all right scott you're ready to think i would recommend under i don't number six name up on conservation area and the last statement the select court will take the matter under consideration i think i would add after recommendation of the conservation  just invested and board of off a million dollars this fee is not possible to come up with shift corner he's not all skiing for anything free we are requesting for the board to amend the ordinance arrangement the she could be paid and done through it monthly or to pay opar post dated checks so that the town would be guaranteed of the settlement that's pretty much it thank you and  plea you'll reconsider thank you so the the board would have to put this on the agenda and i don't for discussion at some future time and then if we decide to go forward with an ordinance who'd asked the biggest strength of mind before that there's a fifteen day notice in advance of the public hearing the public hearing knows has to be published and before that the slick would have to agree to notice the public hearing and he so that's usually you know the combine those two together it's usually about a month and then before that the select board has to review the proposal that comes forward and before that and i'm going backwards of the they have to ask the staff to actually draft any changes so that process could not add another month or two but two or three months well too much just for once they boarded proves that waiting for that to go into fact and it could be another two to three months easily on top of that you know in five months yes it's roughly i mean we always see feel that you know we've been in this town  thing and we'll move on to the position interview and a point perhaps an appointment bryant forced you're here and you have had your would like to become the an energy coordinator for the town that this is a brand new position one that you hadn't considered for but perhaps you can give us a brief back your be brief background even though we have your application and your why you want to take the position  i'm a retired architect and have been interested in the environment energy for a long time i don't have expertise in the in the field but i have a lot of passion in the field at to the to the position i would like to have the position because i'm the state has a comprehensive energy plan which which is looking to provide ninety percent of our energy from renew twenty fifty states fell far short of its projected twenty twelve goals and i'd like to help the town reach the goal of the conference of energy plan the brand board what kind of things do you x what kind of things do you want to affect in the town i mean i think the most important thing these be done is a energy plan for the town so we can chart where we are and chart how we get to where we want to be i think we can do that on energy plan we need to have measurable we have goals and measurable benchmarks to see if we're going to get there and if we don't then we need to change the the path to get there i think that's the most important thing there are look there are just so many things the reviewing where  police department but i'd like to know where we are with regard to the rest of the buildings are also like to see where we are with regard to our transportation and what we can how we can switch to non fossil fuel based vehicles as fast as we can my question is how first focus on you that i have some questions about or maybe they are questions for you by about the position in general but my question is along the lines and please don't read anything into my questions it's just my way to try to you know i know your style and ok the town has a town comprehensive plan and if i remember correctly it has an energy section in it and so my questions are along the lines have you had a chance to review the energy section and what is your valuation of it in the process or are hearing that now also while they plan is being in play with being redesigned down plan i threw a stale input ok ok and i guess my question is even mention something very specific you know the concept of establishing goals and you know measurable on benchmarks is there other aspects that you see the town either should be or could be doing but currently isn't doing i'm trying to i guess part of what i'm getting at is what would be the role of a or  or using that site for solar or wind or whatever seas pull that site and others issues with the dump but i think there are opportunities in town we should take a look at talk to those also interested and in this issue and  and take advantage of them to help us on our way because if you don't mind would it be would would it be fair to say that you view this position as sort of an advocate or somebody who is if you will trying to push the town maybe to  i'm not a person who wants this job this is a job that seeking a person and i'm jim i want to be in that's what did you do for your  it was divided to two phases the upper phase was came across private land up in the federal lands and because the a forest service had  real hope project but i woke up one morning with the obvious brainstorm that we should do the first phase and private land which does it which wasn't anyone else interested which is highly unlikely but it's up to you position and then then the question becomes if the answer is yes and you know thank you for raising it bring it to us if the answer is yes then figure out who's the best candidate but really the very first question is is  you know as i said do we need it i was a little surprised to see this like board package because i never heard of the energy or nader but you know i did read the statute thank you for including that  i'm certainly not opposed but i'm i'm hesitant to sam for yet without hearing maybe from rick or the town planner you know those who are involved with  energy issues in the town means town has been maybe not proactive and enough i can get that pushing is never a bad thing but we've done a fair amount with particular with solar  it's there if the board is it really a board decision i mean it is anyway but my guess if the board is interested in pursuing a range of other things than other beyond what we've already done then it might make sense to bring someone in like an at you know this gentleman mr forrest as an energy coordinator we have done a lot but there's always more you can do and really it's a matter of how aggressive does the board want to pursue some of these things and i mean that that even if you make the decision to make this a point that still be an issue coming up time and again with every new proposal that comes forward it's more of a consulting role so you have somebody looking at and evaluating in contact with conservation groups looking at potential new technology we other towns are doing right what other towns are doing but it's a consultant role it's not a you know they don't have any  which in a formally introduced later in the meeting but certainly we have the capacity now to handles extra work than we did before i like the idea from the standpoint that somebody would be looking at th outside of the towns because they have more time i mean we have town staff is pretty busy as we've seen before the other on the other side it would be nice to maybe advertise that we're pursuing this position to give i actually don't know brian maybe you can tell us how did you come about understanding or applying for the job  on the position i think first let's talk about the position is it in there could be to just i view two types of roles one type of role would be to monitor the town comprehensive plan and and make sure making a judgment on that that's kind of more the status quo the other the other position or the other that position might be the word the other oh my few more b advocacy the pushing the town the more that coming up with ways to like the idea of the measure measurements and the benchmarks so i look at that as more of an advocacy type position you know the only thing it's a just interrupt one point and the measurements will have to measure that at some point right if that thirty two year out benchmark or goal stays solid what we have to measure ourselves as we approach that what requirements are currently exist for that kind of thing at this point there are certainly tools that are available towards that in fact there's a website with a community dashboard and wilson doesn't have anything posted on it even though we've done a fair amount and a lot of communities have posted information that's a good resource and i know mr forest is aware of that is one option well is that something brian mr forest can do i mean one of the things i'm one of the kundra underarms as i was reading through the information presented in our package is i'm pretty sure although i'm pretty sure but not positive our town cash will tell you or so she would natural gas but on the other hand it's in conflict with the concept of reducing greenhouse gas emissions or getting away from fossil fuels so i'm asking that not that i no particular problem with mr