 to order. Six o'clock. First is to approve the agenda. Any changes to the agenda plan? I have something to bring up in the other business, okay? Nothing else? See you then. Make a motion. We approve the agenda. Second. Okay. All in favor? All in favor. If you don't speak up, we don't hear what you're saying. Okay. First, it will be public comment or inquiry. Anybody from the public have a comment in regard to something other than what's on the agenda for tonight? Is it by the water or is it lifted? I believe that's lifted today. I saw it posted. It's been lifted. Any other public comments? Yeah, I'm making a point about probably you. Okay. I would have all been, I would have just kept going up and up and up, and so was everybody else, but I'm paying the same. Yup. It's everybody that we have the houses and the schools and everything, and it's not right. I'm on fixed income. That's the only thing that don't go up is my income. Well, I'm just, like, bored. I'll talk about that tonight when I talk to the water commissioners about the overall cost and stuff. Certainly, any questions you have? I'm a divine leader. I belong to myself, but I was told when I said that before that I didn't read it. Right. And I think that should be good. Yeah. I'm willing to take what water I use, but I don't want to take what everybody has, and that's about what I'm doing right now. It certainly is a concern for people that live alone, but at this point, meters are not, I'm not an option at this point, but I think the select board will get into that a little bit more. I think it will be down the road, perhaps, for Bethel, but not in any way. Well, I'm probably 86, and I want to be on that road for a couple of days. It's not what I thought we would want to do. What is the status of the robo calling? Does everyone in town are having contacted everyone in town that they can be on the list so that when there's a boil water that there's a call? The water bills are going to go out this week once the select board as commissioners approves the rate. And what's going to go into that bill is a call link for the consumer confidence report. The rate is scheduled as well as for people to sign up for Vermont Alert so that we can create such a database. And Kelly also put in the option that if someone didn't have computer access, couldn't go to the library, they could contact her personally, and she would have them come into the office and set them up. So it is certainly something that we're working towards, but it does take a little bit of time just to get everybody to buy in. We've already started the process so we thought by reaching out via water bills, especially after a recent, a couple of recent boil water notices, people might jump on the bandwagon a little bit faster. So you'll see that in your bill that will go out by then. But the other thing is, you know when you plan to work on the lines, you might give thought not to do it on a Friday. Because if there is a problem, you have all the kids at home, they're using the water, they may not know. So if they were in school, my daughter-in-law said, you know, we're going to plan. And I said that they've done it on Friday, and she said, you've got to be kidding. It was a scheduled maintenance. It was a break. It was a break, yeah, certainly if it was a scheduled repair, it would have happened in a, you know, in a better time. But it was a break, so they, you know, have a choice. Well, we certainly understand your concern. It was a valid point, for sure. It was actually a Thursday. They'll dig? Yes. But it was a break, and it just kind of went over the... But the water samples were sent out on Friday, so the boil notice went over the weekend. I think that was the main concern that people had. Yeah, in the Grand Horn Society, and then, of course, you don't get an electronic notice until the following Monday. We do get a phone call from the lab on Saturday, they will tell you. So we have unofficial reading on Saturday, but you don't get it officially until Monday. But it was on schedule, and it wasn't Thursday. And by the time we got done for the day, it was too late to grab samples and get them to hand over. So they do have a 24-hour hold time, so we were able to grab them and then send both sets the next day. What I wanted to add was, I mean, it is unfortunate that we have water breaks, and I know this board is working hard towards a solution with the water infrastructure that we have. It's a process that's slower than we would like it to go, but we are in that process, and we've been doing monthly or bi-weekly-type updates with the public. I will say that, you know, having been on your end of it before with water breaks at my house, that, you know, I believe, you know, the water department is doing an excellent job of getting out there and notifying people of, one, that there is a break, and two, the administration has done an excellent job of getting out there, even though we're like, oh, no, here comes the boil notice again, but we're out there knocking on the doors and passing out the information. I can tell you as a homeowner, you know, ten years ago when I came to town and had water breaks almost monthly on north end of town, I never got notified. I didn't know the water was out until it was out, you know, and these are problems that, at that time, it wasn't like it broke that day and they're out there fixing it like we are going now. It was, that thing's been leaking for weeks, now they finally came out to fix it. We're not quite where we want to be, but I will say that we're getting a lot better at the reactive end of things and making you aware that, hey, we can't drink the water, because I can tell you before that it would be a water break, they come out and fix it and the whole time I'm drinking the water, I didn't know, not supposed to, you know, and then all of a sudden you care, well, you weren't supposed to be drinking the water, well, I never knew that. So I think on that end of it, we're doing a better job. One question. You said that the notice is going to go out in bills and if people want to get on board, I would think that a boil of water notice is severe enough that they should be requested to submit to a phone number. Well, we can't. I mean, we can't require people to do it. We will get as many people as we can signed up if they don't want to give out their personal information like that, we can't force them into it. You know, they would be notified. This is a matter of your health. And it's their choice. They also have free will to make those decisions. Is there a critical number that you are looking for before you can activate it? Because if they're signed up, they should be getting all of those notices that they're signed up. You should be able to send it out to two people. Yeah, Kelly did do that. She was, she did it today because she asked Mo and I if we'd gotten them on alert on the water notice and but we hadn't and so then we are busy with because taxes are due tomorrow also but she was going to call the gentleman that you're working with to do the LAOP at the state level and find out where the disconnect is. But you're right. It can be forced up wherever has it and she did do that. So the main thing is for you to, you should, you're not going to be hamstrung by other people not signing up. Once you get signed up, you should be able to get. Yeah, but the way these things work is that you have to, you have to validate it from your end when you sign up, right? So we can't force people to sign up. Yeah, it seems strange to me since this is a matter of health, a person's health and not failure that there was a request from the people whether they wanted to or not kind of it. You know, I spoke to Jamie who is the assistant to the town manager and she said we just included it. I don't think there was a do you want to sign up kind of a thing because her sister lives there. Yeah, her sister lives there. So I just wonder what is your point? The point is if we have to boil the water, that means there are germs in the water. And I think that a person should get a robo alert on whatever phone they have being notified because the girls can't run around to everybody with this sort of paper. But are you, are you being signed up so that you'll be notified? I hope I am. Well then. I think that you would have done the hunter wrong. That's not it. When I spoke to Randy who is in charge of this, he said that what you have to do is set up a pool. Right, and that's what we're going to put the numbers in. Yes, absolutely. Okay, then you can activate that and robo will go out. Right. And there really isn't any reason to delay. No, I know, but when you guys met with Randy what Randy said was he told us to get together a bunch of information. We sent it to him. He creates the database to put it in. And I believe that at the time we didn't have very many people signed up. Hence why we're doing the push in the water bills this week to try to get more people to do it. But when Kelly pushed it and she said, she asked Mo and I and we didn't get it. And then taxes were busy today. So she was going to call Randy to find out why it didn't go. But we are doing that. My point is, is that since it's a matter of the Board of Health, the point to have these people notified is to boil the water. I will have to ask Randy what the legalities of that are. I'm going to be honest. I take phone numbers. The other thing is too, a lot of times, believe it or not, we actually don't have people's phone numbers. For many, many years, town clerks didn't collect phone numbers because it was public record. So we're doing, we're in the process of that now for doing collections. As checks come in, we're collecting phone numbers. But as someone who's been doing the link with collections, there's a lot of numbers we don't have. So we probably couldn't even add, we certainly couldn't add everybody. We probably don't have, we have less than half of people's numbers. In the bill that's going in, is it going to be like a red piece of paper or an orange piece of paper? Yep. And just say, and I'm sure that the Board of Health, where I told them tomorrow, is that it's ultra important if there are germs in the water. And have that on the red or orange piece of paper. We really absolutely have to have that. That's the issue I'm trying to understand. What does other people's health, what is your issue with other people's health? How does that hamstring your access to the information? If somebody else... I'm just, so we are sending out the information to get people signed up. You understand that, you have the opportunity to sign up. You've provided your information. What business is it of yours that other people in town make their own decision about their access or their risk of health? Because I don't want them to get sick. And how does that affect your standing with the alert system? Well, as a Christian, I really don't want other people to get sick. Okay, well we don't either. And that's why we're doing this, but the fact of the matter is that we can only do what we can do. And as long as we don't... I'm saying I am in total support of this in matter of fact, I researched it on my own. Good. And I got a hold of Randy on my own because I couldn't believe that Kelly and everybody were walking around with these green things. Yeah. So I researched it on my own. Good. But I think one thing that might be talking, I could be talking a little bit out of turn here, but the Vermont Alert is different than the school's robocalls. So, Vermont Alert, you have to get signed up because that's a third-party organization that puts this together. So you would have to give them permission to contact you if something was to occur. However, you know, sitting here and thinking about it, there probably is an option for us here at the town to mirror kind of what the school does and we could have our own robocall system that puts out an alert if we need to. But the emergency management is trying to link all of this. Since they have the Everbridge and they have the Vermont Alert, they're trying to link all of those together so that everybody stays in the same system. The nice thing, this was just thinking here while I'm sitting here, but the nice thing if we have a good look at like a robocall system for our town is it could be used for much more than just that. You know, you could use it as, you know, you can send your message and send it out and say, don't forget that Friday night there's movie night at the town hall. You know, I mean, that information gets out to people just like the school system. They do more than just schools cancel today. They'll talk about parent-teacher conferences coming up and everything else. So maybe that's something that we could look into. Maybe, because you know Olin, right? Is that his name? Maybe you could ask him. I'm just curious how much they pay for this system. But this Vermont Alert is certainly free, but it would be interesting to know because you're right. I mean, they're definitely in different uses for things like that. And that might get information out there. You can put other information, but... So for the town, so for the time being, the Vermont Alert is where we're going for now. And in order to be a part of that list, you have to make sure that you have signed up with them so that they have permission to... Where did we sign up on that? You're gonna get that mailer. It's coming. So you put your personal information that you want to be contacted and that will get out to you. And Kelly already worded it, Janice, so I can't remember what it said at the time, but she's already worded it and printed them out. And carved them all up to put them in the... I can't remember what her wording was, but I think she explained about boil water notices, et cetera, in there to kind of encourage people. But I will have her, we'll talk to Randy to find out about mandatory or set up, I don't know. Do you have anything, Tim, you want to add or you're good? The boil water notice is precautionary. It is only assuming that there's bacteria in the water. The way we deal with the leak now is if the volume is slow enough, we will work on it live until the last possible minute, which greatly reduces the chance of cross-contamination as long as you have positive pressure. And the water was only out for an hour and 45 minutes last Thursday. That's pretty good compared to how it used to be. And like I said, again, it's precautionary. The town does do every recommendation that the state has a law for notifying the public. We meet every one of the standards. The state is incredibly impressed with the office and the staff right now. The Vermont