So I'll start and I'm going to talk about how to get designers involved in your project. So a bit, a bit even more basic than we've talked before. So, yeah, I also work on next cloud and the design team since a long time already. And yeah, so the short story of how to get designers involved is basically go to open-source-design.net slash jobs and post what you need on the job board, on our job board of the open-source design collective. But the long story is a bit longer and I'm going to use examples that we learned from working on next cloud and that I also learned from working in other communities. And it's, yeah, very, very basic things which have a lot of impact. So can I have a show of hands? How many people work on an open-source project? Okay. How many of you do not have any designer involved in that project? Okay. Or somewhat maybe also. So this will be very useful for you but this will also be very useful for people who are designers who work on a project and who want to improve. So even though it's kind of, or I consider them very basic things or I keep repeating them in projects, I think a lot of people or a lot of projects still don't do them. So yeah, you'll see then. Just a small word about next cloud. You might have heard about the whole on-cloud, next-cloud fork.  So yeah, you can ask me later about it. But anyway, this next cloud is like an open-source alternative to Dropbox and Google products for files and contacts, calendar, email, video chat, stuff like that. So yeah, it's quite an extensive project. You already heard about Ragu that he maintains the calendar or co-maintains the calendar as designer. So yeah, we have a bunch of components and there's lots of things that we learned during the years. So first thing of four basic things is to establish a culture of design. So I was back when it was still on-cloud. I was like the fourth or fifth contributor and I was the first designer in the project. And yeah, it was very few people and there wasn't even a company yet and yeah, it was just like a few people hacking at a table and stuff.  So you can even see like I have trouble fitting it on the slide because there's so much stuff on it and so misaligned and yeah, that's the own cloud one installation. So yeah, it's pretty... I mean I could point out like what's wrong with it, like alignment of the field labels to the left, the password, you need to retype the passwords. It's pretty much a drag. You need to choose the data directory or you can change it, which I don't even care about. Force SSL, just do it. All this stuff like date format, what does g even mean? I have no clue. Probably you can tell me, but I don't even care. And then one of my biggest problems with the whole thing is the database. Like I remember horror nightmares of copying and finding database credentials somewhere in some weird other subfolder or asking my web host for that and even with like a bit of nerdy skill that was difficult. There is also like a technical choice to usability and some sort and that being how it looks like now, that's the installation now, you see there is no database field by default because we use SQLite by default. It's not 100% advised to use it for big installations, but that allows us because SQLite, if you know it or not know it, it's just a single file and you don't need to create any username, password, credentials or whatever, it can all be done by the web server. So it's a technical decision that allows us to actually make it so simple. You just need to choose an admin username and password. We could just also like directly log you in and give you the credentials or have default credentials, but that would result in a lot of insecure installations. So we don't do that. But yeah, we make it, I'd like to think even simpler than the WordPress five minute install and yeah, this, but you can still change storage database so you can still modify two things. One is the database, so you can change it to MySQL or PostgreSQL or whatever you want, whatever you implement and then also to, you can change the storage path so that you can store it somewhere else and all the rest is just done automatically. So the, yeah, so it's just username and password. It's basically, this is very similar to just the login screen actually and that's very simple. That still though leaves you with, you need to download it, you need to set the permissions and stuff like that. So you always need to know that in open source we have this additional problem. We don't have a sign in button on the page. We have a download button, right? So that's a very, very different thing. So yeah, but that gets easier and some sort also technical reason with PHP seven, I think at least because you don't need to mess around with permission so much anymore or on certain servers. So a lot of technical things interweave with the design decisions or with how the UX is at the end. And in this case, UX is of course the user experience of admins installing the software. Okay, so that's the first thing and I think I've been talking so long about it now because I think it's so important that the setup process is easy because that's the first reason that people turn around and don't use your project like website and installation process, I would say. Next thing is you have to care about details. So for example, here we have a colleague of mine. He's actually