they lose all think that in the state house we make sure that we hear that over and over again however we sometimes hundred forty eight other people kind of fake exceptions left because they feel they're copies of a report of some things that have been going on the state house so far this year it has been a very active session i'm sure the second half of the session is going to be very very active because this is the second year of the bayani and anything that doesn't  it's too early to get the is arising out of discussion of the moderators having said that let me give you a sense of how the articles work today we have a daughter called to consider for your consideration both the first of which is the is the the money article article one the budget then we have a couple of articles which i referred to as boilerplate these are presented in very similar form for you to give the town now that's what i call a good point that all people here that hope third time's the charm we're going to start with pages twenty five and twenty six this is the capital budget and it's a third year in a row we try to put a focus on the capital budget because this is where the big ticket items for this is included within your general budget is not in addition to that it's a way of looking at what we're thinking of for the major projects that the town has for the next year we feel that this is important to call attention to   in the general budget and the numbers on page twenty six list the revenue sources and the corresponding line number in the budget itself so what we'll do is we'll start with of buildings and property  imposing spending forty thousand dollars this year and the money will be coming from the building reserves for the library has been required to meet eighty eight standards and has spent the last year developing to get it right here developing plans with input from this life board from public hearings and this year is for fiscal year fifteen they will be finalizing their plans but the important money will be spent on  this year will be just strictly for the annual meeting cycle and the funding for this comes from the operating budget we've put two hundred thousand dollars into gravel road improvements and that's because we need on these roads and you know some people complain about the berms on the site and so we're going to clean it all oh right it get the crown property and put it on a five to seven year cycle then the money for this again will come from  every budget and we're hoping to get a grant as well as a twenty four thousand dollars grant as well as six thousand dollars of town money to read new do our public works best heavy equipment if you notice most of the spending them south of the highways and we need a new handle truck that's so we're spending one hundred forty seven thousand three hundred recreation him taxis and the reserve funds and split evenly and they need continued repairs some of the trails to get washed out and there are some riding bridges that need to be replaced there as well for paths and sidewalk the vast majority of that of course seventy percent of the property tax the property tax revenue that we project is going up slightly less than half of the total in they do all the work and they really get a lot of credit for being so successful government grants are going expected to go up by six and a half percent this year from just over five hundred twenty four thousand dollars designated for specific purposes so since those reserve funds are in healthy condition we're drawing down for those just specific purposes and catherine outlined many of them the single over the last eight ten years we have we we have not really been putting back into our gravel roads the capital that they should have been getting so there's been a slow deterioration in the overall the gravel road nice thing about gravel roads is that they're there they're very resilient to that it takes a long time for them to really change much if you don't put much back u roads where they go on ok and then they get bad fall off a plane getting really bad very quickly gravel roads deteriorate deteriorate slowly but they have been deteriorating it's time for us to start rebuilding that's the single biggest item causing us to pull more out of the reserves the reserves are healthy so that's not a bad thing but it so i'm going to speak very quickly about wages and salaries and benefits as a totality for the whole budget and then as the other folks bill through department by department they won't mention the salaries and benefits the cost of living over a couple of years and the actual expenditure on the totality of of wages is ours is not going up that much because we've had some people leave and stupid will come back and so the distribution of wage rates in the town has changed the the total cash the total expenditure on cash wages and salaries is going up by two and a half percent from six hundred nineteen thousand to six hundred thirty five thousand so that's sixty thousand dollars so we're going in in the last year we had an average of eleven point five full time equivalent employees as f t we have more than that and actual human beings working for us because there are a number of part time people but if you add all the hours up and divide by two thousand and eighty which is the number of hours of work at work here it's equivalent to eleven and a half full time people this is not counting summer summer  and we're going we're adding half an f p in the next two years so we'll go from eleven am to twelve some of that will won't make that as much of difference to the total budget because some of but the benefits are going up quite a bit more from two hundred twenty five thousand two hundred forty seven thousand that's nine and a half nine point seven percent the vast majority of that is health benefits  we made a decision with the help benefit us when the switch over to the new the new system occurred that we would see and and the the system the the benefit packages that were offered on the users but none of them was precisely what we had traditionally offered we gave the employees an opportunity to choose what they wanted but we would put that state within the same we would only pay out on our side the same amount of the previous week budget most of them chose to upgrade to a a a a benefit package which is better than we used to  provide and since we said we won't pay more than we did before a lot of the extra cost is falling on the employees however the packages are much better than we used to provide so the expectation is that because people under the new benefits will have a much lower on a go back the expectation is the actual effect on employees and of living will be a walk in other words that we're paying a little more would that be getting more and the net result be you the same or maybe even a little better so that the total the entire and salary and benefits bill is going from eight hundred forty four thousand eight hundred eighty two thousand which is an increase of four point four percent and a big chunk of that as i said is th t the for those two would like to know the average cost total for f t e for the for the town accounts everything wages benefits on average for everybody the whole nine yards is seventy three thousand and forty two seventy three point four two thousand and that will be almost exactly the same next year seventy and when the change came a big year we did not agreed to increase young what we had originally funded so it was the level five it was we wouldn't we wouldn't go any higher we had originally the the cost the ultimate cost was something like sixty percent but for the time and we didn't agree to do that shelves of this activity later renovations but in terms of a need to renovation even though we will have plans unless we get outside funding it's not going to happen for a while there this kind of concern we have to compet for a very long time and people there are committed to keeping it it's a community resources and historic building and initially it was thought that because  have to do something to do there this is discussion that will continue to happen i mean if the voters of the town decide that they don't want both of them i mean this is going to be a real issue but right now the community seems to support having that year of the city library as well given their use for different reasons there they're used by different parts of town and there's a a very active very hard killer children's activities taxpayer there's a saying that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one my feeling is better than two hundred forty seven thousand dollars on sidewalks which practically nobody in jericho uses and does not benefit majority of the paying tax payers jerko is a waste your overall minas of ridgeway road and other road similar isn't under serious betty compared to that sidewalk you need to be putting the money into the roads we live on two hundred thousand dollars to fix these dirt roads spending is two hundred forty seven thousand dollars but most likely cover the constipated beach the beginning of brinkley road which is constantly in chamonix i just want this brought up in a town