we ask the same level of accountability in cases where there be some degree of uniformity and we put this question seems reasonable to us and we're  that in over three years for the budget that we're working on for fiscal year fifteen the budget has gone from fifty six hundred to eighty seven hundred for a school y what's driving the what's driving that increase is guaranteeing reimbursement to the donating to off the town's donating officers and frankly i mean catherine's right i mean proper public finance says that the books donated by the don't even count should be counted as cash and then that's counted into the total expenditure and and the whole thing is allocated rather than kind of population it's sort of like the fire department saying that eighty percent of their costs are ready to us which is true that's true for many public services so population in a sense is a measure of the potential of a town for these services relative to other other tasks and then case no load is how much they actually draw on the service and because we all benefit from the availability of the service we should all contribute even if we never drop any data just like everybody should contribute to the fire department even if there has been never burst but whether that should be  it should they should be a case of it so mixing those two is complicated there's no perfect answer we understand that but it's a little it will be helpful especially if our contribution goes up three times you know that we just have a cut both ways right but that kind of there's a kind of information that helps is if you're comfortable that what you do there's not going to be writing actually were we want to be acceptable is that you're being rational and sensible and doing your best to balance between your interest been applied to all the other counties in the city you know they're all very different around the way we're funded and most of those other units are smaller and they might have a trooper a signed one trooper or one police officer to the see the prosecutor and so right and so that these are the people that have been victimized not people who are being prosecuted and so this is for life it this wraparound service so they go to this one place and they get a lot of services and then on top of that they have specially trained investigators who know how to interview children so that they're not their testimony is not tainted you know how to you know all forensic things i kept the internet crimes against children thank you you know is another piece of that you know so that it so they realize that the you know the individual departments who have person responders and completely competent police officers and troopers could not handle the complexity of these cases trying to find out from a four year old whether or not you know something happened is not something that individual police officers are your next side of update of the rivers property discussion and approval hiring an outside appraiser the select court appointed a committee after a meeting couple of times with the fire department attending the fire departments but with beatings and so forth and requesting that the fire department suspend their their efforts to sell the project until march first gives a chance to develop something both sides appointed a committee two centuries ago she coming up with coming up with a proposal is not simply us going off in a back  r the initial task is really only to try and resolve the disposition of the ownership of the property is not to go into exactly what gets done with the property that's another job if we succeed in gaining ownership control of the problem then we'll have a process of process to figure out exactly what to do with it and everybody has  since we made some progress it was a bit of a struggle we didn't make as much progress as a hoped but we did make progress we did move the ball down the field and we de on a joint statement after that meeting which other they're sitting out by the door you're all welcome to have a look at it it's fairly not that oh we didn't make  move ahead and the present the beyond that i'm number of issues were discussed things were put on the table bantered about or the others like board members what was discussed an their side will discuss with us with the with the fire department but we would not be broadcasting every two weeks questions based on what you just said the two committees i was set up in are discussed in discussions are those discussions are confined to dollar amount for the property  you know can you know sort of like begin to plan a palooza for the riverside area that's what we would envision because we know that there's a need to keep the gateway and that that people value but there is other areas that could decided at all just on the table there's a possibility the fire department might retain ownership of some portion or some plot some piece of the property for uses that they feel they need  a lot of substance in the discussion but nothing was agreed and it's not helpful in discussions here that stuff because people want to say things frankly and they want to take them back or they might want to change their minds or neither no nobody was all of us but in all of those committees have to go back to our principles to get a complete so if you can speak if you feel like anything you say is going to be put on public and held against you you can't negotiate my second question be a larger committee of four by the select board including citizens that would discuss once ownership was taken  that would discuss the utilization of that land that yes acres sounded like that was being discussed in the joint committee nothing was done that i mean  their arrangement has to be place before we could seriously or specifically plan anything that the talents wishes for the property could affect the price it's willing to pay for the property in other words if we were if if we were to gain share something and then we to find out that the town refuses or that in general the town doesn't want any income from the property the nominal price you know i can sell your my house for one thing you pay me carefully and it's a totally different thing if i have the thirty