report first of all i just want to apologize for the last minute like presentation of this and that it is scheduled for three weeks earlier next year so hopefully we'll get this in the middle of the budget so really this is this document is presented specifically to this like so with this shares with you is if i'm just all significant transactions of the town have been recorded and if there are any misstatements they're listed in here and any disagreements with management so it's really your communication directly from the auditors and this year we did have a few misstatements that we passed on  the largest of those was the final lease payment of the ambulance was actually recorded in two thousand and sixteen it should have been recorded in the beginning of twenty seventeen we found it immaterial because of the dollar amount and their opinion of the it and their opinion is that these financial statements that you're looking at have been presented really what you're looking for in that document the next section of the audit is the managers discussion and analysis analysis so this is actually like an overview of the town from a layman's perspective it doesn't have all of the financial documents it's really giving you the position of the town at this time and any stories behind any of the numbers really talks about increases revenue i don't see things like that any financial highlights we had over the year you'll see in here that the increase to the fund for the fund balance has been increased to three point one million and that's what we've been talking about through this budget process  talking about that fund balance and how that is out of compliance with our policy the town's policy with the fund balances between ten and twenty percent of the following years budget where at about twenty eight percent  page eight of that we do have some revenue highlights the first of those is the sales and room staff that was over budget by a hundred seventy thousand dollars so you'll see later on in the night when we talk about how to get to that increased tax rate of two percent one of the things that we are recommending is that we budget a little bit higher  requirement but it provides good information for you especially verifying where we're at with the balance looking at how the next section of the financial statements that i want to talk about was that exhibit f which shows how we did to each line of the buy budget last year so that just provide some good information of areas where we may be budgeting to have or budgeting to  mike the notes to the financial statements are really stories behind the numbers is how i like to describe no one really just tells you all the accounting practices that we use here at the town and also talk about any significant commitments that the town has and also a debt that the  townhouse supplementary information the only piece of that that is required is in exhibit seven which is the retirement piece that is the final page schedule seven is the file the net pension liability this is required to share in our art it the other schedules are there just for reference so you can see how those different fun and one of the funds that we're talking about is i referred to that in my report as a single audit and they actually called federal compliance so this is our grants that we received from the federal government if we receive over seven hundred fifty thousand dollars in federal funds we need to have a single out it this is the second year in a row that we've had a single file if we preach that level vain piece that you should be looking at  board perspective is on the final page there is really just their summary of results and this will tell you if there are any findings if there is any internal control weaknesses or material you have to qualify to be low risk and there's five requirements we meet all of them except for the first one is that you've had a single out for three years in a row since we've only had two were automatically high risk everything asus so we have met all the requirements if we do a single audit next year we will be a low risk oddit and then i am required to file this one single eye with the federal government by march thirty first some point to we approve approved or for the record just basically ambulance receivables the way the auditors did their calculations were different than mine by one thousand two hundred seventy dollars pre paid expenses that was the loan payment for the ambulance i was recorded in june of two thousand and sixteen deferred grant receivables per policy we're not supposed to claim something put something in as revenue unless we received it within four months of the end of the  of the bulk of the work is done by our own staff to give the orders all the information they need to do this kind of report it's a work of a lot of work for sounds like the town is getting if we were to get a letter grade or number grade it would be excellent it would be an a plus yeah i would say so and this is jennifer there's a lot of credit for this but it's like she said it's a team effort so we also have to have cooperation from every department head and make sure they provide the information  that is required during the course of the or purchase orders make sure the contract completeness yes i would imagine that from a select board perspective you don't get much better than this in terms of our confidence in our town staff around financial issues thank you or efforts to try to come in with a little bit lower tax rate of the details as relates to the capital but anyway just so we did provide an updated schedule of the capital will different than the one that you received in your package or your books when you first started talking about capital budget one change that we made on this was the highway replacement truck savings i spoke about this last week that we received more in trade for our highway truck last year so we reduced the amount that we need from fund balance for the highway truck so we're still keeping one hundred in one one nine hundred from the host town fund and moved our fund balance request down to eight thousand eight hundred ten dollars for a total of  one hundred thirty five thousand for the highway truck replacement this year asking only for one hundred ten because we received higher than expected trade last year and we're going to continue to do that each year  two hundred eighty nine thousand eight hundred ten dollars and from grants and other revenue eighty thousand for a capital project balance of eight hundred thirty three thousand and twenty dollars if we vote on the capital budget before the operating budget does that is there an issue with that because we've already voted for this it worst case if there's no further questions on the capital but then program the motion is in order to move to adopt the capital budget and program for fiscal years two thousand and nineteen through two thousand and twenty four as amended by the budget adjustment summ was to do it as we understood it was to get the estimated tax increase down to about a half a cent and they could and i emphasize it's an estimate because last year at this time we were also estimating half a cent we ended up with zero increase cuts that was unusual so i don't expect it would happen again but it's certainly it's possible it might be less than half a set but right now rest shows the changes that we're we're proposing and that results in a and that decrease on the expenditure side of just about forty nine thousand we also recommend on the second page some revenue changes putting a little bit more from local options time x and interesting com and  little bit less use of fund balance than we originally talked about and we did increase the ambulance service fees because the board had talked about that your last meeting about the interest in  three positions and so with that was three positions comes some additional revenue so on the expenditure side side you'll see those three positions showing up as sixty three thousand five hundred eighty  additional and then additional twenty five thousand dollars in revenue and then there's a couple other