mr forrester but since we have an advertising position it seems just to me it would seem like i would like to at least put it out there if we're considering  i absolutely agree and think that's that's been our standard practice is that we make sure that any position is advertised we have and when i believe it's a very good maybe actually a candidate but we each still need to go through that step interview several people and again by the end of january so would we would we have all the candidates signed up by the end of january and then we would interview or we would interview them between the or maybe one person was interested at the report once a year i will do a usually a broader posting i can front porch form and maybe use the other source or  but all it is is changing over the ownership of the currently existing right a that you already have not much is going to change i don't think anything's nothing's going to change about the management of the store the manager who did the education course to stay the same so you have the education certificate in the application package we submitted and you know it's really just going to be kind of a ownership change nothing nothing more significant so they would continue to sell beer and wine at the store under second class license so it's not terribly controversial either and i hope but we did have them identify the manager who will be staying on so that we could make sure that we had somebody who'd already done the certification for the online course yeah exactly stouffer's no objections we do have liquor license first class license application for chefs corners and this is just a change of location i don't believe there's anything always but everything was exactly the same just different location same owner same everything and staff has no objections to this one either and the only question i would have is they have the outdoor seating and the current the current the older of the previous location it was kind of fence then is that going to be greens the staff will say the same just different locations so the training and their good history excellent history the were in violation so their excellent history will no need no reason oh if you've all read the memo speaks for itself it's revised guideline we we need to add a non emergency b l s in on a very sea level of service billing and we recommend a fifty dollar decrease in the current rates for meaning that  stated your expect to use this for a much fairer no we said less than five percent of time if it's two or three percent the time is probably a lot you explain i read through this but i didn't quite get it these are the non emergency vs emergency what differentiates them what you dispatch to as opposed to what you end up handling for call maybe an example would be helpful dispatched to a call that would require an illicit level of service and then you arrive and find that the person is not a sick as you first thought they were the report has been and you have a non emergency transport to the hospital for i mean with this somebody's phone broke their leg non emergency they're in pain i assume they need to get to the hospital would that be considered you know non life threatening that's the word i meant it every calls different if you have but i can't give specifics because the the broken leg that might seem like a slow transport to the hospital is a pain management call that requires a quick transport to the hospital or it might be a pain management media that requires a faster transport to the is the other piece of this is you're saying this is required you don't have a choice have a choice you have a choice in what the fear is but not exactly and it needs to take effect january first in the fee would  also would this be that's proposed it would be exclusive of the mileage that is also charged if i remember correctly wrecked yes ok and if these are ever the case i'm sorry maybe this but where the ambulance shows up but the the person who showed up for refuses the trip to the hospital or trip anywhere it would that be fall into the same category non emergency no it's a non emergency transport ok so if you actually have to transport from a side of the accident or whatever to the hospital or a medical facility we do not bill for non transport so it's only if we transport the person emerging first is not emergen but the question is for your basic claim we don't have a choice we could argue about what the very big but yeah we don't have a choice not like energy and then we like energy coordinator we've pulled a couple of other services and and found that they similarly we do stuff by a small amount so we can match that same small amount seems like you have to provide the categories for the government at the prepaid we have to provide the could associate with working with us various projects and i know the amount of work that will list and has on their plate at this time and there's always an open door here and we really really appreciate that whether it's public works whether it's through rick's office or through the financial office and it really does make a difference to us so thank you for that we have a good quick presentation rick has come up with this way that we sheet of projects that we were to have worked on and really it looks just like this so these are projects has a little bit of narrative on some of these projects that we're going to be talking about we're going to try to keep this to fifteen minutes so that you can move on to more important things but we've had a host of projects go on through the course of the year we look at two thousand and eighteen as being even more projects and so we're going to touch base on those projects i think it's really important that we let you know that we have really worked hard aligning ourselves with the lake recreation district which we all feel is really important to us the four towns coming together lake eyre coit association's mission is to work on water quality and make your coil in my eyes says bank being a resident of that lake for sixty years my entire life i think is our biggest most precious resource that we've got natural resource that we've got in our community it's being used by thousands  people we have over two hundred acres of recreation as that surround their lake and i don't think we have to tell you how many people come and go throughout the course of the entire year using those facilities and so we really work hard in working with l a r d there's four representatives on the lake area recreation district board there's fourteen of us on our board that work hard to meld those two associations together so that all went that hasn't always been the case we haven't always had the relationship that we do know and so i really i'm excited about that we're very excited about that so let's get on to the for bringing that up so this summer the greeter program which we've had going for many years and parted with the town to receive grant funds from the state grant made program we got a boat wash up and running so washing vehicles and boats that are high risk event in the water body other than make your core that may be carrying an invasive species so they're washed including the cooling systems and things of those vessels before they go in and then potentially on the way out if they're going to go to another water body  hopefully exactly yes it is a waste water you don't have a great picture but it's on the uphill side of the access road to the fishing access so it just kind of drains off in there and drives off that  was some other members of our group worked really hard to find the right location and partnership with the land nearby landowners and the state so that's the most that's the location is really fantastic we don't have the boat launches and lake champlain including small vessels now we're doing small vessels or working on specifically on saturdays and sundays because they're paid positions but we really are excited about the fact that we're doing canoes and kayaks down to also and there is there was a new state statute that the legislature approved this cycle when the governor signed so that boats that are being launched an access that has an operating but  station are required to utilize it so the d c is coming up with rules on that we're certainly not going to become enforcers but encourage people and people have been unwilling to perspire with us through that so we intend to submit a gr again to get state funding from the state to convene that program as we have in previous years some of the contributions wilson makes and the other towns make up us make me look imagine and that sort of thing and that we also did a ecosystem restoration grant going into the into the lake we restarted our water quality monitoring program we'd been doing it for a number of years the state so we could take a few years off so we restarted that to give us a good baseline data about the lake did some education opportunities around the lake lake wise properties did a tour of them talking about how people can modify the landscape in their property