right six o'clock when to call the town of underhill capital improvement program public hearing to order on tuesday january sixth twenty fifteen six p infrastructure projects we've reduced gravel roads to seventy two thousand five hundred to get more in line with less of a tax increase and we left the rest across the board at one hundred forty  flexibility from any other way to do so that's what pushed that one to the beginning of major infrastructure projects for us sidewalks projects you know as what we've been discussing that's not half of it and a lot of that is coming from a grant source building upgrades town garage for the fuel tanks in case there's a large diesel spill it's going to be a cement dike so that discussed to storage container to twenty which storage containers due to lack of space they have in the shop floor tires especially and the hazard of storing tires in a space where they're doing some hazardous work we have a total expenditures of five hundred thirty nine thousand seven hundred dollars project revenues debt bank financing one hundred twenty one thousand nine hundred which would be the load or loan they hopefully a grant from the highway which would go towards the dean road project that speculative sidewalk project a hundred fifty seven seven seven always nuts because here that money so if that's how you decide when to put a particular road in a particular year how critical it is yeah if i could yeah of course we had it off hydraulic study done this summer for f ive structures three areas three structures and the engineer said this is number one to be replaced so we went with the engineers suggestion we don't mention the section a route because that becomes it's sometimes hard to know ahead of time so which part of where paving isn't on here we haven't done it by saying and seem prepared but by that bridge project it is in that order of just wondering if this at what point would you be able to say with this capital budget because you'd have to see the rest of the budget for your regular expenses budget to know how much the municipal total municipal bu going to go up and therefore how much it's going to impact that part of our taxes or you can say with this budget versus last year you're going to see tax cents on the  i'm assuming that yeah there's no need to use to do this but what's your concern you bring about the stuff that you bring up this year look what makes it confusing for folks that you point out i don't know if it's confusing so i think that as i was saying before that it's going to be a tough year because property taxes are really from the center for everybody and you have no control over the education part which is as i understand about seventy five percent of the total tax rate but the last thing that's awful part is there is no progressive aspects everybody pays based on their assessment so my sense is you're going to get some things fired you know i'm just wondering if you can so when we you know one thing when we went through the budget you know so we went through line by line and literally found out where these guys could buy less pencils and align i five we had one hundred forty five so the budget that we're looking at tonight that we've been working on has got three point three percent increases right on two or three point three percent you know when we first did it and left the numbers as it is in an aggressive c i t program you know we were at sixteen percent and so we go back and whack at the c i p intelli that gets beaten into a number three point three and that we feel that is you know inflation is two percent kind of thing still need to get going up just a little bit and still maybe those numbers we don't change they're just kind of numbers that sit there and then we deal with as you can see that fifteen sixteen and whittle away at those didn't feed him into a seat that we think that voters can stand for lack of period week out how many systems were signed up and that would establish the price and then installations would happen and so basically we would have a committee whose job is to identify and vet the installer suite from the keep part of the way this particular program works final one installer rather than have it open to all installers so that we can bring the price down that's the big thing and we would advertise a program we would you know manage the paperwork but the installer would be responsible for doing contracts with the people for doing the site visits so basically they would have the lion's share of the work in terms of actually doing installations  couple key points is that i mean the residents are not locked in this would not be their only option you know this would be you want to option and we would provide if people want to take part in some of the community solar projects that like some comedies doing or if they want to go with an individual store different than the one that we choose they certainly could but it's a way to provide community members with basically somebody they can they can believe in and feel that somebody else has looked at and you know with a with a critical eye and identify them as aid not the only but a reliable and competent installer and i think the real plus is you know if we get enough people you know then we bring prices down so it will be a base price for people and then if say one hundred fifty whatever the number is people in the place could get those down there's one hundred people place goes down further so i think that's the real plus it also provides an incentive for people to help find other people who would like to do so and that's what they've discovered in upper valley and other states where they don't this kind of thing is that you know the word of mouth the buzz that gets built by saying i'm going to push this i'm in my house and i go talk to you know peter in suggesting he might want to install one and so it's a way to kind of promote solar you know in a community effort that you know it's not real hard sell what else let's see that contract together between the residents and the bedroom so we're not involved the legal we were not liable for for anything when you say we begin with the energy can they will this do we at this point is it is that