 Okay, all the select board meeting for Monday, November 21st, 2022 to order. First item on our agenda is to add additions or changes. Any changes from staff? Two potential changes from staff. Under business item 5A, can signorello has withdrawn from consideration for moderator, so that can come off the agenda. And item 6A, the minutes of November 7th, we're missing a motion that was made after executive session, so if you move that onto your business, I can speak to that. There's also a memo at your seats, no impact on the agenda, but just some updates on the budget, which would be item 5A, and I can speak to those when we get to that portion of the agenda. Thanks, Greg. Any other changes from board members? Yes, I would like to thank, I assume it's Public Works and the Fire Department for painting some of those hydrants. They look fantastic. Thank you. Okay, so I will make the motion that we strike can signorello from business item 5A, that we accept the modified memorandum for item 5E and move the minutes for November 7th to be business item 5H. Thank you, Trace, for the discussion. Listen in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes 5-0. Are we going to go to the agenda? Next item on the agenda is public to be heard. This is a time for members of the public to speak to the board on topics that are not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard, either raise your hand in the room or use the raise your hand function in the Zoom meeting application to do that and float your cursor over the reactions tab down at the bottom of your screen and a raise hand button will appear. And is there anyone who would like to speak during public to be heard? Any hands in the room? I am not seeing any hands online. So we'll move on to the first bit of a business. Interviews and possible appointment to volunteer to serve as the town's moderator. Catherine, come on up. Introduce yourself to your opportunity to share anything that any thoughts you have about why you'd like to do this. Yeah, thank you for having me. My name's Catherine Noffer. I go by cat sometimes. I work here in town and I only moved here in July, but I've been living in Waterbury. My family's from Vermont. My stepfather has been town moderator in the town of Newfame for over 20 years. So there's definitely a certain pride that my family has in that role. I'm young. I'm obviously new to Essex as well. So there's certainly a certain amount of respect I would have for this process. And in getting to know how you all see the role and some of the challenges I have been involved in unions in the past. I'm familiar with Robert's rules. I would certainly need to do more training and spend more time with my stepfather. It's a lot to take on I would think for more than just one day. Also January and the warning and the different steps that would go into making sure that our town voters are heard and that there's a organized process when it comes to town meeting. And I guess I am very curious to see what questions you have of me. And unfortunately Ken is not here. So I also just very much welcome you to consider my candidacy regardless of whether or not there was somebody else to hear from today. So to be clear there was another candidate we interviewed at our last meeting. So I don't have to feel like a defacto option. That's wonderful. Yes please assist me in letting you know about myself and my interests with any questions. Okay great. Any questions? What experience do you have addressing large groups of people that tend to get overexcited about items? Yeah that's a great question. I don't know how to put it. I think this would probably be a larger group but I have been to a couple conventions in different parts of the country with my union when I was in a union. And being able to hold the floor was certainly something that I actually enjoyed. But one advantage I would think that I have is also not being as familiar with all of the people in the town yet and able to serve that kind of unbiased role. I think I would lean heavily heavily on being transparent about when I might need to go to the rule book and say I'm going to the rule book. I would also very much embrace that opportunity to understand the rules as a means of making sure that voices are heard. And again having some of the stories growing up of some of those challenges whether it's being kind of taken aside or having different influences and just remembering to refer back to those rules and also know where I can lean on. It's a legal question or that's we're here to go through the process and stick to kind of what that looks like as opposed to trying to settle a dispute leaning heavily on the rules. Thank you. Mr. Chairman I have a question for the town manager. Is there a residency requirement for moderator position? I believe you're supposed to be a resident of the town of Essex. And there's no petition. You don't have to be here a year before you run for an office or anything. I don't know. I don't believe so. I think as long as your moderator is elected from the qualified voters of Essex. I just wanted to check. Thank you. Anyone else? Yeah. Are you familiar with the way town meetings work? Have you been to a lot of town meetings? And if you were selected, would you run for the position in the future? Yes. So it really hasn't been since I was younger that I was attending town meetings with my family. So it has been about 10 years since the town meeting setting. Very honest with you. But I see these roles as like something that you don't jump into thinking that you're not going to be committed to it and learning it and remaining in the town. My goal is to be able to be a property owner in the town of Essex. I'm renting. My work is here. My career is really dependent on being here for my job. And so making a home in this town as well is really getting to know its political life and the institution here is really important to me. I am currently a member of the Community Justice Center on a volunteer panel. And that's just one avenue with which I decided to kind of be a member of this community. I see this as a very valuable role, obviously, but one also that would allow me to contribute in a way that wouldn't be necessarily political or subject focus, but rather process and community institution building, which I think is absolutely critical to having a happy community and a functioning political space as well. Thank you for your question. Thank you. I have a question that's kind of leads into what they both said, but I thought of it at the beginning and I want to stick with it. But beside what you've told us in your introduction, is there certain things beside the connection that really interests you in the position? And also, could there be a couple of skills or assets that you have that you think are special that you could bring to the moderate position? I really appreciate that question. Organization, I have always let at the chance to help run meetings, whether it's at work or in my volunteer experiences and making sure that those spaces were uplifting voices. It might not be heard or at least making sure that there is space for everyone to participate. I won't lie, there's very much an attraction to having some of that power, which is really the town moderator has an immense responsibility to be maintaining that process. And I actually thrive off of kind of that responsibility, essentially. I have in the past been more of a public speaker in terms of together press releases, speaking before groups on advocacy issues. I see myself able to put on that hat and step aside from my personal life, which I think is definitely an advantage here. What does this space call for? That's what motivates me. It's bigger than me. It's not about me. And I feel that I am very well equipped to be able to put on a hat that really serves that purpose. Well, you just answered the question I was going to ask. So I'll go with my usual, tell us about a time you changed your mind on an issue. What was the issue and what brought about the change? That's a great question. I think recently more of what I have changed my mind on has been about finding practical solutions to problems that are often posed very ideologically. Not that I would want to jump into saying, for instance, police brutality or a subject like that, but more along the lines of people running for office that may be judged for one sentence they say that is not what they meant. And kind of seeing my community pray because of lack of space to be able to hear people. I think it moves me past what in my youth was more political. Where does somebody stand on the matter versus how can someone engage on this topic? So I think I'm being fairly vague because I'm unable to give you one instance, but I've seen how people aren't given a chance to be heard and are only heard in terms of perhaps one stance that they have. And I felt really strongly that our community in Vermont is bigger. Communities are bigger and better than that and that we can continue to do a better job at hearing one another even if we have very different views, especially because Vermont is full of many different interests and people. I love that we have a tradition of being able to pass that and hear each other. So that's my shift from politics to process actually, which I guess kind of means that I'm here in this room. Thank you. So do you have any questions for us? You know ideally this sort of position would be something that I would have been here to be in town meetings and see in action. Would you have any advice on resources in people locally or potentially other opportunities in the near future to observe? I mean even just this already observing how this meeting proceeds would be a very easy step for me to take. To answer the question, at least from what I'm aware of, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns is likely going to offer shortly, I think do annually a training for moderators. Or do they? Yep. And also Steve Eust is who would, I'm certain, be willing to sit down with you or have a discussion with you or however, I guess I can't shouldn't speak for him. I would suggest, I've known Steve for a very long time and I think he would be very amenable to that. One thing I did want to comment on is, I don't know, we haven't had an in-person town meeting in a couple of years and we have not yet had an in-person meeting that had a ballot, or did we have one that had a ballot vote? Our budget is now on the ballot. So town meeting used to be, the big show was getting the ballot approved. People would suggest moving it out, people would suggest moving it down and there would be all the parliamentary rigmarole to go through all of those steps, which we don't have anymore. And so it may be a little bit of new territory for us as well, because again, remembering how to do it, because we haven't had an in-person, and I think it can't be a hybrid meeting because you can't vote, there's no way to vote. And so it's going to be a different situation that people are accustomed to. I think they've gotten used to in the last couple of years. Right. Just saying that people might be used to not being in-person and there would be, or do we know for certain whether it would be? They're not going to be used to not having input on the budget by the time town meeting rolls around, because it'll be a done deal. There'll be the presentation the night before and the balloting the next day, and that's only the second time we've done this. I see. Right. But there could be other questions that we're also talking about increasing the capital tax, which I think we haven't confirmed. It needs to be a floor vote. Right. So that would be one of the bigger questions that comes up. I don't know. We haven't, there may be, there's some discussions about some charter changes. There's other things that, again, I don't know if maybe those from the floor, or that has to be a problem. I was thinking, I can't remember. I want to say those are probably a ballot vote, but we'll have to confirm that. Right. And so you mentioned being involved in the warning also. I didn't, I've been reading the moderator guide rather than necessarily looking at town of Essex or what Essex? They approved the warning before it goes out. Right. Exactly. That part of, so in speaking on that, I was thinking about what are the obligations outside of the meeting for participation. The only other thing I know is, I think you need to look at the Australian ballot before it goes to print. The only other thing I could think of. Oh, right. Right. So I guess there's a couple of, right, the warning and the ballot, I think. Yeah. And then running the meeting. Just to sign off on. And then I guess once you know what's on the warning, you know what questions you're going to need to be asked, you know. Right. Right. So we have two candidates. We clearly don't talk about candidates in public session, so we'll have an executive session later. And if we come to a decision, somebody from the manager's office will contact you tomorrow. Right. I'll let you know. Thank you. So thank you so much. Yeah, I appreciate the time. Take care. And welcome to Essex. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Moving on to business item 5B interview on possible appointment of volunteer to serve on the Essex Housing Commission, Deborah Flannery. Deborah, are you online? I am. Hello. Good evening. Okay. So this is your opportunity to introduce yourself to the select board. Chair, any information you'd like to about why you're stepping forward for this position? And sounds good. Well, I'm Deborah Flannery. My husband and I moved to Essex in February just earlier this year. We relocated from Vermont to Vermont from the Midwest after my husband had taken a job in Burlington in 2019. So it's been a bit of a transition to really finally have settled here in Essex. I learned about this opportunity through some professional associates that have served on the Housing Commission, and they encouraged me to consider it. And so my background is very well suited to the issues. I would think that they would be considering my master's degree in urban and regional planning with the emphasis on housing and community development. And I've worked in affordable housing across an entire spectrum of housing finance and development topics for 30 years. So I have a long career. And after moving to Vermont, I eventually took a position with Evernorth, which is formerly known as Housing Vermont. We are a parent organization that was formed after the merger of Housing Vermont with this sister organization that serves Maine and New Hampshire in the same capacity. And it's a Northern New England Housing Investment Fund. So Evernorth is the merger of Housing Vermont to the Northern New England Fund. And we develop and finance affordable housing throughout a three state area. So I work there now. And so I have those connections and thought that this would be a great way to meet people in the community and learn a lot about what's going on and just be of service. I've been on a couple of boards as I left my last professional role. And I have sort of gradually been stepping those duties down. And I have my last commitment, which is to the Habitat for Humanity Board in Minnesota, where I was working previously. And that's ending here in March. So my schedule is freeing up in order to take on some new commitments. And this looked like an interesting one where I could be maybe useful. So happy to answer any questions. All right. Thank you. Any questions? Yeah. When it comes time to make a decision and you find yourself in your position in minority, how would you handle that situation? I'm sorry. What was the question? I didn't quite follow that. When the group needs to make a decision and your opinion is in the minority, how would you handle that situation? I guess I would state the reasons