with the public to be heard and that or anything that is not on the agenda do we have anybody who has anything to say that is not on the agenda tonight yes  transportation plan that is just started if you've noticed there was announcement that there will be a public hearing be for the first of that transportation plan and like street plan that would be december tenth we haven't determined the location yet so issues such as you know problem intersections that sort of thing please come to that meeting and it will be review of what the existing conditions are and then you'll have your opportunity to put have some input on what you see is you know signed it that you do and that because we want to make sure everybody gets recognized and gets heard state your name before you ask a question when you recognize that on the record and that because it is just like we're meeting questions to come to the board as opposed to trying to interact with the different people who are here on the agenda the first order of business is to appoint the jericho center library trustee who as i understand it is not able to be here tonight that we do have a library representative who is here to speak on his behalf calendar year to date to respond in the jericho a full time marine back up to essex rescue thirty two times with a ten minute thirty five second average response time to our primary service area jericho cost to six percent of our total first contact with a patient and s s rescue provides the majority of our paramedic intercepts and rescue is not the same agency we were three to four years ago we have instituted and forced to staying in station for their duty shifts this means we are regularly getting the truck out the door faster than we ever did before and this also includes screw skill levels by providing more opportunities for training we have instituted of course tighter budgetary controls and fiscal management to get the absolute most out of every dollar that comes our way from billing assign to this allows us to write hail us care for all shifts during the week occasionally due to luck of the draw and setting up weekend schedules there are some basic crews but advanced techs are seldom far away needed members are continually trying to advance your skill and certification levels and we have had zero hour service hours in july nineteenth two thousand and eleven that's total for two years and four months as of yesterday the state of vermont has put in place new protocols that will go into effect on january one two thousand fourteen these protocols on hansie ability of all ambulance services to provide for better care for their patients the new procedures include but are not but are not limited to seat half which is a pressurized breathing device much like what it's used for sleep apnea entitle c o two monitoring which helps gauge is effectiveness of c p r and other treatments for respiratory distress a wider range of medications available for us to use and an increased awareness of the importance of early acquisition transmission e c g s for patients  is not on the table will be only and when this starts we began the process of shopping for a new ambulance this would be to replace a one to two thousand and four american france medic master vehicle initial estimates are looking at something in the area of hundred sixty eight thousand dollars for a new one that would duplicate r eight two and remounting the a one module is also under consideration for the tonsil cost savings there is still the desire to is to the citizens advisory board made up of select board a plane representatives from each town we and we can get that going we hope jericho will be able to participate our requests for f y fourteen fifteen zero six thousand dollars about the same as the thirteen fourteen request we understand the board's reluctance to make the big percentage jump in funding last year that would have been required to meet that request and at six thousand dollars this places the funding support approximately six dollars per resident of the area that we cover support from the town's constitutes thirty four percent of our income with building making a forty eight percent building income as fungible thought all calls result in billable transports and not everyone is insured and insurance companies pay a very percentage of the bill medicare pays fifty cents on the dollar and medicaid only pays twenty three cents on the dollar moreover every time you hear a politician talk about reducing payments to medicare providers in order to save money well return rescue as essex is such a provider payroll makes up a large portion or expenses the stars say there are few if any all volunteer ambulance squats left anymore are pa truck mean and scheduling purchasing planning training and monitoring background checks and a myriad host of other tasks that would not get done if the volunteers alone we very much appreciate and wish to thank us what born the citizens of jericho for your new and continuing support for richmond rescue pay people work thirty six hour shifts don't have to have our final budget to the membership until you know at the end of june so in order to meet the needs of the towns we pushed through together eight approximate budget and what are you looking on the  wondered why the difference or if this budget doesn't really reflect all these different expense expenses if they don't i don't know i'm just looking for the total expenses but what what would you do with  right we will put in what we need to keep it going until such time as it's time to say it's like a bike and your insurance is going down a lot and workman's comp is going down a lot we've been able to not have any injuries for quite some time now been having to modify our previous budgets and stuff to try to bring things into line with current accepted accounting practices so they're been song shifts and things a lot of us even i don't fully understand myself to be perfectly honest i just kind of like ok of ten dollars an hour for a call we feel that you know any volunteers shouldn't be losing money from either their job and neuer responding to an incident of either their own vehicles or the gas money so it basically covers up for the individual career benefits an increase of two hundred dollars i believe that's in line with what we set up with the town of trying to follow the which i think that's where that low for me comes into applying for those grants and trying to  well you got to go you got to go find out what it is you know expenditures increase of four hundred fifty two and our capital funding is increased basically seven thousand one hundred ninety two which is in line with the capital plan