year no not know it will be back by its own resource so it would be effectively if it purchased the land for cash i mean for money and then it would have to go to a bank and effectively get a mortgage on the property would be the answer is we don't know done for years of experience real estate broker knows that environment a lot better than i do and we certainly will not a employer appraiser and just give him a blank check to spend whatever you want to look at that but we don't know the answer to that his family understanding that the only and itself if we are going to use it for multiple uses we want to know the composition of the soil of the question for potential sewerage and water and certain areas want to be protected for if they are one areas or cetera et cetera so it seems that either the appraiser or some other group has to come in to  this information at some point rather than there's a curve in the beginning the first five thousand dollars gets you a lot of information the next five thousand dollars get you incrementally last the next five thousand get you correctly s less and there's always a judgment you can always spend more money and find out yet more things but a judgment has to be arrived at how much money to really do how much information do we really need to make to make a i mean it would be hard for them trained appraisers and they are real professionals and they and that we are we're both but those are not framed in valuable property phrases are in the should be and it should be recognised that you need to have this is a commercial to me my idea is first of all actually me talking to any residential praises it should be a commercial it should be a commercial operators and it should be someone who has as you said i think you've hit on it you're right you've got a gravel pit you've got things so somebody who's collecting data on that's a problem for state and my concern is how much money is going to be spent in order to do this because to do it the scope of this type of an assignment the appraiser to do you may come up with so many different values in you to do this ten times over dinner is how worthwhile is the day that you're getting because if you've got you know you're doing it all these values that are just all over the place we will talk again yes martin fisher again i don't know if my points will be as well taken but i do have a question for the fire department i influence on the select board on what to do with that property but we don't have any real influence on the fire department i wonder how that works there are some funds flowing from that property in terms of rental from the house on the ground will you think but what i'm hearing about it is a very expensive assessment likely and i think it's reasonable to undertake that but i would as a taxpayer would be very concerned about cambridge twice and i think that i would hate to see us saying well we have to pay the taxes on the river property down because the money from the river property was used to do the assessment so it becomes a very tangled web and i think i have real concerns about the fire department using taxpayer dollars for the separate they own that property yes should they be using taxpayer dollars to fund legal counsel assessments and whatnot to to sell this property i think the taxpayers have a right to say yes or no i'm with your point it will specific piece is well taken but i can tell you we're not going to go back to that like that is something that it would be included if for instance taxpayer funds were being used it would either be included in terms of payment towards the final price or if the deal fell through a repayment to the taxpayers would be i think that you know somebody who has been involved in real estate transactions  real estate transactions can be very expensive and i i don't think that we should be footing the bill for both sides of the negotiation and as i start looking at reports i still get more lots and lots of questions on my phone to go through them again but they're still there but they put some things on the table that i have real concerns about they talked about their i saw readings in there to be congratulated for that number i'm sure they've worked very hard for it but there is something that that higher home or that higher iso rating is going to lower homeowners insurance rates i've made some calls the reality is that's not true it's on a case by case basis with the insurance companies and that that's actually been stated in the iso report so you can assume that there's going to be an across the board reduction folks homeownership rates so those then in fact i'm one of those lucky people who want better i also took a look at the ratings and having spent some time with the budget and raising questions you know i took a look at the ratings its one hundred point  scale they got a seven point seven four out of ten points on their receiving of handling calls twenty nine point six seven out of fifty points for the fire department itself and a twenty three point four four out of forty total points for water supply so in reality the fire department itself is only fifty points water supply and how they handle calls are a big piece of it what was really interesting to me is that i saw on the fire department presentation why they needed a ladder truck was to do with zoning regulations that allow structures of forty five feet and when i saw on the ice a report is that the need for a ladder truck is zero and the other interesting piece is that the ladder trucks over him overall impact on the rating is only five points five out of five percent five out of honored so the question for me is do we really need to spend almost a million dollars on a truck that the  iso folks say we don't need that's in their capital plan or could we just change own thing these are the kind of questions that you know i put forth i sat on the planning commission when that was when it was raised i never heard that we're going to need a lot of truck in a million dollars  had that been presented i think the planning commission may have looked at that differently or the select board or whatever the process was that's information that's come forward since i've