little changes here and there we did take out the custodian the full time because the odeon position that was an increase in ours more than adding a new position it was just changing a part time into full time but we're taking that out of our request and we've i'm stealing all jennifer's thunder and we've reduced property casualty by ten thousand because the latest numbers we have show that we can do that will cover our costs and i think i've covered most of the items here replacement ambulance for one year martin has reached out to other venues polities and other towns to see if that's realistic to say can we push our ambulance one more year and he says feels comfortable with that so what they would do instead of it was supposed to go into their actually starting the bid process right now to get a lease that would take effect next year and we're going to delay that to have that we start in tw because it's a lease and their annual payments we are i don't like the concept if we can avoid it just pushing the expense to a further year but this isn't really doing that this is keeping the equipment one year longer keeping a quit meant so getting better for like a better word getting more value out of the existing equipment is the way i should look at this ok and also you know we we had that conversation two are we just moving money that we should be spending this year into next year and we actually think that there will be some room in the budget next year we do have a few requests this year that are unique that we haven't had in years past twenty five thousand for the church fifteen thousand to start the housing trust and those items were not in the budget last year and so those those are items we probably won't see a request from an outside source for twenty five thousand housing trust fund is probably something we'll work to accommodate in the budget for the let's just say this is more an observation than it is a question as i went to this as well as as best as i understand it this really is not except for the custodian position which is a reduction in services but it's actually internal to the town versus messily but the on a residents will feel this really doesn't affect the level of services the town will be providing so you did a very good job if you will of sharpening the pencil and i think you're making appropriate adjustment i guess what i'm really getting to is is i can support what you're proposing i can i will support what you're proposing who are coming to your questions for you don't just one question or rick you mentioned it's going to reduce the tax rate increase to current and i don't look at the bottom block of numbers the property tax rate current it says twenty six fifty six manager budget was twenty seven twenty seven and recommended which includes all the different adjustments on both the revenue and questions yes so so there were three things that and i didn't get a chance to talk to them when i came as the housing trust fund but sure we've done enough i mean i certainly support affordable housing strongly but i guess i don't afford i don't necessarily think the first path would be to tax homeowners for affordable housing as like to see  push for inclusionary zoning the second one is this environmental reserve fund and i know we're not but we're putting i mean when we first talked about catamount we talked about having a grant to cover those funds so when it popped up in the budget kind of a surprise to me  the last one is the church steeple it may not be popular but i'm not sure the town should be funding that either so in a discussion on that   i think it's interesting that the town clock here is housed in a church steeple but it is can't do much about that and my feeling isn't this a little bit facetious but i think it gets the point across if if the town were not to participate in the rebuilding of the church steeple the church would probably has the right to put the clock in a box and bring it to the next like board meeting and say here's your clock which i don't think is it is something we want it's an odd situation i will grant that but because of that mixing of church and state but this is about this is about keeping fit it's about keeping the clock in the air so people can see it it in one like it's talk of perspective often churches such as meeting places town meeting places that was the tallest spot to put the clo h and i don't know if you guys saw the email i sent i'm fascinated by this clock the fact that it's powered by a box of rocks just i mean i think that's why you know i guess the point i'm making is is the town i didn't even know we had steeple really is the face of all of them if you look at the number of people that pass through austin stop and take pictures of it and just the ambience that has for the town that's why i think we should support kind of a historical feature of the town ok and i really i have to say since i've made the comment before i've read up on it and many towns have chose to do that so i wanted  when other people had to say i'm not so worried about the separation of church and state as i am just spending the money so i want to hear any other any other comments or i'm in favor of it but my main concern is  separation of church and state you know but i read i've read specifically about that and it seems like every case that has come up on that has been well yeah i mean if i had if i had to turn down at a time machine and make it so th affordable manner right in a more reasonable manner because saving fifteen thousand dollars a year it really isn't going to do a lot to create affordable housing plus we're taxing people who may be marginally able to live here in the first place so another big i'm not a huge fan of taxing into we trying collusion area night i saw the arguments because i'm pretty passionate about the subject so when when  really stuff but the biggest reason for not doing inclusionary zoning at the time was that burlington vermont had tried it and they had failed it wasn't as successful but burlington is  figure they call it is a it's a it's an older community so to do it for about housing in that kind of community you have to do redevelopment which is tear down and that's a more expensive process and what i've read and again i'm no expert it's just what i've read in the what i could find inclusionary zoning works better in places redo new development like williston rather than old neighborhoods where you have to redevelop so it seems like it's worth a  try you know the fifteen thousand it's not a huge amount of money i think it's just one of those it doesn't make a lot of sense to me too when you have an affordable affordability problem assert taxing the people who are living here  o i guess that was that was my two cents on two comments of thoughts that i have on the inclusionary zoning i believe i i'm i'm in support of inclusionary zon and and whether i agree or not it's gone through quite a bit of vetting and the town has chosen not to through the town comprehensive planning process and our adoption of the zoning bylaws so it that mean this is been a long and has a long history to it i may disagree with or not i i may not agree with that but that's neither here nor there the other thing is i look at the tos as separate inclusionary zon is is different from whether the town should be supporting an affordable housing trust fund and i look at this is as a i mean fifteen thousand dollars is not a small amount of money but it's also particularly with our budget it's not a large amount of money either and it's a seat it's to get something started i truly hope that we through the development process we can build this into a fund that is large enough to accomplish real things the only way to do that is to start with the seed and that's kind of what i look at as part of our responsibility here of doing so i mean in support of point is and again we were not going to solve it here obviously tonight and i want to keep the player to ten o'clock but it seems like we should at least try inclusionary zoning development has gone at a rapid pace and we'll listen to the to the great success of all the builders