because i just don't see a reason to put another sidewalk in that practically nobody who pays taxes uses flats and at the moment this particular year is the one in in europe or center but we're building up all around the town on a cycle rotating in in that a fan of manner that we've been road where there are businesses i believe there's a bank there and there's also a dentist office there so there are people traveling in large numbers down that road as well and they are the tax payer to jericho other comments  and i appreciate the sidelines because they're safer than one of the edges of the roads night i live over on buttercup and jericho east on the sidewalk issue you just said that you know it's grant money so it's not coming from the taxpayer all that money actually does not come from some place whether it's paid taxes to the town or paying taxes to the federal government is a little wrong to say that doesn't help the taxpayer there's also no discussion of what the fee it's cost of these are we do these capital projects that's great what our long term maintenance costs of the site once we get the it in place are we going to pay to have them plowed all winter long what's how are we going to maintain  are we going to pay to plow that i've seen the sidewalks and most of them are unplowed right now so they're not helping anybody for six months out of the year it doesn't make any sense to do this as you well know the question of risk of color oh paving are not the play was a divisive issue in this town for ages and ages and ages and with strong feelings on both sides and and people on the other side said this is a this is a major cutthroat for us for for commuters from beyond the town cambridge and johnson and so forth who travel  and they live on the road and they don't like to see or afraid of seeing the traffic numbers go up and the speeds go up they both sides have a good point when we have when we have many many hearings man great deal of input and came to a compromise solution which was discussed at this meeting last year whereby we agreed we paid the same but we would also put in place traffic calming mechanisms to keep the speeds down the single most effective way to keep speeds down according to traffic studies of all around the country  informal impression is the speeds have not increased from what they were on the dearth is highly likely because that's exactly what the really do scientific studies around the country predicted that an important part of that of those ira so that was part of the compromise was done to the end of the fight this out of having forgotten the fifteen municipalities of their electric car it was an incredible lives actually an economic decision it's it's a green decision but it's also very economic and it actually will save the taxpayers money as a hundred ten dollar monthly out and go visit holmes certificate of occupancy all the different issues that they go out for and we've looked at the numbers over the past few years and what the the planner does for meetings what the town administrator does for meetings and it looks like that the cost actually was several hundred dollars a year less to lease than it was to continue with the reimbursement rate so we thought it was a good understand this is working all across the country but we're here in vermont we don't want to be like everybody else all the that's a fair question i think you talk about the speed tables which was part of the original full every engineering plan and it was part of the compromise to make sure the speeds of we were kept down we are going to do speech study in the spring and it's entirely possible we don't know this yet but it may it may turn out to be study shows that the speeds are already down to were below where they were in the dirt road scenario if from my house down the road up and down the road and i applaud the decision that was made to pave it and i feel that the islanders are affected and terms of slowing paint on paper roads get a look also like sure there are best practices as to how roads should be maintained in order to avoid having a lot of potholes a lot of maintenance and i don't think in all instances from what i've observed that we're following those best practices for maintenance and as you can see it builds a lot of frustrations where people are ready to trade be safe and comfortable and i've watched this for many years we've had different points of time in the past actually maybe it's on the roads but just for example if a dirt road is not day once the road starts having water flowing it ends up being dead which ends up in growth which ends up in the stream which ends up either with a river or in the wetlands so not taking good care of  planing so i don't think it's a capital budget issue and i don't think it's an alternative to shut off the sidewalks i think it's a matter of people learning to take care of her to sensitive road and doing it the proper way with the proper materials it will save money for everybody and citizen satisfaction we'll be watching one example of a good moment take a look at my drive know where that fits in with the sidewalk plan people are always in the road there were people just the last storm traffic stops any time someone wants to take a picture it's risky for both and and then as i say this every year will just and while we're talking roads i don't know what powers to be we can break but i really think we need a boss walk on fifteen across from joes to lead river of them atlanta light would be great but again i do see especially in the summer lots of kids starting back in court without any sort of notice or protection work through the construction right away easements they had it's you negotiate with the the gas station for loss of income and that is  been resolved and they expect to go to construction this years that we will have and bring back if there's a if there's a sentiment that we have to do serious study on that it we would incur a lot of costs in taking care of the fifteen we would get some reimbursement from the state but i doubt they would cover the cost but a study of what it would really cost us to be are we appropriate and if there is a sentiment among the pieces that we ought to take such as early we you know will do what you numerical way on this budget and so on page twenty under expenditures you have between lines fifty and lines ninety five you have each department's  expenses and i'm only going to touch on a few things because we've already like i said talked about salaries and benefits and those are the main expenses for each of the departments but lived sixty nine hundred ministration or the professional consultants were budgeting for that is what we were talking about in terms of the public works projects which are really inadequate and must be updated so that's what that expense is right there  that's the bulk of the line item i should say and also want to quickly mention some recreation lines one twenty four through one thirty three  no significant increases there that i think i'm going to hand the microphone over to katherine who's going to talk about our highways and bridges more to come for right are still budgeting fifty thousand dollars for hired equipment even though we're asking to buy a the next excavator this just will enhance the work the town will get done because we still would have to hire a large gravel on hand for emergencies for the storms things that happen in the summer we're increasing the line item for culverts and that so that we have more culverts on hand  replacing after certain storms i'm worried about that we're just replacing our coverts with with the same exact over after storm and would be great if we could have a study in looking into  w certain certain storms are going to impact certain roadways and and increase  we have increased our we have asked the i p c c to do that study for us to make sure that we are increasing the capacity the culver says needed because you're correct storms are going to get worse and we want to make sure that we are if there's no other questions on highways and bridges i'm going to move on to some of the other  we did get the payment from the may storm we are still awaiting payment from the july storms we do anticipate getting that money time is on top of that and in contact with  officials to make sure that this does happen hope to continue sally's work i think she did a good job for the county of two so thank you very much with the opportunit reengage just briefly passed by insurances unfortunately the passive dollars are going up just because the liability insurance does and has increased for the town police and safety you contract dollars will still say they stay the same forty to forty hours per week for the sheriff ten hours for the state police or up to ten hours to many what they can give us and then talking about buildings and property if you'll notice on one thirty nine the street lights we budgeted a decrease of twenty five hundred dollars that is because of all the work that the task force did with the study first and then engaging the electric companies to replace all the light bulbs with  s we did not budget the entire decrease because unfortunately rates