one forty six northwestern or sure the board knows why i'm here in the top informal housing the lack of it still another year what are you building right now over there what a building mr mcguire what's been built over there right now you don't know what's being built at the gross and what's being built this is your time to talk it's not time for i'd like to ask you a few questions here but it's really up to the board to decide whether  i came last time i don't trust these guys because for ten years ok they haven't built any if you re chapter five what's that that's what they're supposed to be building nothing over their next growth center is for those children in sixteen hundred first single what is going on around here it's beyond ridiculous it's beyond being embarrassing it's disgraceful it's shameful you have an affordable housing task force it which there are members in the room here that were on it they report to a state legislator you go study it for a weekend retreat you tell those kids why you haven't built any affordable housing in that girl center when you've got a member in this town government that was on that task force that handed that to you and your bill none that doesn't add up to me that doesn't make any sense your state legislator something's not right i don't do well when things aren't right what do you about what do you about sir your hypocrite going to bother to answer that it doesn't deserve an answer it does deserve an answer because that's what you have for evidence you study affordable housing you take it and you look at it for a weekend and then you allow a man in the group to build and not ask him or be quire to build any affordable that's the true people of power abusing and given it to themselves self interest self serving self centered a slap in the face to the state of vermont a slap in the face to us as residents people that care about the youth people i care about this demographic problem we're in a mass i thought the town of williston was historic and led there's no leaders here just a bunch of followers following the bully let me the bully in rich's pocket book by tens of millions and no one stood up and said what about our kids what about the men and women that are serving us it's not hard you see this right here it's a pamphlet in it is the champlain housing trust agreement that they have with me and my wife we have seven perpetually affordable homes in richmond you know what they're doing they're providing hope they're providing opportunity and their show on these young kids that about a little challenge how many can you when you're professionals your millionaire professionals build on my wife and i have a little challenge how many can you build town  it's not hard just got to have a willingness got to believe in it gotta believe in the people gotta believe in what it represents it's not hard esquire kinny welcome five hundred some odd units to zero perpetual  are those just are they equal opportunity does someone have the opportunity to buy a perpetually affordable home in this town right now how long has it been they've never had the opportunity over twelve years since i've been here that's equal opportunity you've got an inclusive club over there school and it's going to catch up to you sooner or later if i don't get your history is going to get you and it's going to be harsh on you you had a chance to enrich hundreds of young families lives with perpetual homes that would have forever then affordable for your children ones that are in the first grade ones that are coming out of college ones ever to sixth grade and ones that aren't even born i guarantee you this much ok of all the kids that are net school system twenty to thirty percent of them are going to say mom and dad i want to work here and i want to live here and you've got nothing form those are dead end streets down there nothing you've lost three percent to five percent interest rates you knew because dana hood came and told you what you had to do to achieve it it was interest rates  was speed and you've sat back idly for five six years you believe in fifteen dollars an hour sir how about two young kids fallen in love make it fifteen dollars an hour haven't a youngster if they had two hundred perpetually affordable homes in there at six hundred eight hundred dollars a month they could live there and they could walk to work it's going to get you little never never ever make up for what you've done and how you've devastated devastated the opportunity for young families in the children in this community to have a home that's on your conscience and that's going to be your legacy it's never leaving people are going to drive by it for ever that's yours yearning i wish to heck i could turn it around sooner not for me it was never about me it was about this state that i love about the people that i love and not my children because i don't have any but the children in this state that i love that i've built schools for that i built their ski areas i dealt their hospitals i could go on and on i come here every tuesday if my wife and let me but i do love to come here because you're on the wrong side of it and you're on the wrong side of history you enjoy that i was tempted to ask for an amendment on item six about the state transportation presentation that reminded them that they've come any number of the surf alternatives are just around the corner like to see and that's a presentation of the name of one sort of the year award from the department of health mr bates he is here to make that presentation and morton and many members are vetted and selected by a panel made up of emergency medical services team members out of our office traditionally these were awarded at a ceremony at the state capit but we decided to years ago to begin to give them out in places like this because frankly standing in front of the capitol with no legislators in session did make a lot of sense and i think it makes a lot more sense to stand among you  you can hear the great work that's being done by your