please pledge allegiance to the flying of the united states of america and to the republic who just stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all like to welcome everyone to tonight's luck board meeting and just remind you if you have one of these if you could put it to turn it off or put it the silence that would be very much appreciated thank you and if you hadn't signed in that looks i think everybody has but if you have and if you can make sure you sign in so that we have that for the minutes we would appreciate that as well so we'll go on to item two which is agenda additions and change is great i see we do have a few things here things in reverse order we have a community outreach over the weekend had a few more edits today which i would detract and yes you can see what's different from what you received over the weekend for our excuse to use the applications to responding to our accused her facilitator for the just a minor change no changes to the final numbers but under the on the first page into the town manager section total town manager percentage change of total so the far right hand column the correct numbers opportunity to opt in to get notified so it's it's in everybody's utility bill right now and i don't know what the town with the reaction was for the town to i'll double check and make sure that we have actually adopted any formal policy that will double check that and see if there's any instructions for the time i met him or to get the information for where they're going to be spreading and what they're going to be spring and we are supposed to be receiving  had asked you in the past in my many days of proposed retirement and actual retirement to speed up is it best you can the recruitment selection and hiring which you did i'm thankful for and the twentieth of february is my retirement day to start i think you may have known this i just thought that i would say it killed seventeen and you again here they're twenty eight twenty twenty eight  the board would miss it for the ok if there's nothing else proposed to be here there we're going to move on to our item five which is public hearing so for the for the budget fourteen million two hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred thirty two dollars that's five hundred ninety five thousand one ninety three more than last year and as a percent that's increase the operating budget of four point three four percent right at ninety five women sixty five ninety five one as one ninety three in the warning it's one ninety three as well still the public hearing is open is there anyone here tonight in the audience that would like to talk about the budget questions about the budget ok the hearing none then i will have a motion to give a question ok yeah i was curious if the line five hundred the county tax didn't get the up and so i came in right after that and so i started in the exit june of two thousand and fourteen when its operations going to move myself up and before taking over the general manager position i was the assistant general manager under kevin who moved on i took over approximately a year ago and so i just wanted to come in and have an opportunity to introduce myself to the board and kind of a very quick presentation of kind of like where we are what we're doing what we're up  to some of the exciting things that we don't we've done a really org reorganization of the organization and we'll kind of go through and i just kind of explain some things that we're up to and then at the end we can answer any question that you may have  so basically just about greenmount transit just this gives you the the kind of the language and we were charted in one nine hundred seventy three and under the name of gin and county currently are fall into green mountain transit but we do have a bill h six zero four that's at the legislature to change the name officially because it was chartered to and it's going to be greenmount transit authority we're currently in five five counties in the state of vermont with the largest transit agency in the state and we transport him approximately anywhere between two point five to three million passengers a year combined streamline the organization a little bit we originally used to have eight directors that reporting up the chain now we've kind of have it down to four four directors and the marketing person managing direct departments into divisions and these four are basically just right under me and they kind of do like said their executive leadership team they kind of have some authority over making decisions that i do spend time at the legislature in their day to day decisions that they may make and so we we meet weekly in some structured it to the point where if you look at the kind of the you know the lowest position on that or chart basically has a pretty good streamlining to me if they need to and we have a very large open door policy i meet with everybody and we have individual meetings we have basically we'll go through this a little bit later but this allows staff to basically you know have a direct report to their to their direct report but then also the ability to come into my office my office and have a conversation so stop the eight directors put them into four thank you the one thing one thing i i wanted to bring to this organization when i took over was that i feel that our our staff and operators not only are part of the organization but also part of the community that they serve or they live in and so one thing i brought to the the organization and i wanted to kind of make sure th come in on the one day that we partnered with china forty four and we basically gave them double the amount of ticket sales for that because the veterans use the bus quite a bit in town so we basically doubled the number of tickets we we sold that day and we double that so that was our first very successful outreach the second one we did was washington county this is one of my this is kind of a fun one where we went to washington county family center and said you know what is it that you may need and  came they just basically we need diapers and you know for the for the moms and the babies and so we had a lot of fun with that and we chose staff to command how many could bring in you know stacks of diapers in the nearest store trying to buy diapers and home a wife like what we used to but i  don't remember and so so we had a really good time with that but we were also donated quite a bit and we had a media partner down and washing county at that point was a radio station and so people were bringing in donations all the time and it became another really good event and then the last one we did was from franklin county and franklin county community action we did a winter clothing drive we're going to ask them what they needed and they said you know winter clothes are always a big deal so we basically again challenge half the community bring in and winter coats and gloves and things like that and we had a great a great amount of response to the point where our teamsters donated five hundred dollars  in clothes which if i go back to when i started two thousand and fourteen tutors and just not c i i but their relationship