who build here i mean there are there are the builders of building willis and there's a couple of them that have built an enormous number of units yes and we have the least affordable town i think we've heard afford to live it's just it's fifteen thousand dollars you know i'm not sure i would decline to support the budget for fifty thousand but i feel pretty passionate it's the it's the wrong thing to do and  n i was hoping to get a little discussion again sorry i wasn't here last week it was but the two hundred twenty thousand dollar for the environmental reserve we'll take that out of our fund balance that's where that comes from or is it part of the tax burden you know comes from the capital budget but two hundred thousand of that is from fund balance twenty thousand is from the operating budget is that your book comes from so it's kind of money we already have and i guess we'll get a chance so it's kind of a we're not increasing the tax burden as a result twenty thousand and we get a chance to vote on it later based on what we correct just a case in question on this at one time i thought the amount that was going to go into the that was proposed to go into the environmental reserve fund was two hundred from the fund balance and then sixty thousand that's that's correct w we're talking of the twenty thousand we're talking about is in addition to the forty thousand that's budgeted for the current case we're ok this high as eighty or ninety thousand and then when we had the great recession the slight board contributed no money for a couple of years and then gradually we've been kind of trying to play catch up  to the point where you know if we do this one purchase now we will be zeroing in out potentially depending on what happens with that grant that we're talking about commission to start looking at inclusionary zoning as well that's not right but of course not so the think the thing that's hard you know is this is my first time through the process i'm sorry and and it's a it's a huge number some of these things are fairly small and eleven million dollar budget so you know i wish i had a line item veto but i guess i don't so i guess i'm looking for guidance on well when we get to a motion you can certainly amend make attempt to amend the motion by excluding that if you wish but i understand we don't have support for excluding things because we've talked about it so i understand that so in general do we do we decline to support the budget if we decline to support a single item is that to me when they choose not to have to sign right i'm just understanding understand the are typical i mean maybe this helps  give you my thinking or philosophy or not philosophy way too strong of where there my thinking on this is last meeting you know we i have value weighted all of us i think have items in the budget that we may not fully support for various reasons but what i can i am going to support this budget and the reason is is at the last meeting we discussed what we thought would be an acceptable reasonable increase in the tax rate or what people paid in taxes the percent increase and this budget does that it does cutting some you know significant items on my i guess my point about that is again overall i can support the budget even though there are light items in this that i want to say i would gladly cut i don't mean it like that but i could i could agree to cut but the budget does what i think it needs to do and i can support it because of that and i should actually i should revise that that this is this is a good budget and i can support look at it like there's stuff on my dinner plate that i don't generally eat but since it's becomes a package you know suspect that's ever been ordered column a on the menu ok that's what it comes out so yeah i like most of the stuff know and i agree i think the town does a good job obviously i mean we have a good income too to the town so i think we benefit from that dramatically if that income wasn't there when we might be in less good times if i feel strongly that we need to look at removing the you know we're looking at other ways to fund a housing trust fund it's a pretty materials size i'm not going to make a motion to take it out so issue information concerning the amount of funds available in the range of can read development activities that may be undertaken under this program the impact to any historic archaeological resources that may be affected by the proposed project and to give effect to citizens the opportunity to examine the pope always statement of projected use of these funds proposal is to apply for six hundred thousand dollars in g c d p funds which will use to accomplish the for graciously considering answering this application to the state for the city p funds for a project that is not actually located in your town but that does have a regional impact and that's why we're asking for your support can apply for that funding so really appreciate the town's willingness to consider this application the project is the old north end community center located in the former st joseph school at twenty allen st in burlington the st joseph school is a beautiful old historic brick school house three stories beautiful hardwood floors preston ceilings the classrooms with a slate chalkboards and a big gymnasium with a stage it's a it's a beautiful beautiful building and since the time that the school closed the diocese has rented the space out for three regional non profits including the robins nest daycare they've actually been there for over thirty years they provide daycare to people throughout the region janet mind family family room which provides parent education for people again throughout the region they do some great programming there in terms of child education and parent education and the association of africans living in vermont a l v has been there as well for about ten years and they provide a number of different social services to recent new americans in the community again very much regionally in the county area so those three programs that had been housed there for quite some time were at risk of being displaced when the diocese was deciding that they may need to sell the property so they approached us to see if c h t would be able to secure the property for them so that they could stay in place and it was an exciting project and we were very very much eager to take it on it was also the building is not was not entirely occupied and so we saw it as room to really expand a community  center and also one of the reasons it wasn't fully occupied was because it didn't have an elevator or able to negotiate with the diocese and we've actually installed an elevator at this point so all building is completely occupied the program that has been added is the burlington parks and rec has rented the second floor and they have sublease to a number of different tenants including very merry theater a youth center for the old north and the senior center  hindu temple they have the building is just a really exciting combination of all sorts of folks coming in for just a myriad of programs from you know new american families coming in  and great girl has they make car seats and they they have a car seat day and they are installing three car seats in people's vehicles that they can be safe it's a really exciting building with an amazing number of uses and activities going on at all times however the building it's a great building but it really is in need of a lot of upgrades and that's what this program this this grant application is really for it has really been renovated since the sixty's or sevent s you know for example there is one thermometer one thermostat in the entire building in the principal's office so controls the heat for all three floors of this fifty two thousand square foot building so th those sorts of systems need to be upgraded there's one electrical outlet per classroom i guess for the projector so the teacher could show some slides we need to upgrade the electoral system the heating we need to add air conditioning because now it's a full year use  we need to install a sprinkler system we have installed the elevator