been doing it so i think that's those are kind of the questions that as a taxpayer concern me i also took a look at the training piece because you know on the budget information their personnel costs for the huge a f d are very high compared to other departments in the area and i took a look at their training so out of a possible nine points their cumulative score was four point three seven but underlies that are points for that feat up to that nine points then what really stood out to me and i'd like to know more about this is that company training which is the training of the entire fire department only scored two point one three out of a possible twenty five points and i took a look at their presentation that said for the first six months of the fiscal year they'd spent fifty thousand dollars approximately one person out if you take that that's one hundred thousand dollars on personnel the numbers that they gave were forty four percent of that was for their training stipend forty four thousand dollars approximately if we if they stay at the same rate of spending this year will be spent on meetings and training but that i saw report indicates that they  spent two hours per month training now does that mean that we're paying for training that really doesn't relate to the ice or trailers perverse two hours per person per month so many people live  only my understanding was is the training sessions are paid for twenty dollars and there are i believe twenty dollars and there are two hours long it seems like we're paying an awful lot for training that doesn't seem to be increasing the rate or their questions this is just something that to me stood out as an area that warranted further questions and investigation you know i could go in i could do a whole nother long presentation on the ice so report i don't i know you guys are busy and have a lot to do there's a lot of questions both from my previous presentation and and in the new information that we've seen so the you have jay position is when i've seen their numbers and their budget piece they compare their budget increases vs the overall temperature or they make the comparison of the homeowners insurance costs versus you know the cost per household on a tax basis which is the fire department cost to me those are really the questions that concern me the questions are why do we spend so much more than other towns is this really a cost effective organization or taxpayer dollars being spent appropriately and our investments being made in the appropriate areas and how can that you know you're hearing it with the land how can taxpayers be informed and have input into spending decisions i mean it we have no sense of how the taxpayer dollars are being spun with their spend for and it's a real concern and i think that you know folks have a right to have answers about how ten percent of their town budget is being spent so what's in the best interest of the towns what we've seen from the you have to use position is that you know we've been doing this for a long time we haven't had any issues we understand the needs and what are the disadvantages none that they're aware of well i think that there are some issues i actually have notes from a meeting that the fire departments on that said you're not going to have access to government employee pension plans or insurance programs because you're a private corporation i think that means that we pay more for those things and our fire department lawyers have access to probably less robust programs i can tell you right now just trying to do this in talk to underhill there's a whole lot of problems in trying to coordinate policy and trying to get the towns to work together on this as a join issue because it's two different select boards so while they may be able to serve the towns i think it's very difficult for the town government to coordinate across town lines i have real issues with the fact that they don't have to comply with the government and finally they have the ability to assess a financial burden on the taxpayer without taxpayer employ their capital plans do not require the devore rasa library needed a boiler wanted to do an expansion they had to go to a vote  absolutely have the ability you have the ability but it has not happened in the past when they wanted to buy a new engine truck they bought one they didn't come to the select board there wasn't a town bond and they took on your last five years i'm sorry that's true that we have can examine their their capital budget and we have sat down and said what's to show us why it has to be now why you can't stretch this out or what about this one since i've been on the select not the but as the road to birth isn't it true that in that if we improve a three hundred thousand dollars budget with the with the with the understanding that of fifty thousand of that is going to go towards the purchase of some new equipment and there's certainly been a great deal better in the last five years but it still could get better yes and it's a difficult because there are two towns involved so i know because we're so much larger it would be this would be a much bigger complaint if we were sitting  like to have joint meetings again because it it's better town discussions from both sides and in fact is as past chair of the slate board i'm the representative on the budget committee with time and a meeting with the budget committee of the fire department and we had you know we're having some decent very good discussions and they have expressed the interest in really wanting to have join meetings again because it's in everybody's best interest to do that and they would very much like to have a single agenda item joint meeting and that's just their fire department but instead of that really stickley because we are not experts we i don't know what we need and so really it comes down to what what the tail is going to spend in the end that's the taxpayer exactly and that's the issue i was at the meeting where i heard matt talk about the match up with talk about the need to replace the scott tax and how expensive that was and i believe the number was thirty eight and i left that meeting thinking wow we really do have a big expense and then