alert is above and beyond, and so it's going to take time. It's also mandatory or required, so it's going to take time to get it set up. What does that mean? It doesn't mean it doesn't have to do it. You don't have to, Vermont Alert, it's optional. You don't have to do it, Vermont Alert. No, but since Vermont Alert is there, you might as well use it. And they're trying to explain to you that you're going to have to have some patience. I understand that, but I also understand that Omi had a break in front of the post office before it came along. It had gone on for three days. And I told the board to come. I mean, they were very, very, very upset. And they said, okay, is the minute here, is it right? And whatever it's coming down, that permits bad things to go in. And they'll have to put out a boil. They're a little misspoken. That's a little misspoken as long as you have positive pressure. Okay, well, I'm going to pull them up too. No, I'm sure. So I guess for now, just for the Vermont Alert, the faster we get your information in, the better off it'll be to be able to get on that third-party system for everybody. And we'll look into potential robo-call systems and things like that. Does the Vermont Alert isolate particular areas, like for example this last break affected from here to here? Whatever information you want to give it. You can create any kind of group. You can create a flood hazard zone group for particular outreach. And that's the point is that you can, once you get the information in there, you can sort it however you want based on whatever the information is that you want to send out. But it takes a learning curve for whoever's going to be. So that would come from the town office to Vermont Alert saying... It would come right out of this. Right now we're working with the emergency management to create our database. But once we have a database and training, Kelly should be able to activate whatever kind of grouping she needs to for whatever kind of an alert she wants to send out. And then that alert will go just to that pinpointed area. And it's a new system to us. Certainly to Lou Bethel who's trying to figure out Vermont Alert and Everbridge. And so we're trying to understand the software as well so that we can use it to its best potential. So we're working with Randy. He's coming down. So I mean it's an excellent tool. Janice is right. It's an excellent tool. We just need that. I have a question. We'll take one more. Outside of the high school they have a board and every once in a while there is something that flashes on about something that's happening in the town. Is there any possibility that we could ask them to flash a look-in you want to go to sign up for town alert? Just something as simple as that. People drive by, they notice it. It's another way of... Sure we could ask. Of course they can say it's not. We could always put it out here. Yeah. Yeah. You were in Florida. Yeah. I'll have to ask. I will. I'm sure that the Kelly knows someone at the school. I know. I'm pretty sure. You're doing another thing. This is the last year that we've had by the Scopers. And then every month they have an assembly. Could this be alerted? You know, they are really good messengers. And we should use that. So we have used up our public comment period. And we are going to move on. Which we're moving on to more water and sewer. So under our first item for the night is the rate setting of the water and sewer. We had started this conversation at our last meeting. Which was three weeks or so ago. We had proposed, there was a rate sheet that went around which was the current rate schedule versus the proposed rate schedule. Had comments on their rates if they were changing of why we were changing the rates. Did everybody have a time to look at it and take it in? There's copies on the table for us back there and budgets as well as the proposed schedules. So again, just kind of overview for those that weren't here. Water rate wise, our current EU costs is $100.92. The proposed rate increase is to $116.12. This is keeping the increase that, you know, we talked about a couple of years ago of where we need to be and where we were at the time. And rather than taking an awful sharp spike to get to that, we chose to do kind of more of a gradual, doesn't seem like gradual, but a little more gradual, great increase to get to where we need to be to offset the cost of what it costs us to produce water and bring water to the households. And as we know, you know, water and sewer has been, in the past, has been one of the drawbacks on our budgets here at the town with either on the collection as the things or not being run efficiently. Good thing is right now we're running the most efficiently that we've been in years. So the EU proposed rate is going to increase about just over $15.25. The other thing that we have looked into is the current rate for the metered accounts, which I believe is only four or five. After they use their EU, so every EU has a certain amount of water that's allotted for usage. And once they go over that allotted amount, they have to buy water at a certain rate. So the current rate was $0.90 for 1,000 gallons of water. Well, where $0.90 ever came from we're not really quite sure, but we do know that $0.90 does not cover the cost of the water that goes to the house. So what we... What's that? The business. Or business, right, in this case the business. So we've increased that for the metered accounts to $3.59 per 1,000 gallons. So that is going to offset the cost of the cost us because right now what we were doing is any of those metered accounts, if they went above their usage and they were buying more water, for every 1,000 gallons they were buying, we would lose the money. Well, we, as taxpayers, take money out of the other account. So the other thing that we've also have gone through and looked at was the Bethel water ordinance and looked at the vacancy and the things of the ordinance. Our ordinance that we have in the town of Bethel states, has not been followed, but states that the vacancy rate should at least cover the fixed costs. And the fixed costs of the town represents 68.96% of the overall cost. So 68.96% of the EU amount. So there has been for many years, sorry, it's great, but there has been for many years, well, not as long as I've been here, $25 was the vacancy rate. So at the households, what we found out is $80.08 is really the actual cost per EU. And follows the water ordinance that the town has. So the other proposal was to increase the vacancy rate from $25 to $80.08. The other... For this year. Correct. For this year. Correct. This is the... These are rates, the way that we're calculating it now that will be recalculated every year, based on the same kind of a formula. Yes. At the same time, there's also rules that would be followed, that would be in accordance with our water ordinance, that would be followed with, if you choose to put your account on a vacancy rate, then there's procedures to follow from there. So there's the disconnecting or reconnecting of the water. Chris, do you find that everybody is honest about if they have a tenant or, you know, where they have to be rented their apartment after they're on a vacancy rate? Well... There hasn't been enough incentive in the past to be that way. I really couldn't tell you. Well, I know. I won't name the name. I wanted to know the person who took her apartment off and then rented it, and then forgot to tell you that. And that very well could happen, and I don't know, you know, any accounts myself, but what this fee structure does do is, for instance, if someone before took their account off and put it on a vacancy rate, one, we weren't covering our costs for the transportation of the water to the residents. Just because you're not using it doesn't mean it doesn't cost money to get it there. So now, you know, so before, your cost structure was $100, right? $100 a quarter to have an EU worth of water. However, if you took your account off and put it on a vacancy, you paid $25, right? Now, let's say you did, you weren't honest and you decided to do that and you still were using water because we never went around to shut your water off. So what the system, the way it's supposed to be run is the vacancy rate should be, should cover the fixed cost of the system. So that is the delivery portion of the system. Can you only get vacancy after your water's been shut off? Right. So in this case, your vacancy rate would cover the fixed cost for the system even though you're not drawing water from the system, but it covers all the transportation. I have five people living in my building and according to tourist, my new, my bill that will go out for five people for the quarter will be $791.57 for the quarter. That includes sewer. What? It includes sewer, I think. Sour and water. Yeah. But $700, I gotta say again, $791.57 for five people, one of them being 95 years old. That's absurd. Well, it has nothing to do with the people. It has to do with the system, right? This is the actual cost. You know, I really think, I think that, and I respect what you're saying about, you know, the vacancy rate, higher squares in the left foot and one with an R, why don't you just take an eraser and just start from scratch? We just did. That's what we just did. So what we, well, hold on, I could probably handle a little bit of this. So what we've done is, what we have done and what we are doing right now is we're getting a handle on what is our true cost in the town of Bethel to provide the service. I can tell you that we did, we had no idea how much it was costing to provide the service in the past and you can clearly, by some of these pricing that we had, you can clearly see that it wasn't, that's why we got in, you know, part of our issues that we have in this town is because we don't know how much it costs us to do business on something and we were charging rates that weren't at least keeping us even steaming. I will say that our rates, even with the proposed rate increase, are still lower than a majority of the towns in Vermont. Lower than Rochester? Okay, so we picked the one town in Vermont. But I will say if you look to our friends of the north, if you look at just water, it's $250 a quarter, not alone adding your sewer, which their sewer rates are more expensive. My father lives in Windsor, Vermont and he pays over $400 a quarter for water and sewer. So I understand that it is, for people that have a fixed income, it is a lot to bear. Wouldn't it be better if you had meters so that people that are using more water are going to be paying for what they're using and I won't have to pay for more than I'm not using? No, you actually will have to pay. You'd have to pay more. You'd have to pay the vacancy rate. You would actually have to pay. Why a vacancy rate when I'm living there? Well, the vacancy rate is the base cost for the system. It's 68% of the cost of the system is just to keep water. So you will only get metered for water for the cost that's above that 68%. So you're basically, it's a lot of arguments. Well, here, we can do this one quickly. So if we were to take your house, and I don't know, so hold on. So if we were to take yours, the fixed cost of the system would be $80. So you would be charged $80. And then Tim, correct me if I'm wrong, but how much is one meter to buy? Well, it's going to be about $400,000 divided into $400,000. Really? No, how about just one, if one person went out and bought a meter, how much is it? $15,000. Okay. It's probably going to be $300. Okay, for a smaller. So you have $300. Is that installed? Is that just a unit? Oh, that's just in the menu. Okay, so you have to buy the unit. You have to buy the unit. You have to install the unit. You have to maintenance the unit. In the long run though, I'm going to save money because I'm not going to be paying for all this water that I'm not losing. You're just assuming. You're just assuming that you're paying more because of the rate that we have. I am paying more because people with four, five kids and rowmuffs in the house are paying the same as I am. I am paying more. Tell me I'm not. But what we're trying to explain is that you're not paying for water. You're paying for, you're hitching up to the water system. We are not charging for water. We're charging for water. We're charging for infrastructure. And that's... Falling apart. Yeah. What's that? Which is falling apart. In fact, the infrastructure is so bad it's on its death bed. So that isn't the point. We're talking about cost. And if you want to improve infrastructure, $400,000 spent on water meters will not improve the infrastructure. I am my own employer meter. I will install it as I said. I don't know why you couldn't do that, but it isn't going to save you any money. But it didn't save you any money when I sued you about it. No, actually, we all paid for that. Yes, you did. Because... So, I will... Hold on. How much? How much is... Yeah. With the way that you use... How much? Can you tell me... $100 and 90 cents. How much? $100 and 90 cents. $100 and 90 cents. $100 and 92 cents. It's just water. Yeah, I mean the whole thing. You also get sewer? Yes. Okay, that's an additional $175.97. Okay, so an actual $8.00... That's what I'm paying now. Yes, ma'am. Okay, what am I going to be paying when you get done adding all this other stuff to it? What you're going to be paying is an additional $15.00. It'll be $300 now. Yeah, you'll be paying additional, I believe, about $15.00. So the same thing holds true. We're not charging on the number of people who are actually in the house. We're charging based on the potential usage of water and sewerage within the house. There should be the number of bathrooms in your home and the number of people. Right. What happened to that? Well, it's that. It's not how many are in it. It's the capacity in that house. These are basic... I don't know them all. That's my capacity. What? Well, what I'm trying to say is that you're not... It's apples and oranges. You're trying to say that you're using sewer or you're using water, and that's not what we're charging on. We're charging on a system basis. We have to break... And in fact, this is not a new idea. In 1949, when the town took over the private water systems, that's exactly what they did then. It was a rental fee. You did not pay for water. You paid to rent the water system. And that's exactly what we're doing now. These are rental fees. These are not how much water you use or how much sewer you make. And it's confusing, but that's the fact of the matter. And what is the $3.59 for 1,000 gallons of meter? That's water. That's a problem beyond. With our