one thing on page two i'm on the last paragraph of i don't number five which started on the previous page in the dock and this sentence says the documents will be updated so i'm wondering which documents and why will they be updated because it makes it appear that to be updated because of the funding issue and i thought it was because of the discovery of the gasoline tank underground storage tank yeah she did say that but i don't recall what she meant by that so i would suggest writing that sentence since on then to public comment was there anyone in the audience who wish to make any public comment tonight is really just then we'll move on to item number for the reader each of the state office of property and evaluation review completes analysis of property values across the state in effort to make adjustments each town's brand list values the values are based on market rather than assessed value that's known as the common level phrasal help him and look at our report this year and there's a discrepancy between the study has two numbers and it has a ninety four point seven percent and an aggregate indicated of ninety six point zero three percent of bill spoke with the state to say why are there two different summary numbers in the report and the state didn't have been an answer yet they need to do a bit more research on it so the town has the opportunity to appeal the c l a within a specified time frame it's coming from the bills recommendation is that the board appealed the c l a so we can have more time to get why these numbers are basis for an appeal to have the suggested so motion for the board tonight to consider that can i ask the the implications of this are to so our school funding is somehow or the amount or who are paying into school funding is adjusted by this how how does this affect us is that school funding primarily but last year was a big disconnect we we won the appeal mr right you know ok this appeal is really just career for mom this appeal is really more about clarification and then it is feeling like we're being misrepresented in terms of what it should actually be yeah the state didn't have an answer for bill exactly so we're butting up against the time line to appeal so this kind of buys us more time to further figure out why those two numbers are different and if we didn't do this we have to stick with the c l a that's been addressed in the report and just quickly it also has one other number for c l a see it which is the ninety five point nine two which says that residential study so i was just trying to figure out what are the three numbers and maybe that's what it feels about his think if i took it is the difference between the ninety five point nine two and the ninety four point seven if the if it's ninety four point seven seems like percent you paying an extra percent but that number is very close to our the residential study which i think again i took maybe in the future we can ask bill to be clear but i took the residential study as being you know our study and maybe it wasn't i don't know but it does beg the question i mean are we appealing you know is the number to have to go down or go up i guess it's hard to tell from his memo because i would think in the way i interpret it is the was doing it to represent the town to see  chair of the select board to file a petition with the director of property evaluation and review for rita terminations the town's equalized education property value just so i should ask this as a question before that the letter that memo from bill talks about our district advisor and it was unclear who our district advisor is or what hit that person's role is introduce us to the board tonight so we're looking at our stormwater loan program and it's been highly successful in its first year a number of neighborhoods taking advantage of this quicker than we had originally general fund to the stormwater funds that's made five hundred thousand dollars a term of five years with an interest rate of one in there from loans a tool can loot can use in circumstances like this where public benefits are expected and there exists a lost opportunity if expected projects are deferred because the loan is not made interest is charge so the thought is if that money was sitting in the general fund still and earning interest over that period of time don't want to lose that opportunity so interest is charged when that storm water fund would pay that back to the general fund but i guess what that's the one thing i mean other than that i mean i thought this was a pretty straightforward situation but given that we've had difficulty spending your general fund making it go down right and we had trouble again last year why do we need to charge interest in what does that mean what does it really mean when we're charging interest against because we're not asking the loners the actual owners of the money to pay that back rate we're still charging them the one percent because we have you know we written some policy on those stormwater loans right that charges when i think it's one percent of one and a half percent want to have i think you want to have percent so why charge why charge interest of bringing in or why charge i guess why charge interest at all given that we're having trouble spending the money in the first place i guess i could if i could the example i had the same sort of thoughts and my rationale for agreeing with it's a good idea is the general fund affects all residents of the town it's a fund that affects all of them where the loan program is a certain segment of the residents of town so the concept is we shouldn't be in a sense that it's probably not a big county but all the residents when they aren't going to be making as much the town is going to be making as much on the general fund as it would by giving a loan was it let's say no on interest rate that was the rational i you know  development though of course i understand that i mean the stormwater fund isn't a limited fund just so these few neighborhoods it's a fucking for the whole town because they have many projects that are paid for by well everybody's taxed everybody has a share of store and that's i believe that's correct the difference i see here is that the loonie is so that the town can continue through the storm water fund to provide loans to the homeowner association so that they can do the projects they need to do to get their some water systems up to standards i don't have the right word there so that the town can take them over so it's the concept of the loans that go out of the storm water fund to homeowners association is what to me say it's a limited segment of the residents in town if you're charging all the homeowners for that two percent you're not really it's not really i understand your concept but it's not really causal because you're not charging the people that are using it that two percent you're charging the rest of the homeowners that two percent putting them and then just putting the money into the general fund i'm trying to understand the rationale i'm still struggling with the rationale for charging residence two percent when we really have more than enough money in our general fund while and if we really wanted to make it causal we would charge marriage because i think in correct me if i'm wrong rick i'm sure you will but if we had this concept of a staged implementation of neighborhoods such that we wouldn't have the situation happened so why are we allowing ourselves to get we were putting ourselves in the situation because we're allowing ourselves to get in front of that staging right we're not right we're not managing that that introduction of new construction per our fun or fun balance which i fundamentally don't have a problem with as i just don't understand the two percent because we're just charging homeowners for it not metal ridge we're charging all homeowners because it's not really that ok that aside i think there still is a finish area duty by the town to invest that money in the general  wisely and to just forego the interest is not it's a breach of finish i didn't start i'm concerned with regard to those funds you can sit there and argue who should be paying the interest within the stormwater fund at nice and but i don't think that you have the right to sit there and that we have the right to sit there and say no interest in general fund you have it it's just great we're just charging taxpayers that they put the money in there and we're charging them again because it's of their money that we put in there and we're kind of charging them again i guess it doesn't seem to make sense to me that was my that's my point that's why would they be a simpler way of looking