first money for it for the trust fund it's really important to put some substance behind an idea that had widespread support fifteen thousand dollars is this direct that it's not in the end but it is a start it's important to get that sound going i think there is a discussion that gonna take place within the community about how you can grow that grow that fund what the source is and that's something that that ought occur next year but in the in the immediate future to portland to get the fund up and running provide some substance to it and get us on the way to creating affordable housing there's been enough written about affordable housing the task force has provided you with information statistics and probably you know just and of totally about the surety we have throughout you don't count in the role that will see can play and in helping to bring affordable housing to folks that work our seniors  and other folks who just find the cost of housing beyond their reach so i don't want to keep you but i do want to thank the town manager for getting this discussion going keeping it going and providing subsumption substance to our discussion so thank you for doing th i'm here we're here tonight we understand that there is a bunch of review later on with the public works department with regards to plow rain roads in the infrastructure and all that and we have been here before and have asked that the town consider plowing lean in maintaining the sidewalks and bike paths throughout the neighborhood of any crossing the road and infrastructure been constructed they have not been accepted by the town at this point but the plan is that this summer many of the roads throughout the neighborhood will be  funds to plow the sidewalk and bike paths which are required as part of the comprehensive plan and we build them and our homeowners can't use them during the winter months because they're full of snow so that's really what our request is there's also one important point is that since we started for any crossing  to date there's substantial tax revenue that's just as he would the growth of the neighborhood in we're very happy about bringing that to the town in two thousand fiscal year two thousand and seventeen there's approximately one point five million dollars of property tax revenue has been is going to be generated this year alone and so we think that with of the number of homes the tax revenue that has been created that it place and now because we had a big storm and then we had the blowing snow last week and the snow blew over coming home friday night was pretty difficult to bypass obviously it was  media event so it didn't wasn't cloud at that point but then monday morning i go down and it still isn't plowed and so i and i know it's other people also work walking on the street as opposed to the sidewalk so i think it's important to keep you know and a lot of people down the shops from the neighborhood to shop so i think it's important to have our have the sidewalks plowed and so we can do our walking safely probably seen the mill from bruce regarding this yes we're not actually taking the action tonight but her agenda for next week for actual action we mentioned last week we received a common level assessment from the state on how our properties are valued and we feel that the common level assessment for the town of wilson is lower than it should be so a building him in our assessors been working with supervisor dugway and they've come to the conclusion that there's two large commercial properties that are driving that the sale of maple tree place and the sale of a hotel just north of i eighty nine were sold in twenty sixteen and twenty fifteen respectively and those are what's driving o number and they're hoping that they can work out something with the state to take those two items out of our commercial number and get to a number that's closer to the median because the right now are median bills says the median ratio is at ninety eight point six seven and the aggregate ratio is at ninety point one three because of those two sales that had the largest drop in cs so they're hoping that they can do something without a formal appeal that between him and his supervisor they can work out and get that up to where it should be but we would like to request that the select board give permission to the  yes it has a major impact on the rationale makes sense so i don't have a question i guess we own it so we've already gone over and taken a look through it and then some minor things but rather than just come up with a whole nother category with us in discussions with rick nobody's been taking care of the building at all the more the schools had it they really haven't they've used it off and on it's been sitting there in pretty much disrepair we've we've painted it we painted it two years ago or paving dollars up there so we can keep our roads in decent shape we've been doing a pretty good job of that we're getting to the point where we can start doing some long long term treatment rather than paving the roads and making them look good on top which is what everybody sees and likes and things they look you know everything's all hunky dory but not necessarily we can start doing some because that budget is getting but that's why there you'll see an increase in outlying i don't could an argument i'm not arguing against the need to do this and i'm not arguing at all and just wondering is this the appropriate place for that course to be or should that be gets more crown into we have going after grants with storm order and have actually gotten some from the original mission but even in those grants there will only pay for the work that has to actually do with  ditching and those type of things even though it may say unerring prove the crown of the road we have to do that but they're not they won't take that as part of the grant so serve your mind the way to think of it is the crowning of the road comes out of this system that the point i'm trying to make it it's consistently applied every year to what is our five year plate paving plan does that make sense i guess not looking to the system is just a  we get the p c i number from what i'm really trying to get at is every year we allocate ace you know a significant amount of money to retreatment and my point is is that what gives me comfort in that number is i know we have this system in place and we have a consistent way every year i believe this is the case that we determine you know what are our priorities what needs to be done and in a budget that is from year to year this year we're increasing it slightly but it's still relatively consistent with the budget last year and probably be relatively consistent with fiscal year twenty a complete we're saying that already fiscal year twenty's budget because we have this system in place and the way to allocate determine what projects should fall within that eight acre that budget and the payment management study that was done for us and we've developed a five year and seeing what they have where the roads rank on and it's not always doing a worse route first so your question is yes we are using it for that to develop that program and i hope that's the answer you question once again i was just looking at page five the whole budget going down through the lines certainly we can go to talk about one in particular if you'd like but if you look at the budget overall you'll see it's a fairly significant increase at the end but that's because of the way we've changed a few years ago we took salaries and everything out of highway one of george stormwater now we put them back into highway we're going to charge storm water w to pay storm water a little bit differently that we can talk about but i don't normally come in here now for a two hundred thousand plus increase in my budget so i just want to make sure that that's clear we still most of the up the whole two hundred close to two hundred thousand dollars most of that salary and benefits and yes jennifer can help explain that a little bit more if we get to it when we get to that point ye chief give his budget presentation two years just so i could get a feel for what things were going like this year i did notice the