is concerned considerably turned around so they don't have five hundred dollars worth of which are clothes they went shopping and they had fun with it and they brought in a big box and so that was also successful this will happen every year we'll do three each in the community and staff will make recommendations to you know their local organizations that they think that you know might be benefit from us doing these things so that was the one thing that we like to highlight because we think it's really good for the partnership between our staff and community another organization couple our organization highlights that i'd like to bring up is that we also start a staff volunteer program so staff comes in quarterly they get eight hours if they come to basically they have a nonprofit that they want to volunteer and they basically get approval for it and then basically we let them go in volunteer for the day and we pay them for it so they don't have to use any of the vacation time or anything like that so they can find an organization within their community and volunteer that in were that nonprofit they may think was helpful so we do a quarterly that's brand new for the organization another part of any organization in my mind is that is communication and inlets you have clear communication within the organization sometimes messages get get a little money so one thing we started was a software called boom fire it's an internal internet and basically when he gets an account everybody from you know the operators all the way and anybody in the organization has a has a log in they can log in what they can basically do is go in there and they can actually go to h r and they can grab documents that like every time a document that they they may not have time because their hours are different so they may just go online at any time blog and request a document then we would send it to their account and they can basically just pull it up at any time that they want it's all done by mobile has it's something we started we're just getting off the ground in this because it's one of those things where you have to kind of figure out exactly how much you want to share and and what you want to share and then one of the other organization h i do quarterly staff meetings i do a town hall meeting basically where we project from burlington our offices to all of our locations we have five in the winter and basically we go over certain things that are going on the organization and we may focus one day in training just on one blue fire but we do them quarterly so everybody in the organization can log on and actually watch a live kind of town hall meeting and ask questions type in questions and things like that so very open and transparent  and so that's been that's been very very successful within the organization the this one is interesting though you probably have heard a little bit on an electric car electric bus program that we went for so we in  conjunction with going to electric to be icy and be trans put together a grant called the no low and that basically is no emission low emissions and what was kind of neat about this was the uniqueness of the organizations all working together your utility company in burlington working in putting basically money towards the bus purchase the e e o c putting together all the grant and be transporting together the money for the the buses we kind of put it all put it all in the grant we asked for originally asked for four but we were settling with two and it's a national grant that goes in the i think there's a there's a there were a total of five hundred fifty six agencies that applied and we were one of them that got the grant which i think because the uniqueness of the partnership was compelling to the federal government so they came up with the money and then what we did was we then all got together one day b d and then bt came up with another grant from us which gave us more match money ultimately instead of the two we are now going to purchase for we are currently in the process of doing they are a few right now and hopefully to be awarded sometime in march or april when it gets there we don't know because that will be dramatic just a matter of getting a built so we're pretty excited about a bit of the fully one hundred percent electric and so those we will charge him with in burlington and that's the deal with the with the bt burlington electric is that we have to charge them overnight at low peak so ten difference is about two little over two hundred thousand between a diesel court clean diesel to electric vehicles about two hundred thousand of difference so we had to bridge that gap so that's the big money that came in in the the light came in with some some funds so so that we're pretty excited about hopefully by you know hopefully with depending on the on the build kind of line of how long we can get him out on the four buses compared to say you know thirty buses from somebody else so hopefully we can kind of get him in there fairly quick i'd like to get him on the road so but that's it was all word of the money is always secured and we were going forward with  so you know if this is an interesting conversation because it's in their in their paperwork they'll tell you oh you know we've got two hundred thirty two hundred forty miles one of the conditions and so what we intercept paid isn't anywhere between about one hundred and seventy to two hundred is what you know we would need about a ten hour shift and that's kind of where we are so we're kind of very we're being very conservative and so we know that it's it'll stay out that we did do some pilot testing with two companies  so we do have some data that shows that we'll have it on the road for about ten hours so but they say about two thirty to forty but that's probably in the summertime at eighty five degrees and not in the winter at negative twenty so  do miles in the winter these next couple of just kind of explaining how we are funded and go through this quicker these are our funding streams that we currently have there is one that we haven't put on here and that is one that we are working with the department of labor in vermont where we have went to them and we said listen we train so many operators in our four to six week training program we're constantly have a classes of five to seven you know is there any way that we can partner with because you do pay other agencies to do that and for profits but if you if we could utilize some of those funds to for our current training program would that be would that be possible and they said well it's interesting that was never asked us this before and what we propose is that we would be the training organization for the whole state for the all the transit agencies without the within the state and so we applied for it through a grant and we actually received the grant  about two weeks ago so it's something that's very unusual something that's never been done in vermont anyways at the deal well so we're pretty excited about that so we're hopeful to build off that and so we're work we just literally two weeks ago  some capital funds for our bus purchases and some operating funds for match for