longer discussion with us on the topic feel free to come you don't have to stay for an hour and a half you don't have to come at six thirty you can come in and ask a question other discussion would like that too so that this is that is one of the ways that we'd like to share information and answer your questions and says this is town meeting we don't want to take up too service specially for those of you that are watching watching on the light streaming that on so kind of you forget to take it you don't take it or you want to stuff the ballot box whatever so there is a copy of it on my website if you'd like to print it off and mail it to we will try thank you all right so you can and i charged with giving a little bit of overview on the revenues of the budget starts on page twenty one of the teleporter and then the total budget is three million nine hundred sixteen thousand three hundred seventy three dollars which is increasing by six percent from last year however some of that extra money is coming from different sources grants side sources the amount raised by taxes is only increasing by two point eight percent or seventy three thousand dollars and i wish the town would were had this chart there's no way you guys could see it from down there but we do have a chart that shows that the the the town tax rate is pretty flat for the last seven years and we try really really hard to stay in the two percent range in terms of what we're raising each year  cut where we can in order to make that happen and see i guess i'll just talk about things that are sort of stand out on the budget as you move down through intergovernmental on line nine we have the class two structure grant which we're receiving a hundred thirty oh sorry no we're we're not receiving now because  that that project is done that's waste of minus one hundred percent that was the bridge here on brown's trays that was closed last summer so of course we're not getting money to do that again we're done on line fourteen under special to to make a big change in and out license fees and the suggestion was that we not charge for dog licensing so it is now free for you to have your dog licensed the idea being that the more dogs that are accounted for and improperly have their their shots the safer in the town is and so to that hopefully we're going to encourage people to come in and get their guns lace and so it's kind of an experiment this year created first oh ok so you have to come in before a bill first to get your dog licensed for free you're wise they will be in charge recording fees of one twenty four are being reduced there's just we expect that there will be as many recordings of that line and it is adjusted accordingly and again on line twenty nine you'll see that restoration computerization that line item is reduced may two thousand dollars and that know other ways possibly we just wanted to see if this actually increase the number of people that are being licensed because we have a lot of dots that are not licensed so there are no funds specifically only firing range and we've increased slightly to account for the salt we take care of there the roads there so we've increased that to help pay for the cost and then on line forty thirty four you see the school billable expenses are being reduced that's just to you know reflects the actual cost of working with down and collecting taxes for them in this including the moving down to line forty three these reserves funds here that the twenty thousand are going to be used to cover the cost of digital land records contract and on the following line on line forty four the sidewalk in passed by this sixty eight thousand four hundred dollars is being used for the local match on the jericho center sidewalk construction which i just which i spoke about earlier and then the next line like forty five half of this money is moved into the general budget for it to cover a highway garage fire alarm system that's really needed and the other half will be use to cover a match for a needs assessment or recreation needs assessment study that can be done in town e we are moving one hundred thousand dollars from this fund into into the the regular budget in order to reduce the tax rate increase this year and continues to go down because as debt is retired we pay less interest on highways way that allocated two hundred twenty thousand for asphalt roads out of our reading and gravel roads we have allocated one hundred sixty five thousand for the upcoming year utilizing both reserves and the green monies and as i can't tell you which roads are going to be worked on we have the bradys list for the different roads but we are still waiting on a transportation study to help prioritize over that as well but roads will be worked on there's no question about that jericho center traffic calming we're using fifteen thousand dollars out of reserves and that's a dual purpose speed table it's going to be yes you know people are going oh but what it is it will help foot traffic calming interior designer but it's also going to be a raise the debt stream halfway so that people can walk from the green to the store and it will be much more visible than just paint on the side street bridges and coverts this is  bridge fifteen that's the bridge that is below the town garage it needs work but we're trying to minimize what we have to do now so this is for short term or your future work visually it will have to be done  the bridge over the levy river where it will be major work but this is going to maya some time for the future and that's money coming fifty thousand coming out of operating they have the whitman vehicles on the ninety nine thousand six sixty is strictly or ongoing payment for all or trucks and things that we have right now and that's out of operating money recreation needs assessment it's coming out of the recreation impact these reserves and seventy road last year but engineering further engineering had to be done in the retaining wall over the well lands cost ended up with the final engineering lasting more than we anticipated and we also had to wait for the transportation to sign off on the final plan that is in process now we hope to go to construction this