public safety professor here so it is my pleasure to be here tonight and to let you know that wilson fire department has been selected as the ambulance service of the year with one hundred seventy seven services in vermont that do the work of to do a great amount of work on your behalf and on behalf of the ill and injured people throughout the state and wilston fire department has been a leader among those services they were nominated and selected this year because of that leadership because of the model they provide for other services in the system and i can speak from my own personal experience that they have  been early adopters of measures like high performance c p r and as you know i was here not long ago wording of her to community to you as well made great strides for us both for the for the community of wilson but also for the system is a whole because as services like wilson go so do other services that come in behind them so the we've relied heavily upon them to serve in that mentoring role but not just in the area of cardiac arrest certainly in lots of other areas and members of their team have worked diligently with our office to help us with training projects whether it be warm zone e m s tactical training whether it be  a variety of other projects as well we've consistently found great support from them not only that and the reason they were nominated most of all is because of the work they do here in your community they have  consistently provided excellent patient care they've consistently provided a level of training above and beyond what is expected of us and like i said have been true models of so thank you thank you commerce is here tonight to give us a break a little bit of history and perhaps of where we're at as we just joined why certainly won't be as exciting as the west to state what we're seeing and what we're doing and i'll give you a kind of very brief synopsis of what we do in what we're doing to address some of the challenges that we have before us as a state as a region and frankly answer any questions you may have these these types of interactions tend to go better when you ask me questions and i don't presuppose what it is that you want to know so as the chair knows i once i get in front of a microphone i could talk for hours so i will really keep it brief the chamber's been around for one hundred eight years i give a chamber one hundred one just for the heck of it we do all of the things that  expect a chamber of commerce to do business after hours events business the business connections member discounts advertising marketing and those general things that no matter where you go in the country you'll find chambers of commerce doing those things we tend to differentiate in four different areas from other chambers of commerce in the state and frankly i was the chambers chambers of commerce in the northeast region and that's on leadership development economic development policy advocacy and visitor services and those are in no particular order but those are the four pillars strategic investment areas that our board a number of years ago said that we wanted to focus our time and assets on and that's where we've been building our strategic complete plan and strategic capacity leadership we begin with high school programs we run a high school program cool tips  as an internship a mentoring program focused on college for high school and high school juniors the purpose of that program is to work with young people in the area to help them learn what's possible for them academically and professionally in the area we hope that they stay in should they choose to stay what's the art of the possible we also work with them on soft skills how to interview had to show up for a job what's it like to work in an industry and then at the end of the semester we connect them with a business that they're interested in for a forty hour internship mentoring program one day a week they go and in shadow a business you know it's been very effective we have a young professional mentoring program where we take a young professional who's working in the area and based on their interests connect them with a if you will a seasoned executive in their field who might be able to mentor them is supposed to be a very short three to six month engagement and some of those have been ongoing on their third year where the mentor and the mentee just connect and they become friends and in more than just a business transaction we want to run the school burlington young professionals but it's really a regional young professionals program again creating for them or helping them create an  ecosystem so that they understand that there are people around their same age in the area trying to live here raise families here work here and stay here in that addresses some of the economic development problems i think we can chat about we've run leadership champlain which is a leadership development program and it's thirty second year or thirty thirty year i've lost track of time and the executive leadership program we are in the process of  working with st michael's and maybe you v m to do a leadership champlain style program for college sophomores the belief is when you're a freshman you are clueless when you're a junior you think we know what you want to do and when you're a senior you're on your way out and so the sweeps month talking to some local academics says let's focus on college sophomores get the idea is let's show them what's here show them how their skills connect with what's here and let's create for them connections so that if they do want to stay they know where to apply for jobs and who to talk to it's again building that ecosystem economic development we run  three programs really it fall squarely into that we run in early stage accelerated program where in the last five years the forty three companies very early stage companies that have come through we've created over one hundred fifty jobs mine nine million dollars in follow on capital investment in these companies and