and i think that's of the and overall our budget increase of three point six percent and the amount funded by the towns of two point four we have worked hard to control the increases in our operating budget and feel that we must make an a more of a breakdown in terms of what like if you just have something called insurance as opposed to what all the different forms of insurance and has that you know if it's  can have a better print out at the countability of how our taxpayer dollars are spent i think goes a long way from both sides and you know if people just looked at our record what we have here rather than going to the places that i think it's important particularly if we have folks in town asking the say why don't you know it's only this much per person why don't we just give you the money and you know take the land that we want to make sure you know everybody's  of their dollars before we even think about giving more money for stuff i have a few little odds and then rather than go into a great detail but under gravel pit income i mean because you still because you had twenty twelve twenty thirteen you have gravel to an income of ten thousand was eleven thousand dollars but you know it was realize you can't say how much you're going to sell but you know usually there's a budget in numbers i just wonder if  actually putting that reserve funds for your trucks or you actually using it to buy new trucks it's the last thing it's trying to get but it's done it's done both it that line pays the payments of the trucks and of course it takes the money out that we need to save to purchase new drugs in that say twenty to thirty year life span to this is why more and you have anything yeah i think we asked you this last year as well but why do you not budget for donations or grants because there they aren't one hundred percent guarantee well we budget for things that we don't know are guaranteed based on an average based on history we don't know if the grants are coming up for next year i mean the town the town budgets grants we we put expense items on our  budget and then we put grant income on the budget and if we don't receive the grant income then we delay or cancel the expense so i mean i think my my suspicion is that a lot of the most fire departments rely heavily on grants and i'm wondering are you do you write grants  are you writing grants for next year now this year we don't know if the grant process through the it's all through the for the federal government so if they don't have a grant process for next year it doesn't get implemented so if you get the what happens to the budget if it's not budgeted to get the grant or does that grant money go towards your i mean then you've got extra money correct and i think that's where we look at those grants are out there and it's  target next year it's a vehicle replacement this year it's it's building maintenance or different different things so you don't know what's coming out from year to year on say a grant for a fire station correct and those are those the lines where if we use that money towards that matching fee or that money that if we don't spend it one year it gets put down into a reserve where we can then start  so use your example of building maintenance because you've got thirteen thousand dollars dollars budgeted in this next budget for a building let's say you get a grant that covers building maintenance what are you going to do with that thirteen thousand or if you have to pay ten percent then you've got eleven thousand correct other otherwise that money if we do not spend that money from the previous year it goes down into a reserve which reserve i mean to towns asking for that i think each year if we have a rich amount left over it comes down to and we could maybe ask the towns of a we have this amount of money left over from the year we're looking to move it to this reserve maybe do it that way because because i think i think each year depending on what reserves we're looking at and it's different needs what year you it that building come unaware of having lived here for fourteen years about our fire department being an independent not for profit corporation a private entity that actually isn't obligated to follow procedures typically required by government agencies and  when making major financial decisions so they do the budget work but when they buy trucks how they buy trucks it's not something that would the voters would be voting on and i'm also hearing just recently that at monday night's meeting that they need to be significant additional funding for future costs of meeting equipment these are all things that have to be thinking about you know but you know i want to feel good about our budget for the department and i want to make sure that we're providing for them so that they serve the community well so at the first thing i did was i took a look at their funding sources so this actually answer some of the questions that you have i did the breakdown and based on previous budgets it's ninety five to ninety nine percent taxpayer supported the split used to be fifty five forty five between jericho and underhill but back then that should be two thousand two hundred right around no they actually stipulate that they were going to pay forty percent so it was actually i went back and looked at all the reports that's actually how that came about that forty sixty split at that time they also said that one hundred percent of the property taxes on the rivers property needed to cursory level one of the things that actually concern me is we have an agreement that was signed in one thousand nine hundred seven that agreement is on indefinite duration it does not require any renegotiation and it may be terminated by our either party with one year's advance notice so long as there is no outstanding mortgage on a property of the fire so the question is if there conflict caring mortgages can we ever renegotiate the agreement that that's a real concern to me that we would have a forever agreement that we are never in the position to renegotiate and i think that since one thousand nine hundred seven there been a lot of changes in government in terms of requirements and i think that a long term agreement raises questions  so then i went into the you know some of the issues that are raised for me was there's no oversight replier immense in the agreement there's no conflict of interest requirements there's no capital expenditure serve and i saw very little in terms of due diligence in terms of accountability to the taxpayer so seeing that and those issues were kind of what first bubbled up to me i said well maybe it's not a problem so i started looking at budgets so the first