 to the agenda, certificate of compliance for bridge standards and network inventory. That's from the public works director, so we'll add that to the agenda. Is that it, Bill? Okay. Is there anything else from any of you guys? Yes. We had a brief discussion on the school board's selection of the Waterbury school member. You can. Yep. Just very brief. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes. That's Mark. It denied me the first time I tried calling this. So we just finished out the, having approved the agenda yet, just added a few things to it. Do you have anything you'd like to talk about, Mark? No. With those necessary changes, would somebody like to approve the agenda as presented? I make a motion to approve the agenda as amended. Second, please. Second. Okay. All those who wish to approve, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Second items are simply the minutes from April 6th meeting and extend the waiver for late fee for dog licenses until May 31st, 2020. Would there be a motion to approve the consent agenda, please? So moved. Second. Second. Second. Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All those in favor say aye. Aye. There's no letting them introduce their work. Thank you, everybody. I think I just need to turn back when I have the Cookie. So let's do everybody. I don't know how many of you have turned back today. I'm, I made a leap from the Karen and Melissa both were going to be on the call tonight I know I sent Karen this agenda so hopefully they're not trying to call the other phone line but I think whether they are here or not my recommendation is that you approve the setting of that letter there's a long and short of it is that as I indicate the digital letter I had a conversation with Karen last week and you know some of their revenue sources are down as you might expect businesses even though that they've had some new members join our W as a result of this crisis their memberships are down their individual contributions are down and they expect that they will have other reductions in their budget they've already taken steps to cancel the arts best that is normally held in July I think it is and they've applied for some of the federal programs that are available to not not for profit organizations like they are and they've simply want a letter from us allowing them to kind of use the seventy thousand dollars that we supply them so that they can continue to provide their full portfolio services so if they don't use the money directly for services per se that they would be using all of their so I think that they are invaluable organization right now they are providing so you have the same thing message I got like that's all I have to say I mean I'm in support of the letter as as all of us are facing times when you know our our income might be suffering we're we're having to pick and choose where we're spending our money and I think that this gives them the ultimate flexibility so I would I'd be in support of it sentiment that Nat has I thought it was a good letter by Bill and I think revitalizing water barrier is going to be a very important cog to you know our recovery from this whole thing like they were after Irene so I think it would be foolish to cut cut that money I'm going to ask Bill this question he may not be able to answer it any more than probably anybody can at this time but you have any sense of main street instruction project as to whether that the government the governor's revision of the amendment allows you know two people to work together I don't think that's anything close to being able to see that construction going again we haven't heard anything about it right last week and you know this letter really doesn't have anything to do with the construction service of the portion of the funding piece of the organization so all this letter is suggesting that we're going to continue to send them a $70,165 that was budgeted and we're going to let them just use it so they need to use the post as opposed to specifically that they've got to use for this or that the letter that I sent out yesterday said $75,160 but I double-counted $5,000 so I've changed I didn't send out the letter again today but I have changed it's $70,160 so it's somebody like to make a motion to approve the letter of funding confirmation to revitalizing waterbury as presented I would make that motion do we even need a motion because we have already approved that money and this is just a you know just a recertification that we're going to do what we said we're going to do yeah but like the letter specifically tells them that they can use our money for anything that they want okay that's important for them to have as they deal with the people who make the fatal tools about PPP program and all the rest of it but yes we need a motion to authorize the next time the letter point taken so just so so that made the motion and you change the $5,000 you took the $5,000 off it so this $75,160 now $70,160 okay all right who seconded that this mark I'll second it okay all right any further discussion hearing none all those who wish to approve it please say aye hi hi hi motion passes whoever's speaking we can't hear you yeah no it's Alyssa there she's kind of sitting in the back of the room and she was just talking about the troubles she was having dialing in so okay all right look that's all that was well then hello Alyssa I got right in like I said the same thing happened to me when I tried calling look at the draw forward with the update on the lending concept for sick time yeah we we spoke about this at the last meeting the board was predisposed to do it at the time because I wanted to present it to the EFUT board the EFUT did authorize it as was presented I would ask you to do the same thing just for the sake of consistency I don't have to go through the whole process again that we talked about last week I'd like you to approve it in case we decide to implement it right now however it's looking like it probably will not be implemented but still like the approval since you were predisposed to do it at your last meeting and the EFUT Commissioners did it that way if something happens down the pipe and we do have to implement it I won't have to come back to the board anybody got any questions on that or comments yeah question this is Katie if you do have to use that in the future you will you notify us ahead of time oh yeah I will if we implemented probably it would be slightly changed one of the issues that we grappled with a little bit that night and then I looked at it when I talked to the people the concept that I had kind of letting people download donate their sick time and then kind of redistributing that to everyone if we do it we'll probably just make it available into a into a universal bank as opposed to distribute the sick time individual people it worked out okay on the talent side of things but when because there's only five employees at EFUT and because the wages are a little bit higher things get screwed out a little bit and if you looked at one EFUT employee was hired about the same time as one particular town employee and you'd like to see that they would both end up with similar amounts of sick time if we put that redistribution plan into place the EFUT employee got way more sick time than the town employee had available to him and it doesn't make sense that way so if we implemented it will be done in the same fashion as I explained except all of the donated time will just go into a universal bank and then employees like that if they need it one will get a permanent increase to their sick time I think it will work better but I'm also thinking we don't have to do it at all but I like people to do it if you have to okay hearing none one of you would love to make a motion to approve the lending concept for sick time through a donate donation or sale formula for town employees if needed that motion make the motion to approve the lending program for sick leave for town employees as presented by the town manager is there any further questions or comments hearing none all those in favor please say aye 19 update things are going along about as they have in the when we reported with the last meeting the big takeaway right now is that there have been more reductions in the workforce both in terms of some people being partially laid off and others being fully laid off now so in the municipal office we have two 40 hour employees that have been completely laid off we have one 20 hour employee that has been completely laid off we have a 40 hour employee who is still working who is probably submitting an unemployment claim because she's getting about somewhere between 18 and 20 hours in the library we have two part-time people that have been fully laid off a number of other staff there have had their hours reduced a little bit salary staff now all have volunteered to have a reduction in their pay from all all all departments I met with the library commissioners on Thursday last week they had a meeting on Thursday I reviewed a budget with them that's very similar to the one that I sent out to you for the library yesterday except they understood what I had to say they are there the process of implementing some additional staffing cuts in the library as far as fully officer confirmed