 Paul Gillis, your moderator. And we're gonna be going through all the articles tonight. We have guests to speak to some of them. There are 27 articles. I, we begin though, by, if you can focus on the little screen that says town of Berlin, and you can see the flag there. Let's start with the traditional Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Now it's, you know, I always have to go through this routine of saying if this is for town voters and not for others. But since we have many guests from many different organizations, may I assume with no objection that we may allow non-residents to speak? I don't hear any objections. What I would ask is, even if you are a resident, that before you speak, you give your name. And if you're not a resident, then you give your name and your town residents. So we are, the first article is on elections and the first office to be elected is moderator. And at this point, I would ask anyone who is a candidate to come forward and speak. I am a candidate, and I suppose traditional rules should say that I should turn this over to someone else, but I'd like the job again. I've enjoyed it. This would be the 21st year I've done it. But when someone wants to take over this job, I'm the first one to help them get there, and I'll even train you. So all right, number two, or one select board member for a three-year term, are there any candidates here that would like to speak toward that? Hearing none, I'm sorry. I'm Brad Town, I'm running for the three-year term. I hope to be able to serve town again. Thank you very much. Thank you, Brad. The next is the two select board members for a one-year term. Are there any candidates who are present who would like to speak to that? I would, Mr. Moderator. I'm Bill Wolfe, good evening, everyone. As most of you know, I was your police chief for 12 years, from 2008 until 2020. Just over a year ago, I relocated to Berlin, and I would love the opportunity to continue serving this community as a member of the select board. I had nearly 35 years of a municipal government experience, and I also have four years of prior select board experience. I would appreciate your support on March 1st. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Bill. Anyone else? Good evening, this is Joe Staub. And I have been in the community since 2009. I've been on the fire department for 13 years. And I'd be excited to give to the town more than just as a responder, but in the municipal arena. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other candidates? Then let's go to article two. This is Shell the Town Appropriate 3,807,810 dollars for necessary town expenses for the period July 1st, 2022, through June 30th, 2023. Is there any member of the select board or perhaps Vince Conti who would like to address this or before we get to questions? This is Vince. I'm happy to speak to it, along with the board. If there are any specific questions, I'd be happy to try to answer those. And if there are some that I can't answer right away, I will get you an answer and get back to it. Whoever has that question. Erin, are there questions on the town budget? I don't hear anyone, so shout out if you have a thought here. Article three is the longest read of the night and I only have to do it once because we're not voting on it, but it's Shell the Town, collect its real and personal property taxes, defray the expenses of the town for the period July 1st, 2022, through June 30th, 2023. Installments, one fourth of the taxes to be due by delivery or by US Postal Service Postmark, no private post will meet your postmarks. Honor before August 15th, 2022. One fourth of the taxes due honor before November 15th, 2022. One fourth of the taxes due honor before February 15th, 2023. And one fourth due honor before May 15th, 2023 with an 8% penalty and a 1% per interest or portion thereof to be charged for late payment of any installment. Any questions on article three, the collection of the taxes? But let's go on to article four, Shell the Town grant as the continuation of the full property tax exemption for a period of one year to the capital city grange number 469, property located at 6612 Vermont Route 12 in exchange for free use of the property by residents and minimum of two times per month. Is there anyone here from the grains that can speak to us before we start with questions? Yes, I am here. I'm Ken sports. I'm the president of the capital city grange. I'm very happy to be here to answer any questions and tell you anything you'd like to know. I don't want to tell you how to, what to say, but in the past you perhaps you've told us how many people used it last year. Yes, we'll be happy to do that. The pandemic has been hard on all the uses of the hall as you can imagine. So for the year from March of 2020 to about March of 2021, we had very little usage by the winners or other people. Since March of 2021, we've had that for you. 23 different uses in the time even through the Omicron surge. So we're back up to about two rentals for rentals or uses by Berlin residents or organizations and which we're very happy about. We always hope that this one will get out and that most people will want to use the hall. We've had people use it for Thanksgiving feasts for an extended family. The moors, servicing, meetings, town or not, organizations within the town, nonprofit, and just a wide variety of different things. In addition, we provide services and rentals that aren't only for building families or organizations, but which are certainly open to all people from central Vermont. The repertoire of dance classes, church services, day-times, women's choral group, there's a wide variety of different groups that call the capital city's rain town. Thanks. That's it. That gives you some idea. You're so comfortable where we'd like. I would recommend that anybody who wants to see our calendar and see the variety of groups that use the hall, check out the range website, capitalcitygrainge.org. And there's a calendar tab there. And you can see when there's time open, if you want to schedule something there and all the contact information is there to contact our rentals. I'm ready. It's muted. Are you guys on video? Thank you, Tim. Those at the town office, you should probably mute yourself because we can hear you whispering to each other. Well, it's a talking. Oh, I asked if it was muted because I wanted to say, yeah. Sorry about that. Can you still hear us, Paul? Oh, we can hear you too well. That's the problem. Do you have any, who has questions for Tim on the capital range? Anyone? Mr. Moderator, I have a question. What would the tax bill