for my position and, you know, just hope that we have a mutual understanding of the different perspectives. And I guess whatever process is in place for making the decision, I would then I would respect and, you know, move forward. Thank you. Do you feel there might be any conflicts of interest with your day job? And do you have any ideas of where there might be opportunities where you could use the skills from your day job in this appointed position? Well, I'll have to be honest. I don't know a lot of the details of what comes before this commission in terms of decision making. I would think that we at Ever North, there could be the occasional conflict and I would certainly abstain from anything that would approach that in a decision making capacity. I I think it would be fairly intermittent if so. And certainly I don't have a personal stake. It's a nonprofit organization. I don't have the personal stake in any of their activities, business activities. But I do think that my knowledge and experience does give me an opportunity to understand a lot of the different types of resources that are out there. I have very I have a deep breadth of knowledge in housing finance programs and resources and and the ways of structuring resources to promote housing of all sorts from everything from homelessness to workforce housing and affordable homeownership. So I think it just gives me a breadth of knowledge that I could bring to bear and assist. Thank you. Hey there. What are some of the needs that you see in Chittenden County specifically in our town? And what what skills or assets do you think you could bring to the commission? Well, I think the needs of Chittenden County and this community are much like, you know, the rest of the state where the cost of building housing is, you know, to make it affordable. It's just out of reach for everyday people. So I think we are really seeing, you know, lack of supply of, you know, affordable units and a range of options. So people are having a harder and harder time affording to moving to communities where they work. I have recently I can I don't know exactly how this could work here, but I've been asked a lot about it in my my current role. One of the things I've just recently done is I have launched a new fund and it's been in the newspaper. So you may have read about it, but it's called the Upper Valley Loan Fund. And I worked with a group of anchor institutions, the Dartmouth College, Dartmouth Medical Center, and a bunch of employers in the region to form a nine million dollar housing fund to create a little bit of subsidy, extra subsidy to promote workforce housing, because they were seeing a dire shortage of housing opportunities for their workforce. And so I just close my fund with the investors and we're now beginning to deploy them and these are targeted to the region where these employers are. So that's a kind of thing I have the ability to do to know how to bring people together and and solve for these kinds of problems around resources and engagement. It's a it was a very deep engagement of understanding what the problem was and how people could participate in solving it. So I just throw that out there as an example. But I think that's just one of many ways that my knowledge could be useful. Awesome. Thank you. And I just I just want to in regards to what you just said, I read about that project and it was very awesome. So thank you for doing that. It was very exciting to read about it. So yeah, thank you. Sorry. What do you see is the biggest driver as it relates to the affordability of housing in our region? The well, I think the biggest driver is that we have costs that keep going up. And I don't know if it's, you know, just in it's not just in the largest nationally, but the pandemic really, you know, caused a dramatic increase over time. So the resources that we have are, you know, have to stretch a lot. They have to cover a lot bigger gaps. So the cost to build the housing to make it affordable for folks that have more moderate incomes is significantly higher than what you can rent it at if you're going to keep it affordable. So that gap requires public subsidies. And those subsidies have not been keeping pace with the increasing costs. So we just keep falling further behind. And Vermont is a very good job, the state legislature prioritizing housing, but even in that context, we still are falling behind. So I really think we need to figure out, want to take a look at how our cost structures are, what are, you know, our own local policies are and how we can promote more access to housing, how we can create opportunities for the people to live in our communities, but also just look at, in general, at the entire whole process of building housing to understand what we can do to stop seeing such increases. It's very, it's going to be impossible to do that, to keep up if we don't address the cost. Thanks. Hey, thank you. Do you have any questions for us? No, I don't. Okay. Okay, so we have two vacancies. And this position has been posted for a couple of months now. We can. We have two options. We can either go into executive session and have a discussion. We could. I'd like to make a motion at this time. We appoint Deborah Flannery to the housing committee. Second. Okay. Thank you, Don. Thank you, Tracy. Do we need to specify a term like? I'm trying to remember if it was a bracket, but we can fill it with the longest term available. Okay. All right. Any further discussion? 2025. 2025. Thank you. So I think in June, 2020. I am okay with that. I'm in. Yep. Yep. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Congratulations. Deb, you're in. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much for stepping forward. Thank you. Thank you. I'll drop off now. Okay. Moving on to our next business item, interview and possible appointment of a volunteer to serve on the energy community. Daniel Parkins, are you Daniel? Yes. Come on up and introduce yourself. Let us know anything you think we need to know about you and if you want to be on Yeah. Hi. Can you hear okay? Yeah. Okay. Great. Yes. So my name is Daniel Parkins. I am a new resident and homeowner here in this town of Essex. I've been here for about nine months, got married a few months ago. I originally am from Utah, but Vermont called my name when I came here for graduate school. I went to the School of International Training, the SIT Graduate Institute down in Brattleboro. I got my master's degree in peace building and conflict transformation with an emphasis in sustainable development. Before going to grad school, I actually served as an AmeriCorps VISTA in the state of Massachusetts working with Habitat for Humanity and ever since I've been committed to public service and supporting community development in any way I can. After graduate school, I had the pleasure and honor of working at the Carter Center, analyzing peace and justice programs in Liberia, and then moved back to Utah to deal with some turbulence on the home front for a while. COVID caused a bit of shakiness, if you will, on career trajectories. But while in Utah, I had the wonderful opportunity to jump into rural economic development work, providing access to opportunity through digital inclusion efforts and broadband development, and working in access to justice as well as continuing to support on a grassroots level the procurement and development of renewable energy resources throughout the United States. Now that I'm here in Vermont, I have started my business community wealth development. It is primarily focused on facilitating the development of many forms of wealth. A vibrant arts culture can be a form of wealth. A vibrant business culture is generally considered a form of wealth. But where that really plans for me is on the sustainability side of things. If we are to develop long-term wealth within our communities, then we need to plan long-term and create sustainable solutions that benefit future generations. So I'm here today in order to volunteer to serve on the energy board because I care about transitioning away from resources that are damaging our community and that are impacting our globe as a whole. And I am excited and very interested in jumping in and starting to participate in the activities here in the town of Essex. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions? I am going. I have a couple of them. The company that you started is wealth development, is that Essex company or is that a? Yeah, the company community wealth development was organized here in the town of Essex. That is true. I understand there may be a conflict of interest there in terms of work. I am happy and willing to abstain from any business opportunities within the town of Essex regarding energy moving forward. And my usual question is when there is a when you're in a minority and making a decision, how do you handle that? Yes, I rely heavily on my training in peace building by practicing dialogue. Dialogue is not a debate. It's not a conversation. It's not a discussion. It is a process to seek understanding and to find ways to build common ground. And so when I'm in the minority or in the majority, for that matter, my effort is to seek understanding from everyone that's a part of the community or on a board or a chair and provide space for all of us to reach that place where we can find mutual benefit in moving forward. Thank you. Do you see any particular opportunities in Essex right now for building renewable distributed energy type things? Yes, absolutely. So I was doing a little bit of homework. I haven't done a lot. I have many things on my plate, but I was watching the renewable energy conference 2022 with Jennifer Green and Alicia Barton. I believe that was on town meeting TV just a little while ago. And that provided a lot of insight into the regional efforts in renewable energy development throughout New England. I also was looking at the community revitalization program and seeing your efforts, at least the community's efforts on winterizing and providing more energy efficient subsidies for low income homes in the area. Now, beyond that, there are also a variety of national funding streams that I've had the opportunity to develop proposals for regarding renewable energy. And I believe that those types of funding opportunities would be worthy to look at and consider here in Vermont as well. One in particular that I recently applied for was the National Science Foundation's World Economic Engines program where I helped my business associates in Utah develop a economic engine model around distributed energy resource systems using a variety of renewable energy resources to develop micro grids throughout eastern Utah. That funding stream provided a million dollars for the first two years of operation and 160 million dollars for the next 10 years of operation if the engine gets off the ground. So that is a skill and an asset that I'm happy to bring to this committee. And there's no conflict between your business and that on this commission? No, I would make sure that I do not benefit monetarily from anything engaged in with the committee. Thank you. You have a question? Yeah, leave me a lunch. I have two things that I've been thinking about. The first one is I just want to ask you a little bit more specific of what your business does. Yeah, I'm still very much in the process of figuring that out. I'm about four months into the venture. So I'm in the ideation stage, doing a lot of market research at the time, interviewing a lot of people and trying to build a network in Vermont. I'm very much of the school of thought that when entering a new community, it is best to listen and observe first. But if I could speak a little bit towards what I am hoping to begin to develop here is one, providing types of grant writing proposal writing services and technical support to regional efforts to develop a variety of different economic development initiatives, primarily in tech. That being said, I'm also very connected to the arts community. I'm a poet and a writer. And so I have a lot of aspirations in developing a lot of community initiatives to rebuild the arts community in Burlington. Like I said, community wealth can be created in many forms. And so I am very much hoping to in many ways facilitate the strengthening and development of ecosystems on a state level here in Vermont. Awesome. Thank you. And then my second question, since you're from Utah, I have a connection to it myself. What solutions have you seen, if any, that tie in with agriculture in rural parts, whether it's biodegradables or No, that's a fantastic question. I actually have spent a considerable amount of time working on farms. When I was growing up, as I worked on an apple orchard, my father was a farmer. He wasn't very good, but we had a go at it for a few years there. I grew up in rural Utah. And I actually, when I was traveling abroad, I worked on farms for housing and food through a program called World Online Organic Farming. So this is all to say that I very much understand the need for innovation to take place in agricultural spaces. And I think that through developing new renewable energies and investing in new technologies that can support farmers, there's a great deal that can be done in that space, particularly in rebuilding the soil base through practices like mob grazing, rather than the traditional or conventional method of working with cattle or livestock in general, as long as well as introducing more robotics and technology into the farming space directly to reduce the cost of labor involved with organic grown goods. If that makes sense. All right, thank you. Gracie, you got anything? Tell us about a time you changed your mind on an issue. What was the issue and what brought about the change? Okay, so a time that I changed my mind. I think that a good example of where I changed my mind on an issue was while working with an organization in Utah called Building Beginnings. They support the reentry efforts of individuals that are exiting the prison system. They provide intensive inpatient care with a variety of programs. And this was shortly after I had just analyzed access to justice programs in Liberia on a larger scale. And I had a lot of ideas about what could be done. And in this particular case, while working with this nonprofit to first evaluate their programming and then move on to seek funding for them, I had to acknowledge the differences in local activities. So for example, there was a lot of civic engagement and volunteer mentorship opportunities in the programs that I had analyzed and evaluated abroad. And while suggesting these same types of approaches here, or in the state of Utah, I had to come to the realization that utilizing the same types of civic engagement activities would not be a good fit for the area they were in because of their personal standing in the community. So the Carter Center has a very strong reputation and is able to use that reputation to leverage diplomacy. Whereas with this organization, the owners were ex-convicts themselves. They had turned their lives around and they had really spent a lot of time rebuilding their own personal wealth in their own space and then moved forward to try and support others to do the same thing. Their strategy was to focus on micro businesses. And this is, I think, probably where my personal values varied a lot more. I more tend to fall on the political economy side of things, if you will. And so I had to learn and understand that by supporting and developing these micro businesses, they were actually creating a lot more peace and safety in their communities for these individuals by giving them access to new opportunities. It was a humbling moment and it gave me a lot of insight in how I can do things better in the future. Do you have any questions for us? Yeah. One question. I am just curious. What are the current pressing needs on the energy committee? Are there any particular issues that are kind of hot right now or challenging to overcome? I see Tom Yando on the online and if he's able to pop in, I'd love to put him on the spot. I know he's been attending energy committee meetings. Are you there, Tom? Yes, I am. Thanks for saving me. Some of the hot pressing items is looking to how can we get some more solar installed around the town? How do we jump on the bandwagon that the infrastructure bill has from the federal side has created to get more of that money into Vermont and particularly into Essex to help weatherize more of the homes here within Essex? Adoption is always a really big challenge no matter what technology you're looking at. Thank you. That helps provide insight and gives me direction on where I can start doing more research moving forward. I appreciate that, Tom. Sure. Yeah, thanks, Tom. Any other questions? I would just suggest that maybe another area to look at is the program that Green Mountain Power has with the micro grids setting up the houses that right now that that even with their help it's cost prohibitive to most residents. If there was any way to make it much more economically viable, I think that's a great way to go. Thank you. Thank you. Any other discussion? Again, a situation where we could... Mr. Chairman, given there's this one candidate I would like to recommend that we appoint Daniel Parkins to the energy committee. Thank you, Don. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Kendall. I also would expire in June 2025. Perfect. June 2025. All right. Any further discussion? Close in favor? Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, we can pass this by zero. Congratulations. Well, thank you very much. I'm honored to be on the committee. I appreciate it. Have a good night. Thank you. Okay. All right. So let's see. Now we are moving on to item 5D presentation from a discussion with Greater Burlington Industrial Councilor Corporation. Corporator. Corporational stuff. It looks like Sam Anderson. Yes. Thank you. And good evening. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. Just a quick refresher. GBIC, the Greater Burlington Industrial Corp, is one of 12 RDCs, Regional Development Corporations, that exist throughout Vermont. We each have a region, ours is Chittenden County. We were formed in 1954, and one of the first, actually the first building we ever built, at least, was to IBM in Essex Junction. So, Essex Junction and the town of Essex, we're particularly fond of throughout our history. We do partner with the state of Vermont to provide services to the dollar importing and value added businesses in our region. That is both within the town of Essex, as well as I am certain you have residents who work at other businesses throughout Chittenden County, as do we. We help those businesses with a variety of programs and services. And annually, we request contributions from the municipalities within Chittenden County. I have been in contact with your town manager, Greg, who presented three questions to me, as you consider a possible contribution to GBIC. And Greg asked three very succinct questions. The first was, is GBIC looking for $7,500 from each Essex town and Essex Junction? And my answer is, historically, the two municipalities have given us a joint contribution of $75,000. We're not per the any conversations you've had in the past or the present with the city of Essex Junction. But I am aware that in prior years, $500 came from Essex Junction and $7,000 from the town of Essex. We are hopeful that we will see that amount again. But we're grateful for whatever you, the select board, decides to contribute. The second question Greg asked was, how are dues calculated? And unfortunately, we don't have a formula as the RPC Regional Planning Commission does, based on number of residents. I will tell you, I attend the monthly meeting of your Economic Development Commission. And I would encourage you to ask Jane O'Sullivan if she feels we contribute constructively to those meetings. Greg will also verify that we attend the monthly municipal managers meetings that are posted by the Regional Planning Commission. And we try and bring information that is valuable to you all as a municipality. We run, or not run, we develop the Regional Priority List. This is a list required by the state for the Northern Borders NBRC Regional Commission grants. If you're in the top 10 on the list, and our list is happens to be greater than 10, you can receive extra points. GBIC also is enthusiastic to write recommendations for any other grants a municipality will apply for. And this list is reviewed twice a year, or yes, twice in a 12 month period, in the fall of a year, and in the spring of a year. More and more, the legislature, the state legislature has asked for this list beyond the 10 to see if the region has decided if it's a priority project. We, there is a committee made up of members of GBIC and the Regional Planning Commission that review all the projects every year. This leads to another big project we're doing right now, the SEDS. And that is the comprehensive economic development strategy. This is a document that after a year and a half, almost two years, we will submit to the EDA in conjunction with the Regional Planning Commission for approval by the federal EDA. That approval will permit us to apply to become an EDD, as you can see, we love acronyms. And that's an economic development district that puts us higher up in the chain to qualify for federal grants. Currently, the SEDS we're working on, which I believe Gino Sullivan may have told you about, is with four regions, Chittenden, Washington, Rutland, Addison, and two towns in Orange. And we are applying to be a district. In addition, we provide services. And when COVID hit, the state government asked us to help in areas we adhere to for, not going as involved with, which were small, micro, commercial, and retail entities, applying for federal COVID relief grants. We've done that. And it's been wonderful to work also with BIPOC businesses. And we continue to be involved. Right now, we're still involved with our community navigator program, which links small business, startups, and under 10 employees with vendors from Vermont. And we supply and grant so that business aid, for example, needs technical assistance in financing or marketing or web design. We couple them with a vendor, a Vermont business, and pay that vendor to do that project for the business. We've had over 150 of those in our region that we've done in the last year and a half. The final question, and then I'll be quiet, is what Greg asked was, what would happen if Essex is only able to pay $4,000 this year, given that the town is looking at approximately a 21% tax increase? I'll give you the answer to that by saying, we appreciate whatever annual contribution you can give us. And we understand that this year in particular, you're anticipating this significant tax increase due to the separation from Essex Junction and Essex Junction becoming a city, which has separated joint functions with you, the town. We're grateful for whatever contribution you give us that demonstrates your support for the worker that we do. We're an organization of three. And we'd like to think we work very hard to touch as many businesses with services as possible. In the letter of request, I also included our dashboard, which gives you a snapshot of what we've been doing this past year in 2022. I thank you for your time. And I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Sam. Any questions? In viewing this dashboard, how much have it had a direct impact on the town of Essex? We've never divided it by newness. That would take data work that our staff is not capable of doing. We report to the state of Vermont on a county-wide basis. So I wish we had the staff to be able to get back to you. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions? I have a question. Go ahead. Thank you for the presentation. It was very good to know because I didn't know a lot of the things that you guys do, so thank you for that. You're welcome. My question is, if the town can't fully fund the request to 7500, do you guys plan on asking the city for more than 500 to make up for it, or would you be at a loss? I did mention to them that I'd be talking to you. And I mentioned that the two communities have given us a 75 I said that close to the same thing to them. I've said to you, we will appreciate whatever you can give us. And we're very mindful of this year, particularly for the town and the tax implications from the separation with the city of Essex. Okay. The reason I asked wasn't to see if they were funding more or less. I was just curious as to if they had committed any funds or an idea of funds because I wanted to know how much you guys were losing as a total number. They did not discuss an amount at all. I don't know if they've made final decisions such that Regina could share that with Greg. But we were not told. As I don't expect you to tell me this evening, I am mindful that you'll need to consider our request along with all the others that you receive. Yeah, just I, Regina and I have talked a bit about this. I don't know what she's going to propose. I don't know what the city council will end up proposing for GBIC. I will say that the $4,000 that's proposed from the town's budget is based on a per capita split of that $75,000. So we felt proportionally it was at least on a per capita basis that the proportional contribution from the town going forward. That's how we came up with that. Is that $4,000? Any other questions? Let me just ask, do you feel that there are more opportunities for grants and things that you could do for the town than there are for the city currently in terms of our growth area and businesses that need help, things like that? To be candid, it always depends on the projects that we are made aware of. We go on a very robust business visitation schedule. And when we talk with businesses, we discuss possible expansions, workforce training grant opportunities with the Vermont training program, workforce partnerships. And we also ask business what issues they have that they want us to testify about, not only to our state legislature, but to discuss with our US congressional delegation. So I need to respond by saying it's very specific to what's happening. You've got a lot of activity going on right now, especially in the area of the S66 area and what's going on there. And you, I don't know if you're aware, but Gene and town staff put forward a project proposal for that area for enhanced infrastructure to continue to attract business to that area. And it was placed on our regional priority list just two weeks ago, and it will be submitted to the state. So it depends on talking with the municipality and the businesses in your municipality, what they're looking for, what you're looking for, and how we can be value-added to that, bringing possible grant opportunities before the parties that they may want to apply for. Okay, thank you. Okay. Anything else? Okay, so there's no action required. This is for information. So thank you, Sam, for your presentation. Thank you. As we go through our budget discussions, you'll find out what we decide, I guess. All right. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for the work that you do. Thank you. Okay, moving on to the next business item, which is Continue Fiscal Year 2024 General Fund Budget Work Session. So, yeah, continuing with the fiscal 24 budget proposal, there's a memo in the packet that's tried to provide some updates since we last met. I'll run through those in a moment and also try to, as best we could, provide answers to the questions and the issues and topics that you'd identified in the first two workshop sessions. Just hitting on the changes, first of all, big one, unfortunately, is in the wrong direction. We were doing the police budget. We had put in the three and a half percent of the administrative cost, which was part of the shared police agreement with Essex Junction. Unfortunately, we had not broken that out on a per capita basis. We missed that clause. We have to do it. There's no way around it. It's unfortunately about $120,000 swing of revenue that we're not going to be getting. That's the big change. There's some other smaller changes. VLCT dues went down about $1,000. Landfill monitoring, we're able to reduce that by about $2,000. Wenduski Valley Park District dues went down about $2,000 from what we had expected. Also, this is in the memo that's in front of you today. It's not in the packet yet, but some changes that came in over the weekend. Green Mountain Transit dues also down a few thousand dollars. They are projecting them at $71,000, as opposed to $77,000. Very small change in the health officer from budget of about $200. All told, I don't have the exact number, which is why I don't want to put it in writing, but approximately we're now looking at about a 22 and a half percent property tax increase. That's up from about the 21 and a half percent. That translates to about $350 on the average home. That's largely due to the police change that's being made here. Beyond that, I don't know. I'm going to run through all 21 questions in here, but certainly I hope you've had a chance to digest it. Dan and I can speak to anything that's in there if you have more questions, but just try to provide more information based on some of the conversations you've had and get to the information you need to keep working on the budget. Are there any specific questions that I can ask? I have one under 12. Under the health officer update, are you going to promote one person to be a full-time health officer? Why are we sharing with the city when that was not something we wanted to do? We had discussed it with them and they said, no, they'd have their own health officer and not be connected to us anymore. And two, I'm just concerned that by appointing a full-time, is this employee's other position full-time also? Yes. Well, yes and no. The zoning administrator role is full-time. The health officer is not. It's a kind of as-needed on-call position. So instead of having a town health officer and a deputy health officer, we will only have a town health officer, but the city's town health officer will act as our deputy where the coverage is needed. In vice versa, it's just a good pro quo. So each municipality would only pay for its own health officer, but then they would each back each other up? Are there some of somebody's on vacation? And no cost either, right? We're not going to nickel and dime hours the deputy stands. We do recommend having a deputy health officer. It is a position that can called on at any day, any hour to allow people to, whether they're out sick on their own or on vacation, they're just not available. It does help to have a backup. It's a tough position that requires some knowledge and going into some pretty nasty situations in some cases. So do you think it's worth having a backup by sharing with the city and backing each other up in this case that theoretically should save both municipalities money so you're not paying for health officer and a deputy health officer? I guess my concern is that it says the change in the health officer results in a budget change of $200. But we had two before and we gave up one that was a lot more than the, I mean the assistant was a lot more than that. Yeah, I have to double check on that. I think that when we were projecting for fiscal 24, because fiscal 23 kind of had a break point was budgeted with certain rate for the first half of the year and a certain rate for the second half of the year. I think what happened is that we budgeted for fiscal 24 based on that entire amount versus the rates for the second half of the year. So probably should have been a higher projection up front before we get the updates to the health officer. I think that's what's going on there. Because yeah, I thought it was a little bit more. Yeah, that's given, yeah. Oh wait, I have a couple more. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to follow up on that. Is there any need for a formal agreement or contract with that as far as if we ran into a large issue that needed a lot more potentially than the city or anything? Is there any need to have some kind of formal agreement versus a, I mean I like the handshakes, but yeah. It's not a bad idea to just get an MOU in writing. Regina and I have talked about it. We're both on board. Sharon Kelly is on board with that. Yeah, wouldn't hurt. I think part of it is going to come down to each municipality points its own health officers. But yeah, to formalize that probably wouldn't hurt. Thank you. Oh, it's only when we start with, I'm trying to find it because it's different than what I'm reading in front of me. But I would like to talk about that six experience first if I can find it in the packet that was the Explore Essex we have under number three and perfect. Number three. Okay, I got it. So I want to tie in Explore Essex with the REC department. I don't know what number that is looking right now just to see if they are close. I don't think they are because they read one and I read the other quite a ways down. Yeah, but 14 was also 14. So 14 and three. It says in one that Essex experience costs $8,900. So we're going to consolidate everything into the manager's budget so we would have no impact on the overall budget. And then down in 14 it says considered giving $1,100 to Essex experience. Yeah, so if you look at, you go to number three. So that's a change in them. That's a change in the budget. No, look at number three. Right. And go down to that last line out of there, the one, ten, five, 30, 10, eight, 50. Okay. Right now Parks and Rec has $4,000 for events. Right. What we're proposing is to reduce that by $1,100. They would still have $2,900 at $1,100 to go into the community events and celebrations line that we're proposing in the manager's line. So that $1,100 plus those other notes that are made up of total about $8,900. And that's not just for Explore Essex. So we don't have a total from Explore Essex. In June 19. Explore Essex. This past year we budgeted about $5,900 for. So that leaves about $3,000 for other events whether that's Juneteenth, other things that might come up. But it's a total community events and celebrations line. We could then break that down further, say roughly $6,000 for Explore Essex and $2,900, $3,000 for other events. Right. The problem that I have with it is that I was specifically asked for to have a cost for Explore Essex because it was seen in so many places and there's no definitive number given to what we spent on Explore Essex. And it wraps in now money from the rec department of a $4,000 surplus that we were talking about eliminating or leaving specifically for a town event that's not Explore Essex. I just would like to see those numbers separated and I'd like to know what we spent on Explore Essex in 22. We spent about $5,900 on Explore Essex. Okay. So we're $3,000 short of of budgetary money that's listed, right? Juneteenth was $3,000. About $3,000. And then we want to add in $1,100. So that would bring it to $10,000. No, no. The $89 includes the $1,100. So if you go through the math and add up. Yeah. If you go through these. There's $3,000 for Juneteenth and $5,900 for Explore Essex. We're the $8,900. That's $8,900. I had $1,100. That's $10,000. The $1,100 included in that $8,900. Original money, Ethan, came from somebody else's budget that they used. Some of that $5,900 came from Parks and Rec. So we're saying, well, take the contribution from Parks and Rec that we used this year and we're going to assign that to a different program. I don't agree with that. That's what I know with that. I wanted everything in one spot. And it's not broken down to explain that the $4,000 that's in the budget was used for that. The $4,000 that was in Parks and Rec is being reduced to $2,900. That's the $1,100 that's being shifted to the Explore Essex specific climate. To cover what we spent this year. Projecting next year. Projecting next year. Based on what we spent this year. That allows the Rec department the opportunity to be grown. So the other question that I had, because I had looked into participating in one of the events up there. The Explore Essex and some of the events that went on up there didn't produce any revenue. Explore Essex. From the town side, we weren't trying to produce revenue. Wasn't there an event that happened up there that was promoted by the town where you had to buy a booth? You had to pay a substantial amount of money to have a booth? That was through, so that Explore Essex was very much a partnership with our business community and the Essex Experience. And so the Essex Experience gave the space to hold the theater and have not the theater, the stage and to use that space. They charged for booths. Yeah, they charge for the booth space. And the town didn't have any? No. So did we pay to use the space or we just paid for what we would put into the event? I will double check, but I'm almost positive we just paid for what we put into the event. Okay, that's number one. My second question is about the police department. And I tried to use my book that we were first given with the number that's changed now because I had asked the question on our budget workshop about percentage of the overall budget. And I think it came in to somewhere like $56.44. I think if I remember correctly, that's what for the for the police department budget for town versus city. Oh, $52.48. Originally, I think it was written out as the way the numbers had fallen. So I'm curious now with this $101,000 change where we stand, percentage of the overall budget for the what it costs to run the police department is changes on the revenue we get back. So we need to make up that revenue in our tax rate. Exactly. So it puts more burden on the on the town tax. But it makes a correction to and that in that number now that, like I said, I tried to see how this number would change. I didn't know exactly which wine item was changing. So my question is what it and this can be answered at another workshop. But what is the percentage moving forward paid for by the town taxpayer? Total total budgets. It hasn't changed. Well, it's changed by $101,000. That's really just an application of the revenue. So the expenses haven't changed. But the revenue that we had originally shown decreased by $101,000 because it was erroneously showing 100% of a collection when we're not making 100% of a collection because of the per capita ratio that we have with the city. So that's the reason for the reduction. It's a it's a truing of the actual revenue that we're going to recognize next year for the police contract. So nothing in the expense line items are going to change. But we're correcting the revenue that was not calculated properly in the previous iteration that'll be in line with the per capita of each town. You're saying each yeah. So now now it's aligned with the if I went and divided it by the amount of people that would come out with the same percentage as the budget should be following. The town is still getting revenue from the city in their in their form of contribution to the police department for their per capita, whatever that rate plays out to be now. My point is that it changed to buy $101,000 from two weeks ago that per capita rate because I asked that question. I think I get I don't think we'll be able to answer tonight. That's fine. I just wanted to put it on you so you could write on a paper and I'm going to say it back to make sure we're on the same page. Right. So the police the amount of police that's budget that it's just the police that's raised by taxes that's that's on a per capita split of 4852. And there's also that three and a half percent town. So we wrap that into the police budget to account for it. But that's already being paid for by town taxes separately. That's your HR, that's your IT, that's your finance support, your manager support all gets wrapped into that amount. So then there's going to be roughly $100,000 coming in the revenue beyond that. So I think what you're saying what we talked about at the at the first workshop was taking that 48 percent on just the police and then adding what is that $100,000 of revenue on top of it. Is that that's I think what you were asking for before and what you're trying to get now? Yeah, I'm just my question now is how much has it changed and where do we stand? What like where are the numbers? What number is the town responsible for? You know, I just want to make sure and I be fully transparent. I was a strong advocate of this the whole time that what you was going on about about the the deal. But you know the town of Essex and its constituents need to understand how much of the police department that they're paying for. I think that then needs to be laid out very clearly in the budget when I present it. Working up. So is this is this where I would ask questions for this about all of these items? You can do that. Yep. Okay. Rather than going through them. I just wanted to make sure. I just wanted to first on number one for Essex Rescue. I wanted to suggest that maybe the town considers funding them at a percentage like we do. Tammy's. If we do what? Just forgot the one percent of the budget that we set aside for the businesses and the helpful like ant dots place in place. I just can't think of the word. We don't even set enough aside to cover what they're asking for. Yeah. But we do that and Tammy gives that to all the organizations and stuff. Maybe we might consider giving a percentage of our budget to Essex Rescue each year so that they would have and we would have a better idea per year of what their what our contribution to them might be. Only because it has increased so much. Just just something to consider. The conservation reserve fund. How much are we budgeting for that this year currently? About $8,000. $8,000? Yep. Down from $15,000. Okay. Thank you. My next thing I commented on was I noticed that the highway guys you asked them about their wish list kind of. I can't believe you're trying to keep those trucks for 10 years. I would 100% once those things go out of warranty, you can blow anything that you might say really quick something happens to them. So I would strongly support them going back to the staying in the warranty period and getting rid of the trucks upgrading them when the warranties run out. Do we do that with the police? Police cars? I don't know if you know this. I want to say the police cars are no I take that back. They're at least three years. So they all stay under the warranty period? I was going to say at least. It's just a three-year lifespan. Okay. So and then I also noticed that highway had some specific requests for the storm water sections and everything and I would fully support more than that. I think we should look at maybe 200,000 for that. We have the unprecedented opportunity for federal money that can be matched through the Clean Water Fund and the state of Vermont. I forget what the number is as far as what the state of Vermont has but they have a ton of money that you have to go through their process that Aaron has laid out in this to do. So I would strongly support whatever they want. I mean I think he's asking for like 100,000, 150,000. The more that you could put into that so that they can get some of these projects, you know preliminary engineering reports done so that you could apply for the grants that will save a lot of money. So I just wanted to speak on their behalf. There isn't another process that we haven't started yet the capitol plan. This year is likely going to include a request to increase our capital tax. We have a two cent capital tax now with losing 41 percent of our tax base. So we're not going to get as much for those that two cents. So I guess there's the question of do you put it into your operating budget which is what we're talking about today or do you beat the capital as a separate, there's it you know from a different source. And so I don't know when. We're talking this morning we're looking at December 19th your second meeting in December to present a capital budget capital plan. Okay so when do we need to warn the budget? Because the reason I'm asking is because there's going to be a point where you decide okay or you know who we want to put that money in as a way if we're going to go that way you know go anywhere near increasing funding for stuff we put it into a operating budget transfer or or hope for a proof of a capital tax rate increase. So I think we're gonna have to have that we can have that certainly have that discussion okay at some point but I think we need to have both of those plans yeah that's why I'm asking do we need to if we need to warn the budget before we have the capital plan that we can't do that juggling of does it come out of operating the operating budget or does it come from the capital plan so okay. January 30th is the within that window that's the day of that week which is when he would warn town meetings that's when you kind of have to have your absolute final number. Working backwards from there you know we were looking at doing two public hearings for the budget this year you're only required to do one but we've done two the past couple years and figuring what the big change this year if you're going to recommend doing two you could do it as soon as tonight I don't know I'd recommend that but you could yeah so probably depending how you how you want to space it out late December early January and then you do the 30th in January you would have three meetings your first Monday actually it's going to be Tuesdays because of the holidays but your first third Tuesdays plus that fifth Monday would be the meeting schedule in January unless you want to add additional meetings which we may have to okay so after tonight we have two more meetings but we have to have the first of our public hearings there'd be two of them in before we warn so that's I think what you just said sure I understand it okay that makes sense candle yeah I mean I just wanted to make sure that if you need the money that you can either get it out of capital or you can get it out of the operating budget yeah the the other the other challenge though is that we need to increase the capital tax rate just to stay even and if we're and so yeah we've talked about the app a little bit with Andy trying to get away from the operating transfers capital and putting more of your capital expenses into the capital tax there's a there's a risk factor involved there of when you do it and how you time it because if you say that you're going to take a bunch of capital transfers out of your operating budget and put it into your capital you have to have to vote to have that capital tax increase yeah you do that all at once is quite risky in in my opinion that you wanted looking at are there ways to ask a question of you know the capital tax should the voters increase the capital tax certain amount each of the next successive years you do a vote in November so you're prepared for the budget season for March there's different ways to do it but that's yeah one of the things that's on our mind we're looking at probably won't have final answer this year but just another year the point is trying to get away from those operating transfers and okay keep stuff in capital for the most part and operating transfers carry a one percent penalty to them because they add to the human service fund oh jeez every dollar that you you add is a capital transfer you had another penny for the services so it actually is a more expensive way to do it put it through