commercial accounts, they use way more water because of the commercial need for their water. So they have meters, and they still have a base amount of water that they have brought to their facility because they own or they're renting a connection fee. But when they use more than that $1,000, then we charge them by the gallon. Wait, wait, excuse me. You're not telling me that a whole with, say, seven kids and two parents and that, and they came the same as I am for water and so else. And nothing else is, they're paying more than I am now. That is a clear thing to... I'm not saying it's fair, and in fact, but the court case already showed that it doesn't have to be fair. What we're using... Unfortunately, that's the truth. What's their mistakes? Fine. I'm not disagreeing with that. Then what are we, the people that get one check a month supposed to do when that one check a month goes for life, food, water, and food? I know. I don't... I share your concern, but that... And what do we do now? But your fixed income, unfortunately... Does not stay... I mean, it does not go up. What I'm trying to say is that... It's going up and everything. And then what do you do when our taxes are late because us people that are on one income can't pay up, you add more to it by adding interest to it. I'm sorry, we're not making these fees based on your one income. No, I know you're not. It's not helping us people that I do want to go. We need help. Yes, we know that. And that's two different conversations. If we can find a way to help you, we would be open to that, but the issue that we're trying to find now is a way to be financially responsible about an infrastructure system. And unfortunately, it costs more than you can afford. But we can't actually change that unless there's some way that we can get a benefactor or somebody who's willing to pay for accounts that are having a hard time paying for it, but it doesn't change the cost of our system. So just a couple of things. So just separating two articles here. So tonight we're talking about the cost of the water system and the proposed rates based on those costs. We are on a... We weren't going to talk about it tonight, but we are in the process of the water inventory for the town which we're greater than 40% of the way through that. We will also be looking at other methods or potential methods of payment for the water service. We're all open to whatever is in the best interest of the majority of the town, because that's the way it works, the majority. So we are going to look at the majority of the town residents and owners of businesses and we are going to make what we believe is the best decision or most efficient cost-worthy decision for everybody. Now I can tell you a couple of years ago when I first got on the board, we had briefly looked at water meters. And contrary to belief, the water meters was going to increase everybody's water bills drastically. We're not talking $15. Everybody's just going to go up $100. So we chose not to do that. Actually, we just chose to not even hear it. We pushed it aside because it was wasting our time. But we will... Teresa has been working with Michigan North Carolina. We did tear the rate apart. We started from scratch. That's how we came up with the numbers. And while I agree that meters are perhaps the future of Bethel, at this time we have so many infrastructure issues that my recommendation had been to Greg was that when we finally get the final stuff from Aldrich and Elliot with the probable cost of engineering and construction looking at the possibility of starting by putting meters on anyone with apartments and commercial properties and starting there. But we have to kind of look at the costs and don't forget that while we're discussing this when you have a water meter there's sometimes there's a dual rate. So there's the base rate that it costs for the system and then there's a secondary rate on top of that to cover any debt because this 68.96% this vacancy rate is not covering the entire cost of the system. So it will be once you add meters and another bond payment and things to that and Rome wasn't built in a day and unfortunately you're in a system that's over 50% depreciated and no one had the foresight to set aside money. So we're working through that and we're trying to work. I totally understand where you're coming from. He's talking about taking the majority of the people in Bethel. To me the majority of the people in Bethel don't get a check every week. We don't get a check every week. You've got to look at that. Other than the majority of the people in Bethel. The other thing we have to understand is I know that here in Bethel that we've taken our rate increases have gone up quite a bit here in the last couple of years but we also have to understand if you've moved to almost any other town in Vermont you are instantly going to pay way more and I know Rochester is a little bit lower than us but they're in a novel. So we're trying our hardest to make sure that it's cost-worthy for everybody. Barbara pays one equivalent unit. I paid 2.71 equivalent units for five people. Bethel Mellows only pays one and a half equivalent units. They have 35 employees they wash down the grounds they wash down the trucks they have people coming in the public and using the facilities it is not right but you say they do not have meters they do not have meters. Does Bethel Mellows do they have meter Bethel Mellows? No, do they pay one and a half equivalent units? I believe that Bethel Mellows is fresh right now but you said 1.5 or 2.5 but however they do not have three accounts one of the two of the accounts one is over here and another one is an apartment that they rent Bethel Mellows itself has one and a half trust me I have researched this one and a half equivalent units and Barbara pays one and Bethel Mellows is unfair that is immoral we have a survey that they respond to I am not sure if we have got their results back so that is something that I was going to mention to Greg when he came back because we did do as Paul knows did the water test from over there so we are certainly looking at how many bathrooms so we just sent the survey out and I am not sure we have all the results it doesn't when you have 35 employees and the public using the facilities and you are washing down trust you are doing this and that and the other thing I don't care what set of numbers you use one and a half equivalent units is not right when Barbara pays one we have to have some consistency across the system no Carl no your consistency is entirely wrong that is wrong for Barbara to pay one so do you want to have a logical do you want to have a logical conversation in here so then I am going to I want to so the question that we have surveys that we sent out to all of our accounts please don't interrupt me so that when they respond we have criteria that they respond to and the fact that they wash trucks and that they have 35 employees may not affect that survey the way that you think that it should and I am not saying that it is right or it is wrong but we have consistency so that every single please stop every single commercial account has the same responsibility to respond to the survey and we calculate based on that but at the end of the day just one thing and then I am going to finish please hit the nail on the head your criteria is wrong that is the crux of the entire matter for this entire account on how the sewer and water is regulated and we don't disagree with you at all we don't disagree with you at all we have been for the last six months Greg has been going over the criteria and the sewer for those of surveys I mean you are barking up a tree that is already full so to let you we are working on it we really are and kind of the whole situation if Bethel Mills ends up paying two and a half that doesn't necessarily mean that everybody's accounts going way down it just means that you are going to pay the same amount that you are paying now they are just going to pay a little more so we are going to be looking at that I thought they would be paying their fair share that way I don't know what their fair share is but we will figure that out but right now what we have to worry about is how much what we have in front of us tonight is we are looking at what it actually costs the town of Bethel to produce water to everybody's households and businesses this is something that in the past was not done correctly as we see a vacancy rate is $25 it should have been at least $80 to cover the fixed cost of the system so we are trying to move to a fair system so everybody's got fair system also on the meter their accounts themselves they are going to pay more more money actually they are going to pay what it costs the town of Bethel before for every thousand gallons they were taking we were losing $2.70 $2.70 this went on for years well that was years and all we can do is we are in the present and we are moving to the future so all I can tell you is that right now with the water just to kind of go over it so we can get back on track the proposed EU unit the EU unit price is going to go up just over $15 a quarter 15 just over 15 I'm not hosting my budget $15 I know so $15 I know so $15 a quarter so $5 a month is what we are charging everybody more the meter accounts per 1000 gallons is going to be going from 90 cents to $3.59 and in the vacancy rate we are going to put the vacancy rate at what it should be on the Bethel's water ordinance that we have so for years that should have been something that was very easy our ordinance if you look it up says if you have a vacancy rate which we do it needs to be cover your fixed costs and $25 does not cover the fixed costs what this also does is like girls have pointed out if someone does try to fiddle around the system they are fair share because now we are going to say if you want the vacancy rate we are going to come out and shut your water off and that is going to cost $25 to shut your water off and then you go on vacancy rate and then when you want your water turned back on you are going to have to pay $25 we are going to come out and turn your water back and there will be no water going to that residence during vacancy absolutely we are going to work that is another issue that I am sure you are well aware of that we are and we will work through that whole thing too so we understand that there are going to be times there are probably some water shut offs that either are there and we don't know where they are at or need new ones or whatever and we are prepared to do that now while you are working for all of these that I am here this should be there who pays for all of that work that they have to do I am doing that work right now but that all comes under the cost and the fix but so I mean it is frustrating but the problem does not rest right here this is 50 years of poor management on this system and we actually have our hands tied too so we cannot perform our duty for the town people of the water system if we don't take these moves and it isn't it isn't easy for us to swallow it either but I mean and this is one of the reasons why it has never been presented to the townspeople before it is because nobody wanted to have this conversation with people who were paying the rates it is easier to say this and then create a line of credit and keep that rolling for 15 years than it is to actually address the cost of the system and charge people what it actually costs and you're probably paying more now than if somebody had 35 years ago started taking the bull by the horns we'd have a completely different financial structure than we do right now and it's unfortunate and I'm not trying to dismiss your concerns we're not disagreeing with you but our hands are tied we're not able to change that for you how the taxes you want to be going up in this year yeah taxes and water see and so is gasoline so is food I think you're going to add interest to it I mean where's the help for people that are that their income doesn't go up there are organizations for taxes for the best case I would say I do get between $25 $500 but that's still you would hear that in the first few years of this year that's the way it paid them it doesn't pay them anymore I still end up with paying taxes maybe you would qualify for both the renter rebate for your law grant as well as your e-bots 2021 for the state rebate last year it didn't cover it I still got a bill from from the IORM yeah and it was verified too this is the thing that was funny too now this is just too great that I have I make up a check from the state for my taxes I still I had to pay $268 extra every quarter and the first quarter came up instead of considering the money they already got from the state they told me if I didn't pay upon time I was going to add interest to that now come on they had all that money from the state already taken out of that that's unfortunate I was going to say I don't want that at town meeting so I just want to make sure that we stay on track I would tell you that this board is we, like Carl said we completely understand all the concerns and we have the same exact concerns that you do and that's why we have taken extra time out of our lives to be on this board to try to get things the way they should be we're in a better position in the town and we're more efficient and more cost effective on utilities, taxes, everything so we really are working hard on that I truly believe that for the first time in a long time I truly believe that and like Carl was saying in years past when I was on the board and when I sat in the audience and watched board meetings too I've never I never remember any really debate about water, sewer it used to be just we're signing off on water and sewer they got passed around and that was the end of it what we wanted to do is we want as people can attest to or Lisa can attest to she's here at all the meetings we're very transparent on this board so there's no hiding anything we're all an equal partner in this whole relationship with this town regardless if you're a resident or select board member or administrator we all have the same stake in this town so all we're trying to do is make sure that we want everybody to understand understand and also own the responsibilities as well so right now what we want to make sure is everybody understands how much it costs us in this town it used to be the number of people in my home and the number of bathrooms in your home but look at well why do you think a lot of things that we used to do has put us in the position in today right so I'm not even saying but maybe the way we used to do it is the reason why we're here today I don't