to modify things just a little bit we've got a pretty full agenda but one thing we're not going to do is get into the zoning question a lot tonight we've got some more questions court's looking forward down a couple people who've been involved in that will pick it up again in the next meeting what i would like they'll also is to ask that anybody who has there been concerns raised about conflict of eight years and over a period of time since probably two thousand and four two thousand and five i've been aware of a deteriorating health matter mr bord officials who went on his property and cleaned up the property so we really started fresh two years ago the challenge we face today the town faces with this public health emergency is that the property the residential property is there's a mobile home on it that is not habitable as i understand it the roof is caving in there may or may not be running water in the facility there may or may not be sewerage capacity in the facility i don't think there is there some electricity mr bordeaux is living outside of the mobile  home there is a travel trailer recreational trailer beside it that mr bordeaux has been living in some of the time it is not it's not a proper home in richmond by zoning standards and can't be live bordeaux has over time attracted a lot of wild cats and other wild animals by feeding them and the property is littered with  food waste potentially human waste trash two years ago we removed two roll off dumpsters of these that same material and then it's back to the same condition there  this property is a joined by several residential homes in the health ordered indicates we estimate that they are from approximately ninety three feet to two hundred forty five feet surrounding the subject property and it is the condition of the property is such that the neighbors  cannot really enjoy the outside of their homes given the condition of the property immediately adjoining this public health order has been  established to ask mr boarder tell mr bordeaux that he needs to rectify the situation he needs to make his home habitable for him if you choose to live there  d until then he needs to not live on the site lived there for a long time and his parents did as well but it it truly is a challenging health situation perhaps for mr ward open certainly for the public and immediately surrounding neighbors immediately i need to focus on are that as a health officer by statute i need to focus on the public health with respect to the property i am concerned about mr ordos personal health and his living situation but it from the town's perspective it needs to be the public health of the good that situation is being so i'm sure a photograph a recent photographs and these are from a year ago it's just it's pretty good to public health issues are has a water well on his property and it is approximately maybe thirty five feet from the model home but on the property in the neighboring  wells there is i was incorrect in the order i indicated that there was a home that was a still connected to that well and that's not the case so thank you for that there the landowner  where presenting multiple threats to public health and safety in steps must be taken to secure the public health immediately the second part of the order is steven bordeaux shell vacate the property including the recreational vehicle immediately commence repair or replacement of supported mr bordeaux in the past by both financially and by we work hours to facilitate the cleaning up of is if you are doing it bought u some time for a couple of years but we're back to where we were saw i don't think that's the answer i do think as harsh as this may sound that mr or govt needs to be accountable for the situation there be held accountable for the situation and ideally he would choose to leave the property until such times that it's in a condition to be that it meets the  there are twenty bags of trash that have no clue anyways so i have some efforts to start the process i see that and he has moved his vehicles off the road which is unbelievable just driving up the road every day i mean to be in that neighborhood and it's it's not in my situation i wouldn't and none of us would ever be able to sell our homes there it's like living in  some of the situation but i think if it gets cleaned up i mean i think he should be able to live on his property in them in their own time that i don't want to start a neighborhood feud over  now and it's going to be an icepack it's already on to the public ruda christmas hill the water started leaking for quite quite a while and it's here and there's just things that need to be taken care of a about this guy i just want to know that it is an extreme situation and i think that all of us and neighborhood would be absolutely willing to help but i don't think relations and would like to do a very free presentation of the work that we're doing we are making the presentations in all four of the towns that border like your boy and  case i don't know we have a situation where the water is is not healthy in the doing everything we possibly can to turn that around one of the problems that we have is that the highest percentage of votes that come into lake eyre oil come directly from lake champlain and there are a number of invasive species that are thing is that there's little agreement on how this lake will be used it's everybody's lake and small but it's like four towns there's a lot of different versions of how we should use it there are water skiers people who want to fish need you need to know is that we get a new job in two thousand and ten two thousand and eleven when we discovered at the end of the season blue green algae in the south oh sure of the lake formed in two thousand and seven with the focus directly on water quality and our mission is doing research providing education and getting involved in action to this point and our membership includes people from the entire watershed our actions to date we've fired readers at the fishing access for the