and we've put in a commercial kitchen for our uses including training folks in the food service industry we are  one of the issues with the v c p grant is that you need to document beneficiaries for that reason we're going to target the grant towards a l v because they're already collecting in income data and demographic data for their participation so it sort of administratively it will be the easiest way to document the benefits so i want to tell you a little bit about what he does it's called the association of africans living in vermont because when it was founded a little over ten years ago it was really more of a social group of folks from africa recently here from africa to get together and talk about their experiences being new to america since then they've really developed into a social service agency and they now job training as i said they have a licensed nurse nurses aid programs they're training folks into that they they assist folks in starting farms and having the ability to grow food and sell food to create income for their families they have teen programs and mentoring programs they provide mental health services they do a lot of health education that's culturally appropriate so they may do some  sex targeted they do domestic violence education there they've got a myriad of programs and through those programs they are collecting a lot of client income and demographic information so make that reporting for the city p program easier if we target it to that one program the total so we're asking for this application to be for six hundred thousand dollars in the city p funds those are federal funds  total project cost is seven point eight million including the acquisition of the building all the renovations and all of the other legal expenses the the other sources of funding were working with this program called the along also reaching out to social impact investors so people who are interested in making an investment in the building mostly to see the social impact that their investments can have and to get a small monetary return and then we are playing to make many energy efficiency upgrades to the building so we'll be looking for some grants to help support the efforts the d c p funds would come to the town of willesden and then we would be looking for those funds to be granted directly to c h p c h t would then grant those funds into the new market tax credit structure so that it would be used in that that financing structure we would be taking on a much of the administrative burden related to that grant as possible i'm going to write the grant we're going to do all of the reporting and and i'm going monitoring we're going to obviously be managing the construction and so forth  we will need to rely on town staff to deal mostly with the finances first the town staff has to review the grant and push those buttons that says yes you know yes we want to do this it's on behalf of the town and then  managing the work record making sure to have the financial records of when the funds have been dispersed so we try as much as possible to minimize that impact the project can pay for the legal expenses that the town incurs for taking on the grant and also if the town needs to do a single out it we can cover that expense as well so there will be some staff time but we don't expect there to be any sort of other financial burden to the town and the process from here is you have a resolution to consider tonight the application is due on february sixth and i'm working away at that and i would be looking to rec two to press  but it's all online and then there's a v city p board meeting that's held on april twelfth where they will consider all of the applications thank ok i had the opportunity to tour the facility yesterday both because of the hearing public hearing tonight and also because of the probable request to the legislature in the in the capital budget for some funding there which was has not occurred yet but it's a fantastic business building and i met the gentleman who is in charge of the refugee only next question is biggest to reckon for the staff or maybe jennifer does this impact asking for this crib for the burlington community center does this affect our ability in the count on or is  this it is amy mentioned there is some staff time required particularly jennifer's time of that our biggest concern going into this was the cost of the single on it and you you had rober we don't have any objections to this this is for the grant as state or federal ok three believe this is the third type of more directly involved from doing it and it doesn't really hurt us or for me i don't really understand all that when she spoke of it but it seems like a good idea just been a really the only question earlier actually two questions actually the question i thought you were going to ask terry was will our applying for this grant for all the good reasons for doing it in any way limited grants that we applied for a community development grant purely because we don't have the population that would score well we're competing for the grant monies and amy is more knowledgeable about that process not him but i do with actually the single audit again but i'm going to ask the question in a slightly different way this year we had to we had to do a single audit would we let's just say you didn't come to us for this for us to apply for this grant we still likely go through the single audit have to go to a single audit actually the timing i was maybe spoke a little too quickly on the timing because we were talking about this fiscal year we would be expecting i'm sorry one other one the right the the single i guess the application form that's in front of us that we're supposed to sign it does not mention the grant amount is that a concern yes i guess at the resolution and you're authorizing me to review the application ok then that's that answers that question ok move to adopt the resolution for the vermont community development program grant in support of proposed renovations to the former st joseph school in burlington and her a discussion of the mo so that just as a side question just associate with that we have no because of the income distribution of well liston we have a harder time getting these kinds of grants so for instance like i'm actually being serious on this whole idea of a senior center week many many years ago when one of my jobs was writing grants and i remember seniors were assumed to be low to moderate income as that changed you know cost of living type things that cost of living well this budget in the sewer budget are driven in large part for the others because you need paper in this case will be the water district and then the with them and they have the would it appreciate us putting that on the warning for the discussion at the town meeting night rather than being on the australian ballot and you saw in here they're the short remember that they had on this one protect particular position of they had two hundred forty seven people sign of the play four hundred fifty or so that they needed but we knew that they were probably not going to get the i mentioned in my report that i had prepared some draft language because that this using this whole resolution in the wording for timing was a little cumbersome so i will get down to one sentence go council review it and legal council like my version better with one minor change and so i included that minor change and that's what you have in the draft morning and i share that information with the propose didn't have any negative feedback from that don't have a written policy you do have a little bit of a past practice eric's done a fair amount of research on this so he can fill you in in the asked both past practice and what the  petition to did have sufficient signatures but the board wasn't required to put it on that was an advisory voted on the ground about down the intersection down the street here there is more than the required signatures but it wasn't an issue th been other issues to citizens united was one so my my problem with this was it was so poorly articulated and i am afraid that if you allow the said