the operating budget oh slightly maybe one percent more the other the other thing just to be totally transparent about it is that you've got a reappraisal coming up capital tax stays the same with reappraisal so our uh capital tax revenues will go likely very likely go up with reappraisal so there's there's a maybe some consideration there's how far do you want to move it the anticipation that it's going to be a bigger it's going to generate a larger revenue the reappraisal happens it's it's ironic that the last time the capital tax was changed from one cent to two cent was the same year that the reappraisal was done 2007 so there was I remember that it was a double but then that then but then that rate stays the same you know as long as your appraisal has been changed I mean I've been paying what $69.70 or whatever the station made the number of every year since I've owned my app since 2007 and so that's out there too is my concern is we given this is our first budget without the city we really need to watch those dollars and and not try to spend what we don't really have right now yeah and I would you know rather see us tighten our belt now and then yeah and further out and I would agree with that except that we have 15 percent of our budget and the fund balance and typically that's what we shoot for but again I think that we are in a very short window for both the ARPA projects and all the extra money from the COVID issues that is available and I just wanted to make sure that the public works has the opportunity to take advantage of much of that as possible to leverage it for projects so there's there's a couple things that follow that but the thoughts that come to my mind is is whether we have the bandwidth which is uh to the chase after depending we can right there and then and I you know if we can do it I can bring it down yeah the the other thing is this is a one-time thing the you know the the money that's the infrastructure money that's available or whatever the the bucket of money is it's not an ongoing thing and so given that a more concern about adding it to the tax rate is then you take it back out again because it's just it's it's a you know you mentioned it's a short time window and is it even is it because we're talking about July 1st of 2023 that any money we're talking about today is available it's available I don't know what the timeline is for the need the funding that's available I believe it's still 20 you have to have your projects all designated by like 2024 I believe something like that it's a short it's a pretty short time window and and the other thing is if there's something critical that staff wants to go after they come to us and ask us to use some of our fund balance to do yeah okay maybe that's the choice it may not be a it may not you know it may be a hard choice and it may be but it may be the right choice for a given project or so there are there are you know when you know after we have all this discussion I'm gonna open the door to the public to talk about it too but I'm kind of aligned with with the dawn of the fact that this may not be but I understand right there's a kind of golden opportunity do you want to pass it on just because you're afraid the fact that I'm just not gonna pass yeah I don't know I don't know so maybe maybe that's the tack that I'll switch to at this point because I have been fairly vocal about trying to get public works and projects and stuff but again I'm not Dennis or Aaron so maybe this is the opportunity to ask Aaron come to the board with some proposals with or with a specific one because he could he knows I mean right in his memories like we've got some big projects and you can see your budget you had a stormwater drain fail and it cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix it one time quickly and so maybe put the put a little thing on Aaron to say what's your wish list you've got an advocate on the board where where would you like a little bit of money to go a short term with the projects that's coming with the capital it's gonna be looking the capital I'm Aaron said that if if you were doing he's appreciative of it he he also understands that we're in a crunch so made no not this is the year um he can see but he said that uh professional services would be helpful line that that's gonna be um the stormwater professional services in the operating budget will help with some of these small projects moving and through having some of that oversight having some of the engineering work yeah but most of it most of it you're gonna see in the capital with the project list and things that are coming off in areas that are whether to study the number figure out the the hazard areas or the at risk areas go after that way that's mostly going to be in your capital okay thank you yeah I didn't want to go again till Tracy had a chance to ask her okay I have two questions um if we went to $15 and I don't know how fast you do math what would the amount for sx rescue be if we went to $15 per capita instead of their 18 do you have any idea 30 thousand five hundred and four people from the latest yeah roughly 30 thousand dollars it meets right there's 10,541 five hundred and sixty six and five and this is really concerned about my guess it's saved about 34,500 dollars um I mentioned in here I can jump in yeah I mentioned in here um and having conversations with some of the other managers I know some of the other legislative bodies in the area have have similar concerns um I don't know if I had to read he leaves I'd probably say everyone is unhappily ready to accept the price this year but kind of be looking for more direction and oversight representation on the board those types of things or to come on that I know you've stepped up to have some of those conversations um said if I had to guide what's happening from the other community it's talking to their my fellow managers that seems to be the sentiment and it's it's one of those things where I I think my recommendation would be that you go all five member municipalities go hand in hand it's it's going to start getting weird if one says we'll fund at this rate and the other one says we'll fund at this rate and then it's your thing for so what does the rest of your municipalities bill at then or contribute at 18 per capita is the request every but that's their request but what okay but do you know what they currently do uh they're all so it's per capita across the same thing so I think we're just different I think we're at $10.91 per capita this year each each town has it like like so let's just use under hill for an example so under hill is only a portion of under hill right I know they only pay for you know six thousand residents or whatever six thousand dollars yeah but I wanted to jump in on the asset rescue thing because I didn't have a chance to kick you an email about it but they didn't respond to the dispatch question did I answer your question first yeah I'm just concerned about this I'm and looking at what they sent and looking at the fact we have no say and I'm going to love as X rescue I just don't I can't see going with that huge amount this this year but and my other thing before we go back that's X rescue is the money for the library at that 15 thousand dollars I think would leave it in the budget and not give it to the library at this time yeah I mean 15 thousand doesn't sound like a lot of savings but every little bit right now is going to help us before I ask you I'm sorry I just no I just wanted to throw that out there before we moved on to something deeper no and to answer your question it would be I think they said it would cost about a hundred a hundred and ten thousand dollars is what they were estimating to do dispatch that would get added into the total cost so everybody there for everybody but then revenue would be split with us in the city yeah so it's it's not well it offsets the hundred and one thousand dollars we just saw a lost revenue well not really because we'd be paying a hundred and you'd be paying that 110 let's let's say let's say that said under hill is about six thousand people right um for the sake of easy math let's say westford under hill and jericho are all five thousand right fifteen thousand town and city are twenty two thousand so you'd we'd be getting a hundred and five we'd be getting a hundred thousand dollars of revenues so you're getting roughly fifty cents on the dollars well let's just use the same example and say that there's a hundred thousand let's just say that there's just a number as a hundred thousand right sx makes up uh let's say sx and the city both make up 20% right so we're paying 20% of the total hundred thousand we're paying 20% more in under hill or capital right well you're all paying eighteen dollars total population for those five areas let's call it yeah eighteen dollars eighteen dollars forty thousand people right yeah eighteen dollars is eighteen dollars the town of sx and the city of sx junction now split with the police department is paying whatever that hundred thousand dollars is more than any other town because of the per capita split so we're covering three other towns sx and sx junction we're paying more per capital maybe not on paper you're doing dispatch dispatch for some stuff but i think not at all sx rescue um i remember i don't know if you remember i feel like i'm trying to play camera for sx rescue or one of those towns but some of them contract with shellburn for part of their dispatch services i have to get more information part of westward has fair facts has fair facts yeah that's right so that's five thousand and the far part of under hill has lamoille so yeah and part of jericho has rich but that doesn't include that five thousand that's five hundred right but either way you look at it they're total operating budgets what a million dollars almost rescue yeah i can't remember i think it's i think it's over a million this year i have to double check to see what what they came in final haven't heard or seen anything or even response that should be right in here you go ahead but anyway my my my point is you know i don't care if it's five dollars your it's revenue that we're losing out on and we're paying for it and anybody in that district or in this whatever service area that's paying 18 per capita is in benefit of the dispatch service in that area in my opinion but i just think it's something that we shouldn't overlook when we asked them about it they give us a number so we can get the yeah i'll try to get more information about the information because it yeah it's it i've brought this up before as well sx sx now now it's sx and sx junction now we're paying for the dispatch whatever the split is for all of sitting so i don't know right if it if it comes out the pennies on the dollar and that's not made it be worth the overhead to do it um but you should have those numbers rather than just yeah we can get the numbers it it opens up the tricky complex argument where i've heard from these other municipalities you know not directly but i've heard that part of their concerns are most of the call volume is in sx next junction so drop the service you know like they're off you they're up they're paying for a per capita if you cannot get any drop the service if you don't think you're getting your money's worth that's that's my recommendation i mean if i was paying for something i didn't think i was getting any use of i'm not saying i don't think they get their money's worth something they they can argue and have argued that they think i don't call the police that that they feel like you know sx and sx junctions benefit more from that per capita rate also argue that we're closer we don't have to travel as far we're not it's just it goes back and forth and then we'll get the numbers but if it comes down there's their their total expenses for 2022 with one million one hundred and fifty one thousand five hundred and six i remember that i knew it was over a million it's couldn't vote the number but you want to know and that's for last year it's twenty one twenty twenty two twenty two so they got their budget done or their fiscal year done all right any other specific questions here's a follow-up on insurance for beef farm property yeah so i made initial contact and the coverage is for the entire land area around there um well i have not gone far to discuss and we are supposed to meet with vlcp with my info questions and general renewal discussion on in december and i didn't understand number 16 greg this is right i'm fine it says follow whether the city approved joining manuski valley park district the city of essence voted to join manuski valley park district the dues request from them was 37 342 less than the 39 that was originally budgeted what does that mean so that's so the the um western park of 37 000 okay and the issue was that s extension was not part of manuski valley park district so they had budgeted assuming that extension was going to join and we had budgeted 39 000 based on that okay um and i can't remember if that was the number from manuski valley park district or a projection based on the breakdown of what we do um if s extension had not voted to join the park districts their their formulas based on per capita and i think grand list to some extent um so they would have been losing 10 000 people and 11 11 million dollars to grand list that would have then have to have been spread across the remaining population in town so if that if they hadn't joined that 39 to 37 would have been higher i don't know how much higher but it would have been higher i didn't understand okay thank you so that's a good i'll get another question i can't i can't remember exactly what it was because i got like i messed up and i forgot my binder at home that had all the color and highlighter in it but i had asked the question about um and it was some sort of insurance or uh there's something that changed by about 70 000 from what we budgeted and what we thought it was going to be this year i don't remember what it was like buildings something with buildings it went from you know 220 to 290 000 even though the previous years had only gotten up by 10 000 every year and i had asked a question about if we were sure about that i got i got a highlight i can bring it to this next meeting i'll send you an email yeah i don't remember it specifically it was written down on here on our it's in the minutes i can pull it off well all of all of the questions that we brought that that we studied for here um um i couldn't remember about the insurance rate 18 18 yeah it will be encapsulated within the vlct items um so we have about the rate was that what it was was right well i think it was actually related to the the credit as to whether that should be shown as is revenue because we don't know what that's going to be until right so it looked like we were losing 70 000 dollars right yeah so with the vlct credits what's happened is that you know we will receive a credit for all the prior history that vlct is experiencing in their insurance plan overall throughout the whole state so it's really nothing that we can budget for it's nothing that we can really gauge on internal information it's it's kind of a variable out of our control based on their portfolio um so you know we've been looking to kind of continue keeping that in the expense line item not really called revenue because you know it's been anywhere from you know a few thousand dollars to maybe fifty thousand dollars in a given fiscal year and just really nothing that we can you know point to three or four elements and say okay this is our estimate it's just all over the map depending on what year it is don't have it i guess my follow-up to that was how did we predict this the large change i can i can find the okay because i got to know the numbers now because i've still looked away too many numbers oh we can