to slow storm water and perp and prove the will of the water  road in the northern part of the lake there as well as the tributary the drains in there is a great source of new transfer lakes and looking at what what can be done it with the road or the waterway and that to try to work to reduce the nutrient load into the l this summer we installed some benefit barriers at the fixture in access kind of as a as a pilot we had done some diver system sucks and harvesting there the previous summer to remove some weed so that there was a clear channel for boats to get out on the water as well so we turned to reduce the chance that they would be transporting weeds elsewhere this was primarily funded again by that same granade program we also hired the darien freshwater institute at r p i to come and do an aquatic plants survey of the lake to see permit through the state are allowed to go into the lake after may fifteenth and then have to come out of the lake on october fifteenth or before october fifteenth and it's basically a weed barrier it doesn't it kills all the w it doesn't just it's not specific so that it's not the most desirable opportunity to control no foil but it is a great opportunity for us to cut down the law take the  cutting of milfoil by boats and then distributing it through the lake and repopulating into the water so just a little recap of the milfoil timeline it was first found in a lake in and  ninety there was a lot of plant survey done by the so c h and twenty fourteen we've been doing a variety of things since then but the dash i mentioned the benthic barriers this year and we've been working towards  reside permit to treat the whole lake with every side sonar we've party to the town and rick was a big help to submit that permit this time last year the state review of that has been extended  extended precedented they did issue a draft permit we had a public hearing it was and in hinds were going may and they've taken their time to review all those comments we hope to hear a decision from them soon typically they review these in one hundred eighty thousand and sixteen seventeen jamie if you want to just explain maybe why it looks so different yeah a wilson resident former senior took these photos for us with a with a drone on the left milfoil really topped out at the winter of fifteen sixteen was that record warm winter we did or didn't have so the ice was out really really early the plants regrow really well and kind of created some stagnant water there in front of the beach so there was some algae growth and things there this summer was a was quite a bit different we still had milfoil but it didn't top out as early and the beds were just as damp so recreation wasn't impacted as much of the summer as it was the summer before last the survey did show that there were still quite a bit of milfoil still in the in the lake so it so found throughout the the lake we did do a survey of the lake as well as sunset lake which like you're quite drains into towards the south into heinsberg to understand that plant community better as well the richmond conservation commission you paid for that our plant survey and which was great because it we now have data for two different years that is really helping us with the milfoil process and skating how dense it is and where it is so in our intention is to continue that every year going forward so that we we are able to monitor these these control efforts to see if things are getting better or worse as we attempt different things  so looking forward to you know twenty eighteen there the summers of effort on the lake the the fiscal years of the towns you know bite bisect that the town of willesden in in this fiscal year you did allocate twenty thousand dollars towards like your course of stations some of it for regular efforts and some of it for milfoil control it's our intention to proceed with that if and when we get the permit could you maybe go to the thanks to this table which is the dollars and cents table maybe that would funds from that ton of willesden funds from the town of heinsberg grant funds from the state the great need program as well as we've raised thirty thousand dollars from private funds to to get together to do a one year summer treatment the expectation would be that we would get four to five years of control and may have to come back and treat again based upon experience with other lakes we would continue to do some hand polling in in areas such as the public access perhaps at baylor or d beach those those two areas have high density plants and there are still high use area for recreation and consider around that there's a rock island in the center of a lake that it's got a dense area of milfoil around it continue the monitoring program continue our education efforts to raise awareness about a vicious species and and all the work people can do on their own own properties the intention of the board is to move forward with the permit of our board is to move forward with the permit if we are able to gain the permit for this spring yeah  so the the other options are to use the diverse a student section harvesting the dash program which is expensive program we've spent thousands of dollars on a program that really is what we feel and the contractors feel is our lake is too far lee infested to be using the dash program to be able to control it but we have no options you know we don't have a tool box of tricks here if we made reference to this to heinsberg you know if we had an invasive species that was lining all the brick or louis creek we would get a host of volunteers on a saturday and sunday and we'd work like hell to go through and pull it and clean it up in the eradicated and we can do that only care coolly so we're concerned that you know if we don't do something we're going to be in trouble here and so that's why we're back here asking for your support we really appreciate the fact that with this than has been able to give us all the support that we have had and we continue to work with the landowners we've come up with a there's no need to landowners around the lake fourteen a bit of which are in most  make a commitment we've asked for a simple five hundred dollars a year for five years it's pretty pretty simple if they can do it twenty five hundred dollars investment and we've raised over  over thirty thousand dollars from that request just in a few months time we will continue to do that from this point on because that is we feel is really important but as i said then the the use of wake your call a i've lived there my entire life the uses been incredible in the last ten years we love it we love the fact that people can come and use that resource we don't want to let this and i live right by the beach on the first first camp and from the beach and last year in two thousand and sixteen it was pretty  for the for the beach goers and number one the smell number two the swimming and number three the the boaters you know i would almost almost every night pole some kind of a boat or whether it was a kayak or a kid in a canoe or at sometimes a sailboat out of that mach to get them out of there because it was so frustrating for them so we've got to deal with it fortunately this year wasn't as bad we appreciate it that you know there's a bit of controversy with the use of herbicide i understand that we understand that there's a you know not all of us are unified on the lake there are some people that are adamantly opposed to the use of herbicides we appreciate that we understand that the help department in the state of vermont have put a stamp of approval approval on this use of the service side in other applications throughout the lake or throughout the state and i don't think our lake is any different the fact that we're running into such controversy is it's kind of you know present something and it's kind of unusual funding for the next fiscal year looking for an additional five thousand dollars for the next year we have we have not used rick and i talked about this today we have no use that twenty thousand dollars that was that was appropriated for those eighteen and nineteen and so at this point our hope is that we can if we get the permit between now and april  we're going to move forward with the herbicide if we don't then we're going to hopefully spend ten thousand dollars during the month there during up till june thirty first and then we would request an additional fifteen thousand dollars for next year for four number one various projects that we're working on including the v lane and and various other projects such as the dash but also for the the the weed problem that we have so other questions one technology i haven't heard you mentioned and there's after i made that proposal here in which the conservation board and i think you would you had made the point that going after a park that the town already had owned it had made investment with something you didn't have an interest in and the jake a parcel came up at the conservation board and i were i'd actually been aware of that and was was intrigued by