I've added four highway employees to the fully laid off list so three weeks ago I cut all eight highway employees to 20 hours a week we had a work schedule that was the other day we scheduled to make sure that we had everything covered in case there was a storm regardless of what they came starting today the highway staff has been reduced to four crew persons and they are all still working 20 hours a week so we're down to 80 hours a week of work in the highway department there was a directive that went out from the Agency of Commerce last week that I included in the email that I sent you that really spells out how restrictive the governor's order is with regard to these types of crews so for that reason and probably more so for the what I feel is the need to try to reduce expenses of the highway crew had that layoff of four people completely they are working the four people that are working are pretty typically working on travel roads there's great great that's going on I don't know as if they've had to haul any real material of any consequence around this just yet but they're working on the back roads that paying care of potholes and they're doing their work in the garage we will have to think about what's going to happen with all of the playing fields and cemeteries and parks within a couple weeks here my direction so far to seal you with regard to lawn mowing and any kind of ground keeping is to do what's minimal to keep the turf manageable in other words I don't want to grow up to hay but we will not be manicuring it for a play the baseball leagues and the other sports leagues are on temporary hiatus right now anyway they can't go back until after May 15th at the earliest we're waiting to hear about how the governor feels about that allowing you know significant groups of people to get together and play sports so for the time being we're going to try to take care of the grass to keep it in a condition that doesn't let it get out of hand I haven't talked to silly about roadside mowing but my expectation and my desire would be that if the layoffs are still in place as they are now when it comes time to have to try to mow down those issues I think we'll do that unless we're specifically told that we can't I don't see how having one person out on the tractor so my my expectation is that we will do that I have told all of the employees so far that has been laid off of hours reduced that there's two two bars that we have to pass mile markers that we have to pass before people are called back certainly on a live-scale basis the first bar of course is the social distancing bar if on a 15th or they're about the governor says everybody can go back to work well that's one bar and people can be allowed to come to work and do what they need to do but the other bar for us is where we stand financially and that will be much more difficult to get a handle on because we're not going to have any real evidence of reduced revenues in the municipality until we get into July at the earliest so I have told them all that they should anticipate being out until July first possibly and frankly you know I think it could go longer than that for some depending upon what we feel we want to do with regards to the budget we'll talk about the budget in a few minutes and you know I just wanted to pass that information along that it's not just the governor's order that we're that we're awaiting that first thing that has to happen but can we just go back to like nothing happened immediately I'm not sure that we can so with that I'll stop and you can ask questions if you have any questions one how has the most recent governor's announcement that you know people of one or two you know people in construction as well as professional people you know may be able to go back to work have you have you gotten any of the staff you know talking about that you know are they subject to that well you know we already have people that are working here from time to time so parallel it comes in the office three days three days a week or several hours of time Karen Petrovich the utility building to mark tax burden she's coming into the office about three days week herself usually from about two o'clock until five maybe six in the afternoon so she's putting in maybe 10 to 12 hours of time here at the office and the rest of her time which is about 20-ish hours all together from home how does that so important from home for the most part coming a few hours a week to get ready for meetings in particular Bill Woodruff and I are pretty typically in the office every day Bill comes early and it's usually done by three or so I usually get here sometime between 9 and 10 most days out here until after five but we we we are not open to the public so when the governor's discussion came down last week that flurks might be able to open law firms appraisers you know single single person employment if you will businesses that's really telling them that they can go to work it doesn't mean that we are allowing them into our office there's nothing that a paralegal needs to do a title search that Carla already isn't able to get to them so we're we're not opening our office at this point as far as the outside work we already have small crews of highway employees they have been working crews of no more than two even when they were all eight working now there there's only four of them pretty typically you know working alone or in a small group we have some requests today from came through bar that like you know the garden club would like to get going on some of the gardening work and like we said no to that for right now we have already we've told the the landscape people that we actually pay that we don't want them coming here to do anything for us until May 15th so we're gonna even tell that to the volunteers right now that we'd rather that we just leave it as it is for the moment so we're we're awaiting the situation as it unfolds way and again for our for our employees the the layoffs for the most part have been instituted for two reasons one there's a few of them that really don't have the ability to work from home or don't need to work from home so Pam Pratt for instance she's mainly receptionist secretary does some clerical work there's nothing that she asked to do from home that can't be done by somebody else either here at home so she's not working at all same with Beth Jones the assistant for Dina it's been laid off and we're having Steve do that work so the the fact that we place them off is more a function of trying to save money than it is you know keeping them isolated and from my perspective at that at this point that the financial side of the equation is much more driving my decisions right now than the social distancing yet I mean we need to be smart and safe and we want to comply with the order but the decisions I've made mainly have to do with with how it impacts the town's budget thanks Phil my second part of my question is a little different how has I know Steve's kind of taking up Dina's work is like for instance are we having many permits is the DRB meeting or are the other boards meeting at all at this time even if they're meeting remotely yeah the only board that I'm aware of that isn't meeting at all right now is the cemetery commissioners the DRB has been pretty active I think they have had all their meetings they have a number of reviews that were scheduled to have a meeting last week they've got another one a week or so and they have fairly extensive agendas for projects that were already in the pipeline like right that's what I figured so much don't know is the planning commission meeting that they cancelled their last meeting they cancelled the meeting I know the planning commission did the planning commission I believe is only met once or twice since the shutdown and they cancelled their last meeting so there's not a lot of planning that's going on right now right I figured the DRB still has stuff to do you know because there are projects you know in the pipeline yeah okay thanks for the update Bill yeah I just say one thing here before we move on probably as you've witnessed you've seen a lot of people start to get a little restless about the stable mortar obviously for the state of Vermont we have seemed to have had a much easier time with this problem than some of these other states with big cities and whatnot I've even had some some friends you know agree with this protesting other states are perhaps I think their guidelines may be a little bit stricter and people are starting to protest because they want things to go back to normal I had a friend of mine there that was kind of agreeing with that type of mentality there today and I simply said to him that you know what it's okay if those people want to take the risk and go back to what they consider normal with probably a higher percentage of contracting the disease if they do that but if I were the governor of those states I would say you're taking this chance at your own risk and if you get infected don't bother to show up at the hospital because you're not going to take and be foolish about you know jumping beyond these guidelines getting yourself infected and then going to the hospital and expect people up there to put themselves at risk to save your butt because you decided to do the wrong