i talked to some folks and other fire departments and the first question i got was why do they have so many and i don't know the answer to that but i think that's a reasonable question to ask and and i repeat and i recognize that this is as you state is a very complicated issue but the question is we don't you folks have so much to do and it's to count and how how can you actually provide adequate oversight i mean that's the i mean the the other issue is that unlike other departments in town the fire department is separate you know there isn't or there isn't kind of an overarching structure they are a private corporation as they have told us taxpayer i don't feel like i have enough information to know whether i should feel good or bad about the part i really don't i mean i'm in a in the long term i have a question i have questions about that and long term i have real questions about the pros and cons of the current structure about their meeting as a private corporation versus i not for profit in a fire district versus a municipal versus you know something else i think there are both short and long term questions  and i think the taxpayer deserves some real clarity to these questions and what i would like to propose is that an independent committee is formed to investigate these issues that this not be a fire department or select board issue but that an independent committee is formed to investigate issues and develop information and share with both the select boards of character and under the citizens on these questions and i've raised both short and long term questions and that the select forward provide oversight into the key questions and issues and strategies that a committee should report but i really think there's a need for some sort of citizen task force into this these are questions that have been around for a long time and that have bubbled to the surface for friday and different reasons and i think we deserve answers so that we can go to town meeting day and feel good about what it is that we're voting  periods celebration which was wonderful it's not unreasonable to my knowledge there has never been a comprehensive review of the relationship and how well it serves the people of that time i've never been maybe there has been maybe i'm wrong but i don't think so and it's not unreasonable after i've read yours that there be an examination seen on how well this mechanism service ago a half years ago the relationship between us between the fire department and the select board was awful i mean really awful four letter words typed off slowly under under the guidance of todd's predecessor and the slick board we started making that better and with a deliberate plan on both sides of this once this was no good and and a lot of progress was made and for most of the last five six years all of the really bad vitriol all that was out there when i first came on largely dissipate are not simply vitriol or bad feel some of the legitimate questions some of them are not but some of them are my experience with the for the fire department over the last five years is that after all that's a big organization with many different a points of view and factions and all that in it so when one speaks about the fire department a little careful that we don't know but as a whole they have been forthcoming absolutely which is the biggest part of our budget and there just as legitimate about this office is this you know this building you know got the right number of people in it the right set of skills being paid the right oh absolutely that's absolutely  we don't fully examined every single piece of the project of the of the of the town every year but the town the road crew the road program is undergoing several things several different when you call the fire station thank you are funded by taxpayer dollars for the most part right right now when the firm was to renovate their station they don't need to do any of that or is not a thousand dollars that renovation which has not been approved as yet ok it's in their perspective but it has not been approved so but when the time comes to spec this was a million want to spend the renovation of this building if and when the fire department decides they want to spend a million and one to improve they bloody well will come to us and i'll tell you why because no bank will give a penny unless we say ok we are the bottom line fake their meeting servicing their began the relationship perhaps this effort with improve the relationship with the town in general and provide more clarity because it seems like that they have made great strides with the select court and perhaps an effort such as this would take that to the next i think that's right i think right now i hope but because we can we can convince the fire department to look upon it as a positive opportunity because that's what i've been talking with the budget committee about is that you know  it's not just us attacking them or that it's because of the own just the issues that come across the state in terms of intergovernmental relationships and things of good old transpired if it's in their best well in fact is that that's that's where you know the clarity needs to be because we have a certain on information we can feel good about what their budget is but does that mean we you know represent the taxpayers in terms of what they're willing to pay and you know we don't really necessarily have that expertise or what they want to what you're just asking for and to make everybody more comfortable saying ok yeah we do want this level of coverage and it's been more i mean there have been cases in the state of that and the town said no thanks we'll stay where we are an absolutely legitimate decision i mean the taxpayer has a perfect right to say i want i want i want the extra i'll pay for it i don't want their experience and everything in five years ago had that been the question to that's why i think that this discussion probably wouldn't be happening right now as well five years ago when you know we hear now they're going for a you know a higher rating you know is that the reason why we're spending more money that's a question that was never put to the tax various we're going for a