last four years from the agency of natural resources we have completed an engineering study of the runoff of all of the storm water coming down from the butt from the hills on the west side which is where very attractive work this summer at the bottom a punch or drive on the water storm waters diverted into this series of basins so that it doesn't move directly into the lake and that's one of the successes that we've had other current initiatives include implementing all the recommendations from the engineering study of the west shore this summer the initial phase took place and we're we were able to put catch basins below the culverts on pond road where the water comes on off the mountain in the back and to be able to catch a storm water as it comes down and slow its progress so that it doesn't end up dumping directly into the lake of for  for when they discovered that the their machines could not handle that and we had to hire rental of heavy equipment to make this thing happen and and the rain came right down into it in such force that is where it came right out and on the ice and created a mess and all of that stuff that comes down marginal in its ability to do the all the recreation that people ask the other thing we've been able to do this is a picture of one of the ponderosa basins that was put in this summer to catch the storm water as it comes off the hill and to slow down we have other things that we're doing down there but those were the initial winds where we got hundreds for a list of behind us to make that thing happen this ability to determine the source of the pollution so that we can pin down where the big problem areas are a new initiative is that we're working with the liquor or work or here's recreation district in which you are you have a representative on that to see grant money that funds an engineering study to address the runoff from the beach parking lot and as you can iroquois recreation just really to try to solve this problem and that's going to be one of the major major initiatives for next year the lake and continually lobbying in general to grow to convince homeowners that that they really need to join us in taking care of this water bo plonks for the future to continue to work with state and town officials to help improve water quality in the lake to increase our own membership by twenty percent in each of the next three years and then to continue to build liaison's with state and local groups such as the agency of natural research of sources and the federation of vermont lakes and ponds that's what that acron ym we have hard working with the recreation district now on this project on the beach and so we've been able to really make some through joining up with other  organizations of this apologies we've really been able to have an impact we will continue to update and distribute the publications such as the one you have here and we will carry reimburse the trend in the way it is and we had a really good summer some things were starting to improve so we're hurt but we still have a lot of work to do and as long as this organization is viable for and then the other question is certainly other communities find this when they look at impaired waterways but you know often a lot of the pollution is not necessarily from surface water runoff and ok i'm going to be the only person in state government with this name so but when we do hire the person which i imagine is eminent they'll start working on the program just to move things  district this is a mechanism to help homeowners in town to then in towns to finance energy efficiency and renewable energy projects through their property tax bill not directly through the track property tax bill but in conjunction with their property tax bill there was a lot of discussion last year about it front porch foreman and we had the town energy committee sponsored forums on it think the night before the town meeting realized that this was on the ballot and felt and i think it was correct that for these kinds of issues that don't involve money unless there's a specific action specific meeting where the voters vote to vote on it by australian ballot it needs to be voted on on the floor and i confirmed that with the secretary of state as actually correct program and it hasn't been implemented yet they have yet to find to finalize the where the money will set it how it's going to be administered but they're pretty close in that i think they will be  implementing that in this coming spring what the town energy committee would like to ask you is is to to do this again rather than do a special meeting to vote on whether or not we should vote on  extremely confusing and probably low turnout meeting of what we're recommending is that you put it on the ballot for discussion on the floor for town meeting day i'd be happy to do a presentation at that time explaining what it is and answer questions and let's let the voters decide on i think what when i brought this to you last year i didn't bring in a recommendation one way or tother on how you should do this that i didn't think it was just if they have been hopeful throughout the entire year that this would be is just just around the corner would be just a couple of months and hasn't had yet so i don't know what the hopeful down the interest rate for low income folks and towns that have this have this mechanism and you know what one of those that i was disappointed with this past year is that i was afraid that then when he would have got away or would have been used up before we would have had a chance to get to it but doesn't look like it's going to be the case because it hasn't been rolled out so that's actually what to me is quite hopeful that that if we do adopt it on top of meeting  it'll be early in the game for for payson that will they'll be additional resources for low income folks to be able to use it as well i don't know exactly there is a there's a stay way organization i'll be going to that again as several members from the energy energy committee well they will