operating as well and then c c r p c we do get planning grants from c c r you see this the member community is is is obviously what essex is is a community that is voting representation from the town on the board in the town is assessed a tax for service the nonmember communities do not have voting represent representative from their community on the board we cannot assess those municipalities some of the rural rural areas we don't have agreement we don't have that they're not member agreements but they do contribute to their service for instance the city i'm up here they have some they have representation from the from the regional planning commission but they just contribute monies to the service that we provide for them within the city this in just an example of some of the some small of rural areas that we that transportation services it's a mandate through the federal government you have a fixed route you can only go through three quarters of a you must provide service three quarters of a mile from that fixed route it is as the crow flies so it can be it can kind of cross over different routes  but basically it's a requirement from the federal government that we allow them to complement complementary paratransit services they don't apply to commuter routes and we are currently contract with s s t a which is based out of colchester for our current paratransit services right now the next program that would be somewhat important is the indie elders and disabled program these are federal funds that are applied for basically enhanced mobility the beauty of the kind of the indy program is that it's there's not a lot of mandates on this so we can kind of work a little bit basically improves the mobility for seniors that funding is has been a little bit this past budget from the from the on the trans are able to be they took money away from this program and so you know it could be an impact at some point  but we're currently working with our current agencies and even the group to continue the service that we currently provide and then the last of the important thing within the town and we're actually utilizing the current kind of program and policy that is happening here we're trying to kind of merge into some of these other communities to kind of explain to them this could happen if you had a park and wrecked apartment i was willing to take seniors to trips eighty is tricky in a sense that because it's a mandate that if you had two people and this just happened basically move from say williston to essex and then they take the trip every day i use this example because maybe they'll help me at some point but there's two nuns that moved from willesden to south burlington and they take the they basically take the vehicle to the church to church every day and so the two of them go to the church and they go but so it's if you think about ten round trips they go together the ten round trips but if you add that up over a period of time you're eighty a cost you know could go up because of that but as a mandate they don't they but they both qualify for eighty eight and so that's simple as two people could is actually working well for you so so you ford make that with or so we basically you guys come up with the math the local match and then we secure the funds for you for the eighty percent and then we basically turn the van over and you go do your town operation through a park or wrecked apartment i believe and and then we maintain the vehicles as well so we still have a kind of maintain and then we build the town i believe so i met coordinate between the s s t s a and the senior van  oh no to make sure that more the rights go on the scene even yeah no they really don't coordinate but the what's happened i think in here especially here in essex that the seniors that know about it would rather take the van because it's a lot more convenient it's you know you can pick it there is no know allow me to be in here just give you a quick overview i know its court but you know that you know i'm available for questions now and later whichever is easier for the for the board thing am emails and you know whichever way you want to go i'll open up to the quick question i had about it is the staff fall into your program he said they get eight hours at a year its quarterly quarterly quarterly it has to go through a process so there's has to be a nonprofit that's recognized a lot of times united way does does a lot of these programs and so we've you know reached out to you know the way in so you know but we have a whole process that has to be approved by managers and then up to i have to sign the final moments here you have a feel for your participation  rate so we've we've just basically kind of opened it up to staff within the last quarter last quarter we've had i think two or three were in a third one's taking taking us up on it so what the what the problem of the issues was trying to figure out in local communities like one thing that we used to do where it came from is we used to volunteer and go to a nonprofit to help paint the paint the homeless shelter or something like that and so what we had to do is compile a list of local organizations that could utilize our services and kind of reach out to them make sure they're ok with so took a little bit of time to get going but they're going to third third stafford now that's doing it and we do a similar thing at globalfoundries and we work through the united way they actually set up the know the sort of do people go as a group or is it individuals right now it's individuals it can go as a group so one thing that i that i plan on doing in the spring or summer of this year is getting all of all of us together and finding one organization that we c all do one full day together going to team building the team believe and kind of help out a homeless shelter and take everybody basically out of the building one organization help that organization for the day and use it like this as a team building  exercise so that's one thing we're working on right now in your memo that you included it actually wasn't part of the presentation actually your name's not on the man memo so this might be more challenging for you the last two lines say the board and staff continue to discuss a more sustainable source of funding until that funding can be secured the board and staff continue to work diligently to find efficiencies in the company's operation what's the what's the concern there with  funding funding is always our biggest challenge right when the state it's really a trickle down effect unfortunately it is if the state all the way to the governor's office comes in and says that this is what the budget going to look like and then just trickles down from the through a be trans and then ultimately to the transit agencies within the state and while the federal money has has been there it's the local match that is challenging for us sometimes because just in our capital program last year  there was one point two million dollars of capital match money that was taken out of the trans budget to basically purchase vehicles so at this point we're a little bit behind on purchasing our vehicles in the rural area not so much in