have also gone up so but we'd rather be under budget rather than over budget and but still we still see the decrease the othe dollars for mobs you'll see that line item increase by another five thousand dollars we not sure whether that money will be spent but that was allocated for the trails committee as they start being able to connect the trails that  located throughout the town we also have seal signed a trail easement with with property along the river with chuck lacy and gays i mean ten that in the future they agencies so outside agencies otherwise known as appropriations both mandated and and non mandated lines one fifty five to one fifty nine in the budget  e those expenses that we as a town do not set out and do not recommend nor not recommend they are bills basically that are given to us and we're required to pay them the increase is really i think mostly about being more realistic about what their actual expenses are due to increasing attendance at the park they are becoming more and more popular as more and more people use five and i know there was some discussion a few years ago about doing the repairs let it was and if someone can explain how it was decided this is the right time i would appreciate it i'm going sales inter in relation to what the assessed value is she's seeing things for lack of a better term start to get out of whack so when the last tree appraisal was implemented in two thousand and five that means inspections were done probably two thousand and three two thousand and four this is providing some starter funds to look at starting a reappraisal in two thousand and fifteen which would really be done in in fiscal year two thousand sixteen implemented with the fiscal year seventeen budget so we're a long way out but we're seen some discrepancies in terms of between different style homes neighborhoods so it's really time to review those to make sure that we have as much equity across the sussman as possible and this funding grid the twenty thousand dollars offset by funding we receive from the state so we're using all that  funds to start it but this is really just the beginning obviously as we as it moves forward starting next year really just laying the groundwork there will certainly be a lot of information about it communication that sort of thing but hopefully that answers your question ok and then the mandated agencies are those mostly non profits that we have traditionally supported as a town and they have been flat funded for many many years for the most county on really sensitive and difficult cases around child sexual abuse mostly and so they have bad and asking for an increase for many years from us and we have really of pushed the organization to give us a representation at their governmental their government level the on their board and also to explain their budget really clearly and what it is that you know what their services do for the town sure go and they've really done that they've done a lot of work to explain their their budget so we would recommend the town do increase their funding by the allotted amount this year so that they can continue to offer services of the the next major line item is line one seventy five the rescue squad in richmond and it's actually a very similar story in that we've asked them for a detail to budget and a detailed explanation of you know the cost of each call and they've provided i think that they've come a long way recently in terms of organization and staffing so i think that's a warranted expense and i hope you agree and then when seventy six underhill jerko fire department we are going to hand the microphone over to you to matt champlin who is the fire department to get more clarification more detail of their budget and math champlin the assistant chief was the representative the primary representative from the fire department we had many productive and frank meetings they worked very hard to put it in a more clear form that's very similar to our town report form we feel that in the future we will continue forward in terms of transparency and clarity they did not do everything they wanted in terms of our format but they felt that they needed to do it some parts of it in their old format so that people would understand a little bit more and then i will pass that up and then we let them to be known that they would be presenting their own budget because it's one thing to talk to me about it but it's a better marks a twenty percent increase in calls for service from the fire department in the community two hundred and here also last year we were able to obtain a grant from the state of vermont become commissioned in the amount of thirty four thousand two hundred twenty five dollars granted that is taxpayer money but not local taxpayers money it's funded through the federal government so everybody across the country to upgrade our radio systems in the past you have to see it mandated that we narrow band their radio undertaking a project to improve our i still rate i so is your standards office and they provide public protection class ratings p p c ratings for fire departments those c ratings are used by insurance companies some insurance companies to establish homeowners insurance rates the project entails the fire department doing a better job of tracking their training tracking our calls sorry tracking or training tracking our calls documenting our procedures and processes in our responses specifically the big one was water supply we've done that we did all those things there was some minimal cost incurred to buy some minor pieces of equipment for one truck so that truck could get credit in the ice to review we moved a bunch of equipment around from truck to truck to make sure that we had the them that they wanted to see we did that and we're proud to say that we've taken our eye so p p c rating from a six not to a four six it is an accomplishment for six radios one of the best volunteer fire department raids and in fact the whole state what does that mean ten rating here is no recognized by no recognized fire protection you have to be beyond five miles from a fire right from a fire station fortunately in jericho do the past planning the fire department everybody jericho's it within five miles of a fire station a one reading means the absolute best fire protection you can get there are only very few fire departments across the entire country that obtain a one ra resulted in eight hundred fifty seven dollars a year homeowners insurance bill the new rate which took effect march first of six that results in a homeowner's bill of six hundred thirty one dollars that's a two hundred  twenty six dollars savings on your homeowner's bill any health care fire department cost to provide fire protection services to that home through your tax bill is one hundred forty dollars good information in there scene uses the highway department they're not out spreading same salt and sand they're not out plowing constantly so we have an expected lifetime of thirty years of our apparatus that's our big trucks we do have a couple of smaller pickups and the routinely for obtaining plowing stuff for the stage the capital claim however is under revision back in the early two thousand after september eleventh there were homeland security grants made available the fire department at the time was very successful in obtaining greens fact you gained over a million dollars worth of equipment through those grants unfortunately that equipment has a life time and needs to be replaced at some point in time the capital plant a couple of the big items we obtained in there were our air packs that we use to stay safe in a fire in our portable radio the handheld walkie talkies that we had that equipment is nearing its end of life we see that coming some of it is mandated end of life where the piece of equipment has a osha specified lifetime and when you  back you have to throw it away so we are in the process of updating our capital plan to take into account those coming spence's the air packs themselves entire replacement were estimated to be about two hundred fifty thousand dollars so we're cooperating that in our capital plan so we don't have to come to the taxpayers to say we've hit the end of life we need two hundred fifty thousand dollars extra this year so we're hoping to avoid that there are still a little bit of increased expense to plan for that coming in the future this year's budget request for the town of jericho three hundred fifteen thousand six hundred five dollars that were represented two point four percent increase to the town we feel is very reasonable we had a twenty percent increase in calls on calls of service for us last year the fire department is funded sixty percent by jericho and forty percent by underhill that historically has proven out to be the case call volume in green cliffs and population of the communities so we all have a great fire department with a great protection class reading that we only pay sixty percent for that cost of shared with hund getting under the new budget form and you'll notice in our budget format there are some line items that are right justified those line items in previous years were part of the line item above