learn more at that time you know what it looked a change so the towns who voted in two thousand and ten and two thousand and eleven they're just kind full board tonight but i don't anticipate problems but the rule make sure one that we do agree with this time and to that that we have some idea when this is going to be ready for primetime because it's been a long time in the making and  decision to do this so jeff you just keep me informed when you want me to come back we can we can do that and i'd be happy to you know i'd be happy to answer questions here or you know folks can get ahold of me to front porch and the library director went over the numbers again and submitted a pretty lengthy memo explaining about it and so do you guys have you guys read through that you have specific questions or do you want us to walk through things step by sort of any changes step by step what that was that going to work most effectively for you  the so the the modern like gary is running out of information technology departments and so and so more and more of the services that are being offered in all libraries and including for public libraries in her mind are being done through online services so almost all of the reference materials now come online the audio books the e books are all coming  and so as more and more that's more and more where we're sevens coming from and so i think that it will be permanent i mean we will always we will increasingly need someone to be  really supporting the online services of the library authors and so that will be a permanent position and that person will also continue to work to bring their current staff skills up i mean your back is quite savvy in this but she can't be there although the library is open and so they need somebody who is pretty technically savvy to be there in that vein there there is either modest or no increases in the benefits that that full time person may or may not receive there's no increase in health insurance in the budget and then i would assume that if they're paid if they're paid sick they're under i certainly support the use of rental fees to go towards the library that makes complete sense and if that's going to have been then what i would actually recommend is those expenses those that revenue goes to capital and not to your operating reserves so that it's not because if if your library at the library doesn't get rented out one year it's not heard of your operating reserves so you you decrease  capital as opposed to having to make up that that revenue somewhere else and what that could what you could also do is that ten thousand five hundred dollars and beyond payment that the church in f y thirteen that you're proposing to put towards capital then you wouldn't have to put that towards capital and knew you could bring the increase of your library operating budget within our perscribe amount that  yeah i mean i think that for you know from our perspective that you know we will have a little ability to control how much it costs to maintain that building it's in and credibly expensive building to maintain and so i think  that you know that our ability to you know sort of the level at which we can i mean there's certain things that we will we will prioritize safety issues you know we were going to prioritize motivate that we're going to prioritize the sleep roof we're going to be less free and would this this question because you know there is i'm not going to see a significant amount of money in capital reserves but if you maintain the amount of money that you are contributing plus are able to put another x number of dollars six eight ten thousand in in rental revenue to that point and you're not paying your bond pain then there is some there's some liquidity there you know right you don't you i have to say that i was i was a little surprised at how at the percent increase that the library was asking for it as in relation to some of the other departments in town and this may be a way to a bit of data for a couple of years you know and if and if you find then you know revenues are not where you needed and or the expense on the facility is costing you more then then there's always the ability to propose an increase to capital or old a line item in and and in an annual budget what we're anticipating fifty five hundred would be the income that the community room could possibly bring in so you're increasing your contribution capital by fifty percent while also decreasing your your bond payment so it's still a net game right significant ga so but i think we can achieve all of your your goals and your capital player with with with what i just you know with taking the revenue and putting it big i mean i think the way the trustees sort of prior to actually discussion i being on the board you know they we we had built up a pretty big reserve in the capital reserve because we knew that the building was almost completely renovated ten years ago and now we're at the point in its renovation cycle where a lot of the things that were taken care of ten years ago now are needing to be redone it needs to be repainted and the roof and the basement and so big ticket items are starting to pop up and so we had amassed the nest egg sort of for this rainy day and the rain is starting to fall in the you know and so that's we're just thankful that we want to make sure that  over no but i mean at this point well i think that because we yes you are correct that we are intending to to do the conversion at this point we have not yet been able to get the people to bid on the conversion some of those problems to actually one of our one of our questions well we're standing sitting up here with to ask if we might have a waiver from needing the three quotes if we i your capital fund that's that's what i would like to see the revenues come from and the police chief maybe in a similar situation he gets a grant to cover his you know radios and it you know he was proposing something that came out again and again in the plan that we did you know a lot of people