move on and i'll i'll uh bring it back to the meeting yeah bring it back to i don't remember it i don't remember it specifically for buildings but um we don't look at any numbers that you know we wanted to do you have any other specific questions well i would i would just know that sx rescue looking through their budget that they're looking at the same increases that we are their fuel their health insurance and i mean so their budgets pretty good i mean there's a couple things in their question i just you never know when you're going to need an ambulance and it is sx rescue just my two cents right so i am going to open this up to the public to comment now nobody in the room but us chickens um anybody online i think to make a comment about any aspect of the the budget can we switch back over so we can see who's i don't see any hands up thank you scott so yes with no hands up um do we want to go through and try to answer some of these questions so that we don't have to continue talking about them um one you know the i know the sx rescue i think there's there's more discussion going to be had with them and i think that that's going to continue on based on that we're not going to do the next agenda i don't know i do have a good experience when we get there okay okay um so conservation fund the question was that that was raised is um that that has been historically funded at 15 000 a year since it was uh put in place the proposal from staff was to do 8 000 this year and i raised the question do we fund it at all can we answer that can we can we so originally that was funded by everybody in sx right yes and the reason it was was was turned back to 8 000 this year is the per capita not per capita is that the grand list grand list is that the per capita number that was by the grand list number the which is which is uh 59 40 right 41 yes so um you know and and you know eight thousand dollars is a is a very small drop in the bucket on a 15 million dollar budget but it's still i mean a little bit helps helps the they will sort of up i guess do we want to come to a consensus that the weather to keep that money in there this year or take it out we'll have opinions well i think what they said would be harder if we didn't do it this year to put it back in you could do something i mean it just there's about eight thousand dollars between zero and they they don't have to fund it at the age that proposed you don't have to cut it all the way to zero what if we do 50 4 000 4 000 like the your your last expense out of that was 4500 roughly roughly and remind me what's the balance of that um we're close to i want to say about 50 000 just under yeah i thought it was like yeah upper 40 something like that everybody's good with four thousand that so we don't need to vote we just have a consensus because we don't know the number and later but changes can be bad change um the explore sx funding and then we had discussion about that before this is really just a a moving of accounts there's no we okay with with funding um uh nominally juneteenth and four sx with this eight nine hundred dollar fine item all consolidated what's this gonna sound awful but i'd rather it go five thousand and three thousand and throw up the nine hundred dollars given that there was much discussion after out and about sx or about things we could change and save on so i'm just saying that i would go with the eight thousand it sounds i mean it sounds really awful to say take away nine hundred dollars but there's changes that can be made that we're we could have saved money i did participate in both events so i can i would like to be somewhere's closer to 7500 and i'd like to keep the four thousand dollars with the parks direct because i tried to also participate in the event and do it at the time for the skill that i want to do the price that it costs to be in the event was more than i wanted to spend and i don't understand how the town is trying to put on uh what i say a cliche farmers market not make any revenue off from it so i don't know nothing to do with the farmers market even yeah it wasn't the farmers market it was the explorer sx where you could buy a booth for five hundred dollars sx experience i had nothing to do with it was it was a town promoted event on our website advertised through the town sorry you know so i just i've been in this community for four years we don't have a farmers market put on by a town like every other town does that is free that takes donations from the vendors that to pay for the event and has the possibility to create a revenue and i just see money being dumped away and i don't see any revenue coming from it i mean the turnouts have been decent i wouldn't say that people are raving about um you know what was going on so that's just my two cents i'd like i'd really like to see the four thousand dollars stay in the parks and rack for the main reason that the parks and rack director specifically stated that her team is working on um you know putting something together and it would need the funding there if they were to do something so i hate to take money from reason i guess just curious around to support additional community events appreciate funding to remain in the epr admin operating to support additional community events does that include explore sx and if the funding is available through comm dev or the manager's budget does it matter whether it's an epr or because the the pot of money is there right to fund these events people are going to be involved in throwing out ideas and planning and coordinating regardless of what line item that sits in so i i guess i go back to our comment from the last meeting around let's have one line item right that's around community events and celebrations that gets used regardless of you know whether it's deemed parks and rec or i mean it's the community that's the overall goal the thought process behind putting this together the way it is including some money um still set aside for parks and rec was that the stuff that the manager's office would be those townwide almost everybody department is involved so you're um you're explore sx your juneteenth the the money for parks and rec that's proposed to stay in there is separate um but it goes towards explore sx if we really felt the need for that $2,900 and it was a great idea from recreation sure we would talk about it we'd look at it but the idea is more that is there a park and rec parks and rec type events that they would do like the haunted halloween walk and their Easter egg hunt or the or the spring egg hunt um uh like the national night out that the police put on that's that's still in the police department um line item so we were trying to to take that you know these little buckets of explore sx money and put them into one and calling it the community events and celebrations with juneteenth and really looking at those are probably the two you know maybe there's some flexibility in there um you know it's budgeting so it's helpful down to your point if it's five thousand for one and three thousand for other it's helpful but if it ends up being fifty five hundred and twenty five hundred still coming from that same pot of money um and so but so that twenty you know so so yeah police would still have their national night out money separate parks and rec is exploring some ideas if they if they're keep that twenty nine hundred dollars to do smaller sx parks and rec type things um and i guess my follow-up to that is if i remember correctly in the epr budget like the Easter egg hunt all of these things were broken out into individual line items do they i mean should they just have a special events line item instead of breaking it out so granularly so take the police money take the community money take the parks and rec money and just put it all into one everything events i'm specifically speaking about parks and rec okay so if they're breaking it out for you know should they have just a parks and rec events rather than breaking out this is for Easter this for Halloween this is for whatever i mean if we're doing that for more community wide events shouldn't we also be doing that within well i i think to speak accounting wise like all of these events would end up on a similar lineup in terms of presentation but in terms of you know individual budgeting the software allows us to say hey we want 500 for this event thousand for this event 500 for something we don't know yet and you know things like that but i think presentation wise you're going to end up on that singular line item within parks and rec for that their group their host of activities that they want to do i'm trying to pull up the parks and rec budget because i can't remember i don't think you broke it down that way that's why they have a breakdown where they're i might have been last year but they used to say east drag hunt and a couple other things that they that are funds that they had thrown right because it was like $800 i guess i mean approaching it from so point of you know we're trying to streamline as much as possible we're trying to break out as much as possible to you know reduce rather than add into me if it is working on ideas and possibilities um i mean couldn't that come back to us as a plan and we could use fund balance for that and then add it after it's already set up and it's an ongoing thing yeah i mean i think if there's you know uses that the board would approve you know maybe if there's an add-on event something new that comes up a new idea that's developed you know that's outside of an approved budget there's a there's always that room and flexibility to to that you know incorporate a fund balance um so you know i think that'd be for a specific event down the road if if something came up in that in that realm it's not a huge amount but it's a time where we're saying every 82 every penny matters so drawing an idea out so my my i guess my thoughts on specifically this parks and rec question there was a couple things i want to say one is i think we should focus on the number not on how the accounting is done i know on the on the explorers it's the reason that we asked for what we asked for is because it was spread around and it was really hard to see i think bringing all that together is one whether some things in one or three line items within parks and rec i think that's dan's problem from the accounting standpoint and we should just list this community event in celebration and i also wanted one of the comment on this 29 dollars came from this line item used to be 7500 for the memorial big parade which ellie had no control over it just was a complete pass through she wasn't even wasn't even involved in any of the planning or any of that so that was this is just from from ellie's temple there's new money for her um and it was reduced to 4 000 because that's the the per capita per per pretty close grand list right the grand list reduction so that so that the you know the portion that the the village was contributing to the town uh amount that went into that 7500 dollars was pulled out so this is where the 7 000 came the 4 000 came from and 11 000 was pulled out to to slide it over to the explorers six things so it would be more obviously that's where it was that actually wasn't previously funded from that account sorry he said 11 000 1100 sorry okay sorry yeah yeah sorry yeah yeah and so my mind went what and so sorry yeah 1100 so this this 2900 dollars and i i i watched ellie when we when we asked her about it and she's she said it would be wonderful to have some money that we've used to start planning events our parks and rec department has been through the ringer with co-location and the how that fell apart and i i really want to try to support those folks we can so i'm very much in favor of leaving this 2900 dollars in there and let them do as they wish with it yep um and i i you know hearing what don said about the explorers six and the opportunity for reducing costs i'm i'm i'm in line with with going to the 8 000 i'm not okay with going down as far as 7500 um and so that's that's my thinking that's like this i think you're gonna get a good return from ellie he's gonna come up with some great ideas i think and i and and just from a sense of feeling of support mm-hmm i don't want to hurt any one of our staff sounds good i just want to add one more time that i'd really like to give all of you the four thousand dollars not even at that so this question we can answer tonight do we want to take a consensus here there's a couple of questions here right one is one is how much we want to put for juneteenth and it can be separate questions because it's it's it's this point it's free money right we want to reduce that number from 8900 to what don proposed 8 000 i i agree with that i see tracing out of your head and the euthan i know you i was gonna ask again because i i forgot honestly great but what was the breakdown between sx uh excuse me explore sx and juneteenth i'm in three the cost amount yeah i'd have to what he said earlier yeah 5900 3 000 i was 5800 um 58 different events tonight and i'm double checking my spreadsheet here that we use for that uh the i'm sorry i apologize for my language i had thought that there were some parts of the money involved in that i think it might have ended up being some but it's not in the spreadsheet i put together so i'm gonna have to dig to get you a final amount but uh yeah i'm just i'm just curious i mean thousand for uh explore sx and probably about 3 000 that was that was part of what you know the conversation that we had when we when we did the budget was why was there money coming out of the out of the rec department for for these other things so i guess if if i'm if i'm understanding this right this will help me come to a consensus with with the board indeed tonight is if this is taking into community events and celebrations for let's say 8 000 and money was used last year from parks and rec cover events let's just let's just think theoretically right if we only give her 2900 was she getting any other rep in fact that went elsewhere last year or say does that make sense so each budget year has its own is its own thing she only gets 2900 she didn't you don't get leftover money it goes in the fund balance if there's any leftover money it just goes in the fund balance and it doesn't unless somebody asks for it so last year it was out of the out of 7500 that it came out of so that's 7500 because the parade went to the village went to the parade oh they had a parade last year it's the two years before that they didn't have a parade okay i'm just curious how much how much we're gonna lose out of the rec department but i guess my answer is 1100 that's that's what's the answer currently that's what's on the table again i'm just and i understand how this you know it changes everything from these others to zero and puts in this one so i didn't know i didn't see anything i didn't know if that any of these had come in from the parks and rec it just says the parks and rec 4000 includes a reference to asic experience of everything so each of them you should have to say where they came from so d con dev d con dev com dev com dev parks and rec that's that's this is worth the line with with the departments where that those line items came from when you came right but the total is about uh $13,000 so 4,000 5,000 1,000 1,000 1500 all right no so if you take each of the items in the subtracted group so there's a 300 taken out another 1500 taken out gets you to 1800 calm dev the third item is another 1,000 gets you to 2800 calm dev special programs 5,000 it's eliminated so i get you to 7800 and then this last 1100 dollars from parks and rec gets you to the 8900 that's being created in that one single line item under the town manager's budget area right so the total of all of them together is another 2900 dollars right if you include that leftover money