it so for example under insurance the line item for two thousand and twelve thirteen represented thirty eight thousand five hundred dollars now there are four line items underneath that individual expenses shown this year which are individual line item expenses for insurance fire and if you look down under expenses you have insurance line i am and again two thousand two hundred thirteen that was three thousand five hundred moving forward we've broken that out into the components of what make up our insurance bill in  couple things no we used to include fuel in our vehicle maintenance line item we've broken that out as i'm sure the town is well aware feel expenses are not going down anytime soon so that it's growing to be a bigger and bigger piece of our budget as those costs go up so we've broken that out a couple of the things that we are required to do by the national fire protection association is a pump test on our trucks to ensure that those pumps will perform the way we expect them to at a fire so we have that cost that we perform annually also there is a host test that is done in really on all of our bows we usually do that school vacation break and for the last two years the guys that come up and do it have been fortunate it's been snowing on them but they literally unload every inch of hose on our truck put it under pressure test measure it check it for leakage and then we'll repack it on the truck for  so we don't replace pillows on any periodic basis we don't save it's five years old or ten years old or whatever we don't replace it like that the hose either have to fail at a fire so significant signs of failure when we get back from using it either at a fire or training or as the tale of those temps we have pows on our department that has been in service for nineteen years at this point we replaced the bunch of last year that was twenty three years old the line item for firefighter safety equipment is the turnout here that's the fire protection suits that we wear in past we had purchased three to five sets of gear here several years ago those those set to turn here go up in cost three to five percent per year and f d a is always updating the standards for that year it is always increasing the cost of that year so several years ago we went out and purchased twenty five sets of here got a huge discount because we were purchasing such a large volume we financed that purchase at a low interest loan that has saved us money that loan was paid off last year we went out this year and bought fift new sets of gear that loan is currently financed at two point five nine percent much less than the three five percent annual cost increase that occurred with that here in the capital portion of the budget capital expenditures you see a capital loan that is some improvements we made on the station several years ago to incorporate some sleeping quarters for essex rescue that was all done through negotiations and approval of the select words back then we have our building loan payment which is for our station down in underhill and that is coming due very shortly that will be paid off the next two line i the truck loan payment and the truck reserve payment those used to be one line item of the old budget where we would pay the loans we have on trucks and set some money aside in a reserve account very similar to what the town does to plan for those future purchases again we have a thirty year life expectancy of our trucks and we set up the reserve account to try to keep a flat tax rate for the citizens rather than coming in and saying we need a bond this year for three hundred fifty thousand dollars to buy a truck and we have a five to seven year increase we set the money aside in a reserve account and utilize back very similar to what the town does for highway footman and other capital expenditures the town you see a new line if you compared to last year which is the air package portable radios or this is the reserve account that we're stablish ing to cover the cost of those future purchases that we know are coming this will get incorporated into our capital plan the next google line item to see is the transfers to reserves if you look at just the bottom line of income and expenses on the fire department were really really good we spend just exactly the same amount that we take in every year that's not really the case we do have years that we are under spent and when we are under spent we take that money and we set it into a reserve account very similar to what the town does it's our rainy day fund there have been years that we have been over budget especially on salary on a quick meant on vehicle maintenance when that happens we draw money from our reserve accounts to cover those increased expenses that are beyond our budget that year or not coming back to the town asking for an increase mid year to say hey we didn't see this coming we have a major expense we need more tax revenue we benefits of our volunteers and our two full time employees that will give you a breakdown of what those salary for training for calls for benefits statements are some of our below that you'll see a rivers land account statement the fire department used to have a reserve account labeled rivers land which served very well well alice was a we realized very little income from the property typically just enough to cover taxes on the property in the past years we are now renting the house and we are not receiving the full income from the gravel operation therefore we felt it appropriate to create a separate chart that shows all the funds that are associated with the rivers life all of our income and all are expected expenses so we have that budgeted glad to say the reverse land for now paying for itself were able to cover the taxes the town assesses on it and any repairs that are needed to the house when we went to red house last year the well had failed and we had to spend some money to get the well fixed to allow the house to be rented and that was done through the money that we had in the rivers reserve account so this is now set up and will keep this and this will be posted will provide this in to the town's every year the last page of page fifty one is our reserve account statement and again we do our reserve account a little bit differently than the town the town  obtain many more grants than the fire department does it's not that the fire department doesn't try we do try every year we've applied for grants through thema we're constantly looking for outside grants outside the government private industry  they're hard to obtain and there's a lot of competition but we do a the reserve accounts statement here is all the reserve accounts that the fire department has and underneath as an explanation of either income or expenses that happened in that account during the year you'll see an increase in the new equipment reserve account of twenty three thousand four hundred sixty seven dollars that's because we had planned in last year's budget to purchase the imaging cameras that had failed to replace the ones that had failed in the fire department when we went out looking we found out that there's a whole lot more than two main factors nowadays there's nine so we took the nine hundred took a project to evaluate all nine camera manufacturers we've been doing that it's been a little bit longer than we expected has been about eight months nine months so that we're in the final stages of that and we'll be wrapping that up shortly and when we do that if the membership of the fire department approves will be utilizing some of this reserve account maybe all of that to purchase the cameras that we need to replace the ones that have failed that is my presentation at this point any question right back over the lottery ok you're welcome members of the end of jericho fire department do receive a stipend payment of ten dollars an hour while they are in a fire call we have a weekly training on tuesday nights that is planned to be two hours long i say planned and i'll put that in quotes because if we're out of there before three hours we're lucky and they do get a twenty dollar pay for attending training that's not unlike many volunteer fire departments in the state or ma and across the  is a truly part of the part of property is a separate entity how does that all relate so maybe you can give me the five minute or two minute background on it and what the future goal direction is to make use of that w probably seven years ago now we renegotiated with alice on the gravel pit so the fire department could realize some income from the gravel pit to cover the cost of taxes that the town of jericho charges on the property alice recently passed away land is now fully under the ownership of the fire department the fire department is a private nonprofit corporation that is contracted by the town of jericho in underhill provide fire protection services these agreements that were made without property and any income from the property was to be used to offset expenses we have set up the rivers land account offset the expenses of the rivers land at this point or not we don't want to take the position of using that money to offset our budget yet because the land isn't in