conversation there about how the customer you work for over there well we just hired another part person has been very consistent been with us for a while and the other one's been a rotating door revolving door or we were lucky enough to get somebody on board that person doesn't have any desire to be full time either but i would ask that we still make that position with the possibility of going full time so that when one of those to change again we can do that if it's after july and as far as working out t care of the police department i'll figure that out even with a two part timers even if it means right now one of the part timers only works monday through thursday care of to bring him in a little bit more on friday or something so that we can take care of that other green that we've kind of made with the police department we can take care of that and working with us and i understand that then in his mantras budgeting he put some seed money fifteen thousand dollars to start that fund and you know i think you're all familiar jeff was on the committee as well i think you're all familiar with the concept of you know trying to have some funds that we can use to make grants in order to encourage developers non profit developers or other kind of create that usually to build affordable housing you have to go into kind of creative financing schemes and one of the reasons that we don't have more of it is because we don't have the have the resources the financial resources available so this is one  for you know very very low income folks we're talking about people who are very close to the median income for our area so around eighty percent of median income and but that will encourage you know young families to young professionals to be able to afford places here and i think it's the kind of folks that we really want to attract to wilson that we all agree we would you know that's the kind of wilson that we'd like to have so that we have greater diversity of of incomes and you know not we're not just appealing to people at one end of the spectrum so i wanted to please ask you to encourage you to keep that fifteen thousand dollars  in the budget i know you have to make tough decisions have been there my myself but i hope that that you won't be tempted to cut that out to to balance the budget or you know to keep people's taxes low i think it's really an investment in the town's future and i would also just say that one of the things that we talked about in the committee and then i would like to sort of plant the seed in your minds is that there are other ways of trying to find you know provide the funds for for this and one way might be to actually ask people on the ballot if they would be willing to put a half pay an extra half penny an extra penny on their taxes in order to make this investment i don't know if you know if you'd be willing to do that this year or you know we talked about perhaps maybe it's been a little more time to do more education for people but i know we did we did that few years ago when i was on the select board with regard to the roads road maintenance and risk and so that he came to us and said we really need more money because we've gotten behind on taking care of our roads and so we actually we asked people in the town would you be willing to pay an extra penny on your property taxes so that we can take care of this and people did and it passed overwhelmingly so i think we can trust people in wellston you know to do diversity so we're not all just of the same economic bracket so in a way that's basically what i had to say and i really appreciate your taking the time to listen and i thank you so the i guess i'll start right with that is the new budget day you were received is we got a gift this year that we were expecting which was twenty five thousand dollars from the trans that was given to the municipalities that have a storm water utility he's got twenty five thousand dollars just as an incentive toward because you have  utility so we don't look a gift horse in the mouth we didn't ask him if there really wasn't any strings attached and there's not so that was added in under revenue and then just added to our capital savings for now since  came in so late we actually got to be sure we didn't know if we were getting it next year for sure we still don't know that we're getting it in fiscal year one thousand for sure although it's pretty sure the legislature still has to vote on it the fact that we don't have as much money going capital savings because it wasn't put into the program anywhere else at this point there aren't any huge line changes except for the say rather than just do it on the twenty percent that we started out with when we set this up now we've been tracking about i don't know i don't want to be a little careful because we haven't been being as diligent about making sure things were kept separately but i would say we were tracking about ten fifteen seventeen percent highway to a storm or so over the now jeff i mean i would i'm going to advocate that if we find it just you know we get a you know a percentage point we stay pretty level that after a while but it is what it is going to fluctuate just like public works much awaits every year anyway  capital savings let's see well that's an capital improvement so we'll talk about the rest of that when we get down there so the rest of the budget is pretty much  road in there to be completed just took a while to get it because of some things that were going on the only other place where waiting for to take roads great now is that any crossing development and as chris said when he was in here he's talking about some of that happening at the end of the summer with asking the lease get zafir done and get the traffic coming through there if nothing else through that development and he's agreed to that but it sounds like he's talking about doing some it and implementers been around for a while it wasn't a big proponent of it at first but it has nightgown perfect a little bit better and it's used on gravel roads it's like a wheel horse we bring that back into the roads and the one i'm asking about and it's in our capital was a little bit more expensive one but it is one it will go on front of the greater you can get i want it all we can go on your greener or one you can put be that's what that's for it's not a dog do this year through the u p w p is actually get us some more boy ams and speeds i'm really looking more for volumes i want to gravel roads because some of our gravel roads as much as everybody wants them to be gravel roads maybe handling our traffic that it's become down to an issue of safety and you know engineering practices are so i'm just asking for those so we can see where we're at there i do have one or two that people you know more people who live on it certainly want to be grabbed every once in a road five hundred vehicle five hundred vehicles per day is one of the numbers that says that when you start seeing volumes over that you should start considering a more permanent treatment for that road now there's only one advocate that we paid gravel roads the way we used to where it was gravel won and somebody decided to be big so we is going to put pavement down top of it so we can get very expensive depend upon what's in the road and some of them you may want to actually dig a hole road up to two or three feet deep but better material on it and so you could get very expensive this is once again it's just so we can start to see so we know what's going on down the road no pun intended or say got to come back to the retriever  for you and again this is a common against the retrievers this where you could end up in the budget and before you you were asked about you know i'm crowning the road stormwater or highway public works and you say could not could afford some public works because it's about crowning the road what could an argument be made that the retriever is more dealing with the road surface than it should be more in public works  because they aren't filling up in real time the turtles yeah and they because the whole concept of the large gravel ditches is that it infiltrates water versus letting filling up with smaller stone and ending