First on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Does anybody have on board anything you'd like to commend? Do you want to move the executive session until after the end? How long do you think it will be in the executive session? Not very long, but it just might be a hassle. We move it to after the minutes and communications and all that. You can. Are you kidding? Mine says it is at the end. Mine shows the... Has it put our packets down? It's at the end, but in the packets it's not. So never mind. It's posted. It's actually posted out to the regular. So it hasn't been moved to the end yet. Anything we want to add? We want to move the new member for the energy committee up so he doesn't have to sit here quite so long. Sure. Yeah, we can move him right up front. How's that?  Okay. We're just going to put him in front of the budget discussion under reports, motions, and ordinances. Oh, okay. And we'll just take him before the appointment. Everybody good with that? Okay. Anything else? Second. All in favor? And we will move to public comment or inquiry. Okay. I'm expecting that anybody from the public has that is not included in tonight's agenda would be the time to raise that. So I think Lucian. Okay. Lucian Henkel. I live up Sanders Road.  And up to the top there are about four very old trees that are rotting out. And it's a very narrow and very dangerous spot. And this slot, as I call it, as you're going up, is just before you get to the top where Wilson Hill Road goes off to the left. About a month ago, there was a quarry truck coming up right there. And I had to pull way over and he pulled way over and we were able to get by each other. He had a very hard time getting started back up the hill. The other day I met further up the road, where the road was very wide, I met a large tandem logging truck paralleling up the road. Again, I pulled over and stopped and he came within about a foot of me when he passed. It would have been extremely dangerous if we had met further down in what I call a slot. This is a dangerous instrument and it doesn't matter what truck you meet, whether it's a logging truck, a quarry truck, or a logging truck, my wife almost had an accident once with a propane truck. So about a month ago or more, I called Rock of Ages because I wanted to talk to them about this since getting this fixed is so much in their interest. And a very nice fellow called me back. We had a good conversation. Towards the end of the conversation I asked them, because of this ledge on the right that you're going up, it really needs to be drilled and blasted. And there is access. There are like two humps out and there is easy access on each hump for a drill. So I asked them if they'd be willing to bring one of these drills out and drill and blast it. And he said they don't use that kind of a drill but when they do need that kind they self-contract it out. And at the end of the conversation he said he'd be willing to work with us about this. So there are three things that need to be done. The ledge needs to be drilled and blasted and the town would have to clean up the rubble. There are some trees growing on top of the ledge. Most of them are small. I think there's one large pond tree and maybe two other large trees. Might even be able to get a longer interest in coming and take those trees just for the taking. And up near the top there are these four very old maples that are literally rotting out in the middle. You can see where over time a few limbs have just broken off because they are survived initially removed. So I would like to ask the town to start the process going forward to fix that. Are you familiar with that section on the roof? I think so. Can we have somebody go up and take a look at that? Yeah I'll take a look at it. It sounds as though maybe I need to make the connection with the Rock of Ages people too. The person who said we'd drill it, did you say it was from Rock of Ages? Yes, from Manager Cole. Okay, do you happen to have or can I get the contact information from you? I figured you did. So yeah, if you'd like it too I can reach out to them and maybe get an idea of what we're looking at for a timeline and a cause. So we probably won't have enough time at the next board meeting. The next board meeting was actually next week. So could we put a follow up on our meeting after that which would be January 14th? I can try it. I'm going to be on after a week. See where we're at at that point and it may take a little while longer than that to get the information. It sounds like we're going to be kind of after mercy of them as far as when they can budget it or when they can schedule to get it in. But I'll reach out to them and see if I can at least get a cost and take a look at what it's actually going to cost. What it's going to take for our people to do the rubble and all that. The town could probably get rid of most of the little trees. As I said there are like three large ones. I mean they could cut them down too but it might be worth a lot for somebody. Especially if one's a large pine tree it might be worth something to somebody. If you want me to log on take a look at it and we'll kind of get started on it. Would you mind if I came along? When do you want to do it? When do you want to go out there? What's good for you? Any time it can be I'm probably going to be gone maybe Wednesday or Thursday this week I might be gone but otherwise I might be available. Tomorrow? What time? Ten? Ten o'clock tomorrow. I'll meet you there. If we won't cut trees we can go the other way. I talked to John. He lives in the house at the very top right over the corner. John Presser out of 14 North Sun Hill. Closest to that point. Now I agree that this should be moved back but there's an advantage to where it is. It's the only thing that stops cars and trucks all sizes. It keeps them slow down. Because I see cars and trucks coming north and south. Well mainly they're headed south and they're coming up to the south. I can't see what's coming up though. If it's wider and they can see I don't have to slow down. I wait for cars and trucks coming up. I expect it. It could make it a lot nicer on everyone but it's going to speed up traffic. That's going to be more wear and tear on the road. My opinion on the closest one to that spot so I see it a lot. That's my two cents worth. It doesn't slow down the traffic on the rest of the road. It doesn't slow down any place else. It's much safer because someday there's going to be a bad accident. I will meet with you and I'll go over what we're talking about.  I think at this point in regards to the board here would be to get a picture or pictures of any of the safety hazards that we may or may not have on the road. Get all the information and we can start that process. Thank you for a future discussion. There's a wide space here at the top. Thank you. Anything else? Anything not on the agenda? Hearing none, we will move on. Prior to, we got two Tom for a squeeze and we have an energy committee member appointing that we just want to squeeze in quickly and then we'll get right to you. So we'll go right to item two. Everybody's got the information in regards to Bob Cary and Jose is looking to appoint him to the energy committee. Have anything Jose you want to say or are you good to go? There's a 2-1. So I guess at this point we'll be looking for a motion to appoint Robert Cary to the energy commission. Second. All in favor? Is that it? Thank you very much. Have a good evening. Thank you Robert. I just want to make sure I wrote that down. The last one, you're meeting with him tomorrow at 10. We will go with our 6-15 appointment. The board is okay with that a few minutes early. So Tom from Stagecoach. Thanks for having me today. As you might know I've been Bethel Stagecoach representative since 2014. The purpose of my request to meet you today is to provide another date on regional operations and an update on the Tri Valley Transit the new merger organization and its finances. And to collect comments, questions, suggestions, and anything else that the Bethel Select Board would like to share in Stagecoach. And I think we can do this all within the 15 minutes that we have. Back in 2014 I was one member of the newly formed Board of Directors and helped stabilize and rebuild that organization and assist with the merger of Stagecoach and Addison County Ripple Transit, also known as the Pactor, into Tri Valley Transit. While both organizations retain their brand and their individual identities to do business as Stagecoach and actively move legal entities, TBT Tri Valley Transit. So we may have to use some abbreviations in the discussion. First I was appointed Treasurer in 2014 and after the merger I was appointed TBT Treasurer, I still have Treasurer as of 2017. To start my update on regional Stagecoach operations I'll provide a brief background. Stagecoach provides a vital service to our community in the larger region by providing transportation to people to go to school, to go to work, to go to health centers, to go to shopping centers, to go to senior centers. Currently through the Stagecoach Network, a couple of residents can go over to Pointe's North, but for their living in Montpelier, or Pointe's South, or Great Northern would stop, but then hand over and to our communities in between. What's new since we last met was is that within the new TBT organization we've established two regional operating committees or ROCs. ROCs, I'll refer to those as OROC, Orange County slash Northwest Earth Regional Operating Committee, which is Stagecoach essentially, and Addison ROC. The purpose of these committees is to ensure the service meets the needs of the communities. These ROCs were formed to engage with communities to understand their needs, to monitor service levels and identify service gaps, to raise ridership on existing lines, to plan for future service changes, and to evaluate, prioritize, and participate on projects affecting their region. I'm a member of OROC, and I participated in bi-monthly meetings, and as Bethel's a grad, I have been put into those meetings and in setting priorities. Therefore I welcome any and all input from the select board regarding service to our town tonight, in the future. I'm going to open here and open input to that committee. Subjects that we're dealing with right now include expansion of the 89th and North to extend service to Rochester, and Chelsea, and Sharpe, and that goes to Malkina, Berlin, and I've been to Hanover, et cetera. Expansion of the 89th and North, which goes to Montpelier, Berlin, and extending service to Barrett. And we're in the initial stages of a pretty significant project, a two to three year project to replace the Bradford bus barn in Coordination with VTrans. We've secured already two million dollars in federal funding, and the next major steps involve hiring a project manager, hiring a contractor additional fundraising from foundations, businesses, and other local sources. So before we want to update on the trivalent transit and its finances, I'll ask the select board if they have any comments or questions, concerns related to stage goods services in Bethel. Okay, Mike, I'm here and I just wanted to make note that we do, we have to have committees below the team to really focus on service and understanding the gaps and fixing those. Tom, can I ask a question? Sure. You also provide local service to pick up people to take to the senior centers and things like that. That's correct. Has any of that changed as far as distant, you know, how far they've lived to the senior center, whether or not they're eligible to be picked up, or have the routes changed at all, has any of that? I occasionally hear some things about that.  I don't think there's too many limits on that. These are more regular, you know, going to the senior center in Stockbridge. On a bus? Yeah, on a regular route. Yeah, that's a fixed route. That's a fixed route, but people need to have it somewhere that they're not close to the fixed route and no way to get to that bus they can call and get around it. So those routes haven't really changed. They're kind of ad hoc. That's what you need to call out. Okay. So next is my update on the new merged organization called Trivalent Transit and its finances. TVT was formed in July 2017 and completed its first year of operations on June 30th, 2018. And this merger was a necessary step to be able to stagecoach to continue operations and the new organization I can say is thriving, relatively thriving. Our first contract was recently completed and the news from that is positive. We're in compliance with all federal programs that provide our funding. There are no deficiencies in the management letter. And we're a financially stable organization with $7 million in assets. But that's not without challenges. Despite significant shortfalls in Medicaid funding we still manage a small surplus in fiscal 2018. However to do that we've had to delay replacing buses and you've found some deficiencies in the new organization we've had to delay hiring some key positions. We have an open regional manager position and a community relations matter position. We've tried to hire for those positions but those are some of the gaps that helped us a small surplus. Five months went out five months into the fiscal 2019 and we're similarly forecasting a small surplus but under the same challenges that we're facing. So positive news, not negative news, but cautiously optimistic. As you know our annual appeal for funding is in progress and letters were sent to the select board to all town select boards in September and in December we're mailing out our annual reports this was last year's and an appeal letter to individuals and foundations and other potential donors. As you're aware I think 80% of our funding comes from federal or state sources, but it requires 20% in local land, pull that money down. Stagecoach seeks only 50% that seeks a quarter or 5% of our whole budget from the town sources. In order to make that equitable across the community we've established what we call a fair share formula. The fair share formula is based on the size of the town and the demand for the services and we use that to ask for support. We introduced this concept last year a year ago so if folks have heard about it and are entertaining questions if you have them to the extent that I can answer them. But that is intended to distribute that 5% share where it goes to use. Most towns are contributing less than their fair share and we at Stagecoach and at TBT would like to gradually bring these up. I will say of that local match at 20% that we need to raise locally 5% from towns together 15%. Stagecoach is taking all the responsibility of raising that money so the chunk that we need to do it's part to do that through from American institutions and businesses. We've got a shared responsibility to bring those funds in. Last year, Bethel's fair share calculation was $5,900 and in our last letter to the slide board, following this approach of gradual increases this is something that we've been working with for a little over a year now we asked for $4,500 and human services recommended $3,500. On the floor of town meeting primarily due to human services provided from the data that I had and that I could share a town meeting I requested an increase of $500 to $4,000 essentially splitting the difference between what the community offered and what Stagecoach had requested. That passed and $4,000 to two thirds of Bethel's fair share is for relative purposes we want to gradually, possibly all towns to gradually meet their fair share. So not sure that the time is right for an increase now and we've already received the letter back in September we asked for a level fund and we didn't ask for an increase this time I don't have the membership information right now to say maybe it's