more of a developer but does a bit of front end and yeah, he opens that issue or we basically did it together. At every meetup we now do, we have four meetups during the year. They're like planning meetups or working meetups for the next version and they're open so everyone can actually attend and what we established during these meetups is that we sit in a meeting room and we install the newest version or the current development version and we just click through it as if we were like people new to the project and we just point out every single small thing. So you see like, there's like wrong capitalization for example or white space issues or some icon errors like it's white instead of black and stuff like that. It's very, very detailed things. So that establishes a general culture of design, a general culture of the, you probably heard about the no broken windows policy. So if you don't see anything wrong then you're also less inclined to do wrong choices or you encourage people to do similarly nice looking things. So that's very important to do that with everyone and everyone is in that room like all the developers or the other people working on it. So yeah, it just brings everyone together on this design or experience base. Second thing is be informative. So what does that mean? It's basically something such as simple as just putting screenshots in your readme, in your repository readme. A lot of projects I look at, I go to their GitHub or to their GitLab or to their repository anywhere and they don't even have any screenshots even though it is an app which probably has an interface and there's like a ton of explanation and it's like oh we use PostgreSQL and some blah blah blah cluster with some AngularJS and I don't even care about that when I want to use it. So basic thing, just a short explanation like even those tags are a bit nerdy but that's okay. So just short explanation and just a nice screenshot so people can understand what they're actually looking at. So that's very important. That's one very small thing. So the people who raise their hands if you don't do that yet, please do that now and because this is also similar to the website so if you don't have a website you just have a repository, do this. So make sure your website has short explanation and a screenshot but most projects don't have a website yet so just do this.  So we have some funny emojis, also part of design and we just list some features or some important functionality of the app to explain what it does and then we even have some more nerdy info like we say if you want to send a script to the email just use this browser extension and which libraries we use for example just for developers who also want to get involved and also what we have planned for the coming versions so it's kind of like being informative and being open about your process. Then we scroll down even more and the problem is always like oftentimes people or projects don't even have any setup info like how the hell do I make this thing run? I just download it and then what? You just clone the git repository which is already pretty difficult for many people and then I'm just left there and I see an install.sah and I see a grant file or some shit like that and I'm just utterly confused about what I need to do next and so one important thing is do not assume that everyone knows what they need to do with a make file or what they need to do if they see a make file or something like that just write it out and make sure that it's very few commands so I'm actually still complaining about this like about two commands so if it can be like just make it make or I mean nothing at all would be best but if it actually needs to be just make it one command because this I always forget like what I actually need to type and so yeah that's also another important thing like for people who actually want to contribute and who are a bit more technical maybe or less technical but would like to learn just spell it out like just write it out and those are the three important things in the read me actually I would say then third part I would also mention it same thing be welcoming and I like to repeat it because it's super important and I'd like to think that this is one of the big reasons why the next cloud design team is so successful the first thing for example is tying into the whole make or grand file or whatever thing is that you need to remove barriers to entry for example we have this issue or we have this thought forever like oh should we have some CSS preprocessor CSS in this case also regarding design right so we could talk about like I don't know using using composer for PHP which we also do in some parts but this specifically is about the CSS so it also concerns front-end designers and so one thought was yeah do we use SCSS and we were discussing about it in the past already and we're saying ah no we didn't really want to use it because like then people need to compile it and then this one contributor said well there is this PHP library which directly compiles it and next cloud being a PHP app you don't need to do anything else right so actually it's seamless so and I said okay if you can do it like that like if you can if you provide a pull request and if you make it if you rewrite it and if you make it so that it just works then that's okay but otherwise it's a barrier to entry and that's