it in the conservation board you did  leigh recommended that the park district work towards properties like that i had the exact language in front of me but they did support the notion of the park just her taking on a park to help increase the value that we bring to the town and subsequent to that did done a ton of research on the jacob parcel we've walked it we've got an idea of what the issues are you know every part has its issues it's a highly intriguing parcel it really fits  mission our board has talked about it we haven't taken a formal action on it of course because there hasn't been offered to us but it's clear that it's a high value conservation parcel it has great public access opportunity it's riparian strip and it has great conservation values so my highly educated guess is that my board would find favor with it i mean jump in anytime you want and we had quite a few discussions about it then the other piece of the discussion tonight is is how we're funded and and the formula that we've used in the past and one thing it did i just want to surv reflect on the issues that i've heard you know i've been doing this for three years now so i've got a pretty good spirits and the issues i've heard at various meetings and through conversations with folks will know the obvious one that we only control eighty acres of land within will list and the feeling that we're not bringing value from that perspective the issue that there was a feeling that we had morphed from and this is a point rick brought up and i actually took his point i agreed with it and it's changed but we did more from an organisation is very aggressive in acquiring land and one that was managing way and becoming more of a manager and less of an acquisition or use i can tell you that's changed quite a bit there's a potential of us having four new properties of conclude the chicken parcel over the next couple of years and we have one on under option and in burlington the one that's working very moving back into a different relationship with them also just generally our service in relationship to the town generally and that i can tell you he's been changed to the positive over the last couple of years in terms of our work with the conservation commission and with melinda on specific projects and the issue of you know why are the other towns paying up there's a few years there were self burlington and essex weren't paying their full share they're back on board the only town that's really short right now is when you ski and they are climbing back up the financial ladder so that has changed quite a bit and last but not least is the use of the issue and i've been pretty focused on this road over the last year has as has our board we had that we've had a nerd i do understand that willesden is a town that pays into the education system so i understand the issue that you're not a receiving town at the end of the day in terms of the moneys that get sent down to my pillar in which you get back and that's if i'm in your shoes that i'm concerned about that  i live in burlington were receiving town so politically i'm you know on a different end of the spectrum but i totally understand the difficulty of both emotionally and practically of gathering taxes from your constituents shipping them down to my pill your and feeling like you've totally lost control of the process and not getting that will back your investment i think that you know put that on table that's that's a real issue i guess but i don't really wanted to bait that point tonight i would say that the reason that the grand list has been used in our formula is is a way to compare how towns can afford to be part of our system and and made a very good point when a great discussion last friday that that has changed over time post x sixteen x sixty eight that is changed not going to it i don't think anyone in the board would say that we don't feel that changes could be made over time however if we abandon the grand list as a part of our formula than another town will pay more to compensate the fact the wilsons paid less of  a little bit of a political issue there however i do feel we're better prepared than we were six or eight months ago to look at different models i think what we're really focused on is first of all stabilizing our budget and our overall asked this year is flat from last year we've raised our operating budget by two point four percent but the overall ass to the towns is the same so that was a big goal of min e we are about fourteen months into a operating as a fee for service entities and we have a contract with health brewington we've brought in about seven thousand dollars worth of profit  you know net revenues from that work we've sort of it was a big deal for us to step into that area but that is something which i think can expand and we're already getting requests from other communities to do fee for service work and we feel that that's a new area for us to move into but cycling back to the issue at hand here i feel very strongly and i made the pitch the board  got support that it really is in any scenario for us to be a good part of willesden is to is to take on more responsibility as a park owner manager so that's why i was very proactive with the idea about the take a parcel i think rick from rick's memo is he's he's not asking for action on this tonight however we are faced with the potential of you guys voting to go to town meeting to ask for the removal of the park district from well as to believe it or not i understand both sides of this issue so i've been really determined not to turn this into a some kind of political squabbling more interested in problem solving so i was hopeful a little back up a little bit in any scenario when i mention this to wreck on friday  if i left tonight which i don't expect to with the board saying we love the way you're funded into the future let's just keep it going the way it is go ahead take the take a parcel even if that scenario occurred  we have a lot more level of comfort with two things one is that any ownership bipartisan work of a parcel would have to have some kind of reversionary clause and frankly most of our properties have that it's very common in the conservation world i've discovered since i took this job that would ensure that if we're not managing it up to a certain level or or we go belly up as an organization that you get the property back or gets transferred to another organization that can manage it properly so that's that's something but also we have not stopped the conversation of how we're fund it it's a big organizational emotional part of our work and we have monthly meetings that are fully attended by are trustees and i guess i just need to reassure you that in any scenario the conversation will continue in a rick has made a very intriguing case and i don't necessarily disagree with what he's saying about the use of the lies graham list if but i just feel if we abandon it totally and right now that it would create a political issue with some of the other towns that may be very negative  we've done a ton of research and i gave you up a memo about how other part districts are being funded in from mine and how other organizations like our are funded generally across the income and fee for service so that's our organizational goal for the time being weak we need to do our business we need to maintain our parks we do a good job of it and maybe i could record love to y gave me the green light so yeah well first i should say thank you nick and the membership of the park district do a fine job in maintaining the various parks that are part of your system and i don't think that's ever been a question in my mind anyway and i appreciate all your hard work and the work of your board in trying to resolve this however we brought this issue up right a year ago and the funding for it was one major part of that and i understand that it may be uncomfortable for some of your board members too because it's going to be a change may increase their cost something a little bit you know we kind of said we want an answer we want something to change and i know you know there's part of what you're doing is a change and so that's really something the board often center if that's enough but for me  the equalize grand list as a method of or not a way of approximating the ability to pay just doesn't make sense because it didn't it was never a great method to begin with it's even far less however you know there's a little bit of time between now and when the board actually has to make a decision on this and so i would hope that your board make could make some progress towards resolving that funding formulat that is a town on right away there's also a town owned path right of way that goes from the back of the trinity baptist church property there is also an existing private trail the twenty behind the house but there's also  potentials are several one has to work with trinity baptist church on acquiring the right of way and some kind of he's meant and in parking there the other is that there is existing ability to get