know but we're working through this so I think what I'd like to do before we move on to the sewers do we want to take a vote on the proposed rates on water then move to sewer would you like to hear the whole thing first we need to adopt the amendment to the sewer ordinance right if you're going to yeah does that not require a public hearing to amend an ordinance no what you have to do is you have to do maybe what you have now and then you it's not effective for 60 days because people have the right to vote to petition for a public amendment exactly the amendment to the system includes the amendment to the system clarifies the basis and the vacancy rate right because and then we can adopt the rate right because what you had done in the past was the vacancy rate for was only called out in the water ordinance not sewer and what you had discussed your prior meeting when you asked me to draft it was that you were considering saying that the vacancy rate would only be available to residents that it would not be available to commercial and so to users because you felt that they had the ability to rent an apartment or increase their rent so that's why it would be an amendment to the ordinance because you had to change so so do we want to stick with do we want to finish the water portion of it before we move on to talk about the sewer there's a water ordinance I have a question I have three units in my building if I had a vacancy rate and I didn't pay or I didn't inform you what would you do? you don't you don't qualify for vacancy rate if you don't rent an apartment you have to shut off the water to the entire building otherwise you rent the apartment although as you pay the base rate for the water that you're hooking up and one other thing that you said then you can increase the rent in this area you're just a point at which you get which you can increase the rent because the people can't pay it I was just stating something that they said that someone had mentioned last time I was just resigning I just want to make that clear so I think the first thing to do is we address those amendments to the ordinances and then we can accept the rates because the rates basically are also amendments to the water system the rates you actually don't have to do it's not technically an amendment because it says in your ordinance that you will annually change the rates so the rates don't have to be but the amendment has to and if it's adopted it will be effective July 5 so that's like I said everything could change the vacancy rate and leave it under the current circumstances but since you had talked about more specifically changing it and requested me to drop that's what you got so the amendments that were the amendment that will be voted on will be the language surrounding vacancy and putting an account into time out if you so we would so it's just making the amendment of the wordage of where the water is shut off or turned on in regardless of would be the amendment also the second paragraph section 19 vacancy rate was we were defining vacancy rate it wasn't defined in the definitions in your ordinance so that's why I put that under article 1 amended so that's the amendment so it's article 1 you can see where I did the vacancy rate you had to define it and then I put a line in here so you can see what your current ordinance said as to what it would be changed so we'll clarify the definition of vacancy rate for the town of Bethel as the vacancy rate means the quarterly charge of at least the fixed cost of water service rendered as set annually by the water commissioners right and then under section 3 I try to put the changes in the town and then under section 3 we'll be striking from the current language wither water is shut off or turned on and regardless of and then the whole second paragraph if the owner of any property would like to request the vacancy rate of their property they must submit the request in writing to the town office outlining why they are making the request and for how long they would like the rate to be in effect if approved the town manager's office will contact the owner set up a time to shut off the owner's water at the curbs dock the vacancy rate will apply to the single family and water shall be shut off by the town at the curbs dock commercial rental properties not fully occupied aren't eligible for vacancy rate and Lindley's right the first paragraph 2 after that crisis as a charge of at least the fixed cost of services okay I didn't see that one yeah like I said I was just trying to capture what you had one vote for the amendment and then one for the exposure so I would entertain a motion to accept the Bethel town definition of vacancy rate as we just discussed as well as the under section 3 adding the paragraph that specifies in regards to single family residences and the commercial rental properties definition of shut off so move second okay all in favor all right and then second I'll go over quickly again the proposed water rate schedule is $116 and 12 cents per EU per quarter rate with this new proposal is $80 and 8 cents price per thousand gallons is $3 and $0.59 the disconnection fee and reconnection fees would be $25 each again interest on delinquent accounts would be assessed according to statute which is currently the 1% and the next part is what I'm asking for and penalties on delinquent accounts will be assessed at a rate of 5% of the delinquent amount so that's a request that I have brought up before is you have such chronic delinquencies that there's a 1% interest but there's no penalty and by the time you issue the water bills they're not paid within 30 days you issue another water bill for 30 days and then you issue 2-page notice that's another 15 days and then you physically go out and start tagging doors and then shutting them off so you're not even covering the cost of what it begins to cost you for collections or even for people that go far down the process so my recommendation and you can change it however you want to control under it is that you charge 5% a rate of 5% on whatever is delinquent past 30 days and I know some people to a flat rate where I came from it was a flat rate if it relates 9 bucks and you know so the clarity is that the first line interest on delinquent accounts will be assessed according that means that what you're saying there is there's statute that enables us to assess interest it doesn't mean that there's a statutory amount of interest that's charged that's usually the same both that you make and then the second what you're asking about is that we actually create a penalty on delinquent accounts that will be assessed at a rate of 5% of that delinquent amount and it's per a different statute that allows towns the authority to create penalties on accounts so one is about interest the other so would this be on top of the 1% interest no it would just be it would be the instead of 1% it would be a 5% no it would be 6% they would charge 1% 5% with the 5% we charge on the base amount not on the interest the base plus interest 5% but that's a recommendation just because I see obviously I'm doing the collections and by the time you're handling all the papers and stuff in the envelopes and buying the envelopes in the paper it's unfair to people have you got an idea of what those rates look like in other communities I know we charge people $9 it was a flat rate we charge 9 I've seen people do 8% which is the not a percentage that was a flat H5 $9 would be almost 10 8% almost 7 or 8% depending on what the charge was for the water and some people use 8% just like taxes I mean I don't know maybe you start at 3% but a percentage is more equitable because if people have paid some of the bill and then they're just being charged but you have so many glinquencies obviously working on it but by the time if someone is continuously every quarter getting 3 bills or we're tagging their door or anything it's a burden to the people who are paying their bills it's a balancing act to the point where you don't want to charge them so much that you dig the hole so fast that they can't climb out of it at the same time we can't chase that kind of money and lose money a lot of times too people are just late so first time they're late well you can wait with the penalty I mean we've done that with people where I come from was there you know what Mr. Russell you were late I'll pay the interest we'll wait with the penalty this time and I think that there's ways to deal with it but when you have a constant month after month in here it says price per thousand gallons is $3.59 do we mean price per thousand gallons above a lot in the amount or is it $3.59 across the system is that what it costs us to move a thousand gallons to produce last year based on the budget so that's an accurate statement that's very accurate and it matches your race so that's my recommendation can you scratch that or not obviously it's tough because the rates are going up and I realize that but like I said it's also unfair to the people who do pay their bill on a regular basis I agree there should be some sort of incentive to pay your bill on time or make sure that you do you know the 5% I guess my opinion would be is the 5% probably could be a little light but depending on it'll incentivize the people that want to hold on to their water bills longer where if we just did a flat fee if you really only own let's say $10 and now we hit you with another $9 fee that's a very large increase so I would say the 5% is pretty reasonable based upon so Teresa how much does that 5% transfer based on what's currently well it's 5% out of $116 you know if you looked at per person $5 and change so yeah I think the other thing people need to remember is that even though our administration is getting salaries this is an enterprise these both are enterprise funds and so they actually any time the administration is dedicated to these administration of these accounts these systems should be paying for exactly and plus you have just the materials and the time and the postage and you know all that and then if you're you know if Tim's going out and hanging a shop notice on the door I mean there's a whole you know process to it I think we need to turn the lights on can't we just I don't know where's the switch there's a couple switches all right the start where are they up here oh okay they're somewhere behind that wall and there's absolutely something I see it's we just went from went from blinding from the light to just got really dark in here so all right well I'd make a motion that we adopt our attachment A to the water operation system spelling out the rates as Chris just expressed including the addition of a penalty on the amount of accounts of 5% second then second all in favor moe okay all right so we'll send that around and sign that last piece and water has been taken care of for the night and next up we have sewer the sewer the sewer portion of it the changes to the sewer are less than water the proposed sewer rates are to stay the same for this coming year at $175.97 so there won't be any increase to the sewer equivalency unit however just like with water the the vacancy rate for sewer in this case is $120.70 to cover the fixed cost of the system and up from $50 as well as the gallons used per meter account which currently was at $2.18 per thousand gallons meter would increase to $11.06 per 1000 gallons meter again this is putting ourselves in line with the cost of the system so again any accounts that we currently had that went over the lot of usage it was costing the town about $9 per 1000 gallons for that the last numbers that we had on that were not that high so the calculations were based on my calculation was wrong as I said that night I didn't think my calculation was right it was $7 or $8 I didn't think it would change and Tim and I met the next day and I was basing it off the wrong number on the grid so it was obviously my error but I had said that that's why it went to $11.06 Tim and I did do the calculation and Greg again to on sewer and while we still stand by the $175.97 there was room to increase but between water, taxes and everything else I've said it before I'll say it again that you've had a really good steward of your sewer system for the last 30 plus years and he's really done a great job keeping it maintained and I don't think that it's certainly not anywhere near what the water system looks like as far as it's need because he's been such a good steward of it so I think it's certainly part of the reason that the rate doesn't have to go sky high but we do need to adjust the vacancy rate in the budget room to $3,000 just so that it's more... so it's valid and we certainly had shown you that we've done them half but I think the big problem before is nobody was actually basing it off the production of water and sewer so once you apply those principles it becomes a very easy formula to figure out and it's valid it's verifiable right back to it comes in you can do it six ways to Sunday and it also has room to change as the community grows or if the EU is changed it's just a matter of simple inputs into the formula and then it's you put your budget in and it's stuck soot so also with the also with the vacancy rate change and the price per 1,000 gallons to put your account on vacancy rate with sewer would be the same as that disconnection fee and then when you want to come off it a reconnection fee so it'd be the same setup as with water so we have let's see so just for future if you underline the new word the new wording because at least in my printing here it's hardly noticeable so it looks like on this one we got to make an amendment here with the wordage that once connected to the wastewater system the owner is obligated to pay at least the fixed cost of such service regardless of whether the property is occupied and the next one and the next one a charge of at least the fixed cost of the service is to be known as the vacancy rate and then the entire following paragraph which is the same paragraph so first I would entertain a motion to accept the again the definition of the vacancy rate for sewer as we just spilled out as well as the parties that are able to take advantage of this which would be residential only and commercial and rental properties would not so moved all in favor and then second would to approve the rates of sewer for the next year at $175.97 per per quarter a vacancy rate of $120.70 price per $1,000 gallons at $11.06 also a reconnection and disconnection fees of $25 each again the town is able to assess the 1% interest statute and also be adding a 5% penalty to delinquency accounts second all in favor so there is