thing i looked at and kim you saw the last five years but i had one way back in one thousand nine hundred seventy when the rivers property was first donated and what's really interesting to note is that we had a really slight increase right until just after the fire department was rebuilt and before nine eleven so you'll see right back here we went on a really steep curve so i don't know what happened around one thousand nine hundred ninety nine but we saw a really steep curve that then peaked around two thousand one probably due to nine eleven we psyched up but then a really big increase came you were right on target but that's a trend that's been starting since two thousand nine hundred ninety nine two thousand that's not something that is just in the last five years so then i took a look at how our budget compare and this is by the way on actual dollars so this is to fiscal year two thousand and twelve because taking a look at other counts i could really only get actuals for two thousand and twelve is our fire department budget is actually much higher but back then it was four fifty and even then you'll see that as a total budget we're paying more than double asks a lot or so but i know the total budgets don't always tell the whole story so then i took a look at budgets and i apologize because i couldn't get to every town hall i could only do what i could grab on the internet so i took a look at trends over time in terms of how their budgets have grown and i had the most information for heinsberg which you can see is it goes up because down it goes down it goes out we see some interesting trends but more informative for me when i took a look at this was taking a look at their hundred percent funding and how much it's increased over the same time period for those different lines so you'll see that the underhill jericho from two thousand and seven up until expenditures a little differently so they actually had a big expenditure here but then it went down and then they have another big expenditure and flatlined versus shell who also had a big truck payment things went down they didn't have any payments for a while went back up and milton who's actually declining from where they were so when this to me was very informative in terms of looking at people's overall change from their budgets and it would be interesting if i had the time to take a look at it further out and for different periods of time because i think looking at this in kind of these spots is a is you get a better sense the longer the better the longer the trend the better idea you have in terms of what it really means but for me this was an eye opening  know what's interesting to note and i'm not sure but from what i can see and this is just if this is incorrect let me know but it is usually pay for meetings trainings and call hours smaller cars but still you'll see overall with the exception of office expenses we're paying more than the five other fire departments that are located in our poll just listened but it was so confusing i couldn't even begin to try and trainings let's get that break down and figure out where those costs are being spent and what meetings are being paid for there's lots of committees and just the made to use in meetings or are they other meetings do we have a volunteer fire department or do we have a full and part time a fire department should look at the big process and pray frankly i saw not a whole lot i saw something in the member guide that said for items that are more than three thousand dollars they're supposed to have to be but there's no credit process for coming here supposed to big one nine hundred thousand dollars item for a ladder truck and so and then we also see squad cars being replaced in another engine being replaced so literally there is not a year where we are not taking out a mortgage so then once i look at that i started thinking about that agreement and thinking about well how are how is our budget matching up with expenditures and what's interesting to see and i pulled it this is when we switched from a calendar year to a fiscal year the numbers were really screwy so that's not a real deprived there and i couldn't figure i didn't have time to get excel to figure out how to phrase that so i apologize but it seems like up until two thousand  actually you would get the budget they would do the budget and then some years they overspent and some years they understand but somehow after two thousand our budget what they propose as a budget and their bottom line has matched  to the dollar it never used to be that way and i didn't see anything in the notes or anything the select board meetings that would reflect why that change happened it seems like now in previous years they would let us know when things were happening differently and there was a budget adjustment now it seems like that's whether they understand or overspend it's the fire department's money number this could be a fake number but depreciation is is not something that's typically what i assume is kind of real money but then when you take a look at these are funds that are directed to the equipment  so if i look for the budget and compared to the art it i think this is kind of getting to the what you were getting your character enough we need to know where money's coming from and how it's going because for me i would if i see if this money really all going to the equipment or is it or is this going someplace else or is this is this money that is going to the fund as well as paying off existing loans i don't know when you can't tell me quite frankly it made my brain hurt trying to figure it so from the capital plan i had some more questions lots of questions come from the cow based on the capital plan we are mortgage there at the fire department is mortgage patil twenty forty does this mean that we can't do anything about the agreement well that's a question of interpretation but even so the mortgage on the  for the renovation would be on real property so so we're looking at a time where we can revise that agreement because there's there's going to be a mortgage of some sort but we can approve or not approve the mortgages exactly we have no say so so we can't we have no say in whether or not they take the mortgage we can't modify the plan unless there's no mortgage i feel like we're in a catch twenty two this seems like a really bad idea the question comes to me is the same when you why does the underhill station need such significant renovations looking at the equipment this is why having the number of calls in the i mean i know we're not responders but there are people who are responders in the in the towns who don't work for the under fire department