town meeting is going to be free for all that takes up a chain or missed a minute time that nobody's going to structure i really wished you'd been here ten because i would have appreciated your commentary but i just those two things kind of bothered me here's my two cents concern that i have with these kinds of resolutions and  advisory type things is that if we open the door and i want to be clear i actually support what they're trying to say i agree with the environmental issue that they're talking about one hundred percent passionate about but i'm not inclined to put this on for town meeting because it's not directly related to the ground about was this isn't and we've had other examples in the state going back to the eighty's with you know funding of the contras in nicaragua with partial birth abortion gay marriage this kind of thing and one of the things that i've always willesden is that with the town government it's nuts and bolts now there are you know it's about property taxes plowing and you know keeping our tax rate low enough so the school can have some of the tax rate to things like that i you know i mean i i would be you know my my heart is inclined to put this on but i don't think that i'm comfortable doing that because  you know the fact that i agree with this issue doesn't mean that it should be something that we should have municipal meeting taking a position on and that's that's the concern that i have is that because the year after this somebody comes can come in and say well you know i've been going to be a little facetious i suppose but the exxon mobil did a study and they said there's no such thing as global warming and i want that on a budget and i i do have five percent you know absolutely get is that our role is to put this on the warning you know eager to give in when when if we say yes to this doesn't that mean down the road on next year we would have to say yes to something we disagree with if it was as for lack of better words you know by innocuous i mean not that this would have impact i mean it's it's it's not doing anything negative well having a discussion about whether exxon is right that there are procedures like exxon is correct that there is no global warming it's an oculus also but i wouldn't support that one and so that concept of playing binding effect right this is basically i look at this and and maybe i mean i certainly support the issue whether it's the biggest issue we have right now or not and that's very debatable it's probably not the biggest issue we immediately have but you know it's an issue that i personally would like to hear what the people who want to talk about it have to say and i look at the town meeting as one of these these institutions that allow residents to speak up or groups of residents to speak up and to me it's a way to get an indication of how the town residents feel and in fact you know in the coming year how i would think about you know voting on various conservation actions so from that perspective again it's non binding so  like people should be allowed to have their say and it seems like they put in a pretty good effort they didn't get all the votes they put in you know how many votes if they get two hundred seventy you know in the mind of something whether at the time that they were supposed to be picking them up so i feel for them a little bit they should've started earlier they were very disorganized but i still feel that's kind of the purpose for a town meeting as it is to you know maybe here vote by overturning the wishes of the moderator yes but there is a way that the moderator could be so yes this is appropriate to bring forward or not as he did last year and  has the right to overrule the moderator to bring it forward so you can ask another question just on the i understand ted's concern and enjoys concern about them being disorganized and having this for or can we as a group say we i guess i'm saying i would like to hear feedback but i don't want to hear two hours of i think we should hear clear feedback to get a sense from the tone plus that we get a lot of people coming out you kind i know that it's a topic people want to talk about rather than if there's five people like that the three or four we had here show up and then we know it's a topic that maybe isn't on the forefront of the residents minds it just that's sure there's a mostly made yes sure so what that one thing i am struggling with i just want to express this is when we had the question back when the three of them came in presented this idea they asked if we would if they got the number of signatures whether we could would put this on the ballot or not and i remember thinking yes even though we're not required that made total sense to me because they met this threshold and so what i'm struggling with right now is they didn't read this threshold that five percent but they got a significant number of people i mean maybe even more that three or four agreed that we would allow them on the ballot if they didn't even go out and get signatures so i'm struggling with they did i mean so the point i guess i'm making is five percent seems like a significant number that it would question just what you just said before a lot of time you can hear that i'm i'm you know waffling i and i don't i wish i had a clear sense and i don't so i'm looking for any thoughts on this i think it's i think it's a big enough i mean on a weekly it mean look for the budget we just approve the budget and i don't think we had in the audience where we finalized the budget so so i'm looking for i guess you know in this form tony in a direction from tell what you want so that's what i sweat like to see or hear topics in the fact that somebody came in and wanted to do it and collect the signatures to me says gosh it's the only one of those that in in would you i'm just go explore a little bit would you feel the same way if you didn't agree with the petition that was being asked to put on the warning i think we have some responsibility not to do silly or trivial things really i think that's part of the  president right yeah but are should we were required to provide ample you know whatever whatever those things are but what you say has a legitimate issue but you disagreed with it you would still feel the same i want to hear you know i i've offered to go to meetings where i'm not in agreement with the people because i want to hear what the town people say right even if they're not the same you know backgrounder i  exactly so i have offered to do that so i'm a happy participant as i want to hear you know what people have to say and i think i can learn from anybody so  i would support putting this on the the warning for homely and night i think we gave the indication to the individuals who are here that we would do so i think it's worth discussing in the limited there's perhaps we could have a motion positive motion that we can sue or goes i move to include be an article for discussion and vote at the annual town meeting in support of the so i guess you know what what i came up with was it it appears to be reasonable to me and i'd be happy to answer any questions you had as to how i came about that conclusion based on the i also researched what it would cost to install a system such as this now under today's today's costs and approximated what i felt was probably the install cost back at the time that you did this solar the cost of solar panels of gone down quite a bit since as you install this they just went back up again yesterday because of the government s trade policies but what i have my own solar project on my own own farm and i tried to develop similar projects to this and when i felt was a fair arrangement  for a project that i developed would be to at the time of transition is to offer the to the cost of the the insulation at about fifty percent the the tax credits and depreciation reduces the install costs by about fifty percent there's a thirty percent federal tax credit that i'm sure this project you know used and when you depreciate the equipment price is about half the cost of what it cost you to install it you know that kind of the net cost of what