. He was not, I don't believe Dave was aware of any major repairs or issues that it had. But I will also say that they're not like the road crew in that they don't, you know, there aren't, isn't somebody working on these vehicles all the time doing maintenance. So whether or not there is something, you know, lingering in this 23 year old vehicle, I don't know. I can't say for sure. Um, I can text Dave, let me see if he, maybe he's wrapping up. I remember when we got this vehicle, I think it was for free cover page on one of our town reports, wasn't it? Yeah. Oh, I don't, I don't, around like 2012 or something like that. Let me just text him. What is the board, what's the board's thoughts on replacing? It's also hard too, because they couldn't make it, which was not their fault, obviously. And I feel like they're in a position where they want to take some action. Certainly happy to set up a meeting between one of you and myself. And then if you guys want some more information that I can answer, if you want to give the blessing now, or if you want to give the authority to somebody else after some more questions are answered, I, you know, we couldn't anticipate an accident and then a second accident. So, they don't ask very often. Yeah. But they ask for a lot. Well, because unfortunately they're big purchases. That's like the road department. You know, that's a stinky thing. And I'll like ask for new computers that's expensive. I'm going to interject something. I'm sorry, do you go ahead? I'm wondering, because of the, what these new vehicles are, maybe who we have looking at our maintenance program by no fault of their own are not really qualified to maintain these vehicles. So, I mean, we might want to look at the potential of saving some money and extending longevity if we had it serviced by people who are trained to service these high tech motors and transmissions and all the systems they have. Yeah, I kind of say this. I know that when they have repairs, it's not like, you know, you have top oil out for a new and green couple fittings. It's not, that is what it is anymore. No, I know. I can tell you that I know that a lot of times their vehicles go to Sable and Sons, but I can also tell you that like the bigger trucks where they have like pumps, they have KME come out of New York or maybe somebody not KME, I might have the wrong initials, but they come and do all their like pump testing. And so they specialize in that sort of thing. But as far as the engines, but you know, and I don't know, is if I doubt, well, because this is out of state, they don't certainly doesn't come with any sort of like maintenance plan like we've talked about, but that is something we could set up. But you're right, we could set that up with the proper person to take a look at these on a regular basis. 25, 30 years out of that, I guess. Well, I always look at my John Deere tractor that's 75 years old and still doing the job. Yeah. Yeah. Do they say why it's the last two, don't you think? You know? So, but I agree with that. I think that there's, and I, they could very have a very specific maintenance plan that I'm just not aware of. But I do know that we've paid bills for like Sable and Sons and things, but I mean, just just for the nightmare we've gone through with that six wheeler. I mean, like, are you kidding me? Oh, I know internationally. Yeah. And I will say this, I don't knock on wood. I don't have, I haven't had those kind of issues really with the fire department. And, and I don't know if it's just because their equipment isn't beaten on and like used every day, like, you know, road, you know, jumping, it hasn't, it hasn't run for a month and you're right on the floor. Just sits on a heated floor. I mean, I'm assuming that they're, they do, you know, somebody. What was the reason for the municipality to get rid of the one that we're looking at? I don't believe that it's, it's not being sold by a municipality. And it's pretty new. I kind of said it'd been using a couple parades or something. Maybe just for them, because the name of their company, just buying the body and then we're buying the cab from somebody else. No. Yeah, right. Exactly. Brand new cabin chassis and body has been on a 2003 truck in parades. Gotcha. Yeah. And he did say, so the full rescue equipment included for free with the truck. Okay. About $80,000. So we're buying this from a dealer. Yes. And I, let me check my email. And other than, yeah. Other than the normal policies that come with it, is there any other, but I'm away. I don't know. I guess I had a, it seems to me that the fire department's done due diligence and they don't come when they do it's big, but they don't come, you know, often. And so if you're looking for a motion, I would move to, we go ahead and approve it. Just to back up what Gina is saying. I also, I appreciate Teresa's approach of looking at this sort of from a fiscally conservative standpoint of using what funds exist and also not getting a loan that then costs us the amount that we're getting a loan for. I think that's the smarter play here for us, even though it puts us in the hole and sort of fronting the money, but for a bit of time, they will recoup it. And yeah, I mean, these are big purchases, but also they're the least well paid crew in our entire town. And they do probably one of the most vital jobs. You want them to show up when you need them. And so, you know, part of me says, we give them the equipment to do the job and to do the job well. I know