warranted at the time last year we had a ridership increase of 32% to Bethel and we asked in the funding increase was 29% so I think that was in line against still behind the fair share but still within the region. So I am expecting an update from Stagecoach on those ridership numbers hopefully fourth current year for the first half of the year. Potentially a projection towards the end of the year. I don't know how reliable that will be but maybe we'll have the first six months of the year, July through December and I'd like to get the select boards opinion on that if it would make sense to go to the floor again but if it was a huge increase in ridership then could we ask for a modest increase? I don't know what's in the budget right now and then we submitted a request level funding for $4,000. So in closing I'll ask this select board if they have any comments, questions, concerns regarding the BTBT organization, its finances, the fair share formula, our approach to gradual increases for our request that's your final funding. Well I know right now Tom, I mean we're actually tonight we'll be talking about the human services portion of our budget. That's usually taken care of through the human services committee. I'm sure they are working on that or have made a decision but definitely if we can get the data as soon as we can. I know last year when we were looking at it the increases were, I guess you guys were tracking the increases where we were just a couple of years ago at 34,000 riders, maybe I think 10,000 or something was if I remember right. So there was quite a significant increase in ridership for seeing it. I just wonder how that actually came, you know, if it did come to last year we were at 13,600 years before it was 10th rate. So that's your 2% increase that I referred to relative to the 29% increase. Do you still have the programs with Dartmouth? Oh yeah. Are they able to give you some funding too? Pretty significant, that's one of the institutions that gives the hospital, college if it has a small program similar to that. We even depend on those institutions. They're there to do what they can do. Being our representation for Bethel based on what we currently are at and where our fair share ridership should be regards to looking at the budget, where do you feel that we should be for this year? I know you asked for level funding but I think that we need to be on a track where it's a good strategy to build up, whether that's get us to a fair share, whether it's three years or six years. I thought that $500 last year was I don't know how much it cost the select board and human services committee off guard. I think that's similar. When I get from ridership information I would say they kind of go hand in hand but no one goes behind. It's kind of as I said, most towns are, some are in step with the fair share but most are behind. I can speak to the human services committee. I'm the chair of the committee so we have a number of factors that we look at and we have 17 or 18 different agencies so we try to look at the whole bottom line too where it comes out. So I think the process that you went through last year was very appropriate to do that. That's exactly what you can do. Any of these agencies can get up a town meeting and do a presentation and make a suggestion and have the town because the taxpayers in the end are the ones that are putting the money up so I think it was very appropriate that you did that last year. Now this year if you come up with a firmer number you can revisit that process again and that's how the process works. I'm comfortable doing that. I'm also comfortable communicating in advance of that so like you said in the morning do you feel caught off guard or we can have that conversation before you end? I think last year we had this discussion on what's going on this year but I know last year we did decrease from your requested amount so we kind of anticipated that you would be possibly coming in with the process. It's how meaningful it's great. It works. Has the human services completed your process? Yes. We haven't officially announced it or brought it to the select board yet. It went through our process. Is that a public meeting? We have to present it to the select board next and then once the select board takes a look at it and makes any recommendations positive or negative then we can advise the agencies as to what our proposed amount will be that goes into the budget to the town report and proposed to the town taxpayers. It is. 17. I guess you're more than welcome to come back to that meeting next week. You can always get your hands on it a little bit early. If you call the office we can get it to you or it's posted on our website. Usually the packet is posted on our website. Any other further questions? I have one more question. Is it annually enough to hear from your state representative? I mean I would bring something to you if I thought about it. This kind of once a year. Any impact on the drop off point at the white church there or any new difficulties? I think once a year is sufficient unless something comes up that needs to be brought to our attention you're more than welcome at any time to come to the meeting and we can conduct it as a public comment period or you can always talk to Greg about getting on as an appointment. We thank you for your time Tom. Keep up the good work. 6.30. Is there anybody here for the white river partnership? We're a little bit I wouldn't say quite blindsided but don't really have all the information in regards to which you're here today. So you're going to have to start with scratch. So my name is Mary Russ. I'm the director of the white river partnership named Steve Libby from the Vermont River Conservancy. We've been working together on a project in East Bethel on the second branch of the white river. So Sam Lincoln reached out to us a couple of years ago and let us know he'd be interested in selling this dam behind Dan in East Bethel and we funded racing funds to purchase that property so Vermont River Conservancy is now the owner, the proud owner of 0.4 acres in the dam in East Bethel and we've received some funds to design a project to take that dam out of the river to improve fish passage and flood resilience in that spot. So we're working through those projects details now and we're planning on maybe taking it out in 2020 so we wanted to bring it to your attention to let you know that it was happening and also to talk about maybe some long term ownership options. Was that hard? No? I'll turn it over to Steve. Okay, thanks. My name's Steve Libby. I'm the executive director of the Vermont River Conservancy. We're facing not failure but we've worked with Mary in a lot of projects including the White River watershed and this particular project is one that we are happy to partner up with White River Partnership as the short interim owner of the property, the dam removal and kind of river restoration work is happening. We actually, we bought the property I think in September this fall and we did have some initial environmental assessments of the property because whenever we buy a property we look to see if there's any contamination issues and because this site has been a dam, a mill site for, gosh, 150 more years there was, it's kind of a prudent thing for us to do and so we've done what's called a phase one environmental assessment. The consultants didn't find anything terrible but what they did find was a lot of buried soil. Some cars were buried on the site and that sort of thing. So they wanted to do a phase two assessment which would probably happen in the spring and the phase two assessment is where they go and really kind of do detail soil warring to see if there's any soil contamination and depending on what they find then what we've done in the past on projects like this is also work with funders that do the cleanup work. So under our ownership we'll do whatever site remediation work needs to be done work with Mary and her crew as the dam removal and kind of rear restoration takes place. And then in the end we know that spot's a popular fishing spot so what we'd like to do is it's a .48 car so it's not very big but to have some, I don't know if you folks are familiar with that site at all but there's kind of the upper level and then there's a maybe a 10 or 15 foot drop down to the river itself to put in some simple stairs, maybe reuse some of the stone from the old mill that was there and provide a fishing access point or other purposes that might people might want to get down to the river. So that's kind of a general plan and when we've done this in other communities we often turn the property over to the community when the project is all finished and if that's something that the town would be interested in we'd certainly like to work with you on that. We feel that these sites are you know they're like community assets so having them as part of a community sort of recreational system has made sense in a lot of other towns. So that's ways down the road I think at least a couple of years but during our ownership of the next few years we'll continue to pay property taxes and we'll again work with Mary and push the project forward so that's kind of where we're at right now. Where is the property located? So it's on the first level? Yeah it's where the old farm mill was crossed from Hyde. Oh okay. Right at the store. It's immediately under your left. Yeah we work in the two family units right? Yeah we've got some great old historic photos of the site. Three or four big mill buildings there. Oh yeah. Our goal is just to let you know that it's happening and if you have any questions and we'll be in touch with other folks in the community and make sure that it's not a mystery what's going on there. We bought the old farm mill then. We did buy some that's on the north kind of north side of the land on the south side there's still remnants of the stone foundation of the old mill and the dam is still intact. Well good. Feel free to help keep Greg in the loop on what's going on and then when we get to the point here two or three years on the road of what the town can help out or take over or something like that then. Thank you for your time. So it isn't quite 645 but is everybody okay with this moving along to our next appointment? So we have Du Bois and King. I'm assuming Du Bois and King. Process of elimination didn't say anybody else. Greg wants to start. So we just finished up a project. Bridge 33. And there were a couple minor issues with the project and the request of the board invited representatives from Du Bois. Is it Du Bois or Du Bois? Du Bois? Du Bois. Du Bois and King here to discuss and kind of look back on the things that went right and went wrong and how we kind of move forward from there. So that's kind of the reduction. Okay. I'm Marcia Evans-Mungin. I work for Du Bois and King. I was the senior structural engineer on this project. This is Darren Deloy. He's the director of transportation activities for Du Bois and King. And I put together a little bit of a timeline so that I could have a basis to talk to you about the project. So we've been developing the project for a while. My timeline sort of starts just before we did the bidding of the project because most of the issues that revolution happened after bidding and for the end of construction. So on March 7th this year I had an onsite meeting with Jen Ward who is the river management engineer for this area. He's with the state ANR and he gives permits for stream alteration projects. And that's why I met with him. We needed a stream alteration permit for this particular project in the Middle East very well. I showed him the plans that we had developed to that point and he was of the opinion that the wind wall as it was laid out restricted the stream too much and he wanted us to make the change. So at that point the length of the wind wall was 24 feet and it came off of the face of the above one at a 60 degree angle. And he said that was sticking out too much into the stream. So he wanted it pulled back about 12 degrees it came off at a 72 degree angle. Pulling it back closer to the road like that made the wind wall longer because if you can get farther away from the road you can have a slope coming out from the road you can shorten the wind wall. But because we had to pull it in and get out of the stream the wind wall got longer. It went to a 42 foot longer than 11 and 24 because of that change in angle. On March 15th Jared approved that plan and issued a stream alteration permit. Moving ahead to July 20th we had an on-site pre-bid meeting with potential contractors. And one of the comments at the pre-bid meeting from the contractors was there was a scourable underneath the corner of the above one and where we were going to didn't plan to fill that out. And we didn't plan to fill that out and we put out an addendum to our bidding documents saying that that scourable would be filled in. So that was included in the bid documents and on August 7th we opened a bid. We had four bidders and our bidder was Culver River Bridges at $92,000. They were, as I say, three other bidders. The high bidder was $244,000. So my engineer's opinion of probable construction costs to Greg at that time was a little bit over on $91,000 plus a 20% contingency. So a total including that contingency of about $230,000. I know that Bethel had a grant, has the grant from the transfer of class 2 and 10 highway wrote a agreement. So anyway at that point my estimate including contingencies was $233,000 and our little bid was $192,000. On the basis of that information Greg approved the bids and we awarded the contract to Culver River. We had a pre-construction meeting on September 5th on September 21st. I get a call from Greg that the plans indicated that the foundation would be built on Bethel and that they'd gotten to elevation for part of the window and they found Bethel. So at that point we need to think about perhaps we need to change the design. So I propose to change the design Greg showed it to Culver River and then there was a call from the contractor Culver saying we want an on-site meeting. They were concerned about the redesign and how much that has been lost. So after a meeting on site and some more discussion I came up with a second division to the plans. We were like the original plans but took into account the fact that we didn't reach bedrock and we were on glacial tail so we proceeded with that to the point where the contractor got about halfway done with the foundation for the wing wall and they wondered at that point as they got further away from the stream whether they could raise the foundation up a little bit but we decided to open this up, save materials, save up time with the project done sooner so we decided to raise the back part of the wing wall up a little bit farther. Keep being in mind not to raise it too much so that future scour would not be a problem because that's a concern always when you have a wing wall next to a river. So on October 4th I received the first change order from the contractor in the amount of $61,610 That change order was for 300 extra yards of excavation 300 extra yards of backfill additional cost for their coffin having to be deeper than it was initially planned to be 70 extra cubic yards of plastic concrete which is what the bottom of the foundation was being built out of and some additional cost for mobilization Greg and I talked about that first change order based on the fact that they didn't hit bedrock we felt that it wasn't unreasonable what they were asking for On October 16th we received a second change order they had made some modifications to that first change order and it had gone up to $66,626 and there was an additional change order for additional cubic yards of plastic concrete and reinforcement steel The reason for that