it costs a developer to install all these numbers lined up about the same that the  high for the amount that they were suggesting in their contract so roughly of bits as best i could determine about half the cost what the install cost was at the time and the the  revenue from the project over its life looks like it's a pretty good rate of return i think jennifer estimated around ten percent per year i think that's about right and that seems like a reasonable deal the the life of the panels the panels have they typically have a twenty five year warranty which manufacturer warranty which if the manufacturer is willing to warranty if for twenty five years it'll probably last a good deal longer the inverters have a life of warranty of about ten years i think common practice at least certainly the way that i've done my analysis is to expect replacement around year fifteen just as what your cost of borrowing money would be on that kind of washes it's kind of you know works one way or the other to to kind of net it out and so these dollars are hidden in today's dollars over the life of the project just really simply i mean it was probably more than just more than you want to start more than i want to hear it in what's the net effect on the taxpayers of the town so we pay for energy to run things this removes some of that cost and you know into that you have to factor the maintenance as you said replacement of us ok so what is the net effect on the citizens you know what's the do we spend less every year as a result of this throughout the life and throughout the i should say throughout the time that we'd be paying for the panels let me answer that and then on what they'll let you know or so it's a speak right now what you have that the deal that you have right now with the green lantern is the company that you have your contract with is for every kilowatt hour that's produced by this system it's applied against your electric bill and then you pay them ninety five percent of the value of that so there's a five percent discount on the electricity this produced so that's you're here again right now  if you were to buy the system for three hundred forty five you would get one hundred percent of that could be applied against your bill not a percentage or so you get the benefit of that and that's what this the revenue stream and in my  it was it was about thirty and thirty two thousand dollars plus there is agreement power in the state really has a program that provides an  thousand dollars so you're the revenues is a little over forty thousand dollars for the first four years for so that it's actually it isn't revenue it's reducing your electric bill by about that  which what are we spending what it would be spending per year to purchase these or do we purchase some just not right right and so that's what i looked at and i said if we're going to do this on their purchase we should look at it as we look at any capital project so first of all what is the purpose of this and does this meet with the town plan so i looked at the town plan we do actually have something in our town plan that says the town when opportunity arises should be a leader and solar and energy saving projects so that was the first thing i looked at the second thing is how would we fund s so one of our recommendations for funding is to have this come out of the fund balance so money that is currently in our fund balance so we wouldn't have to take that for this but we're asking for is for two hundred thousand to come from the general fund balance hundred twenty five thousand to come from the public works building so that's money that we already taken on in debt and we're paying interest on that anyways and then twenty thousand six hundred ninety one dollars from operational savings the first year is how we would expect to pay for that and so just the simple payback of this project has changed a little bit based on the numbers that jeff gave us earlier today but it's about eleven years for simple to pay back that three hundred forty five to get that back into there and so really this is these are funds that we have in our fund balance right now and we can get a ten percent return on that for the hundred forty one thousand dollars so the first eleven years to pay back our fund balances so it's not debt that would be going back to paying back our fund balance and then after that it's just operational projects is the permeating you know priests putting the electric service to it or the labor of installing it replacing panels or replacing inverte make tonight we have to make the decision whether or not to put it up on the morning because i believe the decision has already been made that we would put this as part of that strong about if the slack part wanted to that they wouldn't include it it's not included in our budget right now is so my biggest question is is the ten percent return approximately eleven year payback again sorry i'm i'm an engineer i'm not a financial person for miss a pol how should i look at those numbers are those good numbers is that a reasonable pay back is that something or should i say i'm looking for advice to how to evaluate those two numbers so right now that three hundred twenty five thousand dollars that we have sitting in the bank and our fine balance is gaining about one percent so instead we would be investing in these solar panel project and instead of paying green lantern solar for the rental of those each month we would actually be receiving the full utility credit  decisions would look at a return from want a return of one percent compared to where we return if we had other things that we were going to be using our fine balance for that know you know that ventures like that you know you can invest public funds and you know and investment vehicles this one you're allowed to do you know it's a capital investment that has a return there's so many or school district have to have no return but you still have to do it you know like parking lots and brooms and all kinds of stuff this one you know energy projects are unique in that you know energy efficiency and renewable energy projects whether they be solar or biomass or efficiency they have to return a third different like they were turns on different line items in your budget you know so the money goes out one off after certain amount of time and why if it's a money generator for them what ones because why isn't it still a good investment for that i forget the name of the company so typically the way they did that the incentive is counterintuitive the incentives for a particularly solar projects are tax incentives right there tax credits and there depreciation the tax that to the tax credits can be you can use immediately tax is fully monetized it's not unusual for the developer to try to flip it and to try to get the capital back into it again you know they'll be an interesting market if you know he you know one thing that would be an interesting thing to do is is to have a secondary market buying these projects after the first tax is monetized because you can be depreciated but you know if the tax incentives are relevant for for a municipality and as far as your contract it the way that i read your contract and i'm not a lawyer i'm not an accountant so i you know i do do want to stress that but the way i read your contract is is is that you haven't either word choice either you continue with the and i think that the the date is actually six years from that the conception date which is september twenty eighth i believe so it's probably before the end of the year i think this is probably your opportunity to put in front of the voters restructure the contract we structured it knowing that we probably have to have a vote so we had to have the appraisal done in december so we could vote on it in march and it was specifically set up that way to give us the opportunity to have a discussion and have to think think about the investment in the return because that it's not quite the same kind of investment return i would expect from an investment vehicle but it's investing in solar so renewable energy and if it's actually still valuable at