up being a conduit to move water down we just replaced a greater few years ago if you remember and we don't know we didn't buy a new one then either you know when replaced was about thirty years old so we get good longevity out of a great and i would expect you get that kind of out of this too with ten miles of road it's not like hunting to some of these other towns it's the opposite way around it's forty miles of gravel road two mile paved road one water break that was the night before new year's it was a service line a library but actually that job actually one really well they were out we found it about five o'clock  probably started digging at the end they were out of there by two which is actually pretty good for the morning when morning yeah to the time all the way around to about four or five hours an e mail about a water line broken elbow and even a wall sometime after two thirty and was it discovered two eight o'clock three thirty the next morning when i came to open the library she had quite a bit of 's an interesting situation because we were scheduled to replace it this coming weekend anyway and the the insurance company asked the question well it is this is if you could have left it would you have you know it in other words if you hadn't planned of replacing it in the fact is the carpet that we ripped out we were going to be replacing because it wasn't it hearing properly to the surface below th in wasn't well the water made it worse so for the same reason we're replacing it that that's the reason why it's not salvageable so i don't know what the insurance company's going to cover but the fact the matter is we had the money budgeted and plan to replace it and then actually the schedule we're going to stick to the original schedule we're hoping to get in there on friday to start yeah yeah yeah they're doing a really good job i mean it's not one hundred percent dried but it's getting there the each day that humidity levels are going down significantly and and we're hoping to get in there on friday and start doing the the new corporate work and luckily because of the way the library is its bookshelves most of the stuff was up and she lost very little as far as actual books are or any kind of product is concerned it was really something to see i've seen a lot of flooded buildings it was flooded as bad as most i've ever seen a basement two inches of water easily and it was  the water got into the cabinet to hold all the wires and call some shorting which damaged the electronics phones so we may end up having to replace the phone units water was pouring and those kind do it's in the basement up like water you are asking for an increase in our return rate this year some of that was based on the fact that we got it we are seeing a three percent increase from the champlain water district for to our wholesale rate  we're still asking to put the thirty three thousand seven hundred sixty into the water tank capital which will be the second half of the first two years payment  just quickly the new water line is not online i mean a water tank is not online yet we thought it would be by now but they had a problem with some security cameras and electric electrical issues up there yet that they're still trying to get straightened out hopefully they'll have to strain out by the end of the week and then they'll start refilling the tank we've filled it wants coronated or did all the testing everything passes but the water tank but the payments don't start until the tank is actually built and finished ok oh so this is a year or two i don't know if you give us a two year on or not turned out your program was telling us it was a two year forgiveness it was really only o back so this will be the second half of the first year's repayment so next year to be sixty six as the b team is a sign of calendar year and we're this our budget is get it with one big payout sixty six thousand or sixty seven thousand dollars a year for how many years when he's channeling water distribute the money is actually incredible so certainly when one gets hit and i accidently if we can we know who it is it gets charged to that person's insurance company but we get no sometimes two a year they get hit and money excuse me into the into the capital savings farm which in water is a place where we need to build our farm do a little bit more comfortable balance and don't you get billed even you don't use water break right i'm just what right that's that was my point that rate is not going up but the the rate which is based on how much water i use is going on using that one balance where but at the same time not making it too big of a hit to the budget difference is about twenty cents per thousand gallons yes that's right he's just using the amount of finance we're saying we would end up using in from for nineteen is two hundred forty four thousand we're going to continue the operation a bum stations if you remember a few years ago we started going to revolving alone or getting loans all the time for the upgrades of these pump stations we just put one hundred seventy five thousand dollars in the budget which would allow us to do a pump station at least every two years without having to borrow money we're going to continue that program again we're still purchasing more the town hall down we've been doing work to it off and on over the years but this year we discovered this years were in really bad shape and looking at it some more and getting somebody to come take a look at it and knows more about that kind of stuff than myself it turns out that we really have to do some work to stabilize that thing and keep it safe so i got i got some  we keep its lead to replace it with some other material and i believe the money this show here is for some other material some might argue that historically we should stick with slate because that's what we say was going to be a slate roof because it was not a slave roof originally and i'm not saying go back to cedar shake by any means but you're not going to be from a historical context quite honestly some of the people that deal with this kind of stuff all the time or tell me if we should just go to a standing seam over here this one wonders if this roof i'm not sure of the standing seam metal roof yes you know a lot of the historic that's a going to be a big issue with a eventually does come around ok yeah sure i mean this is a huge thing in two hundred fifty thousand dollars in the budget for two thousand and twenty one the whole it's kind of a we have a few of those and there is not a definite signs that the both rules are wearing you know occasionally they'll be slate that just falls right off the roof that's not good the roofs in separate years do we have to do both at the same though i think it cost savings overall if we do that well i was thinking that it was such a large number that we may end up having to borrow the short term for that and so i'd rather do it now one vote than two votes ok and this they do seem to be wearing the kind of about same rate i get your point we're still asking for twenty thousand dollars in there for things that might come up during the year honors examples of above there of what we or just real quickly if everybody anybody's getting excited or things there's a good spot for rectangular rapidfire speak ins i would ask you to forget about that they're not approved by the manual for uniform traffic control devices anymore so we can't put any more in th i guess it doesn't have anything to do with how good they are or whatever so they work or they're safe for something so the ones we have we can continue to use in a sane till they wear out but we can't put any in here any media future that may change about the well off of old stage road that was taken down for repair what happened it's not that's not a right to flash beacon that was i'm talking about the crosswalks oh ok the signs are fine they came from the police department from public works so that's that one twenty four is just a money that's in there every year for paying back for the sidewalk we're at a truck's right now is it clearing snow a certain number of hours are that's the key thing right there is hours of the operator in the truck