said i mean there was you know that was designed for reasons that with a great example of following the grant money which is what we have it you know in a close to almost final form to december the latest date you can have a hearing on the budget is right in the beginning of january and does this constitute a hearing or do we have to like oh you can never hear him during a regular meeting ok but it has to be warm suction get this kind of survey answer your question it just goes on until you get to that point ok and i think will end up taking the next two meetings before it seems like that yes but i will say we're very close right now at the last meeting the select word put herself self imposed three percent spending cap exclusive of the balance fifty thousand dollars of ardent which are being funded by non taxation sources such as the increase in the wind for the town center heat which are also offset by using a revenue from the town center run run fund and the two groups in the park and the second payment on the foreman pickup truck with pl utilizing circles so right now the full spending increases six point zero five percent and if you take out those other items you're of a little under four and a half percent and i think we're about twenty four thousand dollars away from being hitting that three percent spending cap so i'll go through it all explain what we've done and then we can have some discussion about the re have made a number of minor adjustments to certain lines to put them into a more exact expenditure for example the c c r p c dues went up by sixty seven dollars over last year j of this draft is draft number three we were deuce did ministration salaries by seven thousand dollars that reflects a change in the administration personnel where we're moving to a finance assistant as you know we've already put in extra money for freshness c p a to do accounting work and we dissipate keeping that in place for a while and since we're activities we also increased police salaries by two thousand two hundred sixty dollars to reflect some changes that were proposed by the police chief earlier but we reduced the auxilary line completely we reduced it by ten thousand dollars to zero because for the past three years that line has not been used in the chief didn't feel it necessary i mean i guess maybe if it structured vents but we've been we've been using over time and if for certain events they'd be expected to pay an overtime rate to us anyway so exhilarating line really didn't seem to have a good  purpose we reduced training by one thousand dollars reduced cruiser tires by five hundred dollars for an overall one thousand two hundred forty dollars draw highway i adjusted the salaries to reflect the two and a half percent cost of living which before it had been four percent we reduced planning legal by seven thousand dollars we increased planning contract services by four hundred dollars and highway we reduced the gravel and retreatment plans by twenty thousand dollars each and this is a significant change where increasing the gravel plan only by ten thousand dollars this year and we are keeping the retreatment flat level funded and we shifted the capital plan so that we're going to purchase the loaders this year but the replacement of the tandem truck has been pushed back one year to next year so that's thirty thousand dollars reduction as pete that in a very real sense where we're constricted just by the size of our highway department and just continuing to pour twenty thousand dollars a year into the increase in the gravel plans very soon just not going to be any good because we don't have the manpower to be able to lay that much gravel down in the time time that we have to do it bottom lines for you right now our proposed spending is three million one hundred seventy six thousand eight hundred ninety one dollars which is six point zero five percent more than last year or this current year sorry this current year being two million nine hundred ninety five thousand seven hundred forty six dollars and we're about twenty four thousand dollars above the three percent cap right now as it stands the proposed tax rate increase is two point zero six cents which is three point four percent over last year so the total tax tax rate would be point six two eight three or sixty two point eight three cents and i think that bringing down the spending to the three percent cap will get is very close to a two percent increase in the proposed tax rate now comes the fun part do it yes you did hear that that roof is very old it's more than twenty years old design or standards been explained to me that the cedar shingles on there are coming apart and will further deteriorate they'll split and wind will start to without really hitting the tax breaks with with any increase you want to protect the money all goes to the same place of into the anyway i mean that surplus could be used to to you know reduce that twenty four thousand dollars that resources was a pretty desperate situation when the cheese factory closed they had to do something anyway i advise against using surplus to offset just general tax rate increases because you have to use it every year  and if you ever stop to get it off an automatic tax rate increase right so so specific purchases are what i recommend for one time capital wired owns that don't repeat every year and you'll get multiple years out of them before you have to worry about replacing them again and you're right we could do this at any time but i don't see any reason to delay at this point because we have the money there and i think there is a need to do it and we also talked about creative solutions for the baseball and the rest of the restrooms and it being a frank right you could do a combination of those items and also if you if you didn't spend ten thousand dollars on a roof we wouldn't take that revenue at excess of what we spent anyway so where do you propose cutting twenty five thousand dollars well that's going to take a lot of discussion of whether there been any