i think would be really interesting to see how their senses of how our qui matches what the calls are we buying the right equipment for the type of calls that we're coming to and then that big item of that ladder truck the the big question why do we need a ladder truck since it's double the cost of the engine what type of structure warrants this type of vehicle can't work without hydrants i don't know we don't have a whole lot i'm around doesn't make sense if they don't work if you can't get them to work with a pumper truck these are all just questions as a layperson that i'm asking if they don't work without hydrants how many structures are we really servicing with this vehicle and if we do really need it can we purchase a used one and not spend almost a million dollars and then my final question on the planet just kind of one of the things that i know as somebody who works for a not for profit is that certain grants are only open to minister polities so by not by being a not for profit corporation are we losing out on potential opportunities because of the status of the fire department other budget questions that came out these are ones and i think you know that i've talked to before they're all listed here and it is good to know that there actually was an i r s audit because that was one of the questions that i had about kind of  cross walking all these different financial documents but i think one of these key things and i think it's already been brought up is making sure that we have all the information on their accounts and understands how funds are directed at me and so i think  budget sheets is just under thirty eight thousand dollars but the direct cause of kurds from the river property are over two hundred thousand dollars there's recently been a permit issue that's actually been known since i believe about two thousand six the limit of their active fifteen when it was to five acres and they've expanded to approximately seventeen there are be hearing notes on this we know that currently the fire department has had to put up approximately two thousand dollars to park on the property for sixty five thousand dollars that sixty five thousand dollars is not to close but merely to bring the gravel pit back into compliance under active fifty who's paying them then the big question how much is it going to cost to close that gravel pit we don't know that and that's i don't see what i see we talk about kind of forecasting in that capital and i think that's a big budget item that needs to be for so the questions on this kind of for me are kind of an oversight issue of you know our ground operations recouping enough money to cover taxes and closure concert if not want our taxpayer dollars being used to subsidize the ground operations a private company and if it does it how can we structure it so that it does you know what are the you know what are the things that we can do can we can we talk to the fire department about modified so that it can create a relationship that do i can only imagine how hard it would be to get the two towns together to really talk about this because i think in order to do this in a holistic manner and really come up with solutions you need to have something that  and it may not be the most appropriate mechanism for the rivers property but the river's property sort of precipitated ok let's figure out if this is going to work it's probably going to be more useful for other properties because we wanted to have input into how the development happened in an inappropriate manner throughout the town the you know what we're going to talk about our options throughout this process we don't know what's going to be the exact way we're going to end up we we just really don't know we're going to you know ask for people's patience and stuff because we have to sort through a whole lot of different things because we want to get the best reluctance i'm sure reflected in my own view that towns are not very well set out to be active equity participants in a property development i have some kind of peripheral but they get right in there and put the deals together buy the property and make the contracts to build this kind of thing and that kind of thing and all of that towns are very well structured to do that kind of thing and people get very nervous if towns use taxpayer money right out of the general fund for that or issue general obligation bonds that are backed by the whole full faith and credit  so that means on the one hand we'd like to hat we'd like to be able to play actively on the other hand we're not constituted very well to do that well a mechanism that's fairly and fairly common i them and this idea is not new but there are probably forty of them thirty five or forty are in operation around the state so the concept is was you see the called an economic development corporation or community development corporation or something like that  it's become a different varieties of slightly different flavors depending on the problem let's be address but but the general principle is an independent not for profit corporation wholly owned by the town but which does not get any taxpayer money it might get grants from the getgo tax money and it can issue it can't tax and it can't issue general obligations bonds that are backed by the time they can issue bonds but the bonds are backed by whatever properties of revenues it has not but that and there are quite a set there are quite a few of these around the state and they can they can operate in a more commercial efficient you know despairing way and i don't know exactly what the track record is but in the last some months i've been asking around researching this a bit around the state the general feeling that was particularly interesting for the flats because you're looking for something that can play for ten years or twelve years carry something through with that with developed expertise and can contract you know can make and follow through on contracts that have longer  duration but the flats is not immediately problem i mean it's we'd like to get moving on it but it's not something that is an emergency tomorrow morning when the rivers property began to  explode as a community issue and threaten to seriously polarize and and divide the community something we really don't want we thought well wait a minute you know there there clearly is a sentiment on both sides of the argument that maybe this will take bored out of step in and help try and organize you know a mutually reasonable solution so it doesn't tear a community apart and i think both sides of responded well to that that meeting at the at the at the fire department on monday you know we had three different news