second change order were some errors in the calculations of the initial quantity for plastic concrete and the contractor had gone through those two particular quantities and come up with a different number The reason there was an error in the calculations was I believe that when we made the change from a 24 foot long wing wall to a 42 foot long wing wall those two particular material calculations either were based on the wrong set of plans or never got updated and so there was an error in those calculations So the total of change orders round up being $88,300 more of us On October 19th we had a meeting with Jim Moller who was the contractor and myself to review both of these change orders to see if there was any negotiating room and getting the change order costs down Moller was pretty adamant that they had expended this effort to get this done and they did not feel that any of those quantities were negotiable. They felt that they would do every penny of that and that pretty much brings us to where we are today. I will say that our original contract with the town of Bethel was for Dubais and King to be done with the project at the point that the bids were ready to be received because of some of these issues I've had several more site visits and field visits to Bethel than were in our contract trying to resolve some of these issues with older ones but as it turns out we are quite a bit over what the original bid was It's not that those quantities were not part of the construction it's that we did not alert the town that those quantities and those costs would be part of the construction at the end of bidding and so the town unfortunately didn't know the extent of the cost that they were going to incur in this project and for that questions How come you didn't find that there was anything better Well we had one boring and the result of that boring we went to refusal and the note of the boring law said that there was rock in the case and the other thing that I looked at was so there was a scourable underneath the abutment and the state bridge inspectors had been keeping track of that scourable they had taken pictures of it every two years when they did their inspections and I noticed that that scourable was not getting any bigger and I theorized that because of the boring and we had rock in the casing that that particular location had bedrock and I thought that underneath the abutment the fact that the scourable was not getting any bigger indicated that we would have bedrock there as it turned out when they tore out the wing wall the reason that the scourable was not getting any bigger was because the abutment footing had fallen off of the stem and it was sitting at a 90 degree angle behind the stem basically blocking any water from getting in there and making that scourable any bigger so I went on the information that I had as far as soil warings you can take many soil warings and still get inconclusive information until you actually dig it's hard to tell what you're going to have for subsurface situation but you know based on the one warring that I had and the information and the 15 years or whatever of bridge inspection phones that I had I was going on those two pieces and I assume you assume I assume was that one warring done when it was back at a 24 foot at the original design as opposed to the 42 foot it was done in the area well it would have been done in the area closer to the road anyway because it was as far as really a warring could get to you couldn't really have gotten a warring like down over the bank where the end of Wingwall it wasn't down so it wouldn't be standard practice to do a few different warrings along the length of the Wingwall well I mean standard practice would usually be one warring for substructure unit we're really only building part of one substructure unit and that we're only building the Wingwall we're building the apartment or the other Wingwall more information would have been better on the other hand more information would have cost more to as it wound up it would cost much more not to have the information but hindsight is 20-20 you don't know that when you're developing the project so I guess the questions is anybody else on the board have any other questions so I guess the questions that I had had was all of 2016 when this was brought to us at that time the board had made an approval to go ahead with the project based upon engineering costs of around $25,000 that was the initial proposal that was given to the town from so we were looking at engineering for $25,000 based on a project that we said was in the $180,000 estimate which I had brought up at that time based on my years of experience and working in the field of construction I had felt that the PE cost ratio for the project was kind of high you know that was in the 15% area but you know we understood that based on smaller jobs sometimes the PE percentage is a little higher but then the follow back up we got to March 2017 and then Du Bois and King had come back to us again with that the estimated $25,000 for PE was now going to be $50,000 so we had 100% increase in costs in PE to engineer this wing wall for us so at that time in order for us to move forward with the project well was one the town either coming up with more money to pay for the extra PE process so we didn't have to delay it or we ended up partnering with VTrans again to get a second grant to do that bridge so even though we weren't very happy in having to pay double of what we thought we were going to have to pay for PE in cost we did so under the premises that we were getting making up for that in the grant process so then we you know we've been, Greg's been very transparent with us through the process through select board meetings so we've been kind of up to date with how the project was going and then I guess we were just kind of disappointed to hear that you know that the PE process that doubled in cost now kind of failed us when both on the technical end of things as well as the financial end of things so I mean we now don't have a CRPE and that's why we don't put our stamp on that project but we do however contract in this case Du Bois and King to do that work for us in this case which was 100% higher than what we thought it was going to be just to turn into at the end of the day you know the project ended up being almost 50% over value than we're at so right I mean the bid amount and even when you have a bid amount because you need to have plan for some unexpected cost I think in any construction project so when I quoted to Greg you know like our final estimate of 192,000 I also said that we had a good contingency of 20% because unexpected costs will come up but you are correct that overall I mean 88,000 on 192,000 whatever that percentage is it's a fairly large amount right I mean the original contract sum that we entered into agreement with Coulter Bridges was very close to the estimated amount I had my notes here the original budget was 128,000 well to go back the original budget was 189,000 plus the 25,000 at PE cost and then the PE cost went to 700 but now you know the contract was entered at 192,000 that ended up turning into 281,000 so you know to a town of our size that's a substantial amount of money which was about 90,000 dollars that had to come directly out of our pocket for what we feel is a new voice in King's issue some of it does come with some of the design having to change but at the same time which we take responsibility for if the design has to change based upon the flow, the stream and whatnot but on the part of technical engineering as well as the financial quantity and the things you know I guess the way I'm not going to talk for the other board members but the way I feel is if had the financial quantities been correct it would have given the town the opportunity to reject the or delay the project and find other sources and by not having that information that we pay you to do the town was not able to use that option other now having to dig through other coffers to pay for that I know in certain areas of construction there are areas and missions clauses and I guess at this point my question is what is Du Bois and King willing to do for the town of Bethel? I don't know how the other board members feel but it's a big pill for the town to swallow we're going through some real financial challenges in the last couple years and then the incoming next few years with the water systems and other systems that haven't functioned and it's a hard one to explain when I get stopped on the street I want to know how we can justify doing it I'm a contractor myself so it's difficult for me to go into a project and give them a bit of my best guesstimate and I always have a side note that says based on visual inspection at this point and anything that's found afterwards is available at whatever rate I always have that clause in there and it seems like we didn't have that option on this particular contract so it's how do I explain it when the guy on the street stops and it says hey, it's considerably more and where is that money going to come from? We understand that there's always going to be human error related to anything and that's why you do have budgets that are rounded or have estimates that add 10% to it or something like that but in this case to be looking at 47% over budget is a substantial percentage, not a long cost for the structure that we were trying to build here Greg, I don't think you feel free to chime in at that point but what is Dubois and King probably have talked about this behind closed doors we have to discuss it and a position is that the quantities and the need to go deeper for the footing or to change the footing because of the bedrock not being there while it would have been nice if we could have told the town that ahead of time so they would have known what they were financially going to be liable for those quantities were there regardless of whether the town knew about them at bidding or found out about them later, the design probably the overall cost probably wouldn't have changed but we would have known at the time of bidding with the overall cost and it's unfortunate that you didn't know what the town could have done differently and still keep that bridge in service the wing wall issue had been documented by the bridge inspectors over a number of years and it seemed to be sort of continuing to move the top part of it obviously something needed to be done and I agree that it's unfortunate that the town didn't have the opportunity to say wait a minute $280,000, $281,000 is too much we need to come up with a different option but at that point you would also be spending more engineering money to come up with a different option and I don't know that you would have come up with an option that was any cheaper but we can't go back there and do it over again I guess I'll just add to that what we do is we work for a lot of municipalities we take this very seriously because we do have our opinions out there in so many municipalities so it's not something we're viewing as your problem and not something we're doing as we found our mistakes but once we started realizing what was occurring the quantities, the time we stopped everything we've done since then, the redesigns, all of the meetings that's all been completely off the clock that's our contribution, we made a mistake and we fixed it, just the bigger picture costs if we were, a lot of times when you're talking about our mission, you're talking about something that was done inappropriately then it fell so you incurred additional costs because of the action in this case, and that's where Martha was going is that was always there, unfortunately we did take away your ability to make the decisions on whether to move forward or not and that's the part that certainly frustrated us as well the geotech, the way Martha was describing, it's pretty much the standard of care is you take the borings and then you're looking for other things as they're a ledge out proper, there's always a certain amount of inherent risk of dealing with geotech anyway because you just, you don't know what's under the ground and unfortunately in this case it didn't work to our favor, this isn't if I was looking at 10 of these projects out through there and looking that we had multiple pieces that we were looking at that's not outside of what I would expect on this type of project So would you say on average to piggyback on that comment then, so you're willing to say that, being that this wasn't outside of that then a project running over 47% is average? Not average not even typical, geotech is more of an arachnid of science as far as the understanding of the ground based on just a few data points so as we're looking at founding a foundation of a bridge, now typically we're dealing with a whole bridge so you're doing a most quarter once you have more data points with an isolated piece, there were some axis issues where how many of these were you going to get in the proper location so in this case, I think you probably find most engineers would be approaching this, would have done just one more and the scourable was giving us the type of evidence that what we're seeing from the boring seemed reasonable and if you go through an entire career, you can remember a few of these it's not some impounding place, it's not some extra report on every single job I probably had four of them in 30 years you just weren't able to predict based on all the other evidence you were looking at but that is in fact what an engineer does is look at the proponents of the evidence in front of you and make your best decision and that's, so the geotech is a little bit different because I think we interpreted the evidence we had in front of us and unfortunately that wasn't the case. And I guess it doesn't matter now it's water over the bridge but the change orders that were accepted from the contractor how were those presented from the contractor typically working for the state of Vermont they'll ask you for your cost plus so you have to show them your cost then you get 10% or 15% depending on subcontractor. How was that determined in this case? When the contractor called over bridges he plotted up revised sections and did average end areas for the materials that he was asking for additional quantities on and he also made some modifications to the way he was doing those sections in order to basically save the town of Bethel some money because from the back of the footing he would come up at a one on one angle and the material included above that angle would be the excavation of Bethel the fact that they had to go down deeper he took that area that was deeper and he basically moved his slope line up so he did average end area he showed us his calculations he showed us his sections and it was based on actual in place quantities from those sections based on changes of the footing elevations and excavation levels so essentially he took the quantity and that was to the contract unit first? Yes, he did and he verified with the re-borrowed relief he had trip tickets and all that so we verified the quantities based on the bulls actually sent to the site He also pointed out to me that there is a clause and we're basing our items on v-transit standard specifications he did point out to me that there's a clause in there if you go a certain extra depth below you're allowed a premium price and he wasn't charging the town of Bethel that which didn't help I've got to say well it helped because he might have been entitled to that but he wasn't claiming it because he realized that the town of Bethel was already in a bad place for the cost of this so he agreed to forego that premium costs for the additional material and just based it on the contract price So I'm curious you mentioned that you had found an area and you corrected it and the