not okay so yeah we're on a good way like this issue is still partly open but most of it actually is moved already and yeah it's it's very cool with the yeah with the additional bonus of not making it any more difficult except you know the SCSS syntax is like I mean it's almost the same as CSS but it's it's very easy very easy to learn it's like not an entirely new technology so you can have some optimizations or you can have some cool tools but you still need to keep in mind that it needs to be simple then second thing what I will also mention I'm very happy that it's successful or that it works is two tags that we use or yeah we use many tags but these I think are one of the most important ones or two of the most important ones for open source projects in general one is the design tag it's just like an umbrella tag for everything regarding interface design and UX design any kind of design we just chose the tag design I actually got it from Mozilla where they use 13 different tags I think like UX feedback so if there's missing feedback or if there's a spinner showing too long then UX wording I think when the language is too technical or not understandable so we just grouped it to one design tag because that makes stuff much simpler and then also the starter issue or junior job label which is just for issues which are very good for people new to the project and as you can filter with two tags so you can combine these tags and you can just see what can I do as a designer new to the project so it's simple stuff like some logo or icon is misaligned or there needs to be some CSS fixes or something is broken in Safari and yeah some of the time of course we need to fix these things but often times we also just leave them open for a bit longer intentionally to get more people involved and this is also perfect for events for like small hackathons for example where for new people to get involved that we have like a list of issues that need to be done so that's very I would recommend that a lot raise their hand again if you don't have a design tag if you don't have a starter issue tag please create them now and add issues to it and open issues if you don't have them yet like if you know of design issues in your project just open them and communicate them openly so yeah I'm very happy that our design team is actually the biggest team in the entire organization and I would say like it's a pretty big team for any open source project and I mean of course some people are more active some people are less active but in general it gives like a great feeling that you can always just mention like Github has this at mention functionality that you can just at Next Cloud Designers review please or what do you think of this and as there are so many aspects like Android app, calendar app desktop and stuff like that it's very cool that people get designers involved some of these designers are in individual teams of the apps for example so yeah thanks to all these folks contributing so first thing last thing is talk about design like make it an actual topic this is similar to the culture of design actually say it in I don't know in tweets or in communication don't just say hey we do a developer meetup just say either we do a contributor meetup or we do a developer designer meetup or we do a contributor meetup developers and designers are very welcome just basic stuff like that for example also publish updates which are specifically about design unfortunately blogging is always something which is neglected of the feeling and we are guilty of that too but yeah sometimes we have design team updates and it's like when we had a discussion at the conference we have a bunch of info how to get involved some feedback what was good and then also we had three good questions that we discussed for example how was the design decided on how to approach a new feature and where is design help needed or how do I ask for it as an app developer so if it's discussed in this way at a developer meeting or developer designer contributor meeting then it's good to notice like how you lack things and how to improve things and coming back to the first point also yeah by the way next start conference will be in Berlin in August and one thing that we say specifically there in the text focus will be on coding design front end work and testing so we actually mention it it's just a small thing right we could just not mention that sentence or we could just say hey every developer interested just come around specifically mention design front end work so people of that area designers will feel welcome and that's often all it takes for designers to contribute so to recap have a culture of design establish a culture of design of simple design preferably to make it user centered be informative explain what your project does in easy terms on your website or in your readme very welcoming to new people in general like this also this doesn't only apply to projects who need designers this applies to any project and then also talk about design make it a topic and raise the profile of design so yeah thank you come contribute and please leave feedback for the talks and you can talk to me here or on twitter or github or whatever we'll see you next time bye bye