at is we have an enterprise fund that's borrowing money from the town general fund it it's shouldn't that enterprise form because it's supposed to stand on its own without support from the tax base shouldn't they pay interest to the people of the fund its loading the money and so and that would between who pays as part of the general tax base and who pays into the enterprise fund set up and it's it's not necessarily the same proportion which is exactly why we set up the enterprise fund to begin with doesn't fundamentally make sense to me but given our fund balance and our difficulty in driving it down so and then and also why are we why are we has have we questioned the policy of getting out of our getting ahead on construction of our fine balance because i thought that was going to be managed in a way that we didn't have this problem so it's kind of a question back to you why didn't that is why isn't it the board has actually we can delay some of these projects i don't know but why wasn't we don't try to time the market so that we can do these kinds of contraction ok so the one of the half percent is being paid by metal ridge right i would almost say that you should we should make that one and a half percent and then that percentage is paid my marriage alternatively could tell matter if you want to build it ahead of when we have funds be the two percent and i kind of i i wouldn't charge the rest of the rate payers for i guess but percent over the life of the loan the five years you i believe we do it over each year each or do i assume so i just want to check and then the last question it's a little bit of a hypothetical the one point nine two percent is the best guess at how the general fund will do over the next five years yes dept back it up in a scenario safe this money stayed in the general fund where would it be invested in let's you know that's the current interest rate be coming back into the general fund from this loan as the general fund would have made had it not made the loan and kept on investing in whatever vehicles and invested in that is something we have to accept you know i mean does ask another question so we're we will have the one and a half percent coming in from or them you have one and a half percent coming in from merrill ridge and then we're going to have another two percent on top of that coming into the general fund so really you know we kind of double charging interest on this or not general fund which is entirely separate from any enterprise fund so it's leaving money to the enterprise fund it's you know that's a separate issue with so having that half percent interest being paid by taxpayers is that kind of the way i zero whether that will that was raging seems unlikely given the numbers that thank you so that twenty five hundred dollars a year will show up as an expense for the stormwater my lack of financial understandings does the difference between this loan from the general fund to the storm or enterprise fund being a five year term versus the loans that go out to the homeowners associations being a twenty year term does that and or how we should think about this at all so no word have to play thing that we'd like to hear every year in the report jennifer you've written the memo on it but perhaps you can lead us through the other a fort that we have yes i did kind of put it in the outline in your package that just kind of walked through the documents and what you were looking at the first one that i wanted to talk about is the governance letter which is a separate piece report are that all significant transactions have been recognized that's what they do in the audit process they review it and make sure that all of the information that we're presenting to you throughout the year is clear and accurate there were three misstatements in the audit that we chose to pass on you can see as a whole or separately none of those had a material impact on our financial statements one of those is actually a carry over from last year there last year as well it is the sewer in twenty seventeen and then the other ambulance receivable in grant receivable we often have a small discrepancy in those because we when we're doing that in and of september we don't necessarily know the october report is not complete at that time so there's usually a small discrepancy there doesn't have a material impact on our statements and you'll also see that there are no disagreements with management during the process of audits which is always a good thing for the slide for to know that we're not forcing the auditors to make decisions that they don't want to make or disagreeing with them in any major way one of the biggest items that the select board should take up this year is a recommendation from the auditors i'm about our capitalization policy currently our policy is we capitalized anything practical things which is i mean to to the time we don't have many assets that are within that five to ten range and so it really has no significant impact on the financial statements it's really just streamlining that to make it more manageable  it you know is there any value of taking a five thousand five hundred dollar piece of equipment and spreading that over seventy years on connec spends that in the beginning so it is something that you'll see  probably reckon air new finance director bring that to you at some point during th in the next part of the but is just at the very beginning of the book is there that independent auditors report so there are just expressing their opinion on our financial statements and you'll see that their opinion is that these statements are presented fairly inaccurate or you know that yes the next section of the audit is starts on page three and that's our management discussion analysis if you read nothing else in the documents those are the eleven or so pages that you should read that's really management report on how the town is doing throughout the year so it's really it's it's some numbers but also the story behind the numbers for what is going on in the town some highlights that you'll see is as teresa mentioned as we've talked about throughout this budget cycle our fund about is three point seven million dollars we are anticipating to use some of that in this current fiscal year for the year i'm some of the reason that fund balance did increase this year really looking at all of these being favorable balances toward that fund balance so sales  and meals tax bits actually local options tax and rooms and meals tax and that was two hundred ninety thousand dollars over what we had budgeted for last fiscal year  in the budget this year we did increase the amount that we're budgeting for that line item we've been pretty steady especially on the local options tax side i'm a we actually increased that this year so hopefully getting to number that's closer to our budget number and the reason to do that is that we don't want to take we don't want to increase the tax rate when we're actually getting this money from another source throughout the year so really trying to budget that more realistically to what we're actually receiving  we budget to increase that i believe five percent so i remember the dollar value of that i can't remember off the top my head i can look it was pretty much to not an only but compared to last year when they were down i believe she fully reported this time last year they were down almost four positions so in much better shape hopefully planning to use more of their budget this year  and not have that understanding and then we did have other financial sources so we received the bond proceeds for the firetruck last fiscal year we have not seen that expense that expense will hit this  year so that is that will be sitting in our fund balance so that is well it's in our fund balance it's not necessarily available for use you know the next section on here is that the financial statements they go through  the financial statements in both follow cruel and modified a cruel however brief explanation of the difference between the two yes a fuller modified accrual is how we often report to you it's more of a cash basis almost and then we really do only for audit purposes so that these statements can be compared to other organization in exhibit f is our financial statements those are the ones that you see throughout the year from the finance director of how we're trending to budget so it's really just each expense line and that you approve in the budget looking at how we actually did in those line items so if you are curious of the different ones where we're really off on that budget that's a great place to look some of those you'll see as you talked about just a