the urban areas we just had twelve vehicles that just were on the road and we have the four new electric buses and then for the urban area it's more the world area so the funding is a challenge throughout organization because because we do rely so much on the federal government but then we also  local match money and veterans and last year we just really kind of took took a you know kind of a cut that right out of the budget from veterans and there was basically no purchasing of extra vehicles or anything like that so it's just always a challenge every year just to make sure  that you know that we can keep up with the demand i mean if the vehicles ages five years and we're at four point eight and we should be have something in here already that should be you know being built so that's what we're so it's kind of it's just a general statement for the organization in a whole as a whole well that's question all right i ask this of every regional regional entity that comes in and talks to us there's a number of regional entities now and there's also talk about potentially adding more of them as as time progresses and we you know the police dispatch was one that was recently talked about you all have i guess what would be called back office functions where you have a t departments and human entities such as yourself the waste district the water district the regional planning commission to consolidate any of those back office functions so then you can be more efficient yeah we haven't really talked with those come in and take a look at it does it make sense for them to continue with a contract it doesn't make sense for us to possibly take it over so that makes sense to go back over an r f p to try to be more efficient specially if those operations worked david you know going to kind of grab you know that piece of it or is it just makes sense to keep it where it is so we have had these conversations i will also tell you that in a perfect world we would love to see transit in general you know kind of regional allies as you have agencies throughout the state and some of them are a lot smaller than us and they they also have an i t person they also have an h r person they also have and so you know what we've started the conversation with is should should we talk about kind of discussing the efficiencies of all the transit agencies in general and maybe the our fees all come out of shouldn't count because we have the staff to do it and maybe then they can look at their w stations and so there has been some talk yes you're welcome anybody else so again i want to thank you for coming in it sounds like you're making some real positive change there and we appreciate being sensitive to the local just thought i'd you know you have the memo i can run through it quickly and i understand a few things i like to discuss a basically just sort of fresh your memory and she'd be i see one of the we're one of the twelve regional development corporations in the state have been around a long time basically we work with businesses that export goods and services out of the state bring dollar one in to the states so it's it's not the retail or the service sector it's the it's the manufacturers of the business service companies that are like a dealer dot com that it's selling out of the state  we have a bunch of functions here the first one of the list is its business retention expansion that's what i spend most of my time on i have a list of about a database of about two hundred companies that we try to keep keep track of reps and about forty thousand employees in the new county area so it's a it's a and a generally those two hundred companies are generally ten or more employees so so it's not the smaller ones who are close even a small business development said it has an office in our building it to work with the smaller companies we work with economic development centers i'll talk a little bit about the vermont employment growth initiative  incentive when i talk about some specifics here and in essex workforce education and training we've been promoting that for my training program  as one thirty five required to report and so that whole state wide report has been consumed a little bit of time from from frank and seth we try to stay out and legislative advocacy but i was there last friday and occasionally those things that come up that we were asked to testify on do a little bit of permit facilitat we had an issue with autumn harp their construction was held up by helped a little bit with that as an example  the other thing i guess you can point it more you may not be familiar with is we work closely with us in a county a recent planning commission on this said and we did just updated the economic development information on the on the said there are other resources for economic development vailable through we created we have sort of a regional office in burlington a sixty main street the  put a significant building expansion on we work closely with them and encourage them and their expansion through something called the rim on employment growth incentive this is really the only incentive program we have in this state  the way it works is the state calculates the economic benefit from the project they keep a piece of that up to like twenty percent of the economic benefit created print primarily t employment payroll taxes and other benefits that their crew through copland expenditures and then they receive return a piece of that incentive back to the company to encourage the incentive to curse you essentially create that economic benefit to the state so that state takes a piece of it and then returns if the tar if the business meets those targets a portion of that new revenue was returned to the business over a five year period t well this is a it's a fifty percent match basically from the state for my training program we were actually working with a number of businesses currently in essex junction i guess the one but the only one i could really comfortable to talk about is were dean had a meeting with them last week and they've already come to the town on for a warehouse expansion out there and this is kind of what i try to spend my time on is finding these little companies that have to decide on the operating out in the woods somewhere and then have an opportunity to to expand into a new market and  industrial lands with the exception of a few pockets here and there or a sizeable piece of industrial areas you know in essex to pieces really want is this global foundries where they have  with global just trying to get an understanding of what's where and how it works and sort of breaks down into about five different projects for me to talk about  whether it's a waste water treatment facility or the forty three acres or there are there are significant presence in williston as well as sort of include out in our our global foundries evarist building  i try to keep in touch with what's going on in essex or the economic development corporation committee me commission meetings greg board for questions and gerri could you just remind me where you harbor security is i haven't run into those my travels are they in the secondary as well or they are a little stealth