thing nobody on any reporting media outlet has or anybody in the political world has even bothered to have the guts to stand up and say that you know it's one thing if you want to put yourself at risk but don't expect some caregiver to put their life online to help save you after you decided to be stupid mark that we continue to follow the guidelines as best possible I hope the government doesn't jump too soon I know they're starting to get daggers thrown at them so because they're not you know some people suggesting that they're moving too fast other people suggesting they're not moving fast enough so I wouldn't want to be in the governor's shoes for anything so great if there's no other comments or questions we can move on to the budget report okay so I sent you yesterday afternoon or evening it was later than I hoped but I've been working at this feels like January again I'm working every day I think the best thing to do first is look at the CIP budget so that would be the one that is the first page of the dating fun fun 70 and what I'm trying to do here with both of these budgets kind of working with them simultaneously is to ultimately see where we get as far as surplus or deficit is concerned if we take certain actions and as I said in my email yesterday I'm not asking you to approve a budget now the other budget that was approved in town city that will remain our budget in terms of what shows up every month when the budget reports are done but I'm going to try to target lower and try to estimate revenues so if we look at the CIP budget first the first one is the painting fun and there's no science behind this it's a little bit of art a little bit of kind of my philosophy about things and a little bit of math so when the painting fun I'm not closing any cut to the transfer from the highway fun so the 447 655 that scheduled to come out of the highway fun to go into the paving fun I'm going to recommend that we make that transfer the pilot plans there's a little bit of a question about how much of the pilot money we're going to get between the general plan and the 70 we anticipated about three hundred and eight thousand dollars and that was pushing the envelope a little bit and now I really don't know what's going to happen the pilot payments don't get made until October typically we get a letter in May that tells us what our pilot payment is going to be it's generally based on a lot of information from the prior year for 2019 so if they do it as of as they always have we might not have any reduction in pilot but if they prospectively say we're going to be in a world of hurt next year as far as the local auction tax that funds this they may decide that they need to cut now if they cut I'm proposing all of the cut come out of the general fund so here in the paving fun I've got the hundred thousand dollars coming out of this thing I will put that hundred thousand dollars in here we had five hundred thousand dollars of paving budgeted mainly Mabel Street we said that if we have enough money we might also do Howard Avenue I talked to Bill Woodruff about a month ago and said Howard Avenue is bad but we should look at you know around the post office on Guelphal Road up through Mabel Street that might be a better place to get certainly has a lot more traffic than how it out does but in any event I'm just suggesting that maybe we'll spend four hundred seventy five thousand dollars the estimate to do make Mabel Street was in the 460 to 480 range if prices come down at all maybe we can do it all and only spend 475 but my proposal is that we will still paint Mabel Street and in 2001 so that's the paving fun fun 71 is the infrastructure fun starting at the expenditures the only thing that I've changed here is I have taken the hundred and seventy thousand dollars for the bridge improvement that would be the bridge on Guelphal Road that's closest to Dr. Murray's house and that we just push that off for a year it needs to be done but it's not a safety issue right now it's deferring something for a year but you know the Main Street project we have to pay whatever the state builds us based on how much work gets done the hundred sixty was a little bit lower than the cost would have been if they actually did everything that they had hoped to do in Main Street this year so since they're going to start late if they start at all they'll do less but I think we need to leave the 160 there just because it's on somebody else's decision making for now leaving the sidewalk repair replacement this would be a stretch of sidewalk on Wanooski Street beyond the east side of Wanooski Street the same side that hinders bakery is on and the intention was that this sidewalk replacement on Wanooski Street would match in with sidewalk that was supposed to be done on Main Street as part of the Main Street project so for now that's left in there I told Bill Woodruff this morning we typically go through the sidewalks until late summer or into the fall we have plenty of time to re-evaluate if we think we need to take this out you do that with you've been doing it with your own the town's crew would you still consider that yeah that's what the 38,000 and then the building improvements I'm leaving the $46,000 in there we've already spent maybe $400 that was to buy the new lift for the highway department that was installed in January and then the remainder of the money is to repair the roof the roof needs to be repaired I think it would be a mistake not to do that so I've left that money there going back up to the top of the page what I've done here though by taking out that $170,000 I reduced the amount of loan proceeds that they were going to use to support that budget and I've reduced transfer from the the highway fund what I did there the number that says 0.47 so 47% the $194,750 for loans was 47% of the expenditures except for the debt service down below so when I took out the $170,000 I still used the same percentage of 47% of $160,000 plus $38,000 plus $46,000 which comes up to $244,000 which is down there on the right in the middle of the page. 47% of that is $14,780 so that's where that loan proceeds number came up with and then what I tried to do in Kent was have these funds end up close to where they would have been had we done everything in them this one has actually a higher fund balance that it would have had so I reduced $39,570 from the transfer from the highway department which in effect will be able to reduce the highway fund. The highway vehicle fund same thing exact same kind of path. We've already bought the and we've already ordered the tandem dump truck we ordered that in January and told the manufacturer that we agreed to the order so that we would have it before the winter of 2021 and if they had told us that they would let us out of the contract if the town said no to the public so we're gonna we're gonna have to buy that truck. The one contract $87,000 for the one contract. We'll not buy that this year that's something that will defer whether it's one year deferment or going on that we're gonna have to re-scramble or re-evaluate all of the but that $87,000 comes out that allows us to reduce following in that fund from 205190 to 154.460 and reduce the transfer from the highway department by $36,000 so we transfer $1,125,000. Let me get through all of this and then you can ask questions for the end. In the fire department of fund 73, we have a fire truck that's out of order that should be delivered sometime in July 9th. That's the spending of $49,645 but when I looked at the fund balance for fund 73 at the end of the year, I proposed that we do all the borrowing that we had anticipated on 02500 which is less than was authorized. We were authorized to borrow $950,000 but I'm borrowing all that money or proposing that we borrow all that money that would be a good cash infusion into the into the town when we might be needing cash or you talked about the rationale for paying for that over the 20-year life of the fire trucks so the 02500 would be the financing for both fire trucks the one we bought in the fall at the November meeting and the one we're going to pay for in June. But what I did here is since the borrowing was staying the same and that fund balance is pretty hefty it's over half a million dollars was the end of the year but fund balance for the fire pump I decided that I would reduce the entire $172,000 that's going to be transferred to this fund from the from the fire budget so that that's a significant reduction of force. And then the fund 75 again I've reduced the transfer from from the direct department by $11,000 it will leave the funds with $874 in it as opposed to $15,000. I do propose to do all the work in that fund we had at the bottom of the page. So $11,000 is for the youth at the at the pool that roof probably should have been changed probably three to four years ago. It's really a good day. I think we should build $11,000 to do the moving. The community guidance we're going forward with that $11,000 we have revenue that comes in at the offset of that. I do propose that we put off the work at the Arboree's Park. This is the Arboree that's up behind the pool on that hillside that the Rotary Club puts the Christmas tree streams up on. There's a there's a small area there that is used as there's some