moment ago is in the police department and really i'm having a lot more in the budget for labor in police that we actually spend the next section is just the notes of the financial statements so really walking me through some of the significant accounting policies of the town current town commitments and debt that we have an employee retirement plan so really just more detail of what is actually shown in these financial statements and then this year we did not require a single audit which is a good thing but we don't spend that money to have that single i we didn't receive we did not receive grants them over seven hundred fifty thousand so that is not a great but i believe that we will hit that very easily in this current fiscal year especially i'm with the catamount money that is federal dollars it's four hundred thousand federal dollars so that will pass very close they're halfway there to that a federal or that raises a question as part of this this or any compensation have the first i'm doing the manager report and the financial report is part of that are you going to be prepared he had one quick question under expenditure highlights it talks it says two thirds of transportation payments and i was wondering what was meant by transportation payments that week a dream about transit on our mission and that's part the substance abuse forum we have picked a date for that it's wednesday april tenth so please market your calendar really big turnout from the community we're going to have quite a push on getting out we have a separate committee working on that piece of it and then we have another committee working on the format for the meeting itself so and we have so many ways that the timing is well notice some information about a community development program grant application on this is an organization that in this case is located here ralston and they decided recently that they'd like to pursue a grant for the april round i think it is in order for then the meet that deadline they have to have a public hearing on this sometime in early february in order to meet that deadline   i also have some one of the mentioned we've picked the date based on earlier conversation with the board for the legislative breakfast and that's the morning of february eleventh and the only we've got a so far a good response from our legislators we have at least four or five maybe four or state senators that will be here and to  and present an update to the board probably your second meeting in february the first meet second meeting there are talk about a whole range of different things the things determined are subtle but i think it be useful for the board to hear some of the things they're talking about considering  that would and then the see the final thing is just a brief storm report our crews were out working hard during the storm we had about a foot and a half of snow i think or was it the year before no i was not aware there's like it's my second you know my second and it's you know something bothered me just about the process because it i couldn't quite put my finger on it but you know this year elastic week ted started the discussion about you know where should we target you know increase decrease flat and you know most business budgets kind of start there in it's not a bottoms up process by itself it's usually a top down bottoms up process and that is you know we should be starting much earlier with a what can we afford what should be our outlook what should we be targeting in the pushing down to rick what finances we should be seeking from the departments and then rick should be managing that into his departments and of course things will pop out we need this to keep services flattered keep services going well or we need new services here in which case you know rick brings forward his justification for doing that but coming in and then the timing of this is such that sense we can try to cram it into six weeks or so at the end of the year and we bring up just the fire truck and i've been poking at a few things here and i find it awfully uncomfortable to poke and prod and it's getting a little feisty the feedback from the chief is getting a little feisty and great frankly there's no reason there's no reason for that right i mean there's no rift there's no reason for us to be here at the end of our needing to approve  budget that we haven't really discussed at least we haven't discussed the issues at any great length so i would think we should we could move that back a little bit to talk about the structure from the top down what are our targets for the town and then any big items come up a lot earlier than a couple weeks before were approving the budget because it i feel like i don't have enough time to research and look into things we have two sets of questions and then the second set of questions were around glad the chief isn't here yet because these are already getting feisty and in implied you know i'm not going to put my residence at risk well nobody's suggesting that but i feel it's my responsibility as a board member to ask questions and you know look for alternatives but i'm not going to make up alternatives right and i don't see any so i look at rick it is that's part of your job to challenge the your staff and come up with alternatives and present those to the board and don't really have any right we don't the things that are proposed to us have no alternatives i mean best i can tell you and that's kind of what i was seeking from the chief but again i you know i'm not an expert in this business  so i guess to some extent i'm looking for you to take you know what you know bring the budget back a little bit more not driving this at the end tower because i think we do have a real deadline here with a warning for the town meeting  like we should have a backup a month here and and not be especially in big items it wouldn't be nice of the firetruck bond issue came up and the new staff came up in september rather than december or january january i'm not sure when it came up but it seems like we got this is our second my second set of questions into the chief clarifying questions and they're already seeming just reading between the lines a little feisty so quite frankly i would have expected you to one already know the answers and not have to send those directly to the chief so if you're challenging the chief in the expenses the kind of expect the manage these things so i was kind of surprised when you just forwarded my questions without even reading them to the chief and then the chiefs response i would have expected you to read that and say well some of this may be not appropriate such as the comment about you know putting residents at risk i mean i'm a huge supporter of the chief the fire department the emergency squad the police department but i'm also responsible for approving a budget and we're looking to spend two million dollars in a couple of years right and spent six hundred thousand dollars or was it last year jennifer on a fire truck or we're going to spend it this year so in twenty to twenty two we want to spend another one point four million says two million dollars over a couple  years and we had we had seven structure fires and again i'm not minimizing i just i was looking for alternatives looking to make sure it's justified  and my questions feel like things are getting tense with the chief and i don't think i'm glad he's not here so i'm glad i'm talking to you about this it doesn't feel appropriate it feels like we're up against a time d here too so now we're at the end of our feeling and kind of over a barrel a little bit here with no alternatives and you either approve the budget or not so anyway i think so mr cherry guess i'm looking for it seems like this can happen earlier than it does and then we should start with the top stone process kind of a this is what we expect this is the financial situation you know this is how much money we should be putting in you know spending but of our of our general fund and this is where we should be holding a you know theoretical tax rate flat you know low high and and then drive that down into the departments  exceptions would come forward than just a thought so that's kind of the way business works a business doesn't you know a department doesn't you don't ask your department will tell me what you want in three days before i have to put my budget  you know we got exaggerating here of course but you know a couple of weeks before i have to have my budget and you know my my department brings me all their wish lists it works a little differently than that right you kind of tell them what they have in the first place and usually it never is more usually try