clock was off at that point in time but there was an additional $25,000 in engineering costs and both came back That was prior to getting to the bidder that from $25,000 to $50,000 that was before this Sometime ago, I believe they did studies on a number of bridges in town and those each had their own unique promise When I came back in front of the board when we finally got to the point of what we call final design on this there were a lot of different elements You look at the survey of the whole bridge you look at the hydraulics of the whole bridge in this case where you're doing a quarter it feels like you should have a reduced price on a paying quarter but unfortunately to do the analysis you need to do the analysis of the whole bridge and that's what really made the numbers look funny actually our design cost was pretty compatible with it ultimately was just because there was a lot of different bases you had to touch base with but when Jen said we were off the clock it's that construction services was an optional part of the contract and Beth will chose not to pick up that optional part of the contract Greg said no I can handle the construction aspect but some of this stuff was not just construction it was change of design and that should be on us but we're not aware of that because of the error step in calculation and quantity so we haven't been charging since the bidding any site visits, any field visits visit here we're using it to make demands basically it's not really a one to one of we made them to say and then we fixed it that's where we're finding the balance between we made an error and we're trying to make them in I guess just to sum it up your firm in this case was recommended to us and we didn't put this out a bit for the PE cost and then from it to go a certain amount it doubled just in PE cost and when we're building it we're 47% over based on whatever the factors are it's a bit of a tough pill for us to swallow as well as a pretty discouraged in regards to the next time whatever project it is that we do in the past we've just signed you up to do work maybe down the road it will end up being bid out you know so I'm a little disappointed that Du Bois and King isn't willing to do more than what they have done in regards to this but I mean at this point there's nothing else to do but we appreciate you coming in this evening and at least coming in facing the firing squad rather than not so we certainly apologize for this situation and do appreciate the opportunity to come in front it's not a situation we like so do we have anything else on the board are we good appreciate coming in thank you I'm assuming you must be with V-trans in the back are you sure you want to go tonight that was a tough one to follow well this is a bridge that isn't big yet I'm sure you're all relatively familiar with bridge 38 on your way pretty obvious it needs to get replaced that's a full replacement so it's not necessarily a quick job but the good news for the town of Ethel is that they're going to instruct the new bridge right next to the existing one LAQ traffic open in order for us to construct the project we need to obtain rights from the town in this case we're actually looking to do fee purchase of some land as well this is a big project the interesting part about this is that the town actually has three parcels that's affected two of them being roads so the town owns one parcel but then it's bisected by an ancient road or an old road as you would say and the other road, Gilead Brook Road of course is town in two so what I did is I have, there's two parts that we can look at there's first the plans which they've got their own you might tell I'm one with math wrong great yours are colored right and I tried to keep the same colors I lost the files on the fire so I had to recreate okay so the fee taking that's usually the first most important question so you'll see that if you're looking at parcel number four whether it's the highlight of one or not parcel number four will be this guy and you'll see the very first two shaded in gray and outlined in red if you go ahead and if you flip the page you'll see that so as I said it's funky because there's a road so it kind of gets cut off right in the middle so see parcel four ranges from if you look on your bottom right you see it's called sheet five and then if you flip you see it continues on to your bottom right sheet six yep we're good alright so backing up to the fee taking that is the stuff that's in red shaded that's outlined in red shaded and in gray if you were to flip back on to page five you can see that the fee taking is right along the easterly side of the road and what we're doing is we're widening the approach to the whole bridge and so that's why we're doing that as you're looking at page five you'll see the yellow which is on top yellow is called all rights titles and interests and although it's not the easiest thing to explain it's basically what the state already owns to the center line so it's the existing right of way and what we're trying to do is we try and get that from everybody throughout the whole project so that we do in fact own the whole road whether we do or don't and so that's what the yellow is it's kind of a cleanup doesn't it? Exactly it's just to clean the title of the road because you just never know how old and how long these deeds go back and so then you can see as you're looking at it you can see that parcel five kind of starts because it's a road, what's the name of that road again Greg? The one that you asked me about? Spring Hall Spring Hall, oh that's not right, okay so that's where we are and so you can see that yeah you can see so parcel four is really from here to here but because Spring Hall a road goes like that it goes in between so that creates another a second parcel which is called parcel five It's essentially splitting parcel four It does, it splits parcel four exactly and so parcel five is if you flip we have parcel five and so that has a tiny fee taking in two and that's point one four acres so just over a tenth of an acre and that's right away, that's the right of way that is a fee taking on parcel five I know it's a lot to look through I apologize So basically yep exactly that's an eight that's why it's because it's three parcels it creates all this paperwork which makes it a little harder to interpret it in the end of the day there's so much to it, you can get these engineers talking to you and they can just spin your head around with their weapons and stuff and you can get at the people We went through the last June of the year, I believe Yeah, I tried, I'm better than that There was a good question from me that we were asking about We did, I think the biggest question that we had was on the deed we have a FEMA, FEMA has rights to one of the parcels and so we just need to make sure that to stay within that we weren't building any structures and removing the kiosk during the process of Congress construction and then replacing it, but that doesn't put anyone in a bad position or violate and it doesn't change the access down to that area We'll rebuild it and even though the maintenance agreement is not something we're looking to sign as this part of the process the way that Bethel retains their rights is that now that we own this parcel of Spring Hollow Road, we're actually going to give you a maintenance agreement so the town can still maintain it, so we're taking the rights from you buying the land, but then we're giving you the rights right back so you can maintain it and get down to whatever is down there and that's exactly what's happening on Parcel 8 which is Gilead Brook So on Parcel 8 the impacts are really minimal because there's just that idea if we want to own an approach and then, yeah see that's right here, this guy So we're asking for a temporary approach so that's during construction we can maintain your road so you don't have to do it and then a permanent right to maintain the guardrails, that's the big ugly green line and that obviously so if someone decides to put their car into it, you can transfer it to the district and come in and fix it and not have to obtain commission every time. So how does that impact the property owners? There was a private while ago, it was the old school house right? Oh yeah, we took a lot from him, he lost about an acre Yeah we paid him about, yeah we paid, but he did alright but he's going to be right in the middle of the construction Yeah, he's impacted and his house is going to be Yeah, right now the bank that holds his mortgage is rephrasing the property to make sure that they don't have to do this So yeah, so those are the three parcels and that's how it's affected and of course with the way engineers work, they decided a little while ago that my deadline was at the end of the month So we're here Greg and I, Greg's been great, we've been talking openly for about a year and a half As I said, the files walked away on me when we lost them in a fire at the National Life Building, so I didn't have this product on my desk for months and so then it came back, now I'm here But yeah, I'm welcome to answer any other questions I think our biggest concern through this process was more you know, protecting the spring hollow piece that we have down there How would that look during construction and how would that look after construction, I think was After the road is going to be rebuilt to its current state or better, so the access, and that goes as far as the rights that we're taking During, I don't see any fences at all During construction activities It's going to be an open area It's not fenced off I would imagine they would stage there You don't really know, see that's the thing Greg, I think you're right, because see how they're taking this access The reason that to get under, I don't think you're going to have access probably for important construction I mean it's a construction project, you're most likely going to stage your equipment and materials And that'll come good, well what I mean is they bought the Davis property through Yes, we'll get to it That road doesn't change, you're going to put it back just the way it is It'll just be owned by them and maintained by us Yeah, but our spring hollow section is off of these limits So during construction you're not going to have access What I'm talking about, the entrance and the roadway to get down to spring hollow currently, that that won't That won't be that people still have access to get down there Well half of the construction limits don't go all the way down There's a gate there now, I think the gate Are you asking if there's going to be access to that area down there for the construction project? That I don't know Well I mean just looking at what the temporary construction limits are Our facility, that's the whole road right here I think tables and stuff, that's down here So will folks still have access to this? I actually don't know that Or if not, can that note be put in there? During construction I'm hesitant to say yes Just because of the liability and speaking from a contractor's point of view or a private land owner I would suggest no But that's really going to be A contractor to contractor, you know, whoever decides to do it and how they end up taking the approach So that's a question that is safer for me to say no Not knowing how, when the rubber hits the road How they're going to do it Because they're going to be coming down through You can see here that what they're doing Is that they're going to plan to use this And then use that all to get underneath Where they're building the new buildings Which is a good question And that just, you know, the prudent answer would have to be that And about how long would the construction activities take place Or what would they get? I have a piece of paper somewhere Spring 19th of Fall of 20 But again, that's the advantage of Having the bridge built right next to the existing ones That traffic will stay Usually those projects, and that includes Everything from moving utilities To, you know, the final coat of pavement So that, you know, you might only be doing utilities from now until the fall Until the summer and then who knows So not losing the flow of traffic is usually The hardest determining factor against the schedule So we'd have to get information out to the public Knowing that that period of time Well, VTrans will hold a public meeting When the bids awarded and stuff like that Where the contractor who gets the bid will be there as well So all the involved parties have all been notified They all know what's going on All the people involved in the project So now you have the rest of the taxpayers in town Your commuters and stuff like that And what we could do, I'm assuming that VTrans probably has an active link Or something that they show In the progress of the project You know, absolutely, not to mention that There's an on-site engineer With a contractor And then there's an on-site engineer For VTrans And I'm sure we could at least Put their link on our website Or on our Facebook page I can send you right away The link to this guy Which is really informative We call it the fact sheet That'll even get you linked to the plans If someone was so interested in that far But this explains the old bridge Versus the new bridge And the why we do in this bridge Yeah, you can send that I'll put it on my website Keep that I mean, I think we all agree that the bridge Of course, that was probably the only bridge That was left standing after Irene But out of all of them Still doing Irene products Look at it, you know It's crazy I think that's the only one that we haven't rebuilt Was there a plan to do anything with the paving Of that bridge? No That's already started That's probably going to fall apart Until they're done That would be the edge What would it be? That's going to be hell The existing paved, I mean That section of road is only paved So far, right? Currently Going down into our facility Spring hall Spring hall Is it paved all the way Or just a portion of it? No, no I don't think it's paved I think it's only paved like 25 feet Or is it paved? Yeah, just an acre It's only paved right about that I think it's just paved to fit the gait, isn't it? It was paved at one point, but it's all broken up It's only paved to the gait I think that's most accurate Well, they're required to put it back Either as good or better So it'll be paved up to the gait Or whatever Most likely the acre is going to come up And afterwards, it'll be It's better than holding it And after the project's completed It'll have the same access as it always has Yeah, in that or better It'll look the same Yeah, okay Yep And give me the disnormal construction And because the road is moving a little bit With the new bridge We have to enter one of those maintenance agreements For your ability to get onto the Gileana Brook So you'll be crossing part of B-Trains 12 in order to do it But that's just the back and forth We're just sort of training Yeah, absolutely I think our big question was You spent all of it Yeah, a lot of work If you think about other people Who are directly impacted by the projects Who are on it, that's public interest So that makes sense I don't think anybody else from the board Had any other questions Do you need them to sign these Or who guys sign them So whoever has signatory powers So it doesn't really matter Give me that And I forgot to tell the board The good part Do you get compensated for this Jeff knows who's part of the process So for the big impacts It's 4,250 And then you'll have one more For 1,550 And then another one for 900 So we'll do Boy and King money Coming back to you Well, we need about another 80,000 You have to do better than that Yeah So Ain't over yet So what'll happen Which are as well Do you guys want to sign these Or would you rather just We can make a