on the parcel through town and right away is from the end of that street so the trinity baptist property abouts there is a right if you see there's a line of dark line to the jacobs property so that's one potential access another which is less likely just because globalfoundries i guess is less willing is to use one of their existing parking lots of the solar facility and run a path easement across their so it's going to take some work however there is existing you can park your car on the side of the street and access the property so there is existing access and there's another two potential ways plus that right of way you see with a magic marker my high tech magic marker goes all the way up towards the hydro dam to the third development so there there ways to get to the property from all three housing developments down there plus the potential for access from the printer and the baptist now i haven't talked to trinity betis they may beat they may watch this and say what are you kidding or not to do this but has not stopped discussion of but has not yet decided to change its i don't know what's right word its funding formula what it gets from the member of the what it gets to raise revenue from its member they love what we're doing they think you know that there's never been an issue that doesn't mean i don't understand why you guys have an issue with get it d if we change the population only for instance it would mean for instance that berlin to be paying ten thousand dollars more i don't have a sense of whether our highest paying town is going to want to start paying its one hundred ten thousand dollars a year for operations they i you know that they're great i just send stuff to morrow's office and the treasurer and they'd and they did love the work we do but you were mentioning quite a bit of land in burlington and we have a lot of relationships so as you know i try think in terms of where we're going to be twenty five years or so after i'm gone and to me the only way that the relationship is going to work with the town of will assist and is if we become owners and managers of parkland and i had actually a very interesting chat with mike harris on his way out when he was leaving conservation board and it's ok i really just got to know why is it we don't park land here you know we help to build five tree hill we've done a lot of things and  understand there's been personality clashes we've just come in here and so you get up as your money and you know i get that and he said we want control we want to be able to you know it's a chess game in a rapidly developing town that if you own a parcel of land then there needs to be an easement across the edge of it or you need to work with the developer and you know you need to have control over that land and having a third party like us come in and placing these men on and lock it forever is a big deal and it's sound that is growing so fast that was just one of his perspectives but it was very illuminating to me and i got that so that's why initially my pond seemed like a good property because you know it's it's going down five to nine feet i mean it's not ever develop a boy it's highly ecologically important that jacob parcel is isolated it's riparian it's floodplain it's a tributary stream there's a lot of reasons why that could never be reasonably developed so that seemed like a good also a good option so it was really a my encouragement to the board that i be proactive and come to  guys and say to me the main there is the funding issue we're not going to ignore that we're having a really hard time i think they have a really hard time as a group trying to accommodate a single municipality but what's the real issue the real issue to me is that we are not playing the role that we should be playing with the guys which is owning and managing property and so to have if we were as off the funding issue with the population thing i went through the whole political process and still feel like we're not really doing what we should be doing for the town of willesden that this not the role that our organization does best and twenty years from now will still have an issue  mean it's reality so it was at my encouragement that we that the board give me permission to be here and to be proactive about it i think there are other ways that we could be funded as well and it doesn't ignore the issue but my focus has been on what are the other avenues that we can bring in to be clear we don't carry debt at all so we do it and we're not binding we're not doing memberships and we're not we're not competing with our partners like the miley trust housing conservation boards lake champlain land trust they all partner with us and raise money for us to acquire properties so we're an end user that manages you know once these lands and that's what we do best and that's why i made the proposal so i guess the way i should think of this is or i guess i'm asking if there's flaws in my way of thinking but under the current funding scenario which is based i think fifty percent on population fifty percent and grainless value correct board is these all indications you're not willing to abandon at this point  or rethink and i think it's here as well rethink no that's different i mean it's a constant conversation ok here's we're getting at to the point oh yeah but the difference would be and in this case that same feed that we've been paying under that formula would be different because now instead of it being eight acres that you came in access through will a stand that to go to south burlington access would actually be twenty seven  report correct i mean it also fits the the objection that we are not an organization that's growing our portfolio and so it's two parts it's if there is a perceived lack of value and real like a value that people see stand that's that's important and we're also growing up portfolio the when i was reading melinda's i know it had a copy in the nose and i know i don't but i have read it ok and that the one the one question it didn't answer that i was kind of hoping it would as i read through it is because i think the concept of are we getting the value we should out of what we currently pay using the current formula i don't know if it started with the conservation commission but it certainly has been echoed by members of the conservation commission absolutely and so i'm sorry to make a long story not as long as i maybe could make it is what is the conservation commission's opinion of does adding they they recommend yes they like the idea of when you see valley park district managing or owning and managing the take up property they don't answer the other question which is does that make the the value willis and gets for what its pay you know whatever the word is acceptable does it make sense that last it makes perfect sense and i felt it wasn't appropriate for me to ask that question poll absolutely and i may not agree with the conservation commission but i still would like to hear i'm not sure what kind of data they're going to give us if we don't already know i don't think it will be data i think will be kind of a de what's the word when you you know  an object of you know kind of yes this feels about right home i don't think they'll ever be able to come up with any sort of subjective reasoning behind it other than you know this is this is a valuable part and it adds t i guess maybe i'm missing something but how do we know if it's enough until we see a plan or what we would do with the parcel just trying to understand as just having the parcel doesn't really provide any value which i guess it would be what would the plan be for them when you ski valley park district to inhance it is such that people would feel it's usable as a park and you know that's that's pervious you know if we got to the point where you guys say yes you know good but you authorize staff to go and you know the next logical step would be to authorize staff to look at the feasibility to make sure it could all happen because things come up with any kind of land transfer and also like the internet from that perspective as i think we have some very highly successful properties that the town owns and manages and successful from the standpoint of  so i mean i think we have a sense of what you have to put into that to get that recognition and use by the community and it's a great analogy would be what we're doing with walcott family natural area right now and colchester which is a sixty nine acre parcel that we're building from scratch a new park with with a parking lot and with a mile and a half trail with lots of punching and bridges because the landscape and so it would be that type of development it would take you know takes a couple years do these things a you know a grand cycle and a lot of work but we could give you plenty of examples and if we got to the point where you know the tell you guys authorized staff to go to the next level then we would be a lot more aggressive we do a natural resource inventory and we come up with some you know some basic planning for a trail system