higher iso rating and that's going to cost absent are you supportive  money buys you and what reduction is that's absolutely fair how that vote comes out i personally do not have an axe to grind as long as the taxpayers know more or less what they're paying for they have a right to say i want more rights and as a taxpayer i don't feel informed i don't feel like i have the information for me to say we're going to we're going to we're doing our very best to group that in what used to talk what i do there i've spent probably more hours in the last eight months on fire department stuff than i have with my family ok this is a passion this is about i'm in a position tired of the situation where we make life and death decisions with our firefighters and with the services and i never stand people respect that and they respect us for that i actually get i think we have the because this is such an important discussion that is now ongoing and it really is a taxpayer decision i mean we can this like we're going to say yes this i mean they've done with that we've asked them to do their thing you know there's nothing wrong with their numbers but whether you want to spend that kind of money is your decision and so they can make a much better story for what they're spending then i can explaining what they do because i don't know what they do except i fumble with you know the stuff i have so we're asking them to actually to present it to me information the town does to the citizens i'm hoping that that isn't the right we're always looking at more questions that's not a problem but that's what the thought processes so right i think it's also reasonable that least effort to put no finer point on it create a vibrant center in flats riverside area and we all know that's been going on for quite a while there been several  criteria so strictly speaking if you read the criteria that doesn't fit we had to convince the committee in question that it fit the spirit of the concept of the center even though it didn't fit all the rules and it wasn't easy to do and to their credit they they saw the point and they gave it to us so that was one step there were several other steps and they hadn't most of them did that was the charette process of a whole bunch of things  and they hadn't managed to make a lot of progress our most recent one was the effort with the planning group to develop a plan form based on this is all an effort on the part of the select board to create an environment for an attractive community development but the town has not had up to that and i don't think we'll have an effective mechanism for play a proactive role in making things happen rather than just trying to create a so you know facilitative environment that's not there this is not a new problem for towns in vermont around the country it's it's a common problem fans fact and there is a  active players in this kind of process while attempting to avoid the pitfalls of doing it directly out of a town mechanism which is inevitably political and they will involve taxpayer money and both of those things are not necessarily good for a complex development process they should be bob their part of the story but it's a it's a it's a it's problematic basis for actually going out and getting your fingers dirty and in the complex to go price that class of of of entities are generally called economic development corporations are only development corporations or something like that and generally they are freestanding corporations and usually it's not always nonprofit usually it's not always completely or majority controlled by the town or county or state region whatever it is but they're freestanding they have to live on their own they generally have to get their own money they don't get taxpayer money and but they do operate they are classified by by the i r s as municipalities so they have access to the municipal bond market which is attractive and they have other advantages because as rain is about these they are eligible for grants of various kinds and so forth and they can do infrastructure development that is hard for private developer to and get grants for them so they have a number of advantages in this sort of thing but because they are free standing in a days there is a a chinese a wall of some degree between improper political influence and and you know wasting and jeopardizing direct funds there are something like forty or fifty of these in vermont different kinds all of them on is divided into fourteen regions and their regional development corporations are all from every piece of vermont is under a regional one we're covered by  and then underneath that there are a number of local ones almost all of them focused on some local problems and the the way they're structured differs the flavors a little different depending on the and develop bring jobs many aren't that way many of them are like us focused on a problem property woodstock actually tried to have them failed to build one of these because there was a big chunk of quasar idel like property on the east end of the town sort of like our problem oh any rate there's a bunch of them i've spoken to probably and somebody involved in this many is ten my impression is that they're generally considered over not universally to have been pretty successful in at least ameliorating a problem or improving situation i have never i have yet to hear about an absolute disaster like oh my god you know this was a mass of money was also out of the bahamas or they made everything worse or anything like that the worst i've heard is ones that didn't quite live up to the expectations and didn't quite pull off what people hoped but that's the worst and most of them are considered one  pretty successful for the green mountain one which covers a large part of central east vermont that i know well it's definitely considered quite successful and they've been directly involved in purchasing property redeveloping it selling it on some of it for community some of it makes use and so on so there's a plenty of of of precedent for this kind of thing it's not a new idea at all the say it was originally conceived to deal with the the flats property which is very complex and is a ten year