 Are we ready? Do you need to call the meeting to order? Oh, I will call the meeting. December 13th, 2023, City Council meeting will be in order. Awesome. All right. Thanks everybody for being here. We got all kinds of food over there. We've got lunch coming in part of the day. So please help yourselves move around. We are going to start with a little bit of over. You've seen my narrative. A couple of changes to the narrative just since last year is how we've sort of described what's going on in each department a little bit differently. So there's a little bit of like look backwards, a little bit of sort of goal setting going forward, and some metrics and what sort of the key changes are in those budgets. We are doing the strategic planning process right now. What we hope to achieve from that is a work plan of sorts that we will work through with the council and then that can kind of feed the committees. And so that what you're seeing in here now, I think we'll look a little bit different next year when we kind of this system that we are collectively moving forward towards a similar path. But I think that's a great start so you can kind of see a little bit more of that kind of summation of what's going on and what folks are thinking about. So overall, this is a 7% increase. As I said here, this is higher than I would like it to be. Jess and I did a lot of sort of looking and seeing what we can kind of cut back on between what we got from the departments and what you've got in front of you. We did a good amount of that, but it feels like not enough. It seems like this is this is still too high. So happy to work through this with you. Yes. Yeah, no worries. On the little table there, you see that the what we've done in the past kind of highlight and to find sort of the big pieces that are in there that are different from this current fiscal year and a little bit of a note for me on what I think would be really difficult to cut. But of course, everything is open to cut. OK, and just like last year, $100,000 equaled roughly 1% on the tax rate. So you could kind of just sort of think about that in the back of your mind. Big thing I did want to point out in the notable issue. Oh, sorry, let me just sort of touch base quickly on compensation and benefits. So what we have in here right now is a just sort of overall 4.5% pay increase. What we have what we saw from the other municipalities surrounding us on average, folks are doing 5.5% increase in their proposed budgets for FY 25, I'll say. The salary study, we've got the preliminary report out right now and essentially in comparison to the market based on data collected in August, September of 2023. So essentially this fiscal year. We are overall as an organization doing OK. A lot of the folks at the bottom level are not in line with the market research. And really the plan recommendation is that those folks are brought up. A good amount of the upper half, I'll say, are not necessarily when you think about it in terms of a market comparison in need of an increase to accommodate where we are in comparison to the market. There's a second recommendation in the salary study that wanted number one step, try to get those folks who are not at minimum to minimum. And then a second phase of sort of bringing in a longevity lens to that and shifting folks to that. So we can work and do some back end figuring out how much that will cost in comparison to what this 4.5% actually looks like. So just some thoughts on that. Can I ask a question on that? Yes. I'm going to dive into that. I'm going to ask it later. I think you can ask it now. All right, are you saying that you're going to look at 4.5 at an average and take the lower? We talked about folks on the lower third or half, right? Are you going to address that more heavily and less as you rise up and that average will be 4% of an increase across the overall salary budget or are you? So I think what's in the budget is 4.5% that may change based on what you folks want to do. And then I think that just gives us a dollar amount basically. We can figure out how we actually apply that to the individual based on what that whole dollar amount is. Jess and I can give you more information about how much of that plan can be achieved within that what 4.5% gives us right now in terms of the dollar. That makes sense. I do have a question about just broadly the stock salary. I believe it was last year we had approved of a one-time bump to everybody to help account for inflation. Yes. Was that taken out from this? That has been given to people this year. It was not that 1.25% was not an increase to the salaries. But did it look that way in the budget? Right. Yes. How long is what you're asking? Right. Yeah. Yeah. So where was that then? So it was last year it was in the budget as 1.25% on everybody's rate. But we gave it as a one-time lump sum. So this year's budget is reflecting the current hourly rates for all staff that does not include that 1.25 one-time bump. Okay, so 4.5% is on the base salary, it's not on that. Okay. Correct. Yep. Yeah. Okay. What else do I want to point out here? So we've got some notable issues that I pointed out as well. That starts at the bottom of page 2 and goes into page 3. The big one that is quite nerve-wracking, I'll say, is a very low, unassigned fund balance, 236,000 at the end of about 0.23. I'll say the preliminary number, the audit is still being finalized, but likely to be not likely to change in any real significant way. So that is something we really want to keep in mind and focus on and think through how to address that. Ideally over a number of years to really get that up. We've got a couple of other things that are out there that we don't have fully funded. We still are getting more information and trying to figure out exactly what to do about a corrosion problem on the frame of the ladder truck. That initial estimate is 294,000. And so we, at the moment, do have that worked into the rolling stock fund in like 25, I believe. But that rolling stock fund is real tight. So it's in there, but know that that's a, that's a big pressure point. Main street waterline project, as you folks know, we've ran into ledge on the upper end of that project. We still need to figure out what that, what that looks like that it will be in the, that's insured the waterfront side of things, but still this, it's all kind of comes together. So we'll know more about what that looks like, hopefully over the next couple of months. Then we've got the economic development fund. So as of right now, this is the last fiscal year that we actually have that as a revenue source. We will be asking the voters in April to approve that going forward as well. And what you've got in your budget packet is a projection of what that would look like for the next three years if it is approved. If it is not approved, we can cover the present connector need that we can cover the main street park need and only about 450 ish, I think, 1000 of the Amtrak match is like in renovation, very, very first cost estimate it's 500,000 over we are working pretty significantly at trying to get that down to 2.5 million which is what we've got left of the article funds for this renovation. Then also litigation we talked last year about increasing those funds just generally speaking because we're doing more code enforcement work, we want to be doing more code enforcement work. And then we've got big litigation on the table right now. And so just to be clear, if it goes full full many years we don't have that fully covered in the budget right now. Okay, then what you've also got your narrative or what each of you talked about and asked about for council rolls back in September. I don't have that in your packet I don't know that we need to go into that in detail but does anybody have any questions about how anything was addressed or. Okay. All right, so the tax illustration so essentially what we're looking at right now. The budget increase is basically $184 on a more over what folks are paying FY 24 on a $280,000. I'll just say, broadly speaking, which has been in the news quite a bit is education funding is going to be, I think quite painful for folks. So, just want to keep that in mind. So, another part of this overview is to just look at the revenue budget just in terms of overall what that looks like so we can switch over to that, unless anybody else has any kind of overarching questions comments thoughts. We want to touch on right now. I do in regard to the projects. This the appropriate time or would that be better. Sure. We got time right now so. So, on the three projects that you better talk about this overview. My question is in regards to priority because there's a certain part of me that at this particular point based on priority and what we're looking at with the waterline everything else. And get to the point where I don't think me street park is priority and get to the point where I start to my real thinking is, let's not do it if we don't have to let's save these funds. It would be nice to have that beautified over there, but at the same time I also know in the future that we're going to continue down the path like we will. We don't want to come for that particular intersection anyway. And so there will be another time and another discussion degrees green up that space and beautify that space. And right now it feels like this is a time we don't have to spend these funds. We have any requirement to spend bit given the fact that we got the grant. We have to give it back. We can look into that but I presume we would give it back. I think we have to spend it is a dish this year 2024 is when we would have to spend it. Yeah. You know we've had some of the expenses already on the design of that project but we had, we would basically pay for that out of that and our development fund and not. We can cover what's been spent so far no problem. It's, we will have a little bit of work to do probably in relationship building with the state just because we're not making use of a grant that we asked for, but I think, I think that is a potential that that's the direction the council would like to go in. What's that graph from. It is from the downtown transportation. Let's put it towards intro. It's downtown transportation project. I mean, writing them. And so a follow up question to that is totally related is the, the, I keep hearing the, there's creep, it feels like an Amtrak grant match number. I thought, initially, there were somewhere around 500 and this could just be me. So, and then I thought I heard 600. And now I'm seeing a 750. Yeah, so what what's going on with that. So, the, I was working with a $600,000 number. Because just in the way you think about the match calculation, are we talking about a total project amount of 3 million, or are we talking about 3 million plus what the local match requirement is. So it turns out it, we, I mean, we can access whatever we can access from that $3 million based on whatever match we can provide. So we can access less of 3 million if we have less match so we can bring to the table. If we want to access the full 3 million, we actually need $750,000 match to get the full 3 million from the federal government. And this was Chris just worked this out by finally being able to put some time into getting to the details to figure out exactly what this situation is. And do we think that full plans and the terms in terms of what we think we're going to do with that will require the. So, so backing up, sorry, so there's 3.75 million dollars. There's three nights at $750 million. Yes. For the project. Yeah, the plans, thus far, and what we're submitted are really conceptual. So the first step of this project to move it forward is to put out an RFP to get a consultant on board to really do bring it to a more workable design level that we can then actually get a more true cost estimate. And that is money. So we, if we're moving forward, we should do that. If we're not moving forward, we should not do that. But there's. Yeah. And is there any, any partners process where does the owner of the facility have a requirement or an ask or a match on this because this is the city and the feds, beautifying. The private property. It's there's no requirement. So I think they, you know, it would be interesting to find out if that would be considered a downtown transportation project to which $200 to $7,000 grant could be transferred. I'm guessing no, but it's worth an ask. They just came out with a new round. The announcement that was open again. You can apply for a new grant. You know, matching funds can be, it'd be sourced from another grid that you're trying to match. Probably not somebody probably thought of saying no to that. There are cases where it can be because we're doing that with Crest connector. The state funds are our matching funds. Because that's a federal grant as well so it's possible. Yeah, I think it is where it happens. But yeah, hence on the programs that are funding. Yeah. And if the state and if that state program is federal funding then right now, but if it's actually state funding that. And then another thought I had to help fund that and we can have this conversation another time. I'm going to drop the word. Hit parking in that area, especially in the area surrounding the multimodal transit center that we're now is private and we're funding. I think this year is a great year to have to begin a conversation around the true positive. Providing parking. And what that means in the long term. Just as I try this is not first of all, but just as I try to get my head around what we're doing with the train station. I feel like it is going to bring a lot to this community but I just like we think about a lot. I think we need to think about who's using what that means. And what we're giving up what we're managing as a community for free. So I'm just throwing out there for me something to discuss over the next year. But it would be it would be interesting to figure out we can move their grant. I don't disagree about the park at all. I would agree completely with Marcus on this. That was one of the first things I noticed when I read the binder. It's important as our downtown is that by corners location, we already have a monument downtown that's crumbling that we are not spending money on repairing. And it's a very small part, more is to come in that location is far more important and we'll have far more economic impact on a six junction and surrounding towns. So I'm not a bad part. I don't disagree. I think one of the concerns that I would have is if we can't ship the funds to Amtrak and we give the funds back does that put us in a position of potentially not getting any funds like do do we get like, you know red flag to ever get any additional funds from the state because we don't have that and so, and I don't know that we are going to get a straight answer from the state on that question. But that would be one of my concerns. Unfortunately on the train station since I came up with a match, depending on the, how the spending was requested or was designed or the match may or may not need to be at the rate that is currently offered that might be negligible. So I'm not going to go into the statute for that funding. So it might be worth exploring, as well as whether or not, since it came from lady. And he's no longer there. This might not be possible, but there have been precedent in the past where congressional designated spending was originally designated one path that then the request was made to have to go through a different funding channel, and not all funding channels require matching. There are ways to reduce that, but it would take the call to the designation or to our legislative designation. Also wondering about, like, what's the timeline and that match spend, you know, like how many years does that spread out if it's, you know, 125 at first to get the first stage you're talking about. And then we're going to spend another 350 and two three years step different. Yeah, because I imagine it's not 750 in one year. Correct. Yeah. And that's going to be important now I think as we talk to the community about the redoing the economic development thing, you know, really projecting that out for for three to 10 years. I think. Because I mean in my head right now, in the past week I've been thinking about it as all at once. That's not the case. Yeah, we, the way it's shown right now is over that four year time span between FY 24. Amtrak is not an FY 24, it's between FY 25 and FY 27 sort of spread out over those, those three years. Amtrak, sorry, sorry, that's one more question about the transition back when previously I've been on the board. We were also talking about doing work on. Remember it's railroad street road of the street that goes along the bus station. We were talking about waterline work under there and also even possibly changing the direction of the road to accommodate new bus routes. Is that still, I don't know about the road, the direction change, but all the waterline pipes needing to be updated on that road like are we going to need to think about a project at the same time as train renovation. I think that is in the capital plan. And is that part of the 3.75 or is that a separate project. But we since we're already doing construction over there we would want to do more online work at the same time. That's a very interesting question because I wonder if that is match worthy. Okay. So there's going to be a lot happening between the end of the next construction season of the two or three years following as we do drive the compact studies, seeing how the crossing connector impacts that whole area. Playing around the direction changes. Okay. All right, this is helpful. We will find some things out. Okay, so let's take a look at the revenue. Um, Jeff, I actually showed that that railroad habits, like the next on the list. Yeah, it's, yeah, yeah. Yeah, 244 change with 120. This is just the most recent one that we have. There's updates, but 127 out of the waterfront and 116 of the general. Okay, so not too much different to sort of point out here. The biggest difference that you see here. I'm not quite sure where we see it, but it's going to be actually on the summary. Sorry. Okay. So, yeah, because that's so right. Okay, so looking at the general fund summary and the revenues that we see there. One of the big changes that you see is in community development that's up 172% that is there are two increases in there we are assuming an increase of just the general community development fees because we did increase those. And also, really what you're seeing there is the rental registry revenue funds, revenue side of things there. So if that, if over the next couple of months for whatever reason if we don't move that program forward, that will come down but also so will the expense side of the equation on that. I think the other things just can correct me here, but about this wrong some of these movements around our on the it line I think that's an adjustment it is down. Yeah, so we're allocating it expenses differently than we are this year. So that 14,000 this year was a direct transfer in from wastewater. We've included it in the admin allocation for all funds this year. So there's still revenue was just reflected under the The admin transfer in rather than this it line. Anything else to point out. The only thing with revenue and it's not very much revenue under I'm going to flip to the the actual revenue budget here. We had a rent and royalty lines and we've sort of went out parking space to chase moving like way way back. And that agreement expired because properties changed hands. So that was taken out to this year. The other thing so the dollar that shows in there now is technically the rent that the large chips which we don't actually charge. So we have to explain what's in that in that line. So if we were at a place where we started charging we've read to anyone that's in our spaces. That line also could be increased. If, if a organization wants to use a space like, let's try to get on this road right now but the room across the hall is not being used. So if an organization wants to use it regularly. Do we now charge the run. But notice when I was looking into the senior center, what other communities did with their spaces and everything it became really apparent that studies set the example they do. So I didn't, we don't have a lot of spaces, but once we renovate the building. This space. The senior center, whatever spaces we have. I'm not saying we can make a ton of money but we might be able to recover some cleaning piece and some other things to just. And even another cold room. There might be a philosophical issue with that, but I don't know that there is a lot of communities. And I think there might not be in the wider community. So I think we need to really miss. That's the kind of nitpicking to get to some point. So just pointing that out. And there is a space use policy that was a village policy from several years ago. And I think it does outline small fees it's like $1020 or something like that but we that's another policy that we could look at revising and. We could have additional revenue if after renovation and have space that we can use. I'm renting the conference room of the Waterbury town offices next month and it's $125 from the day. Yes, everybody charges. Yeah. Yes, the police department does not use their community room. It's, it's an interesting discussion that's not necessarily kind of dry, but I think. Yeah, or maybe there's a category of use. There's a delineation and non-profits or something kind of went over. Oh yeah, there's city, there's municipal committees, they don't get charged and they get precedence. Yeah, yeah. They're also going to library state that do charge. They're on absolute work. We're under so much pressure right now that I think we just into. Okay. Okay, we're a couple of minutes over. Anything else any other questions on. So, um, chief of Oreo is joining us on zoom. Don't see him yet. Yes, I should be here. It did seem odd. All right, so Jess will get to your budget here. So Chris, anything you want to highlight or point out about what you've got here on your budget. I will just point out that there is a, the big kind of change here is paying folks for their time to actually volunteer, which is not what we, not what we currently do. There's a few other changes that are in here. Based on just our better understanding of what costs are these days. No, basically, in summary, just that the big increase would be moving. Currently we pay individuals for their response to fire calls. What we're looking at doing is making a change so that we would compensate individuals for training hours that they attend. So, you know, we do require. Individuals to remain active. They have to have 10 hours of training every quarter. As a minimum. So, we do require them to maintain that. So, all we're looking to do is in turn. We'll start compensating those individuals who attend training either on Monday night or Thursday mornings. We run 2 sessions a week. So, that's where the big increase comes from everything else down below. A lot of it again, just tied to inflation. You know, so my minor increases just to keep up with that. But those are that salary line is really the big one this year. Can you differentiate? Good morning, by the way. Can you differentiate the increase between the increase from 20 to $21 an hour and the paid training time. Is it off the top of your head? Yeah, so all we do is we'll take the individual pay rates. So they vary based on your years of service based on your. Level of certification. So, in other words, we have a minimum base hourly rate of 1750 an hour. You have step increases for those individuals who are certified. Therefore, if you are a certified firefighter 1, you would get an extra dollar an hour. If you're an engineer. So you're, you're qualified to operate all our apparatus. That's a that's another level. You'd be you'd get an extra dollar an hour. EMT is getting an extra dollar an hour and a EMT is getting extra dollar an hour. So all I do is take the hourly, excuse me, the hourly rates of everyone active and simply drag that down in an Excel spreadsheet to get an average hourly rate. So, based on all of the increases last year that average rate was $20 per hour. This year that average rate is $21 per hour. So we use that as the basis to. You know, add the hours in and we use that as the factor to come up with the dollar value. Thanks. Makes sense. And I think Roger, if I understand your question, you wanted to know what's the, what's the difference between the pay increase versus the difference of what this change in operation and paying volunteers for their time. Yeah, but I guess, I guess it sounds so it sounds like we're not necessarily giving a pay raise across the board as opposed to that is just a normal step increase firefighters are getting as they add certifications. So I, my question is really relevant at that point. So. Because this is right. My question was wondering if we were giving an across the board increase and. I didn't understand the step nature of it. I thought everybody was getting a flat 20 and out again 21 and then we're adding the training. Yeah. So. Yeah, that just gets us to our base number so that we're, we do a lot of it just based on just adding hours. So. Looking at this, we figured this to be an increase of about 300 hours a month. So, again, to get us to that financial number. We do our average hourly rate multiplied by the 300 hours. You know, to get us that amount of 86 400. Another thing here too is again, what we're seeing this year based on calendar year. We're running, we're going to be running about 10% increase in calls over last year. So, you know, it's hard to base your salary numbers. You know, it's a role of the dice as to what's going to happen. We ran about 500 calls for service this year. We're on track to be closer to 550 calls for service. So, you know, that and immediately I can see that where I am, you know, year to day to my salary line where, you know, probably about $5,000. Over budget currently. So just hoping that that, you know, averages out in the next six months, but yeah, so part of this part of this increase will be paid training and hopefully to compensate for a slightly higher call volume in. FY 26. 25. What's the general nature of the calls? What's the increase? Can you pinpoint it or is it? I would say that our, yeah, our call volume is getting higher. I mean, we're doing and being called more regularly, if you would, for EMS assistance. You know, your EMS call volume is really, really high. And Essex rescue, you know, if they had their way, they would like to see a dispatch to all of their calls here in the city. I have told them we're not going to do that. We that would just burn out our people. But that's what they would like to see. I can appreciate, you know, I certainly understand where they are. And I hope they understand where we are. We get dispatch for automatically, if they're not in service, we get dispatch to any unresponsive individual if a person is reported to be unresponsive. They dispatch the fire department along with rescue so that we can meet, we can get there and assist them with CPR if that's required. And, and then just lift assist moving, moving patients if they're, you know, you got somebody that's on the second floor or down in the basement needs to come upstairs. You know, you, you need personnel to assist you in making that happen. And unlike rescues, they have their own reimbursement challenges, obviously, but unlike rescue, we're not seeing a reimbursement on those EMS calls, correct. Correct. So we have a question and comments for the comment first. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation is only 3.2%. So I think we should be very cautious as to when we're going to say inflation as to why costs are going to go up 20 something percent. That's not going to really look good. If anybody asks us about that. So, if the, if the reason for increases are not inflation but rather to align with historical spending. That's another narrative to put into the charts. Also, we're looking at a 7.1% overall budget increase. So coming into this my lens is really more of a cutting lens. And so I'm curious Chief Gaboria. If there were things in our other things in here that you believe could be cut without sacrificing the ability of the department to respond to calls for service. Always a challenge Andrew. You know, again, we don't, we don't really get to the end of a budget year and find ourselves with a lot of excess funds that, you know, we're able to spend. I can certainly appreciate, you know, consumer price indexes that reflect inflation rates. I, you know, and you're right, we could, we could change the text. But the inflationary factors on those items that impact us are a lot higher than what consumers see that's for sure. You know, again, in uniforms. You know, our gear. We're to the point where we're just about to the point of $4,000 just to put a brand new coat and bunker pants on an individual. It's about $2,000 a piece really. So, and it just it's crazy. But yes, I understand that. Is there anything else here that can be cut. Again, we could, I could sit down and take a look a lot closer, but I don't know that I could get us down to 7%. Totally understand that and please know I'm not asking you to cut out. What would end up being what 50,000 from your from your budget. That's that's not the intent of the question. And certainly looking at your, your historical spending you do usually come in right around two to 7,000 or so, from budget to actual so no it doesn't seem as if you are regularly having a budget or anything like that. That's not really the intent, but rather, as we're having these conversations. Curious of your thoughts on it to make sure that when we go back and deliberate it's not a let's just cut 50,000 from the fire department did luck. Yeah, exactly. I would honestly say to you that it would be it would be a challenge to find money in this budget. Thank you. Jessica, in regards to your defining success metrics. You'd say that you want to maintain 100% response to calls for fire response. I assume that you're also in that statement stating that this year, you've been able to do 100%. And so you're hoping to repeat that next year. Correct. Correct. It's a challenge. I mean, you know, we do have a, if you could look at our roster, we would say we have a healthy roster. You know, we have 25 to 30 active individuals. But you drop tones for calls at any time of the day or night. And, you know, sometimes there are some real challenges in getting support for fire call response. You know, individuals, a lot of individuals working during the day. We have a number of people that work different shifts. The worst time of day is probably that. Six o'clock in the morning till eight o'clock in the morning, where you've got those that work a regular shift, kind of getting ready to go into work. And those coming off an odd shift if they work on 24 shift or a 12 hour shift. And they're not off yet. So, you know, you got that period where, you know, it's, it's sometimes a challenge. It's, it's tough. Again, we had had another individual this week that has resigned the, you know, due to family issues, time commitment, 10 years, 10 years. He's trained to a firefighter to he's an AMT. It's a big loss. You don't, you don't replace those people. You don't replace those people. But tonight it takes years. So chief on that particular note, speaking about retention because I know that a portion of what this increase, you know, paying for this training doing these things is is one I think being much more fair to these individuals who are giving their time to help protect our city. What I also assume and I know in previous conversations, it's also about trying to help with retention of our volunteer firefighter partner. Can you speak to that and how this increase is going to contribute to that and what other things you may need if they're not in this particular budget that you're going to need in order to again retains this fighting force. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's the big thing we've, we've had individuals that have, you know, we do monitor, you know, people's people's response people keeping up with training. And if we see individuals kind of dropping back. I know the line officers have done a great job with contacting them hey what's going on what's happening. I've had a couple of individuals that have like, hey, I've had to take a second job I need. I need more income, you know, to, to be able to maintain living here in the city of Essex ocean. So, that's why, you know, we're looking at, okay, maybe if we compensate training and get some more paid time here. What that does is gets a, you know, a little bit stronger income coming from the fire department to to help sustain those those living costs here in the city. Chief, can you talk a little bit about what beginning planning for the station replacement looks like. Sure. I mean, we brought this up I brought this up probably for the last five years. And, and I think what we need to do. My recommendation would be to hire a consultant. That's, you know, familiar with planning for for fire services emergency services, and coming in and taking a look at where we are today, what's available to us and, you know, what we should be doing, where we should go. How big of a, how big of a station, how large of a station do we need to to suit the city for the next, you know, 60 to 70 years. And where, where can that station be. How big does it need to be, and give us some kind of an idea as to cost so that we can take the next step and plan for that replacement. You haven't planned for this consultant in your budget, correct. That's not in. No, I have not. I, I, my view of the world would be that would that would come from the city that would, you know, the city should be planning for that to be done. Just checking. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We can, if you'd like, we can also just look at the fire building budget real quick while we've got. Yeah. One second, we gotta. Page 32. Perhaps a silly question. Comcast is listed under buildings. We've got BT for the library. Do we have one internet provider for the. I just want to ask for the city or are we spacing enough based on the facility. It's a good question. We have been focused right now more on phone service because we've got. First light for phones and is. Getting rapidly more expensive. And so we are looking at. Switching that service Burlington telecom isn't is an obvious choice. We also. Have integrity, which is a separate company that actually runs our voicemail and phone system. So we're looking at the Burlington telecom because that could sort of all be wrapped up into one, one system and hopefully the. Cost of that monthly service will will come down. I don't know off the top of my head in terms of internet service per building. So internet service we essentially have two providers for each location so that we have that backup. And we're living under what the town had set up for us. With the idea of being that as we go through the renovations here to Lincoln. So those will all be looked at to see, you know, just like, even getting grown into telecom in here is requiring everything. And there may be services that they can provide more holistically that we could, you know, cut ties with another provider. So I think that was kind of the plan going into the renovation process was to look at all of that. And then the phone internet combined. Is this a big process that you go through in our journey stick. How does that process where you just make the call because obviously, there are multiple competitors. I'm not saying that really the telecom is not great option just wondering, because there are multiple services that can provide these things. And the, I think it would probably be more in the realm of gathering various quotes, but dependent based on our purchasing policy but, and that's what we've been working on right now. For this building at least. No, no problem with, with regards to us at the fire station. We are now connected to the city services. So this Comcast line. For us will be disconnected. Probably at the end of December. We need that. 172 90 in the budget. Comcast line. Yeah, so Chris, that Comcast line that's in the building budget is for the TV, right? No, the television would be that's a separate bill that's like $21 a month. So this 172 90 was our internet. Now that they've brought that fiber line over to the fire station. And everything, you know, we've had it up now for like two months. So our plan is to remove the Comcast service for internet from the fire station. So I think that 172 90 can come out of the building budget. I did that specifically for Andrew. So you get today that would you want to keep it in and that goes. You know where I live. Also ever likes pennies. Yes. Is the first light not to get too much into the weeds but is the first light a contract like that shouldn't be that. Okay. Yeah. I'm curious as to why the increase of their fixed contracts. Because they can raise rates when they see fit and get through. Yeah. How long are we going to drag it for? We have another year. Personally, it's the contracts are different by building. I think it's about a year, six months to a year. Okay. I don't know. Potential outlaws. Termination fee. There's a wicked termination fee, but we're at a point where it may be with the renovations. It may be worth it to pay that termination fee because we'll save it in what we're paying by moving to something else. Okay. Anything else for Chris. All right. Thank you for us. Keep you on schedule. Good luck. All right. It'll get off track today. Thank you. Thank you. All right. All right. Thank you friends for joining us. So we've got in your budget. Your budget packet. The police department is up first in health and health and human services side of things. So we can have that conversation first, if you would like. And I think there's, there's two pieces that we pointed out. One is the additional expense for the gasoline. This was, as I understand it, Greg couldn't explain more, but it was always in the public works building budget and they're reassigning out to the various departments that that budget relates to. And there's also the budget is lower because previously the vacancies that the police department had was still kept in the salary line. This year, the recommendation is to lower that budget assuming a vacancy is a real vacancy for the year. If I'm saying that correctly. You guys should explain. Thanks for coming. Morning all morning. So you might remember back when Sarah Macy was here, you know, we've had a lot of vacancies in the police department we're having. We took a look back historically and past several years and then up to 10% of the staff. We're short staff, about 10%. So rather than creating having fun balance, we saw this trend we decided to do a discount rate. So our discount for vacancies. So we had 10% and patrol and 10% and dispatch the 10% and patrol is still happening this year. We have some retirements that are coming up. We're actually just down one, one officer right now, right? We do have the expectation that we'll have some more openings coming up in the coming year. Hopefully we'll build them. Hopefully it's going to be a good problem for us to have to be people at staffs, but at this point we're still at that 10%. Dispatch we're fully funding we're up to post out and dispatch, we don't foresee any staffing shortages there so that is back up. One of the changes that we made, this is Virginia, what you were referring to health insurance in the town, we typically budgeted, we have an opt out plan. So, people who decide not to take health insurance can save the county money and also they get the stipend or bonus for not taking it. We always budgeted those people as, as you have a single plan, just budgetary purposes, making that something changes or kind of something. We took a closer look at that this year. Historically, there's not much change people who opt out opt out. There's always a little bit of turnover, but we