that program is expanding in that through a partnership with a generator in downtown burlington it also for the past three years has expanded to include a launch v t collegiate program where we work with the colleges in the state to create their own business pitch accelerated program at the colleges they choose a winner they go this year it's february twenty second and they have a college pitch off and the winner of that college pitching off gets an automatic entry into our celebrated program with all sorts of very interesting folks who do things that i honestly don't understand when you start into rockets and you and drone technology you've lost me i just know that it's pretty fantastic stuff we run the northern borders regional program where we try to bring economic development to the northeast kingdom although we're regional chamber of commerce with the largest business association in the state with a statewide membership and we have a grant from the federal government to try to bring advanced manufacturing into the northeast kingdom and we also have run the state will we call over my quebec enterprise initiative which is working with companies in quebec they're looking for a u s presence in order to access u s markets to market for mine as a new place of choice rather than plattsburgh new york if i can be absolutely blunt we realize about four years ago we were getting killed by plattsburgh in terms of competing for businesses and there's no reason why a company should choose plattsburgh over for mine so those are ways that we are working in the economic development  some years the republicans love us some years the democrats love us and every now and again the progressives like a split one point everyone's dislike this for the positions we've taken we've come out in support of  minimum wage with a slow kind of ramp up to fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage we've supported state wide fun to clean up lake champlain while also supporting marriage equality and other issues like that so it's really hard to pin this down we tend to look at what creates a place in space that people are going to want to start jobs grow jobs in coming to live here and it's about the social ecosystem as much as it's about the business ecosystem you know our tagline is we support our members their employees in our communities you know so sorry things are working in harmony you're out of balance and you're not going to grow the economy in the area lessens visitor services and we run the state convention bureau so we bring meetings and conventions to the state of vermont whether we represent all the major properties from equinox the woodstock into the hotel vermont to the old share and our job is to get leads to those properties to bring the conventions of all sizes to come to the state of vermont and we're working with folks in the burlington region to create a regional marketing organization funded by the major hotel properties from burlington south burlington essex they believe will us that has one that will join because of their affiliation with the marriott group that would be about three hundred thousand dollars a year marketing effort focused on bringing tourists to the area believing that if we get them as tourists who might be able to keep them as residents that's chamber one hundred one in questions on at before i talk about the challenges of economic that new england and the northeast are facing where we're seeing the attrition of young people leaving from ont we're losing more than we're gaining despite the fact that we have a high density of universities were having a hard time keeping those folks here and that's no different the main new hampshire connecticut massachusetts some are doing a little bit better than us but i find large we're seeing an attrition of young people out of out of this area we're seeing an influx paradoxically of retirees coming in which is not a bad thing but you know they're not creating jobs they're not creating new wealth they tend to be living on old wealth th nothing wrong with that but we'd like to see a balance of old and and young folks coming in the area from oz is hampered by its image when we go out to recruit and when we talk to sites selectors who are looking at bringing to come here and shop i love the boat and i love to ski but i don't think of vermeil as a place to do economic development and i think that sentiment although it's very hard to hear is a sentiment that we hear whether or not we're as site selector conference in chicago or florida or boulder for a month has an image of being a wonderful place of couse of maple syrup of leaves and those things frankly as those those extra nowadays those soft traits are one of the reasons we can sell vermont as a place for people to come and do business once we convince them that we are night and economic backwater that we have significant companies that have chosen to locate here they have chosen to grow here we look at the you know the decision that revision made to grow in vermont they recently a growing outsider might not because of a vermont reason and they're very clear about that it's just the access and easier market revision the commitment the globalfoundries has made to the area and we can talk about your opportunities as a community to to work with global foundries around their property sale so we are a place where people are investing and we have to get past the image and frankly working my department of economic development of my department of tourism marketing i think we're beginning to change the image a little bit of working to change the image we like cows and we like leeds and we like barnes but we also want people to know that we have high speed fiber high in places in some of our larger hubs whether it's springfield or burlington or rutland bennington you can come and locate a tech company there you can be kind of a remote workforce there  we met with that we had sixty five people come to the state a state program in burlington about three four weeks ago or