and talk with adjacent land owners about the potential for new access i feel like i'm at the you know i'm certainly not the point to make that an appropriate next step but that would be the next step and that's what we're doing with a couple other properties right now that we're looking into being owners of where my words about this property is is the the access question because nothing is is established yet and i assume many of the projects on the town is taken in the past it's had road furniture so the access issue i don't want to say goes away but is a  lot less and if it can in this case it's very soon it's a very significant question where the access paths except for one are pretty long they're long doesn't worry me i like to walk i assume others do but i i think it's more is it going to be a track going to be able to create in that tract of that's the point where yeah one would have other me from a walking perspective but isn't going to be attractive for use if you have great ideas like an arms you want underneath a power line or s many of its own parks and recreational areas national and all so we're capable of doing it the question for me then becomes the interplay between how much money we are paying the park district and what we get back but it's tricky managing this one new parcel that we still don't know about the access to it we have some understanding not a lot  i think it sounds it sounds like people are trying to say well you know i want to know if we're going to stand the park district or not based on what they're going to do in this in this  project i don't i'm not opposed to the concept but it's it's part it's part of the value i mean if that is the only value that will stem fields is getting out of us then that still hasn't gotten us to the finish line that yeah ye know what i mean it's like you know the value part of the value getting out of being a member of the participants we are regional organizations so that the efficiency of what we're able to do with three full time staff and over seven hundred acres is brought forth by the fact we've been regionalized these conservation so that's part of the value that wilson's buying into if i get to the point where we're having that conversation then that feels like you know that's the  part of the value is what lands within the town that you have easy access to that we manage so you can actually experience what the value we bring and so that to me seems very important in willesden and it you know it doesn't make the issue of whether the equalize graham list is a good way to value or to place value but it certainly changes the dynamic of our relationship of the town and that's why i felt it was so important and the only thing i would say you know in terms of grand list i did to me personally id i was telling rick this to me the property tax is a lousy way to charge people you know it just doesn't represent people's  affordability i mean i get so going all the way you know when you break it all the way down but i guess the rationale you know as i look at the old documents when we set up the formula it's a way that we can do a comparative value of the communities ability to afford so everyone's under the same system like it or not with the you know the c l a's and all the stuff that they're place on the ground list but it is predicated assuming that each grand list does at least approximate the value in those towns and the ability of those towns to afford to be part of the system but it certainly has changed since we began as rick made a point to the point where towns have very low control over how much comes back to support their school systems and i know will lose is quite a bit so i get that i don't know if it's a very good funding or affordability metric you know i think we heard earlier and i've only been on the board for what is it six seven months now but i've heard quite a bit and learned quite a bit and it seems like you know the the dynamics and the the stats for williston would say that residents pay more for housing as a proportion of their income than most anywhere else i think in the state if i recall and maybe chip in county was that the primary but people pay a lot to live in will because evidently they like windows and it's a growing town you know it's a maybe a newer town newer neighborhoods so that doesn't always equate when you're paying more of your income for the property you live that it doesn't necessarily say because you have the big house you could afford more things are in it in fact it might say just the opposite so measure the funding models is perfect from that perspective  i am planning to ask my board to discuss rick's specific idea at our next meeting and put it out there and say there's an idea for all the shit alternative funding here we are providing crunching numbers we know what it looks like  that population only be considered for calculating the formula so i don't know what the other boards going to respond to or whether they're going to want to take a vote on it but i'm going to put that specific idea before the population only means burlington would pay more in ten thousand more per year it's kind of a wash for colchester they pay three twenty more essex would pay bout six hundred thirty nine more jericho pay three nineteen more it would save south burlington almost seventy seven hundred dollars would save you guys over seven thousand dollars and when you ski would have to pay thirty about thirty two hundred dollars more when that's going to have bigger impact than if you try to just something else that's going to try to anyway it's just an observation how this is all working we've talked about that because you know the reality is i mean this this preceded my tenure here i mean this is not a new  but it's that's why i have been aggressively going after the issue and saying to me that the big one is we don't only park here you know within the town and then that you're unhappy with the funding situation and i had hoped we could get farther with that conversation but there's a lot of when i go to these presentations the questions from boards is i was like well how about them you know they paying you know how much you know so it's like having a you know it's like having family a dinner you know with the seven so any i don't population is pretty simple breakdown per person and right now per person those dinners pay more than any other community in the entire district twice in my it i think if there is more data that we can get i mean favor of getting it my turn as somebody presented to me spending in the park district and being a member of the park district now and said but what you get back is management of the jacob krantz property i would probably said that's not a sufficient bearing and so that you know those are where my thoughts are whom it was really would need to have a conservation commission to do it all on my my question is still i still would like to hear from the conservation commission how they feel about the they would propose to do with the property so they're just kind of getting an idea if they did take it over they do improve it is that is that value i mean just just owning the land as it is today i would agree with t know that might make sense because it seems like you're trying to find a way to provide value to the town which i bought back in the envelope it's the fifty thousand dollars or two or three year project to put a trail system and and a gravel parking lot that that's just based on that's information i would have known about the top of my head fifty thousand dollars for improvement yeah that i guess that a lot worse what's a typical maintenance of one of your properties run like for this kind of a property i could get you those numbers because we've been collecting that lot more detail that's important because you know as a representative of the taxpayers we are kind of incumbent on us to understand what value we get for what we spend so and i mean the regional network is great but it's beginning when you ask a task taxpayers to pay for something  probably want to know that there's something at home as well and also commit that at our next board meeting we'll discuss that proposal specifically and also discuss what it would look without will stance ever which is not something we'd like to see happen but that's it's a reality that we've dealt with since you task me last year to have these and it's been a long and it's been some we've taken very seriously so nic i just have one more question y data maybe the data is somewhere here but is there a breakdown of the acreage of park that you manage in each of the town i can get that for you on that ok yeah that's if you got that i got in here it's in the package yeah well  did breakdown of how we charge each town that's here by greg abbott another document that shows exactly how many acres are in each town it seems like we've seen it before because we've talked about this but it's not in this it right if we can get it real so this is a small amount of money for all picture of things we have the money in the