the end of the time that we're finished paying for it that's when we really get big payback so plus i like the idea of putting it in front of the voters so that we get an idea of what the voters think about investing in renewable energy like the last topic we talked about so jeff you mentioned a negotiated it's not up to me to negotiate it where i came down on this is that it seemed to me that this was about right they they they actually did a very similar analysis  i did they came out with a slightly lower number is three hundred thirty eight thousand and think it was in in there was it in the contract or it was in the contract that they came up with a number of three hundred  thirty eight thousand as i think was an addendum on the contract and then they did the contract calls for an independent appraisal so they hired an appraiser the appraiser these are difficult to appraise you know because there is there are you know there's no comparables that they can compare it to this is relatively new territory you guys were early adopters so they're there are a few out there and they're not necessarily public record how much they get sold for so the appraiser tr apply common praise whole methodologies to come up with a price tried three different ways two of them they couldn't determine and this is the third way it was complicated you know discount value future stream and he came out with a slightly different number three hundred forty five thousand to me is it's about the same it's not you know it's not a huge difference and i think it's debatable you know it what  most important would be to make a situation now rather than try to then miss the opportunity to put in front i don't think you'd get a whole lot different answer he may be able to knock a few thousand dollars but i doubt it have to decide on the amount that we offer today or just that we want to do it we have to decide on the amount they were going to ask the taxpayers for of from a negotiation perspective we play are we basically put out the contract that said that the price would be determined by an appraisal ok i think that you know i think i think  i use the term negotiation and then you know everything is negotiable in theory but i'm not a lawyer and this contract is fairly specific you know so you know the two numbers that have been thrown out his side think three thirty eight is in the appendices of the original contract and three forty five is what the appraisal came up with and the contract says either this number or that number whichever is higher and i remember distinctly that language we negotiated because  i said well this this i raise questions that time but it was you know in the discussions with the legal counsel and other people in the business jeff once i'm involved and at that point they said there was a very common language the other point of reference that you might have as you just did the very similar contract with pack of electric for your public works that's when i was here last and this is essentially the same deal it was fifty if you know and at that time  i think we negotiated the buyout price and here six or seven i can't remember what at about fifty percent he has told us so this day the numbers all seem to line up fairly similarly the only difference in that contract is that there is no either or whichever is higher and there's a specific number in that contract option would be if if jeff did his analysis and said actually that system's worth about two hundred thousand you'd be overpaying at this rate then we'd be recommending to the flat for that we just stay in our current agreement and not buy an asset for more than it's worth and then if our next option opportunity to purchase this would be a year ten and that is after the seller after which jeff shared that it's about nine thousand dollars a year that we get for the next four years which helps you know that where i get stuck is this term fair market value you know fair fair market value know what is fair market value you know i we're willing to it's a buyer is willing to pay it with a willing seller you know and the i r s is fairly specific about this is that you know you can sell it for less than fair market value haven't quite figured out the rationale for that but did you know that in the at the time all of the contracts are written the same way this the fair market this number or fair market value whichever is higher which is really counterintuitive but you know what's it's it's not out of the realm of of what would be reasonable to me to take jennifer's exactly right if i come up with a number much lower than yes i were told you figure if you came up with a lower number would be based on having a lower revenue stream exactly so your in your values based on the revenue stream which gets us alone kind of a return value if you will assuming you have the money at the end i guess well that's the good news about solar it's solar as is his question your colors from the board just explored the this issue hopefully just a short bit more is on the three forty five six ninety one fair market value we should be for we're fairly confident it at that price i what i was getting at is this is all about risk cometh risk are we taking if we move ahead with you know the numbers that presented us only to have green lantern capital please excuse my language  late i can't come up with something quicker but use lawyer reasons that then say well you know this really you know you know if you read our contract this way our moyer's are saying we can interpret it this way in the real amount is five hundred loose character in motion i will move to place an article on the town meeting warning for a vote by australian values for the purchase of solar panels presently located on the town property located behind the town they actually don't have a whole lot more to add to what we've talked about in other meetings if you recall we've had several powerpoint presentations for  is a agreement to create a regional authority that agreement does not include a requirement the town actually receive and pay for the services it just gives us a seat at the table the second agreement is a memorandum of understanding and that is a select board decision that would come after and assuming there is a favorable vote in forming the authority how many years do we have that if he joined us authority part of our another part of our police dispatching is actually done by the state police that's a separate issue you and the state police at different points of said they may want to shed that responsibility at some point that hasn't moved forward so they're still offering that service and that wouldn't be changed by this necessarily then the third piece is our  fire and ambulance which is currently dispatched by the tower shelburne so once an area is the towers show burn decides not to join the authority so then we have a choice do we have it continue to be dispatched by t alent show burned or do we move it to the authorities let's say the town is over and does decide to join the authority and they vote that way then we will be moving with them  presumably we'd be paying less if we're a member then if we're not a member because i'm expecting the fee schedules that separate i'm expecting that these services will be offered to they're not party authority but at a higher rate but we would still likely pay more because we would be adding would we be adding the police on top of that or we could we split our services we could split  and and i asked this question of the and of course they didn't really have the authority to respond but the question i posed was well do we retain our full membership under this agreement that if we are just having fire and ambulance dispatched and you know there wasn't a clear answer but i think they would prefer to have wilston part of this even if it's just ambulance and fire and not part of it and so you know that's as close an answer as i can get to that issue at this point so my expectation all the way to again i don't have phone numbers my speculation is that whence we it is switchover the foreign ambulance dispatch will not cost any more than it