a potential of between the vacancy rate and the new prices for 1000 gallons for both water and sewer that we might also fees into the system than have been in the past and we put that in consideration in the budget no I realize that but that in turn talks to the issues of increasing rates is that some of the system rates like the water we had to bring that in line with reality but the sewer rate is basically unchanged in this set it's the vacancy rate for 1000 gallons is substantially more theoretically that could be beneficial to the entire system certainly so that the commercial properties are more there for a share than getting a break at $2.18 when in fact they should be paying the $11.06 the other part of this item was the consumer confidence report where you get a copy of that just letting people know that it's out and that it's on the website and that it will also be notified the water bills that go out tomorrow that there's a link for it so that people can see it and also states on there if you don't have access to a computer you want it to mail you a copy or stop by the office and get a copy it lets you know how the consumer confidence report where it's available and that will also be in the water bills that go out this week again it's a report that's generated annually it'll go over all the detected contaminates amounts it will talk about many violations that the owner has incurred which the town of Bethel had one violation which stemmed to it was a failure to monitor which was from the period of January to March of last year the public notice there was some deficiencies that were noted there was a monthly reporting that was inadequate and then there was an inadequate water pressure this was from March of March of 2016 other than that I didn't see anything this entire report is going to go in the water but just the link to just the link to that and the recommendation that people come get it if they want to they can call the mail to them and sign on the website and certainly make it available to people as they want it so the failure example was illustrations before that was handed over to us the failure to report I think is somewhat tied directly to that too and then the low pressure issue is something we're not going to be able to escape because it's due to the elevations of the reservoirs and the elevations of the service lines we're working with A&E to try to figure it out whether it's a booster pump in that end or not but it's because we have gravity feed systems and we have reservoirs are just barely above the cherry lane and it is somewhat affected we do have a leak that we're somewhat located up in that area that actually may be affecting some of that pressure but it's still not going to save us and the rules are for testing that are pretty difficult because you have to maintain it because 500 gallons come out of the fire every downstream and still maintain that pressure at your highest elevation and that's what's killing us part of it is the diameter of the line so it doesn't allow water to transfer fast enough for it to stay fluid and fill it up to pressure they also have some issues up in the Christian Hill area with the pressures yeah I mean those water lines must be they are really close well you know 2.31 feet of elevation of the pressure so it takes a lot of feet we have to raise the reservoir another than 70 feet to meet the minimum standard and Tim that will all be identified inside the water inventory that we have yeah A&E just completed a hydrological model that they can do with a computer and still show that we just met with the state two Fridays ago and they're very happy with where we're headed but they understand we've got to work too but they're not pushing us because they realize we're trying they were all in the high five and with us during the meeting it was a great meeting they're very impressed with that so as far as water and sewer goes we'll probably get checked back in here shortly in regards to the next step and I know we were at 40% of inventory we're probably 50 or 60% yeah it's driven by A&E and I think we were talking by fall to have that completed yeah it is so by fall around fall time we should have the inventory back and then we can start looking at well the inventory will we have the comments done by fall too the the state everything like that I mean it's going to be the inventory but it's also going to be it's also going to be what their work time about what the cost is and that way we can look at when the state of Vermont USDA what sort of forgiveness sometimes you can get some loan forgiveness or better rates from the USDA or D depending on median income in your town and different things that drive those factors we actually did make out pretty good with the tank inspection they've passed that for the boulevard reservoir so all we're going to have to do is remember and the initial quote came in was $36,000 which is significantly compared to $758,000 for the reservoir but that's one of the first steps that's come along so far so maybe we can let's see maybe at some point in June I'll talk to Greg at some point in June one of our two meetings in June we can follow up on seeing how we're coming with that those are calendar schedule don't have that information right now I'll touch base with Greg when he comes back and we'll see in June if we can have an update there that was the proposal all right moving on that was a long item we'll move on to number two for the night which there is an abatement request 40 miller drive so I put that together so obviously this property doesn't have has been used in water since Irene certainly it was a business that was devastated during Irene and it's since been bringing in water and going home to get water or use facilities and you certainly have under article three section two you have unless and until proper notice is given to municipality affirmation of service so looking back speaking to this gentleman and going through the finances and how long he actually paid through even though he wasn't using the water as I stated I'm not generally an advocate for terminating service but in this case it just seems like the logical move it's not being utilized and we've explored the options there with him and seems like the right thing to do that wasn't like it was a completely out of that control Irene obviously devastated a lot of people and certainly was a situation of this property and so we're abating a value of 769.2 in rental and 208 in interest presumably on that that was a bill, a rental bill that was charged in error and then the interest rate was charged on that bill not so much in error but without any communication between the user and the town I think it reached out and understood what I think they would have terminated the service law sooner but there was just no outreach between and I certainly made an apology on behalf of the town that no one had to contact them in all these years to try to work it out for a visit and so it was a really good way to facilitate what seems like a correction that needs to be made there well I'd make a motion that we grant the abatement I just wanted to I was just trying to think about how we had one three weeks ago that we had talked about and it completely slipped my mind now and I remember that we ended up not abating it that was a vacancy one I think he had been vacant but I reported it and wanted a retroactive vacancy rate so I think that was why we didn't so in this case the water service is destroyed by Irene the facility and they haven't been using it so they paid until they no longer could even though they weren't using it they were paying for it so it's a possibility that once if the business ever grains down ground it could be turned back on and all that but at this point that doesn't look likely so this is more of a case that we did know that because no one reached out from the town to this part of Twin Collections is you start talking to people about what the deal is how you can make an arrangement for payment and once I had a conversation I did first figure it out and then came back and then the gentleman and I had a conversation we were able to figure out exactly how long it had been going on and why and everything so it makes sense to do the abatement they have not been using the water at all and they paid for a number of years going all the way back I'm just going back to bring the bill to zero I still got the old motion all in favor? all right all right the delta dental insurance I didn't see anything in the packet no I just wanted to let you know that that while your health insurance is January to January your dental is July to June it's like a fiscal year it's an increase which is what we budget for so that's good news and it's open enrollment now for people to make changes Katie put that information out this week in payroll anyone to come off the lawn I thought it was good news that we budget 3% we'll take that so that's all I just wanted to look at there's nothing we have to act on just informational perfect okay and then our next item is the capital highway fund which we're looking at purchasing some equipment and so Theresa can fill us in a little bit but basically we had at town meeting day we had with the budget that we had voted in was to was to add a position here at the town this person would would be filling in some different capacities we're creating a position to address costs and activities that have already been undertaken either by state that's being brought or by contract we're not so there were some of the right but what we did is we took some of the hired services that we had been doing so like for instance some of the um the some of the hired snow removal and we're making bringing that in-house to be more efficient with it so along with that there's some equipment that that we need to purchase to make that happen so that was where we're at tonight where which is looking at the purchase of a one-time pickup yep and the also looking at a utility trailer to make sure that the truck has a V-plow and that there's a sander so that yeah so a lot of things that you were contracting for in the current budget that was passed at town meeting you could see that there were reductions in that because we were taking the money from what we would have paid to have someone plow and using that to offset the salary and benefit piece to kind of bring it back in-house or to bring in-house maybe I don't know whatever it was but you also said there were some issues of the highway equipment fund and I didn't see any attack anything in the packet to show how those monies have been you get down so there was a was in my packet was the highway pack improvement summary so basically like I just updated the number it's similar to what we put into the town report and just kind of looked at that the vehicle generally would be able to last seven to eight years and putting it on replacement schedule pulling apart looks like in Bethel's history you have bought two vehicles at once and still trying to break those apart so that they're not purchased two at a time so that you'll do them and hopefully do proper maintenance that they should be able to last to a seven plus year rotation it also was a conversation about pushing out the greater a little bit obviously and updating that price I felt that price was pretty low so Greg was looking at that to kind of look at industry standards to see whether or not you will actually buy a brand new greater or used greater with that was I don't know that's a decision for somebody else to make so basically within the confines of this have improvement program summary you can make this purchase if the funds are available to make this purchase for up to I think the motion would be for up to $30,000 to make the motion purchase of the vehicle and this out of the equipment 30 for the vehicle and then another $1,500 for the trailer $43,000 excuse me I read the wrong number yeah so the motion needs it to $43,000 and I think that you were also given in the packet along with Greg's memo was contracts of you know stated prices for the similar vehicles of different makes and Moe can answer any questions at all that you have let's be your own Moe so does this price include all the other miscellaneous items that go along with this like the $43,000 like communications that radio put in it probably not this is just probably going to have to change the tires are they going to be adequate for those are probably part of the general budget because we did add $6,000 to the budget last year for that was approved in March for tires so that tires are now its own line item so there was and yeah some you know additional insurance costs the additional that would have to be picked up as cost in the budget and those aren't truly a capital expense anyways so you'd have a hard time the daughters would be yank that right out of it so part of what I was getting at is that the funds for this have been pulled out of our capital expenditure funds by the maneuvering of the other expenditure making it no more substantially costly moving forward to make this new cost we still have to come up with the money but we're pulling some of that money from money that we were dedicating to purchasing other vehicles at different rates of time and you can see here under this 17-18 where he put it in and he put in the amount to purchase a vehicle so he put in $45,000 pretty much I think his memo says $43,000 but he put $45,000 in here to cover so you can see that the money is there that's already been appropriated and it's there and it also gives you ending balance and rolls forward for future years and it shows no purchases in 18-19 and 19-20 excuse me we're almost going to need some sort of working vehicle for the person because he's going to have to transport stuff he's a plow down street here he's going to take care of the side streets as I understand it and this year we spent a lot of money on subcontractors for planning side streets yeah is this a duly no I mean the combination of the position is one to be a little more cost effective when it comes to some of the hired services that we've done in the past which more specifically would be the hired mowing this also will help us with our promise to the downtown business owners on making sure that we can clean the down street sidewalks and things like that in a more timely manner the idea here is as we're focusing on these major storm and maintenance of the roads for that is that crew can continue to do what they're doing well this person can start cleaning up the parking lot and get the downtown cleaned up faster than waiting a day or two later to do it so it's