the house s all the barn is old there are maintenance upkeep items and what we would much rather do is use the income from that property rather than taxpayer dollars to pay for those expenses in the future  fifty permit to run till two thousand and twenty i believe is the right time frame i forget the time for high seventy two thousand seven hundred two thousand twenty two thousand twenty have a person shaking his head at me at which time the fire department e that has been appointed by the select board and then to go she she committee that has been appointed by the fire department discussing the future of that property and there was a recent public statement released by those two groups and i don't have that statement and that's all i'm really going to end up saying about where that property is going at this point right now those negotiations are private confidential and i'm going to respect that  i think basically to answer the question of her perspective if you haven't asked your private corporation or problem of serial murders and you know you're going to do with the leo what you feel is appropriate but to the taxpayers i just wonder if it's the best in our interest you know going have insurance to cover his operations and he pays for that town meeting they do not get the meetings and they actually don't get paid for trains although they do have state bans for calls and he in their report they have responded to over four hundred calls as well and looking at their budget at least for last year their budget was one hundred ninety seven or about almost two hundred thousand and your budget was three hundred eight thousand so we are different it has been i've been on the fire department for close to ten years as long as i've been on the fire department we've been paid for calls and training that's the way the fire department here works we feel that asking people to give up two hours a week to come down and train and be profession to do they very important job that we do this isn't going out and coaching kids this isn't going out and fixing trails this is running into burning buildings this is entering hazardous environments this is working on route fifteen in some of the worst conditions you've seen there have been  end actions down here by joe snack bar because the hill is a sheet of ice and we're standing there working on that with tractor trailers coming out of us with cars coming out of us so it is important in our mind to have the membership but we do it we hold safety as a top priority for both our members and the public and that's why we pay for training as we want people to come we want people to learn we want people to be professional i what they contains all their insurance costs fica liability worker's comp i haven't looked that so i can't make a person but typically those costs are not contained within the fire department budget they're contained within the town budget because those people are covered under the town's insurance so there are some differences between the fire department on jericho and with hind hurt one of those being that we are not a public entity we are a private not for profit which organization you are one hundred percent funded pretty much by the taxpayers of jericho and underhill in saying that your negotiations are right with our town is telling us that even though we pay for everything that you guys do we're going to keep those negotiations away from on the reverse property because you are a hundred percent funded by the taxpayer regardless of whether or not one of the you're a private company we have a right to know we have a right to be involved in that process and it was a public very public debate that members of your department  former pretty much said well we're private organizations we can do what we want if you're a private organization that maybe you should get your own funding if you're not getting your own funding and you're coming happen hand to us every year and going right give us money then you're accountable dogs it's it's that lack of accountability that i just i can't sit there and listen to you say well we  go she is ongoing but we're keeping those private there's nothing private about your organization correct that's why i'm standing here doing a budget presentation to the community thank you i'm standing here doing a budget presentation to the private fire department did not make that decision you know unilaterally that was in agreement with the select board that while those negotiations are ongoing that they will be kept private so that's not the fire department standing here saying we can do what we want that's the whole the integrity of the negotiations this point would be appropriate to this like board to comment on the process that's underway no process yes they are concerned that this is not public and i want like i'm many of the people in this room know this because this is been a pretty well known issue in the last five to six months as i think many of you know this the fire department decided that it didn't want to be a landowner any longer and that it was going to put the property for sale there was a considerable expression concern among a lot of citizens that this was a property they did not want to see go into the hands of private developers and a considerable controversy arose word decided that it was this was something that could be settled did not become a divisive fight in the community and so we asked th city the fire department to postpone the sale to give us an opportunity to discuss with them and come up with a proposal for how the the land could be transferred into a commute into the communities hands whether that was literally into the town's own hands or into a community body that would be set up by the time the fire department agreed that the deadline set for march first we had a number of discussions we agreed that these discussions would be private and would be conducted for the select board under the rules of executive session which permit private discussions about real stuff real estate that's part of the open meeting laws of vermont you are entitled to have confidential discussions  meetings that deal with private commercial discussions and particularly with real say so those those negotiations have been conducted under that part of the open meeting rules initially we had a number of discussions about substance just make it clear that both sides understood what they were seeking what their goals were what their concerns were and the select board undertook a independent appraisal we hired two appraisers to give independent appraisals of value of the property on the basis of that took a while incidentally that was those were finally  finished mid february approximately on the basis of that we put together a detailed proposal which we formally submitted to the fire department i think about february twentieth i don't know the exact date the fire department concluded that they didn't have enough time to decide on this they're a fairly effective very democratic organization and they have a process of the whole with the fire department would ultimately have to vote on on the acceptance or not of this proposal they didn't have enough time to conclude that before this meeting they expect we've been informed they expect to have to address it and come to some kind of conclusion at the next business meeting on march eleventh we asked for an extension of the march first and they'll be responding to that as well come to an agreement in the end but it's not a done deal and it's not a slam dunk so the game is still going forward and we are both respecting both sides are respecting the confidential confidentiality discussions we can't where wherever we go ultimately it will be public and it will have to be subject to public approval heating fuel vehicle fuel and medical expenses other comments yes we have a microphone up towards the  front kelly king i just want to make a comment that while i don't always agree with all the expenditures for the budget for the fire department i would like to put in a plug that i think the percentage the eighty eight thousand that goes toward stipends is something that is very reasonable that that when people are expected to work at that kind of professional level with that kind of a risk and that kind of seriousness of training i think we need to respect that and and while i agree there is a lot of people in town to do a lot of volunteer work i think it's really important that we have knowledge at that really a small part of that budget and i just want to be on record as saying that i barely support that part of the budget for the budget presentation both in the book of the detail that you've covered that i want to focus a little bit on capital planning that's an important tool for a budget person or for a public entity to talk about as i look at your so your first steps i would say towards a capital plan it looks like maintenance  the current building and maintenance or just replacement of the current engines and major equipment and that there's no plans for any changes that either of those categories the plane is in a town of course i'm not sure if you viewed our capital plan ok so our capital plan does