year and so we're utilizing special grants our reserves for for the ten percent match that the rest is the green and this is going to study the feasibility of sidewalks alone leave river from lafayette because we have a lot of folks who walk to talk to one or more like and joes are walking to school things like that so it will go from lafayette to the corners and impossible from the other side from to mountain view so that we are increasing on the walkability of the town for everyone very much fifteen crossings this is a  a pedestrian refuge island in the middle of the fifteen that will serve full dual purpose again it will be traffic calming plus people if they're trying to cross and you want to traffic they'll be safe but because of that  f the ages of transportation also i thought it would be good if we had activated system that actually starts traffic much like the fanny element in the nobody gets trapped on that refuge and so this is a  concept to bring that into this capital plan so that we have a plane it's not saying that that is the funding that we're going to give them but if they're already going to ask us and we can plan for that that would probably be the best thing to do i mean if that's sounds like a reasonable idea i mean you know we keep revising how that report looks every year and so that you know these are good ideas to bri it's going to be its design and construction so we will the town had received funding to do scoping study which there were some public meetings about in this was the preferred alternative source you might not do design not going to happen like this year that's just part of the vision it's part of it's part of the proposed solution for that area ok thanks any other questions on the capital that  so it's the f y sixteen budget compared to the f y fifteen budget deal that most recent actually expenditures we have to doubt forty in many places including all the companies have actual for two thousand and fifteen the problem is that two thousand and fifteen fiscal years over year fibro only halfway through it so we would have to be making estimates for the for the coming year i'm not i'm just putting that out as an issue for the town realize what we're talking about here so you're not under the impression that the two thousand and fifteen years or actual numbers their budget numbers now in our case to put your mind  rest is extremely unlikely that we'll get into the same trouble that the burning the schools did because generally our expenditure actually expenditures are less than our budget burling schools are typically more how we do this so when when you look at these changes from one year to the next realize that we're comparing wife sixteen budget to a fifteen budget and realize that the actual numbers in each one of those fifteen is likely to be for most of them not all of them but certainly for the totality is likely to be less than the budget number so that is a question out there yeah percent of your operating budget our operating budget is just under four million that would suggest that i reserve should be around four hundred thousand our reserve is significantly larger than that five hundred thirty three and we try to keep it around there generally we drove that if the reserve of the reserve is short we put it in the woods or if the reserve is back as it is now we counted for the next year but yeah and exceptional cases of extremely good performance or something like that that's our policy so people employees know what they got coming we don't have to make  video decisions every year about who perform better this year compared to somebody else which you know causes all kinds of internal tensions but we don't have a policy because we implemented this a when you look down the road you'll see some some departments appear to have very large pain creases because they have very long serving member of the town treasure i started others that's not the case and i just when they show your hand that's where the apparent differences in the in the game come from there are very few other items in those areas in those can i ask a question jim carroll i thought in the previous years we identified the need to do a long term capital budget on an item by item basis where we listed known deficiencies and i'll just use an example that we have a fifteen inch color cross in one of the roads in the observation is that there's insufficient flow through that so that needs to be upgraded and by doing the capital  and that also goes by having the capital budget we can also charge in activities to any developments that are proposed to impact a substandard road he even though you're not in immediate process of repairing so when we go to other towns we see that they've got capital budgets and i don't see any evidence of us truly having five ten years i have my slider by i don't budget and i thought we discussed that before that you know like after the scope how road we had all the unit costs of doing skilled how so whatever roads were in that same category we could take that spreadsheet apply t to each one of the other potential failure components and tour and start doing some long range planning so that we knew how to do it and i don't see any evidence that we've done that and i see that as a lost opportunity and prioritize where we need to change our transportation sleezy how they're reading the road and we also are transportation study is going also help us allocate prioritize not only because of the reading of the road in terms of the quality  also the traffic and stuff like that where we need to adjust that so we are looking at that as part of her our long term capital budgeting there's no question and based on those that's where we you know take her two hundred twenty thousand real assholes or one hundred sixty five or something like that at the moment in the coloreds we're waiting on the final assessment of all of them that we and the time we do color we do upgrade and support and to do that for future flows there's no question funding of outside consultants and i've not seen the result that i think we should see from outside consultants i don't know whether we have  competitive bid process where the outside consultants like