agency turn up to t v cameras thinking they were coming to a cockfight and expecting all great news you know there's going to be you know happen people from both sides and from the way or informally said look we really don't want to you know we don't want to be able to use i don't know we don't want to be a part of this is that there's there's got to be there's a lot of common ground let's see if we can work this out a sensible way and both sides responded so that the whole flavor of the conversation you know the heat went out and now we're down hopefully into the pragmatic question of how do we deal with us and i think we're you know we started off on a on a good footing based on that meeting that said we don't have an answer i  mean none of us has an axe to grind about what should happen to the property we all have a pretty good idea what we don't want to do but everybody all have his own notions about you know should they be skating prizes or not is getting by should we use that for conversation on to a practical discussion with lots of community and of what to do with that and not on a fight or to sell it yes we can of that means that both sides understand there isn't really a lot of money i mean effectively in because of the restraints of the of the original transfer agreement they can't if they sell it for you know a million a half or five million currently playing two point six percent so two point six percent on one point five not a lot of money and so why get into a huge catfight over thirty forty thousand dollars and several people at that meeting said look if that's what's at issue and they have a legitimate need for it it should be handled in the budget process very good point so there are a number of the broad ballpark in which i think the conversation is going to take place it involves a transfer of the property away from the fire department has a fundamentally they don't want to do it to either the town or some community entity appropriately structured and like that that we have to agree but i think that's easy i think we're putting pretty much on that basis right now and then put in place first of all the mechanisms for that happen which are mechanical and then the more important point is to start a process over the next six months or whatever we decide what's really going to happen to the product and that would really involve going getting a planning grant having a planning process you know approach which as a professional element of community element and over the next five or six months we come to a conclusion about what to happen to which is a slightly separate question from who owns it after march for i don't think the fire department is it illogical so i really don't think that they see any sort of reasonable sensible way out of this that they'll be responsible partners in this dialogue there are a lot of members of community that have heroes and my guess is we could have everybody in the town make a list of we're in a state of play where people are willing to talk to each other in a sensible pragmatic way but we have to go through a process with them and that's where we're going we don't have an axe to grind don't have our own private plan the  community development corporation i think is highly appropriate for the flag it's not necessary for this because this property is this complicated once we go through this planning process we come up with a plan to get it five million thing we could borrow i mean the c d c could go borrow one point five million dollars because it's not government backed it would pay five percent or something four percent by the saying and then pay for it as we like a real estate development it would have to pay for it the way real estate developers pay for things that would sell some of the property and they would rent some of them they would get some grants for sewage and solve another possibility is the sort of the the it buys it but the fire department holds the not so and we pay them what they would get from a trust or make you know we paid we cut the difference between what the c d c would have to pay their way into the market and what they would get for transplant not much difference half a percent and then nobody has to go borrow things and we're paying them the forty thousand or forty five thousand they would get if they had sold it and that's a possibility very convenient simple straightforward we would probably then want to have a say about what that money is used for in fact the agreement says the green is that you have to put it into a trust fund also stipulates it has to be used for the general benefit of the fire department so i think we could come to an agreement another possibility which is also been suggested which amounts to the same thing really is we agree to have and here mark special let's say forty thousand our company their budget every year which is your mark kapil or whatever but it's not part of their regular budget special fifty thousand use you know for proper purposes not for trips to the  and then they just need to for it comes to the same thing if you think of it this is a whole exactly same thing whether you will hold a note and i buy it from you i'm paying forty thousand greggory to pay the forty thousand anyway and you and you give it to me as a gift i mean this is you know pretty much the same so there are a bunch of very pragmatic since we know what the money is we actually know what the pi are several ways we can cut the pie up and get the deal done and the question is really which is the more convenient sinful least for us least legal saw and so forth that's that issue then the serious issue is how to like that there may be stuck there are some people won't want to do that but i suspect they're a minority i mean most people would like to see it used in a sensible public way which includes a park some there's some that keeps a vista of the same  that we met in executive session this is a legal issue and that is when we came out of the session we issued a statement saying that we were going to work we're going to propose fire department hopefully we were going to work figure out how we do you know and there may be other ways of playing with that we don't know all the different dynamics we can work with but for the library we're supposed to adopt a residential and displacement and relocation plan which means if we are doing anything with their funds that would result in a loss of  affordable housing we need to do something to replace it and we're not doing anything that will result in the loss of the need for housing so this is just for affordable housing yeah yeah it's federal money so  because that way we don't have to warn anything else