and make sure that operators are safe in north spend too much time i read that somewhere i can't remember where it must've been  i may have even talked about it last year tell me that i may have focused on it that you did yeah because well for i always pick one service to talk about but this one in particular i focused on last year because we were in the process of adding a new route and one of the factors that we look at is how long does it take to do one plow route and if it's too long then and in a snowstorm the snow builds up  too high and people can't get through so we were just we had reached the point where we really needed to add another and we did do that this year george highway equipment page thirty seven this is just the budget to keep our other equipment schedule they ask of you know with the people coming in and asking about nineteen sixty five thousand and twenty twenty the last one of these we bought was about one hundred thirty thousand dollars so we're going to take on and we've been pushing this every year the whole town but we could certainly take on more plow we don't do anything just like let's go back to you know chris coming here and you guys are going to talk about that another time but even we take over going you know five hours or so and have them out there six or seven or eight hours or we get to sidewalk machines take on a little bit more sidewalk and try to keep those plow routes at the same time to one gentleman who was here was right  with the wind and everything in monday ended up being a problem because that's when we discovered a water break in the library so jeff was part of the sidewalk plowing so we didn't get out that morning to do direct paths that were blown all weekend long so you know that's what happens when you have people doing different things there's not a lot of things in the winter time that would keep us from going doing the sidewalks but obviously the library flooding was a little bit more important blowing around and pushing so first of the town decides to go ahead with a second sidewalk plow what will be the impact on manpower  and here's the retriever age forty one yes this is a little bit down the bottom it has broken out to the twelve thousand twelve thousand twelve thousand general the next one forty two portable traffic signals this is something that's been around for a while but is becoming more and more popular rather than have to use your own crew for flaggers where pay flaggers you can set up and we've all gone through them temporary lights and these are poor little ones that we could take out the crew could take out set them up do their work when you're done take them back down and go on our way what does that do that that relieves two people that we can put back to work rather than having flag and when you have a crew of six people when you have one on vacation and one sick and you take two to fly home you got to have to it's not you know so we thought about this and heinsberg has them they're using them i think saying all the sun they're becoming more and more popular and i really think they would help us turn them off if you're coming back out the next day say we're doing a long line good example of a place for what they would come in real handy as we're going to do something with the church on mt you rode the christian i think it's christian alliance not the other on the mountain view road you know to have something like this over there would just be really ideal around how to take up people flagging it's typically use tell staff so far that's what you've been doing looks like liking yes i have told mark that i'm not opposed and as long as we have you know we keep an eye on the budget down some of these projects is just as good to go and hire a traffic control company for the day because once again you take two people one of the crew out of a six man crew you know have you know really slows things down so all our people who are certified go through the training every year have their flagging card and can do it legally do  in water breaks or good example they don't use room staff they call a contractor who comes in and does that mean these would be very beneficial and there's also times where we could use them other times we could use them if you know we have an intersection get knocked down or something we could use these on a this situation has been out there for quite a while i'm not sure why it was ever put in that way but that's just to correct the existing problem and then on page seventy of the water and sewer meter system upgrade that's just to keep putting money in our capital savings for upgrading our meter reading which we just did this year so this is just putting money again aside for the next time we go to do it have them so they are in development but that's because of the number number of units that they serve that's why they become  dow and then replaced the hydrant how we got in and started digging dug it up we found out there was no hydrant valve so we had to turn the water off to the development where we weren't planning on doing it because our valves wouldn't hold close or we had to keep going out farther and farther out so you know it was an overlap way off needless to say the residents were very happy with this because it was not planned it and the repairs took a whole lot longer than anyone had ever envisioned supposed to be a quick in and out repair and it took all day thousand dollars depends on what kind of number the contractor gives me to be honest with him but hopefully five or six we're we're anywhere from three to six thousand dollars when we're go to do a hydrant so you know six times five thirty maybe a little bit more depends on where i'm how deep they are yeah if this gets approved what we'll probably do is put in more of pm and try to get one contractor to come in and take the six or whatever and do them under one contract risk we go back to page seventy five the additional search faster the hell is reading the description and it sounds like essex has agreed to sell us ten thousand gallons a year at ten dollars a gallon through two thousand and twenty two after that it says that we have no commitment yes correct that's correct we're hoping they will continue to sell us capacity sell us their their capacity and we're hoping they'll continue to sell us their capacity at the same price but we don't know that that's correct ok you know as you know the only number that really matters in here is that the year we're in anyway right yes yes but i just in terms of the long range flannery particularly for something like this it's at least good to know what the  maybe not the best word but what we know versus what we're hoping or anticipate here or what we don't know yet is there any and we get too far down this we'll be talking about attachment a soon enough but is there any worries that that you will not be able to purchase additional capacity after two thousand and twenty  capital savings so we feel confident we'll be ok with that for right now and one of the reasons we didn't do that just because the storm want to know the loans the neighborhoods on to go into theirs and we make sure we have the loans and we may need for the neighborhood projects that are coming  in first on the loans what's the what's the rationale for the difference between the manager approved and what was requested i see manager proof one nine hundred zero forty what was requested was three twenty the year that was before we really knew what the ok the current capital savings were it was going ok we've got all those numbers we finance them so so you're comfortable with the one ninety yes we'll be fine and if we  projects and we have already all right when they put flashers control plant under you that capitalism also because we know we're going to have to come up with a phosphorus control plan ok and right now we're comfortable with a three twenty six three ninety seven that we have incurring capital savings i know that i don't so we just didn't put in a forty nine thousand this year which was where the budget was set up originally geoff to put in forty nine  so that's quick that's causing the corps i concentrations so for in vermont we're not real bad but it's