it's great that we're getting all this great but is the money then being received and i don't want to give any particulars but i can assure you that i've watched grant money come in and because of the inappropriate scope of the project the money got expended on something that was not terribly useful and there's a whole bunch of stakeholders in town who have a lot of knowledge and experience and institutional memory who could have given advice but people from far distances away large sums of money came in and did something which wasn't particularly useful so if we can pre approved list of consultants by the trends they looked at the project and made a recommendation to myself on the trails committee of proposed consultant to do the work studies i think many instances we actually could have built the infrastructure for what the cost of the study and we didn't get anywhere near as far was road because we certainly since this was a this was directly in the trail committee's purview there's no question in my mind have the trail committee come along and said you know here's how we would like this money spent and we think we can get this done for five thousand not thirty thousand and it might be worth the select board spending is only five thousand and getting a good product then spending this day thirty thousand and getting a lousy drug that we would have  very receptive to that we never heard that until now well i'm not speaking for the trust no but why not you're on the trail to be like i said i didn't see it and laughter is fading  that's that's improper ok well i'm like i'm trying not to be critical i'm trying to construct a looking forward again and i could be critical i'm choosing not what i am saying is that i've seen relatively large sums of money spent by outside consultants who don't have necessarily the best interests of getting something done for jer and that this consulting work if we had a refined budgeting process for here's our deficiencies here's our object yes these are the things that we're trying to do here is our estimated units of cost that we could manage these resources so much better i don't think it takes a brain surgeon to figure out how many different ways there are to get from here to joe i think i understand the thirty dollars for principle and i agree with practically speaking we're talking about to go to thirty thousand if you don't think that that's being well spent and you think we can spend our own money and get a better product we're willing to hear that so why did you come in and tell us and give us a  supposed to be looking ok as i said john ok as i said i'm hoping that we can get to the point where we can have a strategic player with a budget that's supported by a so that it's a constant process of  have to deal with what the weather gives as we allocate a certain man every year because you don't want your budget to be spanking and i think spanking is running we try to keep the funding is is low as we can and some years you might be able to do more possible and if we can't do all the roads then we have to which is why you know this long term transportation study has been in the works for quite some time because we've added x they didn't provide all the information i wanted to they years since we're in fifteen or not looking at any actual fifteen so i guess i'd like to say that as we continue with a very nice if you make lots of references to what is town for over thirty years and there are the counterparts the written reports game address rather than the fiscal year they address they included to talking about yeah it is because you know that this actually represents the fiscal year of twenty fourteen this is the report because you have the actual for it and you and we have we have done this in different ways in the past whether we're in calendar year or physical year and we went from cash accounting to a cruel county and there was an eighteen month period that you know we both think and so now you know it's a matter you know continue to tweak help people want to see the their  numbers on that note i will talk about highways and bridges and we see an increase of four percent from twenty fifteen budget and that's because salaries are from the budget here year to year basis so there's you know that's not going to be a surprise but we have added the longevity bonus and we have some nice we have some very long term employees in our highway department that least reboard so the budget  the we are reducing the heavy vehicles equipment thirty seven thousand because last year we bought a truck and  if you remember from the capital budget i talked about ninety nine thousand six hundred dollars being spent on the locals and that is our ongoing pain it's now but what we do for vehicles because we know where the future when it goes up we use the reserves this year it's less than one hundred ten thousand so the remainder of the going the ten thousand dollars remainder will be going into the reserves for future earnings for be able the  salt budget we talked about people are concerned about that well that is it increasing because we know that the cost per ton has had a significant increase over the last year and this budget does reflect that increase so it is going from fifty five lower than they have been and because it's all increase with so much and we are concerned of having the taxpayers you know try to keep our magic as low and mean as we can and we're reducing the money we put colors and this is just keep collars on and and you needed if something is needed we reduce that by five thousand dollars in order to offset the increase in salt so overall the budget for highway and bridges is reducing by hundred sixteen thousand summary the only change there is in the budgeting process insurances they have gone up percentage wise by nineteen if you notice now we have a new heading and it's not just police services it's a public health and safety is looking at the reporting has decided that rather than have the rescue services and the fire department because they are a major dollar number in towns like nine and the agencies it was important to incorporate them into this new public health and safety zone all our services like