so sixty five people all between twenty five and i'd say forty years old at the oldest and many of those were working for companies like microsoft where they could be anywhere they were just tired of living in urban areas we had health care professionals young health care professionals from the boston area looking to move to vermont because of the health center that we have here and those stories are repeated new something on v p r about what happened in brighton the same type of event happened bennington so in those areas where we have kind of the technology deployed we're beginning to see some uptake in the work that we're doing  you know i can't hide from the fact that the cost of doing business in the cost of living in vermont is very high and you've you'll hear it from manufacturing companies whether it's global or general dynamics or appalachian flooring in the kingdom or tidily or i mean you go around the state of you who are hire let rick use or you have a problem with the letter rates in vermont and i don't have an answer for you is just something that we have to deal with time and time again when we address quebec companies who are looking at both plattsburgh and for mine we try to explain to them that if they move into a new building because of our for mine energy code the buildings are incredibly energy efficient they're actually going to use less at a higher rate some of you know this is song but that's really hard when you're looking at bottom line you're looking at forty five cent a kilowatt hour differences so that is a problem our tax structure  problematical we don't have enough people making good incomes in vermont to afford the services and affordable rate that we want and expect and i think working to create better paying jobs that's a problem cost of housing is an issue the housing stock is an issue we hear from the young professionals that while they really like when they are truly young condominiums and town houses at the point they know want to no longer want to live like they did in college they're looking for small houses they're looking for they want to be close to a downtown or town center they want a small house with a yard you know they can be colloquial they want the white picket fence they like what's being built and i think it's you know the housing stock that is going up is fine we need more of it but we also have to look at building the second and third iteration of houses if people want to stay in the area and that's that's not coming from some sixty four year old guy who remembers you know levittown in new york  are my houses that's coming from young people saying it's fine to live downtown about the pizza place but i actually want to house when we have a family it's kind of interesting datapoint  other issues that get in the way and we hear this it's amazing when you have a round table with these young folks the availability and cost of daycare is a huge issue we've lost a lot of home here a daycare home care services because of it's very difficult for some of the kind of mom and pop if you will home fear daycare providers to meet the current regulations although you know we support training education etc it's beginning to push people out and make the market higher stories are rampant the people basically assume it is they are pregnant or know they're going to be pregnant getting on a list that people don't think about we always we complain about taxes we complain about permuting we complain and complain about all of that stuff but when you get people really interested and they start asking about the cost of a house the availability of daycare about what what else we do or i'm nothing if not full of opinions about stuff so answer  one is just having another voice besides the league of cities and towns in advocating for the kind of pro local government positions in  field last year we fall into sixty four pieces of legislation and we're probably active in forty plus pieces of legislation so we work very closely with the other business associations with the leagues of cities and towns to kind of push forward things that are very helpful to communities growth legislation those types of things we're working on the act two fifty the fiftieth anniversary review of act two fifty i mean those are all things that benefit municipalities as as they look to grow the other thing is we've done this for culturist in many years ago probably ten years ago we did some work for e if you're interested in working with the community help you figure out where you're going strategically when you talk about economic development it really is a long play it's not going to fix anything in three or five years it's a five ten or fifteen year strategy of understanding who you are who you want to be we can help with that if you feel have an interest in he working with us will work with you to help vision what's what's in it for williston where you can broad all that you're supporting in indirectly the members who also or are members of the chamber and job one in economic development is to show support to the businesses that are here understand their needs are and help them grow and helping you understand the needs of your hundred plus members who are our businesses that are our members is a way that you can begin to formulate him policies that actually support them without inadvertently doing things that might make it harder for them to be successful and create more jobs and pay higher wages it's easy to direct our oh i can i say we can create x number of jobs and bring this much capital investment into you town no but we can support that as they said development activities in municipal policies that help that other questions for time off i'll take my water so i guess i have a couple of the first time i'm going to ask you you mentioned a lot of business mid vast majority of our members over eighty five percent have fewer than twenty five employees their restaurants their sole proprietorships their small construction companies their retail companies a lot of tourism