be if they were not exempt? Tim, can you answer that? Or should we turn to Diane or someone? It would be about $7,000, I don't know the exact number. Any other questions? Yeah. And as part of that exemption, a town of Berlin or Berlin residents are allowed to use the hall free of charge up to twice a month, is that correct? There's no limit, there's no limit. There's no limit, okay. We have been aiming for at least twice per month and we've been achieving that even after the huge surge of the pandemic. We would be happy to have more use in the town of Berlin and present. Got it. Thank you very much, Tim. Any other questions for Tim? Mr. Moderator, we have Mr. Sawyer with his hand raised. I just want to speak on behalf of the Grange. I'm also on the, not just on the slide board, but I'm a member of the Weston's Mobile Home Co-op and the Grange allows us to use their hall for the 80 residents we have there for our meetings twice a month. And I just want to say we appreciate that. Okay. Anything else on the Grange? Here I am. I'm presenting, Tim. Pardon me. Thank you for presenting, Tim. Yeah, thank you. Article five, shall the town appropriate $365,276 to the Berlin Volunteer Fire Department for payment of necessary expenses from July 1st, 2022 through June 30th, 2023. And Keith, are you there? Or is there someone there to speak for the volunteer department? Yes, Joe Stobb is going, is the also the president and then deputy chief on the department and he is going to speak on the budget. Thank you. Okay. So yes, Mr. Moderator is John Stobb for the fire department. So this year we do have an increase in the budget. And then the areas of the increase are based off of planning for the future, if we could see it that way. Our capital replacement, we did increase that up $10,000. It's running right now $30,000 a year. That is that capital replacement. A lot of people think of it as just the trucks. It's not just trucks, it's also the roofs. It's the replacement of equipment such as maybe a furnace, the big ticket items that we need to plan for. We are also looking to staff the station on weekends where people will be doing there, doing some administrative work as well as some light maintenance to trucks and equipment and some trainings and to be there available for fire calls. We do have an increase on our communication line item and that's our radios and pagers. It's something that we struggle with as far as even getting the supplier to have these units available for us. We've placed an order and we're still somewhere around four or five months out before we can even get our equipment that we've purchased, I'm gonna say over six months ago. The other increase to the budget is AEDs. The AEDs will be placed. We do have some which are getting up in age and can't be maintained or stay in service. So we're looking to replace a couple of those. They are not necessarily that it, they're not that expensive but still expensive enough where we have to phase in the new ones in and the old ones out and that's gonna take a couple years. Would you define the AEDs? Excuse me? You use some initials to describe this thing but I don't know what it is. I'll give Keith. Keith? The AED is an automated external defibrillator. It's what we use during cardiac arrests if we're the first on scene to a heart attack. Let's move from there. Thank you. I'll give them some air of time. All right. Anything else, Joe? No, that's it. Okay. Questions for the fire department, for Joe or for Keith? If someone is talking, I'm not hearing. I can't understand you. So I'm sorry I have to go on. If you had a question, I bet Joe would take a call at the station and answer your questions. Maybe that's the best way to do that. Sorry about that audio. Article six, shall the town appropriate $34,188 to the Kellogg-Hubert Library? Dan or Carolyn or both? Yes, I am here and I'll back up with Carolyn. Hi, hello everyone. I'm Dan Green. I'm a Berlin resident and the trustee for the Kellogg-Hubert Library representing the town of Berlin. And some of you may have known me from my 30 years as a school librarian at U32. Of course I've since retired. Carolyn Brennan, the co-director of the library is also here in attendance to help me answer any questions you have. I'm here today of course to speak to supporting the Kellogg-Hubert Library funding request. The library is asking $34,188. And this represents, based on the 2020 census, just $12 per voter. And by the way, the state average is $35 per voter. Last year, Berlin residents checked out 5,958 items which include DVDs, books, et cetera. And plus a great many digital checkouts. For the math folks in the audience, the average price of a hardcover book is $25. And if we multiply that by the number of checkouts, it comes up to an excess of 148,000. And all we are asking for Kellogg-Hubert is 34,188. So it's really quite a bargain. And just some talking points, just some things that you should be aware of. The library has had a great year. Even in the pandemic, the circulation and program numbers are just about the same as pre-pandemic and the numbers are going up. And that the library has been fully open for the last year, excuse me, since April. And if you come into the library, the only changes you'll see are that masks are required and there's a reduced capacity for the meeting rooms. So all the programs are virtual. They've continued on through the pandemic, but the library expects to go back to outdoor in-person programs this spring and this summer. And the library has thousands of digital resources for our Berlin residents. People haven't looked up streaming video or digital magazines and e-books. They're all available online. So people can access them without going into the library if they should choose. So questions for me or for Carolyn? Anyone have a question? Can I speak up, Paul? Corinne. I hate to do this, but I'm not agreeing with your math. We have about 2050 on our checklist, which that doesn't equal $12 per voter, more like 16 or $17 per voter. It's because it's not, excuse me, I'm sorry. It's not per voter, it's per capita. So it's for the whole population of the town. Ah, okay. I was gonna say there's something wrong with those numbers. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Moderator, I have a question. Go right ahead. Dan, you said there were 958 items checked out or books checked out. How many residents checked out items? Meaning, was it a dozen people that checked out the 958 or are we talking 200 or are we talking 400 people? How many people from Berlin are using the library? So I can speak to that. Carolyn hopefully has that information for us. I do. First of all, it's 5,958 items. Okay, thank you. Yep, and we have 478 active patrons from Berlin right now. And so that means those are people who have checked out items within this past calendar year. Thank you. The other questions for the library. Article seven shall the town appropriate $20,000 to the Montpelier Senior Activity Center. Cameron or Dan and Marta. Hi, my name is Cameron Niedermeyer. Mr. Moderator, is that right if I go first? Of course. All right, awesome. Thank you. My name is Cameron Niedermeyer. I'm the Assistant City Manager for the City of Montpelier. And one of my, the perks of my job is I get to oversee the community resource center. And that's sort of our departments that include the senior center. So I wanted to share a little bit about the senior center, what we've done this past year, what you can expect as a Berlin resident and sort of why our ask is what it is this year. And then Dan and Marta, Canberra, who are valued members of the senior center and also Berlin voters will be sharing a little bit about their personal relationship with the senior center. So I just wanna sort of drive home for everyone that our mission at the senior center is to enhance the quality of life for older adults in our area and our community through opportunities that develop all of you. So the physical, the mental, cultural and social aspects of your life. We hope that our center is welcoming and flexible. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we really turned on ahead and continued to still be a vital experience for folks, including the residents of Berlin by providing feast meals on wheels to a good amount of folks in your community directly through pickup meals, direct services, referrals and making sure we have classes that were affordable and available online to keep people engaged throughout the pandemic. So we really pivoted hard and made sure people still got the services they were expecting from the senior center throughout COVID-19. Talking about feast, that's our biggest thing for Berlin is we serve Berlin residents in our feast program. And that is our meals on wheels organization inside the city of Montpelier and the senior center. An exciting thing that we did in the last year is bring that service in-house. So we used to sort of contract out for meal provisions. So somebody else cooks the meals. We've brought that inside. And so now we have a chef inside making food every day for folks receiving meals on wheels, making sure it is the most nutritious and delicious meal they could possibly get. So our labor and food costs have gone up and that is directly in response to the pandemic. It's really changed food costs out there. A lot of y'all have seen that directly in our grocery stores. Food is just more expensive right now. And so it takes more funds to provide the same service which is why our ask was a little more this year. I wanna say that we served over 2,500 meals to Berlin residents last year and we served at least 60 Berlin residents which is up from 47 from last year too. So for the previous year. So we're just serving more people. I can tell you since our switch to feast and having our chef inside and in-house we've been getting far more referrals to our services. We're getting intakes every day when it used to be a weekly occurrence. And so people are really catching on that this is a service that you can get and that it's great. So that's something that we would love to continue to get your support. So we really hope and welcome to serve more of you in the coming year. So just connect with us. Let us know what you were looking for. We're going back to a lot of in-person classes with some precautions. And we also still offer our hybrid and online classes. So thank you for considering our request for $20,000 to support our feast meals on wheels delivery to your community, our curbside pickup meals and other affordable programs like our classes that really serve all types of you like our physical classes and our mental enrichment classes. Just really thank you for that. Our total budget for this upcoming year is almost $700,000. So our request from Berlin is less than 2% of that. So really just in total thank you for considering our request. And so I'll sort of turn it over after a lot of rambling there to Dan and Marta and let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, Cameron, Dan and Marta. Marta, you're muted. Okay, can you hear me now? Yes, that's fine. Okay, thank you. We'd like to strongly support the senior center and we have been members of the senior center for many, many years. One of the biggest and best things that happen at the Montpelier Center is the fact that they have a live band and that we could dance every single Tuesday and get our exercise that way. So it's not only with the wellness classes that I particularly have attended even during the pandemic because we were able to do it via Zoom. The senior center offers so many opportunities not only for wellness, but they have painting, they have computer classes, they have anything that the seniors really want to have and take advantage of. So we strongly urge you to support this request that MSAC has put forward. We realize that costs have increased. Yes, our costs probably have increased but very minimally in terms of classes and we hope that pretty soon the in-house orchestra or the band will be able to resume their activities because we were there every Tuesday to maybe to get our exercise and to provide a little bit of service to the people who were there. Thank you, Marla. Any questions for Cameron or Marta or Dan relating to the senior center? Okay, thank you. Article eight, shall the Buttown appropriate $10,920 to the Green Mountain Transit. And I believe Jamie Smith may be here. Yeah, good evening, everyone. My name's Jamie Smith. I'm the director of marketing and planning for Green Mountain Transit. And I just came to talk a little bit about what service to the town of Berlin. Last year, GMT served 1,717 trips to the community members in Berlin. With the addition of those special E&D and Medicaid trips, we did have some fixed route service that also benefits folks in the town of Berlin. The city commuter and the city midday route did roughly 37,000 fixed route trips in FY21. The Berry Hospital Hill did 24,000 trips. The Northfield Community Shuttle did 430 trips. And in January of 2021, GMT launched a new service called MyRide by GMT, which is, you can think of it as sort of Uber for public transportation where folks are able to schedule a public transit ride on their schedule. And it will go from within a service bubble of 12 and a half miles in Montpelier, Berlin, and just right on the outskirts of Berry. So folks can use that service at a time that's most convenient for them instead of relying on an hourly fixed route schedule that might not work for folks. So I will note that this is a level funding request. It's not an increase in funding this year. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Are there any questions for Jamie on the green mount transit question? Oh, someone? Karim. Karim. Could you tell us a little bit more about the MyRide? And I know it's probably really hard to say as far as being during the pandemic, but as far as how people are adjusting to that, instead of having an hourly schedule where you know that you can catch the bus for last minute plans or regular plans as opposed to needing to make a call to schedule it. Sure, a majority of folks are adjusting fairly well to that service. I'd say 75% of folks are using it in an on-demand nature, meaning they don't pre-schedule their trips more than a couple of hours in advance. In all of last year, we did 28,000 rides on MyRide service. 16,000 of those were for Berlin residents. And it's not without its challenges, of course. All new services have a breaking-in period. But I would say more than half of folks call into our call center at GMT. There's a passenger app, and then there's the ability to call in and schedule your ride through our call center. And a majority of folks who are using the Montpelier Hospital Hill or some of the other services that MyRide replaced were calling in and scheduling deviations anyway. So it's not completely a sort of foreign service. I think a lot of folks just shifted their habits, and they're calling to schedule their MyRide versus calling to schedule their deviation. Could I get one more piece of clarification on that? Could you clarify what parts of Berlin that residents can participate in that? I'm thinking it follows some of what the old set roots were, but I'm really not positive. Yeah, so the MyRide service actually replaced the Montpelier Hospital Hill route and sort of a three-quarter mile buffer. So instead of having a set direction right now, it's a sort of a geo-fence. And so it's hard to tell exactly what address is where that line draws. But it does serve a fair amount of Berlin. So if you're familiar with the old Montpelier Hospital Hill route, it's roughly that plus three-quarters of a mile around that. So it goes in and around smaller neighborhoods now. It gets people more door-to-door service, so they don't actually have to walk out to a fixed route bus that's just following a linear trip. Any other questions for the transit? If not, thank you. Thank you for your time. Article 9, shall the town appropriate $10,000 to the Berlin Corner Cemetery Association. And the article includes a note, Cemetery Not Town Owned. And let's see. Matt Fitzgerald, is he here? I am. Can you hear me? I can. So I'm Matthew Fitzgerald, the vice president of the Berlin Cemetery Commission. I'm a member and resident of Williston, but my grandparents are buried in the cemetery. My dad is buried there in my nephew. The president, Jeff Mugford, Berlin resident. Linda Mullen joined the board two years ago as our treasurer. And we were grateful for that as she works for an accounting firm. And we really have a good picture. She's got a really great picture. You can speak in detail about our finances. John Boucher is also, he's our secretary. Linda Sands, longtime board member is a trustee. And our sexta and the person that we hire to run and maintain the cemetery is Gerald Stoff, who was a Berlin resident. We're requesting the $10,000 to assist in the Berlin Cemetery Commission smoothly running the cemetery due to volatile and unreliable investments as our only funding source besides selling lots. This cemetery is the only open cemetery of the 11 cemeteries in Berlin, which means it's the only cemetery that people can be buried in. There are three types of cemetery by Vermont statue, religious, municipal, and private, which is what the Berlin Cemetery is. The board members are volunteers and were not paid. We hire Jerry to maintain the cemetery, deal with loud owners, be there on weekends for funerals, grave openings and closings, selling lots and so forth. If we didn't have him there, when people are in their need to have someone buried or planned for that, we'd be chasing volunteers, which would be frustrating and difficult. Having the sex in there as opposed to having a mowing contract as far as the maintenance is more cost effective. In the past, and some of the towns have run into this, Calis, I know, used to pay a high school or a college kid to mow the lawn. But by Vermont law now, and they're sticking to it, if you pay someone over $600, you have to consider them an employee unless they meet a true contractor threshold, which means the cost, our salary, unemployment, and workplace compensation. Last year, we had 34 grave openings, 29 of those being cremations, five were full burials. And part of that, it's a little bit higher than normal, but part of that was due to backlog from COVID where people couldn't have services and they pushed it into last year. So we were very grateful that we did have Jerry up there representing us and doing a fine job taking care of the cemetery and taking care of families that needed to have their loved ones buried there. The state laws and them enforcing the mowing contract versus whether it's a contract or not and having a higher employee is what's forced it there. The money that we've received from the town the last couple of years has been very helpful in making sure that we're able to keep our head above water and maintain the business of running the cemetery in the town. We approached the town in 2019 because we were starting to be concerned about our finances. And we agreed with Dana at the time that we would never come to the town if everything was depleted and so we can't do this anymore. So this 10,000 that we've asked for has helped us and has provided the shot in the arm that we need. And we're hoping that it will be voted in again this year. If you have any specific questions concerning that budget or whatever, I can get Linda in touch with you or you can get in touch with Linda for specifics. But we're grateful for the assistance from the town and hopefully we can continue on 2022. Thank you, Matt. Any questions on the Berlin Corner Cemetery Association request? I don't hear any. Article 10, shall the town appropriate $7,150 to Central Vermont Home, Health and Hospice? Pat McDonald. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. For the record, my name is Pat McDonald. I live here in Berlin. I've been involved with Central Vermont Home, Health and Hospice for years and have come before you in years past. As you just heard, the request this year is $7,150. It's up from $6,450 from last year, which means that it's a per capita rate of $2.51 as compared to $2.26. And as I proceed, you'll hear why. The CBHHH, for those who you may not know, their headquarters are right here on Granger Road down the street. They provide a full continuum of medically necessary services, as well as a whole list of support services for all ages. And they also provide service regardless of insurance status or ability to pay. So if you cannot pay, it does not matter. The cost aspect of this, obviously with COVID, there is a lot of personal protective equipment to protect both the patients and the staff. That's been an issue for the last couple of years. And interestingly, CBHHH has expanded its use of technology, such as telemonitors and tablets. And for some reason, and I see you have a representative at your table tonight, for some reason, telehealth services are not reimbursable for home health organizations, which cost CBHHH approximately $200,000 a year. They give me a lot of statistics, but I'm only gonna read two. So their total visits for the year were 4,135 total patients here in Vermont 118, which I just did quick math. And it's about 35 equals 35 a visit, but obviously it could sway very dramatically depending on whether the service is hospice care, home health care or long-term care. I love this organization. Everybody in my family except myself, and we should knock on wood on that, has used their services over the years. And I would just strongly urge that you support this amazing organization. Thank you. Thank you, Pat. Any questions on the Central Vermont Home Health Hospice? Article 11, shall the town appropriate $3,000 to the Central Vermont Council on Aging. Luke Rackers. Yes, hello. Thank you to the moderator and the select board for asking us here tonight. I am the Director of Development and Communications at the Central Vermont Council on Aging, and I am personally a resident of Montpelier. And so the Central Vermont Council on Aging is asking for $3,000 from the town of Berlin. And this is historically a level funding request for us at CVC-OA. CVC-OA serves 54 towns across Central Vermont in three counties, plus a little outside of those bounds, but mostly Washington, Orange and Memorial counties. And our services include things like a helpline to answer questions for older Vermonters, their families and caregivers. We provide information and assistance to council older Vermonters and families on the many available benefit programs and services like Three Squares Vermont, seasonal fuel, fuel assistance, housing, and more. We also have a very strong case management team that makes up the majority of our staff at CVC-OA to work with clients in their homes to assess needs and develop, implement, and coordinate individualized long-term care plans. And the town funding that we request from towns, all of that town funding goes to support our case managers and options counseling team for the information and assistance services. But we also do a nutrition services and oversee menu development and technical assistance for home delivered and community meals. And we provide the largest source of funding for our 14 meal sites throughout our service area, including for the Feast program in Montpelier at MSAC. And we also have a state health insurance program to provide personalized Medicare insurance, Medicare and new workshops, and enrollment assistance for Medicare Part D plans. We have a family caregiver program to provide different services for family caregivers and those they are caring for, including a memorable times online program and direct support from our director of family caregiver, Barb Asen. And we also have a dementia respite grant that provides a lot of support for caregivers in our service area. We also have a robust volunteer program and community services program. We have about 450 volunteers throughout our service area. I think we currently have about eight active volunteers in the town of Berlin, but many of our volunteers, for instance, our volunteers who deliver meals will come from various towns to come and deliver meals across several towns throughout our service area. And through the pandemic, we've continued to provide that individualized support over the phone virtually when we couldn't have our offices open. Since the restrictions have loosened a little bit, we have provided some scheduled in-person visits in our office in Berry, Vermont, but we hope to get back to more in-person visits here again soon. We also have some special projects and programs that we've developed in response to the pandemic, one being a device lending program that provides devices, individualized tech training, and six months of broadband internet connection for those who need it for the first time to help bridge that digital divide for folks. And a creative care kit project that helps kind of bridge the gap between opportunities that are at some of our wonderful partner sites throughout the service area for our homebound folks who might not be able to make it to those sites. So providing a creative arts opportunities for those folks who are unable to make it to the sites. And much more, but I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have about our services this past year. I believe our number of folks we served through case management and options counseling this past year for residents of Berlin was 62. Thank you, Luke. Any questions for Luke among the Council on Aging? Thank you. Article 12, shall the town appropriate $2,000 to the Washington County Mental Healths? And John Casaris? Nicely done, thank you. I'm John Casaris, the Communications and Development Director from Washington County Mental Health Services. I thank you, moderator, for having us in this select board. We're requesting, as you pointed out, $2,000 level-funded historically for services that we do provide that oftentimes go above and beyond the funding that we receive from Medicaid services. So oftentimes there are shortfalls in Medicaid funding for the services that we provide. In the past year, we provided 94 Berlin residents with services, about 3,500 services for a total of 6,500 hours of a variety of services. Everything ranging from case management, community support, crisis management, employment support. Oftentimes folks make use of our centralized bonus center over in