that are under one heading and  when we talked about the budget work as it rescue richmond rescue and the police services are continuing to be funded at the same level fire department when we were going over the report for today we realize that the budget number that was printed was one of the early working numbers in the final budget from the fire department so the actual number that the fire department had given us was three hundred twenty four thousand one hundred sixty eight as opposed to three hundred twenty one thousand eight hundred so i'm going to have to make a motion to correct this and  limbo and you can discuss it but we need to that's the only way we can correct the difference between fully printed in our budget and well is the fire department had printed so i would like to make a motion of this leghorn that we increase the three hundred twenty one thousand eight hundred eighty eight to three hundred twenty four thousand one hundred sixty and this will increase the final budget by two thousand two hundred eighty dollars to three million one hundred eighteen thousand six hundred  public protection by creating two ice so from six nine to four six all here by now should have realized some savings in your homeowner's insurance if you have it we would encourage you to call your company and some of the feedback we're hearing is that companies are not offering that up front they're waiting for people to call so if you haven't seen it you should call me you most probably will get one of the budget requests this year three twenty four one sixty eight thank you for making the budget at that point in time some of the highlights areas of note in the budget we have increased where we've added a line item to add an accounting service to the fire department currently have an internal  and he has been doing this for a very long time and has expressed that at some point he will want to walk away from that being the accounting for a half a million dollars but it is a significant amount of work we we don't have a lot of large expenses most of our defenses are smaller so there's a lot of work for him and at this point we're looking at moving to a country service to accomplish that task force nice q b and for people who want to look at the fire department more actor from reflect what we've been spending on our stas which is the air packs are where probably our single most important piece of life safety put in for a firefighter are getting older we got those through homeland security grants back in the early two thousand we have in our capital planted in our budget funding to eventually replace those but they are getting older we have some significant expenses those last year in repairs i'll be getting research budget here in to say that we will continue to have to repair that we do apply for fire act grants federal government grants to replace those airbags we've done that several times and we have not been successful in our request we will continue to request funding from the government grant to replace at the other side that is we do have it in the plan the budget that so this is about going to be about a half million dollars fans will come to that we won't be coming to the town for a ball or vote or a large raise or anything like that that is planned in our budget so our budget i mean relatively flat with that those are the major image of the brain but are there any question down through there what happens during the year is the last thing we want to do with the end of the year has come to the towns and say oops we overspend and we need more money so typically what we've been doing the last few years is we have a list of equipment that we would like to purchase wait until the end of the fiscal year to do that oftentimes what's happening is we are doing that in july after we have closed their fiscal year and you know what we have left so what we do is we move that money to reserves very very reserved house that you see here our biggest risk is payroll because we never know how many calls we're going to get so that typically the lines we saw years ago we had to drop it down the negotiated agreement that i'm out there last year was not acted upon and these negotiations are in the early phase at this point i  wouldn't want to say that either side knows exactly where this is going to go at this time there's a lot of questions being asked back and forth a lot of information being changed and they get the meeting monday night to start that process when that will that's not that's not correct we are following the wishes of the citizens of the town of jericho as noted in the november fourth advisory vote and we are negotiating with the town and the only people we are trying to  together can i clarify the meeting meaning our normal tuesday night meeting where we discussed business of the department we discussed but when we discussed future plans we discussed capital purchases we discussed those so those meetings are relevant to the fire but now give a firefighter goes to a offsite training or a saturday training someplace else they are not paid for that thank you so my question is to the slight word we don't pay as a former member of the planning commission i was never paid to attend any meetings i don't believe any other board is paid to attend meetings and so i'm wondering why we sense of what is going on there is a sense of the community of just ignore the what's happening anyway to lay out possible all possibilities or something as us a sense of movement i know everybody is interested we've had after the advisor you go in said quiet for a while and then we had several public meetings during select board meetings including one in february fifth where the randy clark senior or i guess there's an elimination difference idea is to get as much public direction which is why we have these select where meetings before we really move forward with anything i mean if you really want the public to be behind what you're doing so where it is i mean there is no negotiations nothing has happened other than draining a public input of how we want to proceed so anything that happens i mean that splits you know that's where we're looking for public input at this of it sounds