companies so yes ok so i'm first going to talk about a concern i have not a concern but an issue i've had for years and then i'd like to hear more about how you how your in the town can work together on some town planning type meetings and i don't know how well you know we'll listen but we have limits on residential growth we do not have limits on nonresidential growth and i've often is is that a good thing or not stated a little bit differently i've wondered what is the right amount of nonresidential growth for a community like will list and i realized there's no silver bullet type answer to that on the other hand i think we could maybe use the word isn't necessarily help but maybe guidance in the sense of what are some of the indicators that say maybe we're getting it right what are some of the indicators that might be saying nope you're off the mark to give you a for instance some people think that willesden is a little bit to hop head two heavy if you will on large national tight retail organizations and less so on the more local smaller type stores or restaurants and so that might be the type of indicator i'm talking about so first of all does any of that make sense yeah and i think your path to answer that is through your community members i don't i don't think there's a metric that says you have too much of  one or two little of another i think that's defined by by your community in what you want through the town i mean some of you know i mean i spent six years on the essex playing commission six years on the select board and was there when we were you know in ninety one we were starting to look at the town plan and where we wanted to grow it how much growth was was right and where we wanted it and that's it twelve years i was involved in i mean that's an evolutionary process and going through the process with the remark council rural development understanding why they really is that their community wanted where they wanted growth the types of growth that they wanted so that answer i think is baked into the neighborhoods in towns but there is that balance point that the money is nice but how much or how much traffic will people accept what kind of traffic the only i understand the limits are residential growth it  seems odd that you have limits on one and not the other but that gets into the whole question of how many school rooms you knew how many teachers how many buses i had and i mean you know that so it was the schools yeah  so we have done that work with communities before just as a partner basically in groups giving information and we're happy to do that we usually get me when you sign on for that so depending on your in burlington the number of other kind of larger macro issues when it gets to things like parking and trees in the park we leave that stuff to the b b a because they've brought the business association they do a phenomenal job on like really local issues so we there are members of ours wherever there is so it's a divide and conquer we do we do what we do they do what they do in so i'm not familiar with i think it was he was asking that i see and i don't go there anymore so it's not getting a lot of my money and a lot of my time is because the population is in my eyes out of control it's an uncomfortable place to be and that's a sad statement to me that's just my statement but that's a sad statement to make in there are there are i mean i can't speak for a lot of people there are a number of us that are uncomfortable going down there in the evening now because you just don't know so my question is if you're trying to if going back to the economic thing i have if i might my push would not be obviously towards more taxes and more expenses and whatever but i don't know that that getting a program out there that's going to walk someone down and state the obvious we have a huge problem in vermont and we have a huge mental health problem in vermont when we close the state hospital we did not have been do not have an adequate safety net for who with mental illness and the safety problem is you can be homeless without being a threat to people the threat to people and we see this in the shelters that we run  cots we are dealing with mental health crisis have to mental health crisis if the mental health crisis people with machetes people taking fluorescent light bulbs out and going after people that the queue is severity of the population that we are dealing with  is beyond anything anyone has seen compound it with again what we all know the drug problem in town so what we have been saying from the chamber in a coalition of folks  through the opioid counsel and working with the agency human services the state has to step up and do something around system to care for mental illness you know we have a fairly good health network in the state of vermont whether you're a grace cottage job in vermont was to institutionalize week school so i'm going to health services and community services where necessary but there is a population that is on the street that  they deserve better than being left on the street frankly we're not serving them in a way that i think for much should serve its most troubled disadvantage i guess you know really i get a little bit of set with that having been oh yeah i mean it's struck me and i tell the story all the time you know back before i had my little health issue when i was about two hundred fifty plus pounds was a big guy i was literally walking down church street in broad and i got a hot if i was frankly a woman or young person walking down it was accosted by someone whose wildlife is this person wanting to buy my hot dog i'd be nervous and that's not good for business shootings on main street not good for business the theater of the street the mama drama that goes on because of the density of folks who come down the police will tell you it's not good for business they're not saying it's not where my focus was  clean that up that makes filling to my place that you want to go and then all of that and going out to the other