undertaking and at lease to get that all done when the river's property issue blew up it appeared that this might be a a mechanism to help deal with that so it might be a way in which the community could take control of the property and arrange for it to be used in a in a number of different ways not just turn it into one other mobs farm but several pieces of different things know shorter time for the so if if this was to be of any use in that situation we had to do it now so that we'd have the vehicle it might turn out not to be but there's no harm in creating cost very little  to have a suitable you know corporate forms bylaws and everything drawn up and filed with the secretary of state and that's it's there and and we have it done if we need it if it's useful and if it isn't then it just continues to sit there cos it's nothing like the trial then it's just file there is you know that we need it for you know but it's something that comes up then we have it we've done that that homework and we be subject to you know i'm not saying that because i know you have to you know can't do business that way right you can't visit but what i'm saying is in terms of how it operates when money comes through and stuff that you know i think the taxpayers  no it's it's it would presumably it would be like a normal corporation in the sense of the final say in a normal corporation of the other stockholders but they they have that say according to a scale of procedure that there's a board of directors there's a management a board of directors and the stockholders we're effect in this organization we would i mean this in this is the stockholders of the voters in this case but we would be acting on behalf of the voters voters as effectively the stockholders but we would not be micromanaging this is the whole point is to keep a degree of distance between us and that organization people out of politics out of we want sorry you think that this new entity this community development cooperation would reflect the views of the majority of the citizens of the town i would hope so and up i'll tell you what that again to go back to the motivation there's been a very widespread sentiment in this town ever since i moved here fifteen years ago that people would like to see the riverside flats area because of vibrant serious town center of a kind this town has never had sex it was found two hundred fifty years ago and that would that would be a nice thing heard that over and over again all the public processes we've had over the last ten years including bush represents us and everything that sentiment has come back up and in the last one before the final you know meeting for the the fifty eight just but the sentiment was you know that's great we really like that we love that but people care more than more than oh ok and i figured we love that process that we're promising people in terms of hearings and in putting all this how would that happen would we direct the board and we would appoint members to the board who would promise to do that but would we make it to be involved as opposed to obviously we can say to the mars committee too you're not doing well why didn't you do so you're off the committee but the march committee does things like cut trees out so that the bikers can get through on the trail it's not watching the circle thing go round and round and round and round and we had no way to move it forward and that's why these things have been created all of the state of the world i mean all over the country because you needed some kind of active mechanism the d r b sounding and all of that stuff is passive at the very best you at best you prevent terrible things from happening but you never make good things of line assuming it was a viable entity it might be able to turn around quicker than the town could because the town planner you know you know just to bond or something like that at the same time it creates a discipline i mean the be promoting economic cooperation in that they want to develop the land who is going to stand up for the people who try to stand up for the people who wan conceivable i mean in some cases they get these things get big enough for having a property so they pay it but at the moment i don't well there's no guarantee that this is going to be used to the rivers i mean the the we thought we'd go ahead and do broader maxie you know best use of a community resource because you know we everybody wants to see the game we preserve there's no question about it in you know down by the the lever the you know them to recreational facilities but the town plan allows for affordable housing off the plane through maybe you know something happens there maybe something you know that was rivers houses there the barn is there all these are things that could be used for the betterment of the community we don't know how yet but that's why do we have a big planning effort to determine how is the best use and quite frankly you know the town has to make a very significant decision if it's going to pay a lot of money just to keep everything as the way it is because the fire department would like something or whatever you know we don't know how that you know their kids are going to play metal buildings without any windows oh gosh no and then having to negotiate with companies who want to come in and produce god knows work in the meantime they keep asking for a paved driveway they want to be a compromise and that's what we're trying and the vehicle for doing having the down simply walk in and say we'll buy it for a million i have no problem will issue a bar which will sit on the bar books and which we have to be paid for by taxpayers for the next thirty years it's not something that appeals to me and i suspect to the most tactic so that you know we have to find a way meets both our requirements and that's what we're struggling to do and it isn't so complicated i mean is it so easy this vehicle might help us because this might say might it might be a way  yeah but i found out that claire conference that instead of having us sign every single member license you know how it was required to have every member of the board that approved it sign it there can be a blanket approval which