budget because we're not spending it on police officers and so at this point the proposal is just to funded for the six months  you will have in your budget proposal actually the budget proposals being handed out tonight money in there for a whole year and that would be separate consideration by the board at that point community members with mental health related needs so maybe i wasn't quick enough i guess i thought where there was going to be some presentations so i yeah i know he has and there's our discussion on this this point so with respect to the seventy four hundred you know i looked at all of the data and the hiring cost per person there's four people in this plan is he gave me some thousand dollars a person and stuck with a twenty thousand dollar overhead for a person who will use our facilities are yearly but our yearly be fifteen basically right ok and what i appreciate out of that not appreciate but i think it's a really good thing is we could try it for a reasonable cost and if it doesn't fit then that's and hopefully at some point we get the fire department to or the police department to actually stuff up to us with hopefully we'll hear at some point on that so i guess we're in the middle of motion or the need for discussion  don't know how to have a camera see it i did for those who get paper copies i did print out the summary slides i have not yet posted those on line however i got this done very late this afternoon so you can see here which probably can't maybe go over someone's shoulder and stop and what are you showing rick i mean what is budgets you have an opportunity to ask questions about their budgets and any time there is an issue that you want to come back to including possibly adding something to the budget or deleting something for the budget  please make it clear to me and i will be keeping track of all these things at the list of possible additions options from the proposed budget also as we move forward they'll be possible changes as we get more information for example we don't yet know what the county tax will be we just learned tonight that the records so station may be asking for either five thousand or fifteen thousand  thousand from this budget so it's a working document and there's a lot of information argument this is just an overview  is department heads and all the department heads give serious consideration when they're preparing a budget in the focus is and will remain on services this budget is a bunch of numbers but underlying those numbers are the services that we provide this community and all the numbers do is support that in fact this year and i intend to do this last year did we get an opportunity but we actually list the services that each department provides so at the beginning of each section and you can see it there in your budget book there is a pretty major department still be a cover know about the basics plowing the road simply some fire and but there's lots of little things the police department fire department and public works do that you don't necessarily always hear about for example our fire department does inspections of car seats for people who are putting car seats in for youngsters and that's an important service it's public safety related and that's something they do so we don't want to lose sight of all those services because essentially one eleven point one million dollar budget this represents an increase of five hundred forty five almost five hundred forty six thousand which is a five percent overall increase i mentioned earlier this evening i went to the open house for acoustic and i ran into a manager from other community and i said budget is represents five percent increase this manager said wow how are you ever going to sell that to your community and then i started explaining some of the interesting or different aspects that are included here that are kind of one time expenses are changes and that number starts to go down so and as you'll see as we get into discussion  there are some different things that are affecting this that are increasing it more than what normally would be the case and i'll get into some of those things shortly here the there's different ways of looking at budgets we often look at the based on department to department another way of looking at it is the various objects which are caught cost categories for example the biggest wages and benefits and so if you look at and that cost category but he is the largest single change of any other cost category and it's an increase of over three hundred thousand dollars  it one of the factors driving that cost increase talked about it recently was the increase in health insurance costs that's certainly one of the factors there is one position change in here that's driving a little bit of that cost increase that is a change of a part time position into a full time because studio position and we can talk about the merits of that later that doesn't really amount to a whole lot of extra money but one of the big changes which is one hundred ten thousand dollars but it doesn't really change the bottom line at all and that is a change in the accounting method that's affecting the budget and  it's it involves stormwater funding presently the way we calculated the public works crew time a portion of that was attributed to storm water so we reduced the amount that was charters to the town general fund and charge that directly to the storm water from well we've learned that a better way of doing that is to we can go ahead and charge the cost to charge to the so your trip to the storm want to fund is being charged revenue equal to the hundred ten thousand and that's being shown as a revenue on the positive side for the general fund instead of reducing the town no i get it all the other miscellaneous work out me i feel that our public works crew does don't have a separate crew for that so that's one hundred ten thousand dollars right there that really is zero impact overall but it it's not taxed to our percent increase ok all right another is the open space two hundred thirty five thousand dollar increase this is largely part of the purchase of the kind of property and that still has to be determined whether the border towns are actually going to purchase that property but we need to be in a position to have the money if we are going to happen because they're talking about have possibly having a closing on this before the and  but even if we use that and include the money we're going to add to it anyway for next to school yorks every year we had money to it we're still about two hundred thousand dollars short we've been told that there's a grand opportunity where we can get two hundred thousand dollars but we can't apply for that until next fiscal year they say that that's ok which i find it was hard to believe because that would involve us buying the property and then playing for the grant but they say because of the unique circumstances they're willing to make an exception for us there's no guarantee on that two hundred thousand so we've got a budget for so what we've done is offset some reason i thought we had the money in the conservation fund for the amount that website anticipated now and there's a they when they were talking about the outside funding in grants and everything they included this two hundred thousand dollars but we can apply for it in this fiscal year and there well that's that's the the right there i say they assume the grant in the funding ok that's probably what i noticed and so you're saying upfront we would have to spend it in which we don't have got it but again there's no guarantee very good that either and there's never any guarantee they the state people are seem very confident about that but detail yeah yeah another major change in the budget is actually a decrease and that's in our capital projects and debt service generally our debt service is on a downward trend because we've over the past few years we have borrowed a fair amount  world paying that off for example or to fairly new buildings the police and fire departments buildings were half paid on those already it's a twenty year body and we're ten years into it so our public works projects coming down the pike so and also for the current fiscal year we had kind of added some capital one time capital projects that we needed and we decided to try to draw down the fund balance and so we paid from them out of the fine balance so we have fewer of those and then contracted services there's an increase in there in sixty five thousand  dollars there's another interesting one time expense build in there that will be sort of the generating some conversation there's twenty five thousand dollars included in that particular funding category to replace the clock tower which is actually part of a steeple on a church and so i get a lot of quizzical looks when i mention this but the twenty years ago when the steeples eyes were last replaced the town did contribute this was before i was manager here increasing for the town's people and in part of it's just a function of demand and the demand