trails there that the school uses. We had to go in there and do some a little bit of logging to take out some some old growth that needs to be removed and then some of what we're going to try to protect the pathways. So I pulled that $5,000 out. With all of the changes that I've proposed here between Christmas funding, between reductions in transfers and reductions in borrowing, you'll notice on that last page that the fund balance for CIP funds, if all this works out exactly as on these pages, will be $220,504 which is $52,000 less than we had in the budget. We've always used all of these funds kind of in concert, so some of the funds have big fund balances like the fire equipment fund does and some of them have big deficits. So like the pay being has a lot of deficit. The highway vehicle fund has a lot of deficit. The fire fund has a big surplus. So I looked at this and I said okay we can we can reduce the transfer into the CIP from the operating funds like about $240,000 and still end up with a feasible fund balance. When we get through talking about the funds operating budgets a minute, if you want more reductions in taxes this year or if you want to reduce or if you want to save more on transfer to the CIP funds, you could do that because you know we could target to end the end of the year with nothing in the CIP funds. So there's an additional $220,000 that's available there. I don't think that's a very good idea. I'm going to stop talking and see if you have any questions. I have any questions about the CIP funds and the proposed cuts in sending the transfer there. We can move over to the operating budgets and this is a little bit more complicated. We're going to make it pretty brief. I'm not going to go on that tonight of here. I think that you'll understand what I'm doing. So let's start with the highway and the library funds first. The reason I want to start with those two funds first is because principals kind of mandate that those funds are going to show the taxes that they're supposed to get. So we voted at town reading to raise $4,199,000 of taxes and of that $1,882,000 was for highways, $484,430,000 was for library and then the balance, $1,182,000 for the general fund. So since the highway fund and the library fund from a financial statement point of view are going to get all of their taxes posted to their account, we'll start with these two funds. So in the highway department, you can get the top of the page of the revenues. The budget was $1,882,690 for taxes. In the projected column, the retarget column right in the middle, that number shows up again. I have reduced the amount of tax from $113,000 to $107,365. Again, I don't have any information that tells me this is going down. The state has a July 1st fiscal year. So the payment that we have received so far, $56,629, if you divide that by two, we got the first payment of about $28,315 from the state in January. We got the second payment of the same $28,314 in April. The next payment is due in July and then the final payment is due in October. I'm just speculating that the state is going to cut this a little bit. So I use the lower number. Everything else there pretty much is the same. High relays of materials, $16,000 to $10,000. That really doesn't mean much because that's a transfer from revenue that comes from a different tax department. So it really doesn't matter. Whatever the expense is in the other fund, we will be coming there. So don't worry about that too much. But everything else is as it was. So revenues just drop slightly in this projection for the highway department for this year by about $12,000 from $1,022,000 to $2,010,000. So that's about $12,000. In the expenditure side, now here's where, you know, I'm kind of walking out on the level a little bit because I don't like all of these things that will cut the pass. The pay line reflects the fact of the reduction in staff and then the reduction in the actual layoffs. This takes us through July, July 1st, so through June. If it has to be extended, obviously that 342 will go down. And it's not a hard-to-pass number because when we get to the end of the year, we're starting to have to go and hold the title then. Health insurance doesn't change. We have told all the employees so far that we'll keep benefits in place. So while they're laid off, we're still paying their health insurance. Disability is the thing. Social security, that's a little bit down. It reflects the reduction in the regular pay line as does retirement. That's dealt by a couple thousand dollars. Unemployment is fixed. That's, you know, if we pay that quarterly and it's based on a bill that we get in January. So that's not going to change. The workers' compensation, you can see that's actually higher than it was budgeted. The reason it's higher is because our insurance company audits us every year for workers' compensation. And it's based on payroll. So we had a higher payroll last year. I don't know if this 54-260 is the right number yet. I just know that we are going to hold a balance for last year and it will increase that line. So that's why that's always known. Clothing and safety wear, small decrease there. Grounds maintenance down in the middle of the page. And I haven't done this. I haven't reviewed this with Celio or Bill Woodruff yet, but I just said, well, we're going to cut our grounds maintenance. That's basically at the highway galvanized by 3,000 dollars. Maybe we've got more, but I cut it in half. I cut the building maintenance a little bit just because they're not there as much right now. There's no sign for that number. There's no other changes really until you get down to equipment maintenance. I didn't highlight that, but $33,000 budget. I've knocked about $5,000 off of that just because they're not using the equipment to the degree that they normally would in vehicle maintenance. Those two lines can theoretically have more savings, but I don't want to project too much savings now. We can adjust this as we go forward. Gas and diesel fuel, that's down simply because of price. And I could probably knock it down a little bit more because of usage. The reduction that I show there is mainly because of price decrease. So those numbers could probably be a little bit more. Public Works director of the fixed cost. Pre-maintenance. I was going to cut that, but we had a huge tree up on the high street. Street tree that is a pretty tough shape. It may have already been taken down, but I think we're going to probably spend that one night. And then I cut the contract just by about $5,000 to cut some of the maintenance a little bit. Bridges and cauldrons. I left those as they are. We have bad cauldrons, or undersized cauldrons, so it moves up to get them fixed and changed for the next year. I left $5,000 out at the same above. And I left all the sand at the same above for now. I attempted to cut those, but I did cut it for the time being. I did cut the gravel of about $5,000. It's pretty much today. I cut the equipment in half. And then at the very bottom, you can see the difference. I guess I didn't do that there, but the difference between $8,945 and $7,939.05, that is the reduction of the transfers for the VIPs from the highway department. So about $75,000 reduction. There I think it is. So if this all comes to pass, if this happened, we would end up with a $151,000 surplus in the highway plant because it's going to get all of its revenue, virtually all of its revenue, and we're going to cut spending. So that reduction in spending at $988,000, $1,826,000, that reduction shows up. And we end up with, at the end of the day, we end up with a $151,000 fund balance in the highway. I'll pause there for a second to see if you have any questions. And before you ask the question, particular line items are important, but my goal was really looking at a lot of lines. So if you think that there's a line item that we could get more savings out of, that's great. If it's sand and salt, it might be a real savings. Otherwise, you know, it's just the target type. But anyway, $151,000 surplus in the highway plant. I'll stop. I don't have a question. This is Mark. But if anyone's not talking, can you mute your mic? I don't know if anyone else is getting a bunch of feedback on there, but I'm having trouble hearing. I second that, Mike. I think, Bill, you've done a great job making some adjustments, and I really don't have any substantial questions. Okay. Well, if we move on to the library fund debt, this will be quick. As I said, I met with the library commissioners on Thursday last week. They have not made any real substantial cuts in staffing. All of their people are working from home, and all of them have been putting their full time in, except excuse my time people who I told you I was off. And I have a few questions about that. I know from just observing people who are working on this side of the building that it's pretty hard to expect or to understand how they're putting in a full work week when they're not here or they don't have customers to specifically deal with, but that's what has been happening. After the meeting I left, they obviously made some petitions. What I told them was, what I'm going to tell you in a minute, it's why we started looking at the library fund first. Because those two funds on paper get