motion here Do you sign it Yeah There you go I'll make a motion Make a sign to the Bridge 33 Second All in favor Aye Perfect Thank you What the heck was I about to say Oh yeah, we just We had a bridge go out In my town of north And what happened was The game morning goes down To check someone's fishing license And he looked at the bridge and he didn't like it So he calls in the district And the district shuts down our bridge So my little town of 1,600 people Just had to foot $140,000 Just to put a temporary bridge on top To now apply for these V-trans loans That you had to get for your second PE cost like But that could kill a little town like me You know, I got a $2 million budget Including this It's required from about us I'm a notary So I'll ask you for your reaction I'm also a notary Oh there you go You're good He's like I love faculty They are so funny He's so funny He's like Alright, go ahead Have a date though right What was that date today? Date it today That's all I can tell you That's funny huh? Yeah Yeah, I haven't done it So we sort of reached this original I'm going to do the kit for each part Okay, so there's Yup, there we go Beautiful, yup So we can have them Right with the energy We can work on our energy projects I have a new portion here I'm not going to build the playground Who's your engineer on this project? No one Oh, they were Only a V-trans engineer No, no Someone will have to I saw her She was You guys are PD in it Well we'll have a V-trans engineer And then when the contract Goes out to the construction company They'll have an on-site engineer as well So ours is named Carolyn And her information is on the shoot I gave Greg She's a firecracker If you have any questions Give her a call She's awesome Alright Yeah So did you guys have that conversation About Du Bois And then you had to bring him back in here And have the conversation Are you guys done huh? Our first Yeah Well we thank you for coming in I know I mean we only had just really What we thought was Pretty simple questions In regards to the action Yeah, you guys agree But it gets a little more complicated When we had the FEMA buyout piece And can you even take that Absolutely And I know Not that we don't want it But we just don't know If you need to do it You guys were going to speak With the administrator The local FEMA administrator Right I did You're all there You could send me that even though It's been good Yeah Yeah, I just found that documentation Oh yeah, absolutely Yeah, I mean it's tough There's a lot of times Whether we take a portion of someone's land Who's in current use Or there's just these little triggers Sometimes that create more work For property owners And you wish it was worth sometimes You know Good Where you just take it I'll just take it Well that's it Like the railroad I'm a little today You're a railroad Perfect time Thank you So is the project on On 12 On schedule It's up to me to get my job done By the end of the month To keep it on schedule Yeah And right now White River Ambulance Is on it So they're signing tomorrow At their meeting And then I'm just Discussing some trees With the neighbors Because we talked about that bridge Prior to the 12 job Being done Oh this This far Fart treaty Is my employment With VTrans I don't think you guys Been along with this long And then when Group 12 was done Three years ago We Potentially didn't pave That bridge Because this bridge Is going to be done People have been driving Home with this Bridge for two and a half Years now Yeah that's why We're joking to see How long Are temporary bridge On the school streets Going to last Until we get the funding From someone else So what do you want That to say All right All right Let's see Oh her Oh You'll be working there For a reason To invite his To be upon us Yeah All right You all sat there Craig I believe so Okay thanks Thank you Okay A lot of appointments tonight Usually we only have You know We're moving through that We're about on time You know You know about 15 730 right 730 right Not yet We're due for a couple I think we've got Duplicates are yours Everyone how fast We're getting to the budget 5 parcel 4 parcel Beautiful Thank you everyone Thank you Have a good night You're coming Thank you Well I was I don't need Because I've worked kind of this year So we We are up to our Budget discussion And Therese is here She's got the The last sections of our budget Put together So we have Pretty much a complete Rough draft budget Yeah it's the first round I think it's I think the NIST law Officer Isn't that where we I think we did Yeah We did talk Some public places A number of Lisa and Flower Yep So I think that The NIST law Officers Is Straightforward There's nothing Crazy You do see Not the same price But we did budget The time for We need to do a computer Therese can we do We got three New computers And then we need One for the Chloric And the Fire Department And one for the Constable And the Constable Yeah Constable whatever Can we try to Put something Are they all the same Or are they different I don't know I would not speak to the Constable But as far as the fire And the Clerk They could be Similar I think there was One of the Unless, no The highway too Yeah Unless my guess might be That Dave So that the fire And the highway They might need Tough books Like if they're looking For laptops A tough book is just A heavier doing They may be looking For that I know that Pam Will be looking For a desktop But what they can Do is You can go on Sometimes a state contract Through the They have through Dow Or those things And frankly sometimes You just Yeah I guess it depends On what you need For software And stuff But Well, for NEMRIC For the Municipal office Can we need Microsoft Office Excuse me not And NEMRIC Is already Software We've already purchased So she She would need These specials of software On hers And I'm assuming On this day And they all Pretty much come over With Microsoft Office Because I I'm assuming That's what the Fires want That ain't more than About 250 bucks So Now they Buy Microsoft Office For X amount of For keys For now So they can do it So Yeah, we certainly Look to consolidate But as far as the Constable goes I wouldn't Have to get That I don't know Their Call for Specialty Software And just a Clarification from The last meeting I said that That the portion For the computer That was Put into the Constable's Budget Was a third That's incorrect It's a half That's used to Pay Their third Or a third Of the computer So that cost What kind of computer Is that That's all software Everything that goes Along with it If it's a half It's a $4600 computer You can get yourself A really nice Notebook You know For 800 bucks I mean It's really nice Those have Docking Stations So that You know Sometimes Those have Docking That's a tough book Whether it has A docking station In mind But it's It's kind of A mounting thing But that's The cost For a tough Book with All the software And everything He came up with Now we can Find it for cheap I love it You can Find it for $2,000 For a decent Tough Book If you want Just a regular Tablet Or a regular Laptop We want So that It's tough enough That they can Handle In the Around a bit And I know The fire When leaves The stations Was kind of Back Of course You definitely Don't want Something Delicate But I'm Sure We can You know Come Time You buy them All at once Hopefully So You know We need Some Deep passive grant Is included in there Because Pam Wants a standing desk And so But that's not That's not $600 We also need Some For other Office furniture Just in case We need it But what You'll see Overall Is there's A significant savings In municipal Office Because We Downsized Employees With that Those wages We're Separating out Postage Because that's Been a bit of Issue Water and sewer Gives Pay for their Own Postage And their own Envelopes And their own They do their Billings So we're Moving that out We also Like A postage Machine So it's Going to be Easier to deal With So we will buy Pre-Done Envelopes For us To Have you Go to the Post Office To get stamps And Yeah It's a nightmare So I don't know If you have any Specific questions On the Municipal budget That seems Pretty Straightforward to Me But do you Have any questions? There's Two Copier Categories Is one For And one For For Paper And toner And stuff We own That one But the other And even the one we lease We have to pay For a copy For maintenance And things like that Cost on top Of the lease Good With that You want one of the town hall Sure So town hall Budget Obviously is down A little bit And that's Because We had The Repair Line item was dropped Or not We have some wages in here For people to maintain Town hall We're also going to see You will see In the next iteration There's a little bit More of a change Because we use someone To salt And shovel out These stairs down here So we've been coding it To building maintenance In the past But we're going to move That into wages Come the next year That's only 600 bucks I think 600-800 dollars So you'll see that In the draft You'll get next time So insurance Electricity Telephone Building repairs Fire extinguishers Your Elevator inspection Custodial All those things But there obviously Is a reduction Of Due to Is the maintenance on the clock Yes Like a maintenance contract Yes It comes in It's once a year For 295 dollars Yeah We make this For Yeah It's been 295 dollars a year So that's What's in here And obviously There's a bigger Repair Oh, okay So It was actually just here Yep So he He increased a little bit Of course too Don't forget some of this You do have a revenue For when it's rented But if it's rented a lot You're going to use more heat And so there's A couple things like that That you're Looking at Town officials You can see The pay is all the same here Unless you guys Want to increase Your budget And make more than Two more And he has A process table So probably You can come by tomorrow And your pay Is in there Your stipends Are all in this next round The air is on All right So Don't spend it all In one place Yeah One drink each One drink each One drink each And you can Tap it out So I was saying That It appears that The stipend Or being a select Or remember To spend the same You know Frankly I mean We used to A lot of people Get near us Those guys were making I mean They got a cycle Of $1,000 a year I think We were doing $400 a year Plus $15 a meeting Obviously You're not in it For the money But there's Something to be said For that So certainly If you Want to Increase that Or That's You can give Yourself a raise Yeah Or we can Have even more Unlimited comp time That's right Exactly No No You like that better Oh, okay So the next thing Are Listers This budget I went through The lease And Made a couple And Made a little bit Changes obviously There's Computer software That you purchase For Martians with Cost tables You go Sign up Google every year They have The Mapping service In here And Standard membership So we did Increase the salary A little bit more Because You had approved Salary increases In the past And as More people Car training Obviously Reburges new And You don't know What's going to happen Someone Was to Step down And Somebody would Go for Operations And I did Try to Write notes As we Went along here You can see All this Is Pretty good To be Certainly taking Belief of faith By reducing the Legal bill From 25 to 15 That's Always a gamble I do know That for Tax sale Expense We've only budgeted 2500 Be sending a list Tomorrow Finalizing a list Tomorrow to Go to the Attorneys for Tax sale I know we're going to spend More than This budgeted This year But this will be Hopefully our Biggest Tax sale And then Actually You'll kind of See them So what's The next Step on the Process What's The time Bail Yeah So They sent A list And I was just looking at it But I think We're going to be able to Take 12 people Off Because of that letter That we have People that If we're paid in full Or have Payment arrangements So it's Really worth it To do That first Step Next What happens is We're going to turn The list over to the Lawyers And then Funding it Then they come down And they'll do Research You know They'll come down And do their Search Any banks If any of these Properties Which there may be Only one Has a mortgage That Notified by Anybody Like that If there's any Mean holders Whatever People get notified And then The Obviously The property Owners Notified again And then If They don't Take Action of Our money And then The tax sale date And then People come in And they'll Been on the Properties for the amount That they owe Obviously People can obviously Get into it You and I want The same property Got Get into it Or anything that comes Any money that's Made over The cost Of What The tax Goes back And then Once the property Is sold at Tax sale There's a redemption Of their life With all the bills And everything For one year At the end of the year They either Be redeemed Which means The person who's paid The money for the Property Is earning Good interest And They get paid up They go away The person retains Our house If they don't Then They're No longer Retain ownership Of the house And the person who Bought a tax sale Becomes A new owner And then It'll happen It'll happen this spring now This is all turned The list over to my mom I don't know how busy they are But they'll come down here And the next So I'm hoping We do it in March Maybe sooner Depending on them There's obviously legal Requirements And certain things That have to happen So I think We've done As well There's only One Oh boy One property Maybe that We can't locate The owner So For government operations You can see You know That This is where we included The Better Connection grant Money for Jose So This is the full 7,000 Because you can't budget Half Because he's going to need The whole thing And it doesn't go into a fund So It doesn't go into a capital Fund Then It just gets rebuilt Back into the general fund You know And you can see If there's Something better Three-year average Of the Capital I call it Capital Building It's called This Capital Improvement Reserve Fund Or maybe it's going to be Capital Facilities That has been budgeted A flat of 50,000 Add a new Line item this year Which is $5,000 To go towards Your reappraisal fund You have about Half The amount of money That you need For the Appraisal And you are In my opinion About ready In 2007 And obviously Property values change It's just a matter Of redistributing You know The current Property values Whether When the property When the town was Assessed At that time obviously The blisters do a great job Of trying to keep on top of it But you're doing embankments You're doing more stuff That's to me A sign That you need to start Thinking about Reappraisal In the next couple of years And you have About half the money To do it The process normally It's going to cost A couple hundred grand Because we started Doing one And we were doing ours In Bristol And we have 1600 We had Bristol has 1600 parcels You have about 1400 So it's going to cost A couple hundred thousand Dollars You get it done Not everybody does them And it's tricky And hard to find people Outfits that do it So the good news is You've got You have Probably half the money That's terrific So what happens is It's probably going to be Two-year Or re-roll And re-appraisal So the great news is You have This chunk of money already Set aside That you've just saved From the state Then what can happen Is over the next couple of years As you pay them You'll be able to pay them You'll be able to Budget for it So once you Start that process So you probably Won't see it Even if you see An upcoming budget You're sitting on About like a hundred and I think one twenty-seven Or one forty-seven So you have money To start the process You wouldn't have To borrow money I wouldn't think I think