committee that does this project and the next step is question is is this the energy committee is this an energy committee project with other people credit union the new england federal credit union others have come up with low interest loans for energy projects and typically what assaults are doing these days are working with those banks and so you know the installer would take care of all of that that interaction between the residence and the financing already done it you know it's the next tier of people or people that you know may think it's a good idea but just don't know enough and this is a way to provide an education to write them a little feeling of security that you know they're not just getting into something that you know this i think we haven't had extensive discussions ourselves but would be to have this be a project of the energy committee with you know bringing in people from the outside we love it if a select board member would like to be a member of the committee i think that would be a great thing but it's not necessary and i think our job would be to find other people in town you know who would like to take part and because there's a fair amount of work to do to do the publicity you know we build on the work that s they give us access to all of those things and they also want to add this kind of a quick overview two questions one in terms of push competition peer pressure and all that is that just for the installers labor is a word that if we can get them up you know bunch of people bunch of customers in one location and he can have things delivered to one spot rather than delivered you know all over the state for example to the second question is just promoting this require any money from the know now this would be you know totally self sufficient and there's but there's pretty much no money involved in the only thing that could possibly cost money would be any publicity we decide to do that cost money but i think these days we can find a lot ships have done and that's why it's you know there's a pretty you know pretty good history of this concept and like i said you know a bunch of paper people are developed over time to deal with any of the need a little issues that you might not think of if you're doing it for the first time like you just said you know we're all into competition we're all into even the local guys are installing solar let them all have the work right so i think my feeling is if it's the energy committee promoting this as like you do with other things i don't i don't i just don't want the town when you'll standpoint i felt this way about trash collection here too and it's something we kind of got out of for the same reason because we don't want to say this trash company not that trash company so a lot i think that's the only place where i'd wanna make sure that we weren't it was the energy community doing it not the talent to promote him i think that would be important and i think we all have discussed that to some degree because you know putting our stamp of approval on one vendor you know  though i read i part of the thing that i think we should do is we should recommend that you know in addition to going with you know talking to this one installer to talk some other people because you know i think we want to be really careful not to over that and i guess that's the biggest question i had is do feel i think we had do you feel comfortable with the idea that there is one vendor you know in the free market i feel comfortable staying out of your neck and i think that's the what if somebody picks a vendor and they get in a little project and they go bankrupt there's going to be fifteen people down here twenty people say how did you lot this to happen you know committee of interested people or something spearheaded or sponsored by the community and want to be very clear that we didn't go into an area that this way or felt was muddy waters or dangerous territory in that way and it's interesting you say  community in i was working on my letter for the town report and one of the things i mention in that as soon as we get into looking at the cia peters is getting back to your subject that we're looking at tennis court and we're looking at these evils and looking all that stuff and i feel that we need to start looking to the community in the future not looking to the government for these things because it just as we can see that but you can't fix the road so we do in building busy books so let's get together as a community you have one interested person that puts up a temperature gauge and you get ten people in your building busy but you know i mean you raise money and you have potlucks you have ice cream social and that's another way to do things in this town it's interesting you just mentioned that is is this so right you know underhill a separate than any situation and my wife and i have thought about that for a long time but not everybody has a family especially of solar farms fields and we don't have i don't think any  my fellow guys here except i can read their minds at this point that i put on i think it's best if you guys did it as a community project and not pass out as an energy committee project my speaking yeah probably i don't see any problem with having the same people on think it is steve mentioned we haven't really had a real session in the energy committee yet talk about this we're having one next wednesday so many of these questions we're going to we're go starts how far back do we have to step to be at their arms like that you want us to be in the energy committee didn't scare us how they might get somebody to for a i think you just been told not what they like to see this group it's doing it for value but we might we might learn something by talking to them about how they were able to set their vilar and make it completely separate from actual municipal probation then i can tell you that secure some history in years past we've had on occasion three hundred or five hundred dollar budget in most cases we didn't use it d we can continue to bring you the receipts and do it that way but for our community outreach we would twice now we have programs were go out to people's homes to make recommendations and you know one