currently costs i do expect though that if we move police into that it will cost more understanding that will have savings because we'll have less staff but we won't necessarily have one hundred percent my staff because some of our dispatchers or some of the dispatch work i should say is beyond just dispatched they do records that's a different pay grade of work so but there's still that work that has to get done and we have to pay someone to do it help pay the state police  and that's correct that's the biggest piece of this we don't currently pay the state police for that service and that's a significant chunk of the total time that our police are actually dispatched so all in all and of course don't there's also the risk that at some point the state may pull the plug on providing that service and you know will be in a position to easily police into this organization so for all those this the resolution yes yes including the rather extensive list of whereas yours i know i objected to the half but this is this exact resolution has been adopted by every single weeks and the also the wording that's been proposed for the town meeting warning is also the exact same wording being adopted by every single town and has been reviewed by multiple legal council an order i move to adopt the resolution for the formation of a union municipal district and to place an article on the warning for town meeting for a vote by australian ballot that if approved permits the town to enter into an for the formation of a union you know simple district for the purpose of providing regional emergency dispatch service that that board is actually already voted on this is in january twenty seventh teen but there's been a lot of discussion and so i want to highlight and i'm sure that's why the fish commission members are here and it relates to the winners get i park park district if the district does not take affirmative action to change the member funding allocation formula the party of the district rather has had a number of meetings over the course of the year clearing some fair amount of discussion on this topic but they have not taken any action to change the formula and for that reason well the issue is still  the district has made some progress in those areas and the with the acquisition of the property that we just recently acquired the district is so they would certainly would be value however in my mind even if we have that property being managed by the district we're still overpaying our share of the the amount that we list and the rationale was that at the time is the grand list is an approximation of the ability to pack the problem with that is that the money that was the value of our grand list largely help pay for education the state change the name of the rules basically when they took over education funding and so that value that the town had was taken away from us so that money that we had that was value that put us in the position of being richer than the other communities was already it's been taken away and redistributed already and that money is already going to places like when you ski in burlington in fact if you look at their school tax rates they're lower than our school tax rate for that very reason and so for all those reasons and you know the board's already voted this  to the conservation commission through melinda scott has sent rick a memo that is that that provides our strong endorsement of continuing membership in the park district we do not want to see was in withdraw from the park district and we're here to kind of emphasize that point and i believe and i would like to just read my own statement about this if you will indulge me i've been a member of the conservation commission for the past twenty eight years and have been where we have been during which time we have worked with the new savelli park district most of that time  the relationship between the town in the park district has had its ups and downs over the years but in the past several years since nick warner has been the director the relationship is greatly improved the main sticking point  in addition to the formula and rick's first perceived in equity in that regard and i'm not going to really address that but the main sticking point is that the park district has had no parks in will list and most of the their membership is primarily supported its mission of acquiring and managing public parks in other towns and the reason for this is that is has to do with wilson's environmental reserve fund which dollars to the this money is purchased by p t our or fees simple one thousand eight hundred thirty acres over the years for one point seven nine five million dollars this land has been valued at three point five seven million indicating that the town has leveraged as much as its spent to acquire the land the problem currently and one and probably the main reason that we want to continue with a new theme park district is that the town's purchase of the catamount property is going to deplete the e r after further more the labor resources of the town provided by the planning office and our summer interns are at their limit for managing the land that we already have pretty well kept out in terms of what we can and what we can manage at this point so the time is really right for the new city valley park to step step in to both choir and manage new properties and we'll listen as they become available and we have a current golden opportunity for this was rick explained with the jacobs property that when you see where we're from i don't think we're at the point where where i mean we were fortunate to acquire that property without a cost but i don't think we have the money or the labor to manage that property and develop th property so we strongly recommend continued membership in the when you see valley park district in our opinion to discontinue now would be penny wise and pound foolish and as an aside i just want to comment on what to do about that if you were to agree with this viewpoint what to do with article seven could you i mean as reported out this was passed that that the reason is there is because it was passed by this like board one year ago could you rescind that or if you decided you couldn't rescind it could you put that article in a more positive light  in other words put it that despite the fact that the funding formula hasn't changed that the town that the vote would be that the town continues as a member of the russie valley park  district and we say this because ok they didn't change the funding form and frankly i don't know how they could have without changing it for every other town but they did step up to take on the acquisition and management of new parks and wilson which is what we wanted all along so we're kind of at the we're on the verge of getting well what was what it from then was the valley park district and i think a it would be a shame to do it to stop our membership in it at this point a very strong leadership the point they were they did not have lands within the town that they were managing the town's contribution to the american farm reserve fund was being cut had been cut back to zero essentially maybe just ten thousand dollars a year i don't recall that had been on the order of sixty to sixty five thousand and there was also proposed cuts to other elements of the conservation commission budget like trails and trails management and other and and now he's been there for four years now and he is what i consider and karl also said as very strong leadership and in that district in that program and he has worked with us rather than working against us  he's worked with us to find ways to find common ground for the town in a park district within our within our articles for managing town parks and we are now we've we opt out of it because they have those resources that they can bring to the table and develop this new parcel give the folks who live on that part of two way the northern part a two way access to a new park and the river   yeah i guess that's about all that's all i had to say i just encourage you also like what karla say i courage it to look at the wording that are using