all their revenue, and then they have to cut their budget, they're going to end up with a surplus. And we don't have to go through this one, quite the price of two phones that we went through the highway budget. But you can see their revenue right now looks like it's going to drop by about $1,000, $1,200. And their expenses are going to drop by the $24,000 I think it is. So the library fund, they had only picked around some of the things that could come from like a reduction in the foot budget and a little bit of reduction in equipment and things like that. And it really hadn't done anything as far as the payroll was concerned. When I explained to them, I said, you're going to end up the year probably with a surplus bigger than you had anticipated at the beginning of the year. They were supposed to break even. I said, you're going to get almost all your revenue and you're going to make cuts in your spending. So you're going to end up the year with a surplus. But don't be fooled because if you end up the year with a surplus and the general plan to end up with a huge deficit, that's going to have to be made up to all the problems. So they did take some action and all the library director communicated with the king over the weekend. But for now, this is their target budget. We are hoping to reduce their spending by, like I said, about $20,000 to $24,000 whenever it is. And the revenues will be about the same. So their target right now, if all this comes past, will be a $24,000 surplus. So between the library surplus at the end of the year and the highway surplus, if we do what I suggested, that's about $175,000 to the good. And then when we look at the general fund, the main budget, Fund 11, that's where all the fun begins. And I'll go to the right-hand side of the first page first. That first page of Fund 11, which is the revenue report, over on the right, I have a column that says cumulative deficit. So when we get to the end of reviewing this general fund budget, the general fund shows a deficit of $437,000. Then the highway fund has a surplus of $151,000, and the library has a surplus of $24,000. So the cumulative deficit, if all this comes to pass, it out on all these papers here at the end of the year, is about $262,000. And at our estimated great list for 2020 to retire that deficit before we spent one penny on programming in 2021, we'd have to raise the taxes by 3.4 cents to get rid of that deficit. Now, we can talk about the deficit in more detail in terms of how we handle the deficit in several months when we really know what our deficit might be. As I mentioned before, you know, I call Duxbury in the four-time meeting. You know, you don't really have to raise your taxes by 50% all at once to retire a deficit. You have the ability to carry that deficit and retire it over a five-year period. You don't have to do it all at once. But that's a discussion we'll have when we really know what the deficit is. What's driving a lot of the deficit right now here is right there on the first slide. And the select one may not want to do what this says. And if you don't want to do it, I understand it. My philosophy here has been there's a lot of people out there that are hurrying. Both in the business community and I think that people are going to have a difficult time paying their taxes. But knowing people as I go to them, especially elderly people, who for some reason want to pay their taxes the day after they get the bill because they don't want to owe anybody if they happen to die, there's a lot of people that will pay their taxes just because they have a tax bill. So this budget right now assumes that instead of a 55% tax rate, the select board chooses to set a tax rate at 50 cents. So that's a 9% reduction for what the voters authorized us to raise. My guess is if you sent a tax bill that was a 55% tax bill on the grant list, it would generate for the general fund about that $1.8 million. And our delinquencies would probably not be $450,000 like this is showing right now. It would probably be a lot higher than that. I mean, a lot lower than that. Many more people would have paid their taxes than this is presuming. But I'm a little concerned that, you know, that let's say we bill all of our taxes and then there's a fairly substantial amount of it that is gone unpaid. And we decide if the legislature gives us the authority to waive penalties and interest sites, then the only people who get the help are the people who don't pay. And if they don't pay, if they're not paying just because they're saying, well, we're not going to turn into tax penalties so I'll keep it in my pocket. If they really don't earn it all, they're getting a benefit that maybe they don't need. This way, if we set a tax rate lower than we've been authorized, everybody gets a lower tax than. It will really help those who need to help. But it will also not penalize people by having them kind of have to carry the burden of other people who don't pay just because they don't feel like it. So it's a philosophical discussion, but I wanted to start with that. So this proposal shows that we're going to bill $1,455,000 in taxes. That's the new target budget that's involved. And then it also projects that regardless of what we bill, I think delinquencies will probably be higher this year than they have been in the past. I don't have a count of report, but I think that the liquid rate right now is less than 1%, right? This assumes a 5% delinquency rate. So the 1.382 shown there in the projected column assumes that 95% of the $1,455 is paid. And the lost revenue is the lost revenue between what was budgeted at 1.832 and the 1.382 that our projecting is collected. That's a big hit right there, $450,000. It's more than the cumulative deficit of the fund if you look over at the right hand column. The reason it's more is because there are other things that I'm assuming we're going to lose revenue on as well. So here if you go down to the other governments, I'm speculating that the state isn't going to pay us a full 208 for a pilot that we're going to get $156,000. I just kind of, it's an estimated guess. It really has no basis in anything. I just said that looks like the number that I'm thinking I'm going to put in the spreadsheet. The forest and parks and current use, those again both come from the state. There's a less likelihood that those will change dramatically, but I can see that they might say, we're going to have a small reduction in those, so I reduced that a little bit. That's pretty much for the other governments. Docksbury did pay their first installment of the 2020 fire contract last week. We've got to check for about $57,000. So they've paid that. Under the service fees, parallel will have a better sense of this than I do. So far through 29% of the year, it collected 31% of our account clerk's fees. So we were ahead of our budget pace through the first three months of the year. I assume that's dropping out considerably at this point. I don't see it dropping out. So maybe there's a $21,000 reduction here is too much. But anyway, that's good to know. Historical society is a little bit. When you look at the recreation income, this budget, the way I built it, I won't say it's a worst case scenario, but this assumes a situation that I think that we would get in. So you see that there's a fairly significant cut in recreation revenue. Swimming pool revenue is about $45,000 to $10,000. If you go into that projected column, I already in the target column is down by $15,000. But with these target, or the projected numbers, or the ones that are kind of highlighted in the brown, what this is assuming is if you looked at the expense side of the recreation programs, you'll see that we don't have much savings there. So this budget is presuming that we're going to be told everybody can go back to work. Everybody can go, we have life is normal. You can open the swimming pool or you can open your recreation program. I'm suggesting that once that is done, that we open up and we fill up, but a lot of people say, we really don't have the money to pay the full boat, and we take some reduction. Again, it's just purely speculative. I think there's a better chance that we can't run a program at all than I think that this scenario might come to pass, but I want it to be pretty conservative about it. So I'm showing significant drops in revenue and not cuts in programming better to the same degree. So this is tipped against us the way that I budgeted this. And then down the bottom, everything else is pretty much the same. So we end up with, at the very bottom in red, $738,537 less in revenue than the budgeted if this all came true. And then from there, I'm not going to go through every single page of the budget, but in all of these budgets, from the general fund, right through every budget has some reduction of spending in it. And some is more than others, maybe not enough, but in the end, if you go to the very last page of Fund 11, you'll see that spending is dropped from the budget column to the projected actual column. Spending is dropped about $297,000. So revenue dropped of $738,000 and $297,000 in ending cuts. And that generates the $137,000 deficit in the general fund. So I know that's a lot to digest. I'm just trying at this point in time which still, you