made a big change. We budget everybody for what they're actually taking for health insurance so that I think it would please quite a bit that resulted in some savings. Other changes personnel police. We had a records clerk dispatcher who recently left that position is just a record clerk. Coming in at lower salaries there's some savings there. I think those are the big things that Regina, I don't know if that answers what you were trying to get at, but those are the high level staffing personnel. Yeah, I'll just, I'll just start with the record clerk thing so you'll see a change in where that staffing person is actually located. It wasn't dispatch now it's an admin. So it's just a simple change of where that person is, is living where that mission is living because the person no longer dispatches. So we have just a record clerk now. So that's that I don't have a whole lot of like new initiatives to talk about or anything like that. Basically, we're just trying to keep up with increased cost and that kind of thing. I don't have a whole lot of whole lot of money that we want to spend more than what we did last year, but I'd like to go over just a couple of the things for you that we're that we are trying to keep up with so probably will notice that there's an increase in the legal fees line and the legal fees line was added. When, when the two entities split, so direct to reflect the actual cost that it cost for the police department to run. We do rely on legal fees and legal advice quite a bit that you can imagine. So we're, that's in there now. As we go down looking at training, we try to increase that or at least when I came in as chief, I wanted to increase that budget by 2000 a year for five years. If we're in the fourth year of this will be the fourth year about those increases. So we're trying to pump that up a little bit by $2,000. We have a contract to increase with community outreach that we're trying to support. I believe that around three or three and a half percent. So we're so that's included in there. You'll see that. We'd like to replace two market vehicles this year. We've had a lot of issues over the last three years trying to get vehicles. We waited for about two years to finally get forward and deliver vehicles for us and when they did they delivered them all at once this summer. But now we're, we're set for, or at least we've caught up for the last three years, but now we'd like to continue with the replacement of those vehicles. Unfortunately, our costs for vehicles have gone from about 39,000 per vehicle to about 56,000 anticipated in 2025 budget year. Those will be hybrids if we can find them. Those are becoming increasingly difficult for us to get. Four is making as many as they used to and the vendors that we're using can't seem to find them. So this past summer we had to change our plans of buying hybrids, two hybrids and actually bought two normal vehicles because we needed the vehicles. We are saving a little bit this year when we transfer the equipment over from the old vehicles to the new vehicles, however, because we won't be having to buy new will be transferring some of the old equipment out of those other vehicles. They are halfway through their life cycle that equipment is so so that that'll be a benefit to us. The next time that those cars replace those will be replaced with new equipment so that's our that's our plan to do that. We're trying to also replace an unmarked detectives vehicle that has about 130 135,000 on it now. So we're trying to replace that one next year. We've got a little small increase in uniforms and equipment. We're trying to get that to actually where it reflects the actual costs. The job service is allotted according to the contract quarter to $50 a year to buy equipment that's in uniforms that are not provided by the department. The department provides all the uniforms and that type of thing because of other boots and gloves and things like that that they that they would mean. So we're trying to reflect the actual cost in that one item. Again, increase in vehicle, vehicle maintenance, because we have hybrids, our vehicle costs have gone up to maintain those. So we're trying to we're trying to keep up with that costly tires and cost of oil changes and everything have gone up. And then, finally, I have a note here about an increased contribution for CJC to cover costs of living increases for the folks at the CJC. They've traditionally never gotten that and we've never had that in our budget that has always just been like, we're going to do that, but we're going to find the money somewhere. So we'd actually like to like to put that in our in our line items so that we're a contribution goes to CJC. There is a there's no that that's what's going to go for. Those are really the major increases that were that we're talking about. Other than that, we've had, we would like to put money into capital improvements because we spent some money in in keeping up with our communications. We just recently the town replace microwaves for stuff kind of microwaves. We have that connect together and why would be a radio wave so we spent quite a bit to replace those have about a 10 year life cycle so we've had to replace those and we'd like to continue putting money into capital to do that. So the biggest as far as like amount of that yet you would see a room crease in our budget home would be salaries and benefits and that's to that's most of it is negotiated through a prior contract with the FOP and the local employees association that comes up. I don't understand where I think we'll start your app into the contract and they'll be in their last year of this contract in July will start their last year of the contract. So that's reflected as far as what's already been, what's already been agreed upon so. And that's really all I have to talk about animal control has a small increase in there. I know that folks have asked questions about that. And it's mainly we so just make it make it understood for folks out out there listening is that we contract with our animal services for our animal control. Who provides that service to us on the contract and we also have a contract with with Humane Society for our boarding and that type of thing when we give them a certain amount of a year at least save space for us. Right now we're very fortunate. The other only boarding facility here in Chittenden County is getting ready to close and tell all the police departments that they're no longer taking dogs. And fortunately, we're not affected by that because we're with Humane Society or the only police department at this point that's allowed to go with any society so I don't really have too much else if somebody has one question. One more. We just made a change last week Jeff I'm not sure if we can relate this to you again. This affects all of our personnel and yours too there's a point 44% childcare tax. So that may not be reflected in what you have there. I think it's a grand total of $35,000 the entire town so I'll be minimal increase but a small increase with this budget and assessing as well. Because the town paying the full cost or are you paying the town's portion and employees are responsible for the employee portion that is 0.33 and 0.11 to make up the point 44. Okay, I'm going to check with HR. There's some places that are often to cover the entire amount. The employee share as well. So I just want to make sure what you guys, we've got it, like, we're paying the city share and the employees are paying their share. Okay. Let me just ask a process question. Do you have a line item for the police because I don't have one in my budget and say often. Well, I have this. Yeah, we have just like four. I have a short one, but we don't have a space budget. No. Yeah, I mean, Okay. There's about 12 pages. It looks like. Yeah, it'll be nice to have that. Can. How is the committee advisory board going. It's going. Okay, I would say it's been interesting the last three months because we're kind of like in the forming process. The first meeting was just simply getting people acclimated. And then the second meeting was picking officers. And now we're actually at the point where we're going to try to at least this coming meeting. Try to get a work like a work plan what what would like to be done what what we would like to do. I think it's important that we do that. And we've had, I know we have some change over now that we need the city to fill. We've had one of the appointees who hasn't participated. So we're going to be looking at having y'all appoint another person for us. She'll get to that. She's aware of it. I'm really glad to see that you put a line item in for CJ soon for increases. What is the status of the state funding for CJC? So right now, there are no changes as to what they have been doing. My understanding is that they're going to continue funding it the way that it is. I will, I will caution that in that there is some discussion around state about forming regional CJCs. If that was to happen here, the talk would be that it would be an RFP that would be put out to any of the local CJCs to take over the whole county. On a county-wide basis. And that that funding would go to that CJC only. So we would start relying on, I'm just going to make a prediction, but I would say that Burlington CJC might step up and say, we're going to do this for every warden. Isn't the Essex CJC doing a lot of services for lots of towns outside of Burlington? Yeah, currently they, you know, they serve five different towns. And Burlington, we've also deposed the work for the work for Winston. So all of that could be brought under one. I know, like I said, that's been talked about for the last, well, since I've been here so probably the last five years. And so far, DOC hasn't made any decisions on that, but I know that I know that there are also some in the, in DOC feel that they shouldn't be doing pretrial referrals for individual towns. They shouldn't be paying for that. They should only be paying for COSA work and that type of thing. So that's also a discussion that's going on that that funding could get cut at some point. Hopefully not because I think it's a really important thing that we're doing. And I know that that's a big benefit to our community. So I hope it's not. So they're still receiving this like $200,000 a year. Yeah, it's over. It's almost 300,000 that they're receiving. Thank you. So we'll take this opportunity, but not that you're here. That's not so much budget related, but I guess it could eventually be but everything that's been going on for the past six to 12 months it feels like getting to a slightly chaotic point every night in both our communities. I'm just interested in your view, since we have you here. What challenges are you facing with this? What have you all discussed for potential solutions? What would you like people to know? And is there a budget impact that you see? You know, I don't think and I said this before it's completely a law enforcement issue, but certainly isn't here. Yeah, yeah, what I would tell you is most of the thefts and I assume that's what you're talking about. Most of that from talking to other chiefs and other other folks that are in the Intel business around here. Most of that has been caused by juveniles. And when I say juveniles, I mean, under 16 years old, there are two separate groups of juveniles that have been working essentially as groups. They're like, this is my group. This is my group over here. And they've been working in concert to go out and do these thefts of vehicles breaking in the vehicle. You know, transferring whatever they can find to money and somehow you've seen even seen some of it on the fire over being transported down to down to Springfield mass being traded for different things down there. This is a larger problem than just us since it's all over Chittenden County and even and as we saw down in Madison County as well. There's some connections down there. So we're seeing a lot of that being related to one or two people. I should say one or two people one or two groups which are probably a total of about 20 people total here in Chittenden. Our thought process on how we're dealing with that is that when we make charges on these juveniles, which we have many charges on that they need to be pursued. Some of the folks that we've been dealing with are not your normal juvenile crime people. They are folks that are more advanced in their crimes. They are tendency to violence and that type of thing. And unfortunately here in Vermont, we don't have a secure facility for them. So that's some of the challenges that we've had over the last couple of years is that we keep dealing with the same people over and over and over again. There has to be some type of solution that she said me that have made that no one at the legislative level. And I'm really hoping that this legislative session something gets done with that. As far as locally, I mean, we have set up our patrols at night. We've had our detectives out at night driving around in our vehicles to try to catch some of the folks in the act of doing it. Let me just tell people, please lock your cars. Don't give them the chance to like just enter it and make it a little bit more difficult because what we're seeing is people just come along and they're just checking door handles. And the ones that they can get into they get into and they take whatever they can. Well, that's kind of what I'm one of my curiosities. I mean, now, according to the community social media page, someone had a firearm stolen. I mean, this is getting to the point now where some dumb decisions are being made. Are you seeing most of this as an opportunity people are not taking the precautions that obviously they're probably actually breaking into some place. But so your big advice would be to lock your vehicles lock your house. It's 9pm. Everyone should make sure everything is locked before they go to bed. Yeah, a lot of it is has been crimes of opportunity. And it's just people walking through neighborhoods at night and they find people hoping to go in those. Yes, we have had some vehicles that have been actually forcibly broken into. But those have been really, really the far into 20. It's most of it's just a vehicle unlocked and they're getting into it. The key and challenge that was going on this summer for for mayor with that and that was real. And it still is. I mean, he has had a fault in them where a vehicle can be open and stolen relatively easily. And I believe we recovered at least one here at the fair this year. We recovered four stolen vehicles and call work in the fair this year, one of the very first power we were there on that Friday night. And all of those were occupied by if they were occupied, it was one of the three of them were occupied. They were occupied by June and I was under 16 years old. And because of the rules that the legislature has made and the broad court has made in our state attorney have made. We weren't able to charge a lot of those human house with actually being in the car. So, and the idea is you take a car and completely destroy it. You have it and then you just don't get somewhere. And that's what we've been seeing all over check in county. Please lock your vehicles. So, on that, on that particular note, because I wouldn't like to be having conversations with having a ride along and having conversations with others about this. I get the sense that what's part of this process and I just want to make sure that it's clear if it's not, it's not really understood that I get the sense that there's a real disconnect again between your investigations, passing those along to the state attorney's office. And then there's, it sounds like a couple of different problems first off, without some place to house a juvenile who's got Correct problems going. Those cases are either not then being looked at, or they're being put aside, either way, that process of being seems to be being held up at the state's state attorney's office. Is that is that correct. I wouldn't blame it all on the state's attorney's office. I would say that it's, it's a combination of the policy attorney's office and the court, the judges are here with a lot of the decisions that they have made, including the Supreme Court and then in our legislature. So I would say it's a combination of their we send cases to the state's attorney. They face some really hard challenges as far as what to do with juveniles once they have them in the system. Department of Children and Families is stressed just like everybody else is probably they're very stressed they have they only have certain resources as well. I would say have that child in their custody, then they have to be able to find a place to put that put that child or what, what do they do with them. We get parents all the time are at their wits end. Like, I don't know what else to do. And I don't know where to put them so I wouldn't blame it on one entity it's a combination of it's a combination of all. I think I want, I want to bring up and I want to say thank you because you and I had an email exchange over a couple of issues and I do want to say, as a previous firearm truck, thank you for the level of detail you gave me. Because I brought up the question in regards to the type of an issue that's currently being used in the market, you know, out there. And I heard about specifically the red tipped bullets that were used in the, the unfortunate shooting of three Palestinian Americans. And, you know, again, the thing that I just want to, I just want to say thank you this is not really a question I just want to say thank you because it really helped me understand a little bit better about how you and the department are in order to handle these particular situations thank God this situation. I wish it didn't happen at all but I, you know, at least didn't happen in a six junction. But you, it sounds like you and the department paired, we have these situations and but it sounds like the marketplace is changing with the type of firearms and with the type of ammo that people are wanting to get into. I mean nine millimeter until continues to be the most popular round in the world. And there's a reason for that there's more firearms that are nine millimeter than any other gun. So it's, it's the most common because it also because it's cheaper than a lot of different types of anything. So, we see a lot of that, but the ammunition that was used in Burlington was created. And I explained to you that's a smaller, that's a smaller round than a nine millimeter and it doesn't have quite as much shopping powers and nine millimeter would but I mean we we see right around those types of things on the street all the time. There's a lot of rifles in the month there's a lot of rifle and you know, maybe you asked so just another threat that we have to worry about. Yeah. I see that in the operating budget for the police department that the payment to the CJC is this transfer between funds for non capital. Where is the revenue for that state grant. It's a separate part of the budget there. The CJC budget. I didn't see it. You already might see the CJC budget project. The CJC should be a separate part of our budget is included underneath that. I know I just looked at it. I'm not sure you have this date but I'm looking at our, our police department budget. And it's the community justice center is included underneath our income and revenues coming in there. Is that age 66. I don't know if that's from their knowledge. I'm pulling this from from our internal system. Okay. I can show it to you. I guess part of my question is really making sure that the revenue for the CJC is coming through this also an offsetting what we then paid through our contracts. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so, so it's down here actually in there. I think we probably find it. Yeah, we can get it. Yeah, that'd be appreciated. So I assume that that is part of the, the calculation into our contract and that's being offset. How's the, I remember a few years ago, Heather, the conversation about the communities to do also participate are not caring, paying their fair share into that conversation still ongoing. It's still an equitable for us as ethics residents and that town and city were paying more for the same service and what the other towns are. Yeah, we do always asks, primarily, Colchester know the debate, but Chester has told us they're going to fully fund the request this year. We don't expect to again. That conversation can stay about it. They basically tell us we have to keep providing that service. This is the CJC we're talking about. Yeah. We're talking about Milton Milton every single year, just for this purpose, because we want to make sure that we're following up on this every year. So Joe said that we'll go again, asking them for contributions. That's a couple months ago and we've got no response from that. How much? I'm sorry, how much is that? 17,000. Yeah, about 16 or $17,000. But they can pay their time manager 170,000 that problem. Yeah. And like I said, I mean, the response, the response that we've gotten from from DLT is that we consider the amount of funds that we give you to be what we give you and it covers their, their, their costs as well. And if they don't choose to put in anything, then so be it. And I sent this next part to Regina earlier. One of my struggles, I don't, I don't see, or I don't understand why the GIS coordinator, I see that 10% of their salaries now being paid for through the police department. I don't understand why that's considered a direct and indirect cost of the part of our 3.5%. It's an assessment. It's an assessing. Okay. I think that goes first. But she didn't have that, three and a half percent. Got you. Are we ready to transition? Sure. That's why I did that. A lot more to talk to you about. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so in your budget packet on PDF page twenty seven is where you see the assessing line again same thing and note to both Jess and I to make sure we pull in the fall. Budget from the hand into your packet so you've got them. It's the assessing. Yes, I was like what's that. So, So, FY 24, we budgeted all of these exchanges between town and city as transfers between town and city, as we had done previously when we were combined. I would say that the transfer between town and city line is now zeroed out and I've moved that up to the professional services line so it more accurate accurately reflects the relationship between town and city. The other thing that we have added into the city's budget for assessing that the town does not cover is $500 for our online property record cards. It's the annual subscription that we pay. I can speak to that. He spoke Shannon real quickly and then came up and I'm kind of preparing for the rest of the budget. So, basically, Shannon's our GIS coordinator. She falls into the IT department and budget review this year for the town. We realized that Shannon spends 10% of her time on assessing. The one to capture that comes out to 10% of Shannon salary benefits into the assessing line between the town city breakdown that comes out to about 4.3%, I think four or 5% of her salary that we paid by the city. Hopefully that makes sense, but I can try to answer your question about it. I hear you on it. I, given how we do for how we have these arrangements through agreement, I just think this needs to be part of a broader conversation between this entity and not just a here's a cost that we're going to now ask you to pay for. That's all. And I would say it's something that we missed in the past and should have been before last year but obviously you want to discuss it more. I'll say from my end that serve that component of the assessing world is is a logical cost to me in the sense that we have parcel maps that need to be updated. And having an in-house person do that work is really beneficial as opposed to us figuring out on the city side how we're getting our personal maps updated and it does seem a clear connection to the assessing side of things. Yeah, I wasn't intended for us to have the conversation now. I mean, I'm saying that I think that this our board should have that kind of a conversation at some point in time relatively soon, given we're having the conversation now. You know, more important way than just Andrew bringing this up at a meeting. I would agree. And I think it makes sense. I'm not crazy about not having the conversation prior. So yeah, I just agree with Andrew. Thanks for that update. How's it going in assessing. It's going well. Rachel's going into 450 plus properties they started out in the rural areas and they want to come back in because of the weather. Probably half of the properties have a handful of people that aren't happy. But, you know, just explaining the process to them. So it's, it's, it's going, it's going and I think we've only had a couple of calls from the city, the property was in the city that saw the sample letter and then said, oh, I want to make it. We don't make a point to check to actually receive that. But we wanted to put that example out there and say a lot. So it's moving along. Reminding when we think this will be done. This would have a sector toward over 5,000 parcels, or 5,000, excuse me, population, you have to submit your grand list by June 24 for that year. So, that's why 20 school that by 26 being impacted by this. That's enough turnaround to. So, how will we make that. If it's, you said by June 2025. I'm now curious if we'll have enough information. This time next year to predict. And build the budget, but I guess that will work out. It has in the past, I imagine so. You said your tax credit. Right. Okay. I mean, yeah, so essentially we'll be still building our budget saying this is the amount we need to raise in property taxes, the tax rate calculation comes later anyway. So that will be affected. Who knows how. But just trying to think through shouldn't have done it. No, if you have a question others do too it's. I've been through this one supposed to years and years ago for me it was fairly neutral, but as we've seen in other places, it's a stressor. Yeah. The states involved with the equalization study and all that so the CLA's and then we have to readjust. So yeah, it is a process. I don't have any other questions. I think this is fairly straightforward. But if you don't force any other challenges. I mean, I guess on the on the. On these changes that have been made both in the gasoline and with this for the jazz, do you anticipate finding more of these. He's the one we found this at this point. No, but we're we're still trying to double check. At the conclusion of this assessment process. The next one is, it's a trigger it's not like a required every five years we have to wait for the CLA to hit a certain one. They changed the legislature now it's not the CLA they're facing and they're facing on the COD, which is the coalition of dispersion. So if you are 20 and that's the trigger, that's the trigger that they have to keep the CLA because that's how they adjust the tax rate, the education tax rate. The state of I'm on its backs, but to equalize everybody 100%. Do you think that changing to the COD will cause a more frequent need for. I mean, for our grand list, it seems pretty in line, everybody said there's nothing that's outstanding like commercial is way out here or condominiums are way out here pretty that's what you do you watch that to see if there's something on. Okay, and I know way back in the past before my time the condominiums were kind of off because of the sales and listed prices. So they could actually go and redo all the company as a statistical but that all goes to the state. I'm grateful that you are an expert in that Karen. We don't know. But they are going also through new legislature where they are trying to pass every six years for reabraiser center. Interesting. Okay, so people don't have it clear so that six years do we have to start something within the four to be able to get the vendor by six. Nobody has the interest. Interesting. Yeah. Well, and that just leads to our next question and I'll push this into a break. In terms of our agreement with the town of Essex and Karen is doing our assessing as well because we had banked that cost and that's all taken care of but will we be having a conversation in the relative near future about what is the process for us for our next assessment to be at the house? What's that going to be like? Any other questions for Karen? Can you adjust anything else? Greg, thank you very much for coming. Good to see you. Thanks. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Thanks. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. I think it's like years. Wow. Good. I have either high or low. Thanks. We. Take the board. Yes. I've been a. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Present your budget. She wanted to mention. I'm just looking at it. Our blocker system is now finally all together. We have enough to serve what we need, but we are. We haven't so the plan was to open up our best to build. More. And our assistant director Hannah is not here right now. Just came back from maternity leave and she is. She's our software. Couple shooter person in the doors. They're not. The best. I should say. And also just sort of a team effort of what would be the best. So our first step is going to open up the test bill earlier in the morning. Because we've had more. Problems around the building at night. So we don't want to jump into. Opening up the best field till we know that things are more calm. So we have the lockers. Yes. And we're looking at a foreseeable future for majority of that to be. Servicing clients. And times the library is already open. Yes, it helps take off. And then we also will be opening up so people. Like we've had them open when we've had staff training. So people can get still pick up their boats. But we haven't had them open yet when the staff are not in the building. So we want to sort of try carefully as we. Do that. Our initial plan was to just do 24 seven and now we're like, maybe we do it. Just later in the night earlier morning, just to figure out where the balance is. And keeping. That safety band that was in. Yeah. No, that's a good thought. I mean, so I guess I'm wondering, you know, between the time at the front desk waiting in line to free up the front desk people versus pick it. The book and prepping it and notification. And that back in work. Is that a wash or is there a time savings? There's a lot of time savings there because we are. We just do. Regardless, we do the holds polling. And this is, we just be able. Now we can just print slips and then the. Our system talks to the lockers. So then whoever it's. It requires far less time at the desk. It makes things much more efficient for both. Then they, like, need to confide in this staff side. That people really love the freedom to go in. Yeah, we also. Illness. People come on. Like we wouldn't allow somebody to come in there with their dog at the library, but like people walking their dogs can now just pop into the mess. You'll get their stuff or if they're sick. We don't really want to have the close interaction. So there's been some great safety things and also flexibility for the people who are using the. I have a number of questions on summer kind of general, but I'm wondering if you guys have a bunch of statistics that we see in those reports that come out like monthly or quarterly or wherever we get them. But I don't recall ever seeing any statistics. 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 think I'd like monthly or quarterly or wherever we get them. But I don't recall ever seeing any statistics on the amount of folks who are coming into the library and maybe specific times. Like, do you have 10 people that are coming into the library at 8am? There's five people generally on, you know, at 5pm or whatever. And I'm wondering if you keep those kinds of statistics. We do. kind of back to pre-pandemic levels of visitors, not maybe completely, initially, I think maybe in like 2018, we're like over a hundred thousand visits per year, so that's still slowly coming back, but we're also now with the homes, people aren't coming in, so we don't capture that data, but we are able to like the software that we use for our door counter, like we can tell them, portraying how generally we've been the source of how many people have attended because we capture that information, we can say like how many people were here for like a band of hours. Is that information that you already give to the trustees anyways, or is that something that you could give to us as well? Yeah, we could, yeah, we might have to, yeah, just talk to the person who compiles that. Yeah, I just don't want you to create new data if it's something that's already created and distributed, just basically hit the button to set up the office as well, but I definitely don't want you to do extra work. I'm curious, this is just a general question, if we've had any internal discussions about the leasing versus the purchase of the copiers, because I know it's come up on a couple of different linems, besides for now, and where that discussion went. So we have our copy release, Citywide is coming up in December. So we've been looking at the copier leasing and we asked the complete lease package to have an option of the public copier at the library. The public copier at the library is kind of a different animal. And so we've looked at it optionally that way and these folks are looking at it individually and will be able to figure out what the right way to go is. But I think it's very likely that the public copier machine will be separate than the full package of copiers. But we have looked at it financially both ways to try to figure out what's the right way to go there. We used to own a copier prior to the last round of leasing that happened. So it was removed and I think at the time the public copier was, it was a pre-service through Kelly office that no longer exists. So I can't find another option that happened, unfortunately. And then they took, the town took our other one as like an exchange pay. I somehow make the balance. And so even with the own copier, we're still paying for support for it. So the leasing is a little bit more expensive from my experience, but it's also, I'm an aging copier that's also going to be expensive to look at every five years or so. And then I probably should know the answer to this, but I'm wondering why there's a separate line item for the employee volunteer recognition when we already have one in the admin. And if there is a necessity to keep those separate for the reason I probably should know. Please, Jones. Bye. I can tell you at least from our own history with this, our, we used to have a volunteer recognition party and it was completely funded by donations come back to the foundation. And we wanted to have it part of like the volunteers have really added a lot of, they saved a municipality a ton of money and we wanted some of that expense. Reflected in the budget. And then that changed with I think just categories to become more of a employee and volunteer line item. But now it's solely coming out of, it's not donation, it's revenue, it's coming out of the budget. Like it's 1500. Yeah, because our donations died up through COVID. We couldn't really have any of that. I mean, people donate to the foundation but this was more just like, we have an appreciation jar to put that money into having a party for them annually. I don't, I think, you know, doing volunteer and employee recognition is a great thing. I'm just questioning why we have to have a separate line item when we as well do it forever for all the entire city and it should be done for everybody. So, and there hasn't been, I don't believe there's been any money spent on it this year, but I'll let you guys kind of noodle that one, but I'm just, that's just one of those things that I was kind of curious as to why we had to look at that. We had a history of sending, we shifted it to a New Year's card to our volunteers. We usually do some sort of volunteer recognition. Now they're gonna be like volunteer month in April. So we've had, I think a longer tradition of any sort of recognition and we do, I'm trying to bring this, like I don't know if they even covers it completely and I can't remember the different things that we've done to recognize our volunteers because we tend to have a larger pool than every other department. I don't know if I did have the rest of the party in that. Yeah, yeah, I think we usually have like a small gift that we give them like last year it was like a sampler of the paper circle. And even though they said employee volunteer recognition is, primarily it's not exclusively volunteer, it's just done volunteer. Yeah, the employee part was added. The line is a little deceiving for Grinnell because the chart of accounts, it's employee volunteer recognition, no matter what department it's in, but they're covering volunteers. Yeah, and ours doesn't, but the admin does and cover volunteers and strictly employees over the office. Okay, I'm cool. I have a couple of questions completely unrelated. So I used to be the chair of the foundation. And then that way back. And at the time there was a friends of the Brown out and my understanding is they have merged and then you just have the foundation. Yes, is that correct? Okay, and the foundation is primarily their responsibility is to raise funds through the book sale and to steward for lack of a better word, an endowment that helps support the library for large purchases like capital things that are not in the budget and that kind of thing. My question is, can there be a, I don't know what is the condition of the foundation right now in terms of its ability to support the library for things that can't be in the budget? The foundation's been struggling. The friends used to just do the book sale and then the foundation had separate, there was some fundraising efforts, but for the most part since the foundation was created, I think when we, the renovation happened around 2000 to help collect money for donations for that. And since the merger, the friends have sort of taken over the board of the foundation. So they're income is mostly the book sale and that goes towards like for adult, they sell, they give us a certain amount of money to cover best sellers. So we can get those right into the collection and that's how they focus on additional programming. It's been really hard to get phone interiors. It's been a little disorganized. So people who have wanted to volunteer tend to not stick around. And so we're trying to figure out a way forward with that. That's a little bit more organized in general, but it is not a great fundraising or anything right now. Yeah, because it's just, things have changed. We don't have people, like I think there used to be much more of a pool of people like stay at home moms that were eager to be out, just be out of the house and do something and help people. Like we have a lot more working people. So having the volunteers, we've had situations where volunteers are just like, it's just doesn't work for me because it doesn't seem like there's a great direction, but it doesn't allow our group to be running. Well, that was my next question. So is there the interface of the foundation is strictly with you as the director, right? Yes. Yeah. And then we kind of backed away from book donations because that was, it was a lot of extra work for staff and donations. We weren't getting work. Something we really weren't looking, they weren't quality for the collection. So they were more just books and no bounds. And then your board of trustees is your policy board. They are not a fundraising board. That's okay. Thank you, I just wanted to get caught up to speed on that. My second completely unrelated question is can you be a little bit more, can you describe for us what the situation is that staff are experiencing with what you alluded to is the needs of the people coming in the door. What are the kinds of things you're doing with, doing with them, what are they needing and how has it impacted your staff's ability to get their work done? They're kind of looking, some