take into account we do have an upcoming capital plan for our building of the fire station with fifteen long for that will be paid off in two thousand and seventeen at that point in time that building will be twenty years old over the twenty years life for that building we've been in communications with the select boards about those types of services the fire department provides to the community and there is some planning to expend money to maintain the building the roof is getting all that is getting rusty we're having leaks so that's one of the items that we're looking at when we switch the natural gas you're going to attempt to lower our energy bill which we did we had to replace our furnace is because they were sixteen years old and we're just gone so we had that in the  plan our capital plan does right now only take into account trucks and buildings we're having the air packs in the radios as pieces of equipment that we are going to plan for replacement in the future but i agree with you we do have a plan it is adaptable it is funded at this point with our current budget request that capital plane is fully funded going forward under our operating expenses that we requested there's no special request yours to a different type of cap capital planning than you're talking about the reserves if i look at the reserve accounts that you talk about that sounds like maintenance of the building like you've said replace the loop but kind of stuff and one for one essentially replacement of drops is that correct correct appreciate the work you guys do i appreciate the work you guys are doing and i do support the stipend i had two questions it looks like there's a lot of activity around rescue and i was curious if you could make a statement about what services the fire department provides relative to richmond or essex rescue in one of those events and my second question is does the fire department publish the location of those events the vehicle accidents so the fire department supplies we housed the ambulance for essex rescue that is located in town we have two full time employees those employees were brought on over the last five to six years in response to requests from the communities for better him ask coverage during the day so the two full time members respond to all your mass calls in one hundred l in jericho between the hours of eight am and four pm training nights tuesday night seven and nine if they're in town there's a call they can go to that as well at those times so we support essex rescue we support the communities with p m s services through our two full time members don't hold your fire department is not a license the m s a agency are two members are practicing medically under essex rescue they are members of essex rescue when they do that so several years ago the select boards approached us and asked the fire department to study ways to provide better d m s coverage the under to establish the fire department as an e m f first response agency there's a huge amount of training that goes into that there's a huge amount of initial certification and there's a substantial investment  the current to figure later is close to forty five thousand dollars to purchase that you need as a d m s agency it's not just any you know it has to be capable of doing a lot more than that so that's how we support you know working in return for housing an ambulance and providing some people are two full time employees are out in mass call after hours that overtime funding is provided by asked rest that's why you see some income there has addressed the overtime reimbursement so that's money that comes back they pay for that we also have some income from essex rashly to pay for the bunk rooms that we built several years ago in order to have the ability for essex rashmi to have people sleep station at night we haven't been able to get to that point yet the bankrupt are there and we can use that as a your question was and what was the other part of the the second question was it looks like there's a lot a lot of it is a vehicle accident rescue and i was just curious do we publish the location of those accidents we publish in the mountain his that we had stopped for a little while we published in the mountain is that the calls that we've been on  it does give the general location of those i can tell you that we think about on a regular basis if there were a certain intersection or short piece of road that we were spying to on a consistent basis we would be talking to these guys to my left to say hey we have a problem there are areas in town that are worse than others probably the biggest section of road that we respond accidents to is in west on route fifty that is our coverage territory and for whatever reason it's icy out that way so that's that's the majority of our car accident so i am not concerned about the time as usual i think we should move our second tanker in the station we have anywhere from seven to nine volunteer members that respond there during a call the station is fully functional fully operational and we plan to leave it that there's no there's no plans for disruption of service out of that fire s there's no plans to expand it either yes it's the major reason why everybody is within five miles of a fire station when he's done this year and i'm page eighty seven you have your advertisement for reflect however when you have a problem and it's dark and it's snowing and it's raining it's not so easy for people that don't know where you live to fight so those are signs that we have available thank you for pointing that out there is a request form in the firefighters and our membership sit somewhere around fifty two at this point so there are roles within the fire department where you do not have to be an interior go get a person we need all kinds of support if you'd like to know more was nothing legally in any documentation that she won the land open but you have a lot of documentation that states she wants the land to remain open and you all you and your leadership all right that's like board meetings stating that she wanted to land to remain open so what i'm wondering is have you guys actually written anything down to respect her wishes to keep the land open is there anything in their negotiations or just in your own internal department about respecting respect that we understand that you citizens provide us our funding also respect that every single person of the fire department is a taxpayer in underhill in jericho and whatever we vote to do affects us as well so that's why we're here that's why we provide the budget that we provide that's why we have to negotiations with the slide or that we have i don't think there's a question that the select board is stuff that we have refused or not answer ok we we respect that the citizens i live in jericho i want fire protection services i think the fire department does a great job but we are a professional organization we are a highly respected organization we are well funded and we know that ok but we're providing a level of service that we think you citizens have asked for in the summer now in the winter people find it puts a house for sale signs up garage sale signs up in front of a memorial that's been dedicated to fallen soldiers in jericho i find this very appalling wh disagree now the area and especially yesterday when i went by and i see a sign i've never seen i live the jerk over twenty years i've never seen a sign politically downgraded another opponent that you're ready to vote on the budget no objection are we will go to vote on article one and let me read it back to thousand fifteen budget of general fund expenditures of three million six hundred ninety seven thousand nine hundred seventy six dollars including spending on into spirit funds such as state and federal grants and  two three and six as i see them as being your way of giving us a like board to do the business of the town is there objection to uniting these articles you may ask questions about any of the three is the discussion article three shall the challenge like the taxes and equal installments due in the town offices on aug fifteenth and november seventeenth two thousand and fourteen on march sixteenth two thousand and fifteen with postmarks sceptical and article articles on the floor is there a second to not combine them with the other two and then vote on it individually and should we reject what would be the consequence periodically we borrow make short term bridge heard burbridge loans to cover until the next the next batch of cutbacks of taxes comes in all towns do it it's  we've never nobody's ever rejected this we very rarely actually use the power but if we didn't have the power we could suddenly be for three weeks or four weeks short of money and unable to pay wages and so forth so this is short term cash management borrowing and the long time bar has to come before the voters anyway if it was instead amended relation isn't that's what the funding level is the question is if we run short of money because we're not yet at the point where the next batch of taxes comes in can we go down to the bank and borrow our thirty day loan to cover the difference has nothing to do with fund level