been increasing the population certainly has increased about one hundred persons a year so over  the last ten years that means a thousand more people than we had before that and that's in addition of course to the general the cost of buying goods and services has been increasing so it's when you look at the budget and the budget increases a combination of things driving that and getting back to the service with more people you've got more people demanding service more roads and all kinds of things so it's that's all part of it at police fire and highway those three departments that represents about fifty four percent of the total all over all apply to three to three slices on the right right exactly and that's those are all public safety related and actually the fifty four percent low side because a portion of the counterparts in the clinton certainly are public safety related and the good part of that service is public safety related so when you look at our budget huge part of that is all public safety or all the other stuff you know open space  so there's several major issues to go into the revenue questions as well and accounting change i talk about that shows up on both sides and we're going to see an increase in revenues to the town of front of one hundred ten thousand dollars  the fund balance use is a huge issue we've slept with as a policy on how much fun balance we should keep because there is value in keeping them from balance and it's generally ten to twenty percent our overall expenditure we are way above that at the moment although the plan put in place for the current fiscal year will draw that down because we're buying and have bought already a number of capital items when they were needed anyway and but these onetime expenses and there's opportunities for next fiscal year to further draw down perhaps the two hundred thousand dollars i don't know to look  don't recall whether that was taken out of the general fund or not but there's a major project that is not included in these numbers that this staff is recommending perhaps we need to get a lot more information but we may be recommending a town vote and that would be a call for the cycle would have to make but that's for the purchase of the solar panels behind the town hall we have had an opportunity or we will have an opportunity coming up because there are people who want those panels gave us an opportunity after six years we have the option to purchase we have to request of them to give us a fair market value they are in the process of calculating that now we'll have that in a week or two and then we'll have to do an evaluation of the economics of the whole thing i want to get that number but that won't take very long and we we were  certain we get all this information to you before the end of january for sure so if the board if the numbers look good and certainly there's money to be had from those because it will get all the revenue from the energy that they generate right now we don't and if the if everything looks good then we can put it either the psych ward concluded directly in the budget which will add probably three over three hundred thousand dollars to the budget or you can put it to a town vote and then you can figure out whether you want to borrow for that or possibly use fund balance towards that so when you start to see the numbers you can  and i actually all these numbers are in my transmittal letter that's included in the budget too so that's another thing you can look at but anyway we started  off with for as of june twenty seventeen of a three point two million dollars fund balance the top of the range the target range is two point three million so obviously we're way about that however  said we had planned to draw that down showing over eight hundred thousand dollars so that would bring us down to two point four million and there are some  projects that we are recommending in this budget in this chart says nine hundred fourteen thousand protected use for a fifth school year twenty one thousand i'm not sure that numbers i care it i had a different number when i was looking at late this afternoon it was a couple of thousand dollars short so i have to reconcile that but in a way it's somewhere in that range and that's a combination of things i thought it might be interesting to show you the history of the fund down at one point and why two thousand and eight it was a fire and then it went down for several years and then it went as a constantly back up all those down years directly related to when we had the big recession and that money was served as a buffer and some of that was used to help ease the burden of taxpayers and the steady increase is a function of an improving economy in part because with improving economy we have more local option taxes when we have  a economy that's going downhill we have far less than what we may be budgeting for because it's a very volatile tax and there's a host of other reasons why it's gone up quite the way it has but anyway we is a graphic of the revenues and obviously the biggest supply of the property taxes that represents about almost half of this entire pipe chart another significant portion not surprising is l option tax that's twenty six percent that's a large percentage for such a volatile tax but it's also a value that most of the communities do not have  i thought also might be interesting for you to see how the value of our grant list is broken down by property type the biggest piece of this puzzle that's on the far right if you're looking at the screen  is residential and it's fifty six i'm sorry fifty seven percent of the that you in town is residential the second largest piece is twenty seven percent and that's commercial properties and we think goes down from there seven percent industrial and up only a one percent agriculture farm obviously years ago with those numbers to be different i will say that and i though this question has been raised before this is a very  healthy breakdown or division of property types most communities will be much more heavily weighted on residential and it's nice to have a balance for incident and commercial for your taxes and then last year we have think it was about this point i don't recall exactly what the tax rate was but it was i think into being a like a half cent is what we're projecting we ended up with no increase so two years ago we had the same tax rate currently we're looking at if this budget is approved no changes at all to looking at just under a penny increase so it's less than twenty now i suspect there will be changes so these numbers will change and again you never know until the grandest is finalized in the board actually sets the tax rate in june what the is a little bit bigger if you have one hundred thousand dollars and die you're paying two hundred sixty five dollars in municipal taxes be you propose if the tax rate is as we're showing here process there's going to be a lots of issues i didn't mention one huge issue one thing i did not include in this budget proposal is the fire chiefs recommendation that we hire three new firefighters he's going to have make a pitch for that there's some rationale that makes some sense i just didn't feel like  could afford at this point he's going to argue that the actual cost is less because it will reduce overtime and reduce the amount of part timers that we need to use and he's right with the first contract and maybe we can resolve some of those issues but i just didn't feel comfortable adding something to the budget and having this overtime problem in the fire department hanging in there  might we might be in a better position to afford the firefighters and she says before but anyway that's sucked into the thought what you have to look forward to next week and that's it for the overview in for a little bit on friday as well and so he's going through a process of learning about our operations here he spent some time today running with one of our police officers and i actually meant as we had a problem today there will be a meeting coming up the nineteenth of i will not be able to attend myself this will be the first select board meeting that i have missed and close to twenty years you will be heading out of town that night i will be traveling during the day on the eighteenth and returning the following week but most that session will involve budget and jennifer can know they will be here for that and there is a  is going to be held in we'll still would just mind here at the town hall at the community center this traditionally is something the board's done every year to partly give an opportunity for citizens from most of the woods attend t driveway and really the only other item i guess just to mention is my written report is there was a project that the board had heard from the developer many many times  would and apparently that project is permanent going away he's asked for a refund of all his money's that he had paid for various fees and most of which we are refunding to him ok some small fees that we won't be but the major fees he will be getting back