Good evening everyone, I'd like to call the Berlin Select Board to order, a meeting to order, a special meeting on Monday, January the 22nd, 2024, with us tonight, to my left is Flo Smith, Joe Staub, to my right, Callie Streeter, and Tor Nelson is on Zoom, with us also are Tom Bodowski, Zoning Administrator and Callie Streeter Town Treasurer. Callie got named twice. What's that? Callie got named twice. Carly Noiesel. Callie's looking at me like, oh well. It's okay Brad, I've had a long day too. It's a lot of cases. It's that kind of a day, it really is. I had meetings literally, I just got off one and came, I mean it's just been crazy. I don't know why we have meetings on Monday. What's that word? Additions or changes to the agenda, Tor? None. Public comment? Hearing none. Annual report? Okay, I sent out the draft of the annual report for the Select Board. No changes were made to it from last week's meeting. And I've not received any feedback on it. So if it's okay with you, I will send to the town clerk's office. I'll just add, Tor, when I printed it out, the page cut off two of the Select Board names. So they'll be on the report. Okay. I make the motion to approve the Select Board report with those changes just mentioned. A second. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Fiscal year, 25 budget review and possible adoption. So Tor, the change in the budget is 14%. That's correct. Now, taking a look at some of the tax rate implications, right now our tax rate is 0.7574 for the current year. If we take this budget as we currently have now and based on the current brand list, which I think is going to be a little bit overstated, the mobile homes have not been removed yet. And our anticipated revenues. That tax rate will come in at a 0.8725, which is quite a bit of an increase. $2,500, $250,000 home or current tax rate is $1,893. That would go up to $2,181, which is quite a bit of an increase. Now, I sent you a spreadsheet this morning. It's actually a compilation of several spreadsheets that Diane had been working on before she left. And one of the very first tabs is the reservation history. And so we do have $305,000 reserved for highway equipment, which we're looking in the budget for $253,000 for a new loader. And we have $56,000 reserved from ARPA for a new police cruiser. So we add those two items and our tax rate drops to 0.8146 or comes out to be $2,036 on the $250,000 home. Do you have a percentage on that one? You said the percentage on the first one I thought was 14. I do not. It's still the 14% increase in the budget. It's just the non-property tax revenues affecting the tax rate. So we're not actually cutting anything from the budget yet. Also, we have about $45,000 left in unallocated ARPA funds. If we were to apply that to the tax rate in addition to the other reserved funds, it'll drop the tax rate to 0.8062, which comes out to $2,015 on a $250,000 house. Now, Tom printed out for you the current budget draft. Can I ask a question? Sure. So I'm assuming, so that must mean the ARPA funds has no restrictions? Or would it be applied to? Basically for this year, and this is the last year we can do it, we can apply the ARPA funds directly to the revenue side of the budget. Okay. So looking at the budget, like I said, I'm figuring it all along a 3% raise for staff. I've not really heard any feedback on that. Does anybody have one away yet on that? Increase it, decrease it. How would it impact the budget as we've just discussed if we were to lower it to 2% as opposed to 3? Have you looked at that? Like just checked going a little higher or lower or two, two and a half versus three? That I do not have available. Well, and you did mention last time I think the cost of living was 3.7 or something? 3.4 for what I remember. I think a 1% difference in your wages aren't going to make any significant change here. In historic, I don't think they really have. Correct. Except for unhappy cameras. I'll just say that. Yeah. I mean, I think the three is a good compromise between what, you know, I mean, I know you mentioned that we want to increase it to the, I think, to the, to match the cost of living is what I heard you say last time. Seems. That's an option. You know, that's an option. I don't want to be seen as, you know, pushing this through. I want, you know, definitely want your feedback on this. Well, tour. I mean, if you're if the if the constant living assessment is is 3.4 and we're offering three. I think. I think that's fair enough. Does nobody feel different? No, I was just curious how it would have changed percentages. Basically, was my reasoning for the question.  I think you're going to have to look somewhere else where not the wages. Yeah, I do too. I mean, right now we have a we have a good working crew up here and I hate to. I hate to see it change. Yeah, I concur. You know, I don't have any problem with the staff and I'm very fortunate feel very fortunate, et cetera. I just was curious how it would change the percentages is all, but we definitely have to look at other things. There's no doubt about that. It was just this was the discussion at hand. Right. Well, that's where I want to just start with. I mean, in a way, it's a large part of our of our budget, but at the same time. Let me rephrase this here. I'm talking about the non budget. Right. Absolutely. So I'm only talking about budget here. Can you just go over the reserve piece? Or did you already? It seems as though there was going to be money added to the reserve. Does