going to be a combination of some of its efficiencies by bringing in house and some of it is by kind of our promise to the downtown to have the downtown looking like it's open for business sooner after events as well as a little bit from what I understand doing the roadside mowing but also doing more of the downtown ish things in the summertime mowing and weed whacking and things that we've seen in the past couple years where some of these areas out here have grass is high so making it look like in the summertime they're open for business as well and it also facilitates that person not having to use their own vehicle when the other vehicles are being used so it allows them because right now we're utilizing the employees vehicle in a lot of cases and it's not a good thing to do I mean my opinions of it is I think Greg did a good job at looking at our capital improvement program that we have I mean the capital improvement program in my opinion is a working living document that as our needs in the town change then we should be forecasting and changing that through our document I think it was good that he was able to point out some probably cost-saving measures for the town on maybe not purchasing the greater for three or four more years from what we originally were going to do however actually putting in a more accurate number now to go on with the greater and then spreading out some of the purchases that we had in the past wanted to purchase right together so by doing that you know in my opinion the town manager we hired the town manager to do this you know the taxpayers of the town located on town meeting day to go ahead with this and now we need to perform to give them the tools to do it and it seems to work well in the capital program from looking at it so I guess my vote will be in favor of it I move that we authorize Greg to look into the purchases of this up to I think you believe 45,000 43 he said 43 this memo he put 45 in the in the highway plan I will say 45,000 out of the capital out of the capital out of the capital I am 45,000 you have a second all in favor all right all right I carry it should we call him we'll call him and we'll get the ladies from the audience so you can tell him I heard this track I heard he said he would be available give him a tough time for a few minutes what time is it in Oklahoma it was a two hour difference was it two hours yes right in the middle of the grade yeah we love that right in the middle of the graduation our next topic is to go over the Sullivan and Powers service agreement that's Reese will go over you know our auditing in the town was another hurdle we had as we discussed in other meetings we had a period of time where either the audits didn't happen in a manner that they should have or we didn't have a lot of the office staff to make sure that the audits were or the information for the audits were ready and over the course of the year the last couple of years and I had to re-scrab the info for today we've spent more money auditing in this town than we should be doing with a efficient administration that we have in place now so before the auditors were charged by the hour you know so you gotta think as an auditor comes in and they're charging you by the hour and you only have half of your stuff done in order for them to audit they gotta make up the other half so these audits as we saw in town meeting day I didn't have the number with us but the last couple of years the audits were so 2015 you spent 38,500 2016 you spent 36,227 and in 2017 you spent 41,000 so I'm not sure if you had a single audit at any point I don't know those were all multi-year audits because they were scrambling to make up a three-year deficit over a four-year period I do see in one year in 2015 you had two different accounting firms so whether one bill was lingering from a fryer I can't tell by so we have been averaging somewhere around 39,000 dollars a year to do the auditing services in the town based upon that the firms that we've dealt with have to charge us by the hour because we didn't have all our ducks in the row now that we do have a good administration in power and doing the jobs efficiently the the auditing services are willing to do kind of a lump sum type agreement with us all inclusive type thing and not charge us by the hour so the the current the current service agreement that we got in our packet sets a schedule for the next three years three years so you know we've been spending 39,000 grand and we've been playing catch up we can have all our ducks in a row now that we have the administration in place and we have we are caught up they feel confident to offer us the prices as follows 2018 budget year would be 21,100 dollars 2019 would be 21,500 dollars and 2020 would be 22,100 so we'll be making up two years worth it so we'll be saving the towns tax payers of the town a considerable amount of money on this so so we so that is good you know and that's trees has a good working relationship and we're in a good spot here in the town now to get this type of service so they send you a page list of things that you need to do and as long as you get it done and work with them and they did promise me that they would come back in early June and but we're in the process of finalizing our last year's audit so we'll have some I'll be back do we need to sign this for you we have the final page right here so you can make the motion to accept the Sullivan power of proposed scope of services and then give you three lines that you guys can all figure out so I'll entertain a motion to accept Sullivan powers scope of services for the next three years as follows 2018 21,100 dollars 2019 at 21,500 dollars and the year 2020 at 22,100 dollars so move all in favor all eyes have it thank you for thanks for working on that one more piece of the puzzle yeah well that saves but part of it is working on it all year long too yeah absolutely having your numbers clear in the beginning helps it does right there we you know on doing that and being more efficient with our administration I mean we're just on that auditing services alone so we'll save the taxpayers about one cent so I mean that's how big debt that is hopefully we can keep adding one cents on top of one cents and keep reducing things well let's see and next on the list is appoint the new lister we had appointed first in I don't remember when but we had appointed her to do the lister functions and unfortunately due to other obligations she's she's had to withdraw just to be clear I mean this was an appropriate way to put it as opposed but as I suspected we did not okay and we appointed her without a letter of interest and she had not expressed that interest so this is also not a letter of interest we needed to get a letter of interest from Roberta Carrier to demonstrate that she has an interest in being a lister before we take action on it so I have to just say maybe apparently you don't know that the other these ladies had been interviewed by the listers I'm not sure, must be no one told you that no they said that yeah she told us they'd been interviewed but we did not receive a letter of interest which is the basis and we appointed based on the lister's recommendation and Kristen had not submitted a letter of interest she had been interviewed she submitted a resume but she did not accept the position she didn't want the position but the letter of interest started already we need a letter of interest she started because they went back to her after the person said that she wanted it and then she changed her mind and one of your listers is injured and out of commission entirely so they brought Roberta went back to her and asked her if she was still interested she was so she's been working the last couple of days to finish up inspections because you're at the end of your at the end of that it's good I think that's reasonable the problem is that this position and a couple others have been erroneously appointed and if we get an actual letter of interest from the person who we're appointing then we know that we're appointing someone who wants to be in the position right and I'm not sure my impression maybe that that wasn't made clear to the listers I think once they went through the interview process I said right to I said right to Louise we haven't got a letter of interest and she said well she submitted a resume oh okay I didn't know Carl I wasn't sure so I don't particularly care how we move on this it's just I think some people have a hard time following protocols sometimes and maybe in most cases the protocols you know not necessary but then you run into a situation like this where we're all lax about it and I just want to say it's a misunderstanding Kristen is a hardworking intelligent individual and she did not back out of this job she didn't actually say that she wanted it so she was erroneously appointed and I wanted to look as though she just didn't want to do the job I'm not talking to you I'm just talking in general and that saves people's face when we have them you certainly have a meeting Monday if the board so chose you could table this issue until Monday and I didn't realize that Roberta was working and I could go to her tomorrow and ask her letter of interest to be put in your packet it certainly won't affect the payroll because they pay with this week process today so it would fit in your timeframe if you chose this board I just thought that Roberta was another name on the list I didn't realize that she'd already started working I'd like to get the consensus of the board on what we'd like to do I guess my two cents on the matter is in some way look at the same way Carl does it's kind of going back to town meeting day we elected somebody this year at town meeting day that wasn't there that didn't want the position however the person that was there so it goes through that whole thing we've been down that road of people that we think want a position in the town that comes up to find out that they didn't want it and having something concrete a letter of interest an email some sort of document that we can see that the person is actually committed to doing that position I felt the same way I thought this was kind of too informal kind of bypassing the process and even the second part about the increase I think was not comfortable not comfortable seeing it in this format so I would like to table it the second part of that is to be dealt with in the executive session so the first part was and Louise came to me with the memo I didn't realize that you had this conversation so that was kind of out of the loop the good thing is that we have a meeting next Monday so it's not like we got to go a full two weeks we do have it next Monday because of the holidays the Monday after so only talking one week that should be a pretty easy turnaround but I do see that the person is doing training so I guess you could view that as a commitment if we wanted to look at that way I just think for all the other people in our town who submitted letters of interest for consideration on positions that should be something that we ask for Roberto and I will say though that it's an interesting situation and I guess we'll talk about it more in the executive session we have we are taking advantage of and have been for many years of semi-retired individuals performing the task of Lister and is a very substantial amount of numeric understanding it's very skilled work and I don't think that minimum wage is adequate for that and particularly when you look at the kinds of people who would provide veracity to that position I think I don't feel like we need to be I mean unfortunately costs go up but we we see in our current administration the fact that when we have competitive individuals in the work bit force it costs money I think you're right I think it's an undervalued document throughout the state of Vermont the entire state is based on the grand list that a town generates whether it's our tax rate, school tax rate everything so I agree completely it's a very serious statement that it really it's one of the most important documents that we generate so does it sound like the consensus is to wait and put this on the agenda for our next meeting should be the 21st motion that we table this request for appointment of Lister until our meeting for May 23rd May 23rd oh because the state's the 14,000 all in favor we'll just make sure that the Listers understand the letter of interest and we'll save the other part I think Carl and I wrote down and we are on to the town manager's report so Frank didn't do a town manager's report this week but I have two things to just let you know because he's not here so I gave a permission to use three or four parking spaces at the municipal parking lot for the Saturday during the mini block I didn't think that was a stretch so he was hoping to bring in electric vehicles he did say he wanted power but we don't have the type of power that he needs here at the town hall and I told him not to be emailed today because he'd have to go over to some of the businesses on Main Street to figure out who has the kind of you know, amperage service that he needs but the municipal parking during the mini block I didn't think that was a stretch the municipal parking the other thing is to let you know just a conversation I had with Molly the other day test fits at the transfer station are going to be done on Wednesday of this week for Green Lantern I've been in question about whether when the test fits were going to be done a gentleman was in the other day that works for them and they're going to be doing the test fits on Wednesday the public service board did issue their certificate of public good already apparently it's not based on these results because what the gentleman said to me was these results are really basically decide how much they need to spend on engineering what the what the soil is like so just so you know that's going to be happening on Wednesday yeah and we since our last meeting have hired another employee I would assume that you had covered that already hasn't been mentioned in public since our last meeting we interviewed and hired highway department AJ Lewin from he lives in Royalton now apparently has been his prior municipal experience and he started today any other comments in regards to town manager report we did have the constable report information I did want to just point out I'm very glad that he did catch the 74 and a 50 speeder but you know and I continue to have to receive positive comments throughout the community with just seeing him out and about he seems when he's out he's being productive and seems to be in the right locations you know I