like a little exasperated with the question but i think it is really important for us to discuss this i think it does have some serious budget the locations oh absolutely and i think i have read i just can't  things and protect you know all the firefighters have trained for all their firefighters and they have to have meetings and they have to do all the same things but they do it for and they do the same number of calls and roughly the same community size they do the same  taxpayers to investigate whether it is beneficial to the taxpayer to have a private minister how a private corporation like our fire department rather than me as a poll that has never acted on none of my questions about the hard part memoir never knows or about why we pay so much and i so i would actually like to make a motion that the select board put forward a town committee to analyze  information on the river and it's very helpful when i see our direct cause there and i don't see any billing for labor yet i have stacks of that was indicating that in the budget ok all right so i guess getting back to the budget as a whole movie on public health and safety will go back page twenty four of the town report where people are in that cemetery and so that's really does the d v d line one forty seven includes ten thousand dollars are already covered this and the other part of my presentation and some money for the highway garage fire alarm system never really that money that money that's being spent on sidewalks is not money that you would get if we didn't spend it on sidewalks in other words it's not coming out of the general fund when we decide that we will recognize that we have  project we are we have a great staff thanks to our economy the straighter and planning south mostly we apply for and often receive monies that come from the state and from the regional planning commission etc to work on these really important number does not mean that motorized pathways across town so that money would not be would not be in the budget i mean it wouldn't be applied group for the sidewalk project here the total in the budget is three hundred eighty two thousand three hundred thirteen thousand is in grandsons sixty eight thousand is the use reserve fund so there is no grown and didn't get a chance to use the sidewalk so i want the grandkids to be able to get safely from wherever they live on  which is then we understand that which is why if you look at look at the chart unfortunately the grant is there is a handout of questions and it has the graph in it that shows that the county select he has tried very hard to the years to provide these services increase the sidewalks while maintaining an almost able tax rate which is why we were using all the reserves we can grant money we can to buy these things from the community so the tax rate is very minimal if you look at the chart it is the school taxes and we have no control over those i mean that's that's another thing we really try to write as much as we possibly can and so i want to save the issue and when it comes to the multi modal from the germans when you're to the school that has been in process for multiple years now and this is just a continuation of that grant money transportation i've been waiting forty years to go from the center to joe's without having to use a car or be here and i've watched over the years it's not safe for me to ride my bike it's not safe for me to walk and sensitivity in vermont truax sixty many people who are on lower fixed income are getting reimbursed is through their income taxes or property rebates and so i would hope that we can have a dialogue which focuses on  but they haven't caught up much and there definitely is certainly with the r p c which is the regional planning commission and of around the cities and towns those dues are i think well worth that with the return that we get on that investment for the town and don maybe not mandated expenses are those agencies that we see as valuable for the citizens of jericho that we support some of them with small donation some with larger and if anybody has strong opinions about these we would love to hear from you whether it's just an e mail that that comes to the slug board with your opinion or experience with these agencies work come to our budget sessions that we have or see say something now that he wanted to we did increase the food shelf they'd be asked for a nominal six hundred dollars and have for years and years and they asked for six hundred again this year and we increased it by four hundred dollars because the slick were believes that that jericho i think that's that's your goal under health food shelter and medical food shelf on line seventy two they do a really good job and provide a really valuable service for elites in need that are our neighbors that's really all i need to say about that but if you have any questions feel free i think i'm going to hand the microphone over so i am here to make an amendment to the budget and i would like to add twelve hundred dollars to the budget to support paying five people ten dollars an hour or scrutinizing the discrepancy in our budget for similarly sized town  committees who's going to decide who's on the committee and i could use a couple hundred bucks i want to know i think it's just the wrong way to go about trying to force an action so i think i was just beginning to this morning and i would strongly support a motion in a manner that we said indicated ok in terms of property taxes i believe that the fire department is a fire station and the city has a tax abatement environment in the people who have dedicated years of their life it's a huge commitment i appreciate what they do i also know that there's always a little bit of discomfort from people who don't quite understand how the whole thing works and why i don't think there's any it i don't do the least to be an adversarial feeling to this organization getting together the town having a committee look at it and help to settle this so that we don't have this discomfort that we don't need to have their town and because we know we're working hard and we know that the people who are complaining about things are doing it out of concern for the