well i appreciate that the work that town employees do there been any discussion of and don't hate me of reducing the coal that increase there's not been any discussion at all ok really the select border hasn't given a lot of direction on that  i've not had many discussions with the employees about what should be i think every every half percent you're only going to get about four thousand dollars  was never been under two so there's so every year there's there's been now i understand that the cost of living does go up that's a state employee we went without coal was and we sacrificed significant capital reserves a couple of the really big increases from two parts police in the highway deal with fuel and they rolled into the upcoming years budget proposal what they spent last year which in police represents and eleven dump truck the two thousand and thirteen excavator and the two thousand and twelve ten and dump truck that the it looks like that the new payment is higher in f y fourteen than it was thirteen is that a variable interest rate i mean what's going on with that no because we planned for a lower principal payment first here ok because that's those are some significant increases to yes but those are going to be fixed from ok because you're i mean that's you know twenty thousand dollars  plan to add a sidewalk up in front of the supermarket on bridge street it was then decided that we're trying to get that work done with the river unspent revenues that the end of the  way until i get that permission to do that i can't say that it would get done although if i was able to get that for the spring we could probably do it in may or june of this year i'm just looking at the time and sort of where we are now unless it is the other person comments i would suggest that we give this back to you jeff and ask you to come for next time your best with your best shot i think we have ask for was that we wanted to trying cap things at three three percent but that if you know essentially we were leaving it to you to either achieve that were to exceed that but explain to us why and so i think we're at that at that point of sharpened pencil and and you know if you know whatever whatever else you can do would be good to see but this is this is where we where we want to get to think we talked about that lake in march so that it is ten seven ten to thirty that's how much it actually cost to heat the building it's just been shown different places and it took place in the  so what i've done is kept our number in there but increased it to the real cost of that revenue although it may not be be that much if we convert to gas in the spring then we wouldn't be taking all that money from the town center reserve of the town center fund is how is that labeled and how is that appropriated so is it labeled for debt is it labeled as a sinking fund or is it labeled as a surcharge fund or a capital reserve fund and if it is that and then we need to make a motion at some point or resolution to take money from that to spend to supplement the budget just how reserve funds work can we can just sort of be like i am or take it from here and put it over here so is there anything that you don't want to do i mean i know that's always the first place we look at slashing capital but then you run into situations where you don't have any capital it's just delaying it's just delaying the pain and money saved while at such a ridiculous low rate is better than me and get the support of the voters for one it's going to be very tough to beat three percent cap putting in there i think is going to be a twenty thousand dollars contribution plus going forward  four years or twenty thousand a year and still try to meet the cap here but i think we can sell that to the public is saying that this is not only just a benefit for richmond it's a benefit for the business community parking is very scarce and we still have parking mandates for businesses we need to get people behind spending one hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer money to establish a but there's more than just parking it's more than just a parking lot and it's more than just the impact on the general fund budget is that there is a waterline under there that needs to be replaced at the same time and that's in a debt that's additional funds that would then be on the water system that i say that knowing what the water system looks like as far as the revenues and expenditures is there is significant expenditures for debt as it is and so it may be it would be nice if we could maybe tie it with another project that we're doing to get better financing or have some capital built up to to pay for it straight out or offset the loan amount  right now right if we did a two year you know half of that down down payment taken no doubt for the rest pay off the next year with half of the following years couple contributions yeah it might not hurt the water system terms of it might not rate so there's also that potential u point but but it's not just a it's not just a paving project and if there is some way that we can move things around or plan for it then i'm all for it without it being a significant d years you know first i didn't i did in the field intentionally but the more i think about it the more i think at this point in time it's probably the right way to go you know i think it's hard to gauge where people's feelings are about about public spending on that and there's no better way of putting in front of them but it's just my personal way  and then the question is what if it gets goes down to we can put in the budget the next year where we bring it up next year i mean there's no reason not to it's not it's not that people are saying well i think you have to listen you know people say you know we don't want to do this at all it's one thing but it's certainly not  read through great and you know this is definitely from talking to people and the discussion with the economic development committee is is the town making that type of investment and downtown