or not level you know you've just told them it's like what what they can spend they are asking now for a separate sixty so the amendment would have had to been on the first  if it had to do with money eighteen yes article two five three seven three what you wish to do with article fo on the floor dave i'm making a point of clarification for everyone just for their benefit thank you maybe this will be easier because i wrote my words down with the celebration of the town's two hundred fifty at the castle cemetery with the graves of the early settlers were once again in the forefront of history the select board members are default cemetery commissioners current and other boards in the past have also served is that there are also been elected or appointed commissioners the town basically mo's the castle as well as the lower cemeteries  late summer a petition was brought to the select board to acquire preserve maintain provide for the castle cemetery because of its historical significance it was felt the town should do more than just basic maintenance based on early information from the town attorney of this current select board so that we could fulfill the requirements and in a point in a room commissioners to be elected as at the following town meeting i will ever after for further study as it was unclear in town records if there ever was a vote to elect or even a vote to stop electing commissioners the conclusion was the town should warn and have a public vote to have some of terri commissioners again to be fully clarified  records indicate that they have been expenditures for the upkeep of the castle cemetery since one thousand six hundred ninety seven does not list specific names but does what sum of money the town would appropriate for care of its public cemeteries and plural cemeteries the monies for the scare we continue to come from the town and would be in the general budget listed as it is currently expenses would be drawn by the cemetery board itself and paid by the town the books within be audited like any other department of the town and reports of the included in the in your report commissioners also have the authority to do by laws and regulations for such burial grounds so that's a little brief history and and i'm presuming that this commission would oversee public cemeteries but could you just explain the difference there is a difference between public and private  currently there is a part of the jericho center cemetery that is town and then the cemetery although nobody has been buried with the years i mean nobody even knows let me just ask a question as moderator i am fully aware in other places that there are private cemeteries that is burial grounds that are on private land does any citizen know of an example that i can i can  i'd call lowery cemetery these are the two public areas that need to be addressed by this issue i am responsible for the cemetery in jericho  non profit corporation and he has five seven direct and it's a case that these private cemeteries i think would remain separate from this issue money on the cemeteries that we provide not the mo in everything so what is the net zero to us as far as upward you know i mean if if they need more money it will be in the budget you can talk about it every year anything else this is largely declare five legal condition who's responsible which when we looked into it it wasn't clear that's really what this is about garish this article mentions that there will be some of terri commissioners three acres for a period of five years what do you wish to do with article five of subjects including past actions entries in the time report the like but they can't go into the warrant business of the day so the articles or the reports are all in your town report and of course since you are good citizens you've already read the entire report gone through this and have hours worth of comments and correction so let me read r and r so let me just get this on the floor article seven to hear the reports of the town off es what do you wish to do with articles  at lunch time but i just thought i'd mention what is on your mind this is your chance to bring things up especially like other citizens on the select bor town ownership of fruit fifteen is there a s would you repeat that so i can get some words share the whole thing on i propose a study of town ownership of route fifty with the goal of safety enhancement provisions such as process watts light and whatever else might be necessary and when you talk about ownership of routine are you talking about from where the town line begins to where the town line ends or can you just take ownership of a certain section like from the bridge to the top of the  traffic how many accidents and so forth they have a set of rules those rules have their own logic and they believe they're sound we may differ with the conclusion of those rules if that's the case we have the option of paying putting our money where but the i don't believe that they're declining to do this simply out of pure you know obstructionist they have rules they have a lot of money to spend around the state i mean a lot of obligations around the state and so in order for a situation to rise to the level where they feel they have to spend state money on it it has certain standards and in their judgment these standards have not yet been reached in our cases we have a difference of opinion i guess that's what i'm asking is that in this study you're going to vote on those kind of explanations should be includ yes absolutely anybody else like to weigh in microphone down here on my right towards the front i said we're not going to make a decision on this we're going to study what it would cost what the benefits are what the costs are so forth and you're going to make a decision on whether you think this is worth doing and if it costs money and you decide it's worth done doing th it's going to come from from the taxpayers or or grants or wherever and say we're not this study is not going to come to a conclusion about what to do it's going to lay out the facts as best you can and you're going to decide what you want to  do jim carroll from boulder who wrote i see this motion is sort of what i call the cat chasing the dog's tail we have a problem we've got a bridge on a roof if pain that does not have  access on the state gets blamed for not doing it the state has a responsibility to us to make safe conditions and if they create unsafe conditions to say has been successfully sued for wrongful death i can't see a more clear cut situation where you have the best trains walking across a limited access section where their choice is getting hit by a tractor trailer truck or jumping into the river so the possibility of the town of jericho taking over ownership of route fifteen i would have to say doesn't make any sense we may assume the responsibility like old chester in essex for the maintenance of the roads getting an allocation from the state but if you think about it practically speaking we start driving our trucks at one point on route fifteen where the state or essex stop and then they drive up to the next point turn around the real issue is why can't we jericho cause our state senators and our state representatives to be responsive to the people of jericho to have a safe situation on route fifteen so i think it should be more emotion that someone within the town take responsibility for getting on the case of whomever in the states responsible for causing word fifteen to be safe and efficient and there are many cases i think there's one in hyde park there's another one i'm rude to in south hero where people die because the state agency that has this is thord in responsibility did not do their job so you remind them that we haven't no public risk people are walking on a limited area fighting with tractor trailer trucks for space that's not a good situation and it's really stupid for anybody at state to ignore us so it's more a lot more a matter of us in jericho speaking to the issue clearly and whomever within the counter those responsible for speaking to the state i think the motion should address get fifteen safe because we ensure all have to cross it and go up and down it and get the people who are getting paid by us at the state to be responsible to the tower which are and if we can't get those people to be responsive to it then we want to speak and i forget whether i have to suspend the rules which town you live jericho ok i don't i do want to respond to it was just said because i have stood before you several years now and said is going to be completed we unfortunately had a problem with called ivory which took a whole bunch of state resources and then we had a problem with some floods that you all remember well here which took away some state resources and once again this year i have spoken many times with the people in the transportation committee the engineer in charge of the project and they assure me that this year and so we had to resolve an issue you would think that that issue would have been resolved years ago when they were going to start the the new bridge but it wasn't but now it is resolved and i'm told that this year the bridge is really going