of the programs we did director saw all of the old pipe insulation and what have you and we're looking thinking of doing that again on officially with no attachment to official supermom just on our own volition so that's where the biggest line item there's for the cheerios to do that and then  that five hundred  i think you guys are figuring out if you're on a place by the book which is awesome is there any do we need to clarify that anymore do you guys feel comfortable now i mean i no joke around so a couple slips go flying i'm not sure how that is almost enough money to cover everything including the unexpected expenses like the dumpster and again that the bone of contention for me is  know and the very first discussion i did said you know say that this is what the rebate amounts we were expecting at that point in time and we actually ended up getting an extra five hundred dollars  eight eight hundred for the lights that are sitting right now yeah so and i agree we agreed to do a twelve thousand eight hundred or something dollars worth of work percent but it seems like there's a breakdown in the kind of fiscal people who work the end of things and how it's getting to mona how it shuffling through the system and i you know when we're talking about more funding and more funding requests  i think it's important before we spending our money i think board more money we figure out how to work a little bit better as a team and i feel like there's a little bit of disconnect between the energy committee money and then our finance department well i wouldn't argue that you know in my defense i felt that after two meetings that we would the energy committee walked away from this table feeling that we had an ok to go in i had gotten bids on the fourteen lights and get that done and let's finish this project and somehow we're going to get next line item taken care of here but that's that's we can handle that so they're going to get messy detail part you feel that we're cleaning that up and heading in the right direction it was one designed issue that we didn't address is when they walled off the the mailbox area then no he could get into that with the entryway or waiting area whatever years you know we definitely didn't swing for the fences on capital improvement which brought it down to three point three so i stopped well on on that night my only thing i continued to wrestle with don't i want to know what you guys write with the decision of spending the last bit of our savings at sixty five and seventy grand are you guys still strong on i'm looking forward that after a room owners emails and looking  at known expenses for the rest of the year as you as we all know four hundred thousand needs to stay there there's about sixty five in general in the seventy and highway or maybe i have that backwards but let me just do my proposing math for a second here they are those are the two the seventy eight is our entire cushion for the highway that's correct and we can't use general for the highway we can be going either way highly secure we can use i was for the judge that look at yeah good terms of a forty five thousand dollars a month season we've and give it to the greedy it has a set sequence of which funds which money you can use first and which means you can use second or third way over and and exactly where that falls in that list i don't recall  but you would have to use items that were already designated for something first and then get down to it but it is i mean you can spend every penny you know absolutely there's nothing that says you can't spend fifteen percent using that number but take part of that sixty to sixty also is you know when you ran out of money to this place that's where that came to so you have to big sure that you're going to be doing some really good planning and  loose so we don't want to fall back on the three seventy seven because this happened or that broke that's that to me isn't what the three seventy seven is for it's for when all hell breaks loose and it's only two months running time you have a bad month season at forty five thousand and then hell breaks loose you don't want to be into that three seventy seven either but on the other side the corners every time something bad happens gravel roads don't get fixed and paving doesn't happen and now we're calculated what two percent of the new budget would be and how much you would have to increase and actually you know it's a net increase of six thousand dollars there's only six thousand dollars of that money in there also you have two percent in a rainy day fund and then that's what if it's two of you saying spend one hundred thirty then let's make that move if you want to talk about some other ideas then we could work and different slipped out but i don't want to take extra time if there is a quorum on spending two hundred thirty agree in general that we're talking out leaving right let's say it's sitting there and we came to the year end really well but still there if something went really sour and we had an emergency we'd be allowed to make that choice but we couldn't have a meeting as a group and say hey you're sixty five let's let's le saying is because i thought i could pass general over there if you had the issues you can but that's tricky but if let's see if he's perfectly on budget this year he spent twenty thousand dollars more because he basis just one year it's not they do not fall into the criteria of five ten any years they don't tell you don't orders decide to revoke it until the voters until it comes before the voters yeah well but the question tax exempt status reason there might be some interesting solutions with the schoolhouse and i would hate to see you know pete came up with a number seventy thousand saying hey look man you guys are going to hang on to the sea this is grass it takes up your assets but until we're sure we're going to hang under an asset we might it it will sell if you're for a dollar as it is well you'd want to give it to them of course as it is not with seventy thousand dollars of taxpayers money and we only want to spend seventy grand on if we know we're going to hang on to it as a town we don't know we're going to hang on to it so giving it another year is