know, barely 90 days into our fiscal year. And especially on the revenue side, we really don't have any clue until we get into August, September before we really know how things are going to shoot off. So I'm going to take a breath and let you ask questions, but that's what I come up with. I think the biggest discussion you're going to have to have, and it does not have to be tonight, is what we're going to do with the taxes. So we're going to build taxes as authorized and just deal with the link with fees that are higher than normal, but not as linear as high as projecting on his paper in terms of loss revenue, or we're going to be proactive like the water and sewer issues where it was the base charges for water and sewer for the chief billing. They gave away between water and sewer about $200,000 of revenue to everybody. Most businesses unemployed people and people who were still working. They did that to everybody just in order to allow people to submit in their pockets at this time. So I think that would be the biggest discussion and we don't have to make that decision until the first week of July. We should talk about it again before then, but that's where we set the tax rate next to the first meeting in July. Hey, Bill, this is Mark. I have a question. Have you thought about trying to estimate that number or is it a complete guess? Because my first thought would be to at least lower the penalty for a period of time at the current due date. Yeah, so the only interest, we need a little help on that. The town meeting, the town meeting debt, the penalty and interest at town meeting, they voted to have an 8% penalty and they voted to have interest that ultimately will be 1.5% or 18% a year. We don't have the authority to change that penalty unless one of two things happen. One, we can go back and have a town meeting. This is a legal opinion that the city has received now. So we either have to go back and have a town meeting to waive the penalty interest or the legislature has to pass a bill that allows the select board to leave that on its own motion. There's a bill in the legislature now. I think that will probably happen. But again, under normal circumstances, we budget about $50,000 for penalty and interest every year. $22,000 for interest and $27,000 for penalty. And I think that we don't do it with the tax rate and those penalties are not waived. The interest is not waived. We'll probably have higher posting of that how long it takes to collect a different question. But the sure way to allow people to have a savings is to actually set a lower tax rate. And I've tried to accommodate that by trying to make some pretty serious cuts in spending to offset the amount of that reduction. You don't have to make that reduction. That will be up to the board at the time. But it felt like this was the best way to reduce the right amount and plenty of time to follow those. There could be a hypothetical scenario here where we lower the tax rate to $0.50 and the penalties and interest are waived. As Bill had suggested earlier, older people are still going to, because of their nature and the way where they were brought up, typically go out of their way and do whatever they have to do to make sure their taxes are paid. But then you may get a degree of other people to say if there's no penalties and interest, I'm just going to hang on to my money. We could end up in a worse scenario here than what Bill has laid out for us. Let's hope that that's not the case, but it's pure speculation at this point as to how many people are really going to be seriously financially injured on this coming out the other end. There are some people that, employees with filing for the unemployment benefits, if in fact it holds true that they continue to get the extra $600 bucks a week. Yeah, so there's $1100 a week per... If you're entitled to the maximum statement, which is $513, so somebody who makes $850 a week if they're fully unemployed could be collected $1100 a week. First spouse, and then there's a $500 per child. That's not the unemployment benefit. The unemployment benefit is... $600 on top of whatever your normal benefit would be. The other stimulus check, which is $500 per child, that doesn't do the unemployment benefit. Is that a one-shot deal? So far, yes. I mean, some people could, just from the unemployment benefits alone could come out of this thing a little better than... It's a crapshoot at this point. I think Bill's done a great job speculating what he, you know, as good as anybody, what his guess is how this thing will sugar out. Yeah, I mean, the savings that I'm showing there are things... are savings that I think we can realize through the layoffs and reductions in hours and some reductions in spending. There's probably more places that can be done, but I don't want to... If I find more savings right now, it's just like this, that it tricks that cumulative deficit. I'd rather have the cumulative deficit estimate be higher than when we get to the end, that it's actually lower than I'm planning for. I'd rather not say I'd rather have a $200,000 deficit and it turns out to be an 80. On the paving portion of the CIP, that's another best guess. You don't know when those crews are going to be allowed to go back to work, what kind of summer will be last and who's first on the list. Yeah, so with regard to paving, Bill Woodruff and I talked about that last week. I remember during budget time, I told the board that I think this was a year that we were going to put the paving out to bid. It's been a number of years since we've done that. We're hoping that for the reason you just talked about, we'll be better off trying to negotiate with just like we have in the recent past. Because if we put it out to bid and, you know, like get to, we're just a little fish in the bottom of their fish bowl basically, you know, in the aquarium. I think we'll stick with trying to deal with local folks with regard to it. We might have to, you know, pay a little bit higher price than we would if we went out to bid, but I'd rather make sure we get it done as opposed to as there probably hasn't been any discussion with them at all. Please talk to the general a little bit, but I told the last week that we'll come back again and, you know, keep it kind of like that. Again, nobody knows what the cost of the asphalt is going to be at this point. I mean, I don't know how many of you kind of watch what happened today, but oil prices were negative $35 a barrel at closing there around $2.30 there when I had stopped up to have a bite to eat. That's when they closed out the stock market for oil prices. It was negative $35 a barrel. So those were where that'll all land. And by the time this thing, the ball gets rolling on pavement projects again. Any questions or comments? Yes, I have three points, some or comments. First, I guess comment is, Bill, I'm pretty much, I'm very sympathetic and I think that's a good idea to drop the tax rate to 50 cents or a lot of people hurting in the Waterbury economy. And I think it's the way to give the entire community, you know, aid, and I think it's something that's sustainable. The two other points that I want to bring up is, one, I guess I'm a little concerned about the rec department as well as the library department. You know, I want to be as optimistic as I can, but I'm really questioning if we're going to have the ability to have the pool open this coming year at all. And I don't know, maybe we should plan on that not happening. You know, that's, I know, we don't want to think like that, but that's a social distancing nightmare if that pool's open. The other thing, a question or comment, I too, as you pointed out, I'm questioning what the library staff are doing. Is there some sort of accountability on what the folks are doing? I know the librarians are more focused on, you know, digital, you know, lending of materials, et cetera. You know, they're purchasing digital materials and other materials. But I also question, you know, I know everyone wants to be honest, but there are some people that may not be as forthright, you know, what they are really doing for their time. And I don't know, maybe there has to be some sort of accountability on, you know, in terms of what their hours are, you know, what they have done with those hours. Yeah, well, I'm attempting to get that mic. I've had conversations with the library director, I've had these conversations with the library commissioners, and you know, I get emails from all of me and it will tell me what these folks are doing for their time. I don't have the ability to monitor it myself. And I think I mentioned this to you at the lab meeting, but I do not supervise any of the library staff. Right. The library commissioners supervise the library director directly. The town is involved because, you know, we provide them, the lion's chair, there's one thing. I help them on their budgets and they use our personnel policy. But I don't have the ability to direct anybody to be laid off in the library. I've made suggestions. I've kind of tried to point out what I just did here with you folks that, look, you know, if you just kind of whistle past the graveyard here because you don't think your budget is impacted, we're going to get to next year if you don't do some heavy lifting now in