company they do internet security they're located actually used the word stuff because my question was going to be is is there more that can be done to publicize or showcase some of the different businesses that are here because i think in a l cases people don't even know these are in vermont or or even in chile in cali and i just there's not a week that goes by that i don't learn much about a business that's either here or in the state of vermont that i'm like i had no idea was in the supermarket so i think that given the current drain that we have on people leaving for ma there could be more that c be done to identify what all the businesses are in some of the more innovative businesses that are here and no one knows are here i agree with that and that's the ticket really important for companies and they're trying to attract employees to come here because because the employee like to come to a dealer dot com wants to know if it doesn't work out with a dealer who else is around well you know my web groceries around and there's a whole bunch of smaller you know companies where you can have the trailing spouse you know as well looking what else what else is available so it's an excellent point i know that the economic development commission has put together a list of companies and i know greg i don't know if that's been updated lately but that's that's still sort of organ keep track of it i think he updates the periodic last area that as a document that is available for essex yeah i was thinking broader than just essex i do i mean i i know that you're just within the to the county region but i i think you know i was thinking more statewide that you know that seems to be something that's the scuffs a lot of the state level but it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot being done to to at least showcase what exists currently that may actually help people stay within the state i know you know part of it is attracting new people to come but also we're losing a lot of people you know with electronic media now they're trying to more that with web sites we have a d v r as he has a website although we don't spend a lot of the nomic development as well try to put stories on it out and they just haven't a website so i think that's part of the way you can do it a source of electronic media but i agree with you know there's some real surprises out there  my work and working globalfoundries them to say that i am not speaking on their behalf this is just my own comments here but the job that i do doesn't the it doesn't affect anybody that you know i'm not working with anybody here in vermont and so when i retire it's very unlikely that they would replace me with another individual from from vermont are there things that have to encourage or promote remote employment because i work out of my house eighty percent of the time and therefore more and i you know i do i live here because i choose to live here but you'd have to in order to replace my job in vermont you'd have to have somebody who wanted to live in vermont to come do it we just need to be icy hasn't done a thing all along those lines i know that the economic development of the state that's one it would have been doing some promoting on and now it's it's you have to be a little careful with remote work i mean some say it's good for some individuals it's good for some companies some other companies struggle with a little bit so it's certainly something you've got to to some degree you need to encourage and for people what they've elvie's are out there we're not we're able to do it but but i can provide us information are i guess get back to  u on what the state has done along those lines but that's what you're right i mean as people age and retire i can't think of who around a table here that might be but  anything that we can do as a board to help he said to her own now we program to to encourage businesses to expand to stay here and expand is there anything that we can do to help she be as she in that regard because we don't always hear about it first and where my my my economic development want to go one response is go with the municipalities need to do is try to create an attractive environment and so you do that with with just who you are and then permitting and regulatory issues access the government it's trying to create that it that it that friendly business environment and a lot of what you do are involved loses touches on that in various ways and i think mike has be able to do that so i think that's that's how an address like to expand a little bit of on that we often find out after the fact that a company was looking to expand in and then couldn't left and that's that's obviously not where we want to be inserted at the end when it's done  or thinking about moving i'd like to make sure that we have a open communication that allows the manager to know that so that we can perhaps be part of the solution and not just be informed of the result and i know there's confidentiality things but you know that those are easy to solve right you can have you going to have non disclosure agreements sent up between g i c and the manager's office for example but the worst thing for me to see is being formed after the fact like flex of steel for example i'd like to make sure that we know when you do the better company needs something in order to stay here because it's difficult to attract but business is here that's a great investment to ensure that they stay here and they're happy and that they can expand so somehow i'd like to find a way to and i don't and here again you know i knew probably three and a half years or four years ago the fluxes still needed more space so it's at what point is it is it gets critical that they're looking ok they didn't but they need to grow and it's at what point is that get to the point where we need to get heavily involved or are they just looking so that perhaps in that case you know i or  could of could have maybe inform some of the ministration of the town on that one more often the situation max is that we met with the company and it's it's understood understood that that everything is confidential and the company has to be confident that content of that fact they don't tell you anything so it's sort of self evident in a discussion and that we're talking about this issue it's here in this room and that's as far as it goes and i mean i've been next spring i think it be like forty years of my life has been an economic development and it's understood you just don't talk about those things  some situations where we will set up a meeting with the municipality with the client but i think it's very rare and there are fairly rare unless it's a specific issue that we will go to a town and say hey you know have you heard so and so's expanding we just just can't really do that so i think i agree with you there needs to be some kind of maximum mechanism i don't think it's a non disclosure agreement i don't think you really need that you just need the ability to to understand them from between the parties who can talk to whom about what you know and i think what our concern is is dealing dealing with the state or any governmental organization