can really say hey we're open for business coming invest   we need to have the water commissioners buy into the project also at the same time there's real time to guarantee of that right now although the people you have in front of you are are the three select board members on the water  about the full cost of the project it doesn't really matter so much when you're talking a five year note right now it's probably going to be similar to what we went out for twice earlier this years two point three percent which is not too much you know we're talking about one hundred fifty thousand dollars in borrowing we'd need we would need direct voter approval to go out for a longer term i'm not sure that that's really necessary for the amount of interest that we're talking about and i think that for twenty thousand dollars a year for a few years on the general fund twenty five to thirty thousand a year for two years on the water finds i think is manageable i don't think people would find that distasteful especially when we're talking with the sewer fund i think you can do it through your normal reserve i mean conversely and this is not unheard of for the the entire general fund could pay for that to the jonathan computer type project including up the water side and yes there could be some reciprocity longer than five years to smooth out the bumps on the water side but you know if you are only talking fifty thousand you know i'd have to take a closer look at what our budgets look like but it may be ok but i just know knowing some of the things that are on the horizon so would pretty much cover that well you know the big changes careful planning with again the library and the highway fund which i outline as far as what we did with the annual various pushing really the tandem dump truck out keeping lowder and i've created some spreadsheets for you to take a look at for the capital plan if you don't feel that there are any other changes warranted we could announce a public hearing date if you do want to wait a little bit then we can agree to a public hearing until the following meeting will still be in january yeah does this mean that the police reserve doesn't yes it's overspent and the highway reserve is also overspent although the notes at the bottom there we've borrowed for the excavator have to borrow money to pay for it we'll just in the year with a negative balance and then on july first we transfer the money from one form to another to cover that deficit go in so he's already bought his two cars we just haven't transferred the money from the budget lines in there ok right let's move along you financial reports these are the financial records as of october thirty first which is the first on night and the first page for the first part of it is a budget status report which is spending of all those lines and second paid for the second part of it is the budget to actually so who's preparing these now are you preparing these now yes  from just one comment current year period three so it may be easier if we say current fiscal year month three or changes that they've gotten to with the creamery property so those are the two items that this committee see is maybe going to follow up with the plan of action there's district regulations for words right at the planning commission meeting the day after the november sixth election they discussed a number of items with the failed zoning  vote but one of the first things they decided to do was prioritize the redesign of the flood hazard overlay district regulations commonly known as the floodplain regulations or i think there a consensus in the room that a lot of improvement had been made to that section and it went down very thing else but they would like to try to prove that this is possible and try to get that to the select board for their could sit down together over breakfast or sometime in the evening and determine a coordinated effort of how you'd like things to proceed because i think both boards have a lot of ideas but rather than trying to get two boards together to agree on anything you know who would be a lot more efficient for the two chairs to come up with your choice mark eggs or beer  heard from yet so maybe was told to reorganize the project a little bit to come up with a shortfall otherwise the towns would be asked to contribute cash  johns intimated to me that for richmond they may ask for a conservation reserve fund monies they'd go to the conservation commission first for that request  but you can't put the cart for the worse yet just yet they're waiting on one more grant but on the first grant they got about seventy five percent of what the where i do have a couple of supplemental reports this was off my radar for a while but for many years prior there's been a row charity road race run from the real church down cochran road on thanksgiving and last year that foundation disbanded or it became disorganized and the new organization that one of those organizers belonged to called never give up requested back in january that they be allowed to run their race and as a successor to raise and so i board at that time granted permission so that organization is having the race it all started about eight thirty on saturday morning have they complied with the requirements of the public no patient things like that i know they've worked on it i don't know that i haven't received any direct notification but they've put up a little sign on  good and there should be an open house with the buffalo wings s crickets chirping that there is there's contact information you just might have to do it's a couple clicks zero application number twelve dash there's an arrow fine gift i put in there and i get it so that's the only that was the only issue ok oh and with the with the bridge street cafe taxes again so we do pay rooms and meals tax and it was crossed out on the on the bill for bridge street cafe so they should get that thirty some odd dollars back maybe we should maybe we need to write up a town policy on our guidelines or something yeah so that