you're not saying that they should, but right. I mean, even in my trade, there's a lot of things that I can't do anymore. Because I mean, it's just, unless I want to go to school for two years, I can't do it. Well, I think that's what we think in pieces. If we make this concession and say yes to this, we also put with it our demands of, okay, but we want to know, we want to understand your maintenance plan better. We want to understand that these things are being well maintained so that they last the 25 to 30 years that we're putting on the plan. I mean, it's a 23-year truck, so I know it's not being worked on by any Joe Schmoe. It's going to have stuck there that you don't know anything about. Right. But it also, you know, with the new vehicles come with a lot more responsibility. Computers on wheels? It comes to all the different components. So it's reasonable to ask them to consider a maintenance plan of some sort. Well, at a minimum, to report it to Teresa, here is what we do. So then she has the answers when we ask those sorts of questions of how are these being maintained, you know. And believe it or not, it's just it's just as worse to have a vehicle sit. Yeah. As it is to use it all. And they sit on that heated floor. So I just messaged Dave. So just remember, whoever does the motion has to go to North Carolina. Yeah. Well, well, Jean made the motion. It's on Elite Ambulance Sales is the website. So I messaged him, so how are you getting this vehicle here? If they approve it, is that included in the price? So again, you know, Greg Timmons is the one. It's kind of hard to do this. Probably Dave's outmanning some sign, you know, like, yeah, he's like, gonna get right. Yeah. He's like, Teresa, I mean, I know it's not the end of the world, but I'm sure they'll have to letter it up and decals all that. And that usually costs some money. So is that part of that or? No. And she did say that he would either come out of, I think, the the bereavement or his budget, I think, because I know they said they would get it here. And he said, if there's a delivery fee, they'll cover it out of the bereavement fund. So I know like with the cruiser, when we redid the cruiser, I think there was like maybe a thousand bucks that went into lettering and some other things that went on it. So it's probably something similar for this, I would imagine. I wonder where this guy is. He's obviously between here and 107 standing next to the road going that get down manager won't stop texting me. The other question is, do we want to deal with that versus I have another thing to talk about on this. Okay. You want to deal with the motion first? Well, I mean, we can just do on it is your might have nothing to do with that motion as to what we have with this paperwork here, but not that motion. Okay. And just a suggestion. So you made a motion to make a motion to approve the purchase. I would second. Okay. All in favor? All right. Dave, do we want to alert the town folk that this 43 by 50 is not going to be good. So maybe you want to start going some bigger numbers in there? Well, exactly. That's what it's money. So if you look at town report, these numbers were much less because we were down at like a zero, then it was like 20,000 for a while. And then so when I went and I hadn't, I'd revisited it every year, but briefly, when you're doing town report amongst of the agreement fund, the lip-hate alliterate, he says. So I went and updated, you know, the equipment added five grand each to these prices because I was going to ask Reg now that, and I didn't get to meet him with him. But once we do, I was going to ask him since he's doing this really looking is to see if these numbers that we even have out here are even valid anymore. So we need to update this for town report. And currently we're at, you know, we haven't done next year's budget. So whether if we can get it to this 43, you know, that's the hope. And if not, if we can't, we can't just cut $5,000 somewhere out of the fire department budget and come up with it ourselves in-house. But I wanted Greg to look at those numbers because the equipment committee for the highway department has done this. Because when Dave and I and Gary did this a few years ago, you know, we had some base pricing. And then since then we've just been kind of adding either a percent or a flat amount. But now that Greg's been actually on the hunt and out there looking, he could, you know, update these better. And it's one of the things that Chris has been talking about is to coming up with just more accurate projection. Highway department, we started out at $10,000 a year and that was fine. Oh yeah. Yeah, that was what I was getting at, right? Couple shuffles. Yeah, exactly at this rate. No, it's true. And then, you know, especially now, I mean, we just updated with the equipment committee, updated the capital equipment fund for the highway. And it's, it's insane the increase in equipment. And you must see that in your business. I just can't. It's like, what, you know, the jump in price. And then when I had heard that the auto workers were going on strike, I was like, oh, dear Lord. He's eating at $60,000 automobiles expensive now. Exactly. So, yeah, 900. I just had guys got some on there, $1,400 bucks. So the ones I just put on them, $1,000 per year. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, we definitely probably need to look at when we're doing our budgets this year, look at all of our schedules. Yeah, absolutely. The one thing that we kind of have thrown in, you know, some, some of these further out schedules, we show borrowing money. And yeah, and borrowing money with high interest rates is, you know, we got to start thinking about, does it make more sense to start putting more away that may raise the tax rate? Right. But in the long term, is a better deal for everybody at the town, rather than wait and all of a sudden have to take a 7% interest, that then we are going to spend 50 or 60,000 on something we're not getting anything back on. I agree. And that's why we did that in 30. This fund, in order to get that, we'd have to jump this up to like 75, 80,000 for the next five years. But if you look down here, I've tried to budget enough to actually buy it. So, but because we were behind, well, remember, I can tell you that a few years ago, you know, when I started here, what was happening was there was being an amount of money, was being deposited. Just enough to pay the loan on the truck. Not quite. That's what they used to put. Yeah, but not enough to pay the loan on the existing truck. It was in the hole. We never get ahead. And because they were also taking other things out of it. So, we had to climb out of a hole. You can see at 2021, they were 18 grand in the hole. And then, so yeah, so you're right. In 30, 31, it looks like a vote to borrow. And then, but down here, by jumping this up, we could pay for it. But that's, that's. And I know nobody wants their tax rates to go up. Not at all. You know, they want the lowest tax rate possible. But you know, just like as we saw with this phase two water, I mean, a huge difference between the first water phase and the second water phase when you talk about interest on a loan, right? Yeah. And we're going to have a lot more of these things where I know it's painful to ask for it in the short term more money, but in the long term, it's probably going to pay off dividends to buy these rather than lease or finance. Because I usually when interest rates go up, they don't just come right back down. They stay up for a while, you know. And we have to keep in mind that we're looking at, you know, down the barrel of relatively quickly a new town garage. And I believe that we have enough money in the, like a building fund or capital improvement fund that we can pay for the engineering out of pocket, which might be really smart to do. And then we'd be able to just dig the work. There is an engineer that has built two town garages. So I'm kind of interested. I'd like to go see their town garages or at least reach out to that engineer because now they basically have kind of canned plants. So they've built two similar, very similar styles. I want to say palm fray, I can't, but there's just two of them. So, and recently too. Do they have grants out there for large fire department equipment pieces? You know, there's nothing out there. No, because they know that towns are going to pony up the money. The grant money that you can find is really, it's roads. It's hazard mitigation. It's, I mean, I can't, like I tried to get us a salt shed grant, but we're not close enough to the river. So we don't qualify. And sometimes they have like building in grounds. Grants to the state where maybe you could get a little something, but a lot of their focus recently has been seemingly on, since COVID, community buildings and things like that that we don't have, don't currently have the space for. I mean, you know, we're, and those are too, they know what we're up to. We've kicked the can so far down the road that we can't just do maintenance to save it. You know, they're no dummies, you know, they want to, but we also don't have, you know, can't buy stuff to, it's one more thing we can't afford to maintain. All of our, everybody out there goes, prices are going up. And Pound, Pennywise or Pound Foolish, it's just. Yeah, you know, you just do the best you can. You know, we've been lucky. We've seen some growth in the grant list. There's still a lot of zoning permits that have been issued. But so I think, you know, hopefully there'll be a little more growth in the grand list this year and outside of the reappraisal. And, but yeah, it's hard, you know, you're trying to, you know, do what we can. And I also have a feel it's kind of funny. I mean, I've been at this 19 years and I feel like things have changed in this, but the people don't want to pay for bigger government, but they want bigger government because they want you to do more for them. So that, you know, comes with a price and a price tag, you know, for a consequence, either we say, no, we can't do it. I mean, Bethless is small. We, you know, do what we can efficiency wise. I mean, there's other towns similar size with more staff and, but you do it what you can. But I do think there's been a real, in the last few years, 10 years turned towards, you know, I want more government, I want you to do more, but I don't want to call it more government. And I certainly don't want to pay for it, but I want you to do more for me. So, I don't know, it's interesting. We're just talking about keeping up. Exactly. We're just talking about keeping up wheels on the bus. We're just trying to keep the wheels on the bus, right, Jean? Yeah, we do what we can. Yeah. So will that fire department utility body fit on the back of two meals? Same as small. I'll find out. We can build a little penel back. That's right, exactly. Do you see the price of hay? They got that cornfield there. Yeah, that's right. In the flood