definitely getting there or your problem somebody slips and falls and sues us it's in your car contract and it's going to be your responsibility been jet that's a law it's been challenge and it's in and i think it's going to there's supreme court right now to see whether they uphold it or not and if you were hoping they do because if they do then we're going to push vermont had that same kind of thing happen here that's really important for us because we have a stretch of money brothas chloride impaired and it's mostly through maple tree place the taft corners area right where you would think it several major topics we wanted to talk about and then staffs are going to be looking for some direction from the board as to where you want this whole thing to end up  d one of the major topics is the fund outs and how that's going to use another major topic is the fire department and how that staffed and somewhat related topic is the whole solar panel project and how it gets funded that also involves possible use of  ating that whole deal as it were pointing to the ig agreement we had to put in a written request for an appraisal and we did that the appraisal came back i think it was three hundred forty five thousand dollars to purchase the units i believe the original list of us three hundred forty thousand so actually it's pretty close so if we do buy them  will gain revenue back or actually reduced expenditure not really revenue because that the power that generated will them offset some of our expenses for  electricity and the so the other part of this is how do we pay for that three hundred forty five thousand so what we're proposing to do is there's some money and i'm using round numbers here two hundred fifty thousand i think left over from the public works kharaj project which we had originally set aside to buy the solar panels that are put that are on that building when we negotiated the contract for the solar panels the contract ended up being for us to purchase them one hundred twenty five thousand so we that means there's one hundred twenty five thousand we don't need in that fund anymore that's money that we've already borrowed and we already have so it's it's sitting there so what we're proposing to do is use one hundred twenty five thousand out of that fun and put it towards the solar panels here and then the remainder  proposing would be fun balance because we are fund balance is too high and we need to find ways to bring that down we believe that the best way to accomplish this would be to have a town white vote by a story  on this topic and the money for from to reuse the money for the highway garage i think would require that anyway because that money was approved by bond vote we can't use it for anything other that unless the town the as i said there is a reduction in expenditures and that's what it was twenty thousand a year for the first year that's the way the contract was set up the idea was we'd get the appraisal in time for the budget process and then we'd have the vote in march and it would go into effect in january that following year  you would intice a paper the revenue or the money we don't end up spending to be forty thousand dollars annual basis at least for the first year so if i could my quick math tells me we're looking at like a ten year less than a ten year payback period probably doing very straight right it would that's why we've asked arc a consultant to kind of provide some guidance on this because we'll make sure we understand how much going to cost to maintain those units and right and they each year they deteriorate a little bit and the power that they generate decreases a little bit so that has to be factored in and so there's a are things that  we're looking at and the consultants looking at those plus he's examining the the appraisal the make sure the appraisal is accurate and jennifer will be going through the numbers so for one time expenses so we're not the pentagon use of this money the foreigner thousand dollars is something we the amount we believe is sustainable in other words each year when you take the all the  and all time revenues we generally end the year with an operating surplus for that one year and generally it's been in the range of well it's been more than four hundred thousand but it's in recent years which is why the fund balances grow chosen to try to bring that fund balance down by picking a number of one time expenses keep in mind that the two hundred thousand for fun we may not have to actually it or we use it but then we may get the money back you know so it's the concept there is right now we have committed four hundred thousand dollars to the purchase of the town force this is saying we might spend up to six hundred thousand dollars for the purchase of the town force over not but right  that we've been trying to use the four hundred thousand reduced tax revenue we actually based on how things have been operating and getting additional sales tax revenue or underspending in the police budget and various factors have happened and so you can see each year we've actually been adding to that surplus as opposed to things that surplus  the latest year june twenty seventeen we actually budgeted to use almost five hundred sixty nine thousand and we didn't use that and we actually added to the surplus  front so that's why we're being a little more aggressive this year of really trying to utilize that fund balance into these bigger projects instead of borrowing for the  when we said i would say well we're shooting for having it to the board for the meeting on the twenty third of january so that because you the board is to make a decision if you're going to include this for a vote you  table three and on line ten projected use two thousand nine hundred fifty or two thousand and nineteen right now it showing the nine fourteen which are the three items i find other from other resources on page two of revenues but to do the solar panels that would increase that amount to whatever nine fourteen plus two hundred thousand is where is that one million  i guess my question really comes down to the remainder of line eleven then ends up being one point three zero one million which is getting towards the lower end of the target range and i i guess what i want to hear from you is what is the liability of that i think the policy that's like board has a policy that says that that the fund balance should be between ten and twenty percent if you want it to be closer to twenty percent maybe you reconsider that policy i think ten percent is a significant amount of money and when we look at what we have here and seeing where our sales tax revenue has been trending i think we're we're comfortable with that for now but if we do want to have some fun balance because the year that that switches you know take that all up in one year yes but that's built into you know that's built into our revenues correct the eight hundred thousand but i mean you kind of planning to spend the money by giving it back and and the budget and defraying are keeping the tax rate down so i guess just a different way of looking at it i guess the part of the thing is that the importance of having fun balance can be seen when the economy does a downturn then we can see significant swings the other way in the sales tax revenue and we're years where it was going in the other direction those happen to be the years when we had a big recession and revenues were going down and the board was trying to hold the line budget increases and tax rates and but we do need to kind of go the other direction a little bit again but to answer your question i don't have if i had a crystal ball of the and or to easy you know i'm a little concerned about getting it too low because i know we're going to have a downturn in the economy at some point it just happens you know it's never not happened so when it's going to happen i don't know it right now for the media future looks ok but a year from now it may look quite different and but i do think that we have a little bit of probable caution here in the sense that two hundred thousand w not end up or we may have spending to getting back for the the grant to the goes towards the purchasing the catamount