town so i just would like to speak against the men but wholeheartedly support both the fire department and the senate behind it and the change comes about to get more and more in line with how other towns collect as well as bringing in some symmetry and finding a happy medium now that the town is going to be responsible for collecting taxes for the entire after all  give you if you would approve if you do approve we'd like to go to this sort of every six months or a standard collection schedule so that's the way that's why i wanted to object to doing them all together to make people aware that the citizens that are on fixed retirement income that allows them to play easier than doing it twice a year and the taxes always seem to with i mean last year i bought for some reason and it was actually i was thinking the wrong tax bill federal taxes the state or local property tax so i had sort of planned i'm paying property tax on  here regardless of how this all turns out if there's going to be a change to when taxes are due locally is there a plan to publicize the be catastrophic for families who are sitting here right now  so hopefully that would inform people because it would be included with their taxes tax bill taxes once this way everybody is all on the same schedule i mean this is it was the quickest easiest way of coming up with a way of combining all the different aspects because id totally different from the rest of the stuff so we will too late since because what happens when you have in august fifteenth payment is that sometimes the tax bill can't get the timing that will allow for the getting the tax filled out and you get the green listing in all the tax error in entry so there is that side of it as well and in addition we were going into payments a lot of times we find people are out of town in august so they forget and they end up being late so they are  d a penalty i'm so we figured that by collapsing the august and november payments into september more people around you know you're on summer vacation it's not as close to the holidays were some people like to  shop and spend money that way so there's a there's a variety of reasons the town used to be young to tax payments it only went to three want to switch to a fiscal year in order to do that they had eighteen months budget so in order to for people of fourteen eighteen month budget they came up with three tax payments and then when they went back to a twelve month budget for some reason they didn't go back to do your tax i'm going to do the if you are ready to vote on an alexander i had two points that i wanted to highlight in the town clerk record one his vital records we continue to print first still near gas in the report with names and dates of taken those pages out for the electronic distribution but i just wanted to know if it was the will of the people to continue printing vital records in the town or the department of health recommends not printing them only printing statistics identity theft i think is the number one reason but also something we use for safety issues may not want their names in the report but there is that option they can let the town there know for december if i know before december i will need that on the record and there's a little learned about that to let let people know it may my name is hiding behind i want these needed to seriously consider about having these open records and statistics i work for the state health department and i am aware of the fact that we distribute personal identification anyone can walk into the health department at any time without necessarily having a whole lot of documentation and ask her birth and death certificates there's going to be used to get insurance they can be get state and federal benefits they can be used to track your children we are one of the last states to have an open records law it puts us and our children at risk i really think we should think about earnestly read about it already in budgeting so the incentive is to have your rabies vaccination for your god on file was in town and it has to be up to date at least through april one of two thousand the past years we have been phasing it out and all on track and twenty sixteen at that point we will see which properties do not fit currently but still remain open and we mean we visit how learn down  discuss the cost of the fire department for those that are not familiar with the fire department we've never had a citizen come to the firehouse on the phone or in an email ask us you want to understand or like the bill if you want to understand our workers comp insurance if you want to understand something please take some time arrange meeting the fire department come on down it will explain it to you we'd be happy to do i'm working a full time job i am working a second full time job as a fire gene and i'm working a third full time job as a fire chief trying to do politics and budgets and that's ok i won't hear this and i understand  put the debate bad let's get it behind us and understand i'm perfectly fine with that again if you don't know how to ask we haven't had people ask so i would hope the people who have a question  and i want to thank everybody for their combination the fire department the fire fighters it's very difficult for people who volunteer for such passion in an organization giving up at all hours of the night twenty four both zero to go to a even c e o dr we know darn well it's a dead battery but we have to go there's been a nine one one call for service it is illegal for us to not respond that the coverage and the firefighters in the hall have the equipment and the audience the people that you get when you dial nine one one town decide to vote for the committee to look at that and i don't doubt all the preparation for the commitment of the firefighters this study in our town plan and a possible recreation needs assessment that's coming up and so that recreation committee would be oversight for that as well as you know another way to get involved and to bring together some of the disparate recreation opportunities that we have and help with publicizing promoting and supporting all of the difference but disconnected recreation opportunities so