that you'd be able To just pay them When we used our That we used We paid them a monthly So you know what I mean So you have the down payment And you pay them You know How long it took them To finish it It was going to take Two years Because it was a Rolling re-appraisal Because they are going Inside every single Profit That they can do first And then They start then You kind of notify people Street by street Postcards and a set of Appointments And you decide Whether or not One of your listeners Already know staff Can do the input Or would you Farm that out As part of the Contract But you've worked that out But you're definitely My point For that So it's time To start contributing To your re-appraisal I'd like to see More money Going there this year But You know We just Plum area for budget So And I know Greg and I have talked About your capital Improvement Reserve fund It would be nice For you to tighten up The language of that You know Certainly Greg and I Have discussed it What people voted on At the time And the Very broad Explanation that Was given at town Meeting that year You know Certainly it'd be nice To see you take The 110,000 That you're putting In place And Start a capital I'm just going to use Basic terms And capital Road fund So that you Have that money Because instead of Losing it To go back And that doesn't make Thumb bounce You could go In the capital road fund This could be Your capital facilities Money And that it's nice Because then As you have Maintenance Things to be Built Or taken care Of that You know You have a list Of what happened When And so that money Would be Set aside In a capital fund I think they're Certainly their intent Was great Which was basically You need to start setting Money aside In case you have Things to happen You're not just Waiting for FEMA You'd actually Have some money To pay for things To get done So it would be The same thing With capital Road With capital facilities And then Obviously you already Have a real Crazy fund That worked out For you So Then it's nice Because those things Are being set aside I know I just met with The fire chief earlier This evening To do your capital Right now We have a Fire equipment fund So it's nice To kind of Right now We're trying to Put two things in there Which is their equipment And their apparatus And it'd be nice To split those out So you know What you were saving For when So we're separating Those out They gave me stuff I'll pick that out For you And then Gary And Dave Are working on Capital equipment So it's kind of Nice to have The money So the same thing For the highway Department You have capital roads And then you have Capital equipment So it's kind of Nice to have Those monies They're not always Borrowing money So either have A down payment Or Wow You can pay for it So Which is nice I didn't really Appropriations As Paul's I only had What I did Was I left them In italics And bold Because I don't know The actual numbers Except for a couple That we did receive Debt service Has changed I took that You have that FEMA big FEMA debt Of 1.7 million That we were able To get to 1.4 I moved it Out of the highway Fund here Because You refinanced debt So it seems like Very good I agree that it belonged In debt service Not necessarily in the highway Fund Even though You know Obviously some of the money Had gone there So we didn't lose it It's still here And you can also see We paid off Sewer Bond So that's why One of the reasons That the budget Looked good Is you had about $30,000 savings Between wages And Benefits Plus another $35,000 Because this was Paid off And And we refinanced The Long-term You know The debt To the 25 You know We knew that Would come down We talked about that Last year There's School tax County tax Alliance fees You know So there's not much Much the same I know we haven't Got any The details yet But the White River Valley Ambulance Okay So I did speak to I was quite confused By Original Anna And God bless the Webster He came down Last fall To see me about it So What had happened What I was They had sent a bill for money For more money And I was like Wait, I can't pay you that Because That's not what we Appropriated So he came down And went through it What's happening for them Is They know What their starting number Is And they don't know What their increase Is going to be So I budgeted After speaking with him I had a higher Budget increase I had five percent And he said In his history They usually made Around one or two percent So I had budgeted Six months We know what it's going to be The other six months We don't know So I put Three percent Because I was concerned About the rumor Of Randolph Not contributing Members in all Papers And He had met With the town manager And Randolph As well as Somebody in their finance And they seemed to Perhaps not be Maybe they're not Going to go that way But if they were That was going to be A big change A big change for us So So That's why I budgeted Three percent For The months We don't know yet So if he comes in Under that Terrific That was going here But Because last year They went five percent Last year He told me They haven't done More than No, they went five percent Last year Okay He said about one They went probably Two or three years Where Pretty level-funded Yeah You know Very slight Increases And then last year They went five percent Well, we spoke on the phone He said historically And I had So I had to Drop it To three percent He said historically And I said maybe I should Go back to five percent Well, I was just trying To figure out We were at One twenty-seven-eight Last year One twenty-seven-nine If you're round up And then now you have One thirty-five-nine Yeah, because I know What six months of the payment Are going to be Because he sent us a spreadsheet So I know what six months Are going to be And then I added Three percent On to the following Six months Because I don't know But I had five And I dropped it To three And then I spoke to them Seeds like that increase That's That's You have about An eight thousand Dollar increase Over last year Which is higher than Three percent Well, I But remember Six months of the payment They increased There's a January So They They increased There's a January So we haven't Even started paying That amount yet So I know What we're going to pay In January So that's an increase Over this year Plus we're going to I added Increases this year That we haven't Seen yet You know what I mean Like our payment In December Is one amount And it's jumping To whatever It's going to be in January So there's an increase Over this year And that year They kind of do a For two thousand Eighteen They went five percent Was that right? I don't remember what Well that Could be Well they went from One twenty one To one twenty seven The last budget They gave us Went on five Because they They're on a calendar That's our email Week Let's go Or two weeks ago And Or maybe it was one of the Right in the red It took a week to go And spoke to Steve Webster Last week So whatever Percentage increase They went up We're basically going to See two rate Hikes in In this number So we're just seeing The one for January And then We'll see Again next year I can just Forsee this This is going to be On some people's Raiders Well I'll have A better explanation For $15,000 In two years I'll forward you to the evening Because Pretty good height Ten percent Who's your person on the board Because I get emails Every month From Steve Webster That talk about Neil was I don't know Neil still is His name is still on there He's still getting those I think he's still Your liaison I'm pretty certain So you are I get monthly emails From them about their budgets I can start Printing them out Affording it to you But If that's Neil Maybe I mean I know There's other people that are Interested in the community And taking that liaison Position You might want to Have someone come in Yeah because He used to He used to Commit into a presentation At the town meeting For the past few years He has not Is that an Appointed position Yes We appoint that yearly Because I don't remember Did we Appoint that this year I don't recall The three years I believe it's I believe it's a Three-year appointment Maybe we can look in To see what that I don't remember Appointing that this year No I don't I'm not sure What your history is But Anyways it would be nice To level that person Because if they came in Every quarter or something They need an update But I can forward The email Afford Well I know this Was a Hot button Topic in this town When I first came here 10-12 years ago Because we were talking About maybe Doing our own services And it's been Pretty level-funded here The last three or five years But now it's Starting to ratchet up again And I can Well I'm sure just like Eventually there will be A few people looking at it Pretty Well Afford Do his email But you know Could be I'm not sure that Rescue trucks and all that Are I don't remember Not on the sheet But And you guys have met Right Your social services group So Yes we have I turned over The information to Kelly this morning Awesome All right so I'll get back Just like A $900 increase Okay Over the last year Um So is there any Questions on expenses Or do you want to Go to revenues? Revenue Revenue Revenue Revenue Hey one question I did have Unless I Can't find it in here Is one revenue We will start Having Is the The solar Array Peace The Green Land Just made a Peace And it's Something like I think our shares like $1,500 or something Is it coming To Bethel Yeah Yeah we We get half of it I don't know I didn't know If you had put it In some line item So It's not a lot of $1,500 I'll have to go Maybe Greg can Pull up the The final contract That we signed But I'll get to The number But we get Half of that It's at least $1,500 I think $3,000 split Yeah It goes up by the year So I'll put Green Land For customer Or $1,500 So Now obviously You had a Peace schedule Increase So we did Make a couple Of changes Of Regoration Air B Zoning Application Peace Some of the stuff Obviously Is Set by Statue So I'm guessing On high base On VTrans As I haven't heard yet To see If there's a follow up Email From them To see You know It's always a Proud shoot Not sure What That was threatened That you're going to get Last But you never know What they're Going to do So I'll see If there's an email Out But So what I did Was For AOT Structures Grant AOT I was talking about Highways Class 1 2 3 So If you go down To the AOT I'm sorry AOT Structures Grant I didn't budget Anything That was an actual Right up That was an actual I didn't budget Anything To that That was the That's prior to your Grinch grant Grinch grant Oh Yeah These are just Pretty Flat So Yeah So overall our revenues Are going to be Local revenues Yeah Down a little bit Down about 15,000 16,000 Majority that comes from Looks like some of The reimbursements on The miscellaneous Schedule Right Yeah Because it depends Some of it I just don't You know I don't know Grinch We're going to get We do have a The same At 50 I'm not sure And Oh yeah The penalty I dropped Interest I dropped Education billing You know You're just not sure But I probably could Put five Bring it in So at this point With the budget as is We're looking at A one point Actually Three seven percent Increase There's some questions Here Like what you're Going to do Constable Obviously I put 25 We're going to stay 20 Here You know If If you're Looking for the Three percent market You know I'm certainly in agreement With Chris That we Put more money Into the capital funds What's your thoughts on the On the 50,000 Budgeted for Delinquent tax I mean Last year was kind of a An Easy target to hit Because we had So much Bad taxes Yeah But we still do You know We could have probably budgeted A hundred thousand Yeah Well I think it depends on the weight Roles But I think the number To Greg today I think we collected Nine Almost ten percent Yeah Percent of the last year You know The thing is Those numbers are funny Because You know While you collect some Delinquencies You have new Delinquencies So But the idea is We want to get ourselves to zero Well On that So Should we start tapering That down Because Because if we don't Start tapering it down At some point You know That 50 grand is Two and a half cents Right So at some point We're going to come to the end Of delinquencies In theory Right And we don't want to Have to put that Taxpayer burden In one year Right So Should we start moving The needle down To have a tax sale now And hopefully See some cleanup If everything sells You're going to see Because my original Amount That we sent Was like 225,000 I think That we sent originally And now we know We're going to drop Some of the properties Out of there But What was weird About delinquent taxes Is this When They're considered Delinquent For Delinquent In Bethel May 16 Unless You're ridiculous Postmark So That's when We consider them Delinquent So you always Have that First round Of people who Miss their payments Or So we consider them Delinquent That's when We charge the penalty As of May 15 So yes We clean up 2012 13 14 15 But you're always Going to have Some sort of Delinquency So I mean You're always Going to have People That are in that boat And how big That number is You can't You can't Because it's fresh Right So there's that number there You're not going to Tax sale After almost a year You know By rights Once we get Really Get through this big Tax sale We will do one Hopefully For May We'll be doing one In the fall To winter Every year To see You know what I mean So that So that number Is a A lot of money That's meant to compensate For the fact That we'll be That there are People that have Delinquent Tax accounts And this money is Put in there To cover that Well we're We're now It's an Estimation of what You need to collect Right Yeah In a perfect budget In a perfect Scenario That my item Would be zero There wouldn't be Or there wouldn't be And because You wouldn't be Collecting back Taxes You know But Bethel at some point In this process Years ago You know Due to delinquencies We started to Actually budget For delinquencies Right And it's not It's not a sound Budgeting Philosophy That we're Doing Because You're always Going to have Delinquent Taxes Because The fiscal year Ends in June When you have The fiscal year And you know There's people there Right So And you can't And yes You've been Sending the notices And trying to collect But you're not Going to charge The penalty And stuff until May So It's hard Because you're Basically It's very You're almost Always under Collecting Because When we're Sending out The tax bills You're sending out The tax bills So That number changes Whether you Have grievances Things like that So the values Change But remember The school gets their money No matter what On June 30th So Bethel's left holding The bag for the school district So we're trying to collect Taxes that we've Already paid them So I think Eventually Chris Should probably see that At like A 20-25 Well, I just didn't know at what point should we start you know, do we gradually drop that over a period five years? Or do we just cut bait and get down to that number? No, I think I would gradually drop it if I was young. So is this year... I mean, because basically it's taxes or taxes. You're going to collect it. It's really all how we're accounting for it. It's either going to come in at our current or delinquent. It's still that same amount of money that we build. Because, you know, so to me it's really bad. But yeah, you can certainly drop it to 40 or 45 this year. And you know, in a perfect world, there's nothing in there because it's all in your current taxes. But that's not going to happen. So that's kind of why you don't budget a number of current taxes. Because I'm going to build in July based on the grand list that was watched in April or May. And then we know it's going to change because not everybody filed their homestead. So there's always this weird thing. So I think you're really just... It's a number. It's really just... And it could be nothing. It could be something. It's all just taxes. The way they come in is... You're going to take it in as a number. You could certainly drop it to 40 or 45 this year. But I do the guys will say, yeah, I think eventually you're probably going to get it to 25 and hold there. So if you want to drop it, do you want to drop it to 45? Well, I just didn't...  