forest property so you know i think we have a little bit of help there but says some about risk or managing risk might be a way to put that and what i'm what i'm hearing i'm saying this to make sure you agree is that if we were to reduce the funding balance at least the projected from now because of course we don't know what it's go be for fiscal year eighteen yet we assume it's going to go up we're going to do better than we had projected which is pretty much been the case but let's just say the projections are absolutely accurate in the amount is reduced to about one point three million and you're not looking that has any as a significant increase in rhythm not trying to pin you down i'm just trying to make sure i kind of heard you know your your your thoughts if you will i think being within that ten to twenty percent range i think is is significant i think it's good i think you have a full year to look at that i mean next year we're going to be in this same situation and will actually know what our budget use was for right here eighteen if we do use the full eight hundred eighteen thousand and that does come down then what we know as of june twenty seventh teen we're three point two our fund balance is three point two million dollars which is a million dollars more than our cur range is supposed to be i think we're in a position where we should be more aggressive in using it instead of asking for additional built into our budget so far we have a run rate which we exceeded last year but the normal run rate i think i heard is around forty thousand dollars a year underspent soared normal so if you take a one point three it's actually really less than that from the run rate unless unless the something crashes this year in this upcoming fiscal year so likely we will actually drop the budget down that much  yet looks likely but i'm not willing to bet on it yet it's not a bad thing to understand what happens when you have a kind of an economic disaster because our our revenues will stay stable from property reams of meals i assume i don't know whether it's more apt in the other but would that it would that because of the extent because people will still use water and sewer maybe maybe marginally less but decreases probably in permit fees things like that and you would probably see the good that that was actually a significant contributor to the surplus this year it was almost one hundred thousand of our budget not understand without it what is our range of exposure to economic downturn from zero stability perspective toll revenue vs expense well in this first rooms meals  was saying what is the or it's my buddies to disaster another example that might be helpful to understand is you just hear about how big how brick and mortar retail is is having difficulties and so if one of the major stores in willesden were to close what would that mean because that's me is not that far out of the realm of reality you know the possibilities we had that when we had the bader recession there were close stores that closed but even if even in a good economy we're hearing about brick and mortar stores closing very my point is that the economy may be doing great we still might lose a significant source of revenue our sales taxes loss from a major retail let's let's look at that kind of a play and maybe we should have that come up with what we do well in a sense we do that's why we have the fund outs the fundamentals has in the past served to buffer these and that's members it's proven to be reasonably accurate for our needs there's no hard science behind it i think type of thing it was i remember didn't susan do the research well it's a range that is widely recommended it's think that's what she you know i mean it's interesting how it's a range for us it's not even a specific like let's say fifteen percent it's a range we have an unusual situation where is more of our budget income due to two the box stores  talk about any of these questions that you have been really understanding this service decision that you're making within the budget this year at saying what do we want our fire this that you're looking at here this is just saying this is where these are the items in the budget that if we were to add in overtime career benefits training recruiting these are the items that would change within the budget so this is all and these are where we currently are these items and this is where the chief budget is for these different line items here and this is where the managers budget is in these same line items so kind of seeing the difference between is so let's just look at on call says we're going to be adding career staff instead of trying to fill these on call positions and we're going to be able to bring that number down to one hundred thirteen thousand five hundred seventy the managers budget actually has that the same on call wages at about one hundred sixty  currently where our revenues budgeted to be three hundred fifteen thousand with this new staffing and being able to take calls and not transfer out to other  departments being able to be a support for other departments we could bring that revenue up to three hundred eighty two thousand six hundred good for all the calls that we've transferred this accounts for an increase of twenty five percent it accounts for the the current bond that we would handle now with staff and the increased volume would be able to handle with more staff this combination  collection services and we saw a pretty significant increase in revenue brought in net revenue in addition to that on the will we can talk more about the three people added versus the status quo budget but if we were to add the three folks and we're able now to stay at the second and was more often you'll be able to handle more calls therefore generate more revenue so there are a couple of parts moving this increase in calls we get every year anyway there would be the increase was we're seeing a revenue based on the  higher number of receivables are getting by the billing service it would also see the revenue we generate by handling more calls i can take a step back i want to make sure i understand stan the difference between what's being called the chief's budget and what's being called the manager's budget and i think it really comes down to positions staff positions noosed new full time staff positions this may not dress what you're about to ask but if i were one point is how any way in the budget adjustment sheet that i handed out this evening ok one way to look at it is with line four it's kind of a summary of all the changes that would occur between the two different proposed budgets in order to add three people it would result all those changes both up and down result in additional expenditure of sixty three thousand two hundred  eighty dollars ok in line five on line five on the expenditure side now the chief just mentioned that there'd be some additional revenue generated so if you flip the page over on the revenue side line number two it shows the additional revenues in there so the sixty three isn't and that yes well not including revenue revenues a separate category it's net when it just all the different expenditures in other words line items to pay for the new people go up over time goes down the cost of  subject man so i'd have to go back to square i'm on the expenditure changes line five when it says paramedic only what is the words per medically referred to well i'll let the chief explain but i don't think that's a viable option because the cost is close to hiring three new people and it what it means is right now there are scientists because we talked about this afternoon right out two thirds of the time we because we feel it's critical that we have this conversation keep moving they were really there are three options option one is the manager's budget which if you then take the ma budget and then you had a pretty impera medic which will touch on in just a moment then the managers budget plus the discussion going to have about a pretty in paramedic leaves the proposed budget with hitting three people recap how we operate we have moved beyond just the transport ambulance but this year we also became a paramedic service sort