knew that it's open open meeting law and so we're concerned about the public public access to that information we're talking to t what's going on between the planning commission and what they're hearing or who's come in and talk about what what what projects so that discussion be good and then maybe that that's sort of been it would would work to be discussed then that would have to come to certainly will i mean tax stabilization i i don't suggest suggest that so i use that just a set of an example but most things could be handled there because we have a  real you know investment in these companies you want to keep them here and to the worst thing is they're going to find out after the fact that they left and they were looking to expand and we didn't have the opportunity to try to be part of the solution it's miller for his building as you know i mean that and we weren't we were directly involved those final negotiations but once we've once we knew that they were the deal was was on the table then we were able to be involved but there's so they can this brand new company and i'm talking about the companies that are essex within essex now and are looking to think about moving because they don't have the space or they need something  that's where i think we'd like to be part of the solution and in the the bigger building they outgrew their space there and forty six thousand square feet they needed sixty and they also releasing from bob miller and bob miller had one hundred eighty thousand square feet right up on sand hill that the sit near empty all the time there look and so i can't believe that if anybody could put together a deal for food science for a new building or an existing building it would be  a release of the blodgett project and you forget a word kurt in the between the the two in vermont shouldn't there have been an essex inserted in there is should read the long island yeah did the when we cared to see the veggie application they they talk about this they they put it in the veggie application  i know that they have been down there meeting with this company my understanding is it's going to be they're going to be the first tenant in the in a big building but i don't even know whatever it is yet and they're always the middle of the plants of which blodget is one is always competing for these new project products that are coming out and and  so we've been lucky with wood lodge in burlington that they have a great workforce had a great reputation need to get stuff out and so they've sort of been winning these contracts and the market forwards that move that moved up into  apologize that you know we can't say hey we just talked with this company down the road here and they're looking to open to to to move or or expand and what can you do to help because if the company wants to be talk to the town then they'll talk to the town whether it's owning issue whether or how nice you but i would like to be able to have some kind of an agreement with with somehow a system to set up with either the the new new that would like to coordinate make sure that's something that you guys are involved with and and and excise then that's what i'm looking for again not to get in the way or it but but to to to help you know ensure that we're doing the situated with the economic development and it particular companies that are here we want to keep them here we want to help them grow and thrive i would love to bring a new companies but the ones that are here we don't want to see them go off we spent a lot of time with i b m and global and people just to get i b m still there to get a pretty good price for hundred employees or so you know i mean compared to what they were before that's not a big deal but they have three hundred employees that are down across the river here is yeah we're certainly glad they're there significant investment there's a fair amount of police yeah yeah yeah i think they have somebody from all counties working at that plant appreciate  welcome nice to see you again what happened periodically so that's what i intend to do tonight actually that will just briefly go over some highlights some of the things that were in the letter that we sent you for our t v audience and for you guys too but we started off last year in january we sent letters to all of our membership announcing the project requesting donations and we got a very good response from membership on that we held a public kickoff of the campaign at the tower and men and had a fairly good attendance of kind of a rainy day but looking to quite a few people there we were able to open the tower on the ground floor so they got into the see what they are missing they wanted to go up to the top we've applied for historic preservation grants and for some private funding foundation funding which i will go into in just a few minutes we've also sent letters to the county historical societies non profits like the rotary and the masons and the lions and we sent letters to all of the businesses that the fort asking them for donations we also were invited to present to meetings so the as extension lions club and that which minister of the society we published an article and the gentle kind of yes turkle society and i noticed that i did leave out the word bulletin i could say that i did that just to see if you guys were awake to see if i left something out but that's probably not the truth but a temporary man brought a very nice article about the building of the fort and our campaign that we published that you're getting a circle society bulletin and we actually got about five hundred dollars from as a result of that that article so it was well worth  to date we have a total of sixty one thousand three hundred fifty five dollars and seventeen cents which is interest and that includes approximately forty three thousand dollars it's in the town council and i guess that i'll go into that in just a few minutes where the money came from last fall we had collected up fifty percent of the estimated cost of the original estimated cost of the roof and windows and we are preparing to apply for the vermont state to start preservation grants we had been encouraged by the state historic preservation officials to do that and we are also going to apply for a historic preservation grant from the national society daughters of american  cranes and things like that and we found yeah it could be done but the cost of doing it was going to cost as much as it was to repair the stairs so it made absolutely no sense to put that money and to do that from the outside and then still have to have raise that amount of money to do the stairs we were disappointed we had hoped to do the role for windows this year we thought it would done not only what it is shoring up for for the prevent further deterioration but also people would see it being done and they would think that something was going to happen and then they can get them interested and given us some more money but we've regrouped and we've started to put together a list of private donors that we can approach and there are some other foundation money that will be applying for so as part of that attempt to get along go to the private donors i