to hold the line and and but there are exceptions of course and you make them justify him and justify him hard you know it's it's  couple million dollars i mean it's the same it's seems like a big ticket item ticket items and then you know i the other thing that bothered me about the expenditures and again i'm not suggesting i don't support the fire department is th the fire marshal was sold one week as a fire marshal in the next week had been where is the you know we would have an admin is another administrator and the fire marshals would really be the fire department firefighters i guess you know and again i seems like that should have been somehow filtered by you to come up to us in a more realistic manner when it was sold to us just we should come out as this is what we need in this is why we need it so and i know you're proposing some changes there too but some feedback i wonder if next year if we were to have a retreat earlier in the fall to take a look at to what we would propose for the budget at that point whether that would  what hope it would serve i mean i'm i'm certainly not a dictator in the board and you're the leader mr chair so i'm just making a suggestion that something did doesn't seem right about the way we're doing this and it i'll say it it's kind of the way we do a lot of things because they feel like you know the everything gets set in concrete and then we're up against a deadline for stormwater catamounts budget it seems like the kind of or feels like we're we're not getting in early to set a policy which would be our budget would we want our budget to be in and then letting staff do the the ground work the footwork that they are responsible for doing and then bringing it to us seems like they work something up bake it and then it comes to us so i just i'm just suggesting a another way to do things like the idea of maybe some early in way into town staff in terms of our thoughts on the budget but just a couple quick thoughts your werman it's polly not a business and we operate i think very different our goals our priorities are very different than what a bit business would be so that's a tough comparison there are certainly principles that cross i think are absolutely right i find being on the select board sometimes a little delicate because we're a balance were a balance between providing town staff with the resources in the tools they need to do their jobs effectively safely and in the end provide the best service a cost effective service to the town at the same time we're also there advocating for the taxpayers who don't want to see or don't want to see any time the taxes go up any time there's taxes but in particular when taxes go up that's an impact on them i sometimes find that position to be in challenging it's part of being on the select board though and it's actually part of what i get the word isn't enjoyment but some satisfaction out of when i feel we've done a good job in terms of the budget process or in terms of when it happens i suspect we are in concert with the majority of village trustees city councils and select boards that are december's or late november still some birds in january's our budget season and it's always going to be a crunch and it's kind of our job to take the budget and go through it with whatever fine comb we feel we should and come up with you know the questions the challenges the pay why does it make sense to do this you're right it's not the time to make groundbreaking changes but we and we have seen our departments morph over time in the fire department actually had a great example of that that's a fire department that ten years ago correct me if i'm wrong was strictly a on call volunteer fire department where today because of the needs of the towns and the chief advocating sometimes making progress sometimes not in in transforming that that fire department into what i feel you know i'm no expert either but i feel good about how the fire department is meeting the needs of the town in a mechanism in a way that an appropriate manner and so over i mean so these processes necessarily shouldn't happen overnight then they sometimes are going to take times to appropriately develop and it needs to be a step by step process versus it in most cases i would think think that and suddenly things things changing and then the other piece of it is one of the benefits of the budget i think has to select board member is it really helps us understand how the town works this is one of the most effective tools for me to feeling you know feel like i've got a sense feeling that i have some of that knowledge that i need to be hopefully i'm i'm a fairly decent select board member but we also have to rely on on on rick to bring us you know to carry those those budgets those those cases where the process the budget that departments need to proceed in the manner they went before i am not doing a good job of explaining myself i need to rely on rick to come with a budget that i can analyze versus me going to reckon saying this is what i want your budget to look like i guess it wouldn't work for me that other way around me quite sure there was a lot to so i'm not i'm not so when i was going but we have an expectation for a tax rate right i would think from a from a from a tax rate perspective the time to start talking about where to manage that tax rate two isn't at the end of the budget process it's a beginning it should happen ahead of time and it should be a mystery to us where that tax rate is right and then the finance director should be able to tell us that upfront but we learned that the very first this year rick did a pretty good job of nailing it on the head coming to us with what he you know what he was presenting as a tax rate and my idea of what the tax rate should be in terms of keeping it within people's ability to pay were pretty closely matched and i think that's one to rick's strengths or skills is is doing that so yes i don't think it's bad to have that discussion but on the other hand i think rick is pretty good at having a good understanding of it all depends on what you think your value is i guess i'm terms of fifty if you're just here to staff it at the end of the day and you know i don't think it was a city that's fair you know so i'm not even a little bit the the big issue for me in this first two things and then we're going to  pay employees i have overhead and i have profit sometimes more than others so i get paid i'm i'm in my business to make money i'm here we're in this to provide a service at the most economical and efficient cost that we can so i don't want to tell the town manager and have him tell his department heads this is the number that you've got to work with because this is what i learned in business school i want that i want the services to percolate up i wanted to go back to the wonderful example of the carter administration one hundred seventy seven anybody that you know zero based budgeting there where you know it's like ok this is it's not just the same numbers last year this is what we actually need i think we come close to actually doing that with the town saying ok this is what this is the services that we need to provide this so much there is a cost and then year after year particularly during the recession years where we've said to management afterwards the numbers too high that the property tax base with the tax payers will not support this so and come back and tell us what year the experts come back on what your budget what you think you can cut to get the number that we need but you don't and you don't we should know that upfront right we should know upfront whether that makes sense or not and we probably did this year so why don't we have those discussions upfront and i suggesting just having them a little earlier if that's what you're suggesting that i have a problem yeah i'd like to start early because i don't want to be in the situation whereas a couple rounds of questions and all of a sudden we're up against a deadline and tempers are flaring a little bit on the just having the discussion so making a little earlier and having the discussion and affordability in front that's what i suggest i think and that's and i'm not suggesting we're like a business but that is kind of the we you  perhaps over different boardroom i have the same board where you have this discussion at that point as to what we wish to do going forward so we need to move through the public hearings night on the the purpose of receiving testimony including from persons only more interested in lanza but in the segment of hurricane lane being considered for discontinuance shall be held on tuesday january twenty second twenty nineteen on how we