people are looking for social service directions. Some people just don't even know what they're looking for. Like we just have a lot of people that show up and just in under duress of some sort, like not violent duress, just sort of like, they say I have to do something on a computer. They can. So those are that sort of thing. And they do, it just requires more oversight of who's in the library because we've had a lot more, I wouldn't say altercations, but well, yeah, we've had altercations. And so it's just a different crowd. Like we have a regular telecommuters and they are benign, they hang out in the corners and they're really quiet. And then there's more people like who are unhoused that are just using the library and sometimes they kind of irritate each other. And you might have more. The front desk is just a different deal right now. And we wanna make sure that the people who are there just to get their books are gonna be caught up in us trying to figure out how to help them, what resources they might need, where the foodshelves are, where they might be able to get clothes. And some of the situations require monitoring over a period of several hours. So, you might notice that somebody is having a bit of difficulty, but has it to the line of where they need to be talked to yet. Okay, now it's the line they need to be talked to, but it's not, we haven't gone to the line that we need to ask them to leave. And so, it's hard to tell sometimes whether a person is going to settle down or whether they're gonna end up say punching somebody else in the computer room, which has happened. And or they might be, we're all aware of approximately how long people are in the bathroom. Oh dear, this person's been in the bathroom for about 20 minutes. It's a time to make sure they're still alive. So, there's that kind of thing. A lot of people come in, they need something, they don't know where to get that help and where the first ones can be asked. I mean, where the first ones they ask. And sometimes we're able to help them directly and sometimes it's another point in them to the right things to do. Yeah, with the people looking for legal resources, it's really been remarkable how much people will go, like if they're new, if they're just passing through, they're gonna go to the public library to get help and get some sort of orientation to what services they can access. So, we really are like ultimately really trying to make it welcoming for everybody, regardless of their socioeconomic status and their permanent residence. And just make sure that they, a lot of things to understand the behavior guidelines that we said. And so, we work to just educate and then enforce and then if you don't, if they can't comply to that, okay, if you can't do this, you're gonna have to leave or you just really drill a lot. So, it's different levels. And this is over the course of the entire day, it's not during certain periods. Yeah, we never know when people are gonna show up, it could be like right before we close, it could be the first thing in the morning. They've been really kind of alarming, but they've been fine, but like when you have people coming in, like there was in May, we had this first Wednesday last year and those people, they laid off all their stuff in the vestibule of like, why is there a clothing here? That's not the place to have to be like, oh, it's covered in cement and like then they had blood on them and they needed a phone with them. And it was all fine, like how's the problem? Like they did tie up a phone, which is like a whole nother thing. I'd love to figure out, wait, I have like a free public phone because that's a huge need for a lot of the people because they don't have, I think if we can call out the outreach people, they could potentially provide a phone, but that's not an immediate answer to somebody in crisis. So, some libraries in other states like free cable phones and little, kind of a bunch of phone booths in their libraries or we have no work, we have no full-time pay phones to be done in this community. So, I've talked to Burlington Telecom about it and they're like, oh yeah, that's something to think about, but they don't have the means right now to do anything about it. Thank you. We appreciate that. So I have some of the same things, but I have some other things as well, but let me start with what you just spoke about so that we're clear. Because I will first say that as I think about it in my deal, helping to spoke kind of model to help those who are in need or in distress and helping the libraries to be the central point of that particular model. Totally understand why they would seek that refuge and such, but I wonder if there's a better way to direct them to an appropriate person that could then really help get them to the services they need in the system to get the whatever is going on. And I don't know if that's an interaction with the Howard Center or someone else, but. It will call on them regularly. There is Howard Center and there's also the CDOEO program. And I think when we have regulars, our experience has been that we've had people that don't want help from outreach, like we'll give them name or anything, but when they're coming into the library regularly, we, they create, there's more trust being built. So like we've been able to connect with these people more if they do come in regularly, if it's just a one-shot thing. Yeah, we do, I mean, outreach is definitely a resource, but there's also with a lot of these people who are in these really bad situations, the systems have failed them over. So there's apprehension, there was effort this summer to, no trust pass somebody that wasn't causing us any problems at the library. He didn't want to speak to the outreach people. He didn't accept a tent. And he just, he's traumatized. I don't know what happened to him. It was awful to see how the community treated him. And my staff got really upset because we were just like, he's allowed to be here and you shouldn't be asking questions just because he looks different, like I mean more kindly than that, but it's there, we don't have the system. Like our state is really suffering on how to handle this. So when you look at Burlington, they're having people shooting up at the Fletcher Free Library. They don't have, like even with all of the service there, they're becoming a safe injection site. Like it is really like the way that our social network is just kind of really failing a lot of people right now. So our primary initiative is just to make people feel welcome and maybe that's a step. Like the person who was so not warmly welcome by this community ended up getting his feet under him and taking a train form to Connecticut like after two weeks. And that was the major success and I wouldn't say that would happen all the time but that he was able to just have a play. I think that thing with a homeless people is that libraries pervade but provide a sense of like a calming place where they can just like be like we're creating a safe environment. We're not going to tolerate them being harassed and that can help with their next steps. So yeah, I wish we had more and like outreach they are available. It's not all the time. Their primary focus is working with the police. So if we call them, they'll be like, yeah, we could come but it might be a couple of hours or days like for a program or so. I don't deny any of those things. I just, obviously. Yeah, it's something for libraries everywhere. Like any ever been community is dealing with it and I do have ideas of how to make it better. Yeah. How many crimes? How many incidents are we talking about though? Because I also get what I've heard seems like while these incidents are occurring it doesn't sound like it's happening often. So I just want clarity around how often this happens because of the fact that what I'm hearing is the fact that the library is struggling to meet this demand. But at the same time, it also doesn't sound like it's happening all the time. So I just... Yeah, it's not all the time to the point of us needing to call the police or outreach, but it is, I would say daily we're helping serve people that really are in dire need of some sort of help that is beyond just accessing resources. That's what libraries do, but it's not error. Like people coming to get the latest James Patterson or anything like that. Yeah. For one thing I do want to say too, and Regina, I'll just make this general statement because again, as I look at how you define success in your metrics and I saw this on multiple. So this is not just this one, but to me, it's not really answered here as to what those specific metrics are. The overall theme and strategy I think is fine, but what I would really like to see is some very specific metrics that then say, you've succeeded in achieving this. So I'm not sure what that would exactly be, what tools can be used to make that happen, but it's something I would like to see more throughout all the discussions today. To go back to something that Amber brought up, I do want to have a little bit more clarity around when people are using library because of the fact that what I see, just as an observer of the library, if I try to figure out when, I don't know when the library is open. I know how to get that information, but those library houses are not consistent because of the fact that I know that on Tuesdays and Thursdays is different. And I'm not sure that it needs to be. So I wonder if our hours at the library are fulfilling the community needs. So I have that question around it. The other thing I wanted to ask specifically was, in this particular entryway change, again, I want to understand how the need for this particular change, is this really going to provide more access and opportunity or is there a physical need to the facility that is being repaired with this change over? Yes, and that's one of the biggest problems we've had and it hasn't changed is the winter storms that creating their lot of melt coming off of our building or just rain. And it runs off the building and then freezes right in front of our current main door, which has been an issue that we're the, when we're redoing our route, that's what we're trying to. And that was one of the things I was like, is there a way we can do this? Because this is like staff are going out that right hour to put salt down and then it just gets washed away by the water running off the building. And the second component that Harlan brought into it is that it's not an ADA compliant door. At this point, and if we could redesign that area to be ADA compliant right now, our only ADA compliant door is the back door, which is only accessible if somebody's dropped off in a car. So anybody coming from the bus stop is not basically taking their life in their hands because that client is really too steep. Last two things I just want to ask about is, again, I do want to go back to the copier question because for me it seems like, again, I'm not necessarily clear on the amount of use, but I can understand using a service for a copier that might be in the public use because of the ways it might be used. So therefore it would be easier for maintenance to have an outside company dealing with that. But internally, I wonder if we couldn't just buy a $100 printer from Staples that would fulfill the needs internally. I could be completely wrong. Internally, for the library, we do massive amounts of paper, everything, just kind of willing, for sure. Okay. Yeah, we need a real copier. Okay, understood. The other thing I'll add in there is understanding the cell phone stipend for librarians. I'm not sure what the specific need is here for. Pay for a stipend for librarians. We are, people are not at the library all the time. And then we do have people who are supervising. So people who are supervisors have cell phones because it is the greatest when we don't get a response. If we are going to try to schedule, like if somebody's calling in sick, which is happening more frequently, any changes in staffing, the faster that we can respond to it to try to fill the shift. If we're waiting until that morning, it is not very unlikely. And when we need to have at least three people in the building for safety, preferably four. So when there is an issue, we're not dealing with our two desks being run by one person who often is a son, while the staff is trying to manage the situation. So what's the policy? Ask on staff then for having this cell phone? To be able to. They available 24 seven. They available during work hours. And they are mostly available 24 seven. And in response to your hour, fresh generic state statutes of having to be open after a certain hour and certain night, like just to maintain our standards. And we did re reorient the hours looking at the we used to close at five o'clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And we open until nine o'clock. And when we were looking at the door data that really wasn't a need to keep our library open for like a couple of people between eight and nine three nights a week. So they shipped those hours to and it has been serving people who work better. But there are people who are, we kick out at eight o'clock. So I think we're doing better serving the community getting open until six 30. Those two other nights for people who are working. Wendy isn't also the case that the Essex Free is open Monday, Wednesday, Friday evenings and the Brown Allows Tuesday, Thursday. Yes. That was historically those hours were set up but they were open until nine and they were open until eight. So this will probably be the slightly tougher part. So the overall budget you mentioned visitation is now approaching free pandemic levels. So 2019 FY 2019 2020 at this point. In the past since 18, the budgets seem to have gone up somewhere around 3% every year. 23 was almost 12, 24 was 10, 6. And this one is 8.7, 8.66. What's the difference? What are we seeing because the next budget if it comes in on the average for the last three years increase will approach 1.1 million or greater at this point. And it's gone up 49% since 19. I'm just asking from a sustainability point of view only. We're looking at a 7% increase across the board for the city. So we're gonna be asking everybody where it can be cut. So I'm just wondering really two questions that is there something in here that we can do about right now to bring that budget down, but more long-term how do we get back to the more general increases that we're used to seeing and not because I would say that the last three years are unsustainable. We can't, we won't be able to go any further than that. I just don't see it. My personal opinion, I don't know how we do that. So I guess I'm curious how we get there. Staffing has always been the biggest part of our budget and we had several retirements which really cut our budget down because of people leaving who had been there for a very long time but also left with a lot of institutional knowledge. So then we've seen a lot of turnover. We don't have the same like our part-timers used to stick around forever. And so I don't know what is going to be like our staff are training a ton now where they haven't before and that's definitely caused us to be much more spread thin. And the digital information that we do provide has been something I did not want to add until I was finding services that weren't for just be surprise bills because a lot of the digital services that libraries are offering are for use and libraries can't afford it. Like the digital realm that people are now expecting isn't something that's been very well reflected in budgets and I didn't want to jump into any of the new digital services without feeling like it might be a good fit. So like our streaming service is just you can stream as much as you want. And if you want to watch that whole series you can without it being like a three to $4 charge per episode which is what a lot of the services are. So those have all been added. We don't have any large anticipation for adding more services like that but it is something that libraries are expected to provide and it was not something I wanted to jump into without really finding a way to do that that was more sustainable than what most of the services are that are provided to libraries. And also we're looking at increased digital use and that's something that's hard to anticipate what the costs are but we try to keep them as low as possible under consortium that saves like bird. We do a lot to share resources across the state and other libraries to try to really minimize the impact on our own budget. But it's been a pretty volatile few years and I think the combination of the type of people we're seeing at Bramnell and also having staff that are not experienced is really drawn. Created a different environment for sure and I don't know what it's going to be in the future because if we continue to just have people leaving that's not been great for morale. It's been really hard to train and then just see them go off to Fletcher Free Library then that's what's been happening. And you have something to say there? You look like you had something to say. I was just thinking that a couple of things when it's my understanding is that there's a lot of things that's happening that there's been an issue with. But the other is that a lot of the reservings also people who maybe are not digital they need all that comfortable and there's so many things that people need now to do online. So it's not just sort of a confirmation that has been mentioned here. People needing social services but also a lot of people who want to file a taxes and now they're not being mailed to people anymore. There's a lot of things that people need to accomplish in their lives. They're grandchildren and want to send them photos or something. But there's just a lot of things that people need to help with technologically, more so than even before the pandemic. So are you saying then that this change in need of your patrons is causing you to have need more staff and that's why the staff in the staff numbers, the cost of staff is the most expensive piece of the budget. And so these increases we've been seeing you're saying are due to the changes in the needs of the patrons and so you need more staff to handle that. Yeah, I think that's something that came out just talking even to the salary study person. We are very, very good. What our staff does is actually really incredible for how much they balance between being multi caskers, experts in a lot of different things as well as managing a busy desk. So it's not that easy for sure. We are not living with a cush staffing level whatsoever. And the turnover that we've had in staff because they can find jobs that pay better has been a big issue. Really hard to get for our allies and also just trying to get people so they can do their work that we have expected from them and it's changed. Andrew, how much is WLO plus? How much is WLO plus? I don't remember all of it. And I guess the intention of this, I hear a lot of this conversation has been around the needs of from social service labs. The need for significant and other libraries to provide that. And I'm struggling with yes and we're providing BBC. Here is what it is. So it's a fraction of what if we did HUBLA where libraries are probably paying 1200 a month for that service because of what people are checking out. And then they also are tapping people and artists and tapping anybody at anything. So the needs of our community are we need to provide basic social service information and we need to provide our community that's pretty straight. It seems to be a very broad spectrum. It's what libraries are doing. It's not just because everybody does it. It's everybody, but we've been Jericho Town Library offers it. So it's not something like if you don't. Yeah, I'm not trying to talk to you about it. You believe being pushed along because we're not standing. So I just really have you for a few minutes. So I apologize. But I think part of the point is we're going to we're at the point now where we have to make decisions. And if our pressures are going to social services, if I'm understanding the line line, then we're going to have to cut elsewhere. Yeah. And I could say that you're going to be reducing services or your regular citizens live here. And these are now becoming standard services amongst libraries. And I've done it as as most economically as possible. That totally respect that. I don't understand that and see that. So that's not none of this is a question and decisions that, you know, and how you're approaching us just sort of just sort of clear. It's more a next essential question of. This isn't sustainable. And so if these pressures aren't going away and there's no other means to be kind of to a rescue. I'm just conveying that I don't think that this pattern is sustainable. And so if cuts need to be made in places that maybe or as likely the reality for my view and only one. So I'm just I don't mean to be the complete downer today, but I don't know how we continue. And most of these people are new to this community all the time that are expecting these services and it vibrate does draw people to want to move to this community. So that would be a long time believer user and my family has benefited greatly. But it's just a couple of libraries are offering things now and and it would it's not something that's like we're not at this like pushing at the cutting edge. Like I've been super conservative to try to adopt services to find a balance. So we're not disappointing somebody who doesn't need social services. I think our community, though, is facing pressures that other libraries may not be linked to or to Williston and some others just guessing. This is may stick. Well, I don't know for sure. No, it's that they may not. I don't know. I have only partway through that report, which was excellent and extensive. Yeah, we're not unique in offering a lot of social services that's creating a lot of pressure in the state of Vermont is not serving with this that people struggling very well at all. So I think there also needs to be more work on that level because communities can't shoulder this. I was just talking to the pleasure free director who's now talking to her federal Congress because she doesn't believe that this is something that could be resolved at the local level. I just want to observe that. Acknowledging everything you said about the significant increases over the last four years, I agree completely. We need to be very cautious and conservative going forward even more than we are. And I think the population of people that the library is serving in that has serious need is very small, but it's taking up an enormous amount of resources. And so I think there is room here for the city and for the county and the state, as Wendy was saying, to step up services locally here in Essex Junction that might offload some of that responsibility out of the library and into social services. And so this is not a temporary fix that I'm suggesting here, but I think something we absolutely have to do is talk as a community and as a council about establishing a stronger human services net safety net here in Essex Junction. Cots should be here. CBOE should be here. And then the staff of the library can say, you can just step right over to 15 Main Street and find the services you need. And so I think that's a bigger conversation. But that said, we still need to, what Raj was saying, we still need to be super conservative, especially since we have a large education tax increase coming down the road as well. So I just want to acknowledge that I think we recognize the additional responsibility that you are all dealing with for a very small population of people and that the general patrons, the citizens of Essex Junction and the members of the other surrounding communities that use the Brown L, they're not asking for those services. And at the same time, we're detracting from what they expect because you're spending all this time with people who need services. So it's not a problem that we can fix through this budget, but we can work forward on trying to come up with some more solutions. I guess I'm just asking for patience and understanding. I think we understand where you guys are at, but we need you to also understand where we're at. And it's not going to take one budget cycle to fix this. Definitely. Anything else from Wendy, Regina, Jess? So that's a lot of what we expected. Oh, yeah. That's a lot of what we want to know. Thank you so much. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Thanks for being here. Thanks for everything. So we are transitioning now to buildings. So that's why we've got a whole nation of different people coming together here in the room. But so there was already a question about the library building. Any other library building questions? There was a mention of a $300,000 bill for, is that in the budget? Or a $300,000? Not the room, what? That is in the building maintenance fund. Okay. Well, I think so. It is. No, I mean, I don't think there's any other questions. Sorry. Help. Never mind. Sorry. I think I should be more clear. Yeah. Okay. Page of this. Oops. Not 30. So we're moving to page 30 in the packet. This is the building budget for two-linked. All's good. Just go on. Six thousand bucks, guys. We've got to do something to that, Sarah. We'll get there. Yeah. So the building's budgets overall, these are really trying to follow actual, actual data that we've been seeing. The two-linked budget was big change last year because we've sort of had one human in here for a couple of years there, and now that's, we're way more populated in here. So that's kind of overall. Anything else to either of you point out about? On two-linked system because of the renovation and obviously becoming a city and the additional people using it and the way that the building's used. It should very hard to, I think we've done a good job of the data that we've had to try to put together an expectable budget, take care of the building moving forward, but there's, we're still not exactly sure when we're starting construction and that will affect some of the services that we put into the building during those times. So I feel like if the construction gets to later moved up or this budget will get us through that process. Any questions on that one? Can you just remind us of the anticipated timeline that has exists now for this building? I was going to say, we just recently had a meeting and we have put down on a gas pedal so that we can get that answer. Unfortunately, we're relying on a lot of information that needs to come in. We are pushing for a start of April, April or May. And until we get all of our ducks in a row to know exactly what the project looks like and what has kind of cost us, I think in the budget, you've already seen that the first review came over what we have allotted for it. We just went back in for a meeting. We are cutting things that we feel like we can live with and still produce a very functional administrative building for the city to do what they need to do. So we believe we need to be firm but we believe that we found a considerable amount of that money that we were over. And we still need to do a little bit of fine-tune cone but we did kind of reach out to the entire team and say we need to manage this. We still want to start this in April and if we have to bleed into a little bit of May but obviously we have some people that need to know when the building is going to close and that's what we told them. We can't look. I can't say, hey, guess what we found out. You're out next week and figure out we can't do that. So we put our foot on the gas pedal and we are pushing the team right now pretty hard to get us the answers that we need so that we can provide you with the answers to you. But could we confidently say because we do have people relying on us giving them some timelines of even if we can't put a specific date to it, confidently say that the work will not start in quarter one. Sorry. The calendar year, Q3 of fiscal year. So is that something that we can say? Because again, as it's been communicated to probably almost all of us and all of us at some point or another they're filling out a loop. Can we give them at least the update that we're looking at the meeting? There is no way we can start the project before you. Is that what you're asking? Yeah, I believe that's what was said to us last night. There is no way we can start the project before you. So I think that communication is already in the works. Yeah, yes, we can communicate. I just am hesitating because I think I said April at the earliest already. But I will double check that because, yeah, you did. Yes, I did. At the earliest, yes, at the earliest. And if I had to guess, it's going to be late for almost half a year. That is not an accurate answer right now. But I really feel confident from the meeting that we have the other day with our team that we are going to get some responses and some answers. And hopefully in January, we will have a lot more information to speak more intelligently about the plan moving forward. Do we know if Essex Chips has found a place to go yet? Not that I'm aware of. OK, which one's next? It's just a quick question to Lincoln. He said, I expect we need to pull out the basement. What the heck? Like, is it an inert floor down there? So downstairs in the basement, there is a collection of a lot of materials and items that have been left over. There's probably paint from 1879 down in there. Store down in there. I don't know. I don't know. I've been down there. I was reading. I read it. OK, so so there's there's historic documents down there. Do we need to like deal with that? There's no sort of documents. OK, it's more leftover products from just the natural maintenance and the operation throughout. I feel like there are some. I think I saw a box of button blanks that probably came from something that we did years ago. They sit on a shelf down there. So it's just a matter of having people with their historical knowledge of a building and going to the barrier now worth it. OK, I was just like, I didn't know he had a dirt face. But like, what is that? Not a dirt basement. There's just a lot of down to breathe it. Well, look with a beanbag chair and go to the target place. And then we get it out. We also have cannons using some storage space down there. Probably doing some storage down there. They've already moved their stuff out of there. And anticipation of the renovation to make room for all of that work to happen. So they can sell storage. You're running in front of that. Speaking of our footboard. Right on the corner. OK, so Brownhouse Buildings Library didn't have any questions on on that. Anything you want to point out on that one, Harlan? You've got three minutes just saying that. Yeah, I was sitting there watching it like that's going to work out. You take some of my time, I might be right back. Look at the last picture of the storm, why are you not? Got all two seconds. Yeah, I'm just going to say no to Ricky. So it's right back. I was going to say, there's nothing in particular that I wanted to point out if there are any questions about it on the building side of the thing. When the roof issue is in the maintenance fund, yeah, building maintenance, and the building maintenance budget. Yeah, which is the lab page or what we're going to talk about. So, so are you asking for any of the buildings or can we just jump to that building maintenance fund? We were going to go through the bill. And I just have a question about the fire department just says, you know, I need to look at electrical in the future. I kind of remember dealing with some electrical in the fire department, two of your budget cycles. I don't even do all that. So there's no more. I have to go on speed on with that. Three budget cycles ago, I wouldn't be able to speak to. Unfortunately, unfortunately, but as you are aware, the buildings position is new and it started when we were trying to figure out that it started with another entity. And then I've taken it on. So there's not a lot of historical knowledge in this head as to what was planned for, what was done previously, other than whatever records I've been able to find through. What I did notice in the process of trying to remember what project it was that I was working on. There's some issues with the electrical panel that I would like to have corrected moving forward. And I almost think that it's a panel that is the company that made it is no longer in business, but I would have to confirm that. I don't believe it's extensive electrical. Like we're not ribbon wires out and completely redoing wires. It's more about making sure that the panel is accurate in its description and that it's up to code. OK, what do you want to do as a building manager? I just have something on the building maintenance fund. Again, as we're looking at it, it's possibly cut. If you are honest opinion, as someone who is a building's person, does the entrance really need to be changed to accommodate for the fact that there's stuff falling off the roof? Or can something be put on the roof to defer where the stuff is falling to? At least in an inner room. So then maybe in five, ten years, there's another conversation about how to make that building more broadly compliant. What needs to be done right now is the roof needs to be replaced. It needs to have its life back and see it's completely gone. Um, we are well, it's not completely done. We've got about a year and a half left on it before we cut some railways. And I believe you are aware that the materials on some of that roof needs to be specially handled to be removed. That is a definite. There's no question that's going to be done soon. Is that the whole roof, Harlan, or just just the front? So it is the the 1970 edition and the 2000 edition, both of those. The 1970 edition was done with a roof that has a 50 to a 60-year height of tenancy and the 19 or the 2000 edition at the standard 20-year chingles that's on that. And we interestingly enough, they're all coming to do at the same time within about a year or each other. So those particular items need to be taken care of. Wendy has brought up a concern with the way that that front area is being managed and the way to continue moving that forward and basically kicking and down the road. But the answer is it does need to be done. The new roof, the new entrance and the 88 issues that we were up against on that building do need to be done to kick the hand down the road. It is going to require more labor and attention to detail to address the concerns that we are or one of the concerns that we are trying to address that Wendy has noted, which is in the winter time, it can be very difficult in that area to maintain that walkway in and out of the building in its safest condition. So I'm not sure if we could kick the hand down the road. To just replace the roof and not do the not to the entrance relocation. There's a piece of the roof that we are in the process of investigating that we may bring back with some of today's newer technology. It's a piece that failed, which is to catch water. It failed years ago and created more damage inside of the library because of the way that it was designed with today's technology. There are some things that we could add to that, which would be part of the roof. As you're tearing it all apart, that would be the time to do it. It would not be something that you would want to come back to be later on as part of the project. So I would be curious from a budget perspective, what it would do to the budget to only replace the roof and not redo the entrance, which just had the aside. Somebody in a wheelchair needing to go to the back, they don't only have to go up the the driveway that's by make a burst that can absolutely go the other way, which is by the steam. And in terms of whether or not that's safe or not, we don't really control the height of that driveway. So, yes, it's unfortunate that half of the driveway is not as far as a little of the steam, but it's not in both sides. What is the separate cost of the entrance repair? Like, is that what you're asking? What will we be deducting from this cost if we didn't do the entrance? As you know, the beds that came in were wildly different. I would comfortably want to keep two thirds of that budget. And even then, I would be a little very only because I don't know what the market's doing. There are the three hundred for the entrance, not for for so it's the three hundred is a roof and it's a complete package at the moment. And that's the dollar value that we have attached to it. And the process of trying to bring it into being an ADA compliant. There is a substantial redesign that would have to happen to the front landscaping area, right, which could potentially make us short on the three hundred thousand dollars as well. But we're trying to put it together as one package, which at that point, I think we would be able to estimate what each piece of that package costs. But the roof along because of the amount of square footage that we're covering. And from the inside, I've seen a little bit of damage to some of the plywood areas that are probably going to need to be addressed. And then to try to help with addressing when he's concerned of winter travel through in and out of that area. I think a combination of bringing that gutter system back in if it's viable. There's still some research that needs to be done on that. If that's a viable option, I think that will help us. But there's also going to be more man hours and more paying attention on public work part or the library part, which they've been doing. They've been going out and consulting their own. And they're saying that it's washing away in certain situations. So it could be kicked out of the road. It's obviously it's one where it depends on what you guys want to go. And what type of roof are we putting on this facility? I have this portion of it is historical. So it has we're not touching that roof, which is the very front part of the building. OK, yeah. Because in thinking about this, too, I mean, in doing a project like this, are we replacing it with another 20, 50 year or 100 year steel? Most of you most of your your outfall shingles that you're putting on are 25 to 30 year warranties, manufacturing one key. So that's the expected placement, not actually manufacturing warranty that that one good time. That's what we'll be putting on. Something that I would like to do in the future that I'm doing over at Maple Street Park is not to replace that massive amount of roof in one budget cycle. What we've done over at Main Street Park, all of the buildings have come due over there. And I started there. I started three years before their life expectancy was out, and we started replacing it in sections. And over this year, this budget cycle, next budget cycle, we will get all those done. I spread it out over five years to try to keep those costs. Why not replace it with a material that will last a little longer? Like I said, the steel roof is 100 years. Gale roof, because of the way that it's pitched and the way that people go in and out of the building is no real way to protect, help fast. And because there are massive roofs, how fast? Snow slide, nice slide would come off of that. You would need something that would maintain it. So if you went to steel, there are pieces, what are they called? Stables. Yeah. You can put on a steel roof that will help maintain that there. Yeah. I have one on my house. Which adds to the cost. The copper roof on that, what's on here? You know, it's from the old kind of thing, you would cross that if it goes hangers up there. Yeah, do they cross staples then or break one piece? Yeah, yeah. I can say it still shoots right off there. Yes, we see that. Wakes you right up. No, I totally have to take a scan. I have a metal roof in my own home and I have those. But I also know that there's a couple of different styles, like the kind that I have above my entryway of my door is a bar in order to, again, keep the slides from happening off over the door. And it does a very good job of that. Whereas I also have some that are just basically pegs like this. They look like little tees in order to kind of hold it back a little. But yes, slides happen. That's on other portions of the roof that people aren't walking in there. So but I, you know, so I'm thinking not just about I don't know what the impact on cost would be, but I'm thinking about the long term of having a roof that we don't have to replace in 20, 30 years. If you went to a metal roof, you're going to get an additional 30, 20 to 30 years of life out of that. For how much? How much additional? Well, the percentage was, yes, 30 to 50 percent. I was going to say you're probably at least at least in that ball range. 