put together a packet of information and i'm going to pass them out to everybody and we'll be giving those to the private donors the copy sure getting our in are not in collar but they will be in car that we give out to them and we'll put in a nice little packet i would appreciate feedback from anybody from you guys on it if you think we should be anything extra in there are things are taken out i did notice as i was standing by the copier at the u p s store today watching those copies spent out that i had updated it with a new estimates but i will do that and i expect that since pat has going to have a lot of time on his hands in the next month and i would expect a lot of feedback from him on this if you thought you would and the other thing we're thinking of doing as part of the package will either want to will parkinsons books in it or we will give them to people who make the donation but will has graciously given me five copies one for each one of us like  it surface fund is history preservation but it's basically addison county they they fund seventy percent anderson county and thirty percent outside of addison county we applied for a five thousand and they denied  that we applied from some money last year from them for the restoration of the stevens gravestone and i will apply again this year for more money maybe eventually they'll get sick of hearing from assen will give us the money the other grants we applied for some private foundations there are all of them are a long shot so they normally don't fund historic preservation so it's more health care related items education and that kind of thing but you know nothing ventured nothing gained so funds that we've got and is the money that you guys have in the capital fund a success start society board has come through with about thirteen hundred dollars per member as it's come through with about fifty six hundred dollars and then public donations  just to public donations what a bit of course we are the big donors the major donors but we are we have gotten thirty five hundred dollars out thirty six hundred dollars from the public we have seven of it's seven hundred fifty dollars it's been pledged that we haven't gotten and that's really great that that here we're all trying to raise the funds to get interest in the community like that we have had a very good interest in the community you know the two groups that we have we spoke to there was a lot of interest  military out in the west and she was going to write to him and say hey you know this project going on do you want to give him some money so that you never know oh yeah ok i'm questions about the  yeah exactly you know like they have enough money to apply for those grants again this year i do know that there is a nother group in vermont that will probably apply for the a r grant and there's another group  want to see it repaired to have ideas as to other things so i want to stop by for that grant but we've got to have enough money behind us to apply for that yeah yeah you have to have fifty percent for all these upfront for we start to apply for them because they all have to be done within a year so we have to have the money upfront before we can apply for the other questions  will you have a table at the tel meeting again this year like you did last year we can we actually forgot that we had a board meeting last week or the week before we kind of forgot about talking about it then but we can if you think it's worthwhile to do that you know you get a fair number of have next public and that well yeah for a fundraiser we haven't talked about any really big public events well has offered to host another open house over there if we can invite some of the major donors to come but kind of our problem for that is i don't know how to get them i don't you know their phone numbers aren't listed and you know i don't know where they live and you know i know why one of them wins but i can't stand on his doorstep and wait for him to come home so  you the second page has a list of all the equipment but basically there are several panasonic laptops a few apple laptops and a couple of servers that are all out of date and no longer relevant to the network so  why there was active that apple computers are not permitted on the network it's mostly a security issue they have different patches different software that need to be kept up  expensive over the questions so will depart other departments like the library have an opportunity to see if there's computers that they could use that the select for declare the attach list of computer equipment surplus the attach list of computer equipment as surplus and authorize the i t department to dispose of the same in the most and last time we spoke about this i recused myself because i have a close working professional working relationship with the property owner that abuts this land so i will pass the town with their commission that it be preserved in perpetuity for recreation conservation purposes back in november the select board expressed interest in that wrote a letter to the horton thing as much since then the attorneys for the horton have drawn up some deeds and done their research and town attorney has reviewed that as well and the offer is now formally being made in town as an opportunity to take over this property questions just for curiosity sake what's the timetable if we move this forward to ninety days to a couple weeks the horns are trying to move this along for tax purposes so there it's i think by will make motion that these leopard except the land donation from the witness and authorize the municipal manager to sign any documents necessary to consummate the transaction ok that's for the warning of the two thousand and eighteen town meetings so so i guess just i guess yeah comments on the budget i still concerned about the amount we're asking for now explain why the state of vermont has already said that there's and i've heard two different numbers whether it's aids present well tax increase expected this year changes to federal tax code have made local taxes more income tax in your property tax exceed ten thousand dollars you'll have less deduction opportunity going forward so each each dollar we add is more expensive than they used to be to people in the end where they're concerned is  that we haven't given all the fundamentalists back and we've already had that discussion so i'm i'm concerned that we're were the budgets higher than it should be given these other ever try to divert that money to something else then i'll raise that ruckus but i'm still saying that i still contend that given the circumstances of the school tax going up the federal tax code changes that we we do have an opportunity to provide some tax relief this year and i understand it's a temporary thing and i also understand that we've said for many years that doing this giving baton back money on the out of the fund balance every year is a bad idea and then we had to cut ourselves off from that by giving it all back i said that once before already but anyway i'm i'm i'm not happy with the budget want to say that but the budget represents what we collectively came to in order to provide at least the same