Barrie, not to mention the fact that we also do a lot of outreach, the outbound calls and support of folks that might be struggling, checkups, and things like that, as well as providing food services and deliveries and just really helping out around the community. So I'll keep it short and that's pretty much it. So I appreciate your time and hope you can continue to support us as we have in the years past. Thank you, John. Any questions about Washington County Mental Healths? Thank you. Article 13 shall look down appropriate $1,200 to the Central Vermont Adult Basic Education. And I have not been told that someone is there to speak about. I'm even there to speak about it or pose a question no one can answer or no? Article 14, shall the town appropriate $1,000 to the Vermont Center for Independent Living? Is there anyone here to speak on behalf of that? Any questions about it? Article 15, shall the town appropriate $1,000 to the Central Vermont Memorial Civic Center? And no one is expecting here, but if you have thoughts, this is the time to say them, no? 16, shall the town appropriate $1,000 to the Down Street Housing and Community Development? And Michelle Cursey? Hi, thank you for having me tonight. My name is Michelle Cursey. I'm the donor relations manager for Down Street Housing and Community Development. And for those of you who are not familiar with us, we have been in operation for 35 years now, formerly as Central Vermont Community Land Trust. We serve over 2,400 central Vermonters each year through building, providing, and managing affordable apartment and mobile home lot rentals, helping Vermonters become homeowners through our home ownership education, budget and credit counseling programs, as well as down payment assistance programs, home repair loans. And currently we're also working to help connect Central Vermont residents with the emergency rental assistance programs and home ownership assistance programs that are run through the state. We also help seniors and those with disabilities live independently in their homes through the nationally recognized SASH program. And in Berlin, we currently are stewarding four shared equity homes and providing home ownership programs and assistance accessing emergency rental and mortgage assistance. And we are in the process of creating 30 units of mixed income housing up at the Berlin mall location. This is a new request. We traditionally have not come to the town of Berlin for funding in the past. This funding helps to show our funders that we have the support of the community when we're building new housing. And we would also ask that the voters vote yes on article number nine of the Washington Unified School Districts ballot which would transfer 3.8 acres from school possession to the town's possession which would allow for the creation of the new town center up by the Berlin mall. And I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has. Well, thank you, Michelle. Any questions about these pending article, the Down Street Housing and Community Development? Any questions about that? Thank you. Article 17, should the town appropriate $1,000 to the Washington County Diversion Program? My notes say no one has contacted us. Does anybody have an opinion about that or a question? Article 18, should the town appropriate $975 to Circle? I don't believe anyone's here to speak about that either but... Actually, Tim Shea. I'm sorry. Welcome. So, Tim Shea, a town of Berlin resident. I'm on the Circle Board and just a little bit about Circle. It runs a Washington County program to end or try to help and advocate and educate around domestic violence. We served approximately 1,500 people through our hotline services, education and advocacy in the courts as well as running a shelter for those in need. And this is a level-funded request from similar appropriation that was requested last year. Okay, thank you, Tim. Any questions for Tim on Circle? Thanks again. Article 19, should the town appropriate $800 to the Family Center of Washington County? I hope I'm wrong but the notes say no one is expected. Any questions or comments about the Family Center of Washington County? Article 20, should the town appropriate $700 to Capstone Community Action? Allison Calderera. Yes, hi. I'm Allison Calderera. I'm with Capstone Community Action and thank you very much for being, for entertaining our request. I am a Jericho resident and my title is Chief of Programs and Advancement at Capstone. Capstone Community Action is an agency that provides basic needs to Vermonters that live in Washington, Orange and LaMoyle County. We've served over 12,000 people a year and those services that we provide are early childhood education with Head Start. We provide access to healthy, nutritious food through our food shelf and our Everyone Eats program. We are the central Vermont hub for distribution of those prepared meals. We provide business counseling, financial coaching. We provide support for homelessness. We provide housing counseling and we provide crisis fuel and utility payments for residents that are having trouble keeping warm and in the wintertime. Last year, we served 127 Berlin households representing 162 individuals that live in Berlin. 55 of these folks accessed healthy meals at our food shelf. 15 households were able to keep eating their home and provided crisis fuel payments and for many of these folks that are coming through that literally have no fuel in their fuel tanks with the rising cost of fuel, particularly over the last six months. Last year we expended $123,000 total in philanthropic funds just to be able to meet the gap in the rising costs of fuel. So these kinds of funds are very important. And the other thing I'd like to say is that crisis fuel generally 40% of the people that we serve through those programs are seniors on fixed incomes and they've been hit really hard. The cost of propane and fuel oil this year. We provided 10 individuals with housing counseling to help them find safe affordable housing. We helped three homeless individuals try to find a safe and secure home. 11 children are enrolled currently now in early childhood education programs, Head Start and Early Head Start. And we also provided five households with emergency furnace repairs. Either the furnace was not working or was unsafe and we replaced completely four households furnace just with a completely new furnace. And certainly last but not least we also weatherized at no charge two households for Berlin residents. We had one financial coaching session with a Berlin resident and we had three counseling sessions with small business owners for who were folks that either own a small business or entrepreneurs hoping to found a business. So and last but not least 35 residents had their taxes prepared at no cost by Capstone in this past year. So I believe we're also level funded again. It's a $700 request and I am very grateful for the support that we receive. As you can see philanthropic funds go directly to people in need at Capstone. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Alison. Any questions from the assembly to Alison about Capstone? Thank you. Thank you very much. Article 21, shall the town appropriate $600 to the good Samaritan Haven, Julie Bond. Hi there, I'm Julie Bond. I'm the director of operations for the good Samaritan Haven. I'm a middle sex resident. Good Sam really appreciates the town's consideration of to you appropriate $600 to help provide emergency shelter to those in need in our central Vermont community. Currently there are close to 400 individuals experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity in Washington County, which is second only to Chittenden County in terms of the number of homeless individuals in our area. Good Samaritan Haven provides services to those in shelters, in motels, those in the street, including meal provision, housing, case management, the distribution of care items, a lot of other things. And so we currently operate three shelters in the Washington County area with 45 beds. And we will be opening a new facility in Berlin at the former Twin City Motel location in June with 35 additional beds. And about a third of our budget comes from private donations from individuals, from towns, from churches and area businesses. And emergency housing needs have never been greater, especially since COVID came on the scene. So we're very grateful for the collective support of our municipalities to help our neighbors in need with housing. So thank you very much for your consideration. Thank you, Julie. Any questions for Julie from the Good Samaritan Haven? Julie, I had note that Rick the Angelus was also listed. Am I leaving him out or are you speaking for the Haven? I'm speaking for both of us, yes, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Article 22, shall the town appropriate $500 to the People's Health and Wellness Clinic? Daniel Barlow is listed on my sheet. Are you there, Dan? Any questions for any comments, I guess, that may be the best say about the People's Health and Wellness Clinic? Oh, wait, yeah. Then let's go to Article 23, shall the town appropriate $500 to the Ramon Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired? Is there anyone here to speak for that? Is anybody have a comment about that? Article 24, shall the town appropriate $500 to the Washington County Youth Services Bureau? No one is listed, but any may speak on it. Article 25, shall the town appropriate $500 to the Mosaic Vermont, formerly the Sexual Assault Crisis Team of Washington County? And I'm told no one is expected, but comments? Two left, articles 26, shall the town appropriate $500 to the Community Harvest of Central Vermont? Is there anyone here to speak on that? Yes, I'm here, Paul. This is Allison Levin. Can you hear me? Yes, Allison, welcome. Thank you. Allison Levin, a Berlin resident and Executive Director of Community Harvest of Central Vermont. For those of you who are not familiar with our work, we bring the community together through gleaning to recover surplus produce on area farms to feed those with limited access to nutritious food. And in the process, help the community gain a greater awareness and appreciation for the local food system, healthy eating and waste reduction. Community Harvest is a 501C3 nonprofit based right here in Berlin. We work with 200 to 425 volunteers each year to recover the nutritious food that is then fed to our neighbors in need. The food we glean has been grown on local farms, but the farms are not able to sell this food and it would otherwise be going to waste. I founded the organization in 2014 and since then we have donated 1.6 million servings of food to food shelves, senior meal programs, early childhood and after school programs and other programs serving members of the community here in Central Vermont who are in need of food. This last year has been another very busy year since the pandemic we have increased by 100%. We are now in the dead of winter and we are still sending out three to four carloads of food each week all delivered by volunteers. So we are now very much a year round program where we hadn't been so much in the past. The food we glean reaches about 16,800 Central Monters through our partnerships with 35 recipients organizations, many of which have already spoken this evening. It's very supportive of all those requests as well. In 2021, we donated just under 140,000 pounds of nutritious food. This is the same as we donated in 2020 but double what we had previously in 2019. Community Harvest has provided glean food to Berlin residents for the past eight years through our partnerships with all the local food shelves, senior meal programs, meals on meals programs and all the surrounding towns. Again, some of which have spoken already tonight. And we also partner with the Berlin Elementary School Farm to School Program and providing students hands-on opportunities to glean, eat, learn about local farms, fresh produce and healthy eating. Last fall, we were unable to partner with the students to bring them out to glean again because of the pandemic but we continued to send vegetables into the classrooms to help them learn about fresh growing of local food by local farms. We also partnered with three farms here in Berlin who provided donated surplus food that they were not able to sell because they wanted to make sure that it got to those community members in need. We were asking for a small amount of funding from all the towns that we serve to help cover a portion of the costs of our coordination to recover and distribute all the food that we glean with hundreds of volunteers each season. We asked for your support again this year, the same amount as we've requested in the past. Really appreciate all of your support. Happy to answer any questions that anyone have. And again, thanks again for your past support and we hope you will consider our request as you're filling out your town meeting ballot this year. Thank you, Allison. Any questions for Allison about the community harvest of Central Vermont? Paul, Corinne? Corinne? I don't have a question but I just want to congratulate you on having so many volunteers in this day and age where it's so difficult to get volunteers. That's