think again we still need to talk about what we're going to do in regards to you know we've talked about lowering the speed limit through the village out by the school area but the racetrack is that school area so right where the state highway turns into town that's where he usually catches those ones doing 50, 60, 70 miles per hour in this case you know the state has been camped out at the fire station they've been pretty active as well I watched what got behind one the other day and followed him all the way through the village before which I thought was good and it just goes to show we've done a lot in the town in the last two years especially with speed enforcement which was a big concern of the taxpayers and there's only so far that the speed signs and things go without even having enforcement and we've dedicated more time for him to go out there and do speed enforcement but it just goes to show even with speed signs and a constable that's actually active there's still people I mean when he's out there for five shifts and he gets five or six tickets a shift that's a lot of speeding going on doesn't speed is a bad thing is that something that you had talked about at previous meetings is doing a is to reduce your speed limit we're still looking into a couple of different things one is looking at some new different stylish speed enforcement signs that Greg's working on the other one we have been talking about is the potential of looking at the speed limit our bump outs are going to have they're going to do a speed study with and without those coming up there you go, I was going to say you're aware that you have to have a speed study done a lot of times your local planning commission will do it for you at your charge and we actually did one and believe it or not if you don't have the right data you can't we tried to lower our speed limit to 25 we couldn't do it, our data didn't support it and the statute just gives you many abilities but setting your own speed limit as ridiculous as that is it's been out for us but so long as you're doing that then that's great and I do know that Mark has access to a grant about getting another speed sign they didn't move the one that was on where's the garage, Sandhill from Sandhill that one was relocated and that's where there's positive comments about that and then hopefully installing another one that one you can really see when you're coming down through that one really jumps right out at you and I think too there was an issue where some people thought that the signs weren't working but in order to conserve battery what Mark had changed this the sensors thank you so that if you're not speeding it doesn't flash at you but if you are it does so he was trying to get some extra life out of the battery so some people thought that they weren't working but they probably just were reminding the speed limit so and I think the ones Greg was working on were maybe a solar battery the solar ones will bring you down to yeah and that's what he's, well we know it has some grant money but it's going to be a little bit before that I think Grant comes up that he's going to be eligible for government highway safety but so they are certainly working on it but you set up totals there you go so we're so he's doing a good job out there did we have any questions in regards to the budget I gave you the currently we I tried to put some notes on it sometimes I would read them if I could make it bearable to that but otherwise there's certainly notes on there along with the collection so one of the processes for those that haven't been here anyways is one of the processes that we had put in place this year was to get a monthly update of our budget and where we're at so all the board members get a print out of where we stand so that we can kind of compare it with the budget versus actuals so every other meeting we usually talk about this currently we are 83% of the way through our budget kind of on the home stretch here so Terese back to the audit you have an idea of what one will be expecting this audit to be completed? yep it's actually he's just putting the finishing touches on it on the email today this is ending June 30, 2017 right so then we're going to be ending this fiscal year at the end of next month and then how long do we wait are we going to be able to have that audit prior to town meeting? I doubt it I wouldn't think so just because he'll come in June to do a little preliminary work before the year end which is very helpful it depends what their schedule is frankly in the past I've never had one out by town meeting because even if I've got them there in September October just a lot of work and they're really busy so I wouldn't assume that you would see a town meeting but I will know I'll have them know the numbers I mean we'll know the numbers are better there's always I think some expectation from the public that we had audit so that we have veracity in our numbers when we're presenting the town meeting and is that not a legitimate expectation statewide? I would say no, not if you're especially not like us you're on a modified approval basis now if you're cashed sure but I don't think so but we'll be more timely and we'll have a better handle on the numbers by implementing some procedures and balancing their own accounts obviously I knew it was going to be big and there were none of the cash account balances were right and things like that so there's a lot of work to be done for them this time so I think that that'll be better and coming in June is always great because you can work on some things that need to be hammered out before the end of the year and those are all processes I'm working on now is making sure that all the cash accounts are straight that there's any issues that we can call them and sort it out but yeah I do think it's a little bit of an unrealistic expectation I think you'll see it sooner than he did this time but however they were asking me a lot of questions and I was like ah you know saying you were here last so trying to work it out with them but I do think you'll see it in more timely manner but no you'll never see it by town meeting I don't believe alright well that's good it clears it up for me sorry so I guess I was poking through the budget and I had a few observations and concerns but on the revenue end of things what we classify the local revenues are down quite a bit for the year do we and I know those things like recreation area fees those will come in right at the end of June so we'll get slammed with those I'm not sure how often Pam pays your town clerk fees so I was going to I'll have to ask Pam about that so obviously I guess the biggest one is the town clerk fees and then you know my guess is probably the revenue at the town hall won't be won't hit the budget at this rate however the town hall costs have been under budget so hopefully those will and I guess I don't know how often the town clerk pays the clerk fees but I'll ask Pam because I don't know how often do we have a little bit different than I'm used to a few things I just wanted to point out is you know you know the importance of at some point getting a new town garage you know we continue to put more and more money into the town garage than we need to or should have to so it just goes to show that we do need a facility we're already 184% over the budget for the town garage for the year on maintenance and on that which with a newer facility we would have to spend nearly that kind of money which is basically we had budgeted $8500 to date we're at just over $15,000 some of that comes from I think just pumping out your water separator to there I think that was new last year and I think nobody you know you didn't know how much to budget to have that to do that so certainly that's higher than anticipated and we did get downloaded the rules from the EEC on that and how they can what they can and cannot do in regards to that so hopefully we'll see that slow down managed a little bit differently and I would assume that we pretty much have purchased most of the materials that we need for this year I know we were I'm not sure if he's still going to be because it would be nice to grab will be the only thing yeah just maybe at this point just try to hold off on purchasing any materials that we don't you know I think that he's still going to be at home and I don't know how much chloride he has so I guess I'm not going to make that assumption that he's done I'll just talk to him I mean we probably anything that we can hold off until July right probably be the way to do it right now I mean we're tracking on target rate net well we're ahead target right now of course the way materials go your materials are usually front-loaded so yeah so I don't know what what health plan is that but we did it was a tough winner so as you can see the the materials the materials used for the roads you know we were over budget on salt and sand we were right on but we were over on salt I'm sure the state was over on their budget for winter maintenance as well so they we're in the same boat so anything we can do to save face there and I saw do we know whether they obviously used more salt but was there a price differential that caused part of that I think that those some of you buy maybe Brian would know that you buy the same price the state usually negotiates salt and usually buy from their vendor so basically we're using or used more than we yes well it would depend a lot on the tonnage because the price could vary from from start of the season to the end well that's what I was getting at I didn't know whether or not whether it was a matter of needing more or using more than we needed to use or paying more than we had budgeted for cost I mean there's probably several ways in which we I mean I couldn't tell you whether or not you used more than I should have used that certainly beyond my review I was asking about cost certainly they weren't the state bid price so they would have had a price on it for whatever they were going to get like Brian but I mean from my observations it seemed like it's probably a mixed bag of we definitely did have some weather that you know it wasn't the snow but it was the rain and ice but I think some of it too was some of the learning curve with our new road foreman on you know there's a big difference from Colorado to here you know so I think there's a little bit of a learning curve there as well but definitely something to look at I mean I know everybody's budgets were over on the winter maintenance this year yeah it's a chronic issue and then just kind of under the government operations is where I had noted a lot just mainly wanted to bring it up to the public eye on how much certain things cost us so you can't really budget tax abatements but to date we've done $5,600 with tax abatements and then you know the big things that we have talked about at town meetings as well as at some of our meetings is you know legal we've increased our legal budget from $15,000 to $25,000 for this coming year to date we've used $22,500 in this budget season so had we had budgeted for $25,000 I guess we'd be pretty close we were right there but instead we're over $7,000 there and then the auditing services like we just took care of you know last year which is this year you know we spent $37,400 on auditing services that we only budgeted $25,000 for so the good thing is you know now that we have auditing services for the next three years that are under $22,000 so we have a better handle on that as well. Somebody's managing the budget fairly well because we're only at 90 overall for that government well some of it the capital improvement reserve the last little chunk gets put in that and then the other thing is the cumulative debt changed because we're paying an interest payment not a debt payment this year. The only I did shoot you the hopefully you got it I had a question regards to what other meant okay well I don't want to chill out the spot but there's a line item under that's other and it's it's $500 and right now it's at $9,200 so I didn't know what that meant if that was the catch all for other stuff or maybe if you could just shoot looks like somebody's been coding for other generally well it's generally a reason that maybe you just didn't have something somewhere else to put and very well I mean there's other items that haven't been filled maybe it got coded wrong I don't know but that had stuck out I don't know at the top of my head but I can run did want to bring up that our on the utility end of things we were down to $131,420 with the delinquencies that's that's down from $144,000 a month ago so we've collected we've collected $12,600 with the delinquencies over the last month does that sound right Teresa? so we're working in a forward progression here to get accounts caught up it does look like here that all accounts are accountable or accounting for at this point either they've made a deal with the town or we have a handle on where they're at so that's good and on the tax end of things we are so we're down so we're at we're at that time we're at 287 remember 2018 isn't considered technical tomorrow so prior to that I've collected another 7.5% on the 2012 2017 and I've collected 12.8% more on the 2018 so we've collected about $30,500 so this was yeah so this we certainly had collected another 30 grand in about 30 days and people are coming in and making payments and it's working and just reaching out and talking to people have discovered that even though I don't have them some people had prior agreements that I wasn't aware of so certainly then being made aware of that now and then trying to change them to something that will actually work out now how are we doing with those accounts versus like with the utility accounts they're all accounted for at this point on the tax and the things I'm still looking for a couple of people okay so we're getting there and eventually we can get the attention notices and things like that but I'm certainly trying to reach out sometimes I know somebody who knows somebody and sometimes that's how you kind of figure it out and you have some feelers out I think I had a list of maybe seven and we've already cut that down certainly Kelly knows everybody she doesn't know you she knows someone who knows you it's very normal when you're looking for people so I think that we'll have a good handle on how we'll proceed for tax sale you know by the end of July beginning of August to figure out what we're going to do there cool I talked about before I think probably the best thing is to make sure that we separate out the collection from the budget so any of this extra collection at the end