level of service that the people in  custom that i think is our responsibility and that's what we went there and it needs to be affordable we went through that that process that i think is a wonderful discussion we have a lot of people want some things and there was good give and take not everybody got everything they were trying to cut out and i think the board function in a really great way to get where we are and now having come up with a budget that says this is really what's needed to to run our town and then i tell meeting th nay and if they say nay then you know some services will will likely need to be decreased somehow and that's certainly their their choice but i think this is a very responsible budget to say that in order to maintain the same level of service this is what we feel it's it takes to do that and there's not not a contingency built in at all you know follow the fund balance policy as defined and to to counter some of what you just said for the last three years we've averaged four hundred we've typically been under spent by four hundred twenty three thousand a year as the average for the last three years of every day for the last six years is that we've been underspent by three hundred seven thousand dollars a year so i think there's fat in there definitely is there there's definitely some fat in the budget and that we're we're asking for more that we ought to have i don't think that represents bad that represents good fiscal responsibility where they're not spending where they don't they don't they don't need i don't agree then that we would if we were to take another hundred or two hundred out it's out of the budget or give back more fun balance that we would hurt any services given given the last six years of you know would know that until that year is up to you and i you know to take it out now and just hope it isn't is not good practice in my book i logical very present day that money would have been spent if there wasn't poor weather right the poor the the wet weather in the spring pushed up construction and then i also think we're at the mercy of mother voting both we have absolutely no control over that whatsoever neither do we have any control over school budgets and i think i think it's our charge to be as fiscally responsible and provide for the public safety with what we can control and this budget we can't control and without belaboring points that we that we debated last week i i i support his budget i think it's a responsible budget ok so what's the board's pleasure on  to warrant i just want to make clear that right that we're voting to approve the warning we're not voting in support of the budget necessarily will be signing the the same my question was around was the manager who received the liquor control training so can you just again liquor licensing manager tells me that that's the same person that actually went through we had gotten these minutes before and i had edited them before so that's why we're up one so it's forty six where it just references the liquor licensing manager and i certainly didn't have that title in mind but i was referencing was the manager who had received the liquor control training pitch and then ninety five ninety seven we mention the phrase of the end of ninety five member memorandum of agreement but then we refer to as an m o u so i don't know i don't know who i think people are saying m o u but it just looks weird that replied that very respectfully and then to continue on with that same question or that same sentence excuse me it should read mr played been reply very respectfully that the members testifying here tonight have over fifty years of police experience telling them that there were simple answer questions and one seventy at the word more before sensitive line to twenty three inserting the words last two before vermont and then an ass line governors governor  talking about someone hates to read on fifty four please comma after read in the middle of the sentence cross off and say but noted a decrease in the number of children's programs and five please and we could put a comma at the very end of the line and say now listed separately comma so we understand what i'm trying to i'm ok that's silly and i'm looking at deadline one o nine again mr levy asked if the issue could be corrected in the budget we were talking about the overtime said village highway budgets reimbursed by the village was it incorrect in the budget i think it was right it was so i asked how was paid for and we we had a discussion about you know having the village pay their share which means they pay double or not double but twice two different portions and i think that was what  request was was whether it could all be paid out of the town budget instead of the village but i don't know if it's at this point but that's what the discussion was here  i'm one fifty one sam i just change the spelling of that because it's a register trademark and i looked up online so it's like a shock apps and it's one word it's clearly in the first which lines of i want fifty one the first phrase clearly that it should be funded annually at two hundred fifty thousand dollars on some two page three indicate that i was not here line one fifty three at the end it says a mr watts agreed i can't i can't africa and i correction because i was wasn't here just write that if you  those in favor of the january fifteenth two thousand and eighteen minutes with look for corrections seem to five say i posed abstain ok so motion passes for your just further discussion about governance or is it even governance and talking about how you want to organize the meeting of the twenty eighth notes the minutes to finalize that agenda it's made in my memory that i the last time we had a last meal we had with dry toast cheese they suggested that we work on something as a group before we came back to them and i don't know that we've talked as a group about it was the issue of representation for example for tyler pointed us back to saying don't discuss this here discuss it on your own time and we have not made time to do that yet so i think we should do that emotion that if we just talk about when we meet with the trustees that there are ten people sitting at the table and all ten are representing the village but only five  comments i also plans to do an f a q and a about the firefighter alignment and one about why the town is not residents are not being asked to vote in the region a distraction so i'm not trying to do those two yet but i will he's dead and that will leave open to a two of them then this coming thursday and this coming saturday so is there anyone willing  i've i think i think i can do that i think and one of the saturday for the girls marcy ice hockey at four thirty on saturday on third i'm still out of town least one person at them each one which is great thank you i would propose would be ok to contact you greg about getting the stack ready and just coordinate with him about where you pick them up so i was going to ask can you bring a stack to next then there is a possibility i may have to miss the meeting on the fifth i don't know yet but there is a possibility we'll be able to dial in do you think or