an amazing number. Yeah, this year we actually did one more than we've ever done before in 2019. We had 426 and this year it was 427. Great. Any other questions on community harvest? Thank you, Allison. Article 27, the final one on my list shall the town appropriate $300 to the good beginnings of Central Vermont. And my list says there's no one here but I've been surprised before. Anyone have representing good beginnings or has questions about it? That's 27 articles. You're reminded to vote on the first Tuesday. Australian ballots I believe are still available. You can request them. I want to thank all the people that came out tonight to talk to these various articles and I have to say it does my heart good to hear there's so much good going on. Thank you for attending the pre-town meeting and have a good night. Hold on, we have one hand. Mr. Moderator, Mr. Nelson. Mr. Nelson. Hey Mr. Moderator, good to see you again. I have a question for the sec board or anybody from the town. I see requires that in your organization requesting $5,000 or more to provide a copy of their audit to the town. Has this happened for every agency's requesting that? This has been the town administrator. Mr. Nelson, I believe that has. I can confirm that, but that typically happens through the town clerk's office. Okay, thank you. Okay, we don't have an article called Other Business that we would if we were, but I think we can virtually create one if there are other people who would like to speak about anything related to the town of Berlin. This is a good time. Paul, we had a round table on our agenda here. So I think our local representative wanted to speak for a moment. If that's good with you. Of course. Ken, go ahead. Good evening, everybody. And nice to say everybody. And hopefully we can see each other a lot more now that hopefully this pandemic is moving behind us. But just give you a quick update of what we usually do when we have a normal town meeting. Couple of highlights that I've got going on that we're working on. One of my top priorities is public safety. As you know, we're in really difficult, strange times and trying to keep the community safe. And we've all got to work, cut out for us to keep track of that. It sounds like things are going very well here in town and I'm happy to see that. Next thing we have, the governor has put forth and I highly support the need for our workforce development. The CTE programs, which is career technical education, based also known as vocational centers. The housing crisis that we have and also the critical need that we have for childcare that a lot of businesses are bringing forward to us with their needs with that. Also the continuation that we have of trying to build our broadband infrastructure and also the need for better communications with cell phones, cell towers and stuff like that, which we seem to be running into a fair amount of problems with getting permits. As we all know, the permitting process in Vermont can be difficult and challenging at times. We're trying our best to grow, maintain our population. One of the things that we've represented with Donahue and I have done is I introduced a retired military exemption on the pension part. As we know, a lot of military people retire in their late 30s, early 40s, mid 40s and they have their families and they'll come and they'll stay and develop a critical need to add to our workforce. And the Lieutenant Governor, Molly Gray, jumped on board with that. We had a press conference on that. That went very well. The one constant battle that we fight is the affordability, what it costs to live in Vermont. As I'm listening, going down to what I've already heard tonight, it's not getting any easier. It's getting tougher each day. The costs are skyrocketing and hopefully somewhere we can get a handle on that. That is a big challenge. As most of you I'm sure know, this is a year that every 10 years, they go through a process of redistricting the areas that your representatives and your senators, what towns, what areas they represent. Myself and Representative Donahue, we represent Northfield and Berlin. I certainly hope that continues. I enjoy it immensely and I just want to get out and really get around and do a lot more hands-on stuff as we move forward with that. I want to give a big shout out, big thank you to all the workers, essential, state-fed, local, medical, education, all the people that have kept moving Vermont forward. What's this? This is what, two years we've been in this pandemic. It's worn on all of us. People are doing their very best. There's a lot of people out there that need help and hopefully we're doing everything possible to get that to everybody. So I thank everybody for that. I also, I don't know if many of you know this or not, but local citizen, Judge Brian Grierson was in the court system for many years. He retired this year. I'm on the Judicial Committee in the State House and he was a great asset to me. He taught me a lot and really gonna miss him. I also noticed that the town report is dedicated to Henry Leguio, very fitting. We're actually doing a resolution this Friday at the State House Forum at, I believe it's 9.30 in the morning for anybody. The State House is pretty much open up now. I've been there since they were basically a lot of us in the building. So I think this is third or fourth week that I've been there. So certainly welcome anybody down anytime they wanna visit or anything. Hopefully we can get the kids back down when people feel that it's safe for the kids to come in and build and it's always great to see them. Finally, I wanna thank, I think two members of the select board are maybe retiring or maybe taking a break. Maybe they'll come back. I don't know, but Slugman Quinn. I worked with John in Northfield. It's always been a pleasure working with him. And Chairman Lawrence, thank you for both of you for your service. Did I miss anybody on the, it's retiring? We both appreciate you. Thank you. So it's a nice job and I appreciate being invited to events that you had the opening of the bridge here. That was a nice thing. And just a heartfelt thanks from me for allowing me to be your representative. I'm now in my fourth year, which is really hard to believe that times have gone by so fast, but it's really been an honor to represent you. And hopefully the redistricting doesn't change. And maybe I'll run for a third term. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Ken. Anybody else have anything to say before we end this pre-town meeting? If not, again, have a good evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.