going to if we don't put twenty grand into it is going to fall down know it's going to sit right there and look just as bad if we don't figure it out or maybe we do work trigger it out i brought this up last time if if if if if our job is as as my friend c point out to me it's our job is safety in this town i do not know why we're hesitating on a good sized generator at the town garage if we lose power down there we don't have fuel and we can't fix flat tires and we can't fix the plows that fix all the sci fi issues we have in this town we've got guys climbing on trucks to open up doors sixteen feet in the air and to media for look into twenty green from a capital reserve fund here's a piece of capital  question of that yeah i think so it's not just painting that second as to we spent twenty thousand of them to give it away for a buck but just not the point the point is just be in the point is retired with some history religion like their history they like their buildings to stay up for a while the object is to preserve this thing just part of the quite who's in charge wherever the schoolhouse committee is doing this it is anybody done a volunteer basis a real assessment as to what part of the school house is in danger of coming and i just of though in fact but the danger is to the school house that s two hypothetical of giving this to the circle society which has the funds to maintain it  appropriate and this not one thousand two hundred three six dollars for two to see to it and you know for special investigations and we put that on there due to their increase question where we've just given the increase so the total number because i think is in the number already work show the voters of underhill appropriate one thousand two hundred thirty six dollars to jordan unit for special investigations in addition to the budget this fiasco about three years ago we back up everything on to tape every day including all my cottage peroration everybody else's account information and put it in a paper bag it took them to their mortgage closing office  your road and left it on somebody steps the next day it was gone everything the whole all the financial data for every deposit are scary and you never did to time to grow up in front of fireplaces a glass of wine read this report the professional and technical services for the highway department is now up to fourteen thousand six hundred and that's because we did get an estimate from the wind lanphier for how much they spent that was not related to the current job project so i transferred that from count at all to that mine ok so and it was proceeding from the sheer driveway to the proposed house i see arrows to the left of the new driveway which suggests drainage followed by just getting off across the landscape she she know there's you know this is kind of a low spot in here like right along here is five feet this here is off a little bit from from this and then you're going down again because this is where you got to get to this flew that to the excess permit application of arnold and paula basically for property code peavy six to three for a second to occur if you're looking at it to bottom right down near grave granted they have to go through this whole process would be is that something that would be you can't  and it's almost too small to see a little bit of a trail that starts that keeps record road from providing access to the eastern parcel now it was downgraded to a trail probably in two thousand but the east winds are asking for is a permit for the town which is often has been statue to maintain the world bring it up to whatever to usable because they are not asking the town to maintain it to upgrade it to do anything to keep the trail impassable condition now it's just interesting to know that the agency and company and bernstein already have these rights they were be granted these rights for the town they were granted a permit for logging and for access for it in their walking tracks to take care of the road to maintain the road to fix the road they were asking for an addition is that one ho know that still be there a reasonable use of their land as described by step if they're not putting in a housing development they're not looking to upgrade the road or ask the town to make it a class or a class for road they're simply asking to be able to put in a passable condition that is a good question that is a question i could ask the buyer already you would have to worry about that you would have to worry that there would be the added burden on this part of the road if they wanted to build six thousand homes in west for that would be ok as long as it as long as no more than one came through this ro a second toes why wouldn't a town be subject to an attack on the grounds that you gave it to one person why did you give it to two people three people ten people because you're and they're entering into an agreement that has no legal right they have a legal right for access that right is not the way the easements do have the right to drive over the neighbor's land they have to do it because they're good neighbors and they don't want to upset the neighbors so they can perking their car and and walking but they don't have to the supreme court has held that public writing in a row continues after the road has been downgraded to a trail so it hasn't gone away so that the neighbor isn't the neighbor is losing the perception of his rights but he's not really  for truckers who this portion of the road he's asking the town for permission to upgrade and maintain to driveway standards is less than a football field it's two hundred thirty feet which standards are those for a driveway zoning may say you can't divide it up so what you're asking him to do is to give up the right to build on his land even if you could then i mean if you were to build twenty houses then off get rich off good before i mean if you want to put a reporting about what they do great but i just think because we're getting it now because there's a ballot question we put in there about what they do though i don't think we do th discuss advice of counsel received as well as matters pertaining to both pending litigation and imminent threat but occasion on the grounds