should proceed and he is said that we should swear in the people who are going to present testimony for the discontinuance tonight and then go to deliberate on the on the subject itself and then go forward from there so at this point i think there is for people who are probably going to testify today and that's much so eric i think you're starting to the discussion i can kick things off here so the time was approached with a request to discontinue a small segment hurricane lane at the hammerhead anding point zero three seven acres and we were approached by christine a real estate the reason for just continuing this piece of roadways it would adjust the town down tree line by just in the boundary line it would create a change in the buffer zone required for lane we have one tenant in there called six north and we have a business plexus feel that it's not only going to occupy the building but they are looking to purchase the building move their company from essex to will requesting the addition of me for the space of twenty twenty five parking spaces of those twenty five parking spaces we're looking to permit and i think we'll get a permit from subject to the town of worcester and and bringing the set back to you know from the new property line we're able to provide eleven new parking spaces on our on the site for flex the public hearings or any member of the public who wishes to make any comments regarding special the motion to the close i assume we got no written anything like that all those in favor of closing the public hearing say i had to be opposed so no we're going to liberate the  we did and we didn't need to do that unless you wanted to go into a closed session for a deliberative session and since i don't think we need to do any any of that i'm shift suggesting that we do it in the open and  if this sounds to me like we in the straw poll that i just heard that we have consensus to go forward with a discontinuance if we did make a motion i would i would label it to have a chat but article for a vote by a strong envelop for the purchase of a new fire truck and i think there's been some questions regarding the need for the truck and the fair treatment responded with some answers i believe to this and so if there's questions tonight for the chief of this is the time to ask ok so it chief is going to go through his  well he's done it before but he can do it again i'm sure process that we used to sort of adopt this or do we have just relied a person look at it i want to make sure that's correct and it's it's morphed a little bit but it's in been in place for quite a while now or does approve the capital program which six years so what we're being pretty your your recommendation for the one point four million dollars bond both to purchase two firetrucks is a modification of that capital plan a slight one it happens to fall on this year and one that you believe will save us significant money over time it's correct as well make sure i had the my understanding of what you were presenting us with that's my quick version of it the only other question i have is you've used the term point many times i don't want to show my naivety by asking what's a quint but i'm going to ask that now when you say a quick truck what do you mean is it a manufacturer or a type of fire truck it's a type of truck and it in a combines what is provided by it with a ladder truck as well as what's provided with a engine so both a combined into one vehicle which refers to the term quint is it five things this ms more than one company absolutely that that that spreadsheet that was out forty years i've been generating probably since i've been chief so you know twenty years whatever and and during the time of that was years those trucks were less common now that they're very very common and every manufacturer offers those trucks of it is i think i asked this last time i'm just going to repeat it if you don't mind when this new the proposed apparatus i'm going to call it great because that's what it's labeled on the sheet you gave us we will be down to actually three fire trucks fire trucks i mean trucks that i think of as fire trucks big trucks big trucks the rest will be either small or trucks for things like brush fires and that type of thing and some pickup trucks that you normally use in addition to that to command vehicles that you also need to put in the ambulances in terms of fire trucks we are we were at some point i think up around always lowest two engines in a letter somebody if you were more to say something like the absolute minimum plus a cushion that would make me feel a little bit better than at the minimum will be ok point four million dollars when we did the last truck that's spent six hundred thousand dollars or so i don't remember the exact figure it was two years ago the board ok so that was two years ago so we saw what i saw when i was on the board was the selection process i know i saw something because i was reviewing a recess or a vendor selection process there was a selection process once the bond was approved we then went out and generated a specification and invited numerous bidders to command and they all make proposals and we chose a successful vendor in which a lot will do this time ok and if we if we find something so if we approve one point four million and we find something for we'll still be looking to get the best deal that we can  assume we can get something for one point two million or whatever we can we can swing we're not setting ourselves to spend one point four million dollars that's my hope and my expectation and also  we hopefully will have a higher return for training of the two trucks there in service that we're going to retire which will of course lower that number we also will not spend the current fifty one i think it is thousand dollars in capital monies for other one of the other drugs that that kind of intermediate popper we're talking about one of the two trucks in the does that have water storage onboard one of those it does and that's why you can use it for so it's not just the pump or are they are they all do they all contain water storage units or just the one they do ok and jeff just to speak to you that would be our cushion because that that brush truck that's more robust than what we have now but certainly smaller than the popular we have now would carry a pump that has pump capacity so that that itself would allow for cushion just not a large fire truck cushion but does have pump capacity and go into the i s o calculation but it's a bailable to serve that function so one of the things chief i was looking for when i was poking at the purchase here is are there alternatives to what we're doing i mean what are the alternatives and you know one of the things i was wondering and ask it even though i don't not sure it's my place to push on alternatives i would think that down manager would push on these first but in terms of  tower truck which i don't know if it's the most use the least use i would maybe assume the least used of from a fire fighting perspective but i don't know the answer to that  but if we held on to that longer to the point where we weren't replacing k i me engine i guess number three so we kept that for a few more years longer and then replaced both of those win win with equipment at that time and i think you implied more maintenance and i'm just one of the things i was trying to understand was how much more me that's right what are we looking at for tires don't seem while expensive don't amount to the hundred ten thousand dollars a year that it will cost us to purchase new fire trucks and  know i did push the chief rather hard on this point and talked about a number of different alternatives including the possibility of relying on other communities for the service rather than us having over every community having to buy a very expensive piece of equipment and i was satisfied with the chief's responses on that specifically on the need to move up this placement ladder truck and and by the way that the and i joked about this years ago that we've both been retired before we ever wanted to put this before the townspeople are going to face a ladder truck and i didn't quite work out  but they're one of the reasons it didn't work out is that the current truck if we wait a couple more years which is certainly a possibility we could do that we would lose value on that truck because chances are good  increasingly difficult if not impossible to find parts for that lighter truck in our concern is that when it breaks we may not be able to repair it to keep it in operation and i often that you're right on that it was a his chief's notes and just to respond it's either the second