to happen now i've been told this year that it's going to happen before so i completely believe it when i see it but that is the word from the state they are not ignoring us they are hearing from us very regularly both bill frank and myself  d you know they show me the spreadsheets it's a here it is in the queue it is in this year's budget so it's my observation that we have gone back to talking about the foot bridge on the bridge when the motion addresses crosswise and my yeah but the ownership issue arose from a concern about crosswalks not about the so people are comfortable with what's been just talked about being part of this it's of relevan know how are you doing i think actually i'm doing all right here i believe we have a motion on the floor that encourages the soit board to do a study of taking ownership of all or portions its on the road i'm not doing very well close close enough you trust us to dress it up what vision it is i need help i need for citizens to help me count ok so you're going to hold up your hands for the three different positions and you're going to keep them up until the count until the runners come back to me your right to vote all those in favor the motion please help put up your hands and keep  law passed by a vote of seventy six in favor twenty seven against them three abstain is there any other business you'd like to bring before the  crossing i'm speaking as a citizen right now although i am a member of the church energy task force but i wanted to clarify that this is not a recommendation of the taskforce per se but my own my own i move that the town of jericho and its citizens resolved to work together to continue to conserve energy and save money by reducing the use of carbon based fuels to your homes energy and our costs because there are many ways we can reduce our energy and our costs by the method that i've put in the resolution which is to reduce our use of carbon based fuels  in my experience with working with the home energy challenge last year i just covered that it's very difficult to help people to weatherize their homes effectively a lot of people do a lot of work on their homes and it's not all effective a lot of you know a lot of us still have drafts recount icicles we have high energy bills and we wring our hands sometimes even if we try to get our homes weatherized and do the best thing we can because it's very expensive so i just want to put it out there that as residents of the town of jericho as the town of jericho we care about this and we would like to say that we intend to move in the direction of reducing our carbon based fuels for heating thank you with anybody else like to speak to this motion and we've got a need for a microphone up here on the right elizabeth bernstein i hear that this is an aspirational motion but in addition in your wording you said to work together i mean they were sick and so  hearing that you're encouraging people to reach out to the resources that exist for guidance and for expertise where they may not know where such expertise is so this motion it seems to me strengthens our sense of could strengthen our sense of community in that we are trying to  make professional resources available to people who have questions and the name of your organization is generally jericho energy has no the jericho energy task force it's actually a task force of the town and anyone is welcome to join us there's a report on what we've done over the past year the town report so it's the jericho energy task force we have a facebook page if you want to read about us so that is in the way of a repeat example of a resource it isn't relevant to the  make fun of somebody every minute but it was your turn you know i think the things that are off the list are things like water and sunlight right when right what is the question about clarification ok so here we go all those in favor of changing the language of the motion from carbon based to fossil fuels please say  oh well carbon based please put your hands up people  fifty one votes in favor and ten votes against so very are changing the language and we're back to the main motion are you ready to vote on the main motion  matthew champney get on behalf of the un health care to fire department i'd like to thank the select board for their work with us this year it hasn't always been the u c s d and i know that we have different points of view sometimes but with committed to work together i think we have we don't like to think the citizens of jericho for their support it's not a perfect relationship but i don't think it ever could be and will be but if we can have open discussions is this and talk about things come to solutions that support both your fire department and its members in the community we appreciate that thank you comments about article nine are welcome unfortunate i have one comma and this is not about it exactly just make sure when you vote that you notice he is pointing out but it's hard to see where the vote is on the australian ballot it's on the top before you vote for people initial two two year terms will be split first one year and then the other one will be two years and then it will cycle over to it to to your terms that way everybody is not on the ballot the same time know the original this liquid is made up of three three year terms and if this article passes will be in addition to two year terms ok so let's one of the people asked me what do we have to do to make it three to five i said i'm not sure i'll look into it think it's a petition but i'm not sure how much how many signatures you need so i did a little bit of history i went back in the minutes of two thousand and six there was a charter the media at that time was going to change the charter and the site anyway together they changed the five percent by state law and all of the petitions in the town to fifteen percent now that i didn't know why so i called one of the select board members very personal friend of mine and i didn't i couldn't get a eight signatures of registered voters others here hundred people and they just said we want the opportunity to say three or five that's all it is not advocating this i'm just wondering if you can get you know you just you know i wonder if we can get i'm just dots from the kurds like part two more members would be helpful to you or if you feel like that would make your job more difficult on the matter but i don't want to speak from here i will go speak from there as a private citizen purely as a private citizen permit that sounds ok to me i don't think even have to get up that's  good first of all i think it's important i was sorry to know th and about a quarter of them maybe a little more are three person bunch or five and there are a couple that are seven and there's no question in our personal experience that the three person boards are more efficient less politico and less difficult internally and externally simply because there are three of them not five or seven and so i do not believe that going to a larger number will improve efficiency or anything like that in fact i think that's a personal experience you don't want to for now there's another question which is a little more matter of principle under  my open meetings any time a quorum which means a majority of the select board me ask to be warned in the discussions have to be open in the pub because we're only three and this is true any three person or no any time to have our members me we're at a quorum and we have the meeting but that means we never we do not meet and discuss matters in private we don't do that we'll discuss process when are we going to me you know when is the next and so forth but substance we  we don't talk on the telephone we don't talk in private we don't communicate about the substance of the boy as a result there is no back door horsetrading you vote for me i'll vote for you nothing of that somewhere takes place all discussions of substance take place in public in front of the public with a warning in front of the camera it's public see it on the on the on the film on the video some people might think that makes it impractical to do business in fact it doesn't it makes it very but it means we talk in and that reduces the amount of discussion it makes it concentrates the mind we get up in front of our citizens and our constituen and we talk about stuff right there one of the things that doesn't happen when you do that is the more straight you know the back door deal when you have five people on the board that are long sad it is legal zero for any two to meet privately doesn't matter and make a deal on their own nobody knows about it and then each of those two can go to somebody else on the board and construct a majority of three and then the deal is done it's done in the backroom nobody knows who fought what why and the media then comes back but maybe they vote it's not in public it's not in front of people it's not that's the way it really is up that's really the way business is done and if we have five people that's the way it will happen here as long as we have three that's not historical society and probably many other things that i don't know about so i just wanted to honor her thank you thank