Because even if you under collect on it, even if next year your great job is only 30,000, that means your current was higher. Do you know what I'm saying? So you're really just... It's a number that you're moving around. Don't just stop. So you want to drop it to 45 this year, Chris? Well, I don't know. I just was kicking it out. So dropping it changes the percentage. It increases the percentage of increase. Yeah. I mean, it's not... We're talking hundreds or whatever. But I think Chris is right. It impacts that 1.37, right? It's just a number that if things were collected correctly years prior, you wouldn't necessarily... I mean, yeah, you're going to have that June 30th cut off taxes, physical year bounce, but you're also going to have it on the other end. I mean, what you may not collect that year, you may have collected it at the very beginning. So in theory, it should wash, right? Yeah, exactly. So let's drop it to 45 and then... Because I was shocked when I got on the board to actually see that we had a line item, a revenue line item to collect taxes that are owed in a previous year. So I thought that was kind of keeping why it didn't really make a lot of sense, but... Right now we're getting a $100,000 and some of that is super old. So hopefully we're going to do well and we're going to sell every property that goes up for tax. That will be the goal, obviously. I mean, we'll be looking for buyers. And then, you see, nice. So even if we don't meet this target, you would have made it in current taxes. Or do we keep it out of the year? I don't know. I'm just throwing the question out there. At what point do we start to ease it down there? I think it's probably a good thing to start easing it down. If you go five a year, I think you're going to... Because I don't know. I don't have enough history on the item, but it looks like it popped up. Well, you can see it was... It popped up back on 15. I don't know if there was anything prior to that, but... Yeah. It pops up onto the radar from nothing to something from 15 to 16. Yeah. And obviously you've always gone over the target. But I mean, you have the technical delinquent people, right? Which is if they pay their bill on July 2nd instead of June 30th, they're technically delinquent, but are they really delinquent? No. But the way I see this is more the true delinquent people that are a year behind on their taxes that we're still trying to collect from. It becomes a computer software issue because the ones we charge penalty, whoever, they're all considered delinquent. That's where the money goes. I know. It's a software thing. Well, something to think about. So, yeah, so overall, and I did draft a budget summary that I put in the town report last year, sent it to Chris, but there's some preliminary things in there. Obviously next week, we meet again Monday, and the majority of that will be just about budget because you'll be making certain decisions about... You need to get it done until the week before the town report. But I think... So do we want to wait until our next meeting to go through any of the prior budget pieces? That was kind of the intent, because I was going to have a department head... Do we want to kick around some of our ideas tonight so that we can have that information for the next meeting to know about? That would be good because I... Because if I hold on to my questions until next week, or next week, then where the department heads are here, I don't have enough time to explain why they really need that extra $5,000. I agree, and if I need to do some thinking, I'm not really going to pull it up.   So this is just... Well, one, I think that first of all, just kind of looking through it on a macro end of things, it was nice to see that one, our accounting seems to be more in order, and it seems to be that we're not quite at the point where we want to be, but we're getting closer, and you can kind of see that with how the budget has been this past year and this coming year. The only thing I do worry about a little bit, and this is just the extreme conservative end of me here, is just wanting to, even when we have a good budget time, good budget times where we don't have to necessarily increase drastically, is a good time to kind of plan for future events. I agree. If we think that over a long period of time that we really need to be here, and right now we're here, and the average is whatever, 3% a year, but this year we're just saying, hey, we really need to increase things 1%. Should we just increase 1% this year, or should we increase 3% and put more money into some of those items that we might need two years from now? Because I'd rather have a bell curve rather than an ups and downs, or budget wise. And I agree with that because of the situation that Beth was in, and I'm sure Greg is agreeing. A lot of the things that you have are not in great shape, and so it's nice to have some money set aside for especially equipment. The highway is in need of things, certainly equipment and one truck in particular they put a lot of money into, and they didn't have tires. So I agree with Chris. If you're trying to hold this 3%, then it's smart to set aside money for these things. We need a town's garage or a possible solution. The existing town building that we're in now, my estimation is that we'll remain in there for 10 years, but I spoke to Charlie Martin, you know, at CVS, you need to drop those 10 grand into this place to just insulate the basement and take care of some stuff so that you save these half while you're pumping out of your meat. So you know this list. I mean, that's the way it is no matter what town you are.  So I think it makes sense. I mean, Greg and I put in your constable, whether or not you buy a used vehicle or a new vehicle, certainly depends on the longevity of the existing cruiser, but so you're either going to have money to go out and outright buy another used one, or you have money towards a new one. So I agree with the thought process because it's something that, at least in my impression, you know, we've all been very reactive. It would be nice to be proactive and start setting aside money and being able to deal with things as they come on. And just trying to balance that out. I mean, you know, department-wide, and if we go to all the different departments, you know, everybody still needs to get to that point, right? So I'm just trying to, you know, when I'm looking through the budget, it's kind of more of a, you know, like whatever, the fire department might need ten different things, you know? But do they need all ten of those this year, you know? Or over the next three years, or, you know? And when you talk to them, you know, when you're talking to whether it's high weather, a lot of these guys need more than they have. This is just what they're asking for to finally make a step forward. This isn't even everything that they needed or wanted. So you know that that will need to move into that, in that direction. And, you know, I hardly certainly do it all in one year, but you're just, you know, I think the goal that, right now, is we need to have a budget that people can actually live with and work with and still not, you know, flip out every time we have some big thing that's come up that we're running out of money. I'm shipping money all over the place. Yeah. So, you know... So I had just kind of looked at it overall. I had added in the $1,500 for the solar stuff. Thank you. So we were looking at about a round number of $25,000 increase in budget to be raised by taxes from last year, which is just over 1%, it's 1.18%. So it was talking to Teresa about, you know, is this the year to, you know, just put a modest increase, or should we stick to our table and put some of that money aside for the years when we're going to need it and not have to ask for, you know, if we ask for 1% this year, it doesn't make sense that next year we have to ask for 6% to try and increase that, you know. So just kind of getting that thinking mode on that, because, you know, that's the way the town for many years was, was we were very short-term thinking of, you know, peaks and valleys and peaks and valleys and peaks and valleys. And as your long-term planning gets there and gets better and more accurate, we're coming to see that, okay, maybe they need $50,000 this year and then, you know, at certain times, because of things that these are going to increase, like, you know, in 20 years, when you need to replace a fire truck, I know that's going to be $450,000, so $50 is going to have to some point go to $60, which is going to put their gradual increases. So if you have the opportunity to increase those things now, it's going to be smart to take advantage of it. The thing that I'd look at is, I think it's a great concept to build those swans. We've never done that before in one place. Right. And that's just, you know, tremendous work on your, bringing us around, the ship around this direction. But we've also dropped a couple of bombs on the taxpayers recently with the taxes and also with the water and sewer. Not the sewer increase, but the water increase. So there's been, you know, I hear a lot of pushback about that, why, why people understand in the end, but it's just been a couple of big, you know, surprises. Sure, last year was a 10% increase. And so maybe we don't go full. We kind of try to keep it down a little bit, showing that we, you know, try to soften that edge a little bit. I definitely see that. They also have to remember that they paid, your taxes weren't that high. I mean, if this, you know, for a year, so there's two sides to that story. Yeah. But you know, you think about some of the senior citizens. Absolutely. I agree. I understand. You know, so there's, I mean, I see, I see this year, this past year as the year that Bethel is finally covering its costs. You know, and in regards to what those increases had to be, I mean, we can't operate in a deficit. You know, that's just, so I mean, however, you know, we need to get to the point where we can cover our costs, but we also have to get to the point where we can operate the town in the fashion of which the citizens want us to operate it, which, which this year just covering our costs was a big, or last year was a big, you know, was a big hurdle. I mean, our, you know, water rates went up in sewer as well as, you know, we had to retire the long-term debt that we had been kicking around forever. But now we need to continue to get to the point in this town of the services that taxpayers want. Unless the taxpayers determine that they want different services, right?  But I can give you just kind of what I've been kicking around. So I agree with what you're saying. I mean, certainly, and then, you know, but there's also, we still had money last year that we obviously had lost money. So for me, it's still, and I've said this, you know, it's going to be a couple of years until we really can see exactly what we're going to need to keep it going. And so you don't have a crystal ball. It's hard to know what kind of money you're going to have. You're budgeting 18 months out.  Whatever is your target is, it's not a bad thing. I mean, I was looking through this and I just kind of went through what I was thinking, and then at the end, just kind of looked to see where the percentage was. But I moved some items around and increased some other items, which was almost, almost netted out. Take a little bit out of the budget here, put a little bit in the budget there. I'm still pretty close to that, you know, one, one and a half percent area. So it's, but some of the things I wanted to kick around the board that I, you know, thoughts were, you know, quickly was, and we can get the information to the partner head so they can change our minds or, you know, is, so just the biggest items are, if you go to, well, obviously public works is always our largest one. So we had the salt portion of it, which we budgeted $68,000 for the current year that we're in now. We did have the 15% increase in cost. So if we buy the same amount of salt, you know, this year versus our next budget, we know it's going to be 15% more, but 15% only brings us to $80,000. Currently we're budgeting $100,000. So, you know, so for what I'm gathering is we're going to end up using more salt. Now, you know, only mother nature knows what we're going to use, but, you know, kind of going out there, if we use the same amount of salt, you know, as last year, then we will probably be around $100,000, but, you know, it's kind of hard to budget when you don't know, but just taking what we budgeted last year and adding the 15% of drugs to $80,000. So I was kicking around, you know, using $80,000 with the salt, which would put $20,000 back into the budget to use somewhere else. We did get the, we did get a pretty good deal on some sands. We took advantage of that this year. So our normal budget is $35,000 on that. We've gone over our budget on that, but that's going to, theoretically, if we don't use that sand up, that should help us for the next budgeting season. And the same thing now, if we budget $100,000 for salt is since they had an increase in times this year, prices, you know, still bound as money left, he can get salt if he has a place to store it. So he could also, you know, at the end of the year, if he still has money left in his salt budget, he can, you know, do that. Obviously last year we saw an increase in freezing rain, and so yes, we budgeted more than the 15% increase in time, because, you know, we just don't know. Well, so what I did is I took $20,000 as a salt. So just said, last year's budget, plus 15% increase. On the sand end of things, you know, we technically bought $16,000 worth of sand more than budget, but we had a good deal on it. That's why we took it. So that's about a half a year's worth of sand. And I'm not saying take the whole $16,000, but what I was going to do was credit back $5,000 on the sand. And then to pick on everybody. Well, where were you going to put that money? I'm assuming that that savings of money... So there's $25,000 there. ...is going to stay in public order. Yes. Okay, where are you going to... In theory, yeah. Where were you going to reallocate it to? Well, I was looking at increasing the Highway Rehabilitation Fund by $30,000. The reason behind that is we have... We were supposed to start the Sand Hill Road portion this coming season. If we look back through the road map that we have, right? Sand Hill Road? No. To move some of that money around, put an extra $30,000 in there so that we can try and keep that belt rather than, you know, do $110,000 this year and then next year, the year after, we're going to have to go up to whatever, $140,000 or $100,000. There's a chart. If you have that paving roads, if you don't have it, I can get you a copy of them. It's a paving road analysis. Yeah. So I was proposing taking 25 out of Salt and Sand, put $30,000 into the Highway Rehab, which that would go into our fund. So, you know, that would transfer from year to year. On the fire department, I didn't pick on any one, any single one item because I believe in department heads making their best decisions based on what they, you know, prioritize themselves. But if you take a combination of, if you take a combination of the communications, which last year was at $3,000 this year, they're going to $10,000, which that's for computer, portable radios, some dispatching app. They want to add the internet, which is $1,200 more. We have the facility maintenance, which I know it was at $15,000 last year and it's going to $3,000 this year. However, it was only at $15,000 for that one year because we added 10 to it. Typically, it's in the $4,000 to $5,000 range. And the reason that we dropped it was we were thinking that the rest of the repairs to that building could be taken out of that capital facility fund. That's the only reason, otherwise, we would have kept it up because there's still work to be done. So, overall, they had an increase of 12. And then, obviously, there's the FEMA match grant that we had agreed upon, which was $7,000 for the app radios. Right, so if they don't get that, that stays in. And $5,500 is basically going to the water. Right. Which is what we agreed on last year. So, there was around about, I don't have the number in front of me, there was around about $16,000 an increase. The total budget's up $20,000, $16,000 worth of, you know, these different items. I was proposing add that $16,000, take in $6,000 away from the fire department. So that would still give the fire department $10,000 to spend on said projects, whatever that might be. If that's, maybe we've got to wait one more year to get something, you know, the computer or something. And they have to wait one more year for that. Because it's kind of giving it more of a, you know, let's look really through our wants and our needs here. Well, and don't forget that some of the stuff that's driving your fire department is all insurance related.  