communities as well and and i think that is a problem that actually has to be addressed at the state level at the the policy level in my people here at the legislative level at the executive level someone just basically needs to say enough is enough we're going to take care of this people need taken care of and meanwhile you've got other states shipping their homeless and they're sick here because the services are so good and we don't have the support system to be able to help all these people and we are trying you know it's with bubble twine trying to hold it together and i see that from the human services side you know the community health center opening up the the web shelter to try to get those folks off the street especially  nights when it's really really cold we've kind of expanded our services and our level of tolerance around behaviors just so we don't have people on the street  is some of you may know we had some significant funding cuts from the federal government state government and local funding that put in jeopardy the day station which is where people go during the day especially in the winter if we're not open there on the street and so we were able to get through cots you know do some fund raising to keep the day station open but you know what we were saying to this city and others if we're not there you got so let's figure this out together and in fairness the city's doing a pretty good job i mean despite the odds and the uphill battle  there you may not always agree with how they address the problem but at least the problems are being addressed and the mayor is basically open about here are problems this is what we're trying are this movement to create more parking spaces for potential business to come into town it would move centrally move the buffer zone and create another troll parking spaces here and the town would in turn receive  discussion emotion this real quick question sounds like we have enough for a quorum this we need highly unlikely i'll be able to make it sorry a bit and thanks everyone for your communications last week we found we can have for great great and i would do so i did for this newest or latest draft tree said sent me some written comments there's discussion previous meeting as well so i work to incorporate that into this document and i can i can highlight group coalition of stakeholders to developing a response strategy and i've added language at the end in circumstances where a formal study is recommended dislike will grant approval to pursue the study  where was it before five point five where the select board is being needs to give approval for studies before i guess before they can occur and i'm a little bit sitting on the fence on this i understand terry's point about she thinks like george had more involvement and that's i think that was put in response that on the other hand it's a kind of trust staff to know what to do that's you know why we have good staff and i guess there's a corresponding other side of that  trying to figure out what makes the most sense here is that kind of becoming a bit onerous to have to come to this like board and get these approvals or through his ations i guess maybe that's the simplest way to ask  well thank you but i was just there spawn does as a board how you feel the pulse is appropriate what kind of step you would like to take i think we would include in the budget funds for these so it may be the budget was going to be spent updating the board however the board wants feels the best approach and is not consistent with how we do other studies where and like when we go through our budget process we have maybe it line items for studies that the public works department or the fire whoever might initiate but in terms of actually choosing when do we need to study and whether this so you want to be authorized doesn't come to us like where does it typically the other thing to keep in mind here is we're talking about a paul see and it's a document that i strongly suspect will go through many changes once we start to actually get experience with the experience of it that's a good way of putting second sentences is fine it's an accurate statement and when we grew it treatments for the roadway segment under examination as a den of fide by federal highway administration transportation inclusive of industry best practices and also including possible impacts for bicycles other roadway users and any ancillary impacts for example noise created by a traffic c the if there's no other comments or questions on the sleeve motion will be in order to approve this with the recommendation heavy first off i wanted to remind board members that our next meeting is a week from tonight the summer eleventh there to know where these things are three maybe  and my hope is to involve one select board member in the interview process my thinking is that i'm going to have a two step process one is the first round of interviews where i will do maybe six seven interviews that's an all day process my thinking is that i would ask for a volunteer from or to participate in the second round of interviews which will be a much shorter process will probably have two to three cans and that process could take two to three hours depending on still struggling but the good news is we are fully staffed the bad news is that we're good part of our staff is inexperienced in ploughing so we're running with a training session at the same time you know which i think is a really storms so they've served this training sessions and we've been able to bring in hope in some cases of bruce's ridden with one of the drivers  and we we've been trying to bring in some of our retired workers to kind of ride with some of the drivers we've had mixed results of that but we've managed ok i haven't i haven't received really any complaints  nose at least one case one of our experienced drivers knocked over a few more real boxes than might normally be the case that happens is that they're doing their best to provide have to january i guess there was some sort