or third truck out for alarms and fires so is it is often used and in the response to the request i think i know that it got out one hundred some six times but it was out of service quite a lot the bond for engine three for replacement would have come up next year it would hit its twentieth year so when i looked at all of this i said the tower is starting to fail the bontrager three is coming up anyway maybe year after next and and let's be smart and combine two trucks into one be more efficient drop one apparatus still have the capability to protect the community and let's let's do this spoke continue to keep putting money into trucks or failing us and if we have a catastrophic failure of the terra latter it goes from a trading value of well north of six figures to scrap value the motor whenever someone takes out of the truck so i think it's wise to do something with a truck that's failing before it does affect feel it's also believe one hundred ten thousand years of first year in every year of payment if that's that's the principal interest you  year lowers the payment down over time does it continue to ratchet down jennifer  interesting so it's not like when you get a mortgage or something and you pay the same rate for the life of the mortgage as a mortgage ok so the chief or one of the things i'm sorry we're up against the budget so i have to ask all these questions kind of and within a couple of meetings here but what's failing on the the big truck i mean what is the tower truck what's failing and you mention in the second in the twenty years old it's still a twenty year old truck with twenty year old truck value so a truck that we could maybe sell four hundred fifty thousand dollars now if we put two hundred forty thousand dollars into it for refurbishment it's only worth one hundred fifty thousand dollars right if you were to if you were to turn around and sell it but you know if you were to put that much money into something you would expect some lifetime or it would be the if you did a refurbishment what does that do to the lifetime what does that what does it mean is that it ten years that extends life ten years five years or so and that's why i brought this this before the board for approval i feel as though this truck will not give us ten more years of service it's rotting out from beneath upward we've had failure of all types of components we can refurbish the truck and put money into it but the undercarriage is still exposed to twenty years worth of salt and brine and i just don't have the confidence that we're going to put good money after bad and have the truck still fail and similarly and again if we don't we don't approve this bond we keep going the trucking repairing to we approve a bond but during that interim period i don't have confidence a tr last we would normally put the other truck so we typically proceed the truck urges by two years with a bond is that typically what we do so the two thousand and three truck would come up t thousand and twenty three beats replacement two thousand and twenty one would start to look at it for that is next year we would be talking about ok so so we basically we need be talking about delaying one more year ok and i think in the capital budget prior to this year i was showing i believe i'm i'm sorry from wrong eight hundred that eight hundred thousand dollars for the replace invention three and i'm now looking at eliminating that one point two million dollar tower a ladder and looking at one million dollars to eliminate that truck and combine those functions into engine three i e spend ga more thousand dollars now versus next year so we're not talking about the whole new scheme and plan we're talking about a little more toward the truck we're going to purchase we're look toward purchasing we're proving next year but in the process of many the need for another truck two years later  ricky didn't you didn't come to your point about the mutual aid it sounds like we give mutual aid to richmond but in terms of because they don't have  five or six years ago which was a function which drug yet another drug not the five to four now the forty three we let me the hazmat truck and we also then we made the tanker which is part of the you know five to four and  truck i have an agreement with richmond that kind of still if you folks by tower a ladder or a ladder truck why don't we send you our ladder truck the few times you you might need it and we'll call your tanker to wilston the few times a year you might need we might need it so it's kind of mutual that we're working with richmond as far as other trucks you would mention about south burlington might have one or two others actually have one aerial device and they run it as a first line truck so that truck is not typically available to come to wilston so it's off the table what your request is would not be sustainable by the essex junction fire department i e we could not send you a ladder truck and subsidize wilston with that many calls per year i think almost said exactly what he stated  can have the insurance rates affected a wool a community wilson's size really needs to have an aerial device what i'm proposing is a more efficient less expensive and i think less to maintain aerial device for a truck that this town really can afford not the town building and we were very fortunate to have an extraordinary fast response time faster than normal because of the circumstance and say the building that still brick church back in two thousand and seven i think was it was just coincidental that the chief salt was driving by saw the fire it was just coincidental that they were already been on it i received a call and the ladder truck was already pulling out of the driveway and they turned right instead of left and got water on that steeple very quickly but the wait for mutual aid and we probably would've lost that building because i am data driven i want to make one note on in the response to the questions i read through them again and i noticed there was one error and i was in class last wednesday trying to respond to the right to the questions and i was dictating over the phone and and then reading on my on my phone we don't wait thirty minutes for  attention with large pieces of equipment like ladder trucks you can envision a system where there was a regional approach to providing maybe that one piece of equipment so that no one department has to own it but it could be owned by i don't know what a group of towns maybe even a whole county is that possible here because that makes sense the question makes sense oh boy in the grand scheme of things it could i look toward rick to answer this the response times that's it's so critical and we so a little bit of what i just heard just make sure i heard correctly even if will listen was an advocate for some sort of in a regional approach to let's say to providing a ladder truck service the municipalities would likely not be i'm not speaking for them i'm just saying i don't think we're ready for that yet the managers have had discussions about it but there are some has some major hurdles to that and the response time is probably the biggest ones well the questions regarding the firetruck for tourists and i think i am i appreciate the alternatives and chief i am a supporter of the fire department hopefully you don't think otherwise but i also have to support the residents and i feel like it's you know part of my job to ask questions when i feel like i don't have enough information so i appreciate your time and and i think i'm i'm done with the fire before we start as you know i get hung up on where as is the first whereas i'll just read it and go to my the three existing fire trucks are reaching the end of their useful allies and need  replacing i wonder if need should be should be replaced because there's some there's some legitimate argument about when is the appropriate time to replace them we may or may not have reached that when i would suggest is is getting word of the words in need replacing and just put a semicolon after lives it really can go all the way he stared at this a long time and it really is is if you replace the ladder truck ahead of the pump or it of makes no sense because if you're going to if you want to combine them you know you're doing maybe something a little quicker but you're being more efficient at the end then you end up with the savings of ok and  part about that first whereas i wonder if it should reference i don't know if it's a policy but we have a replacement schedule and i just wonder if it should reference that as opposed to the thing i was find difficult about this i don't want it to look like we're the ones deciding this guy and