in parks and rec yeah another 2900 8900 2900 yes so it's 13,000 okay so what i'm proposing is that the community events in the manager's budget to 8,000 leaves 2900 and yeah and parks and rec picked up on outing heads even more not against them yeah only three so we're gonna leave 2900 in parks and rec and reduce the community events celebration to 8,000 yeah but i'll go with that all right um library budget 15 uh 15,000 that used to go to 15,000 that used to go to the brown out library a couple of questions associated with that one is we could cut it completely we could say well let's let's also hit that with the same grand list and cut it back to 8,000 which would be consistent with what's been proposed in other areas where we've done that Caitlin says that she would hire additional staff to extend hours into the evening one that was what she would do with the 15,000 if it was only 8,000 one thing that we've done many times in the past when we've added new head count is to only half fund it in the first year we have it start January 1st instead of July 1st so that could be a possibility um still get the a benefit but starting six months later or we could or we could cut it completely because it's it's a tough year i don't know or we could just go with some other one with the i know Kendall you're the one that proposed putting it back and keeping it in there yeah i mean i i'll be transparent i'm a big library supporter i mean they really made a huge difference in the community during covid i mean everything else shut down and the library came up with all kinds of things to keep the community engaged and a lot of people that couldn't do anything else went to the library so and she provided a lot of information that shows you that you're really getting a good deal compared to all the other communities around i mean we're just about dead last so i see the library as being a big bang for your buck when it comes for the money that you spent that's how many thoughts i thought you're trying to get it so don i wasn't clear on what you said before so you wanted to cut it completely cut it completely this this year yeah is it yeah i uh i i agree with dawn to cut it first cost savings and if we do decide to fund it at any funding i say that we fund it at 38.6 percent because that's what we funded the rec department so interesting compared to last year we used to get the 10 the bill is 7500 and that we're given the village 15 that we'd like to give you the oh sorry we we used to give $15,000 yes yes and now we're keeping but i don't think it's fair to treat departments evenly if we decide to keep the money and run it at 38.6 percent but this is already double that though right because we cut with the the 7500 that we used to give the village was already cut back to the 4 000 but that wasn't a cut that was a proposed budget that wasn't what we used to give that wasn't what that wasn't the fiscal year's the last fiscal year's budget but you're doing it on apples and oranges comparison oh i'm taking them there 15,000 saying that that confused well we used to before the proposed budget this year we gave the village 7500 that was towards the ecstics parade in parks and rec or either town together separated we dropped it down the four thousand dollars for the proposed budget but 2900 is only 38.6 percent of the 7500 yeah but the 1100 is still there she's somewhere else yeah out of the rec department right we can we can fund the community events and celebrations at 38.6 percent for last year too if we i mean if we want to go i don't understand how we can prioritize certain departments over the other i mean what what makes one more important than the other for an event well and it's not it's not like that when the parks and rec budget for the memorial day parade that was a simple pass through parks our parks and rec never saw that money right it was just it's going into this line item and immediately going out to the city to specifically fund the memorial day parade for the town so if we're not if that money isn't going to the memorial day parade going forward it's a in addition to parks and rec it's not like we're funding them less it's that we're giving them more money to do with for parks and rec benefit for the town over and above what they would have gotten because we're losing the community event we're no longer part of the memorial day parade that's a big ever work station i mean it was from a budget standpoint in a in a in a town who pays to participate in an event just saying that looks on paper you know what i mean but we already heard that like our parks and rec staff had no involvement in that event to begin with so why do we why did you guys approve the budget last year to pay them seven five hundred dollars because we were being buddy buddy with our with our third okay town i guess i'm satisfied with that and it's the same basically isn't that 15 000 for the library i went to the village the library never really saw it anyway right is that right exactly the same situation that's why i have some concern about funding the whole thing sure i also need to say that my wife's a library trustee so they not weigh in on this question i remember the year that it was from the floor that it was voted to increase it and it was was um passed by a majority of people present originally the people majority of the people present were city residents now so which is just a bit of history but anyway so tracy do you have a thought on whether this should be funded or by how much or i'm i'm gonna try not to go off on too much of a narrative but i've actually been involved in a capstone project which calculated and essentially defended the value of libraries within our local communities libraries are and should continue to be the hubs of our community they are an equalizer for underprivileged and socio-economic disadvantages i do think that we should fund at some level but i don't think 15 000 should stay in fair enough i would do the percentage of the per capita that sounds fair there's a proposal to the eight eight thousand ish it wants to cut it mark i'd say 5798 but it's just me they just lost me all right you just lost me with these numbers i'm sorry don there was only one thing that i paid attention to in school when it was math no i don't know what you're so you're basing it you're i'm basing it on the percentage that we that we cut the the parks and rec based on what is your percentage that you take 38.6 percent of the level of the whole part of the funding that was previously there at 15 000 is is uh how much it's five five thousand seven hundred ninety dollars it's the same way we funded the would you compromise it five thousand and we say five thousand is good by me i mean i don't want to cut anything this year and i really wish we didn't cut anything this year but i'm just i'm just throwing it out there when i when i brought this up and when i brought up the parks and rec thing compared to you know the way we're funding the community events and celebrations i can if we're gonna i just i just want to spit this out and then i'll be quiet for rest of night because everybody's probably heard enough of me but if we're going to look at this community as a whole and we're going to make sacrifices i don't and i'm not saying this is a biased way that anybody has any intention of funding anything differently but i did if we really come to the senses of cutting things i don't want to see one thing lost i don't want to see one department lose employees i don't want to see a vehicle get sold or anything like that i want to see even decreases where it can be common ground and sustainable for the departments that we're talking about and you know that's just just a little bit of fairness i know it's i know we're all being fair and we're all together i just think that you know we should really look at everything as a whole and say we're gonna start making cuts and when we're making cuts you know i know situationals different with with let's say we're talking about the police budget or they're you know plow and snow this winter i understand that there's that there's a level of need there but immunity involvement and and you know extra curriculars i wouldn't cut one before i cut another no i could just add just i just want to add some clarity we keep saying the word cut we've actually presented a budget that has a certain amount for the library already the proposal here is really for a $15,000 addition to that original budget so you know we're not talking about a further cut or a different level we're talking about we're considering an addition to the original budget presentation just for clarity yeah and we are looking at this item because this was originally given right to the brown out library so this is the five thousand seven hundred ninety dollar increase on the budget as it stands today yes this would be the original proposal that you saw right yeah i don't support any you know i don't support any increases i'm talking i was always proposed i was confused let me just clarify real quick i was just confused that i thought that this $15,000 was in the budget that we saw no it's not kendall suggested we put it back in so this is a discussion of whether to put it back in and or how much yeah and so they're not sure yeah it's in the same logic thank you parts and rec money or anything is that it was originally passed through they didn't see it at all and that you could keep a portion of it to benefit the town residents so i would yeah i i'm sorry i went down that hole so deep but i just don't want to cut anything that's in the budget but i don't want to add anything that's not in the budget because we can't take out and if we do cut things that are in the budget i'd like to cut them fairly a little bit from here and here and here and here i don't want to take everything from one spot so so whoever you want to leave the leave leave the budget as proposed to you want to increase and increase it my wife's a library trust i'm happy taking the $15,000 that's what you're saying i'm sorry i'm happy with what i originally said not this year yeah with that explanation and conversation i'm actually leaning in that direction as well but i do think that this should be revisited in the future yeah yeah yeah right so this is like no 15 no matter i think we have a lot of catch up to play next year with other entries budget you know it's not i just you know hit the c go go hammer on everything and maybe we'll hear some public comment i think the highway question we'll see more uh uh capital budget i see i'm finished i think i don't think there's anything else at this number by the it um fun bell yeah all right there's a question of whether you to use i of unbalance to because there was a we were told that there's a a hump in the amount of equipment that needs to be purchased this year because of equipment that was a purchase during covid and they experienced a lot of use needs to be replaced as a result of there being a pandemic i asked the question and what does that prompt us to consider that a one-time event that we could use or should use um unbalance for the recommendation from stanfiston not do that but then to intend to just smear the next set of replacements out over a slightly longer period of time in order to accommodate that so i don't know if anybody has any so that doesn't impact routes proposed budget so it wouldn't it wouldn't uh either way wouldn't impact the budget's question of whether you add revenue in there from fund balance to offset it to take it out of the tax tax because presumably you're not going to have to buy this much equipment next year that's that's that's why i kind of consider it a little bit of being a one-time event that it's a reaction to the use of equipment through through the pandemic and hopefully we're not going to have a reoccurring and so that the expense for this particular line item should be smaller next year rather than increasing the taxes to fund a higher should we cut it off using a fund balance to pay a portion of it so that it looks more like it's it doesn't look like it's much of a decrease next year i mean it wouldn't affect the you know you don't add it into the the taxes you need to collect this year well staff didn't recommend using it so that's probably a good idea yeah just the other thing to consider is um the budget that we presented had six hundred thousand dollars in fund balance proposed to be used as a conversation we had later on is that the right amount and general fund balance to the general bottom line this option could not be or somewhere else do you have any thoughts on that or are you going to just leave it alone i see yeah okay all right all right that's right as proposed uh lampford monitoring god went down c-click fix we're not double counting do we have a number on that as far as they get a lot of use out of that and c-click um yeah i know they i know they like it and appreciate it um beyond that anecdote i can't tell you if it's there's a dollar amount or the number of uses they get or tickets they get but it is something that they be highly of and is valuable to them okay and we did get the um past year's fund balance memo we'll get an update on that sometime in december so we'll presumably have that before we go make adjustments based on that if we want to or need to redress the community event thing parks and rye we don't have any influence over front porch forums invoicing model i'll just just throw that front porch forum out there is it they're starting to look a little bit like sx rescue in that they don't tell you what they uh oh yeah they're not even they're they're a they're a for-profit company so i don't know if they're privately owned or if they're yeah that's not that's i always think that's not a thing where they're asking for donations but they're not a price internet it's going up you know price internet it's going up uh i'm just kidding free farm insurance and you you mentioned that before there's going to be more discussion with the lcp on that there's a question that should the insurance be sharing or partly part of the fund by the city the question we're asking yeah part of what um we're going to do when we sit down with the lcp is just go through our own insurance policy and see are we missing anything are they charging us for the 99 acres as opposed to 50 acres and just kind of do a sort of a cleanup sort of a review sort of they um do we have the right vehicles is their savings here savings their adjustments here and there so that's part of that okay and i'm not seeing any other items here that we can make decisions on anything else anybody wants to bring i'm gonna ask under under consideration other considerations if the senior man the city decides to share it for the whole year wouldn't that increase in revenue go into parks and recs budget because that's where the funding comes from it would go into the senior senior part of her right i'm just trying to make easton feel a little happier if there's a possibility that we're gonna donate a bunch of land that's put on the biggest parks and rec event ever this year so i'm the kitty fair with the choo choo train right that's that's that's what the police department is so i'm just picking having heard all of that discussion are there any comments from the public the budget so disappointing that we're not here at all i'm starting to think you should tell everybody i want to up the budget by a million dollars so you get some people that started commenting i called people and sending emails and talking neighbors just thank you all for your hard work on it yes thank you thank you thank you can i ask a question about the whole budget workshop that we just did have we done anything spectacular for uh advertisement of what we're doing like i know we post the same thing everybody gets to see weekly but i guess my question is is there