of the issue involving the appraisal wasn't the value that was the felt one has to be very strict standards and and the first one that was done did not do it and so that came in fairly recently and there are some other issues that we follow through on so right now we're looking at the end of june i don't think there's more that comes across my desk on that matter if you happen to know how the fund raising that last little bit well my expectation is what my hope is that we will end up with the full amount by the end of january my expectation is that we're going to be short but that will not jeopardize the project it may mean that i have less money for some things like we're hoping to set up a fund for future improvements that may be underfunded  and there are some other things that may change as well read on that at this point and so i think her that's it for manager of worthless thing i always want to emphasize looking at the budget it looks like a bunch of numbers and it is but it's really a plan for services because that is it's really about the services that we provide this community and we provide a wide range of services those services are actually identified in your budget book if i think associated with each letter of transmittal for each department is a list of services i encourage you to look at that list because you may find some surprising services in there that we provide you know is a really really provide the basics of applying the streets and offering police protection services and fire and ambulance and we have a library and through our town clerk's office we run elections which is an important part of our democracy  so just a quick overview before we get into some details of the budget that's being proposed for next fiscal year is eleven million four hundred eighty two thousand three hundred forty five dollars this represents an increase of three hundred seventy one thousand  three hundred ten dollars which it overall is a three point three percent increase over the current budget the operating portion of that budget is represents about a five percent increase overall down one of the reasons why the costs are going up beyond the obvious is that our population's going up it's interesting how steady increase it's about one hundred people per year year in in your least over the twenty years i've been here it's been one hundred people here and gradually we've been moving up the list of top communities in the state by many years ago we were at fourteen and now we're at ten and we're closing in on number nine i was surprised at that i  increased population comes an increased demand for services so that's part of what's driving the increase in budget and you'll see in the budget there's a couple positions that are being proposed to be added and that's partly because of the demand for serous the other part of course is the cost of living is increasing and it has picked up it was just a few years ago when you're that the services we purchase the supplies we purchase and the pay that we need to pay our employees in a very competitive labor market is all part of that at the general items that i just mentioned the largest single category of line items is the wages and benefits i put the two together and that represents about a first the good news is we had a decrease in our health insurance costs we talked about that fairly recently that's kind of counter to the trends and we don't expect that we'll be able to duplicate that  but that is something that we're very fortunate to have worked through for the next fiscal year is they also said wages are increasing and so in this budget is included a cost of living increase for employees compared again to try to maintain our competitiveness in the tight labor market our police department is seeing a little bit bigger increase in wages than normal not because we've added any persons but because we've anticipate that we will be fully staffed next school year and we haven't been fully staffed in the number of years in fact we've been down two to three people for good parts portions of the year right now we are down just one position and i have every confidence in the current chief in feeling that it's when interesting little side note our chief because he  i was coming in from out of state was required to undertake a fair amount of training at the police academy and he groused about that a lot partly because he probably could have taught a lot of the courses they were offering but the cademy was very insistent that he take these courses and men a lot of time away from the office but he did it well it also gave an opportunity to meet a lot of the recruits to needing money to pay for those positions and for the last several years we've actually budgeted a little bit less in the department even though we didn't cut positions because we knew we were going to works both both say sixty percent of time roughly in our parks department and forty percent in our highway department so in other words during the summer spring summer and early fall they would do a lot of the a lot more knowing and in the winter months they would drive the plow truck and that worked well for years as it happens though one hundred percent of that money was budgeted in the highway department none was budgeted in parks and our needs have been growing in both areas and actually also been growing in our buildings and grounds area so what we're proposing to do is take that position make it full time in parks hundred percent and of course it's looking like me adding one whole new position there wouldn't be right really only adding forty percent of that position and but that allow us to do the sixty percent we've always been doing plus there's some additional work that they can be doing during that other forty percent that they used to be doing the public works and some of that can be also building some grounds so that's how  that step back that she does one part time yet a part time making one full time job so by splitting it you will have one full time town clerk