terms of planning things. You're going to be in the wake of the next spring when it comes time to put the budget together because, you know, we're not going to end up with a $700,000 or $800,000 deficit and the library has a $25,000 surplus and they just go on like nothing happened. So I'll continue to work with them. As I said, they have laid off two part-time people. That's gone on for about a month now. That was the first one and the second one is two weeks in. This budget that I showed you tonight, Mike, includes one of the employees who works 35 hours to have those hours cut significantly to about $7 or $8 a week. So that's pretty much, it's not quite a full layoff, but it's 85% of that employee's time. But the rest of them, the director and the children's librarian and the adult librarian and the tech librarian, right now the director of the salary employee has taken a voluntary pay cut and the other three hourly employees are giving up about 5% of their time. But, you know, it's an issue that I continue to raise with them, Mike, but I don't have... Right. And I understand that. And that's something you just have to deal with both the, probably, the director and the commissioners because I know, you know, you don't directly, but ultimately they come to us for money. And yes, they have to be somewhat responsive to the needs of the community in this, you know, bad time. Yeah. So, I mean, they'll be in the January time frame to talk about their budgets with you and we'll see where it goes. But I'll continue to work with the director to try to make inroads there and keep some moving towards some cuts. With regard to the recreation, I hear what you're saying. You know, there's for the... I don't want to make any decision that's too early without some more information from the governor's office, Mike. Right. I have already talked to Nick Nato, the director. He has talked to people who we have lined up to work as camp counselors and lifeguards. And they've all been told that we're in an unknown situation right now that we cannot guarantee their jobs. We're a little bit fearful because obviously, you know, some of these kids are going to say, well, if I don't have a guaranteed job, I've got to work for a different job. And if we do open that could leave us a little bit behind the eight ball. But right now, you know, especially for the summer rec program, there's, you know, 85 to 100 families that kind of count on that. And we don't want to wait too long because they've got to make plans to do something different if we're not open. But on the other hand, they're all kind of scrambling to just teach their kids and keep their kids at home. And if you drop on them right now, well, you're going to have to have your kid home all summer long too. There might be a little bit of gnashing of teeth out there. So I'd like to wait a little bit longer before we make that final decision. No, I understand. You know, we don't want to see the suicide rate and water purry increase by having kids locked up in home all summer long. That is a sentence I don't think most parents want to say. Just kind of a thought. Boy, it's, you know, I think it's good that they're starting to lean to open up some functions of society, opening up the rec department, boy. That kind of, you know, unless we see a real, you know, some better testing or, you know, ways that we could test people and, you know, show because with those rec departments, it's going to be next, it's going to be very difficult to socially distance all the kids. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Social distancing is a requirement at all. You know, packing 100 kids into that rec building is probably not going to happen. But quite ready to say that. And really pour the chlorine into the pool to sterilize all them kids. Thanks, Bill. Everybody else still with us there? So I don't have anything else to present on this stuff. We do have a couple of other issues that we want to talk about. But any other questions on the budget stuff? Hey, Mark. Yep. I'm not sure I answered your question before. So you said something about, could I estimate, you were talking about the taxes and the, and the penalties and stuff, but I'm not exactly sure what you were asking me. I don't think I answered your question. No, I think you did. And I think it's going to be really hard to estimate how many people may be laid on their payment. I do agree that. I think just to get. Just not maybe at the level that we currently are. But I think I'm fine. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Do you want to talk about this certificate of compliance? Yeah. This is just through the housekeeping issue. The state of Vermont, the trans and standards for highways, bridges and culprits. If you follow the standards, you are eligible for war grants. And it used to be that you could get a higher reimbursement rate for projects if you adopted the standards. They don't think they've done it yet, but they were moving towards saying, if you don't adopt the standards, you don't get anybody. We have adopted the standards in 2013. That's the last time that we have done that. The state sent an email to build with us today and asked them if they would, if we would update the standards to their 2019 template. It's, I don't have it with me, but Bill told me that it's only slightly different than in 2013 and we're doing pretty much all of it. I think it's just a form of law. We recommend that. I don't think any of you have it out there. It just says, we know the legislative body of waterways certifies you to understand the standards for the town road, to understand the public specification. So, even if you're the staff, and we're recommending that we do this as the state's request. Do you want a motion for that? Would you like to make a motion for that? To adopt again the state standard for 2020? Almost. Can we second it, please? I'll second it. Second. Hi. What we're going to do with this, Chris is here tonight. He can sign this. We're going to have to scan it and send it to you and ask you all to sign it individually before we'll end up having the state and all five pages together. The state has told us that this time the select board has to sign it. Next time it comes up, they said that the select board could authorize the manager or the public works director to sign it, but they want all the select board members to sign it this time. So we'll send this out. If you can print it off and sign it, and send it back, it would be helpful. If you can't, if you don't have the capability to print, let us know and we'll send you to email or something. Anything else? Mike, you wanted to talk about the school board election there for a bit? Yeah, just for a couple of minutes. I know there were two candidates and we wound up not making kind of a recommendation. And I know the one candidate that was not selected, I know he kind of had kind of a little bit of an issue with the other king, because I guess he didn't realize, he sent his letter in, and I know he didn't appear at our meeting, although he didn't realize that when we were meeting, so otherwise he would have. I don't know. I guess he's disappointed in how the school board made that selection. I don't know. There's nothing I'm sure we could do about it, but I don't know what everyone's thought about. You know, maybe in the future we need to consider possibly making a recommendation of a candidate that we think is best suited for Waterbury's needs. I don't know what else. I'll speak to that, Mike, in that I was in attendance in that meeting. This is Nat Fish. And I'm awfully glad that we didn't make a recommendation that night in that I had not heard yet from Scott Culver, and it was very clear to me, after listening to both of them at length, that Scott was the most qualified candidate for the job. My personal opinion, but I was completely shocked that he was not placed in that seat because it seemed to be that he had pretty much everything that they were looking for. So going forwards, I would say that if we're ever in that position again and we need to make a recommendation, we need to have 100% attendance and we need to be able to ask our questions and we need to be able to hear both sides. And so, you know, that's my stand. Yeah, Nat, I agree with everything that you just said, and as a matter of fact, I spoke with Scott personally, and the reason I guess I'm a little bit taken back is, again, the information that the other candidate put forward from what I understood wasn't... What he put forward to us wasn't totally how he stood and even the questions that we did ask that night, I don't know how... I don't know if he wasn't not honest, but maybe we weren't asking the right question, but I know I did a little bit more research and maybe we made a mistake, and that's all I want to say. And maybe it's sometimes... Again, we need to look at if we have a situation like that where they are looking for a recommendation, more fully vet and let candidates know, yes, we want your input, and maybe versus two paragraphs in an email, give us some more information on how you stand. Right. So, if this situation occurs again, and it's after July 1st of this year, the select board will make the appointment. So, there was a little bit of discussion, evidently, after