plain. They can just wander around like Sunday's chickens out here. They'll just wander around. Yeah, we'll wander around in the corn in the flood plain. Yeah. So did you have other questions about the, about the, it's good. All I was suggesting is that you don't leave that 4350 through 2050. Yeah. I think people should know or be alerted to the fact that we know. But that's, it's going to change. Yeah, and we'll definitely know more from, like I said, once Greg, I could sit down with Greg and Dave because I'm hoping to have the budget, at least a little bit of the budget for the 13th, November 13th selected meeting, but usually that's fire and some of the basics. But I don't know. We'll see. I'm going on vacation the 15th, so the following agenda is going to be a little tight. So we'll have to, I don't know, hope to make an agenda two weeks in advance and just plan on just changing it. 13th will be my last meeting for a while. Okay. Oh, I thought you were announcing. Something else. Bring that on me. Um, okay, that's fine. Probably should be able to do maybe zoom the next one, but we'll see how it's going. And I can email you stuff and you can always call or email me, you know, if you have, or Chris with your, you know, two cents on something around the budget or questions. And so we can always, you know, certainly do back and forth. But yeah, so I'm hoping to give you a little bit of the budget on the 23rd or the 13th. But you know, like I said, I usually do the fire department, the listers, you know, the stuff, the basic stuff. Obviously everybody wants to lay into the highway budget. That's the big one. So we'll see. I'll be on vacation like the 15th through the, I don't know, 23rd. So I'm basically going to be gone like a Wednesday to a Wednesday. So it's, so we have a select board meeting and I'm gone and I'll have to put out an agenda like the day I get back. So that could be a little rough anyways, but so hopefully between, you know, I'm not sure I'll try to, I know I can't get the highway budget to the 13th because we need to get all the other work done and then I can sit down with Morgan. Hey Jay, honestly, once I sit down with people, it doesn't take too long. And I keep track of through the years we add, they come in, we make notes, we add stuff. And then Chris asked me today about health insurance, dental insurance, that type of thing. And I don't, I think I had a notice about dental insurance if there was going to be a rate increase. But I haven't yet heard about health insurance. So we'll see what that's going to look like. You know, in the past, we've switched from we were on Blue Cross, Blue Shield, we went to MVP. So we'll see what that looks like. And those things, you know, all changes. We have the most current rates currently from retirement. So some of this is really just, I could just sit down and no one talked to me for like two days. I could take the whole thing out. I'll just take my laptop to North Carolina to heck with wedding plans. But I, you know, but I do a budget, you know, not take a page out of Dave's book, but I think, you know, this budget season, I really get to look hard at the benefits compensation. And I'm not just saying that the pick on our people is like, even my work, who hasn't changed theirs in a decade, like they have stayed so firm on, they're going up this year. The trouble where there's more money in my pocket to, As far as I'm concerned, the trouble is, is that we've been working off percentages. And percentages just do not cut it anymore. Because the more you make or get paid, whatever, 3% when you were making a dollar an hour, wasn't too bad. We could stand that. The 3% you're making $30 an hour. Now what's a trouble? Now we're in trouble. Yeah. And it's hard too, because we had a job open for over a year in the highway department. And then we had no applicants last year for a summer position. So it's, I am always for looking at benefits, always, always, always. It's always something we have to look at every year, but it's also very difficult because currently, if you would have a CDL, you can get a job driving a school bus for $30 an hour. Come on, man. I can't fight that. Yeah, but you're only working five hours a day. Yes, but some people don't look at the big picture that way. And you know that. That's what I was going to say. Used to be when, when I was young, benefits were a big deal. Yes. Today's young people most of them don't give a shit. They don't see it. They don't see that as being a good thing. Yeah. It's like, whoa. Yeah. And the thing with, you know, when you work for a municipality, whether it's Vemurs or Visors, you come in the gate and period in the end, you lose this portion of your salary right out of the gate. You know, here at 6.65% unless you make over a certain dollar per hour and then your jump to 7.15%. So immediately out of your paycheck, you just lost that much money. But again, you know, we have looked at, we currently have an HRA. We could look at HSAs. I mean, I feel like there's some options that we could look at to without a big burden to the employee. But maybe, you know, if people have an HSA, they can put money into it. And HRAs, you know, the town does take care of, you know, half of the deductible. And so, and. Just need to be scrutinized. You just got to look at our options and see what we can do. Yeah, and you can, there's even, I think everybody's in the same boat. There's even small changes too. Your current policy is that the town pays their