30 to 50 percent more. And so the savings, it sounds like just to sum up the savings on not doing the entryway is not super significant that would benefit. I mean, because the other thing I'm thinking is that is the back entrance idea compliant back entrance. So putting a sidewalk around the road around that corner down the garden. It feels like 50 feet in my head to get people is the other thing that's not great. Trying to figure out where you're coming from. Are you coming from the back part? A lot to come around the side of the bus station. That was the example given or so somebody gets off the bus with it. Meaning accessibility assistance in there. They're wheeling a wheelchair up and bringing around the back. So we don't have to be able to find the problem. There's no real space between the fire department and the you know, the current is tiny, isn't it? Yeah. So there's no space to leave the road and add a sidewalk to pitch. They do it out to you. So the money that you're going to spend to do that is better invested into the other. All right. You have something. So I was just going to say does it make cost wise sense to do the two versus because like with contractors, when we talk about like doing the sidewalks and also doing the road, like there's a cost savings and then being there. Absolutely, there's a cost savings to do it all with one project. They call it mobilizing and demobilizing. So they got to come in. They've got to do the setup. They've got to and to be perfectly honest with you. The way that the new entrance group that is designed. We're going to put a brand new roof on there. And then three years later, we're going to cut into that brand new roof to attach this new roof that's going to go on to it. So yeah, there are there are definitely some benefits to doing it all at the same time. And the piece that we're kicking down the road, nobody ever goes down. And we ever goes down three percent on their cost, say, well, three percent. So you're adding additional monies to those same projects that you're going to pick down the roadways. Yeah. And I just want to point out, so this is the building maintenance fund. What you're seeing there in FY 24 is there, basically. What we what impact this would have on the general fund is if you look at FY 25 and you don't want to put 50,000 from the general fund into this building maintenance fund in FY 25. And that would essentially we could, in theory, keep the 300,000 for the roof entrance project. But it's the carpets that would be. So the carpets would be done next year, which out to a future year. Yeah. What kind of condition are those? And I mean, and do they have to be or is this just a strong desire? They're dated for sure. And I know that there are issues with them like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Last time they were done, Penny was the director. I remember that was a while ago when he's been with us for how long? Ten years? I'm not even sure, to be honest. It happened when we were on the trustees. So it was within the last 12. Yeah. And there is, you know, the traffic. So it was only as it was on the carpet that you probably remember is most recent one that they've done, which is an upper level, which is carpet tile. Not the carpet set there that they're suggesting here are the rooms that didn't get done then. So it was a few years back, even further than that, that those kind of it's where it's very possible that I don't know that it's restored. But that carpets in the two thousand. And it is a carpet from two thousand. Yeah. OK. OK. I'm good. Nothing else? I think that affects the other buildings. Fun question. I mean, not budget questions. OK. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Can I make a general request? I think I might have said this to you directly, Regina. I would love to see something that brings all the funds. Together, like the transfers that we do. I know that we have a transfer coming up, but like I would like to see it on a regular basis, like that we have rolling stop transfers. We have capital fund. We have economic development and have a building maintenance fund. Like what are all the funds that we are sending money aside to every year? Can we see those all in one place? That would be a really helpful aggregate. It's sort of in that transfer sheet right now with the exception of the two transfers to rolling stock that come from the public works and fire budgets directly. I don't understand the value of having them in those department budgets. I think it makes sense to move those transfers to the transfer sheet so you can see everything in one place. I was just following what historically had been done, but I can make that change. I just think it would be helpful to see it all in one place. That would make it a real asset. OK. I don't ever. Well, no. Somebody thought it was going through my mind. And we know we're going to have problems on behind the scenes. I saw Sam. We're not going to explain that. Yeah. All right. All right, let's get back on track here. We're going to get back on track. Alboros is where we're going to get back on track. I'm angry. Yeah, that's when I've been eating all morning long. It's like a building with a phone work building. I didn't hear that one. That's why you're sitting there now. It's your turn. It's your turn. When are we going to step on? It's sunny, right? That's why you're going to be with me. Yeah, yeah, I've got to get a hand on that. OK, so the cost increases in Ricky's budget. Really, there are some significant ones. They are called out on your front sheet, but this this one's a real struggle because these are costs are really going up. Also, just so you're aware, we've been trying to replace two vehicles and your next like we came in order to them. We've been trying to replace a dump truck and a regular pickup truck to pick up. I'm sorry, one of them. I think that's the first three. Yeah, yeah. So the maintenance budgets for the vehicles are. Yeah, it's wicked. We do that. Yeah, it's a technical term. It is. We do. We do that. We get hard to get parts. We get hard to get them in and they keep them forever. So also the cost of paving is going up. So but that was the of the three kind of big lines that were going up in Ricky's budget. We thought we could at least bring the pavement one back down. Yeah, I realized that by the only one that really takes money out of the ambulance. It's they are what they are. You've got to be able to stand. We've got to solve the roads. Well, usually the solvent and the pavement are my big numbers in that budget. But now the vehicle maintenance is starting to creep up. I'm not creep up there. Jump up there with the vehicle down. Yeah. And we're doing some road stops. We're reading our road stop numbers this year. And it's an unbelievable amount that they've gone. I remember buying we purchased a dump truck in Plough and we did everything for 130, 140. Now they're going to like to send me. It's just 10, 12 years. And it's like a hundred thousand dollars. It's just crazy money. That's a great question. You remind me what is in the rental of Lander buildings? What we're renting? Some of that is the railroad right of ways. The leases that you have. There's some that falls under a couple of works and some falls under water. Sanitation funds. Professional services. And words. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that there's an increase there, too, because the Capital Committee has been meeting regularly for the first time in several years. Yeah. The the Civil Construction Services, I did know here the 20,000 was paid from a lot of funds. But I'm curious. I mean, is this suggesting that we might do that again? I'm just wondering why we're going to put the 320 in this budget. And then if we wish as a council to, you know, use a lot of funds for these particular line items, then we would do that at this point. The students will suggest that we're already going to do that. So we put 320 in originally. Yeah. And as a group, we decided to reduce it to three before it came to you because of that lot transfer that happened. From the sidewalk to the bus street. Yes. Yeah, so it gives them more money to do that sidewalk on West. Right. Our guys bought it the other day. It was nice. Solved it. Well, it's a slip. I think it's a little piece of sidewalk on the side. Yeah. So we're just trying to explain here in this note that the actual budget in FY24 is not really true because we had pulled for some extra lot funds to make that FY24 paving contract whole. Are you saying would you put summer, would you just put the 300,000 summer construction under the lot? Is that what you're saying? No, I'm just trying to understand exactly. Is this truly reflecting all the costs? Because it sounded like it's $320,000. I'm sorry, I just read it. It's suddenly truly $320,000. But in the past, we've done this $20,000 coming out of a lot. So that helps me understand it a little bit better. We're going to talk later on today about a lot policy for capital on the side. One policy is part of a lot. And those are two areas where we've talked about just keeping those to a specific level. Yes, I agree. I think, Ricky, I'm about to say something and no idea if it's correct. So FY24, the paving we just did, we included a sidewalk. Typically, this line would only be roads and not sidewalks? Yes. Yeah, no way things worked out this year. It was a paid sidewalk that we could do to pave it. And then with the amount of complaints we had on it, we did it until back and forth and we ended up packing it on there. And the prices where they came in, the new nice folks came with a little bit of extra money. I mean, it's something little, but maybe it's the same question. But the sidewalk and curb maintenance at six, I mean, it's small. That's more for our work that we do. OK, so not pulling it out of the law. The new policy. All this is for us. If somebody wants to drive away or something, and a lot of times, we're going to fix the sidewalk. So they don't have a great evasion. Not so great as I thought. Great evasion. So they have an ace and two to each other. That's where a lot of that money goes. OK. And that's work that's done in college. Yeah, too. The other thing going back to something I said earlier, Ken, on your defining success and measuring success, I'm wondering if we can come up with some real, again, real specifics, real measurements in some way to again define even if that's, again, identifying meaning clear for residents. This is how many, this is the miles of sidewalk we have. This is the miles of sidewalk we've left. Whatever those factors are, I just began to reiterate for the public and for our understanding about the amount of work that's going in from our public works department in order to support the city. This is something I don't know if you've all talked about before. I know I've talked originally about. But yeah, just looking forward to the strategic planning process, really being able to identify those markers at this time of year. People can look. Maybe there's a static dashboard right up there. Maybe there's something twice a year we can do with how we're doing, how you know, how is this impacting your quality of life? What are those values? And I think every department will have different ones, potentially. And then when we go back to this time in future years, we can look at some of those and say, we're still facing challenges here. We need to focus on here. And people really understand where their money's going. I think, yeah, there's a number of years if we can get something like that going. Yeah, and I totally agree, Marcus. I think this was a good first step this year just to get the department heads writing this down. Like what happened in looking back? What are your goals going forward? And then the metrics, I think, will be. That's the hardest part, right? How do you define that and figure that out? And so I think we can improve that with the new system once we just, like you said, get annual work plans in place and do that much better going forward. Never get your hands on your head. This isn't really a tricky question, but I'm wondering if we really need 10,000 entry advisory every single year. Well, no. I know. I know. Careful. Yeah, here. Nathan's going to be unhappy to show that. Yeah, I'm going to just practice it if I have that for a lot of these other, these things that you consistently just put stuff in as opposed to not weighing the need of whether you're legally it or not. So, yeah. Will you do it at some time too? Yeah. And be honest with you. Are you going to be honest with me? Be honest. Be honest with you. Well, yeah, 2023 it was like, you know, it was almost all spent. And as of today, according to the November numbers that we have, there's no money spent in that. And that money traditionally seems to be spent in the spring. Like it's spent at the end of the spring. Yeah. Yeah. The way I think that we need to get that to do with. With Burlington. Yeah. Yeah, that's going to save some money there. Yeah. I'm not saying don't put, I don't put anything in there. I'm just wondering if we could have it or something like, you know, just to, just to save a little bit of, I mean, do we need to put in 45 trees every year, or can we put in 15 or 20 and be okay with it? I don't know the answer to that. Just throwing it out. Or do we take, or do we take tree and black, like walk, for instance, or whatever else. And we just, instead of having those types of specifics, we have a, this is split ball, and we have a grand matching fund that can go to wherever the grants that they, you know, because I know in bike walk, we didn't really do anything unless we got a grand match. Right. So if we wanted our graphical book, we can, we sometimes would get them installed, right? But often it would be, can you find a grant and we'll match it, really leveraging that five or 10 grant. So I just wonder, you know, not maybe not for this year, but then something to think about, like, instead of giving each of these committees that we... I don't know what the tree community is. Of course it would be ash trees. Yeah. They've got a big plant, so. Yeah. Yeah. That's going to be a good week with a, you know, when we try to help them out as much as possible, once we can cut down ourselves, we will cut the ice, but then ground the stones. Yeah. And then they can replace those trees and it wouldn't be able to burn and then reach out or branch out and it won't take long. I think that's right. Yeah. Yeah. There are two branch managers. Yeah. They don't get the wrong greens. There's a lot there. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I looked at bike walk and the money there too as well. And is there any ability, I mean, to try to scale this back a little bit when you haven't spent any of it. So I think I come at this from, again, at a different angle, which is like, you give me $10,000. I am sure as heck, we're going to spend $10,000. If you give me five, then I'm going to spend five. But like, if you're not identifying to me, you need $10,000, then I don't know why we're just giving you $10,000. So, I mean, we all spend within our needs, right? And then some. And we had to go again, some of that, and we had to retrieve a tool for stuff. Yeah. That, you know, in the street side of it, we will take some of that money. Yeah. I have a question and totally understand. I think it's more a question for them than it is for us as to whether there is any be real in answering the question. Honest answer. Yeah. I think more. Yeah. There is also the Tree City, USA designation of the tree city. Yeah. Part of that does relate to the budget. I don't recall $10,000 was the minimum in order to be considered a tree city or not. But I don't get the question. I require them to. For the bike, this mission of Destrin and Biker, just let me just bike designation. There was, there was a delineation and the awards you received for whether there was an actual commitment from the Spenny and Nistog and my initial terms. Yeah. Yeah. I guess the other thing I'm wondering, too, is this just came up and we're talking about, we were talking about what should be retrieved some time. And I saw the streetlight supplies. Would that include maintenance and replacement and things like that? I think there's like rusted out streetlight bases or other things. Is that in that line or is that different? Yeah, I think it is on the second page. You could just stand. Okay, then. Do the board right up there. Okay, that's what you need to know. Right here. Put your bottom, let's say thank you. Yeah. That's the brown one. That's the brown one. Yes. Yeah. I'm gonna put that in the buzzer again. So it could have been so I have the brown. A lot of the brown electrics, we see they fix some of the gas lamps and the old bulbs that are in there. Every time when those go down, we get a retrofit to the LEDs. So I guess the questions we have, we appear just in my strolling around town to start, to need to address some maintenance on some of these. I mean, what are strolling? Okay, here. All right, you didn't notice that? I thought I saw these bottles and I thought it doesn't, but I must have been looking. Oh, no, no, no, no. You just created the ones right at the page that's the traffic. We had two guys. I don't remember that because we got the lines painted. Yeah, look what you started about. Once you've got the lines painted and you spent a while just being able to specifically get all the way on each side. And I'm driving up the road street, I'm going like, I don't know, black guys, they don't care, I don't know what to say. Those are painted. They'll be driving down here and we had them all painted up. Going through the bases and the five corners and up the road and hold up all the gas and had them touched up. So yeah, we'll just point you to recognize that the eagle eye being. You just bring water. That's enough to say. I'm a little bit hurt, but you know what? I'm okay. I'm getting a lot thicker skin and I get older. Then when we had, they were personally painted in 2023. Whoa, let me see. You're going to try and bail them out? No. I'm going to throw my own grenade and see how much you are as good as I am. I think it's that skin rig. I did have this experience again, driving the winter hours. I could start a little bit earlier, but on West where those lights are dimmer than they used to be, I think for the years past. Yeah. And they're so, and they're high. So what I noticed for people who are walking is for as many lamps as there are going down West, there's a lot of dark spaces. It's not, so I get to the point where my experience either walking or driving down there is that there's not enough light. If the intention is to light those sidewalks and keep them lit for people who are walking on those sidewalks, there's not enough light. Okay. We can add more. But I also wonder if they just need to be lower than that. I hope we get lower. I can check with three amount of power. Yeah, we rent those. The city rents those from three amount of power. So we can, if we want more, we can add more. Well, we have to get the board's approval first. We've done this in effect. Totally understand that. But the other question is obviously it also, we also paid for that. And so I wonder if there is a specific need, what is the specific need of lighting the West Street walkway in comparison to any other street? So there's, The sidewalks lit, I just don't know. Yeah. Yeah, there's street lamps along West, on the, on the, on the, on the barrels. And so there's a portion of me again, because of the fact that they're so dark there, I wonder if we even need them, we can save that, that money. Then if, but if we do feel that we need them, as per the, should there be effects, that is not about you, but skinny blitz. Well, I want to know. Oh, there's a particular spots that are, that are dark and someone requested it. And we, we look at that request, check with GMD, and then we get your board. That's very late. So it's amazing. I can drive from it. You wait, man. Yeah. Wait, you wait. But you don't rise. You're not going to want to know that. You could say that. Well, I need to fix that. Yeah. Yeah. We get to do the day. Oh. So, you know. And again, I'm usually with fingers again. Very good. Let's do that. Let's go. That's it. That's it. That's good. Yeah. Okay. Chelsea. Welcome. Fred. Thank you, Rick. All right, Dan. All right. You're all warmed up. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. Yeah. I don't know if it is from our team. Yes. Yeah. Watch out, guys. So, like, that is the case. That's it. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. No, thanks. All right. So, this budget is, it has a giant yellow section. It's very colorful. So, this is confusing. It was confusing to sort of figure out how best to put this in here. And in a different way, we did the rental registry. We're much further along on the rental registry, so we sort of just included it into the community development fund. This is a totally different thing. We're talking about its potential store monitor utility. And there are additional costs. If we view the stormwater utility, there's also a revenue stream that will come in for that. But stormwater is, our management of stormwater is dictated mostly by a state of Vermont permits that we are responsible for. And so we have a true costs, whether we move to utility or not. Some of Chelsea's time is in this budget. It was last year as well. And then if we are able to get to a stormwater utility, the idea is that we would bring out a full-time person. So, essentially, in Chelsea's old life, when Jim was here, she did stormwater work. She's still doing it now while she's being the new Jim's job. So it's a big lift and a lot we've got to do here. So those are sort of just the overarching statements I'll say. Anything more specific, either of you want to add? That's a good start. Yeah. I know we had, we hired, we got some work done from the consultant on the stormwater utility. Right. Yeah. No. That's going to be on your agenda next week. Okay. At the city council meeting. We haven't, it's a long story. But we're still meeting next week. Yeah. The timeline originally with them is we were hoping to get it by July. It doesn't usually have been running, but my colleagues in other communities said we're crazy to do that fast. So, you know, as fast as we can, but make sure we get public engagement and everything. So we have support and it's successful. Can I, can I ask for like a quick reasoning as to why. What do you mean, but we want for any suitability. So, big picture, we are required to manage the stormwater that comes off of our roads and our properties. That is at a cost to us in terms of infrastructure and best management practices in order to deal with that. So, you know, our other communities have set up a utility because just like any other utility or we're bringing you water, we're taking your waste away. That is a utility that we're providing and it costs us money. There is. There are different ways to do a utility because if you are a bigger property owner and you have a lot of impervious surface on your property. That is a bigger stormwater management effort than less. So it's it should be a different fee for residential versus some other property owners and so there's sort of. There's a lot to think about in the utility in order to make sure it's a fair and equitable system. But there's not a meter like we have for water where we're charging somebody a specific amount of water there use it. The other thing is there's a timeline on it. So, we're required. Now, of course, I'm not going to remember the exact date. So I think it's 2030 around there. We have to reduce. Maybe it's 2035. But it's about 10 years or so out we have to reduce the amount of stormwater for phosphorus in our stormwater to which template by 25%. We have no way to find capital for stormwater that previously sat in the town budget and was paid through that system. So in separation, we have no source now. So, can I ask a question of how this would impact the average resident so we are currently paying our water bill. And then the current expense of this wastewater facility and stormwater facility is coming out of our general fund budget or from our budget and our property taxes. So adding utility as it remove the cost from the. There's no stormwater. It's a separate. Okay, so residents are not already paying for that, except through their property taxes. They're paying for it. So this would be a separate charge to every household for the utility. But it would not be a reduction in anything that they were paying for what the way they're paying now. Right, because we're not paying for it. Well, right. This is what we are in the general fund, right, but there's no, we have no money to do the stormwater infrastructure projects that we need. Okay, forward. So this won't change the current what we're paying for the services in the budget, not the yellow part, this won't necessarily change. If we add a utility, there will be an extra charge on taxpayers just for the utility. I just want to understand, but it should offset support from this general fund. That's right. It's good also a little okay, okay, so it's not necessarily just an add on. It is going to offset some of the costs that we already currently paying. Right, because some of the costs that you see in the white column will shift to the utility out of the general fund. That's what I wanted to understand. Okay, potentially, potentially be paid by people that don't currently pay it. So if you're a tenant with a water bill. Yeah, right. I'm assuming it's going on the water bill. It'll be a separate bill, but same. Yeah. So we go to different different suppliers. Yeah, yeah. And will it global pay for that property. They do their own storm water or they're going to be impacted by this as well. We've not gotten that far. Okay, but there's going to be commercial rates. And so they have their own permit. I don't think I think they must have their own permit because that's not included in ever modeling or anything. So they would be technically, potentially wouldn't be included in this. Yeah. But to go to the original question though, the two hundred and whatever it is, it's in the white here or coming out of general fund that all should be moved into the utility. Yes. So that in terms of playing the original question, yes, there should be a reduction in how I would be paying property taxes once we get the utility going. It'll just be moved over to a different bill. Right. Thank you. That's, that's what I want to be able to explain to my neighbors. Yes. Wait, why are we doing this? What does this mean to me? Yes. Okay. So we never did this before. FY 24 is the first time we have a storm water budget in play on the city side. So overall, I would say we're a storm water and what we have to do for it is completely underfunded in FY 24. So that's what we're going to be able to do. Totally. Like the expense side is so ultimately the costs of this program are will increase. Whether you have the utility or not. Right. Right. So maybe somebody's tax bill will go down $5, but this utility fee is going to be probably more than $5. Okay. Yeah. And it wouldn't be until after the utility is created, which is not going to be here. Yes. So really we're talking about. No, I know. That's what fiscal year that we're talking about. The goal is that it will be standing at some point in FY 25. I think that's very doable. We were hoping to get it to the start and I don't think that's a good case. Thank you for walking us through that. Yeah. It's important. Yeah, it's very confusing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what we're looking at in a way here is what we need for this next fiscal year. And that's kind of. That's a happy place ish. Compared to what we did this current fiscal year, which was. Sorry, nothing. Yeah. This should, this budget then based on the assumption that partway through the year. You know what I'm asking. So if we do, if we approve this as presented. And then in January of 26, the stormwater utility goes into play. Then they'll be. They'll be saving savings. Okay. All right. On the general fund. Right. And then a new bill on the other side. I don't know why to do that. Sorry. No. So the sooner that happens, then the less of a taxi increase. Yes. Yes. Okay. And Jess, were you just saying this bottom line on the F. 25 is correct or it's. Yeah. So the bottom line here in the white is what is included in the general fund total right now. Thus calculating the tax rate. Okay. So what's over here in the yellow is just them aside. It's just a note. And essentially this. If we did what's in the yellow, it's going to be $123,000 more than what we're doing. Proposing right now. But it would be offset. We just don't know what that revenue is yet. And most of those costs. Okay. Yeah. It's forming the utilities of vote. We don't have to vote. We don't have to vote for the utility. Now we checked on that. Can I ask about the contract enhancements for billing. The building process. I'm curious about. What were those enhancements that. Yeah. We should have given them that. Today. You're getting the memo for next week's packet, but. They. I'll just go. I'll just say right now. Proposal received. But they are. They're focused in their firm is creating storm or utilities and water. And so they originally submitted a contract or proposal that came in like $100 under our original budget. It was a regular budget of 17,000 and that was the funds from the PCV settlement. That was your mark. For the utility. And then as part of that, they had a bunch of like. Future or possible scope enhancements based on what I like only what I laid out on. And so really what most of that cost is going to be is improving the GIS layer, which is the mapping layer that a lot of utilities are built on as per base surface. And so. They looked at what's already out there for a six junction. And for example, the church down the street. The previous layer showed like the lawn too, which then if you, if you're creating a utility based on that, it's not fair to, or to not be very accurate. So they're going to do a lot of data correction. In order to be. The best possible. Rate to be fair. So that's most of that. And then the other is they're going to create a great calculator so that in the future, like, I can work with Jess and we can adjust if we need to adjust the utility rate. We don't need to go out for consult necessarily. We can just use this calculator that they formed for us in the process. This is a one time. Yes. But that's, you'll see that's in the white budget too, because we need it anyways. To get this going. Questions on this one. Okay. We are. No. We could do a working one. And while we will have to do working, like we've got our executive sessions starting at 1210. So we'll get your food. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for being. So. I'm not worried. I'll bring that. I know. Not to you. And we are on to Jess. Thanks. Thanks. Finance. Finance. Okay. All right. So. You've got your summary in the narrative document as well that talks about the notable changes. The. The big point to make in here is. So, and correct me as I get this wrong, Jess. Your FY 24 budget. Had a full time. Administrative person in it. This was in wastewater and they did some public works stuff. We had that person also take on the utility billing process. That person. Left. And. We. Figured out the best way to kind of handle this. It seemed like that wasn't a great solution for a number of different reasons. So. We went part time position. Co-op is on utility billing under the finance department. And both admin pieces for wastewater and public works. Are just like very minor hours. So both people who used to do some of that work for both of those departments have kind of just come in and. Stepped up temporarily to just do some of that admin side of the work. So. The thinking now is that billing coordinator person. There's all a lot going on even today. And we're talking about potentially storm water utility. And we're talking about other fee structure that has to. Be figured out on the record registered site. Thanks. So the, what you've got in front of you now is the full time position department budget. But your FY 24. Budget. Had this full time position. In there. In a different department. Which department. It was split between water, wastewater, sanitation and streets. So there's no change. Essentially. Yeah. So some of those budgets do. Are billed separately in a water bill. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. It's a mess. Trying to explain it. So. Because finance also finance as a whole the department is part of that general fund. It's still an increase of one FTE. Globally for the city. There are things moving around so that there's a little bit of an increase cost. To finance. And through that also to the enterprise funds because. That person will also be able to finance. So is that why there's only a 26% change? No. Okay. The 20s. So. That 26% change. Is. Does reflect the one FTE. Does that change the dollar amount change doesn't sound like a. Salary and fringe for one FTE. It is salary. Not. Yeah. So, and fringe is changing because. Insurance. Like you'll see group insurance is only going up. 10, just under 10%. That's because there are changes in what staff are electing for benefits next year. So there was like a health plan that went from a family. Is there, I think you just mentioned that that. Full time position might be doing the storm water billing as well. So is there a potential of shifting some of that? Yes. To our conversation. We have a lunch. Okay. Yes. But we have to buy with this and then hope for it's kind of like with a lot. We don't, we're not budget. We didn't budget anything for a lot because we had no idea what that it was near one. And then moving forward. We are. Yep. Anyone? What's the, I know you like colors. Is there a particular reason why you like the yellow color under, is that just a row of color? It's just a row of color that catches my attention. The quickest as I'm flipping through all these spreadsheets to remind me that I need to look at something. Gotcha. So like the yellow, if you see yellow in any of these spreadsheets, it's because there are numbers that I still need to look at. These are just estimates at this point. So like the one you're looking at in the finance budget. Is for all of our subscriptions for the. Committee members, did we have on the capital committee before? We have five. We now have seven. And those additional to raise. Amounts. $3,400. Because for five people, we. Pay out $750 a month. So. The one you're looking at in the finance budget. Is for all of our subscriptions for the employees to run. Okay. Committee members. Did we have on the capital committee before? We have five. We now have seven. And those additional to raise. We have five people. We paid out $750. And now we're paying 4,200. We're having more meetings. We're having more meetings. What happens when you have a reasonably. You know, people apply. Right. Thank you. It makes sense to. Yeah. Yes. So speaking in a different language. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. We are on the January agenda for the capital committee is discussion about reducing down to quarterly meetings. Because we've done a lot of catch up work and there's really. Amber and I don't really see any progress. Monthly. So we're, we're going to talk with the. Committee about changing to quarterly with additions as needed. Like, we have a project that comes before us. So we can reduce that number. Potentially. And we did. We just, and I have talked about, but Amber, maybe not for you is if the, so that sidewalk policy is. Need some work. And so it may be a good place for the capital review committee to take the first look at. That policy. Well, having not sat on. The council slash trustees at the time that that was adopted. I think the first step is going to be. The city council needs to look at it and be like, are we talking about just minor tweaks? Or are we talking about like some serious major overhaul on that? And then yes, but I still think that. Quarterly are going to be fine. I mean, I just cannot. I had to, I had to come up with goals for. The reporter and I was like, I just can't even think of anything. We have no projects on the horizon. So. I don't want to meet to just meet. There's no reason to do that. So I'm okay with. Well, you know, I mean, I love to see people, but. Is there a role that you think the capital committee can play in terms of the future with public works and the fire department and space. I mean, I just cannot. I had to come up with goals for. The reporter and I was like, I just can't even think of anything. I don't want to meet with the fire department and space needs. No. Glad I don't know. And that is the only based on what you guys are going to see, which is the revised policy that doesn't have them dealing with buildings. They've never dealt with buildings. Since I have been on the capital committee. And so I don't think that's a position for them to be in. I mean, should they be aware of it going on? Sure. Like everybody else in the city, but no. That's a call that's, so that's, I think we're getting into discussion for next week's meeting that because that's on, that is part of the agenda. And so we can certainly to discuss that from my position on this particular line item, I'd say we assume a quarterly meeting because I don't think there's going to be any pushback there and adjust accordingly. We're rain and numbers and conversation. Yeah, I'm golden year for it. So it was true. I mean, I'm reasonable, right? Okay. Anything else on, on this one. Just a quick question. This chart that was in our binders about the different municipalities. What was the, what prompted this data to be collected? For going to the. Taking this half time position to the full time position in the. Just a time. Yeah. So what these departments are looking like in other municipalities. It was interesting. Thank you. And those are the same communities that were pulled for the salary survey too. So it's. You don't just be really interesting. I'm sorry that I'm interrupting. No, go ahead. I'm interrupting. I was done. I'm just going to interrupt you. What would be really interesting is if the same kind of thing we're done for all of our departments, I think that would be very hopeful. We'll be forward in some of these conversations about. It's in the memo that both right side being our government. Yeah. We're having some comparative. Information would be helpful. Yeah. That seemed really pretty sure for. Yeah. I mean, we could just not pay them. I mean, just on that note, I did ask Jackson, we were starting to sort of like pull all this stuff together and really seeing how low that unassigned fund balance is just. Yeah. So I think that was kind of a question. I just asked generally, where are we in terms of a rule of thumb on debt? Are we okay? Are we a direct capacity? And. We are okay. On. Yeah. And. Which I think is good to know because I think we do have some. Likely big bond projects. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the somewhat near term future. So. We're nowhere near other communities as well as with just. Yeah. Is there. Do you have a calculation of what our capacity is? Or is it just like what we feel we can bear? Yeah. So I know there is a calculation and I can do that. I've got the draft on it back now. So I can do all of those calculations and. You know, I mean, I think we can get a little bit of a memo with kind of a summary of all those different. Indicators. I think that would be really helpful for us going forward. Yeah. I think I'm going to start talking. Just stop. We know. We know earlier. We talked this morning about fire station. We know. So let me do one of them. We don't have that conversation. Let's just try to be longer. Yeah. I can do what Elaine was asking before and move all of the true transfers that we have. I'll move them into this one sheet so that you can see everything in one place. So outside of what's listed here, we have the rolling stock transfer from streets and from fire. So I'll put those in here. We know it before we leave that topic. Yeah. The other thing I'm trying to get a handle on is like all of our funds, like the penny a lot. Yep. Like all of the pools of money we have laying around. I'd love to see all of that. So I do report on those in the monthly financials. Yes. But if it would be helpful, I can do like a quick one page summary that has everything on one page. Yes. And I think that's also something. Residence. We appreciate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And those documents live on our trip one folder. So we can put further than we needed. Yeah. Yeah. You just let us know. We can talk about that later. I'm going to be happy to go up to six. But bless him. Great. Yeah, there are, there's two things on your folder. If you're not aware that you can access it's the agenda planning spreadsheet and it's the code enforcement. Spreadsheet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This job is a lot more involved than it used to be. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just saying. Okay. Can I be the Debbie downer in the room that says that I don't like like you're asking. I don't, I saved. I think I saved us like $2,000. And the budget by two items. And now I want to put the 131 back in. I don't like the not taking the, the putting the full amount for capital transfer. Right. I think, I think we're going to be stuck in this position where we understand that. We just have a significant amount of projects. And while it's nice to have the lot funds. I'm concerned if we don't continue along the track that we're on, that we're going to find ourselves in a bond vote or something a lot quicker than we thought we were going to. So as much as I hate to say that, I think we've got to stay the course on what we've been doing and use the lot fund. It's not saying that we won't use it for capital because that's the intention. But in addition to the money that we're already putting into. So that brings us back up to. Sorry. Yeah. But I think that it relates to that question. Yeah, but I think that it relates to that question without franchising our government and asking ourselves, what is it that we are here for? And what is it that we can get first at long? And we might need to have some bigger conversations about. Yeah. The way we historically done things versus whether we should continue somewhere, all of them going forward. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just think, I know we talked in the capital committee is eating about, like, is there this. Doing this spreadsheet or something that shows, like, if we, if we continue along this course, where at what point are we going to basically run out of the, run out of money to the point where we have to go back out for bond on some of these other things. Again, understanding that we have all these other. Buildings things that are happening. So I hate, I hate to be that one, but I do, I do feel like pretty strongly about putting that back in. Especially because if we don't have the money to do with that, the way the whole thing breaks. Yeah. I mean, we've basically planned out police according to this. 30 and then everything just sort of. Don't look that far. Yeah. I don't disagree. I put it back in. See what I'm saying. Anything else we can do. Yeah. Yeah. Minigate it. Anything. At least for. At least for a placeholder. I don't know how realistic that will be this year. Yeah. Do you want to increase it back to the 531 585 is what you're saying? Where did that come from? So the, the transfer to the capital fund. Was like a 10 or 15% increase each year. So I guess my question is, do you want to keep it at what the current year's transfer is? Or do you want to still assume that 10 or 15% increase? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to increase it back to the 531 585 is what you're saying? Where did that come from? So the transfer to the capital fund. I don't want to assume that 10 or 15% increase annually. Also. Yeah. My position would be to encourage to do the increase, but again, it's inflation, et cetera, that it goes into that discussion. So, but. And originally when we did the. You know, The logic part of it was with the recognition that to help catch up with that underfunding historically that are immediately have done for infrastructure, We're going to see a policy about the lot soon. This. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, there's a lot of fun. There's a lot of fun is going to discuss later. Yeah. And we have some time to kind of once we hear the most folks to kind of see how this impacts start plug into the spreadsheet. Yeah. That will bring us if I did not. Yeah. And then we can talk about Ray for some. Yeah. Without even counting the two brand new. I got some other ideas for later. Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. All right. So the idea. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so this, this budget sucks. It is the high. Your FY 24 budget was put together before we knew what this was going to be. And this is what it is. Okay. Okay. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a contract. Right. Yeah, there's really no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's two or three. Yeah. The start and then it's like one year options. Later. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The intent of this also was the outside consultants instead of reinventing the wheel ticket page of the content expert's piece of having. Yeah. That consultants do this at some point in time, giving us revisiting the conversation about is it ultimately saving us money or do we have a better product by doing this as compared to internal. Yeah. That should absolutely be a part of the conversation when that time comes up. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's helpful background. So I wasn't quite sure that whole, that whole piece. Yeah. And frankly, if we were going to win, and separating from the town, the ability to hire somebody on day one versus contract on day one, it's not easier to go back on day one. This is really a true person for organization this size and our needs and the modern aspect of what we're dealing with. It's a minimum to first job. And this is saving us. We're going to get a lot of money from. It's still the savings over the point to people certified and able to do that. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we're a good space is just there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, is everybody generally happy with. I mean, obviously we're talking about one contract really here. And so everyone seems to be happy with that contract. And despite the cost. Yeah. For the most part, I think, I think it's working well. There's still two big components that we haven't addressed. And I'm not sure we'll address one, but the, the first big one is we still got a lot of Google usage out and about sort of all over. And open approach is a pretty strong in their opinion on how unsecure of a situation that is. So that's, that's still out there. And that might be pain when we get to that. But that's not going to be open approaches fault necessarily. That's just going to be. Hard. And then the other big piece is this is still the libraries is an island. Yeah. The fire department is brought in, which is big. They are super appreciative of that. They've got their officers have email addresses now, like that's really helpful. And. The library, I think. Is an okay situation at the moment. They just do so much other interesting things in that building collectively. And they can do it on their own. They've got the expertise to do it on their own. They would just. Die if they couldn't use Google. And. They're using. They're using Google business suite or something like that for their domain and everything else. Yeah, I feel personally really strongly that we need to be under one umbrella. Yeah. And any other departments that are using Google. Need to stop by a date certain. Yeah. Like. I know a few that I interact with and it's like, no. Yeah. And it also exposes the employee up to their personal. Yeah. I mean, it really is not a great situation for employees generally. Like. Yeah. I just the level of professionalism. I think we need to have just needs to be and if it means more costs, then that's just what it is. Yeah. And it was the cost that we incurred. So. Or there are people in those other departments who are, who have a job devoted to it. That then would not be needed anymore. I don't know. Like you're talking over at the library. I'm talking about any department that's currently not within. Yeah. I don't know if we have any folks doing that. That kind of our teamwork. I was just thinking, you know, if there's a job listing on a Google drive as opposed to. Office 365, for instance, or there's a wreck instance or something. His legacy holdovers. And a lot of stuff, it's going to be really difficult for departments. Because maybe to have an interactive with that document or that place of yours. I get it. That's different. But. I think we need to. I'd love to kind of figure out all the next. I don't have that time for this for a year, but. It's having grown along a separate. In a separate situation, saving a certain money or cost assessment. You know, is the pain of transition. Next year. This year. You know, is it, is it worth it or is it. Yeah. I mean, I would think right now it's, it's. There's some cost savings, I think, because I think that individual who does a lot of that work, it does a lot more than just that. And so I, and every time we add one more person into this contract. But that's just an assumption. We certainly can, can look at that. But I guess that brings us back to like the real cost. Right. So if we get to the point where we've now added everybody in the way that we would really like the place to run. And it gets to the point where we could do it cheaper. By having our own employees. You know, or it frees that person up in this particular situation. And this. Hypothetical as a person of the department doing this, that desperately needs coverage in other areas that we've just heard about. And they're not doing. Some of the, because they're still going to have to do some, they're a library. They have our own responsibilities needs. And rules. Practices. Can I just make a recommendation based on what you just said. I don't think we have an accurate picture of the IT services that have to happen that are public facing at the library. And the differences between them and what the city needs to do. And that was always a source of tension between the Brown out and the assets free and the town government. And I really think it might be a smart idea for all of us to be at the table with the library. And perhaps someone from the DOL who explains that this is what the library does. This is what a city does. And this is why the library needs to do these things. So that the library does not continually feel like we are trying to take things away. I guess the only thing I'm saying is I would like an IT expert. Yes. In that field to come in and say, why they can't do those, those things. Yeah. And. Still be under the same vendor. Absolutely. Coming from a healthcare field. I completely get the privacy and the firewall and all of that other stuff that is basically the same as the library. The same as a library. The statue. Please be advised that any questioning of the expertise of the library staff on their own IT. We'll be met. With a great deal of consternation. Oh yeah. It's not a man. It's not an intention of removing work from anybody. What I've been talking about is maybe those people are still doing that same work. But we have to find ways to stay. I mean, if I had up all the subscription services in this pleasure right now, it's shocking to me. Yeah. And we're adding more. Just with the rental registry blows my mind. We're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. It feels like maybe a hundred on subscriptions alone. And I. If we're not going to get a handle on these. And yet we might have said some people, but I don't intend for anybody to do different things. I'd like to just figure out a way to get to spending less money. And. I'm sorry if that hurts people's feelings, but. That's not the intention. Yeah. Yeah. So. Some of those inscriptions of though I would. You are certainly worth it. And I know. I know you would be especially in terms of things like. Time sheets where there was a period of time. Or a period of time where I know the town. Was doing the time sheet by hand. Right. Which just was. Experts. Yeah. And so being able to do those types of activities through a computer system. Hands out as a whole. Yeah. And the tough thing for me on that whole thing is it seems like that's just the way of the future. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What that is. And it's. It is. It's brutal because all those folks have figured out how to make an annual. You know, very large. And it's like, ah, it's, it's rough. Absolutely. Just wait until we get into AI. Seriously. Yeah. Oh boy. Was brought this up the other day. But is there any for. Any built in it might not even be this. Crossing center. But. Tech changes to this building due to the renovation. So, um, Yeah. The meeting, one of the meetings that Harlan was talking about today when we're talking about the two Lincoln renovation is, um, we had a great meeting to kind of cut down some of the costs within this, the original. Um, the budget for the renovations on this building. And we also at the same time had a list of the things that we haven't yet even like gotten to in the terms of the level of detail. Um, having a, uh, the ABE consultants kind of come in and take a look, um, is still on the list to figure out what, what that looks like. But essentially what we'd be aiming for is that in each meeting room, whether that's even a small, like one individual space meeting room or the larger meeting room, the smaller one. Um, the larger one was to, um, everything else. And then town meeting to this is all town meeting. TVs equipment, you know, um, and so how that works. For them and how we do that is still kind of all on the, on the table. Um, But right now, roughly just so you can keep it in your mind, well, to make a number scheme in your mind, but if you will. Um, you know, it's not available for the building renovation. The first cost estimate came back as 3 million. Um, and that doesn't have some of these other parts and pieces in it. Yep. What are the 20 devices that need to be replaced? Um, they are just laptops. Um, devices that staff are using that to work. Uh, one of the significant changes from the, the, how the town was managing our technology versus how open approach manage. Manages is that. Um, our understanding from open approach at least is that the town was budgeting for. Um, Like the basic laptops. Open approach. Beasts those up a little bit. So that. Where the town, on the town side, we were getting three years out of a device. Um, so while the upfront cost is a little bit more over time, we're actually saving some money. Do they take kind of a rolling stock approach as well? Yes. Yep. And it's all based on placed in service. Yeah. Yep. Um, but we don't have these. Correct. He's warranted for that full time. Yes. Did you take more and out of there? The finalist. Okay. Yep. I got a different picture. I had a scandal. Mine. And we know not to bother to fix. Yes. The council laptops just replaced them because it is much more effective. It's not even at this meeting. Okay. Any other questions on this? Oh. Um, so this budget doesn't include, um, a project that we had talked about with Scott at some point is, um, Getting the whole organization to SharePoint fully. So right now we are still working with a just regular network files, like everything's just sitting on a server as opposed to everything sitting up on SharePoint and accessing and sharing documents in that whole different environment. Um, so this does not include that. Um, if, uh, When I realized it wasn't in there, I was like, there's too much stuff in here anyway. Maybe we're holding off on that. Um, but just want to give you a heads up that that's, uh, we still will not be in that system. And therefore I 25. And we can still use one drive. So I'm not saying that he was one drive, so like Regina and I, he was one drive a lot to this kind of internally. There are documents. Um, so. I mean, you know, one drive is personal, right? So, but you are. So I guess the workflow there is this exactly what. Yeah. And to make sure that when they're final, though, they go on the network drive. So if you leave. Yes. Um, you already know that is the train. The training around this. Yes. Yeah, and the problem, the benefit of going to a short point versus the downside of being tied into a subscription for the rest of your life. You know, that's sort of fun. But that's just how we've been making it work. And we will continue. So Marcus had a question that he wanted to have all of the committee members have a subscription email address. Again, just because of cost we haven't put that on there. But that does mean like just yesterday or whatever we had the steering committee meeting Monday for the strategic planning process. Share documents can't happen through the SharePoint system, we need to use Google more than likely so everybody can access those those documents so that's, you know, we're still Is that an open approach that is saying that's the way to be. I say this as a person who works with this every day. You know, I work within SharePoint. And I use this every day and I have no problem sharing documents simultaneously with other, you know, collaborating. So I don't know why we are sure there are security settings around your organization, whether you're willing to allow guest access into Office 365, and they can do some especially with SharePoint. I don't know if anyone identified as a security risk but our folks outside folks in our committees could get guest accounts in our tenant, which means that they're personally my address could be cleared through Office 365 for the purpose. Something they can do, they may advise against it. I say that because I'm in an environment with the main campus tenant, medical tenant university. But trying to get like another institution into a book in our documents like Harvard is a big conversation, even though they're also obviously so it's, it is possible. Yeah, it's not a great long term solution. But if you have like, yes, you're making the verse. Would they have gotten the office to use it I mean that's that's a policy decision later, like I can do this. It's a long term like appointments, you know, for a two year committee appointment. I wouldn't think that's where the line is going. Yeah, we have volunteers in and working on a survey list for a period of time, for a public works exploration committee for three months. You know, maybe there is a guest but they're on tree committee they're going to get an account later. Yeah, so we'll, we'll sort that out and I do know, like, at least it's easier to see when we transfer to the full SharePoint use of cloud we had been they had a whole external drive for us and that's how we shared things with people out all the time but we were missing that component. But we're not there in any way really get fully so but yeah, we'll, we'll get there but anything else on this. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Oh, geez, because I was just looking this up to answer the question because it looks like I'm in this section you do have a online item in there for $2,500 for a system like this for me. Do you happen to know if this particular technology has the ability to stream this so that you could have this meet this hybrid meeting, but have it accessible on YouTube or on another. I think you need another piece of equipment throughout that out to stream it. I don't think that does that. You could have a zoom room situation. More of a zoom subscription where the other clients connected to that common appliances doesn't have to be able to pure. And that could be somebody, a committee chair comes in, turns that on, hits the button on the thing. It's tied to the link it's published. Public watch will record. You could do more of a subscription. I have no idea much. But that's again. You know, live versus. But somebody might have their laptop open in the zoom meeting, or teams meeting. Connected to that. Just so we have to be involved. But you don't need to have somebody over there. No, but if it's a volunteer committee like, like walk, whose computer are they using. I'm not going to, you know, if I'm a volunteer. They may block it that someone use my computer for that. So that's going to be them. They don't have a login to our computer that we leave behind. So we've got a home secure laptop, but the common password, you know, it's like, these little things come up, right? So that's going to be. That's something that in the renovation. You can help with or quote or any other audio visual company can come up with a solution for it. But ultimately somebody probably an account. Something. A lot. Maybe that's just committee chairs to start. That's an example. And, you know, those committee chairs having an account could log into any city. So if the laptop would be secure, the desktop would be secure in here. They would have their own account into it and be able to start their meeting and stream it. And then. That's security. That's a good note. But I don't have a lot of extra time ever. Good job, guys. We'll get there. Well, that's Chris. Are you here yet? Sure. I was going to text them because I'm so lazy. I know. I asked a general question while we're waiting for that. Has there been, I know we just. Made the change to try to consolidate and get everybody on the Verizon, because we had the city. We had the town still stuff on the town of Verizon contract. A, have we seen any cost savings in doing that? And B, have we looked into the difference between the stipends and actually just buying city. Bones for people that and we're paying for those versus a stipend. So, um, Joanne and I have been working. The consolidating all of our Verizon accounts. Um, no cost savings yet. But we think there will be some because we've identified a couple phones that. Don't know what they are. I don't know what they are. They're not being used anymore. So there will be a couple that come off. Unfortunately. I think those are in the enterprise. And the stipend versus the cell phone. The stipend that we offer is whatever we would pay for a cell phone. So the cost is exactly the same. Okay. I would like. Just like I questioned earlier in conversation around brown. I would like. I was to have a clear understanding of like what. What is the reason and responsibility that requires. Then to have this. This. Yeah. Because I just, you know, I will say this. I don't know why. The librarians need. To have that. I get Wendy as a department head. May. But I don't understand why anyone else on staff. Would be required to have a statement. You know, if it's just so that. We help encourage you to keep your phone on so that if we need more assistance, we can call you in. I question that. Yeah. We went through this last year and I did make the call that this for this reason, it means our policy. Cause we do actually. Have policy all written up as to why you would qualify for this. So the three folks that. I think it's three folks that have it. Have the stipend is because they are the ones who are. Scheduling people. They're not. They're. Dang it. Just missed my train of thought. And I did make the call that this for this reason, it means our policy because we do actually have policy. All written up as to why you would qualify for this. So the three folks that I think is three folks. They're not. They're not. They're not. They're not. They're not. Train of thought. Sorry. It's. So they've got. Such an interesting array of how they get all their hours covered between full-time people, part-time people, sub-shelvers of a whole variety of different things. And a lot. The night before they are hearing, I'm out. And I'm trying to figure out who else are calling and trying to get to the table that they can open at 9am the next morning is really the main reason why this situation is in place. So it's not for every full-time librarian there is for a small number of people. Yes. And they're getting a full, monthly subscription payment. Yes. For. From their own phone. probably using it at 10% of the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That seems, I mean, I use my personal phone for my job every day, eight hours a day, and I get $25 a month. This stipend. I use mine, and I don't get anything. So, yeah, we have a policy. It doesn't seem to be across the board. Yeah. Sorry to open back. Yeah. The reason I was at these just as a former city of Burlington employee, I knew that they got a significant discount, and even like things like when I went to buy a phone, like it was free to me. Now, obviously, they have thousands of employees versus us, but that's the only reason I was thinking, I also think there's a potential public record or issue here. So, we do, we pay, so you know, we pay $55 a month for a self, traditional standard cell phone line. Yeah. And we do get free upgrades every two years, I think it is, on any line that belongs to the city. And it's not the newest version of the, you know, Samsung or iPhone. It might be like a version or two behind, but there is, and those are free. Again, yeah, I guess it's just how much we're, I don't know, the policy can be done. You know, we have a lot of policies to look at, which is another effort. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just one of those things, as we go forward, it gets kind of harder to explain that. So, I think that's, Chuck, you're new, Chris. Hi, Chris. Hi, Chris. We made you run upstairs. Let's get here. Ready for you. All right. So, this is page 45 in your PDF packet. And the narrative, the things that we are, oh wait, sorry, that's got the same incorrectly in the narrative. Oh, I just went past it. Okay. Sorry. Here we are. Notable changes that we called out for the community development budget are really the rental registry enforcement officer components. So, you see this budget really going up fairly significantly percentage-wise, but you see the revenue associated with that up above. The other note that we've got here is we are contemplating a vehicle because this particular role is really moving all around the city. They shouldn't be showing up with a non-red license plate. And so there may be some shifting that we can do in here. And I kind of forget where we landed on this between some speaking of stipends. Some staff get a stipend right now because we have no municipal vehicle that they're using. And so they're out and about in their own vehicles. So, that is that. Chris, anything you want to add or talk about or we can go straight to questions. There's a lot of potential new revenue here, but the revenue is from the rental registry program, but that is of course subject to the price being set for that. And what I thought would be reasonable price compared to the other municipalities. And you folks will be seeing that in the next year. What else? There's one of the UCWP projects over here that I'm planning for is to revisit Route 15 between Suzy Wilson and West Street extension and to figure out if there is a more affordable way to have an interim solution over there. Which, yeah, I think it would open the doors to, you know, to a more feasible and better implementation of something that more of a sense. Good. What's UCWP stand for? Unified Planning Work Program. Okay. Wow. It is under the Metropolitan Planning Organizations section for our federal highway administration. And these are the terms one has to use. One thing just with the rental registry broadly, I'd love to see the rental registry just be an enterprise budget and another sale. And so pulling all that out of community development so that that way you can function as an enterprise fund would be responsible for generating 100% of the costs as well as then anything over that can then be brought back into the municipality in some other way, just to separate that from community development. So one potential difficulty with that is that where all of it that have about half the person would like maybe other force that we're saying right now that the revenues would also pay for that portion. That's fine. We can allocate. That's easy. That's a really good idea. The other thing I think this used to live in community development years ago we used to do different activities, some community events. I think of like the, what was Robin's original idea about? I'd love to see things like that come back, granted we're in a difficult budget timeframe, but that was a great event from the community out a couple of times a year. And I'm just broadly anticipating one of the things coming from strategic planning is just more community oriented work and more community oriented opportunities. And so having funding to help support some of that as well as reaching out to our local communities like the banks and other institutions in the past who provided donations for these events that we could then leverage to do things for our community to bring them out of their home and do things. Yes. And I would say I would sort of add to that economic development more broadly. I would say those two pieces that are kind of in this budget but also in the economic development budget. Chris's operation has thus far been really setting up a lot of stuff that hasn't really existed so far. And we're hoping that we all have a better sense of what, once these other pieces are set up, we can kind of figure out what capacity is going on in the community development team with the addition of a city planner also, which is a new position this year. And once we can get this rental registry and code enforcement stuff up and running, we're hoping that we'll be able to kind of sort through and figure out what that looks like going forward and certainly influenced by the strategic plan and seeing what that's asking us to prioritize. My input is really for bringing that up during the community development conversation when it's in the economic development budget. It's because in my mind, I don't see those economic development drivers. I'd rather ask them the development drivers. Yeah, that's, yeah. No way. Are we still thinking? I'm just still can't get my mind around the subscription for the registry to start working because it's still looking, still looking like that's going to be the thing here. Actually, no. We have, you'll see it in the next packet, but because we're likely going to have to exempt the non-profits housing providers here from paying for rental registry that would make up for the shortfall. And to generate enough money to cover the capital, the upfront capital cost of the car because we were so stretched for the rolling supplement, I was thinking of having to increase the rental registry fee to make that reasonable increase in one way to do that was use the cheaper software. And I think it's that we're going to use the cheaper option app right now. You're still good. You must think you are. You're suggesting it, but we can talk about this tomorrow next meeting whenever it comes up. Obviously, we're going to talk about this at this point. And so it is true. We are thinking we can do the cheaper software, but it really won't have any change on the general fund because it's just tied to the revenue will reduce both because we're trying to keep that price point not crazy high. And again, this will be a conversation, but you guys, you might not think that price point is too crazy high. So basically, they're reducing revenue because we have to exempt these non-profit housing providers. So to make up for that lost revenue, they're going to go with cheaper software. How many are we talking about? So it's going to be a net. How many? Yeah, I mean, how much in fees? I can only think of one, probably my fault. I can only think of one non-profit. It's significant with the exact way it would split. It would be way too much split and like actually some are only used for monarch apartments. But also, that's just part of it. It's the car as well. It's the full of our costs. Monarch is a place where a lot of violations happen. Correct. Yeah. So I understand there is the whole conversation on exempting non-profits from their own industry happening next week. Yeah. Yeah, I really can talk about that. Okay. Yeah. So right now, this is a it's going to come out of the wash, but this number's a waste holder. It sounds like for the software. Okay. That's what I'm going to ask about. Fees. So well. So well. So if I'm reading this correct, you're estimating about an $8,000 increase, which in just the license and zoning fees on the revenue portion. That's right. And that could be from or what is that? I guess is the question. Is that an increase in applications or is that an increase in fees? It's a previous increase in fees that is now having an event that's now starting up because that kicked in part way through the fiscal year. Okay. I kind of wonder, and I know this is like asking way more again, but I was looking at South Burlington's fees and I don't know if you've seen those or not, but I almost kind of wonder if we're leaving money on the table. We probably are anyways, but the way South Burlington is doing their fees is they're allocating like their applications are based on like square footage and stuff with a set figure based on square footage. And then there is a different fee if it's, you know, five units, 10 units, whatever it happens to be. One of the other things that I noticed about their fees and this is a conversation for Susan, but they're including a digitization fee. So the municipality is not eating that digitization fee, that's a word, but the applicant is eating that cost. And so that's kind of an interesting concept that I didn't think about because we are, and I'm not sure that Susan's record fee that's in here is one of the same. I think they all get charged. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm assuming though that this is, like if I apply for a permit, the city is still digitizing that request for my permit, not a separate, it is separately being recorded in the land records. So all development development is being now trend in the land records versus in the past where you have to go in and be like, can I see your books? So, and I don't know if we are doing, but like your NOV, like using your NOV as an example, you're putting that NOV, hypothetically speaking, in the land records. And then that's a cost towards our subscription that we're eating. So how is, I mean, it's a bad example, but you know what I'm saying. So I don't know if it's looking at, not necessarily increasing the fees, but looking at how we're charging fees, if that makes sense. Yes. And again, I understand that this is like, you know, throwing one other thing onto a plate that's already full. And I have not said this to anybody else in the room, but I didn't, and maybe, maybe there, when you look at it, their fees are coming out the same as ours, but just kind of doing a back of the envelope, it did not look like it to me. It looked like they definitely had a different approach, which gets more at the concept of like how we're doing with this sort of allocations and stuff, like same kind of thought process. And I mean, I appreciate the fact that we've added some in there and some fees in there, but this is just a reoccurring thing for me. So this has nothing to do with you. I say this every year, that's why they knew what I was going to say. And I don't know if the city village traditionally have looked at these. So my experience with fees, especially in this area, is that there's a pretty decent exercise that gets done every year or two during budget time to see what is the cost of actually handling a permit and putting it all the way through the entire process. I don't know if that's been done here. To my knowledge, the background that I'm aware of is that we, there's probably a couple years ago now at this point, that we authorized the change in fee. And that was when we did that in alignment with the town, doing a change on their fees. So things like we're charging $25 for a certificate of compliance, and they were charging 50 random example. Why are we not aligned with the town? Again, we were strict when we were headed towards merger, but those fees were aligned. And then there was, based on the actual cost allegedly they were, I mean, I can't speak to whether they were not. The problem was that there was a lag in implementation. Yes. And prior to that, we made an effort to eliminate as many fees as possible, like sewer hookups, because we wanted to make that a economic development benefit for developers. And we had a knockdown, drag out discussion about whether to increase those. So people are going to want to build here if we don't be charged for that. So we've made some intentional decisions about those fees that we could, doing the study you suggest, is a really good idea. Yeah. Well, so one thing that's relevant to this, that's outside of the economic development budget is the sewer allocation that was added last year. But Chelsea is making sewer ordinance, which we would work more discussion. I would say like for a short few months, I've implemented those fees. It mostly works, it brings in revenue, but we also see instances where for example, a small business is size of these are about to move into a spot and then they get slapped with a multi-thousand dollar fee and they're like, well, we didn't plan for this. We can't establish it, but we'll be able to serve on it. So yeah, certainly works the discussion and I'm glad that there's a place for that. Yeah. I mean, I think that that's just the reality when you're doing business. Unfortunately, I mean, I think you go to, like even just looking at something as basic as a sign, applying for a sign in South Burlington was more than to apply for one here. And so like, I mean, I get it, it's money. It's also when you're going to open a storefront, you've got to think about all these things like how much is it going to cost me a month for water, sewer, telephone, whatever, all those things. Can I afford to do those? What is the upfront costs associated with renovating this bit up of the storage of the space and getting a sign and doing all that stuff? And I mean, my concern is that we focus, again, everyone in this room has already heard this, but we focus so much on the expense piece of this and we don't talk about the revenue piece of this. And I like us to get to that point of like not just keep talking about what can we reduce, but what can we, you know, some of the conversations later about, do we start to Andrew's point about the community event? I'd like to see us start getting more donations from folks and stop taking it out of the general fund on things like the Fourth of July fireworks and stuff. I mean, that's just my opinion, but we're asking a lot of our community and you know, so I'd like to see us go back to those things. To that end, one of the things I started doing is I started taking a look at various communities of a quasi-familiar size in Le Mans. So we get 91.8% of our budget from general funds, revenues from the property taxes. Town of Essex is 70% times where it's 81, Colchester's 84, Milton 77, St. Augustine 46. Overwhelmingly, communities are between the 70% or so, where their revenue comes from, their general fund revenue comes from property taxes. And I started to go down the, but which departments, communities then account for things like wastewater through their general fund. I haven't fully flushed that out, but I'm curious to see what other communities are doing. So I started doing that, but I was thinking I was trying to compare some departments to other departments to other communities, something other than those ones a little bit, but then realizing that some of the communities I was using just had these massive windfalls and local options. We just don't have that base. It's going to be helpful. On the fee thing, on the fee, and this is not quite similar, but maybe this is a, is definitely in my mind a topic for another time. But as I was struggling and talking to some folks about the park out here, and whether we do it or not, and the value of a community putting forth common areas and unifying common areas for common use. And as we start to see who's using the space, even in its unfinished form, a nice day is busy, like on a weekend. And it's phenomenal. Probably people who have just gotten this community, maybe live in the buildings that have just gone up. So my point is, are we, is that going to be our responsibility as a community to just provide those amenities continually and provide those beautifications? Or do we have an input from the development at the time that it's built to help fund those common amenities that aren't provided? You know, we already have a structure of parks and everything here, but we're also talking about spending anywhere from 500 a million and a half, and can already conceive that this is just this area over here, Main Street and that triangle. So is there a way to leverage some of the incoming development? I wouldn't even know what the trends are. My head is impacted, but I think that's great. Without driving it away, without making it overly expensive, without contributing to higher rents, or like is there a place in there to, you know, maybe that's in lieu of a sixth story, you know, maybe there are trade-offs to be had, but we're working with these developers to say, yeah, you know, we'd rather have six more veterans in that building and give you another story in place of that help us with this common amenity that your residents will use inevitably. You know, like that's a really sloppy way of explaining what I'm thinking, so I apologize. But we can also probably do more private public partnerships, especially if you want your name on it, why don't you pay for some of it? I mean, I'm just saying there's opportunities, whether it's maintaining a ball field, whether it's maintaining a park, whether it's creating a new green space, I don't think we take advantage or necessarily seek out as many potential private public partnership opportunities to make that happen. No, and as a new city, as we gear up, and as perhaps as I don't know where that would go in the city structure, but maybe as things are just going to be set up every five minutes, there's going to be more energy over the next bunch of years to start looking at some of the understanding that there's not that capacity right now necessarily, you know, but just in the brainstorming around how do we get more revenue to help pay for some of this, and I don't want to make it so expensive, I'm talking about making it so expensive so stuff won't get built, and people go build somewhere else, I'm just trying to figure out how to reduce the pressure. I would say too, some of that in terms of like a streetscape improvement or a very urban kind of park like that is sometimes dealt, but managed through a TIF district, and so you, the community itself is sort of laying out that money at the front end to do those projects, and then the debt is paid off by the property revenue that you gain from increased value you're getting within that family. It's probably something we should look at at some point, but it's interesting because we don't, we're such a, it's small area, and the real increase would be hard to figure out if it's worth it. I don't know that are well, yeah, I don't think we qualify because of median income of our community, and also, yeah, you have to have, yeah, yeah, yeah, South Brompton's a little different. Well, maybe there's, they have years before that, right, same with Milton, right, yeah, yeah. Anyway, okay, where are we? I have a question unrelated to impact things and such like that. I saw in here that you've reduced the budget for town meeting TV costs that were added in FY24, so does that mean that the planning commission meetings will no longer be recorded? That, so our suggestion and looking at this whole piece is in FY24 we did add that cost that have planning commission meetings would be covered by town meeting TV as well. Our suggestion here is that we don't do that because it's very expensive and there have not been very many people who view it that way. Yeah, no, I'm fine with that. I just want to recommend just past experiences of angry residents coming to the planning commission when the digging starts because they didn't know about anything. You're doing a monthly program on CCTV about a six junction, maybe every other month make planning commission topics just give some additional way for the public to hear about what's happening on the planning commission because, well, I think the more of the more of the DRV and this point of here is okay. Oh, oh, oh, right. Okay, so you are doing DRV, you're not planning is planning. Yeah, we're not recording zoom. Yes, yes, yes. We could offer the less expensive these hosts the recording we made. Yeah, and index it. Yeah, as a middle ground for some of these right. So we'll reward it. We'll provide it to you this post cash and index it. Yes. Yeah, so exactly this. Yeah, so we're okay, we get into a system where we can do some of that ourselves. Yeah, I think we have to have that larger conversation back to what we're just talking about with like all these meetings should be available and how we're going to do that. It's not necessarily but do we want to pay Tom meeting TV to do every single one of them? Not really. Well, I have that question that's related to this, but I saw it keep on the you know, literally one and such as well as that. And look, when you put in the note in there about how much it's going to cost because I know I'm specifically asked that all the meetings get this level of access. I'm not for $25,000, so I will back on my request. But it also brings up the question for me to pull again, if the technology is available for us to do it, it kind of there's a portion of the goes, what would what would it really be like we were to walk away? And if we're unwilling to walk away, have we done at least a competitive check to see whether or not in those service like media factory who does this for other municipalities in the area as well could do this in a more competitive way? Not saying they are not promoting one option or another. I'm just saying maybe it's time for a little bit of a difference. Media factory, I don't think it's going to be essentially the same thing, but they're essentially the same thing. So then I come back to the question of whether or not we want, again, if we have the technology and there is a piece of use that we can do this, do we eliminate it or maybe we do that option where it's like, we're going to do all the work of reporting this, but we're going to just ask them to see the impacts that we think what we've got with middle ground is we've identified some boards that require the person due to the criticality of it. And I mean, what's the what's the five-point page? It's 15 now, but what I would challenge you to say, do we really need that for even our city council meetings? Well, if one or two knowledgeable people see this every day at work, knowledgeable people aren't around that night, just get recorded, right? I mean, and then you've got a bigger problem than, you know, at least in terms of expectation, I don't necessarily legal requirement to record these. If they're on, if they're broadcast, we have to record. I mean, with the equipment and the training necessary for $26,000 to do the meetings that are proposed to stay, I don't see that as a big deal, but I think there's other avenues, there's another opportunity. It certainly seems like even if we step up to the owl, you know, and can figure out some sort of method by which we stream our meetings live internally, it certainly seems like the quality is better through town meeting, TV, so long as people are speaking into the microphone, which I keep forgetting to remind everybody to do that, then, I mean, it certainly is better and it seems like the City Council and the DRB are the top two that people are going to be interested in understanding what's happening and what's going on. I think there's a lot in this whole topic that we can kind of figure out and think about with the renovation of this building and if there's some other things we can do. Okay, anything else for Chris? So outside of this also, I guess I can call it, I don't know at this very time if I have any questions about that, and track or any partner relating to budget as I can possible next, but thank you. We started our day talking about that. Yeah, so I think those are questions to figure out. Right, I don't know if you changed your any more resolution about the particle, but I would say we have started work, like engineering and design work and paint for that. How far along do you estimate that we are in the costs? I think we're under 10. Well, okay, there's one was already spent before aiming, and then in addition to that, I think it's less than 10,000. I mean, I think for me, you know, I don't get spirit in any of you talk about this morning, but the more I think about it, it's been 24,934 spent prior to the grant approval. So for me, I'm more interested in seeing like, what is this timeframe going to be? How does it play out over? And I guess I have to look back at the, I didn't, Regina pointed out that it's in here and I have to go back and look at it again, the capital in the chart to see how it plays out and how it completes the following. I like the idea of going back to the state and saying, can we move it? This seems to be relevant, this train project and track project, and it's coming in more than we expected. We're grateful, but can we can we shift it? And if they say no, then I think that just comes back to us and says, let me make a slide, you know, with the lens of what Amber brought up, like, take them off, do we just match it? Does it have to be a dollar-for-dollar match? So we have the $200,000, whatever thousand dollar grant they have, but does it bear up to a lot of matches at a 20? Yeah. So we can do something with their grant, not spend as much. If we could do 50, if it's 20% we could do 40, keep their 200 plus grant. Yeah, that, yeah, we'll, we have to find out the, so the Amtrak amount of money is just like, it's just a set amount of money for this project. It's sitting there. It doesn't have a deadline. It's very conceptual and we are, I think, have a lot of flexibility in terms of what we can do there. The main street park, we very clearly gave them the design that we're intending to build and that's what they reviewed through their process and that's what they approved us for. So, and it's a very set deadline. We have to do it by 2024. So that's really, I think our initial line of questioning is there in terms of like, what, what else can, is there flexibility? Would they be okay with us pushing it back a year? Are they okay with us taking this grant out and putting in a new application for Amtrak? Like, those are all things we have to sort out. What do you think about sorting that out? Like, what is your opinion on doing that work? You know, in terms of, when you weigh the benefit of doing that, what would your guidance to us be in terms of, right? Yeah, I mean, I don't know what any of those answers are. Like, in my mind the way I think about it is in terms of what we're talking about for the economic development fund, press and connector commitment is obvious. Like there's no option. We're doing that. The Main Street Park is the second one that I see as a commitment only because it's a more specific grant and deadline. And then the Amtrak is still so fluid, is not the right word, but fluid and no deadline that I think about that one as the third priority. But I certainly understand in terms of what you guys are saying, why the Amtrak project would be a bigger priority over the Main Street Park. Like, I think that makes logical sense. So I think we can ask the questions and see what happens. And the other thing that I've kind of had just sort of playing out in my mind right now is that I think regardless of what we hear from the Main Street Park grant people, the Amtrak match is still limited if we can't get the economic development fund passed in April. I think we can work out all those numbers in my mind right now. Well, no, we're actually not that bad. So we have $450,000 and we put the $250,000 back from Main Street Park. We're pretty close. Yeah, even if we don't get the economic development fund passed. So yeah, I would point out with Amtrak though, the actual needs for that are later, because it's 20% at whatever you get. It's an 80% reimbursement for whatever you're doing at the moment. So actually most of the costs are going to kick in when construction begins. I think at this point, it's possible to do some more design work within the existing budgets probably recommended to that project as a whole. Assuming the economic development fund passed. Well, and if it doesn't, there's still some, there's still money in there to do something. Yeah, and it wouldn't be able to use the whole. Even if you put the 109, which we have in 25 over here, yeah, we still. Yeah, and based on how this general fund budget is presented, I'm not confident that we're over normal for the folks after last year would, would pass the money. Yeah, I think if it passes it would squeak. So yeah, and maybe when we talk about that, we need to talk about a slightly different amount. I mean, maybe there's a respect for that viewpoint and it's a habit or something, something is something different is proposed, which would be a way of respecting the fact that we still have uses for it. So we have to park immediately and that gets worthwhile, but the also general fund asks me just for that. There is a good just considering that we are looking at that as a part of the results. So we do currently have in our budget 1% for EJRP capital, which is also parks. So depending on how we want to find parks and utilize the overall general fund and money that we have could potentially be other sources to whatever detriment of EJRP. I don't think so. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. I think you've got a break. Thank you, Mark. You're always ready to spread it. Thank you, guys. I'll meet you in the next cylinder. Well, that does need this. But you've got to wear that. Okay. So PDF packet page number 50. So this is opposite. So in your narrative, you have three separate pages because we have three sort of operations under the accounting budget. So you've got the look ahead, look behind, look ahead and metrics for all three of us within this budget. And then the changes in the budget noted on each of these. So I'll just say I'll read from the budget itself in terms of what kind of changes are going on in here. So Katla membership for folks that don't know Katla is stands for something I can't remember right now. I can figure it out, but it's not necessary. They really are the agency that helps figure out how to incentivize folks to get out of their car as a single driver for commuting. So tries to incentivize people to take the bus, walk, bike. And there's a membership fee associated with that. And then there are also benefits that come from it, but also additional costs. So if we wanted to as a city help incentivize some folks to get out of their cars and help pay for bus passes and help with a bike head incentive program, that's what you've got in here. It's a understanding of a very small percentage of people that are actually going to use those programs. So it's $4,500. We've never done it before. It can go away would be great to be able to do it, but that's that's what's there. And realize that there are many staff in the city that really don't have a bus available to them. And biking is probably kind of not a reality based on how far they're coming. So I am big proponent of this program. I think it would be awesome for us to be able to do this, but I know we're trying to grapple with some percent increase here. So copier postage machine leases. This postage machine is way too small. A lot of what has been done, it's been over at the town with the biggest bigger postage machine. We've got to upgrade that. We talked about copier leases a few times, but our current lease for city-wide is coming up in December. So we're looking at that. We have increased training for all staff. So this is some stuff that came out of my evaluation in terms of trying to really do some more to help the staff as a whole really feel more collective and come together and also be trained on a variety of things. That's what's in there. Advertising for position vacancies. This used to be kind of more spread out throughout the various departments. Colleen runs all of that. So we've just kind of collected it here in this budget. Also, we are still right-sizing what the heck our postage costs are by department. This was all over at the town. We don't really know what those costs real costs are and have been in this fiscal year. The postage budget and admin budget will be over because that's where a lot of it is going because we don't know where it goes. So we're figuring that out. Then generally speaking, so we talk quite a bit about engagement, trying to engage with the community more broadly in a lot of different ways and get information out there and that all costs money. So we've got increases in here to try to accommodate for some of that. I could have also made that comment, I think, in the community development budget because there are some increases in there for that as well. Do either of you have anything you'd like to add before? Can I ask for an additional piece of information that I don't know is out there, where we have it? In terms of the re-negotiation of the agreement contract, where is that and does that impact this upcoming budget? I'm guessing it does. Which agreement? The association. Oh, yeah, sorry. I was thinking town. We are in negotiations right now. The current association contract goes through this fiscal year. So we are in negotiations right now for the July 1 new contract which aligns with this. Thanks. They had some questions, but while I have a question around the interest specific. Bring it on. You got to crack your mouth. You can go under an HR provisional to go into the principle plan. That's specifically around, again, metrics and goals. So trying to understand the ones that you've listed here. Again, I knew Myers would get to me before at least three years. That's great. The one here that I'm a little confused about is ensuring worker safety and maintaining low workers' compensation rate. How do you and your role currently impact this? Because this feels more like something that Ricky is dealing with. I assume that more public works than generally speaking. You would be surprised. So I am part of the safety committee. I basically facilitate it. And then any near misses or accidents come through filter for me. So I'm seeing it from a citywide perspective. It is pretty evenly distributed amongst departments in terms of accidents, which tend to be the admin in the library or the least impacted by accidents just by the nature of their work. But I think evenly split between European public works and wastewater in terms of their injuries. So part of the role of the safety committee is the first thing you ask after making sure everybody's okay. And when we discuss the incident, it's like, how can that people get out? And so then there's follow-up around those types of action items needed. And that is part of my responsibility to make sure that what happens, whether it's through a passive grant each year, so the library had cameras where there's safety and competency and a lot of things. But in the playground, the EJRP had some playground issues that need to be addressed that it helps keep everybody safe, residents and staff. The other thing I'll simply say is especially around something like that, if you could spell out the specific metric that you're going to use, like, what are we going to be looking at next year? Because next year, what I expect to do is to pull this book out and go, okay, this was their goals and determining success. And I would assume that one of the things I might end up looking at next year, or that I'll be provided next year, is this kind of workmen's constant claims were put for this last year and these ones this year. So we saw that rate. Is that what you intend? And if nothing else, I'd love to see that kind of stuff spelled out better. Yeah, yeah, I can make that happen. Is that what you do? And I think the metric, the thinking about how many claims they are, because the more claims there are, the more our rate goes up. And we have like an awesome rating. And I just really want to keep that way, not only for a financial perspective, but also I just don't want people to be hurt on the chaplain. Yeah, I just want to make sure that I'm, you know, again, I can be with you in the back that I can see and identify the fact that you're doing what we hope to achieve. Yeah. This is the affidavit, I think. I'll ask one more question. Okay. Ashley, as far as your metrics are concerned, do you have a clear baseline on all these? I do. Okay, that's absolutely. I'm good. Thank you, Molly. Congratulations. Like, I don't know what the right word is. This is your last call. I just wish the best for you. It's your pleasure working with you. But we'll see around because you're stuck for a little bit. I do think congratulations are the right thing to do. I didn't want to seem like a total jerk. I want to give an example of what it's been about, you know, I appreciate like the best, you know, almost years of working with us. So thanks. Thank you. You've been great from the start. Bye, everyone. Nice to see you. Okay. Oh, yeah. Right. Let's leave it. Okay. This is page 51. So I have this in here, right? Yep. So we have in here a placeholder, $50,000 for strategically and implementation. That's really like assuming there might be a project or two that maybe we want to pick up and move on. But it's really, it's a placeholder. There's so there's nothing. This is just there's no play out. Correct. Okay. Yes. That's only for some reason. Somebody came up with a brilliant idea that we thought we had to immediately. Otherwise, I see the strategic plan being again, our guiding principle for future budgets. I don't see it necessarily being specifically applied to this budget. Therefore, I personally think we should move this out of here. All of it. Well, I just wonder if out of the planning process, maybe a committee or two becomes, we promulgate a committee and it needs a budget or something. Maybe not 50, but I don't see, I understand exactly what you're saying. And I just, I don't think we're going to have this big $50,000 project coming out of the strategic planning process. But I think there will be action that will require some financial support. Well, even earlier, we were talking about like part of this being maybe community involvement, community event or something like that that's tied directly into strategic planning. Again, I don't think it's going to be $50,000 at one hell of a party, but I mean, yes. And in having been in those conversations and again, our guiding principle that we knew getting into this, that one of the things that we hoped to get out of it was the next phase, which is going to be community engagement. So there is a portion of that, but I also see, and to your point, I understand we're going from a committee standpoint, but I really think that that work should probably be passed on not going to a committee, but onto our existing committees on the planning commission and so forth. So they can do the work that's necessary, rather than creating another committee, but I can see it again based on what Amber just said. If you were to leave a little money in here, it would be specifically for the engagement effort that gets us from the end of this process into the next. And that would just bolster the communications budget by having a little big money here. And I'd be fine with that being $10,000 on that. I'm not at date, you know. Yeah, this seems in light of everything that they can go. But I just leave it as one of those things on a list of places to do. Yeah, that's the place. Oh, sorry, Amber, go ahead. Those committees. If there were to be a new one, that's part of that board member payment, right? Yes, I was going to say, exactly. Yeah, that's a good mind now. Oh, right. Yes. I'm thinking about the conversation that we had last week with ACCD. So we're starting to have some conversations about an Economic Development Commission, a downtown committee, you know, like what are all the things that we need for the downtown and what might that coalesce into? And I wouldn't put that on the planning commission. I wouldn't put it out on the DRB. So, and I think it's an absolute need. Do I think it's worth $50,000? Absolutely. And as a word coming from the general funder, would the public just assume that comes from the penny? That might have to come from the penny. Because my assumption would be as a resident, I'm going to do economic development before we attack me specifically, that fund. That's a very, very good point, right? So when we talk about the 1%, that penny, excuse me, we might have to slump off. I don't even know. That's a great point. Now that you've pointed that out to me, that I don't see why we would need the 50. I mean, I would like, I wish we could use it, but I just think that's a place. I have no idea what could possibly be about the process. And again, these board member payments are for the advisory board and the three additional committees that are not made in the name. So that's not, this includes three additional committees above and beyond what we have. Yes. So Elaine's just mentioned two potential. I would say the housing was a previous conversation. Council, there's three right there. But I'm saying it's already kind of in there. So we've already got that cover. Yeah. Housing is in any development already. So the many that we've heard of over the time is recreation, energy, economic development, which would be, in theory, could be potentially different than an actual downtown committee in terms of that being sort of a separate function. We will have our governance committee. So that's specifically listed that we've got to do based on the three year form of the charter was approved. Yeah. Absolutely. You have strategic planning. So there was the carry forward, right? Or no, we talked about just determined through. Yes. Yeah. One thing you might talk about later when we talk about the law, when we talk about this before, any sort of disciplinary budgeting, when we talked about that in a number of different ways, like resources, whether it's an amount of the general funder, it's a tiny percentage of a lot. It's come up in our conversations. That's not happening. So that's another potential group of people that that gets implemented. And around that, stipend policy, naturally, it's convinced. So I would love to figure out a way to ask or survey our committee members around the topic of the stipends, because I've heard some people be uncomfortable in a number of different ways of accepting it. And it feels like here's this Raj, it feels like we're budgeting for it. We should just pay it. But before we do that, I'd like to find out if people are accepting it live, they're not accepting it online. Like, how is that going? How is it working? Is there, because if we're budgeting for this, then we're taking in taxes for it. Yes, it's then going into another use for the fund, but if our intention is to really reimburse people for the time they're doing, let's just pay them. Since we're budgeting, that's just my thought on it right now. But before that, we get to that. I'd like to know what the barriers, but I'd like to know what people are thinking about it. If it could offer to you or if you haven't decided to take it, would you like to go over it? And then we can decide. We can't pay it out, though, without getting a W-9 or whatever it is. So like they have, there has to be a process. Oh, sure. We'll get that anyway if they ask for it. But if it's just something that, oh, by the way, you're on this committee, you get $15 a meeting. People will promote it. I don't know, would they? And I'm not saying that's the right thing to do. That's why I want to ask and see if it's just sort of that next step it feels like to me. If we're not, then let's take the three-year average and cut it because, and then we can just go over a little budget if one person decides to take it out. I mean, it feels like a drawer because it feels, you know, we probably have $20,000 in here that we're not using. And that's all. I mean, if we're really nitpicking, I want to tie our numbers to 2,000. There you go. I like it. When we originally thought of this, we thought of it as an opt-out kind of thing. I don't think that's the way it's being presented. When we present it as, here's the thing if you want to accept it. And I can say there's one person who recently had been receiving the stipend and then just emailed and was like, take me out. That I don't, this isn't right. I shouldn't be giving this. Yeah. I think the way that we present it is a little awkward and it does make some people feel like guilty for taking it so they don't take it. I really don't want people to feel that way. I have a hard time thinking that people can't do that. I'm sure there are some that purchase to apply, but I'm sure there are others that frankly over eight meetings of the year couldn't benefit from foreign dollars. I would rather err on the side of assuming that folks are going to take it. And then if they don't want it, they opt out rather than putting people in the position of saying, I really need that stipend. Yes. I think if we give them the paperwork, that's actually, here's your stipend. If you opt out, check here. Otherwise, return the paperwork. Yes. It's just in how it's different. Yeah. With a paragraph that's well thought out and well written about, so why? We value your time of input. We see this a little bit, so that they understand that it is okay to take it. Yep. Great. It's intended. It sounds like there's a volunteer to write it. There it is. And she is the one that manages that stipend. She has to do it. I prefer a million dollars, but that's what's going to happen to her, so. So going down to 10,000 for the special programs. Yeah. Sounds good to me. Okay. And then we've got the other note that we're kind of calling out at the bottom of this is just that 25,000 for going to full community TV. Otherwise, you're on the losing side of that. Too much change here. Nothing else. I will say this up since I put that request down. I just really want to make sure that our committees feel like they're being treated equally. And I don't currently feel like somebody was on, and I'm not speaking for anyone in particular, so my own gut feeling about it. But if I were on the bike walk committee, I would not feel as important as if I were on the planning commission. And I don't think that is the case. I agree, but they're all extremely important. And they all play a significant role in our future. And I just want to make sure that they do. And then in that, I want the community to be aware of the work that's going on. So hopefully it will encourage others to join these committees when we have open positions and know that they can participate in these conversations and make a difference about it. Hello. You didn't have to dress up for us, I mean. I did. I had to worry about everything. Now I'm going to pass. It's going to go to the tip of the tongue. We make everybody come and wear the hat. Even Harlingen. Even Harlingen. We can't show you the picture until we get a picture of you with the hat on. Right. Or you can buy your budget. Wow. Welcome to the show. The general is the longer we go, the worse it gets. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, Brad, as you may know, you've read the whole pack in here. I don't know if you've had, but we're at Facebook, 7% budget increase and trying to work through that. So, we've just been talking through the budget changes for everybody's budgets. And then just been open conversation. That's for usual. So, yeah, on Brad's sheet in your narrative, you've got his look back, his look forward, the metrics, and then the budget changes are from a couple of different budgets, admin parks, and then the buildings are here. We talked about buildings before. There were no questions that came up on your buildings. But so that's that. Anything to point out or add that I'd like to discuss? I think, yeah, I got it. Just two things. One is just to remember when you see these numbers and increases that. That adult programs have been folded into administration. So it's a bit misleading if you're just like, what's happening with, with this budget when you, when you, so. When you take that information out. Person out. Is up 3% non-personnel costs are down 17%. So the driver here is just moving seniors from its own. Category into this. And I think Jess explained, or I don't know if we've had the conversation, but we don't separate out any other divisions within the general fund for ERP. So it just made sense to. Put it in with administration. So otherwise, you know, book the, as I said, personnel is up 3% non-personnel. And then also factoring in in parts and facilities that that's our reflection. And I know this highlighted in here of not only parks and facilities for the parks, but also building this is now part of that conversation. And that's a little bit of the driver of why those part-time salaries are up slightly. So that's all I have for opening comments. Yeah. Can you talk to a little bit about the. The buildings and grounds. So last year budgeted like four, five, you know, $4,500 this year budgeting 12. There's a note here that this is the two year average, but I'm just kind of curious why. We dropped it in 2023 and from 18 to four. We dropped it significantly, but now we're saying, Oh, we got to bring it back up again. I don't know if you know what that. What happened there. I would have to look into that detail. I think for consistency sake, what we tried to do with all of these line items, you're looking at parts and facilities and the general fund. Yes. Use a two year average. And so. That's just kind of where we're coming from. I'd have to go back to see. Specifically why we were budgeting. Those lower amounts in 22 and 23, but still coming up with actuals that are closer to what we've proposed in 25. I don't have that answer on the tip of my tongue, but I can find it out. Okay. In 2020, the actual was 14,000. Where is the. You're on year four of the playground. Yes. So that's in capital. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. No, I'm sorry. It's in capital. All right. How much is that a year? This is the last year. So basically we've paid it all. We're just paying ourselves back. Okay. The capital fund. So this is your final five in FY 25. And it's 47,000. So it's the last year that we have a big chunk of that capital being. Music or something. How much. I don't have a good grasp on how much the building is coordinator. How much time has taken and spends that's taking. This year and how much is budgeted specifically for that next year. So I think that's what Brad was describing that essentially this. That position is fully in his budget. And the part time salaries, I'll, I'll say to you that generally this is, we're feeling like at this point in time it's still working. That's why we're still have this laid out the way that we do. For FY 25 as well. It is working because we've got some really great parts on people that are able to step up and just take care of a lot of parts and pieces. So you see the increase there to kind of accommodate, continue to accommodate for that. And then we're going to continue to do that. And then we're going to continue to do that. It's, it's a lot. City Y. What he's doing between this renovation of this building and the sort of the maintenance of all of the other buildings. So. I think it's going to be continued to be pretty difficult to see precisely what that is until we actually get to a point. If you feel like we're pulling that out as a separate. I think that that's a really important thing. And I think that's a really important thing. And that question is, we don't have a, we're not keeping track of that timeline. For public works employee. No. You know, last year I think we had it in the budget materials. Last year was like 30 some odd grand. We were estimating was the additional cost to. Be providing buildings and, and those services through the parks and red staff. We haven't, we're just, we're, because we're so new to this. We're not saying to the part-time folks like, Hey, you guys came over to the library to work on. You know, fixing something in the bathroom. We want you to use this pay code for that hour and then use your, your parks and red pay code. Like those are things we could do. It, it's just so woke into woven in their day. It's not like, okay, on Thursdays we do building stuff. And the other days we could park stuff. So it's, it's almost too integrated right now to have a clear separation. Right. So looking at the parks and facilities budget, then how much of the $25,000 increases related to the building. I guess that's the hard part that not knowing. So it goes up year over year, right. And, and. On the part-time salaries. Yeah, just, you know, trying to get a handle on, you know, how much of this is due to, to an actual recreation increase. Yeah. So, you know, we're not going to have a lot of people who are going to have to build eggs. And so explaining that is not possible. What I can tell you is the increase came from. Was two-fold. We looked at, we had those three. We would call them like senior maintenance personnel. They were budgeted in previous budgets to work 20 hours a week for 30 weeks of the year. When we were building this budget in October, we did a look back and they actually averaged 25 hours a week between the three of them. And then we did a look back at the three weeks instead of 20. So you think that extra 15 is, is sort of mostly allocated. That's what, yeah, based on what we used in the past and what we budgeted for, this is the reality of what we saw over the last year is that those folks were working more. So it reflects that change. And then a pay increase, a normal pay increase for them. And then a pay increase to our seasonals, a reduction in hours for them. So that was kind of up wash. So I understand some of the logic about moving the adult. Programming provision into this particular piece. I will just simply say, and I don't know if anyone else will agree on this, but the importance of our, of our senior program and the importance of education program. It seems important enough that I almost want it called out on its own, so that we can show the investment on like, directly. I'm not saying we have to say that's kind of how I'm feeling about it right now, but I, but I'm not demanding that that be changed. I just want to acknowledge that. If you have two questions concerning specific call outs for this, for senior programming. So one under professional services, $10,000 per senior programming under professional services, what would that reflect? Sure. So two things got moved from the previous adult budget for FY 24. There's 10,000. There's $20,000 total 10,000 and 330, which is other professional services or professional services now, and 10,000 in supplies. And basically it was a budget neutral decision. There was 20,000 allocated in the FY 24 budget for some increased cost and transportation that was not ended up being needed. And so we moved those that 20 into two chunks of 10. Based on some of what we've, I think we've been hearing from you all about your support for senior services. If there is no budget, then we all just need to be comfortable and aware that every program will need to pay for itself. And so that means if we're going to bring in somebody to do a cooking class, if we're going to bring in somebody to do bone builders, some of these things are free, but I'm using class if we're going to do an event that they would all need to pay for themselves, either through revenues or through sponsorship opportunities. So by providing the 10,000 and 330 and the 10,000 and 610, which is general supplies, it gives some flexibility. I think the program director to operate some of those things without being concerned of breaking even every time. If we wanted to start up the Wednesday lunches again, which kind of have gone to the wayside, you know, there would used to be a $2 charge for those. It may cost a little bit more to provide a soup and sandwich these days. So we could charge more. Or we could still charge the $2 and supplement it with some money from general fund. The other question I have in regards to the adult programming decision is this the full amount going from July 1 to the, you know, from the beginning of the fiscal year to the end, I asked because obviously based on the recon renovation costs and based on what I currently understand, when we would potentially hire this person, it sounds like if it's going to take six to eight months for the renovation to be done, we're going to be well into the next budget before word. Actually hiring a full-time adult programmer. So I wonder if we need to budget the full amount. I will say, and this is also in light of, I had a conversation with Virginia yesterday about the update for the seniors that just went out. I honestly felt that we shorted our support for the seniors a little bit. One of the things that I specifically asked, I don't know if Virginia passed this on to you, but I wonder if we wouldn't at least hire someone part-time to be that person who would open and close the senior center versus relying on volunteers. And then hoping they'll show up so that we can have more direct contact, more direct interaction. And then coming to the senior center and not be just having a volunteer that they're interacting with, whether nobody closed, but there's no EJRP representative there. And I'm thinking for this short term, we can hire a part-time person. We have it within the current budget, but in that I say that because if we made this adjustment, because we only need a partial year for this full-time position, maybe we keep a small coverage because we continue to have that part-time person in that role until we're ready to hire full-time to a legal program. Sure. I have two thoughts on that. Are you going to go? I have two thoughts too, but you go first because it might be the same. The first is I think you're accurate, Marcus, that I don't know as though I want to budget after September 1. I'd really like to have somebody not starting on day one that this facility is usable, but start a little bit before then. But I don't currently anticipate that would be on July 1 or August 1. I would say maybe September 1. So if we wanted to multiply this times 10-12 and reduce that a little bit, if that would be helpful, I think that would be fine. But reducing that I think does not give us that leeway to have somebody part-time in July and August. So it's a juxtaposition of if that money is not there, it's just not there, which I think you can cut, but just be prepared that there wouldn't be any part-time support. Well, that's why I'm saying like if we, let's just say it was $10,000 that we were cut because of that short-time leaf, just cut it by five. That way you still have the money for the full-time position for the time that you're going to have. But you have got some money there for that part-time position. Because I personally think we should hire part-time person for the immediate future to carry us through from coming up. It's probably going to be difficult for Jan 2. But I would think Jan 2 through July 1 in the next part. So that's my question on the hours now. So I guess I'm, there's been a lot of back and forth in the Supercenter. How does the schedule you provided yesterday match what it was a couple of months ago? Sure. And you all are driving the conversation. My preference would be to see if there are other budget stuff and then return to this conversation about that memo that went out. I just don't want to cloud any. But I'm happy to answer all the questions. And I just am conscientious. We have 12 more minutes. Oh, don't worry about that. But if that's where you want to go with conversation, I'm happy to address that. Yeah, I just hear it quickly. I'm just curious how it compares to what. Yeah. So, so what was shared with you all yesterday is an exact reflection of what's happening at the senior center this week. And, and next week and was the week prior and the week prior. So it literally is maintaining status quo and it's supporting those activities that are currently happening in that space. And I think that's a good point. Just the way they've been supported. Since at least October, the center on Mondays and Fridays has only been open. If a volunteer opens the center. So not. Not at all. She hasn't. No, Paula has never staffed it. It was Blake. And she resigned at some point back in the fall. And when that happened, they were able to do that. I mean, I don't think they had to do that. I mean, there's no longer staff on Mondays and Fridays. They have volunteers who open, but typically they only open from 10 to 12 while they play mahjong and then they close up. So it's not, everything is exactly how. So like if you guys said that plan you put out, Rad, as garbage. We're going to stick with the town starting January one. They would be exactly like what I proposed in that. I thought that there was cribbing on Wednesdays. Again, based on the conversation that was held, we said we were going to maintain their game. There's not a privilege on Wednesdays. I thought they were doing some from 10 to 2 on Wednesdays. No. Some of that operational, but we can certainly continue this conversation for what we do with the seniors in the rest of FY24. The one other comment I wanted to make on this concept of dropping the full-time position in FY24, is just to note that that will look like an increase. Sorry, dropping the full-time in FY25 will look like an increase in FY26. Just that will always happen when we're not fully funding in FY24. But I think you make a great point that it is true. We are unlikely to hire that full-time person off the bat in FY25. Yeah. We probably had this discussion. I'm old and I forget. Fourth of July, Morrill, the eighth grade. The concept of using sponsorship donations to fund as opposed to using java fund money. Thoughts? It's an area that we've been working on. I'm not sure if we could ever get it to fully sponsored. Yeah. That July 4th event at this point is pushing $30,000 given its location and all of the things that go into it. So it was last budget cycle that we finally put 10,000 into the general fund to support that. Yeah. Events and otherwise there's always just support from the program fund. So the parade is a combination of that budgeted amount and sponsorship. And they get almost the same amount from sponsorship as what's allocated to 7,500. So that's a pretty decent balance there. And if you recall that used to be in the town general fund and has transferred over to the city. Yep. I mean, we've talked about the fireworks and talked about charging admission for one city governments. I think that fireworks are a loan or over 30,000 whereas ours are 15 right now. So I think their fireworks alone breaks that budget. But you don't know if they budget themselves or if they're getting donations or anything like that. The last fireworks said something. You're just reminding me of this right now, like two fireworks were the name of a company. Yes. Oh, no, not the fireworks that. One of the things that drones. Interesting. Okay. We pay for the CBE to be there. We do. And we just pay their direct costs. So, you know, otherwise they argument is those workers would be home. There's trash that needs to be taken out. There's a lot of stuff that we take down. So we just get billed for their direct costs. That's just a small curiosity question. How much is the. Annual maintenance of Memorial Park. Do you know it's it's lumped in with. Yeah, I know that was mentioned in the parks piece. I don't have an estimate. That costs. I've asked for this a couple times in the past. And I just would love to find out. An estimate for repairing. Memorial Park. And replacing the concrete with marble. It was concrete to begin with because they couldn't, those lines of couldn't afford marble. And now it's all crumbled and the liner of the fountain is pulled out and it's kind of a mess. Remember during separation negotiations. That's still being a shared expense. Like a willingness to share that. I'm not imagining it. Because it honors. There. I just want to understand how much it might cost to fix that. And I'm not saying that we need to add, find that out and then add it to the budget. We can figure out the fundraiser to get that fixed. Thank you. With the maintenance of parks in general. I just want to understand how much it might cost to fix that. And I'm not saying that we need to add, find that out and then add it to the budget. And I'm not saying that we need to add it to the budget. I'm not saying that we need to add it to the budget. With the maintenance of parks in general. We have that any. On the tax rate for parks. If you were thinking of taxes to parks. If we were to think about parking broadly. And as we are facing that 7.1% tax increase. If we were to look at taking, say, about half of what was going to be used for EBRD capital to use or say main three part for other parts purposes. What would that do broadly to your capital plan? I think it would be a good idea to do that. I think it would be a good idea to do that. I think it would be a good idea to do that. I think it would be a good idea to do that. I think we're going to have to think about the future. Let's do that here. Probably easier. Well. Or do you want to think about it? I mean, I, I mean, right now that I can, I can just run down because you don't really have an item. I just list 47,000 for the playground. Payback, which is the final year. 10,500 for a new truck. 14,000 for a new mower. 15,000 is paying off. An extra drain and build from in between the buildings. And then a new diving board and then saving. So. I guess, you know, take your pick up. There's. Eight or 10 items that I listed. Both non lonely payback or non lease payback things. Yeah. So that's 47, 75, 73 of the one 20. So that's the one 12. So. So then there's about 50 allocated for truck, zero turn and line painter. Diving board landscaping. Where I thought you were going to go is how you need to go our capital plan is grossly under. For the number of. I do say in just, but also not so, you know, and we've had a little bit of conversation about the condition of the Cascade courts. And I think that's a good point. That they are, are beyond repair. The Mabel street tennis courts are no prettier. Mabel street basketball court and skate park. There's some, some decent infrastructure, you know, this penny on the capital, this penny per capital. Has obviously helped us to maintain a lot in the parks and make some nice investments too. But just as, you know, going through the general capital for the park assets, we really aren't putting away an adequate amount every year to maintain the park assets into the future. And so we are going to. Have some choices at some time soon, some real choices of like, okay, we either, we either need to rebuild those Cascade courts or we just need to. He's up in arms just saying, yeah. And so, you know, we can, you know, we've been able to chip away at some things and, you know, we've been able to sacrifice for that playground over five years, but to replace the Cascade courts of 325,000, like, you know, absolutely. Exactly. I don't disagree. At the exact same time, also hearing from our other portions of the community of paying a million dollars for EGR, the administration and parks is that the right amount that we should be spending for our community. And I don't disagree that he did that we need to have that services. And I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. There's always the other side of the coin. Sure. And, and just with that other side side of the coin, I just want to continue to reiterate. There's a lot in here that. We've not asked for, and it's kind of, and we're happy to help and manage. We're happy to take on buildings and manage those services, but. But there's, that's, there's dollars in here to do that. We're happy to take on senior services. You've seen other people asking for a job. Now, there's a lot of people asking for job offers. But there's a lot of people asking for a job offer. So I'm something that isn't here associated with that. I didn't ask for those. You know, the council. Manager has all asked to continue supporting this. Senior center. And everybody. And so a lot of the things you've seen in our budget over the last two years are not. Assets. Me and I, I remember telling Jess and ravine at some point. Like I don't want people raising their hands and, well, we just gave a CRP another program director. I'm just happy to take them off, but I do think there's a difference there. Do you have, does your team have what you need in order to begin thinking about the revenue side of things because there are these particular projects that have been mentioned here. Is there opportunity either with grant funding and private partnerships that we could potentially do, but don't have a man try to seek out those opportunities. I'm just wondering for it. Yeah, I mean, I think there's always room for more attention to seeking grants and that that's something that's hard for us to find time to do at the moment. And sponsorship takes a lot of time. I think we're pretty good overall in terms of staffing and where budget levels and those things are at. I think the harder part is going to be these big lifts these big basket tennis courts Maple Street tennis courts consideration of the gym facility as many communities around us or our building and constructing those. Those are going to be some bigger questions for you all in the community. Do you ever see the budget for the enterprise fund for like all the camps and everything. Do we see that separately. Yes. Okay. Actually, you just shared a link to those. It's in the Excel file. Yes. They are not. There's still some work to be done because I've got personnel costs to match up rather than we're trying to come up with a better system and like housing all of that data in one place. The enterprise funds, EJRP along with waterways, water and sanitation will be presented later. Okay. Right. Can you do this just for just sort of for folks you may watch this later on. Can you explain how your budgets are particularly complex. Let's just call it that between the enterprise funds program on all of the other parks and administration. I'm going to explain quickly how all of that comes together. What's, what's included in the administration budget. What's included in the budget. Parks and facilities, how does that differ from the programs that are on the enterprise fund, like the childcare and everything else that sort of self sustaining. So how does that tie back into these. Yeah, just real quick so the general fund. We have three major pots of money one is administration one is parks and facilities the others capital plan. The administration we have six full time employees in there who you know generally speaking, I think of it as providing the overhead of EJRP so it's a person that answers the phones it's the person that does the business stuff in the back office. It's myself the assistant director a program director and senior programs person so those six people. And then in parks and facilities we have two full time people. And then the part time folks that it takes to just maintain our parks and facilities throughout the city. In the capital funds, I'd have to go back on the exact year but at some point there was a vote for a penny for parks. And we've just honored that for many, many years over a dozen years of just continuing to use that number as it's about $113,000. For capital projects for parks and facilities outside of the general fund. We have an enterprise fund that we call program fund in the program fund. We have the 17 full time employees so 17 in the program fund eight in the general fund. The program fund is obviously self sustaining so all of the revenues that come in from all over different programs, childcare, the pool preschool. All of those come in and all of our expenses and for those programs as well as many of our community events comes out of there. And that is a revolving fund so if there's any residual money that that's left over at the end of the year it can be reinvested in parks and facilities and programs. And it knows enterprise funds contribute back to capital or percentages back to some of the things we needed. So what they really do is alleviate some burdens on general fund expenses or capital things so what we've done, you know I was talking earlier that non personnel costs and the administration budget are down 17%. It's because we've been moving things over to program fund as often as we can so we used to pay for example for our rec track software where people can register and houses all of our programs and all of that we used to pay for that out of the general fund last year. This year it's moved into the program fund and so what we've done over time as we just keep trying to move as much as we can. We've gotten pretty darn close to getting as much out as possible. We're at $43,000 in the general fund of non personnel costs, other than the new senior monies that we've allocated so 63 total out of that 797 is non personnel, it's really just the personnel to support the level of programming that we have in this community. Thanks. Just a little bit about rack advisory committee and administration budget. What is the plan for implementing. So far has been to wait to see which communities actually come out of the strategic planning process in terms of what's a priority for this community and doing. But is it dependent upon like if the strategic planning results say people are. That's not part of the thing that people say they want to see right away but it is something that we're planning for it should we be implementing it anyway if it doesn't become a high priority for the strategic planning process. Yeah, I think it's a good question I mean. It's an interesting group of committees that we have thus far. And some of them are very specific. Some of them do very broad work. And I think that what I'm hoping to see from the strategic planning committee is just a level. I think it's a priority in terms of like sort of where these buckets are and is there some thought or some thinking about what is our new committee structure going forward. So, but I think it I think it's a good question I think our budget is accounting for the potential of three new committees. And in FY 24 we have that as well. So it is possible that if something becomes clear from the strategic planning process and we want to move forward on it we can do that and I think to your point, even outside of that process. If the council wants to set up any committee it's completely within your purview to do it. And so it's important to you that you do a record advisory committee because the community has asked for that or for whatever reason, even if it's not a priority in the strategic planning process, it doesn't mean that you don't do it if that's something you want to do. Yeah, I just kind of had the impression that that was something that we felt needed to be implemented regardless of the strategic planning process and that we were also waiting to see what the community had to say, but that that particular plan was going to happen that was my understanding I may have that incorrect, but I would be interested in seeing that move forward and I was just wondering, like, how that how and when that was going to happen. So, after strategic planning is, yeah, perfectly finance. We're waiting kind of wings going for direction or response to, hey, when you come up with some wind drafts or things whatever it is, you know, just in my tenure at European we we've had an enterprise committee for longer than we can. And so it's a welcomed and a normal part of our of our daily operations and business so it's just a matter of when you all provide guidance to proceed and we're ready to go. There's a lot of things there. It's a lot I know there's work. I don't like, like fun things there I would I would like to see that happen but I don't want that just because Elaine said she wants to see it. I was expecting it. I was expecting to see it and had been wondering where it was. And so, yeah, I would. I think that our community wants to see that. If it's something that's already, you know, in your mind that's going to come forward great. That would be great. It'd be great to return to that model. Okay, the interest of keeping things on track is there any of it. It's great. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We're eight minutes. There's a thank you for winning. Amber's going to make me apologize for four more minutes. We're going to really be late. I said Amber's going to make me apologize for more minutes than we're going to be really late. Come on up. Thank you most to where they had it. Marcus brother. Okay, page 55 in your packet. So, the notable changes in this budget are. We're going to reduce the revenue to be more in line with what we're actually seeing in this current fiscal year so Susan can speak to that a little bit more, if you'd like. And so the election expenses are going to change from one year to the next depending on how many elections we've got so an FY 25 we're going to have fewer elections and we'll have an FY 24 so that that has come down. Anything you want to add point out. I think so. Yeah, the 24 estimates were based on approximately 40% of what the town was doing. It's things and sometimes things change like markets change and land record what we've already changed. I haven't seen a lot of recordings lately so why. So that affects that revenue quite a bit. And one thing that did go down in expenses was the cost of our land record recording program, because we've got a contract that's a lot less than what I was paying over the time. Susan is the $11 per page is that what our take is out of instead of the 15. Right. Okay, right because the $4 goes to breakfast presentation. Does your question about digitization. Yeah, earlier. Yeah, it does before I forget the other question. Do you know if there's any been any discussion that the town part level about changing that $15 because it's been like that for years now and I'm kind of curious. Yeah, it changed. It changed like sometime in the last seven years. Yeah, it definitely changed when I was. Yeah, but, but I don't think anyone's, I have started anything right now. We've got a lot of pushback women and the attorneys, you know how they are. So by balance of looking at, you know, like the use of the ball with it's great to have the technology. Yeah, to be able to look online and do all of your searches online but it does, it does decrease this other and so there is talk. Yeah, the last county clerks meeting people were talking about setting up to charge people to look online. Yeah. And we don't have that with our system. Well, we don't even have our records online yet. Yeah, pushing for them, but hasn't happened yet. But because for some purposes, it's, I mean, it's, if they look online and then they pay for the copies that they need. That's good. Because that's revenue there. But they're all sometimes they're doing the screenshots for the watermark on it and getting the information off that for what they need. Yes. So that's. Yeah, losing revenue. Yeah, that's happening. One of the things that Elaine was talking about as I mentioned to Chris that looking at the fee stretch fee structure for South Burlington, they charge a digitization fee in whatever fee they're charging so I'm looking at their zoning so when you go pull a permit, or like a certificate of compliance that's in the land record, they're charging 20 bucks plus a $10 digitization. You know what I mean. It is late. And I mean, I'm just making up numbers here, but there is some component where you're actually being able to recover, I assume the fees of having to pay for the subscription costs and stuff. I'm just kind of curious. I mean, I know that there's a couple of blanks here on the record preservation I'm assuming those are kind of a wash anyways because you're going to have a new component. I'm not recognizing the revenue. Yeah, it's encourage. So, but as far as the length of pulling permits, the applicant is charged the recording fee at the time they did to the permit, but we've never done anything beyond that. And I think that I just mentioned to him to take a look at just to try to recover some of our summer or our expenses, honestly. And then the old another question that I have with I was kind of curious about the resident only parking permits to be charged for those. We don't know. He's getting them. I mean, it's kind of a boardiness that it's mostly the neighborhoods near the high school, and that started when the high schools starting charging the kids to park. I'm sorry, the students for parking permits at the high school, I don't know they still do that. They're charging students to have permits to park in the high school parking lot. Then neighborhoods near the high school, we're getting people part of the streets, leaving trash. They don't like all this so the trustees of the time is to the ordinance for resident on the current. And it's also on all people just a real soccer field. I think there's a lot to be talking about. Okay. So that's, that's kind of as an idea. So I always used to do those permits in house and mail them out. And the last few years it's been kind of mentioned. I like to get out that I can hire somebody. And I can say that's an ordinance that doesn't make sense to backfill charge for it. I guess that's a question can talk about later. I'm good. Were you looking at it one point in time into having the passport capability here. Yeah, I still have that in my mind. That is a good income source. You get almost $20 per passport if you do the processing in your office. And more if you do the pictures. So, yeah, something. I was shocked. Yeah, maybe you're shocked. There's a restriction with having access to vital records. And so one of the only two of us in the first office. So one of us might have to give up the access to the vital records in order to be able to process the passwords. I don't have any other questions. I have one question. So the 15,000 under. Election expenses. Does that include mailing out ballots. I'm going to assume there's an assumption. Yeah. School district pays for most of the mail. Since they're valid. Okay. It does say. Well, it's like starting to get confused because I was like, no valid costs. Some postage and I was like. Yeah, try. Yeah. Exactly what's all incorporated in that. Marcus, we tried to list it by election because each election, the costs are different. Yeah. So yeah, it's confusing. Yeah. And I, I'm going to assume. Should we have to discuss second discussion, not right now, but as a discussion about whether we should or should not mail balance. Yeah. So you have to understand correctly, you have to make that decision. We had to make officially make that decision last year. So each year you have to make that decision. So you will have that conversation. And before this budget is finalized so that way we can adjust it. So the, this includes the concept of mailing balance, but it really is heavily cost shared with the school. So it's not a huge cost. It's a huge cost. It's a huge cost. It's a huge cost. And it's a huge cost. It's a huge cost in the near general fund budget because of that combination. Now, if we get ourselves into a situation in the future, where the town moves to town meeting day, but the junction stays on. April. Yeah, that relationship will not exist. School. The school. Yeah, the school. What did I say? where the school does intend to have it on their ballot, this next ballot for voter approval to move it to town meeting day. Obviously we as a council have the authority to move it if they would pass that without getting the additional voter approval. So at the moment as a council, you don't have that authority. At the moment, the legislative charter changes that were approved by the voters last year that would get the council authority to make that change on your own is not finalized yet. Yeah. What was that? As a go-of-of with busy. It's a great voice. Yeah. I don't know. You speak that way and it must have been there. Point. Why'd you do that? Yeah. End of the day. Getting punchy. Getting punchy at the end of the day. But anyway, just making that point clear. I think we're all hoping to stay on safe page here, but just want to make it clear what's actually going in the book. The school district is also pretty committed to continuing to nail that. Yeah. Next afternoon, they have to request to us. To you. Yeah, you have to give them permission. OK. So there you go. OK. All right, thank you very much. Appreciate it, Catherine. Thank you. See you. I know. Sure. So now we are here at Economic Development. That's page 57 in your PDF packet. So my note in the narrative is just generally speaking. We basically tried to cut this back, acknowledging the 7% proposal that you've got in front of you. We have lots of different things have kind of gone on in this budget over time. And like I said, we're still kind of in a transition process of figuring out exactly what we're doing in here. And so we kind of, at this point, cut a good amount of this back. We still have $15,000 in there for a community event like you mentioned earlier. And we also have heard quite a bit about the block party concept that it seems like people really liked the block party. And we have had matching grant funds also over the years here. We haven't used those over the last couple of years. So looking to cut that back. Last year, we kept it in there and had the note that we could sort of move that into the Amtrak pool of money if it's not used. So that's what's going on in there. We put the $10,000, the strategic, we reduced that to $10,000. But we just, I mean, we talked about potentially using that for a community event instead of having the $15,000, and eliminating the $15,000. Just throwing it out. So we said we're going to get rid of the full $50,000 that we put in the strategic planning line item. So it's $10,000. If we use that $10,000, we talked about also potentially using that $10,000 for a community event related to the strategic planning. Do we need the $15,000? Is my boy. Can we just eliminate that $15,000 and use the $10,000? I mean, if we do something like a block party too, again, I think we do need to have this conversation about donations and sponsorships and all this other stuff too. Yeah, for you, you and I will be kind of playing in all events, whatever. That would be my position is to just remove the $15,000 without having an identified event. There are pretty much me and anything coming out of the strategic planning would then have to wait until that buy $26,000. We put $10,000 in. We did keep $10,000. But if we then take $15,000, it's a negative $5,000. I know it's $3,000 in the afternoon. We're keeping $5,000. We started with $25,000 combined for. Right. Technically, it looks like we started with $20,000. We started with $75,000, $65,000 to begin with. You're suggesting taking out. Just thinking 10. But you have no event. You have no event. And to try to plan a block party between now and then is probably not going to happen anyways. Well, for FY 25, it seems real to me, but we also could not do these things. But it seems real to me in FY 25 that we might have something that might cost something out of the strategic planning process. And I think we want a community event. I mean, community dinner alone, next fiscal year, we could go back to a dinner and provide food. I mean, that's probably fine. That alone, what do you have of what's left? By thinking this through, I would say. I think we want to do the block party, the avenue about those kinds of things. We need to keep the 15 that's in here. If we want to do something from the strategic planning, we need to keep that $10,000 in there. I know we talked about not doing out about. That's why we removed it. We didn't do it this year. I mean, it started as an economic development process during COVID when businesses were pretty much going. And I question whether everything else going on, that's specific, providing money to active businesses at this point. I just use that as a type. You know, I do those type of events. And I put the $15,000 would be for you here. The community event would be that whatever you want to call it. So let me flip it the other way. What do we spend $15,000 on this year? We spent $50 something on the strategic planning process. Right. So we didn't cry. What was the independent celebration? Anybody remember? What that cost us? That was essentially a massive round. We've seen people downtown, actually. You just left. Yeah. That was a one-off. Yeah, it was a real one-off. Oh, sure. We haven't done a block party in real, really, like, five or six years. Yeah, well, and one of the reasons why was because the popularity had steadily increased, the cost had steadily increased. And it was turning out that it was not a lot of S-exjuncture residents attending this event. Yeah. And yeah. Well, just like pumpkin falooza, I mean, you know, every, it felt like when we were standing there for that hour and a half or two hours, everybody was only every fourth person. It was a fifth person. And it was a, well, I would say there's a big difference between block party and pumpkin falooza in terms of the demographic that comes. Yeah, I just feel like, you know, we have a list of events now we're putting on. You know, it's going to come on. Serving a greater population city is just something that. Well, right. Right next to that. I mean, I talked about it, but it's like. So the penny that funds this particular page is actually mixed into the general fund. So. That penny doesn't support this page. This is not the general fund budget, correct? The penny is the Economic Development Fund. That's the right now. The Crescent Connector costs on us. Maple Street Park. And got it. No, Main Street Park. Sorry, and the Amtrak station. Yeah, we spent about seventy four hundred dollars on the city celebration because we paid for that with our money. So I have that. I wonder if it's worth it. I'm with Amber on the 20 that's in here. For the 15. I'm wondering if it's worth it to put a pause on this particular budget until we decide what our economic development activity is going to be in the community. And like, we have a conversation about are we going to do a downtown committee? Are we going to do an EDC? Oh, like, I wonder if we could. Would it hurt if we didn't spend this money this year, this upcoming budget year? One year and think about it. Economic development means it was $30,000. It's not going to create a new business opportunity. It's not going to. We're just talking about parties. Hold on. Yeah. And that was part of my intent about community events should be in community developments. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like we're kind of all over the place. I have I just noticed I have a note to myself from when I read this binder said need more structure around this budget. Who's responsible? It's a catch-all for prom dev and communications and admin and capital. So it's like, it's kind of all over the place. So maybe we could put applause on this entire line item and not spend it, but plan for it going forward. So I want to throw one idea and this came up in other previous discussions. If we wanted to find a way to bring back, say, like the farmers market, I see that as an economic development activity that to me is like the kind of thing that I would use this one. I don't need I don't think we need all this money for that. Right. But that is something I'd rather do sooner rather than later. So there is a portion of me that goes that would fit this. I bring the farmers market back sooner rather than later. Yeah. Yeah. Any idea how much I'm sorry. That's true. So I just please. And the answer is no, but that's why I'm bringing it up so that we can be discussed. Yeah, I mean, that is the appropriate time for that. But it is the kind of thing that I'm thinking about when I look at this. That's why I want to say even more, we need to pause. Yeah, I think we've got so much on our plate already. That is such a huge understatement, Marcus. And I say that because I was one of the founders of the last one and it just was massive. This is this is the first day we're talking about it. So let's add us the list to remove. Yeah. Let's. And let's come back later with, you know, talking about a timeline for strategic planning. I mean, if there's an initial read early enough in January. From that process, we can get from Ashley and the committee that says, hey, look, it looks like this is going to be something that that we can do. Then maybe we can put a little bit back in for the time being, I think. Leaving. So we're saying we need the 10 and the other and kill this. Yeah. Yeah. Is is or are there any things that this budget went to in 22 or 23? That's by getting rid of it. We're going to regret later. It went to out and about block party. That's those are the two areas. And then what was the one that we did with Trump? Yeah, I don't know. Well, maybe we'll stop there. Yeah, we can change. I mean, yeah, yeah, that's right. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the one that we thought of this fall and just sort of looked at it and said this is going to seem to make sense right now. And let's figure out what I should do. I don't know what appropriations to other agencies have been in the past. I don't know what that is. So we can we can just look at that. It may be that that's just moved to either county budget or health and human services. It is it's moved to other to the county budget. I can hold it in. Historically, I want to say this was sort of Robin's Robin's budget for things like CCRBC dues. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's of course that I mean, if anything, I'd love to see this money turn well. We didn't get to we didn't get to do anything about the kind of service organization funding. They kind of yeah, but I really feeling that this year even because it occurs to me that even with the budget pressures, I hate doing this. I don't mean on any of us, even with all the budget pressures that found out, they still managed to pull off that event. I'm a how they did it. I don't know if they funded it. I don't know the details to it. I don't think that means we have to do it. But I'd rather almost see if we can. Well, this is your board seat, seat a program when we're looking to start a. Program that goes out to nonprofits and service agencies that operate in the city or maybe what we need more coordinated in the next round is funding organizations that will help us with the situation around this morning before we do that. I think I would love out of the result of this particular conversation is for our residents to hear that we are pressing pause on some things because we recognize how expensive stuff is and we want to get it right going forward. And that we are pausing investment in stuff so that we can get their priorities and then make a map to follow. And so next year, folks, you you will can expect to see economic development expenses happening, but in a more orchestrating specific way. I would love the optics of what this discussion has been to be shared with the community because it's important. I think we just made an important decision. OK, all right. Then we've got health and human services. This we sort of looked at before because that's the budget in it. Also in here, you have Essex Rescue. And I ask a question about the cemetery. Yes. So last year, they asked us for twenty thousand dollars. Yeah, we gave them twenty thousand dollars and allocated that. Do we need to do it again this year? Didn't they send a formal request this year? So they haven't and I thought on occasion about reaching out. So the last time I talked with them about this because they invited me to their annual meeting after we did this twenty thousand to thank us for that. And but their ask really would be. More and will the city take over maintenance of the cemetery? Well, isn't that required because now that we're no longer a village of the town, the cemetery, my understanding was that the village of the town had to have its cemeteries maintained by its town. But once there was a certain. Capacity reached or a certain level or maybe we separated, we're now our own municipality. It's all ours to take care of, and it's not theirs to take care of anymore. I'm very sure it's a statutory responsibility. Yeah, there's this weird thing about if you're a village, your town gets it. But then there's a point where it's not the town anymore. And so we're the fall back where it basically is the nonprofit that's that's serving or the organization that's serving as a caretaker for a cemetery no longer do what he goes to take care of. OK, but now that we're a separate municipality, it's on us. It's on us. And so are we saying that we're giving them twenty thousand in years to take care of ours because we don't have a cemetery commission? Is that what's happening? This is our seven. Yeah, yeah. And they have been struggling and twenty thousand does not cover their budget. And it will, my understanding, if we were to take it over, twenty thousand is not enough for us to take it over either. So twenty thousand was a good, helpful way to help patch them through last year. And then is the town cemetery committee or do we have our own now? We always have our own, right? The village, as far as I know, they only I think they only serve the two cemeteries in the city. OK, I don't know that I've ever seen a list of people who were on this. I've never I never knew we had our own. They're a separate entity. So that it's a separate. It's it's not a municipal organization. Correct. Yeah. Got it. OK. And who are they? Their view, Cemetery Association is the same people, the one right here by the auto place. And then I don't know one by them. Yeah, I'm thinking. Yeah. It's a good number of people. There was maybe like ten or tenish people around the table. It's not the one I'm linking. That one's by Holy Family. That's Holy Family. The one I will call Chester is also a part of. All right. Yeah. OK. So the solution of cemeteries. Well, another group of people I had no idea existed. I seriously thought that it was the town and the town sex and all that. My goodness. So, Amber, to your question, they have not officially asked for anything. And I have. Not asked specifically, but kept in this 20,000 specific. I mean, yeah, just put a pen, put it in the parking lot for now and talk about your time. Yeah, I mean, the more we talk, the more we should to be clear and more we talk about it, the more expensive this line gets. Yeah. Yeah. Next. Yes. And we still need to know what they spent it on. I mean, yeah. Yeah. We did. We did actually give up the 20. They've already collected the 20,000 for this year. And then it's in the expenses we've seen. Yes. So is there a report that happens in the annual like an annual report budget that they said annual report report, but then they put in anything is that you know, yeah, I'm sorry. I hate to say it, but I want to talk more about that just so I can see what they're spending and who they are and what when they need. And it reminds me of the, you know, wants and needs are on the tree front. You know, what kind of information are we now looking at? Oh, my goodness. Good news is I don't think the county in regional I think we can do anything with any of these. No, these last two, these last two costs in these are all. Yeah, I would actually say let's just write to the environment. We get nothing from them. Yeah, there's 3750. OK, yeah. Even wait all afternoon to say that. I think we're going to die. So CCRPC last week, we had the executive committee had a conversation because they were at the IBC was asking CCRPC for a work plan of all the projects. And we were going through this plan and really couldn't we just send them the UPW pay? First of all, it was our first question. But we got into it, it devolved into a conversation where multiple members who would sit on boards across the county were like, what the hell do we need GBIC for? And so there's like four different people from different towns that were upset with GBIC. Well, it's an interesting because they're applying for some special economic development designation or not there. What was it? An authority. Yeah, for the county. So in our response to in CCRPC's response to the request for this new plan that they want from CCRPC, we insisted that they include our comments. And I even sent them the minutes from our meeting where we talked to the chair and I shared with them when you said, well, we asked them if they would please add more diversity to their board. And the answer was, well, we have some women and everyone just cracked up. I mean, so there is general dissatisfaction throughout Chittenden County with GBIC. They are focused entirely on Burlington and the wants and needs of their board. So I think when you cannot identify because of confidentiality reasons, what what you're doing, I mean, that's a pretty that's a state. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, and the whole thing where there's some way around, yeah, it's got to be. I mean, like, if you're trying to sell it to us that we're giving you money, like, we need to know a little bit about how what are you doing for me? Kind of, but that's because all they do is pass through state funds. Yeah. So they were saying, oh, we gave bars and hairdressers money this time. I'm like, yeah, I know you did because that application went through ACCD. And you did nothing. You did nothing. They were just a customer. And the other secrecy part is veggie. They're deeply involved in veggie and ACCV like cannot, will not ever share any data from that. Like the one thing I agree with John Hoffman. I was a little, I was a little crass in saying, let's cut GVIC. I'm wondering if as somebody who has worked with GVIC. You're sorry that you can add us to buy them to bring value to us as a community. I said that a lot. That's sorry. Like, look, I mean, yeah, right. It's it's it's really, really difficult. I mean, I think my understanding, but I don't know any of this for for sure. But my understanding is crime copy and GVIC pretty instrumental in trying to help keep global boundaries IBM here over over the years. And they might be doing a lot more going on with global boundaries than I'm aware of again, because they can't necessarily tell us what what's happening. And, you know, I think they are a good partner at the regional level. But I hear you because many municipalities do indeed feel this same way. And it's, you know, I told Sam last year, I prep Sam this year. You send us this letter with this table with acronyms and numbers that don't mean anything to anybody. And that we got to have a bet. There's got to be a better output stream here. And it it doesn't do anything. And at the same time is three thousand seven hundred fifty dollars. So like I say that only because I just don't know. Um, it is a significant dollar amount to us when we're in a position when we're trying to figure out how to make our budget work. Collectively, I think it's a decent amount of money for them individually. It seems like a small amount of money, but collectively, countywide, I think it adds up to it will have some impact to them, certainly, for sure. Could we propose that we give them the same amount that we give the chamber, the two organizations that serve the businesses in Chittenden County? Well, I mean, because I'm trying to recognize, like, like when you started talking about CCTV, like they were shipped to media factory, like I'm the chair of the CCTV board. And I'm like, crap, that's not good. Right. So I can understand when one municipality pulls their support, that's pro. But we are unhappy. And I know there's also some sensitivity from way back. They've poached a few businesses from as extension and sent them to Milton and that's ages ago, water under the bridge, but it's still there. I mean, I'd agree to 500 today and we're replacing it. Our next part of our discussion at the next couple of budget meetings. We're talking about creating our own EBC. Right. And so it is, you know, they do they do service our largest employer and they are actually a resident, you know, employer in our city. So I want to be sensitive. In fact, that's not a great look. Regardless of how I feel about it, you know, it's not funding. I'm certain global gets more than 3,750 back to the efforts of GBC. So I guess the only thing for that other things I would have in here is their total revenue in 2022 was 856,000. So the 3,000 is kind of peanuts in that sense. The end of the year, 33,000 in profit previous year was 220,000 in profit. Similar to the comment about how the kind of milk and pays 170,000 for their manager. And nothing for the CTC services that we cover for them. Correct. Frank is apparently a 20 hour per week person, making a hundred and ninety five. What? So. OK, I'm not going with five hundred either. Sorry. And I think there's ways that they could find that three thousand dollars. And this would be a one time we're making a point. Perhaps they say, wait, what? As the station doesn't want to pay us, why? And they might come talk to us and have a more substantive conversation than the one we had with their chair on Zoom. Well, I didn't say it's important this year, and I have to wait and see on that. So I just think what I said earlier, I think all of a sudden they're like, so I want to go against my word when I was here. I'm fine striking it out. I'm zeroing it out. That's up to you. That's fine. OK, I'll keep my suggestions. If I wonder if you want to go in, it's fine. It's because I have an expectable motion. And I just heard Ron Berge's voice in my head. I honestly, based on, based on my. I don't have to give him all my reasons, but I believe based on the things that I heard, based on some other feedback, I am supportive of moving this to zero. I though I, you know, I come back to another point where this reflects in economic development here, sometimes I wonder if we don't need that somebody on staff that specifically does this work. That's who you do. You get an agency first, and then it's going to be your desperately known. I mean, you need a staffer. Sorry, I confessed to Virginia a couple of weeks ago that, like, since I was a baby trustee, I've been flying this a position. And it seems like a step. It seems like a staff position that we don't have this particular body. But I see here, maybe, maybe, trust me, I mean, I will say, as right now, one of the participants, you know, we as a community are participating, I'm participating in a conversation out of the tech hub. Boy, it'd be really nice if I could have an economic development partner, let alone a staff member to also assist in this particular process, because that attention and focus would be really helpful. So that's that's the project I'm thinking about. Boy, it would be nice if, based on what I know, GBIZ, if they were that partner, great, this would be a perfect type of project to work on. But they're right now, they're not part of that process. Right. So I'm seeing more pressures in the social services and in the sense of what GBIZ brings to that, because that work for Global is going to go on by many, many organizations. I don't think it's going to make a dent in that effort. I just think it's a messaging thing. So yeah, I'll stick to what I said. You all want to just look at different. I'm on board with removing 37. So I think you got four to one. Can I ask a question about GMT? Yes, we have a representative on that board, right? Yes. Who is our representative? Oh, wait a minute. Well, Andrew, step down, Raj is the alternate. We've been advertising to fill the position to get the right to get somebody to fill that position. I'm going to reach out to him and just try to get involved. It fell apart like they had an orientation. I wrote to them and said, I can't make the weekday. OK, I'll email you everything and we can check in later. And I never heard back again. And I forgot I never heard back again. And then this is back again with Virginia and I. I've got to get in touch with. And I don't want to get in touch with them anyway, because they're supposed to get back to us with what they were doing about what they don't think they ever changed the schedule. He's supposed to be coming as any like coming to. Yes, coming. It is coming here the one after January, January, the first meeting of January. Yeah. One of the things for tech hub wise, we're not going out on this road right there, but one of the things that is possible is talking about transportation issues for workforce development and everything else like how to serve us. I want tech hub people to start focusing on transportation and how to get a bolster GMP, how to bolster them up that way. How to how do you get the workforce to this community and not in cars? You know, and and I think it's criminal that that number two bus whatever 10 runs on the hour goes all the way out. I mean, it's a ridiculous amount. All the workers for a major manufacturing hub in the town. Yes. And and for our community as a connector to groceries, they just think it's absolutely criminal that the bus runs on the scale of those. Yeah, they are so strapped for money. They're like chicken between the seats for pennies between rice. And but the bus is busy, you know, and the time you said it's busy, it's really full and they're there for one day and right now they're very free. So it makes it even harder for them to make changes. OK. We have another one. Oh, yes, we just wanted to look at the last fund. So that is next up. That's page 61 of your PDF packet. So I can't wait to look at the new policy for this. Yes, I'm very excited about that. You don't really think it is fair. Order. I know what I'm bringing. The party is going. That's what I'm talking about. Did we get the numbers for I wrote that to one and it doesn't seem right for the fair, including from the law revenue for the fair. Yes, I saw that somewhere. Where is that? That's a 20. So it's in the November time. It means that. OK. Um. Can you see if I was in the last part of this? I should be able to find it. I mean, a lot of the law, I guess. But it's just an estimate of. Thank you much to it. Well, that revenue that we received November 21st, which would have covered the fair is to even just under 285. OK. So we just now with that payment that came in, we just now have a full year of revenue. So the lot fund, what I did here was I projected this out of several years on based on what you'll see in the lot revenue policy next week, just to kind of illustrate what we're proposing and how the committee is proposing in that policy. So essentially the notes over here, FY 23 and FY 24, we had specific expenditures assigned coming from that fund. But in FY 25, we are so the lot policy proposes that 25 percent of the revenue is going specifically to sidewalk projects. And then years of 26 through 29, what I've done is I just kind of randomly threw a number in just for analysis sake of $800,000 going to capital in addition to the sidewalk amount, just to sort of illustrate. And again, the revenue that budgeted in here is conservative, I think, based on what we have this first year. But this I think this is a budget where we need to be conservative on the revenue because the economy could go and. Yeah, yeah. And we have no. We have no funds. Correct. And no funds. Yeah. Yes. Are any of these higher dollar funds put into an account that has a higher generating yield? They will be. Yes. OK. Good question. Yeah. So all of the capital funds, their set aside, basically lot revenue ARPA could have been. I mean, we have it. It's sitting in. It's not sitting in a checking account for you, but we will I'll be looking into like short term and longer term investment options, CDs, money, you know, whatever. We've just been because the cash flow has been so heavy with Crescent Connector and the Main Street Waterline projects. I've been holding off until those are a little more settled. So I'm not tying up cash. Yeah, these can go into like a six month CD. Yeah. That would be an amazing amount of difference. Is that just a checking account? Yeah. Questions, thoughts. I mean, this is a. If I. Yeah. My questions would be more for when we discuss policy. Yeah. Yeah. I have a lot of as they relate to this particular budget here. It's going to be. Because I have. You know, so I mean, we're not necessarily this right now. I think this is great news. I think this is kind of what we hope for in terms of helping us with capital long term. It's interesting looking at looking at the capital charts. It was like it doesn't make it done. But it really does. That's what I want to say. Without this, I think the story is without this would be a vastly different. Accenture. So I think. I think it's great. They were ready for Andrews. Like eight years too late, but we're here. Yeah, remember the first time I came up and I knew in the beginning specifically, like nobody depended on or they just they just stood up in the town meeting in the select board side. There is everybody mischaracterized. What are we how it works? Yeah, who paid everything and they just sat in their hands and let it go. Because you didn't have a very good thing doing it. You got to put some humor into the conversation. Yeah, we still have business. We still have businesses on fine press collecting it. So. In the red mall. I can well reach out to my contract to see if you have names that you can email to me at the time. Yeah, just to tell my wife. Perfect. She doesn't watch the stuff. So you can submit an anonymous. I was like, how much should you pay on this act? There's a lot of problems about that. Narrows down. So. We're in discussion time. Then I thought. There are there's one thing in particular I'd like to talk about, but I know that it also has to do with our association contract. And so given that as an active negotiator, I'm wondering if I should pull the comments into another point. It should probably be under executive. So right. Yeah. Yeah, except I have a similar question in terms of price. Something else. No, no. Yeah. Can we do an executive session after next meeting to cover all these questions or? Depends on how long you would like to be here. No, not now. Next Wednesday. It's a it's a big agenda. Is it? Yeah. But I could put it on there and we can table it if you don't. If you don't. It won't hurt us to put it on and then if it gets a little bit stable. How about, you know, what they were going to bring up to your Gina in the next two or three days, two days. More interesting about Friday. Hang out and if you think that it's narrow enough that it can be done in 20 minutes, 25 minutes for us to get an idea of what I'm going to have to think about the same thing. Then go for it. If you don't, maybe you just suffered or you can decide to just put it on the table. Is it wrong? The same page? And it's essentially the same question you can probably get through it. Maybe that's just too much clandestine behind the scenes work, but I'm just trying to move this along. It is a big agenda. But I don't know if people are going to have the energy at that point. OK. Rather, that sounds good. It was first ever where they both were they all. Why are you to me? I'm sorry, I thought I had set it up. But you had all sorts of funds, like. No, no. This is the whole reason it was like that. So. So one thing I do think we need to talk about. For me, having a million dollar library, I think we really need to ask ourselves some questions about how much we in the community want to have in terms of services. As such, our library is open. Longer than any other library than in the state with a population over 5,000, according to the Department of Libraries 2022 data. Our library is open in 3,056 hours per year. The next closest from that one is the Brooks Memorial at 3,019 from that. It then goes down to 2,700. How long is Fletcher Free open? That's a bigger population center. That's the 3,016. So we're open more in Fletcher Free library. The average library with a population of over 5,000 is open 2,186 hours. We are open on average 58 weeks per year. I would personally like to see that reduced to 48, I'm sorry, 58 hours per week. Thank you. I personally would be curious budgetarily what that would mean if it were to be reduced to 48 hours per week, which would mean that we are open 2,500 hours per year, which is still over the average. So in terms of communities over 5,000, our communities will be getting more open hours in terms of library time. That's a good question. In comparison to those hours, where is the Brown out in circulation and services? Because last time I remember when I was on the board there, we were one of the top five most used libraries in the state. And so the usage dictated the hours. I do think it's going to be important to see the statistics that I asked for. Yeah, that is that is driving that. That is driving that. Again, if you if you have if you have two people that are coming in between five and eight, why are we keeping the library open for three hours and staffing four people? You mean like? No, you're good. Do you need numbers of books? Well, it's hard because books are down. Digital searches are way up. Computer services are way up. Programming is way up. And because the nature of libraries is changing, Brown out can't necessarily record everything. And so I just want to make sure I totally understand what you're saying, Andrew, and I don't disagree. But I also want to make sure that we are doing as best we can to be apples to apples because I would instead compare instead of a population of community, I would be comparing volume and I would put us in the same level of volume as Fletcher-Free and compare ourselves to Fletcher-Free. That is the only other library in the state that's even close to our level of volume. Well, we don't have them. I mean, I understand. I would also look at the last library court that just came out. The most recent, I can send it to you. She reported it to me. It's widely available. It's massive, but don't get... It has a salary study. It has millions of dependencies. So the main part of the... We'll get you what you want. It's a little more current. We don't have the tax base for all of it. So, you know, and I don't know that we can... We have to do something because next year it's going to be 1.1 something. And just with the average increase, unless they bring it down to three and then it's a little over one. So if you talk... I don't know how we do that. And I wasn't trying to be... No, I didn't. They have so many challenges right now that I don't know how we address that because those challenges are huge and they're real. And we also can't sustain it. So I think we need to look at some of this stuff. I think we're going to hear from an equal number of people that would give us that feedback or that use some services, right? We're going to have a population... Oh, I think it's not that we're talking like this. I can guarantee you there will be 100 people online that are adding one reading depending on the library. No, and that's probably... I think... So if you're talking about total number of books, lecture three has 110,000 full books. Brownell has 60,296. No, that's not about circulation, not quantity of books. See, right, exactly. There's... And I wanted no circulation into city and city versus people accessing programming from other communities. Well, so okay. But these are the numbers that you have. They won't pay. The lecture three has a subscription. You can only borrow if you pay for a card, whereas the Brownell is part of the home card system, which is connected to all the other libraries in Chittenden County. And so anybody from Jericho can come into the Brownell and borrow a book. You can't do that in Brownell and Fletcher. So if you're talking total circulation, Brownells was 84,753. Fletcher free, 339,000. Yeah, I mean, in some measures, Fletcher free is off the charts compared to us, but in others, I think we're similar. Williston is a similar-sized care. They were the same. Williston, my friend. Williston, my friend. The Royal Library of Jericho. Yeah. Williston, my friend. The Royal Library is probably more appropriate. Yeah. My biggest concern about that problem again, realizing that the problem is the problems are real, but the challenges are real is the fact that we're trying to fulfill this need and protect or create a situation where it's a stage space, it's a welcoming space, all of that, but I'm going to work on their libraries, not counselors. They're not social workers. And I hear a lot about the work that's going in to get them up to speed enough to be able to assist enough, but if I still keep falling, I still keep thinking though, that's an inappropriate, it's not the right interaction. Create the right space so these people can be welcomed in, but let's get them, let's hurry up and connect them with someone who has the expertise and get them connected to the right services or give them the right assistance they require. In order to again, hopefully put them on a better path, but it feels weird to me because it feels like what we're doing is we're creating our need, maintaining a library or we're maintaining a safe space for those in need. I think those are two very different things. By statute, a library requires certain things and all of this. And I get that there's been some creep here on their scope. So I'm a little concerned about how we look at this from a manpower standpoint, how to look at this from an availability standpoint. I mean, I've been thinking about this too, Marcus. And there's, it's gonna have to be a larger conversation about what services are missing in S-Extension. How could we bring services that are located in Burlington out here, like COTS perhaps? Do we need a conversation about a day center for homeless people? Do we need a conversation about going, do we need to go to the Howard Center and say, we want you to, we want a part-time social worker staffed at the Brown L. I mean, like, can we put a person in the Brown L who specializes in that? And then the librarians don't have to deal with it. Like, what are all the different ways? But this is not a, I mean, we're gonna have a million-dollar library whether we like it or not because this is not a thing we could fix right now. No, but I think the difficult decision we have to make is that is after today one of, it's just one of those tiny, tiny little things that we can do, it was like, throw us to keep this down. And nothing is obvious to me except rating some other sources, which I don't think is a good idea. We'll bring this down significantly. But what was your proposal? Cut the hours by 10 hours a week. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the only... You know, when back in the day, Penny Ellsbury told me once, she said the best way to get the community to pay attention to what the library needs is to make the community feel pain. So cutting hours is a great example of that. But I think what we could also say is if we did that and then maybe we did a few other things like the stipends and throw the phones and like whatever, and we say to the community, here's what the library told us. They are completely distracted by people who need a lot of help and they cannot do their job. So community, until we solve that problem together, the library is going to have to be reduced because we cannot sustain that amount. Like... That's what I propose. Yeah, balancing that difficult conversation. I think on top of that, we need to really inventory what I will call some of the innovation that they brought, which is really cool, and subscriptions and expected norms now and really present that as a combination of things. You know, I think it seems to me, I've heard the locker program presented to me as a time savings now today. And then a source for new staff needed, new hours needed so they can make sure that they associate to get those picks. So now I'm almost 100% sure that if I go back and watch the video from last year or the year before, then I'm gonna hear that they need extra staff to fulfill the picking, pack and ship for the books. And now it's saving up with the desk. And that could have changed because of the nature of what they're doing with. It could very well have evolved. But I don't know, and this is a very difficult decision to have in public. They're not here, and I feel bad. But I think it's a combination of things, I think. If we are serving people with these lockers and if we plan to make the front door open a couple of hours earlier in the morning and a couple of hours earlier, an hour and a half, well, in a U day, past closing, which sounds reasonable, sounds like what their goal is, then it seems to me that we can constrict the hours a little better for people who are getting their, rather than getting most of their information, much of their information on the digital subscription or having the books picked and put in a locker that can access without it being open. And while we figure out how to get some of those support services in. And honestly, outreach is probably not the right source. I mean, but just because they do crisis with law enforcement mostly, I don't know. I mean, I thought for a long time this community needs a lot of services. And I think there are more services here than people actually know about. There's quite a few services in this extension that exist. And that's going to be a whole different conversation on how that gets funded. But yeah, so I don't know what the number is, but I think we need to figure out both how to make it affordable for this kind of budget and to control the growth, but also it's just to support the staff to like they can be librarians or make them work. Right, okay. I agree. One of the things that I heard and that I've heard before and one of the things that I want to see happen is to get away from some of the fear of the situations. I think they're doing some mitigation on some of that, but for instance, the locker technology, it gives the community convenience and accessibility the most. I've never seen the library for this is a fantastic service, but yet it's only open during hours that they're open. That to me seems like the wrong move. This type of, the accessibility should be wider. Fine, I totally understand if you narrow that down so that it's not open midnight to four in whatever it is, but I think it should be more open, more accessible. So I think if we were to take like your suggestion about reducing hours, we should also ask that there be, open up those doors earlier. The technology is there, so I don't know if those doors currently work this way, but there is technology in the marketplace to make those doors open, lock and unlock, based on time. So it doesn't require that a physical person have to be there necessarily. I wanna talk about the services piece real quick because here everything you're saying, I just wanna throw this out here because this is a conversation that I've had multiple times with residents, especially though, centered around the conversation around Burlington because the concern for a lot of people is you go to Burlington and the environment has changed. The environment has changed in such a way that people feel unsafe by going to Burlington. Why are these people here? Why are these people doing these things? Blah, blah, blah, blah. What I have also heard from people in that community who are helping those you need, it's also about the fact that Burlington is also a central hub for so many services. So if I were to distress, I would probably find a way to get myself down to Burlington because I would have access to more services than in any other surrounding community. And I don't want to say don't bring those things here. I'm just saying it because of the fact that I know we're gonna hear that. When we do say we want to bring those services here, I think based on the need, based on what we're hearing from people like the library staff, we need to bring those services here so that people have access to it. I just wanted to verbalize the fact that I have heard from the opposite side and that particular point of view so that again, it's out on the table, we're aware of it. We can discuss it if necessary. Are there any other areas where people thought they saw some potential opportunities being unfortunately built late? There's so many, it would be so many little things that it would almost be easier to go. Everybody just cut back by... 1% or 2% when I... Yeah, yeah. Because I didn't see those chunks that I can necessarily grab and start pulling on the ground. We've addressed some of them, but it wasn't that much. I think it stood back to a comment that I need to give somebody $10,000 to spend it. And so just being mindful of the fact that I did this exercise where I would have literally went through every single expense line item and said they've only spent 14% of that line item six months into the budget. Like do you need to add another $4,000 on top of that? Like just having that like conversation with department heads maybe at that level and really do you need another $2,000 for uniforms or whatever it happens to be when you haven't spent that this year? No, and I mean, that's... Those are my, like that was my big takeaway. And then looking at things like again, like walk, you know, just kind of again, they're little. If you even if you cut them in half, you're talking about $10,000, $15,000. It's not a ton of money, but it's something just trying to be responsible there. And again, if you don't have anything identified, then why are we allocating? If there is a logic there that there has to be in order to have pre-advisory that the tree city and stuff we have to allocate $10,000, then yes, I get that. But if really bike walk hasn't identified some flashy bikini, whatever thing is to do, like do they need all the money that's coming here? I do think that if we are gonna add departments to try to find 1% just broadly, I would be highly concerned about some of the things like a fire department where at the end of the day, if they cut 1%, then that means if you call 911, they need to have an amount of their budget. So I think there's some departments where they would, should be exempt from that. Whereas others, yes, you absolutely should have that conversation. And if that means as a board here, you need to talk about serving broadly and let's do that later. Yep, great. Just looking at that calculation, we suggested Andrew cutting back 10 hours a week with bringing the Brown Owl to being open the same amount of time as the Dorothy Allen and just a little bit more than South Burlington and a little bit more than Essex Spray. Brown Owl has opened more hours than any other library in Chippendale County, yep. I send you all the link to the same data that I had from the Department of Libraries website. I highly encourage you to look at the tab that says pop 5000 plus. So you can see for yourself, the columns go all the way to GK. So there are things in here that I just don't understand broadly, but programming, circulation, collections, like all that stuff is in here. I don't know what it means. Yeah, there is the very recent, just released. I'll try to send it on my calendar, maybe Jay has it though. Or I can just email the PDF to the report. I don't know, I'll try and get through them. I will say broadly on that report, this issue of essentially the library spilling in and that social services role is a very big issue. Lots of librarians feel under-trained. That isn't necessarily the sense at Brown Owl. They do feel well equipped and they feel like they're doing a good job with it, but it is a component that is newer and more frequent than previously. So just keep that in mind that that report is a real direct reflection of exactly what's going on there, the feelings of that. I'll also just put out there that before this board talks about mental health services, that there'd be a conversation with the Department of Mental Health, as well as our mental organizations and the state system for mental health is extremely stressed. No organization of the definitive agencies are anywhere near staffed in full capacity. So if we're going to go down that route, we're going to be competing against the system, which is going to further harm the system in some ways. So in terms of how to better align efforts, this would be a way I would advise this time to go. Yeah, I would agree. And I think we could even offer Howard to fund that person, and they still wouldn't be able to fund it. 600 and some of the agencies are something else there. So if that's a road, you're probably going to be competing in the market to get somebody at our own employee. It brings up another cascading discussion with other agencies that we already talked about. Which I think are awesome. I prefer not to give me that word. I prefer to work with the community in order to assess why they need the most. Totally recommend to be a short gun. Currently, we're going to get along. Yes, sir. Yeah. Is there anything you want? Is there anything you need to want? I don't know where to start. All right, is there anything? Sounds like everybody's done. Totally fine with me. I'm good. No, I just wanted to give everybody a favor. So I would entertain a motion. There's nothing else from Jess or Gina. I don't think so. I mean, I think we've got some clear directives of some things that we can cut. And we can see what that looks like. We have a very clear, let me not say clear, but we have a list of questions that we will sort through and try to get some answers on. And then I think we've got some more unknowns. But just so folks know, we don't intend to have a budget discussion next week because we have a lot of other things, some of which will answer some of the questions we have today on various different projects and components and pieces. We will have a January 10th will be heavily focused on the budget, including presentation from GMP and presentation from when you see Gallup Parks District. And then your second meeting in January is where we hope we get a good, good to get to a good place with a draft budget that we are ready to present at the community dinner. Meal, brunch, kind of thing. You know, we didn't talk about this tonight. When are we talking about the, or is the outreach, the outreach methods schedule, or where does that stand? We put the draft of that in the reading file for this package just so folks can sort of see roughly what that looks like. It will be a business item discussion next Wednesday. So you can sort of really think on that a little bit more about what we're attending to do and if they're missing or... Yeah. Well, that's it. I'll let you take the motion of your hand. So moved. Second. Great. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, may I add? That sounds like this. Very good. Thank you all. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you, Jean. Congratulations on your budget. Thank both of you. Second. Second. Is it really?