i have to make sure i get this he wants correct that we're relying on the expertise and in the town to guide then in terms of the second whereas it would it does it make sense to reference the fire chief recommends to fire trucks kimber can replace the function of the three older trucks but again where i of you know the acceleration of the replacement of you know two trucks with one makes financial sense for the taxpayers of the town or something like that those are the fourth and fifth second whereas this we're saying yes we agree with the expert advice thus we're doing this and to me the first that's what i'd i'd kind of like the first two where as to to focus on but i'm in support of the resolution so it's not a huge signing it if that were the case and everything we do we have to say well you know plus i'm only doing this because somebody at a meeting told me it was a good idea so smart people said so and so i you know i mean that's  capital budget and program or twenty i had any changes in my changes i recommended when the operating budget ocean just to make sure i understand what we're voting on this would remove all of the changes that were i know that i did the changes that there are some capital items listed here ok i'm the changes i've recommended have nothing rather general fund budget you know adam number twelve on the agenda for the school year twenty twenty and rick you had some recommendations for this which we asked you to get to us for this week yes i have a number of  role including overseeing the inspection program that we're proposing as a matter of improving as a way of improving public safety our thought is the that  the for practical reasons it would be difficult to get this position advertised recruit because of the written process and hire someone possibly someone within the organization but still you have to figure out who that would be and have that everything in place and all the training in place by july first so that assuming that that's not realistic i told ninety six thousand but you'll notice that the number i that i've shown is recommended is not half of that eighty six thousand that's because i'm proposing a lower fee than the hundred dollar per unit rate that we had talked about earlier i'm suggesting fifty dollars so by having a lower rate the board isn't boxed in by having an assumption build in the budget that we're the board is going to you know if you go with something less one hundred dollars that will be short revenue and that's not a good thing so the board can certainly go with hired fifty dollars or lower as well but i think you have more flexibility if i go into if we go into this i mean we do have the deputy or system fire chief but he's an on call and we can and those by the way those are common i'm not i'm not trying to say that every two weeks on the tuesday before of the second week on that at almost a hundred hours well they do one hundred plus hours every  need to you're asking for more of an administrative or a succession plan than necessarily a fire marshal given the troops the firefighters will be taking over those responsibilities trying to accommodate an unmet need and there are a number of unmet needs and i think we've talked about this looking at the properties that are rental properties in town but also share succession plane also balance now some of the workload we put down of the company level that we should be bringing up to a person who's more than me straight a little person so there are a number of unmet needs as positional support  luckily it's not that i'm going to tennessee and i need the entirety of the position funded from the budget on scene we can offset a portion of that cost through the succession plan i mean you must have thought about this before today is i s it is your successor now do you consider somebody in the department now a candidate for succession i would hope so so i mean that that's what any  have somebody there that could step into that position position well you step into that position on some temporary or permanent basis if if they're being groomed or that's the primary candidate for a side that whoever is high soon in the position goes forward whoever's hired in its position would become the next fire chief upon let's say your resignation never know that that that's all right all right i just wanted to be clear they're ok so one can hope but that doesn't mean that know that's a scenario could be we somebody could hypothetically you know the positions created some he's hired in the position you retire but some he's brought in from the outside to be the fire chief could be and this is not a new concept i mean since i started preparing few folks to teach it plans i've always put in that i'm getting closer to the end and and she holbert who's a call physicians getting closer to the end the little twist this year is that because of his changes at work on he's had  have me sold on the idea of my reservation is that it's coming it's coming following a year in which there were three new staff are members were added last year so i guess my only reservation is a concern that it's not a concern it's just looking at the fire department seems to be growing in a much quicker than the other departments in town to the budget that that really covered the cost of one and a half of those three folks so on lesson three entire new positions we only creased funding to cover one half of those positions and and there's no crystal ball but and i'm not if i were to be here in five years he probably would not see me here again looking for more people because i think we are where we needed to be there's been a long term goal but i think we are where we need to be but it's where we need to be not these regarding the proposed budget just on the air in this room this idea for could you remind me chief what's your proposal for this rental inspection how many will you know in other words will you hit every rental property premier are you planning to do that every rental property every three years and what kind of rental properties all over until properties no more than three hopefully more than two but we don't know two will we hit the streets we will find that some of the newer buildings will be able to move through more quickly and because of that i'm hoping that we can see ourselves in every part of me certainly every two years in my my i always have goals i'd like to do every year but it's probably be closer every two years if we if we have a i'm sorry what do we have a if we have a we actually institute something we're going to have to or if we hire somebody we're going to have to institute policies so why wouldn't we do something like a like a spot check policy and a and a call and my understanding there be a better there'd be a more powerful public policy issues that right i mean there's another ball to shoot if we're going to do us check because spacek i don't think it would be discriminatory if it were  if there was a means by which it could be genuinely random and you know i don't know the town i suppose could buy a big bingo wheel with to it's pretty easy to come up with random see yourself then but then the other issues difficult is you know randomly if somebody doesn't get hit two years and they have this carbon monoxide leak i'd rather have a practical right it just sounds like a practical thing to do if somebody is violating you're going to go back and check them again well even if we have a problem we have we have an obligation that can check a salute or if you have a particular landlord of a particular property might not be the same apartment could be the same property or because i don't know what i don't understand the implications of discriminatory policy it seems like if we picked up your ticket or group way then if you're going to sit there and do this it's just wanted to point it out he further questions regarding i'm sorry i do rick because you identified a number of things do you want to just to focus on the ones we have questions about or do you want to go through all of them i would like to go through all of them but i if i have this i stopped at that point because that that whole position the thing was i know was a major issue and i wanted the board to you know get a chance to ask questions on that issue alone and then i the like the fact that it went down think think you know if we go in this direction and keep the rent or property any of the additional costs down i continue on my hip ok so because the next two are important to  and my proposal based on the my discussion further discussion of the chief is to add four thousand back into that request which is why the four thousand the showing as recommended being