the school board meeting, and someone suggested to Scott the school board followed the wrong process and that it should have been the select board that appointed this... fill this vacancy. It is a little bit odd that, when you consider that the school board is representing... it's a unified union school board, and you have members of the school board from Baseman and Duxbury and Warren and the other five talents making a choice as to who would best serve Waterbury. So, there was a... a question was put to me. I felt that I needed to get some legal advice because clearly, if the process was the wrong one, we should have known that and we should have the ability to make the appointment. Long story short, the appointment process that ended up appointing Michael Frank was the proper process. The proper board did the work that was supposed to be done. There was communication with the select board. We, as the town, you know, we didn't put it on our agenda, but there was communication from the school board to the select board about this process. The select board had a chance to be involved if it wanted to. We didn't put it on the morning. I was, I'm sure, maybe we were meeting in person. Maybe we would have made it on there differently than it did. But, you know, Scott, his candidacy was frankly at the 11th hour. We didn't even know that he was going to be running until just, I think, maybe the weekend before our last meeting. But the long and short of it is the process for this time was followed correctly. It has been a change in the law now, however, and the law states that as of July 1st, 2020, when there is a vacancy on a school board that's a unified union district like ours is, that it is the select board of the town where the vacancy occurred that makes the appointment. So we only have to worry about did we do this right or we should be more involved. If it happens again, I think we should be more involved before you kind of select board to get appointed. Thanks, Bill. Katie, you wanted to say something? Yeah, so weighing in on the subject, I was reached out to by Alex Thompson, who's another one of the Waterbury representatives for that board. And there had been talk from the more town and facing residents on some social media sites that nobody had reached out to the Waterbury select board without putting forward a person to nominate. And I said that that was incorrect, like that we had been reached out to and we decided not to make a recommendation so that, you know, people weren't confused or getting the wrong idea. Going forward, I think that we may talk about a process where if someone wants to join the school board, maybe, you know, interview them or like have them come into a meeting, make that a part of the repertoire. I don't know. But I also think it would be another topic to bring up maybe on a future agenda about having representatives come in and talk to the board at, you know, our select board meetings regularly to have input and regular conversations with them. I don't know if any of you go to the meetings or you watch them online at MRVTV afterwards, but I think that's really important that we all are on the same page. So we have the most representatives on the board. And so if two people come to like one of our meetings during the month and then the other two can come to the next meeting, I don't know. I just think that that could be something that we talk about for a future possibility. Totally agree, Katie. Speak to this issue there just for a bit. One, I'm kind of shocked, Nat, that you're, you know, the fact that you seem totally convinced that Scott was the correct person for that seat, that Mike ended up with it. I was going to attend the meeting. I didn't for reasons I can't talk about here on, you know, kind of personal reasons, nothing between Scott and I. But so thinking about this whole thing, because Scott approached me about the fact that he felt that the board overstepped their bounds. I asked Bill to look into it and he did. And that's why he came up with the answer that he did. But moving forward, I'll just throw this out to you guys and I don't know how this change would take place, if it would be a legislative change. But to Bill's point about Scott stepping into this thing on the 11th hour, that to me was an issue. And moving forward, if perhaps the state legislative body had to weigh in on this, I'm wondering that in this particular case we had two candidates originally that both ran during town meeting for one seat. Two candidates, yeah. So they both, they both were on the ballot. Katie, Kelly Hackett and Michael Frank and Kelly Hackett got the nomination or the position and Mike came in a fairly close second, but not too close. So I'm wondering that moving forward, if the legislative body at the state level could change the rules on that and by default, if somebody resigned by default that from any town, a representative resigned by default you would approach the second candidate, the one that didn't get the position to see if they were still interested in being on the board and by default they would fill that position. And if they weren't interested, then you would have some other people as in this case Scott could step forward and try for that position. But my reasoning for that is the town weighed in on both those candidates and there was a fair amount of votes in favor of both of them with only one winner. And with our situation, if we had been handed to us, there's five people, you know, obviously we're supposed to represent the town, but to me it's kind of a lopsided way about putting somebody into that position under these circumstances. And I didn't know that if you had a default scenario in there first and then resort to the select board after that, if that in fact failed, if that... What am I talking about here? If that, then it would come back to the select board. What do you think about that? Chris, I totally disagree with your methodology and I'll tell you why. Because say you have two people running. One receives a thousand votes, the other receives 50 votes. The voters clearly didn't want the second place person. You know, there's not really a threshold that you're going to say what is an adequate second place. I think you can't just then give it to the second place person. If they're still interested. I know if you run, but you know, the voters have basically said that that person, they don't want that person. Granted, this is not the case. You may have had a closer election, but I don't think we want the legislature mandating second place candidates automatically get the job. No, I hadn't thought about that, Mike, having such a disparity in the vote count, but there is a point here. Well, just to close the circle here, if this should happen again, the current law is that they would come to the select board. And just so everyone is on the same page, Michael Frank now will have to run in March for the unexpired term that has one more year left on it. So if Scott decides he wants to seat that, the seat is going to be up for election next March. Appointments, whenever a vacancy is filled by an appointment, the appointment only lasts until the next election. And there was a lot of discussion about whether the next election could be as early as potentially June because their budget failed. And if the school decides to have a budget vote in June, there was a lot of discussion about, is that a right election? And the lawyers all finally came down to agree that this position is a watery, elected position. It's not a school district elected position. This position was warned as part of the town of Barber's town meeting. So our next election isn't until next March. If the select board decided to have a special town meeting to ask voters if they want to waive the penalty in interest, the position would be up for election at that time. So on that note, I did, I did convey to Scott when he contacted me that perhaps at this time that he just maybe don't money the waters and just continue to attend the board meetings and bring information to them as he see fit and then moving forward when election time came around, wherever it may be, that he put his hat in the ring at that point. It looks like the decision has been made and if he's still interested, then he has that right to put his name on the ballot when the time comes. Well, if there's nothing else, we can close this thing out for tonight and let you people get off the phone. Motion to adjourn, yeah. Seconded. Thank you all very much. Stay safe. Take care. Hey, Bill, are you still there? Quick question. So if Karen is already thinking about cancelling ArtsFest for July, is that a strong yes at the parade as being exiled for this year? The Rotary Club has already decided to cancel the MQID parade. They're planning on having the fireworks that night as normal, figuring that you can watch fireworks with social distancing but it's hard to have a parade with social distancing. So the MQID parade will go off. The Rotary and our W are in discussions about some late summer joint event that they would do together, assuming that social distancing would be half of them but they have not, you know, they're in just the conversation stages right now. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. All set? Yeah. Bye.