share up front. You can pay your share second. So if somebody burns through their 3,400, they may never touch your money. So there's some small, also small options. It's also difficult when you have long-term employees that have been working with the same, you know, benefits, and they use them, and they're grateful for them, you know, to have that change. Because I have seen towns do it. And it's always been kind of an anathema to me where they, I'm going to cut your benefits, but I'm going to give you a raise. And I'm like, okay, come on now. Now you're going to make that raise on overtime and everything else. So how much money do I just save? Or did I, I think I just spent more money because a percentage of their benefits, but then they were given my raise to offset it. And I was like, how's the math work in there? So, but it's always a difficult thing. And I think that benefits are an inequitable topic. And they're just something you can't make equitable. It's just somebody uses this, somebody uses that, and it's difficult. You know, one of the things we've talked about before, which I would be in support of is changing the personnel policy. So that if you are hired after a certain date, this is what you get. You get a grant. Absolutely. You know, and then it kind of draws a line in the sand and says, okay, if you're hired after this, you get this. And as people leave, you lose some of that, you know, burden, burden or whatever. So, but I'm open to that. And as soon as I see the pricing, you'll work on that. The schedule usually comes out. I usually have to sign the contract in January. So we'll know before that pretty soon. Usually it talks over the price. I've already got my notice of my Medicare supplements going up. Of course you did. Yeah, because they're going to give you a $3 raise and they're going to enter two dollars. The supplement that covers nothing. The premiums is by five bucks, so you lose two dollars. I remember that, my mother-in-law. It's the first year that we actually got a positive direction. Yeah. I remember that with my mother-in-law once told me. She said, well, I've got a dollar raise. And she said, and my health insurance went up like a buck and a quarter. So she's like, I was like, yay. So it is. And so it's definitely something to look at. All right. Anything left on the town manager's board? I had nothing on there. I think all three things we've already talked about. Yeah, I was, I wrote nothing. It was one of those weeks. Just trying to keep the wheels on the bus. Yeah. I've got nothing. Yeah, I couldn't. I even looked through my calendar. I'm like, I'm just between FEMA and the water project and preparing for the audit for the 30th and people coming in. And let's, you know, out putting fires, forget it. That's nothing else happening. Select board minutes from the 9th of October. Anybody have any amendments to it or just need a motion to approve as written? Second. All in favor? All right. There was some communication that's in there. So you heard that. There's an in here was from GMP. So Maddie, that was her first name on the champion. Yeah, was she here? Tiana Smith was here. Yeah. She's the one who CC'd and then Maddie had reached out to me to let me know, you know, what was going on and they have some plans. And so it's, you know, pushing towards a zero outage for Bethel would be great, especially with some of the storms we've had and also especially Pleasant Street. I mean, you got the fire department, you know, the school has a generator, but really it's all about sewer, you know, the pump station right there because otherwise we have to bring somebody in at all just to start pumping, you know, at hauling, which gets expensive. So school has a generator course and but, you know, so it'd be nice to, you know, have some. So she had mentioned that the grant hadn't been awarded yet. Right. But yet they were still moving forward with the project. If I read it. Yeah, she said they're still starting to advance the broader. Does that mean they're just doing some of the. They want to get the red tape in the right direction. So they must think that they're getting it. They must be because she said they're going to start conducting studies for undergrounding in zones two and three. Yeah. So somebody must get a wink, wink, nudge, nudge, because can't imagine that they would start moving with this thing if they didn't know. Well, and they did tell us that even if they didn't get it, they did have some things in Bethel that they were going to do. So, but if you say what the new date would be on knowing about it instead of I don't. It was supposed to be this past summer. Right. It was supposed to be June. Let me see if she mentioned something about fall in there, but didn't say anything about like it being awarded. Department of Energy initially estimated they would announce awards in the summer, but they've not made any announcement yet. So we're still waiting on a decision. In the meantime, we're starting to advance this broader. So she just said, just keeping us. Sitting on the same desk as your, your, your loan. Yeah, apparently. Must be. Same person. Their neighbors. Yeah. So the zero out. So she gave us, you know, some information which I thought would be interesting. And then I put in the minutes from the, I don't even know what that stands for. Wait, we're valid. I don't know. Are I right? Yeah. What's this? Inter. Regional. It's the inter municipal. Inter regional energy. Inter municipal. Energy