of the year that whatever that number might be that we have left because we will come come out in a surplus because of the extra collections but just making sure that we separate those collections out on their own money and bring that back to the taxpayers on what do we want to do with this allotted amount of money that we have collected do we want to do we want to pay down the debt do we want to give money back to the taxpayers but that's a voted in type it's going to come back to whether or not you have an undesignated fund balancer surplus I can tell you that I'm looking at the audit that's not been finalized was not what I had hoped you're down another you were already in a deficit and you were down another 90,000 last year so that deficit grew which was certainly not what my hope had been but with increased collections this year we'll hopefully make that up and obviously because we're collecting money that we hadn't budgeted for so we'll see what you have for undesignated fund balancer certainly will thumb out there that will get you that before you rush to give it back to the taxpayers there is usually a percentage they suggest that you keep as an undesignated fund balancer that you don't continue to fall back into a deficit obviously we've made a lot of assumptions in trying to fix some things in your budget that was approved on town meeting but you know it's difficult everybody's crystal ball is a little foggy when you're voting out 18 months not what I hoped for I knew that there would be write ups and you know that's fine but the fact that it didn't come down to another 90 was not what I was looking for but the the deficit that we had that we were going to be wrapping into long term debt is concise and then beyond that number we have a 90 thousand dollar deficit from in this last so any surplus collected from delinquent fees would go directly to that because that's live in our budget it'll go to offset that and then the long term funding is really just to clean up that whole theme however once July 1 starts you know that pool of money that we collect from July 1 to June 30 next year we'll want to make sure that because I guess the way I envision it is you know we're going to start fresh with a budget on July 1 so you know hopefully it doesn't work out this way but let's say over the course of the next year you know we run a 40 thousand dollar deficit in the time let's say we need to identify that deficit on its own line item same time let's say we take in 40 thousand dollars in extra delinquencies instead of wish washing it we should identify each one of them as a deficit and then find balance and then be able to figure out we want to do that money well you will know because you budgeted a revenue for some collection of outstanding property taxes so that will be there so you certainly it won't be called out separately because you'll see it on your statement just now you'll see it as delinquent taxes collected and then you'll see in versus transparency issue right right what I'm saying is we do have it in there and you know so I don't know whatever it is so say we said we're going to collect 50 thousand dollars with the back taxes and whatnot and if we end up doing 70 instead of 50 we want to make sure that we identify that we don't want to just use the 20 to offset no but I'm saying that that stuff is happening right so your comment about the undesignated fund at a certain point in time if a town is generating a surplus based on budget over expenditures one of the things that the town can do is create an undesignated fund you basically leave or do you automatically create one as soon as you start bringing in that surplus right exactly you're automatically creating one it's not a separate fund it's just your surplus but at a certain point in time that number does have to go before the voters in other words to say we have a 20 thousand dollar slush fund absolutely yeah so what you do is you keep a percentage of your money you make a recommendation of a percentage that you keep and you just leave it there and then anything over that you can do I've seen where towns say okay we're going to offset taxes by 10 thousand dollars or sometimes if you have a larger surplus you can say okay we're going to vote a town meeting to offset taxes by 10 thousand we're going to transfer 10 thousand of the undesignated fund balance to capital building or whatever yeah certainly but especially for Bethel I think it's a few years before well at some point we won't be budgeting in collecting back taxes you're probably only another year or two away from cutting the court on that other business oh actually we've missed committee meetings look through the oh I'm off again here we go let's get back on the right one here our select board minutes from the 23rd I was just curious whether or not whether or not you know whether the office received a map from the ATV club I don't know I can ask Kelly tomorrow yep otherwise I didn't see any issues with that so our select board meeting minutes from the 23rd I looked them over I thought everything looked good I mean just make a motion we accept the minutes of the 23rd as written all in favor all right and we have our committee meeting minutes there was one in there from the solid waste board anything that you want to touch on or this is this is two meetings meeting Wednesday so so what's the we've got two items the interlocal amendment and then the solar contract so where are we out with those I didn't have to ask Greg on that because the solar I think last I heard it was up to us to review them now they had already been reviewed by the Royal Lord the Green Lantern is a Royalton didn't vote on that last meeting I think lawyers are looking at it right now what he said when I went to the gentleman there he said that they had because I think you used Paul right, Giuliani he said that they had talked to the lawyers and addressed all the lawyers concerns but that was Sam from Green Lantern I gave him a message I told him to call Greg on Thursday but I'll make a note to see if it goes on the agenda I believe there's still questions that were answered to what Giuliani really wanted for the amended interlocal or for the solar for the Green Lantern and it looks like as far as the interlocal agreement went would the board from Royalton that they had voted voted for the amendment and with the suggestion to send it to the amendment to the attorney general which we we haven't on our end yet right, we haven't so that's where that stands so after we yeah it looks like from the meeting minutes Royalton board wanted some clarification whether on page 2 would exclude real estate property so I'd have to look at that because the the facility is just a tenant and the other one that the conservation committee had there in the meeting minutes moved to accept the amended April 9th no we approved should we go ahead and sign those I think that's what Kelly said they just got missed we just forgot to sign them we edited just got to sign them yeah they already approved just got to sign them damn we are at any other business to come before the board or other you know I haven't heard from them it was brought to my attention we have as everybody knows after Irene the town became the recipients of four buyout properties that have been re-naturalized and turned into parks for the town and one of them and several of them we've had tree plantings but the one in Gilead actually is public vehicular traffic has been precluded from all of these sites so they're open for pedestrian use and the Gilead park had structures built to preclude any vehicles from driving through the primary access but people have found a way to drive along the stream of the Gilead Brook in some outwashed gravel remnant from Irene and had developed a fire pit and party site on an adjacent piece of property it is not the buyout property but there's no clear boundary mark and now they have figured out how they can drive their ATVs onto the Gilead park including driving over some of the whatever partnership planted the trees that we planted to stabilize the site it's not substantial damage but it requires some signage the town will need to put some so do you want a signage? or do you want to receive your papers? what do you think will really keep them out? it's not well marked it's not like a road it's not well marked and I think it's pretty minimal I think if people had a sign that said you can see where there's sort of a natural access it looks like you could drive your ATV right up onto the plateau where the green space is and I think it's the only place you could drive your ATV up there and I think a sign right there that just said town of Bethel Gilead park pedestrian traffic only no one are authorized motorized vehicles but part of our conservation easement with those properties was to protect against any kind of impact so how many signs do you think I should have? well I would be interested to see where we are with signage for all of the bioproperties because I don't think that we've actually completed we had kiosks on a couple of them I don't think that those signs have been completed there's nothing on the kiosks the kiosks are up there empty right so I believe that there's supposed to be some information in those kiosks that describe the purpose for the park and the way that it is intended to be used and there is no kiosk at the Gilead park and I don't know whether it was ever designed but some signage that would be in line with the signage on the other bioproperties would be inappropriate and we have the town should have comprehensive plans and if you can't find them I have I can send them to you so what I was going to ask is it something that the town did or does or is that the conservation commission of the town? the conservation commission is our representative in executing the conservation easement the town of Bethel when we took it over had funds granted for the re-naturalization project and we through Dubois and King got comprehensive study in an engineering plan for the which we bid out and had the construction done on all these properties and part of that plan was to put up information in kiosks to describe the way the properties would be used and the Gilead might need to be modified to include an additional sign on the backside and it doesn't have to be I mean I hate to see it be so an obtrusive sign and clearly when you get back there it's a nice it's a basically a high gravel berm that's just the remnants of the wash out from Irene and you're on the backside of a piece of property by the Brook and so somebody just needs to know that they can't drive there the unfortunate part of it is is that it's a 500 feet of private property that doesn't belong to the town of Bethel which is where that access starts so by the time they've made it in they're not on a town property and so then the next thing for them to do is to go on town property and there's no clear line I'll ask Kelly tomorrow if she knows where it is if she can't find it either her I'll email you that needs to go out and walk these parks and see if the signage is happening there should be somewhere in those designs there was a comprehensive list of what those kiosks were money was allocated I can suggest that he walk the parks and inventory the signs and see where he stands I'm not sure whether the kiosk was in that allocation for up there or not I don't think there was one in Gilead but I know that the kiosks themselves were part of our contract and they put them up but nobody ever put these signs in that's funny but it's par for the course that was all part of transition from one I've never heard anything about this topic for a few months so it doesn't mean it's not all it's going to be I'll find out I can email him to you right now okay and then I'll let her know wondering signs for kiosks there is one at Peanute Park at the Odexest which also has never had anything put in it so there's like just kind of a multiple sign maybe a conservation commission could come up with some dollars to put a map or a sign about a snuck weed or whatever it's called you know that kind of stuff somebody recently put up there's a newer sign about cleaning off in the kiosk by the boat launch and it hadn't been there a couple weeks before so there is at least the informational about cleaning off your boats okay but nothing else that no maps or anything so it might be kind of interesting if there is no already prescribed signage for those kiosks then maybe it would be appropriate to list all of the in those kiosks all of the other town parks or river accesses and if we're looking for things to fill the space other than just rules of operation there's probably some great I mean I know like the Vermont Invasives just put out a really well done two pager about the Asian Monk torpedo and it's just a very well done thing for the fact that it's new you know new within our state the state of Maine has had it for over a decade and they don't have anything as comprehensive that's what Vermont just put out so things like that there's free information from state agencies that we could definitely grab and put into those kiosks would that be something that we could task the conservation committee would well I think to some degree looking at you know makes sense to engage them with it but I wouldn't want to exclude them from but I think though part of it I think it's management that I just wanted to maybe using them as the tool to develop you know the literature or what we would like to put in there maybe Gretchen or see what's around see what's there I think we need to refer I think we need to refer to the to the engineering first to see because I'm pretty sure there was or maybe it isn't that maybe it's the FEMA agreement but there is some basic public information regarding the bio property and the way it is to be used that I think was supposed to be posted as well and then those other things would be important right clearly and I think the conservation commission is clearly would be appropriate organization to sounds good anything else Chris a few minutes ago we talked about the planning commission and whether or not they were on line for creating the research or whatever that they needed to you had mentioned you were going to attend meeting I actually missed their meeting that night but I will attend their one that they have this Wednesday sounds like talking with them that they are they are spending a portion of the time right now on the survey that they are finishing up but I will get any other information that they have to share with that anything else I will take a motion to go into executive session so moved sir