If you're not adhering to NFPA standards, which obviously most departments are utilizing, you need to be closer than several versions away. You know, and their history is that they, you know, they left money on the table for years that they could use. And they should have been buying equipment and replacing things, you know, ahead of time. I have had several discussions with people throughout the town in regards to, you know, what we call the constable department, but others have fear of calling it maybe a police department at some point that don't want to see that. The consensus right now from people I've talked to is that they're good with the amount of time that they see him in and around the community. So I guess what I had done at that point was just keep the proposed hours the same as they are currently and not increase by five hours a week. I think we really need to concentrate more on getting actual 20 hours. I don't know why this kind of sticks in my crock. It seems like if you look at the increases, are we really getting, you know, what the intention was when the constable was originally brought on board? We actually getting those things. And just the more the organization department doesn't seem to, it doesn't seem like we're getting a bag for a buck in several areas like the, you know, the cruiser, running the cruiser back and forth, the Rochester. I mean, all these kind of picky things, but getting, you know, definitely getting 20 hours of patrol as opposed to, I don't know what the average is, but if you count all the training programs and the different events that he goes to and things like that, and those are all counted in that number, right? So we're actually not getting 20 hours of actual, you know, boots on the ground, if you will. And how all that is organized. I think we just need to look at that a little more. Tighten it up a little bit. He must have to get X amount out of his gear to hold this. We've had this discussion because I know it's been an issue. And basically what we decided is that he and I are going to sit out every time he's got any kind of training. And I have to, you know, I have to approve the training. We're going to see how it works out as far as the budget, who's paying what portion kind of a thing. The vehicle part, driving that back and forth, that's something he said that just because there's nowhere else to store the car, that's what kind of the agreement was with the Handshake Agreement passed. I think he said 11 miles or 12 miles one way. It's like this, and it's like that. Well, no, I'm just thinking maintenance on the equipment too. Running the rig up and down that mountain. I think the concern I have is in talking to a few people in the community that usually have their finger on the budget and have a pretty large voice in the community is that the budget is continuing to increase on the constable and the things and they want to see a presence, but they don't want to see a department. So that's kind of the fear. You know, that kickback that we're going to have is, you know, if you just look back four years ago, we were at a $14,000 budget and now we're proposing $46,000. So that's that alone, you know, we'll have that hurdle. I'd also look that down. For the constable, just also don't forget, we did add, you know, the $5,000 for the capital cruiser, which makes sense for you to look at the future. And two, the animal control contract. You know, we also add the $1,000 there because, you know, if you take a cat, someone takes a cat down there and costs just a couple hundred bucks and over the dog, and someone doesn't adopt or find that dog, you know, that gets pricey fast. So, you know, in the past, we were coding it to this budget, but there wasn't a budget for it. So, you know, so some of this stuff that was added was things that Bethel lights were already paying for. It just wasn't, it was an unbudgeted expense. Right. So we certainly were trying to find... Well, and the retirement and everything else. Yeah, retirement is new. That's a $2,600 a year that's not an expense. You know, and I agree. I think we, you know, those are the things that... And again, we can't do everything in one year, but those are definitely the things that we should be doing is forecasting these retirements and things, because we've all seen over the last couple of years, we've had some people retire here that we've had to, you know, shell out way more than the cat budget did, you know, to do that. I also was going to... I had proposed here to reduce the cruiser replacement fund from $5,000 to $2,500. And the rationale of thinking there was this past cruiser, the one that we just got a year and a half ago, we paid $9,000 from... I think it was Bratibor, maybe. If we put... I'm thinking, you know, every four or five years we'd probably have to upgrade that based upon buying and used.  How old is the vehicle already? Well, if... If you saw what we were driving before... It was a 92 Tahoe.  So I had taken that. I... Because I think that certainly depends on... Don't forget, whatever you buy or lights and all that stuff that's going to retrofit in the vehicle... Tires and all that stuff. Oh, yeah. Were you at 20 hours or were you going to the 25? Well, a combination, I took $5,400 out and went and stuck at the 20 hours a week, not going to 25. And also $2,500 from the cruiser replacement fund. I think it's great, we should have that fund. I'm just thinking more four or five year schedule, a $12,000 vehicle because the last one cost us $9,000. But then we had to put tires into it. We probably had about 12 or 13 into it at the time we did all the things we had to do. And then I added $5,000 to legal. And legal is kind of like trying to figure out how much salt we need on the road. I mean, usually you would think that there would be peaks and valleys on that but it seems like it's been more of a peak than a valley here in the last few years. We budgeted more for legal this past budget season and so far we're doing okay with that. You're putting that back to 20, you said? Yeah, I just proposed it back to 20. Plus the other thing I didn't know, yeah, 20. Because we had 15, 16, we were at 22, 8, 16, 17 budget. We were at 47, 17, 18, we were at 25. Right now we're at 55, which is good, but all it takes is something to pop up. Yeah, we still have it there. We got one that we're ongoing now. We all know it doesn't take very long to eat that kind of money. So yeah, so overall I had reducing the salt budget 20,000, reducing the sand budget 5,000. Reducing the fire department funding by 6,000. I can come out of whatever line they want to come with and reducing the constables budget by $7,900. So where are you putting that money? An increase in legal 5,000. Right. And an increase in the highway rehabilitation by 30,000. Yeah.  Yep. Where are you putting it? I didn't say I was putting it anywhere. Yeah, I guess that was the whole point of this. So that was where 20, so on. We had one, nine. So I have a $4,000 net positive. I took out 20, 25, 31, plus 8, 39. I increased legal, so that makes me down to 34. And I put 30 in rehab. So it's 4,000. You know, whatever. I mean, that's just my kicking the case. I mean, I think the biggest is the select one increase. I'll let you make that presentation. Paul is going to do that presentation. So I was under the impression that you were looking to this 3% to kind of take that velcro about. But by cutting it, you're going to have less than the 1.3. Well, that right here and adding that 4,000 back in puts us at like a 1.1% total increase to the budget. Right. The only thing I don't feel, well, what I'd like to do is add, you know, another 1%, 1.5% to one of our future funds. But I think we have to really understand where that's best appropriated. You know what I mean? Right, whether it's capital. I mean, I was able to kind of go through the road map of our paved roads, for instance, to kind of see where we could probably lessen our blow rather than have to have a spike here the next three years. We could lessen our blow there. And I don't know, like if we took another 1.5%, that's 25 grand. Is that best served in a capital improvement fund or is it best served in a, you know, but I do believe that we should take $25,000 more that we don't have appropriated in one said identity right now and put it in a fund for rainy day expenditure. You have a highway, or you have a fire apparatus or a fire capital fund that's in the hole and will be for a couple of years. There certainly could be some money set aside in there to at least bring that. So that, when you have a fund that's in the hole, it's borrowing from the general fund. So if you could make that hole, you know that Alan is sitting on a garage full of equipment needs. You know you need a new town garage. Right, so that would be capital improvement fund.   Last year if you take, if you take out the long-term debt that we had to retire regardless, we were at 2.8% last year. Well, I know you, because you had that addition to voting on in the end. Right. But what we proposed to the taxpayers was 2.8% plus the long-term debt. And then there was some items that were voted on after the fact. And I guess what I'm kind of looking at is somewhere around like a 2.5% increase, which is slightly less than what we had proposed that we could control last year. But that being said that about 1% of half of that increase is really just going to lessen our blow here in the next year or two, rather than have to do another spike on something. You know. I mean, I think that I like the idea, certainly of putting money aside, and I like the idea of going to the 2.5%. I think that the department heads know their needs and I will run a schedule for capital cruiser replacement. I think it might be shorting yourself there. But certainly I would rather see you fund the proposed budgets that you get with input from your department heads. And then after that, when you're still at 1.3%, you can still go to 2.5% by funding your capital funds. But why short people what they need? Well, and I guess we have to have a little bigger discussion with the department heads. And it's not that I don't believe that they need certain items. It's just when I look through the budget, and that's no fault of anybody. But when I look through the budget, I've already found three new computers we need. Do we really need three new computers in one year? Or can we buy one and then buy one next year and probably town-wide we do need those, no doubt. But we're still trying to transition from here to here. Can we transition that? I understand what you're saying, but you also have to remember these people who were done without for so long. Some of these computers are six, eight years old. I will say that once you get people to that point, we started a capital technology fund that we put money in every year so that you didn't have this round robin. We developed a schedule. We had an inventory done of everything that we owned computer-wise and then everybody was on a rotating schedule. Like here, since Greg and I have been here, we've had two computers or three in the last year that have just fried. So we've done that. So that was one of these things with some of the equipment that people are sitting on is just old. And so they obviously all held their strength by trying to figure out what it was if they needed to get their department at least a little bit moving in the right direction. Well, the only department currently that I had shorted was Fire Department, which was $6,000. Now I have a net $4,000 left after we went through this. So maybe they're net too. Or we soak up the other two. The only thing I like, the computations that you've done about the Fire Department, one, I think maybe need to stay where it is. What their requested budget item is. Only because the bulk of it, like you say, is insurance related and a lot of it is out of the hand. And I don't know if taking any money out of that is really doing, it's not a significant amount of money. Right. But the impact that that small amount of money would have is greater than the impact that it would have on the other end. I mean, I'm happy that the money would be reallocated for highway stays and highway, but obviously I would, you know, I'm not a road foreman, but I have a real concern about cutting salt and sand. He begs the question, what's the expectation here? I mean, what, I mean, Alan doesn't have a magic bullet that says I'm going to use half the salt that I've used last year, or I use half the salt that the guy before me used. He's using the salt that's required at your job. And shorting him, I just want to put a huge strain on him. Because he's going to stay within the budget. I mean, that's what we've told him. He's required to stay within the budget.  The year before him was $86,000. You know, we were up at $100,000 pretty close. And, you know, I just worry that are we either going to reduce the level of service that we're providing, or are we going to overspend that line item if we have to? And what are the repercussions of that? Or, to Theresa's point, is it better to put all the money in there, give them what they need to do the job, and then the extra can go for extra. You know, still provide them with what they need. And maybe he doesn't spend all that. Great, that money still goes to an undeniable fund balance. But I just, what I'm really, really worried about with the public works people are limiting their ability to do their job and do it to the level that the people in this town expect. And by cutting that budget by $20,000, that's, you know, that's really, really not $20,000. I mean, I guess if you look at it, between salt and sand, I propose to cut $25,000 between salt and sand. But if you just take a look at the sand that we over-purchased, right, because we had the deal, that's $15,000. So even if we took $15,000 out of this next budget, that doesn't short anybody anything, right? Because that's still the same amount of sand, the same exact amount of salt, right? Sure. So there's $15,000, right. But that's $15,000 that we can find in the budget without shorting anybody, right? In theory. In theo