of licenses paramedics and two of the three shifts with recent  hires now each have a paramedic on the shift so three shifts each one works every third day and currently two out of three days the shift has a paramedic on do it working the third day we do not my my request to the town is we not wait until if we don't do it this year july first to twenty nineteen add a paramedic to that third shift i say that we look to add that paramedic to third shift as quickly as possible which would be this july first which means we had one of two things either a pretty in paramedic to the budget which is a call person that comes and goes and might be here today might be not be here tomorrow or we have to rearrange the entire budget and  paradigm shift to how we're going to operate as far apartment and put three personnel on and that number is within five thousand dollars of hiring a pretty and paramedic ok and just to be clear to make sure i understood line five which talks to the paramedic only perdiem is just i should say just it's one person one per diem person at fifty eight thousand dollars for this year only who is a paramedic only not a firefighter so they can't like our other firefighting m t s and had to do paramedics fire fighters this person would not be a firefighter paramedic would be just a paramedic and we'd be exposed to this same pretty imposition next year with the year after unless we train one of our existing people to become a paramedic which is far more expensive than a pretty and paramedic like a hundred twenty thousand dollars worth care so rick's budget or rick's budget with the pretty in paramedic which now means we have paramedic coverage which the three shifts or this entire shift how we operate as a department which trims back on call wage trims back on over time back in a lot of areas and incredibly frees up enough capital if you will that we can afford to the there are there are some the nice part about a pretty a paramedic is the third shift gets a paramedic the negative is that this is a person who's who is hired and it's the same situation if you run into as we're having now with call of staff we invest lots of time to bring people on we get the physicals we train them on days they stay a short period of time and they move on and we're left with nothing for a person along the way the full time staff has invested a lot of their times what equity and training these folks then move on and my my proposal is that we don't cost any existing call folks their jobs we just don't continue to fill every year and fill and fill and fill we just put three full time per and reduce the number of call positions that we try to fill every year and then the looking officiate that jennifer just handed out and in the lower box on the bottom it's still under chief budget and corresponds to the line that personnel goes beyond the paramedic also just to recap and and i'm glad i can make a presentation to the to the two folks were able to make it tonight in my budget presentation when we have our primary ambulance transport patient we normally but always have one career person left to stay at the station fire call comes in a person goes by themselves and waits a call people come back it is a medical call they're only able to f  we don't wait an extended period of time for the ambulance or for airing ability back in the hospital we also gain a revenue of transporting them with our own ambulance and we will stop turning over number of calls we turn over per year this past year we turned over thirty five m s calls which means some other service came and we'll have to generate revenue and and and handle the patients so there  just the thirty five year miscalls you turned over in the new budget for the increased revenue to use use of those thirty five would be covered then do you assume you're covering calls from other towns as well we currently do cover calls from other all of those fifty three next year but would cover the majority of those fifty three calls next year interesting lee anough we did our end of year number six and made my budget presentation thirty five percent of our calls last year touched each other which meant as we were on or occupied a call we had a second call that includes a time at the hospital for the ambulance but that's pretty remarkable that that we had that much crossover and with the fourth person we now can staff really worked a lot of hours in this past year was no exception and i wanted to bring you know the management labor team here tonight press get out of senior firefighter with the fire department he's been full time going into  here he's gone the department thirteen years and he's also our you know local president and and i think that this is the chief with the union are agreeing that it's time we just spend so much time in that that that treadmill of bringing people on and they just don't stay and we don't develop staff expertise like we could which would be able to do with more full time personnel and also by having a fourth person now we don't have to bring somebody back in every single time person but we won't have is a situation where group to which happens to be the be shift call what you will they didn't go out new year's eve they work new year's day the da he called in sick and someone that had now been in the building new year's eve new year's day had to work the third day it was a do from around and that's that's it that's a theme or scene or regular basis a medical hall that i responded to in which an elderly woman had fallen and injured herself my two colleagues are on route to the hospital one is in the back of the ambulance providing patient care the other is carefully navigating the snow covered roads on route to the hospital am assigned as the driver of the fire engine today and i'm alone as i put my quitman back on the engine and my radios wheels well as the environment please respond to a male reportedly unresponsive i hurried to put the last of my equipment back on the truck and go traveling across town of the call my mind is racing questions are creeping into my head as fast as the cars are driving by as the sirens blared trying to clear traffic for me dispatch radio  an update engine to be advised your patient is not breathing bystander c p r is now in progress this is not good i read you for help in the form of a mutual aid ambulance the question now is not what am i going to do it is in what water am i going to do it and you do ensure good compressions are being given i need to start breathing for the patient and he do administer an i v for life saving medication i need to console the terrified family advised you are mutually ambulances twenty minutes away as i burst through the door to the home every eye in the room is suddenly on me for a moment time stands out really still until it is broken by a family member who asks are you it this story is one that any career staff member that were sitting in my seat right now could probably share with you i'm sure you want to my experiences but they could share similar ones i'm here to tell you that those type of instances do actually call occur and as the chief did mention that thirty five percent of the time odds are fairly good that you will only have one additional person responding to your  emergency simply adding that one additional trained firefighter and emergency medical technician per shift would drastically change how we operate it's not just how the care is delivered but it is in the amount of time that is delivered firefighters we're here for you disliked word and we're here for them the town we love our jobs and we love being able to do them well we're simply asking for you to allow us to do our jobs to the best of her ability and there was a script by the chief that's true that it's just just for the record but that's what we face every day and it comes down to delivering the care being short of personal the time not to mention all all that we deal with with trying to keep the call the park is staffed and what we've done is we've taken every single bit of this budget we've got it to be able to free up the money to be able to stand here tonight and say if you had a pretty a paramedic which i think we should do because