added also item contractor do the mowing and some light landscaping of the property and i i believe we can get it done for less than seventy five hundred dollars so i've reduced that i've  taken recommending some taking all seventy five hundred out which would get rid of that service altogether is only taking thirty five hundred out when i had a question and my question is on the lines of is the fire department grounds handled differently than other town buildings yes the when we first hired these all these firefighters they had some time in between calls to do some of the maintenance and they will continue to do some of the maintenance of the building they would be doing the plowing  e the driveway they'll do interior cleaning all that somebody in town staff are working in that building we did not contract out that kind of work we contracted out with other buildings yes well we either contracted out in the case of the police station and library or we do also have to part time for students to do that work for the other buildings it's really my question was is that fire department isn't being handled the the biggest change here is the reduction of to call firefighters and it effects to two different sections the budget the fire call wages and images called wages and that's a savings of thirty thousand dollars currently we are down at least two and so with our feeling is with the addition of the new position that we've moved we can do without those two on call physicians how many on call physicians do we have twenty but how much do we budget for that many i mean what you have  so the next item is number fourteen st my expense this is a function of when we prepare the budget we had not taken into account for this particular line item the savings they were gaining from the solar panels the money that we gain from the solar panels that we purchased gets recycled back to the various departments in this department we just missed them we're preparing the numbers so that's an easy one for one hundred percent of that twenty one green mountain transit bus service at the time we prepared the budget we did not have their budget and their budget was a much higher than normal increase you may recall some discussion on that and so i'm recommending that we had one thousand dollars two it's already budgeted for that line item and then the last item on expenditures is outside services my number thirty five at the time we prepare the only revenue side we already talked about the inspection fee and the i think we also talked about the highway stormwater charges we had  proposed a budget that was greatly reduced over the current fiscal year is because our highway department was not able for a variety of different reasons staffing being one of them to provide the same level of service to the storm or fund and so we had to reduce that to be more realistic with the actual labor that they are doing we think that next fiscal year they'll be able to do a little bit more and went to thirty two five instead it kind of expected to go to about a quarter because you're breaking it the years going in half if things lowered the feed by two times i guess i would have expected that to go down by four so i so it's there's some adjustment to that and that's money that that those inspections are already being done but they're being done by the state and the states willing to give up their revenue if we do the inspection for that one little pass of the number didn't get divided by four there were some constant of that concludes the chase but i did so on the bottom you talk about the tax rates all of these are accepted or approved by the select board in my mass shows that that means the tax rate will increase by one point three three percent question on the motion so let's say i'm still on the fence for the fire marshall position i'm still a little i haven't thought about it or  enough it feels so again i'd like to see is move this budget process back a little bit so there's a little breathing room but in america there's no line item veto here by select persons so it makes it a little difficult to i have an impact or stop the train so that's what anyway for  almost all those in favor of the motion say i say they opposed and lastly the stormwater fund budget and again no changes are being proposed will be discussed before if there is no questions regarding that in a motion with the gun is in order a question i just want to verify we talked earlier tonight when doing the minutes that the proposed budget does not vary does not indicate to be an increase in the stor fee and i just want to verify that that's super it is not here correct jennifer you can thank you there is no increase no increase unlike the sewer and water and we do have a new legal council this year and they are so there are some changes in here that reflect that particular articles latest draft articles thirteen to eighteen minor change in the way the updated sections and the like observer or whether it's a flyer could publish it we'd be we'd have to publish basically the whole charter would you have to do is that what you'd have to do very much i would  movie star career there for the willesden show as well as a front porch form facebook work but yeah we're starting to brainstorm that kind of communicate these issues at a time  it's very important standees before they get into the voting booth because you're right it's you can't look through this we have to provide it late it's you know they're not really going to gain a good understanding of who's standing in the regular while to read the whole charter right so it will get talked about at the very least and our budget reviews session that we have scheduled for i forget the d try to summarize the all the things that we normally summarize we have to have the the actual warning in there we have to have a summary of the budget the capital budget and some other bunch of other information also have legal counsel review that to make sure that it is not many way promoting those articles but rather just explaining so the concept of the select board promoting the articles is not proper the board can do that but not in a for me where we are spending in town money printing documents up if the board wants to go out and virtually for or against that they really do that approved of those things right and several of them were actually as a board we've actually done that right or did we have but we can't we rented who'd to this date anyway pursued he proceeding them no you know last year we approved something on the warning that not all of us were in support of as civil as i think talked about not supporting that when it came to voting so if we are in agreement than one would hope that the board would support what we agree to warn anyway ok i mean but there's some legal implication here too five to talk about the budget and things like that will absolutely have to find a charter amendment proposal is too long and will lead to be shown in its amended form for each of the separate articles and resolve that copies of the investment part him and been proposal should be readily available to the public at the town office and for distribution to those requesting absentee ballots or voting early if a western and by having a full copy located in each ballot the car fifth two thousand and nineteen as for a discussion on the motion excerpt process from we very much appreciate it and i just want to thank you back and do it again next year so we do know just a couple of quick things i think for other business and that is the talking about the return report in report dedication we passed around a document last week to whatever the board decides and so i actually like it together because you know maybe the one wouldn't get recognition after airfare and given it's family when when either one is that any other business to bring forward tonight just one quick question the resolution for the bond vote for the fire trucks does that need to be signing time soon is that underbrush like the previous one that you want to do second for two for two meetings i'll certainly wait to put my john hancock on it because it's just difficult for me to get into it i just think it's a good idea to get it done and out of ari out of my hair if you whil they have they didn't now says they found out that the mounted their charge is actually consistent with the number of hours they use in the day they use ok then that's the part that obviously we don't have or yeah right what's missing is that's not the same amount the other communities pay towards the district to clean out its district own facilities i would hope that will list and is treated the same as the other towns that are in