and one full time treasurer and this will this is consistent with the charter change that's being proposed if the charter isn't changed that may affect how this is structured but the exter manpower in both offices that's partly because last year that the current fiscal year we had a one time expense of two hundred thousand that we put in the environment reserve fund for the county no property purchase that goes fifty five percent expenditures goes directly toward supporting public safety related functions and that includes the highway department the police department and the fire departments so let's talk a little bit about revenue this smoky good news we're expecting an increase in interest rates  increase in interest rates is an increase in revenue i remember for many years it was going the other way and every year we are putting too much for interest and we had to keep going lower and lower until we reached a the rooms of meals and there's a new restaurant opening up in the near future or maple tree place and the retail businesses seem to be doing way of finding out how much of an impact as the state will tell us and keep that confidential but it i'm sure that's part of what's going on but clearly when there is going and when there is going to be a downturn in the economy we will see significant decreases in this revenue and the fund doubts will help us out in that way when we get to that point but in a case for it now we're not into spending number we're showing a decrease in highway revenue and that is strictly because we are doing less stormwater work and we are keeping track of the work we do in stillwater and because we're doing l and in future years we'll likely see less but i think for next year we're still going to see a fairly high level of fees coming in from various types of the so we budgeted thirty thousand more like what we currently have in the budget and expect some of that will get used perhaps not all of it but some of it so we will see her great fun downs go down somewhat we are also proposing to use about nine hundred thousand year as well some of that's a one time expenses some of it is increasing them out to directly reduce taxes i think there's a hundred thousand dollar increase in that as well fact i think the next slide addresses that issue this is kind of a summary of our fund balance where currently as of the end of june about three point seven million which that would bring us down to two point eight million and if we use one hundred percent of the one hundred thousand that we're proposing for next a scare that would bring us down to one point nine million which is within that range my expectation is that we probably will not use one hundred percent  but our expectation is that the rain we will be getting closer and closer to that rate and personally i feel much more comfortable around the higher side of that range  especially when the recession hits because we can easily lose two to three hundred thousand dollars in revenue just like that from the local option tax without even knowing that that's going to  happen you know that's this far ahead of time so that's where we are on the front balance again with the pie chart here on the revenue side not surprisingly on property taxes the largest single piece that forty nine percent of local option tax is a huge part of our budget twenty six percent and then we have a host of other revenue sources including user fees in his town funds bit better for i'm less a little bit less reliant on the local option tax because it's volatility on the other hand it's nice to not have to be as reliant on the property tax for that's the trade off that we have and this is kind of relevant to the question jeff you were asking of earlier about the distribution of commerce or business versus residential this is our grant list breakdown by category this is a couple years old i think but really it doesn't change much from year to year they are the biggest part of this piet is of course residential at fifty seven percent  commercial is twenty seven percent i would say that that i'd like is a manager i'd like to see kind of a nice distribution i don't again if think communities that rel taxes and course it's a simple matter of doing the math when you take the total expenditures take all the revenues other than property taxes and what you're left is what you have to raise in property taxes it's our projection is about four five point four million seventy that is our projected grand list we're assuming some growth and that would yield a tax rate of twenty seven twenty four twenty seven cents roughly and  so our current rate by the way is twenty six point six five so that's the basis of comparison there and what does that mean for the tax payer it means so if we go with a lower number that means that instead of paying two hundred sixty six dollars and fifty cents for a thousand dollars in value when we just want taxes to go up to two hundred seventy five dollars or eight hundred thousand dollars and are over the last several years i didn't do a slight on this but our property tax rate it's been actually changed very little we usually go over it sixty five cents and we went to  i'm sorry not sixty five or twenty six cents and then we went to a little bit over the last year or so and then in the final questions i get the sense jennifer is here like to offer you the opportunity this if there's anything you want to add to this overview ok yet i think the capital budget might up be up to where i'm really working to restructure how it looks so it'll be a little more appealing and he more people look at it we're also working on a video or t to set up a series of videos i don't know how many will be able to get done this year but each video will be short and it will cover different aspects of the whole budget process though the first one working on has to do with the grand the assessment process because that seemed to be the one one of the issues that people had an interest in based on the survey informal survey that we did so