anything we can do more to get some feedback so there was a front porch form was that when i just recently that i thought was actually pretty exceptional talking about explain these are the opportunities you had to talk about the budget you wouldn't that's all the facebook posts facebook posts about each department i was just gonna speak up that that's great putting every budget in there on the page i mean that should generate some comments i mean now people can really focus on one particular interest so that's a good idea i really expected that you would have some comments yeah want me to actually i almost hate to say this but email that i sent you yesterday yeah people don't know where they live oh yeah hear that in passing i gotta i somebody said to me oh the town tax increase isn't going to affect me i'm out in the center isn't it and i said center i don't know where you live a sixth center is absolutely the town find like the center of it and i don't know i don't know you know we had this issue with businesses that insisted they were in in the city and started collecting the local options that right it's uh it's a it's a it's a i don't know how we need to send a map i don't know i don't know how we have a map yeah the regional planning commission worked with tammy and nests junction and we have a map on our website um you can plug in your address see where you're in and we went with the elections too but i would hope with all those people that showed up the vote now they know where they are in the town so that might have helped a little but i don't know oh it's sort of related to budget but it's also in the reading file so i just wanted to make a comment around the town coffee talks i noticed it said 11 a.m on a wednesday um we may want to give some thought to maybe have a having a saturday morning session to just get a little bit different participation no weekdays can be tough not to yeah we'll also get invited to a town meeting tv well and you might have to do that one because it might not do as a strong word you may be asked to because historically the chair is um valid for reelection we don't have the budget oops a little sharp in my pencil we feel most of it would work with you on that and make sure the power point looks good and that you're comfortable and greg goes with greg me we were there last year we're here yeah so he was yeah i'm completely excited with our meeting again so there's there's still hope there so that's another opportunity is we it's a it's a calling show people can call in and ask questions i don't know how often people actually call in can i ask a question about the town meeting there's gonna be should i wait till combar um probably wait so save it yeah budget really yeah and go ahead kind of no it's not no it's not it's not it's town meeting related i'll save it uh i see patty davis you have your hand up yeah i was just listening in when you were talking about um people not knowing where they live and don i agree with you and you know working at the polls you know during the election and everything the first thing i had to ask instead of their name was what street do you live on because people did not have a clue um whether they were in district 23 or 24 or you know is sx junction is part of sx junction part of sx town now because of the redistricting and how's that all going to work with the taxes and you know asking me all these questions and unfortunately people don't come to the select board meetings or you know we need more participation definitely and i think by voting by ballot and the fact we don't have the sx retorter in print a reporter in print anymore having a lot of older people especially living around here there's no newspaper so they have no idea what's going on and they don't go on front porch forum i mean i donate to front porch forum because it's about you know i like it but a lot of people don't look at it and they have a hard time even getting around on the website the sx town website to get into this meeting this is what i hear from the public just fyi so thanks very bad okay so uh any other comments on the budget so even what we've talked about i don't think we are ready to adopt the municipal budget yet or do you have comments you want to make uh just comments to make that sounds like you're not ready to adopt um i did put in and it could get some last-minute stuff trying to get the packet out and said that um you may finalize the number and formally and then more in the public hearing can be pointed me and this was trying to i was looking at last year's stuff and that's how we kind of did it last year but tami reminded me that in the charter it says that you do adopt it and then you want the public hearing so make sure we get the process dialed in for when you are ready to adopt but don't necessarily go off of the memo that's in your packet so i guess looking yeah we commented on this earlier we have two meetings uh in december and by the final meeting in december we need to know what budget number we want to go with so we can have two public hearings in january and then a meeting to warn the uh the the warning needs to be within the 30 to 40 day window prior to uh town meeting i think after tonight though i think we're all a lot closer then yeah yeah some of the the questions that came up the i think the certainly the capital is going to be another big discussion and whether you know how how much of a capital tax increased to ask for will be another big discussion that will at that point which will be a town meeting or a question for the town meeting too the other things to can consider are you don't have to have two public hearings so if you and you can add additional meetings to your agenda schedule so if you're not ready to adopt the budget by the end of december you can either one or both of those things we could also do it on another night that might attract more people too we've done that before both of our meetings in in january and anything all right i was gonna ask greg tell manager if you are comfortable that the budget as it's proposed is pretty close to what you will need you're sure there's no place that's you're questionable and thought maybe a little more here or as i know you guys sharpened your pencils really good i was very impressed by the budget but you know i mean um we did and it's it's lean um but we this is what we think we need to operate the keep the services that the town's used to like i said when i first introduced it any of those buffers are gone the overtime the um is the big one um um you know if your fire calls are higher than we've gotten in the past those types of things are done and you're going to go over budget so i think that's you know i'm comfortable we can operate on this um i think you're comfortable with the risk that we may go over and have to dip into fund balance or maybe not have fund balance i think it's you know okay tough compromise but i think it's a i just wanted to make sure you had a chance to really express that yes thank you for that you know you you keep all the uh strings in play but thank you thank you thanks so i guess the big questions that we still have are uh i you know the response to and from s6 rescue that i expect things will move a lot there but that's a question that we still are looking at another one is the insurance question i think those are the two big ones that i see are there any other but see your van i'll see see your van okay you know that's a that's a that's another good one to make sure we account for there's a couple of puts and takes that we've seen the the the um if we can see the not i don't know i don't want you to redo the whole budget shoot for sure but at least you know with the the change the the correction in the police revenue um so we see what the final number is we have the puts and takes we little puts and takes we've talked about we're meeting next week with sarah and um she yeah she sent over the number i said that's about that 22 and a half percent but just because there's a few little weeks here in there i didn't want to put into writing exactly what it was but um yeah next week we're meeting we'll make these latest adjustments and be able to give you the latest number for december 5th and then the other the other big discussion is with how how this inter interlinks with the capital plan do we think the recommendation is not to add more capital transfers but good to figure out how to find the other part that's part of my question coming up all right so given given that we're not adopting anything we don't we don't want to warn any public hearings either so consent oh no no we added the november 7th minutes and so the the issue there was that there's a we came back into session after executive session and made a motion to um to authorize the manager to execute a lease in management agreement with the city and tree fire management group and don made the motion and ethan seconded that passed unanimously yep because we're here any other changes to that okay i would move to approve the minutes from november 7th 2022 without addition second thank you tracy thank you don any further discussion favor please say aye aye i pose motion passes five zero moving on to consent make the motion we accept the consent agenda is presented with the changes second thank you don thank you ethan we did pull november 7th out so there's we don't know that's why i said with the changes we already yeah okay oh right yeah well whatever we've yeah no matter okay any further discussion about consent all those in favor please say aye aye i posed okay consent approve uh passes unanimously and now we're on to reading file and ethan you had a priority well i was thinking of many times that came up in my mind tonight but i couldn't ask because it was the budget was are we certain about any other business being able to be done besides the forevote because we only change to vote the ballot by uh excuse me to vote the budget by australian ballot so there's um yeah the budget is the only thing new that you can do by ballot the election of officers stuff like that is always my ballot um to do everything all future business by ballot you have to have a forevote at town meeting so i was going to put that on a future agenda to see if you want to have that discussion of putting that on the ballot to have town conduct all future business by australian ballot thanks because my question was going to be can we change capital tax without having a forevote uh getting some feedback on vlct from that which i need to digest i had asked and then got sidetracked with other things um and they weren't they needed some clarification from me as well so with vlct and bill ellis we're going to answer that question through the charter i want to make sure you're asking the answer the right question we can't unit by ourselves no i'm saying uh i'm saying uh town you know town meeting can add town meeting can make that proposal can any other business happen besides or i guess all business would happen at town meeting besides voting on the budget is my question which would make it a a bore i can admit it would have to be warned on the warning for town meeting ethan okay so if you were going to have a discussion and their proposed tax capital tax increase it have to be on that have to be part of the warning right not something you could bring from the floor and let whoever's there that night vote on it have to be warned and then it could be changed on the floor if it was one percent or two percent it could be changed on the floor in that manner like the budget if you're voting if you warn it to vote on the total from the floor yes it could be changed at that point they can't just bring it to the floor no yeah it has to be warned right you can't just write it up so watch this i'm just theoretically trying to understand but if you put it on the on our town meeting for uh uh uh all other business and maybe we didn't do the capital tax or did those would just have to be on and then they would have to be introduced from before yeah by the by the community yeah what uh we would the the discussion we need to have is whether we want to have a question on on the on the floor whether to move all business to Australian ballot it would not apply the very next day well no i understand that the next year right i understand that i just didn't know if except we were trying to do a capital tax change bring up and act on a question that's not on the warning right it could it's public to be heard at that point just somebody with an idea right so i'm sorry if i'm misunderstanding a little bit so we can't change its capital tax this year yes we yeah well i don't you know we'd have to look at when it would be effective we'd probably be effective in 2024 so we'd probably be the the september um if we did it it would have to be possibly have to be and we would have to make your very clear as to there's there's there's the the question of the number right and that number would be changed from the floor right so if we propose a four cent capital tax it changes it to two can somebody it's already at two right now the changing it to two is essentially saying no to because i'm the the current tax would stay in place i hope i believe but if the if they vote to change it to three and a half you know if there's a proposal from who amend the motion to the to amend the question i think that can be done but we'd have to act i don't know yeah but i would have to say that you're going to get a better result for your money if you put it all on put that on a ballot on a ballot because you get what and now that we don't even actually have that much business that happens at town meeting if you get a hundred people you're going to be lucky if you really want to hear from the town it needs to be where they can go actually vote on it oh on the same side of the coin i know you could have a hard time getting those hundred people to vote on a ballot i was just curious nothing i was just curious how this would transpire in the future and i sales my curiosity for now until we hear the legal side of things so yeah so we didn't warn that we were going to have a discussion about this we'll have to have another discussion about it anyway yeah so under the reading final i'd like to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving not only this board but all the town staff also thank you thank you so that we can move on here i'm sorry we still have exactly the essentially going to scroll i think the uh the $50,000 uh donation to the sx police department is exciting that was nice yeah that's awesome and the the stipulation is that the department decides how it gets spent i think that's an awesome thing and like to thank the folks that you know unfortunately that sorry for their loss but thank you for the donation are you ready yeah i moved it's sorry ready i moved it to select board enter into executive session to discuss the proposed public official appointment in accordance with one gsa section 313 a3 and to include the town manager thank you don thank you that ethan yes yes thank you any further discussion those in favor please say aye aye okay do we have and we will be coming back but do we have enough that you're just the one that one yep because we did the other two without and right i forgot to have the discussion before we voted but we can do that that scott you don't need to say but we will be coming back to if we come to a decision on the moderator coming back and making no point yeah i thought you were going to say the adjourn word no now yeah i i completely forgot that me doing executive session so i was trying to move the reading file along so we can keep going shouldn't have made shouldn't allow so much discussion so i don't i'm sorry it's fine it's how people learn people have to learn i mean yeah so who knows well they might not have known that either so it's fine