we should not go not a year and a half with one shift not covered by paramedic if we had that back in we w been we've we've been down this rabbit hole over and over and and it's just it's time where it where we're running our wheels off where we're crossing over calls more than one third of the time and and we as a we implement the service we have in and we're rather proud of this in twelve years of full time staff we've only lost one firefighter e m t in twelve one and currently we're exploring a grant to pay for the training of the second person on that third shift so now we have two paramedics push if which means when some was out sick or indication we saw a paramedic coverage in the town we we've looked at every angle we meet every tree to try to find a way to make this work and we feel as though it's structured to work and we're very confident that fiscally it makes sense financially makes sense and operation know questions which kind sorry and just more as you were telling your story this popped up you mentioned i guess when you're on the on the way to the side of the  got the call it sounds like you took one of the engines if there had been two people at the station when you got the call because we now have four on staff would you have been able to take the emirates i guess and the only reason i say that is it might also be coming from colchester that's no lie that has actually occurred so twenty minutes there it stands up kind of thing so therefore even if we were to lower that to fifteen minutes for example what would occur is then that engine company with the two forks would be able to go back retrieve the ambulance and still even from the far reaches of our district be able to respond and i would argue a far greater time or far lesser timings i should say to be able to handle that call because then the it sounds very odd to say this but i'll tell shed a little insight as to what occurs when a mutual aid ambulance comes in there is a transfer of care and that is critical to the information that is transferred and  patient care that is transferred and because if it is mutually ambulance that patient is not out of the house yet that's also the transfer is the actual physical transfer of the patient and all of those little steps start adding up in minutes  and as it as i had kind of indicated their time in a medical emergency is showing a rated it is it's it's incredibly important jennifer to hear what it is i should hear from for lack of better words don't take this from the other not the other side but your perspective maybe because ricky you proposed a different budget and the chief must of talk to you as so i'm not at all posed with that she's proposing fact i support it the problem is it is going to cost a little bit more money it's not a lot of money but it's a little bit and when you're trying to keep the overall budget  little bit makes a difference so when that and maybe that's a good transition to the next question which is really your decision and your guidance as to where you do you want the budget and up and you know you have this possible budget adjustment this is not the the only possible adjustments that can made in the budget these are some important ones and these are ones that been fly because they represent changes in the existing budget and we may be able to come up with a few more i would like a sense at some point soon as to where the world would like to end up we will come back then with a list of recommended changes based on the target that you would like to reach and then you can decide as a policy whether you want to accept those or reject them hopefully proposed so i would have didn't have to come up with sixty three thousand dollars in savings budget well actually forty thousand because of the revenue that it generates so i would come back with some proposals and i   but unfortunately we don't have a lot of time between now and when the decision has to be made we'll be able to budget some time in our next meeting even though it's not a budget meeting to talk about budgets  make but it does skew things and creates problems in the future we do each year analyze how much we're saving versus how much we need and we do make adjustments and there are some adjustments included in this budget and jennifer can speak to him better than i could so we try to keep them accurate so we're not accumulating too much money for each thing but i don't do it it really is a matter of degree if you mess with them a lot then you're basically throwing out the system and it's a system works really well but you know i guess i would i would in  but i've asked for is for the board to give us guidance as to where you want to end up welcome back with recommendations you can either accept or reject from your call but be no i'd like an opportunity to provide some input of what our priorities are initially to match your target and in there's been some years that we've come back with a record list of recommendations that were didn't like them they didn't want to make those changes  which is fine i understand that because it is these are changes that affect the services that we provide and it's not just numbers it's services and it's not an easy decision sometimes there are a few things that are pretty obvious like you know if we have an estimate that we only really need to spend ten thousand in this one line item and we budgeted fifteen then that's going to be on the list for sure  five thousand that we can save in there but generally there aren't a whole lot of those so next week we'll be doing a bunch of other stuff but that will have hopefully all five members here things i always look at is what is the impact on the tax rate what are homeowners and businesses but what are homeowners is kind of the one that always i focus on going to pay  in terms of increase or possibly decrease and when you presented the budget way back in early december is based on that budget the tax rate was going to be twenty seven twenty seven point four seven cents my question is what is the current tax rate i just don't have that so i can get a sense of when you originally presented the budget how out tonight it shows the current tax rate it's approximate so it's twenty six fifty six it hang on a sec it's the revenue side and if you look at the far the bottom left hand corner of that page you see property tax rate current twenty six fifty six that's approximately what well yes ok ok so the the budget is just a hater is that what i've propose is just a hair under a penny increase that people in mind that you did not change the tax rate joy first of twenty seventeen it's so the the  but we don't have time at the end of the meeting for budget discussions on the also remind the board that the legislator breakfast is still scheduled for the twenty this like what i've had to listen to in the past but maybe there's a cross in communication so anyway it'll get out and ted has agreed to serve as moderator right i saw yesterday briefly january third we did also mentioned in my report that joe fallon who has been legal counsel for the town for i don't know in excess of twenty years i don't know how much you know where and i says i'm is retiring at the end of this calendar  year i have not yet figured out what process i'm going to be setting up to select a new legal council it's most likely he's going to involve a committee of some sort and most likely probably develop a request for proposal and get proposals and from a number of different attorneys with experience i'm going to split up and that's all i hear from seeming ok i guess i already gave a report on the library that was the big news and i don't think i have anything more to add other than what was talked about earlier but that movie good news is we hope to have library open by the middle of next week and you know fortunately the losses were kept to a minimum partly because of the staff's quick reaction and partly with the way they keep things like they keep organized and like all the things that were on the floor in the basement or in plastic b there was some of it is it's i have some photographs i'll share with the board but you can see clearly standing water on this the first floor was a mess yes