coordinator. Oh, okay. I'm like, I don't even know what this stands for. So there you go, Jean. So I did put that in here and. Yeah, I'd just been calling an IRAC for so long. I don't blame you. I'll talk to them. So I just put that in here for you for information. So just for reminder, you're going to have your November. Is it third or second? Thought it was a second. Well, no, it's not. No, it's not the fourth. November 2nd is our special meeting. And so we will meet here at three o'clock. And then we will go to right road. And then we will come back here at five. So what happens is I had a quick tutorial today from David Rue. We no minutes or we don't take any minutes up there at the meeting. We just walk, you know, part of the class three, maybe a little bit of the four, but we don't need to go all the way to Rochester. And we will then we come back here at five. And then it's a quasi judicial hearing and he and Chris will run the meeting. And so you'll have testimony. I'll have to give testimony. You'll get sworn in. Morgan will have to do the road foreman. And about the fact that we need to, how much it's going to cost, why it's not feasible to bring all the road up to standard. That sort of thing. I have to get him an estimate this week. And so we had had one inquiry from a property owner in Brantree about their access that David Rue responded to. But I haven't heard. That was the only person that we'd heard from. So we're going to put out a reminder for the meeting. But that's where we stand, you know, with that right now. Also have a little brief discussion with him about tax sale. So with all the fun going on, we will be looking at a tax sale as well at some point. You know, I would say fall, but, you know, could be between now and March, there'll be a tax sale. We did our last tax sale March. So we'll be doing another one. All right. And then I'm not sure. The day after we set the 18th of December's meeting, I get notified that my first basketball game is on the 18th. So I don't know if it's home or away. If it's home, I get here easily. If it's away, then we'll be missing it. So we'll, and Dave won't be here. So we'll be down to just three board members. That's right. So I'm going to try to attend Zoom. Gotcha. But I don't know. I'm pretty sure I will not be here in person. All right. And we'll add my calendar. So yeah, that's right. 13th and then 13th in the 20th. Was it the 20th in November? December. Okay. All right. 18th because we moved, remember, we moved the one from Christmas to see where we're at at that point. Maybe we don't need that meeting. It kind of depends where we are with the budget and this and that. So we can also see where we're at. You know, I don't know at this point. So. And then if people are going to run for board, they need to have their stuff in by second, third week in January or something. It's what, six or seven Monday's before town meeting. Yeah. So it's a consent of candidate. And you'll also, I believe you'll have to get signatures on your conditions. Yeah. Get one percent. Yeah. So we've talked a little bit about this. So if people are not going to run, I think it would be good to make that announcement sooner rather than later. I mean, people can write a writing campaign, but, you know, with a last minute push like that, you don't always get possibly the best candidate because they haven't had a chance to really think about it. I mean, Denise came in and did her homework and she talked to Paul, she talked to Dave, she talked to me and came in and really met with people to talk about what they wanted to do. Jean talked to people before he ran. So if we have, so if people aren't going to run, I know sometimes people say, Oh, well, I'll find someone to fill my seat. It doesn't work that way. It just announced that you're not going to run. And but give people some time to think about it and talk to their families. Or I also encourage people. And I said this to Denise as well. If you're going to run or you have interest in running for the select board, that's wonderful. Start coming to the meetings now so that people can see you, that you understand the topics that we're talking about. You know, sometimes, you know, I've been doing this a long time, people come with an agenda and they realize after a period of time, it's really bigger than that. You know, when I say we do the business of the town, that's really, it's sometimes real boring stuff. That's what we're doing. So if people aren't going to run, you know, I would encourage you to give notice so that people can really think about it. I've worked with Pam, but I'm pretty sure it's January 15th, is when I think it's seven, seven Mondays prior. I haven't been a town clerk in a while. I would hate to say they changed the like job. So I think it's seven Mondays prior. Website or call Pam and she'll tell you, I can't remember off top of my head. But yeah, so that's the, that's the deal. And because this year it's Gene and Lindley, much to Dave's should run. I kept telling him it was him. And then I realized it wasn't. He's like, what? It's like, I'm sorry, Dave, I had the wrong person. So I think it was 10 year, right? I think so. I think he had a 10 year term. I think so. And so I, so that's what is this year. So Dave, you up next year then? Yeah. So he's not running. I'll tell you right now. Sure. It's not running. I'll tell you, I'm not running. Next year. Yeah. Well, you paid your dues. And then some, the school and then our three years. What will you do