in which i would just need to send them a letter to say we'd like to do it right blanket approval and twenty four towns and knowing how the ones with three five seven work by far the most efficient working are the ones with three having to work people is going to crease so what's on here that's new is article four which is about the cemetery commissioners and then article five the five year exemption for the fire station  i'm not sure we need to do that six if you know that shift in july no biting you know like i start out with four realizing that was probably more than the board was willing to go to for a few reasons one namely using the increase in health insurance premiums of what was going to come out of the employee's pocket through no fault of their band aid on us and their increase was two percent last year and my opinion the staff obviously the highway crew but other staff as well have done a tremendous job for the past year and ha performed very well and in a stellar job and when you look at the employees of the salaries of the majority the town employees they are not overly compensated so my thought was to come in since doing that i thought a lot about it and my recommendation to the board is for the reasons i've stated and some others that i think i think three percent is the way to go it's not a significant amount of money board it means in terms of the message i think that this board would send to the employees is tremendous compared to the one percent in light of a lot of the work that they accomplished this past year in the you know specially that you know the efforts of the highway department responding to all the storms and always being there i think it's i think it's the right thing to do each one percent in dollar that your people and for their performance i respect that having the boss most of my life i know exactly what you're doing and i respect that and i don't strictly have any problem with all of the things you said or with the three percent per say the problem i have and this comes from fifty years of experience in these matters is is a situation in which budget salary decisions of this kind of made gamesmanship in it and it's a it leads at least to ultimately deterioration and it's not a good thing it's a bad thing and so i'm very concerned not about the three percent i'm very concerned about creating a policy of how we do these things that people know and can rely on and is not subject to weather or the boss had a good mood this year and he likes certainly doesn't like us for whatever you know a bunch of ten citizens came in and bitched about it and suddenly we're all risk that kind of stuff and that's where it goes when we have the kind of same conversation you just had that's where it's leading and so i have reserve judgment the moment of whether to do this three percent this is said i don't have a problem per se i'm very concerned about not having the kind of stable predictable policy that will go up and down and it isn't the weather that you're watching or we get a good message or bad and that to my my view that should be generally the  i plus perhaps a couple of other considerations and certainly the question of those of if there's a big increase in health care benefits or something like that then all should be made of that you have a couple of factors they don't necessarily lead every year to an automatic two point one three four percent but they give you a reasonable full degree of predictability and that's where we should be go and that next year it's not out of this discussion like this it's a discussion where pretty much months in advance we all knew what was going to be unless there was some huge change in the air but that's what it would be every year it's two percent that's what i budget and you know it's reliable it's not great sometimes there's a performance but that's not for across the board because of a general sense that's a performance review and you know there's a bump because of this yes exactly well we don't know specifically for certain jobs yet that so that's why i'm wondering should we just deferred if we say three percent then i think that should be  less this year we do have the health care dollars difference in terms of the i like your percent because that's what i've always gotten and that's what my husband gets and that's what's normal as far as i'm concerned that you present well so we already had that discussion with this is supposed to be is because this is the one that comes i don't think the two are related i think when we picked the plan and we had the discussions on the health plan and we address their concerns and we  no medical savings account that was not enough that we also promised those that we would look at it in july to see how it was working and if there was an issue we would do some adjustments so that was what we said and so we need to this is the july we're having to look at so i don't know whether we do it is a three percent because they're churches that are red that's the two percent plus you know people that the costs are going up for are down and i can't answer that so if you're willing i'd like you to come in and talk to you and you explain why it's happening yes it can be ours our the thirty first thursday and friday next week it's a six and seven i can do is the twenty six and twenty seven for the thirtieth thirty for thirty thirty first time for me maybe i'd like to be able to meet again before the next t like a verb because it was mercer said the town budgets based on the average history how about budgets are based on their future history so if you're talking yeah you're talking then when i was trying to figure out how to get the right language we are trying to come up with the way the fire department does not have to be landowners but the residents of the town feel that i want to stay but that it's a delegate but it's accurate yeah said taxes wrong right you know i've read it because i want to know what was going on and you want from you on the one sheet to three on the back of number nine and then it didn't finish oh did you know that  so you see this this one goes from here to here not to the back side of it yeah and then that was missing i couldn't find for