without that paycheck? You'll get my money and gas. Not having to, not having to drive to the meetings will save up much money and gas. So anyway, so. I think the tough thing right now, and you know, obviously we see it in school as well as, you know, there was this renown attraction for everybody to get involved at the town and school levels here. Up until maybe about a year or two ago. And now you're starting to see it starting to drop off again. And there's not as many individuals wanting to be a part of that again. You have that stuff with some real hardcore people that should have got out. Yeah. So you can kind of see it again. It's going down. And you, I mean, like, look at the energy committee, you know, we've, we're down to just a few people now and the energy committee and we're gaining maybe another on that planning commission, which will be nice, but it is hard. You don't, you know, we're not get even with a full court press, you know, we're not getting the interested what we used to. But you know what, with some public, you know, people know them a chance to think, and maybe even if you're not going to run to reach out, then maybe people will reach out to you directly and say, Hey, you know, if you're not going to run, you know, they may ask us some questions about it. Because, you know, for most people, it's just time, you know, just, you know, it's not that we hate each other. It's just at some point there's just time and people take. Yeah, exactly. On some days, yeah. But it's hard, I think people just. People don't want to go to meetings. Yeah. Let that go for a short term. They'll volunteer to do a task. But yeah, that's if he sometimes. Yeah. No, I saw your back because you're still looking for window dressers. I saw your front porch from like, there's Jean. He's still looking for people. Yeah. So, Oh, that week, you're all invited to spend a couple hours here helping put windows together. So this is the fire chief. He's like, we just cleared the scene. Do you need to see him? Yeah, tell me he's beer in half an hour. We'll be out of here. Yeah. And so I'll be able to get home. Apparently, that was just a good, the same thing. So anyways, yeah, it's just, but you're right. People don't or they want like to do a short term task. But it reminds me when are you tying up the town? Is it November 13th? We actually, we need to meet at the town office on November 13th. Yeah, that way that. Yeah. That's the week. I had a note on my calendar. And I saw it today when I was flipping through, I think Chris had asked me about the budget. So in November, she's weighing in. I didn't know what it was. It was like, it came straight. I don't know what it was. I didn't realize what it was until the rubber band went by my head. Yeah. So November 13th, we'll go, we'll be at the town office. All right. I'm going to, I say I'm going to get that one. I didn't think you were here today. I didn't think that today. I think, you know, it is. Yeah. So we're all sitting there like, is it this week? That's what we do. We do. We get some. So it's November 13th. Okay. No, not October. No. All right. You're going to be, I'll be remote. I'll be here. It's just Dave and I'll be hanging out, drinking wine together. Might not mix with, might not mix with his meds. Yeah. Okay. We will be drinking wine together. They will be making some wild potions. And margaritas. You wouldn't believe what you have to go through to get meds now. Yeah. This whole opiate, opiate thing. Oh, yeah. They want to know everything and can't take this until after you've done this, this, this, this. It's even trying to get rid of them. I had, you know, a child had surgery and, and so there was leftover that, you know, she just took them for like a day and then I took them back to the pharmacy and they're like, well, we don't take them back. And I'm like, well, what do I do? We think that they would dispose of them. Oh, I know. And she said, no, they'll be the most logical. Well, and then she tells me, she's like, well, she said, you shouldn't be driving around with those in your car. And I'm like, what? And she's like, that prescription isn't in your name. So she's like, if you get pulled over, you're in possession of opioids in our ears. So I'm like, I'm like, what? So she said, Teresa, do you want to be the last one? Say a sweet talk out of that. So I ended up taking them to the VSP. If you walk in the front door, there's a prescription drop and you can dump them there because they're like, don't throw them out. Yeah, don't throw them out. Don't flush them down. So then she's like, I'm like, well, good Lord, are you supposed to give them if you can't transport them? I'm like, I had nightmares early. Oh, exactly. Exactly. Oh, that's good. Yeah. And there is right here at the VSP. If you pull right in. Who knows? She had me all freaked out. I'm like, great. I'm gonna speed and ticket and lose my job on one time. At least stop. Oh, you're not getting off that easy. You're gonna take more than opiates to get rid of you. I don't think so. That's when you get automatically signed up for two more years. Yeah. Oh, I should tell you that. God, I should tell you too. I just finished. I just completed the first year of my two-year contract. So just so you know. Oh, just three more years to go. Exactly. So she didn't read the fine print on that one, did she? Apparently not. Apparently not. All right. Anything else come before the board? Or if not, just need a motion to adjourn. So second. All right.