that true? Money, if I understand quickly, money taken out of. So we have. And we'll get into more a little bit, but we do have last year we reserved or you reserve 305,000 for highway equipment. Oh, no. I don't know if Brad or flow to. But, you know, of that. You know, use 253,000 for the for the loader. I guess I was talking about carryover funds and the emergency fund. It was. Did what you sent today talk about adding money to that? Forgive me. No. Not necessary. I'm not a question on all this, but we talked about buying it down with some of that money. I think there was more than a certain amount. I just was curious where that. And I don't think there's more than that in there. So I asked Diane how to pull it up, pulled it up. It said we have like 820,000 on that list and that did not seem right. But she also said to email the auditors because they haven't done their final changes yet. So I did email them and asked them what that number was. And they have not got back to me. I checked my email before I came in. So, but it's that seemed very high. But I think a lot of that is also this page as well mixed in. Because when I pulled it up, there was all of these in there as well. So. Keep in mind that the, you know, the budget has voted on is only the expenses. By the, you know, by the voters, the use of the reserve funds. You know, gets figured out at the time, you know, setting the tax rate. Yeah, correct. But I, but I think explaining that at the pre-town meeting is, you know, critical to that understanding. Yes, this is a 14% increase, but the impact on the tax rate is XYZ, right? Correct, correct. 100% correct. You see, I'm trying to think how to say this. The undesignated or the surplus is you can hold some reserve. But the rest of it is the tax payer's money and should go back. Or that's why you buy down the budget, but you're not really giving anything back. All you're doing is cutting down their taxes. Right, okay. That's a great way to explain it. So according to Cali, we have somewhere, if it's not 800 and something thousand, we would have that, we could bring it down to 500 because that was a suggested amount. So we have 300 and something thousand dollars to possibly adjust that. Since I've been on the board, we've always carried around half a million in the undesignated reserves. And I think in 2020, we used it to pay off the greater early. So it got down around 300,000. And I haven't really kept track of it, I'm sure of, but it's, I think 800,000. I can see that, I think. This designated reserve and undesignated reserve. It sounds approximately correct to me. And going back to what Carlos said about letting at the pre-town meeting, letting the town know what it is and that we actually are using our reserves. Because it's almost, if they don't understand that, at some point, that's going to catch up with us. We're not going to have those reserves. And next thing you know, you're 14%, it's more like 18%, or whatever that might be. That's scary. And keep in mind that, you know, using it this year, using the designated reserves this year, means it's not available for future. Right. But the state has always, or we have always carried about a half million because it's supposed to be a certain percent of the budget. And if you really looked at it, I think the actual number would be somewhere around 350,000. We've always carried about a half a million. So that gave you that, between the 350,000 and whatever the reserve actually was, that was what we used for the, to buy down the tax rates. So we didn't get rid of that. We always had something in the, in the undesignated. But to get the joke's point, wouldn't you have to have sort of a definitive number when you go to town meeting and say, it's going to be X amount of dollars? So that's what you have. That's what the decision process.  You know, don't worry. You can be pretty confident that that's not the case. Okay. So then you just start looking to me. No, no, no, no. Different hat. What I am going to say, I know, I know Brad sneaking maybe increasing the select board pay for himself. Yeah. Yeah. I'm putting words out there, but I've said this for a couple of years. I think the town of Berlin should really be looking at a back road or dirt road rehabilitation program, whatever that is. And it can't be just dirt on the road. Okay. And a culvert when failed.  Sorry, Tom, in the town of Berlin. If you look at the town residents and how many live on back roads. So anyway, going back to increasing, that's a line item that we don't have. But I'm saying this. So at some point we're going to be thinking about that. But I think having a capital budget for, you know, will help with so that when something comes up, you know, plan replacement of culverts versus crises when you spend way more money on it. Right. So I think that will make a big difference. And hopefully down the road, that will help to be able to address your concern. But I think what you could, I totally agree with Joe on this and Tom and I, we've talked quite a few times on this. That's one of my projects. But, you know, we do need to get a longer term plan for the road.   And I totally agree with them on this. And we did take a major step last week on this. I did issue an RFP for development of a asset capital improvement plan to start looking at the roads, the culverts, the bridges. And start doing this in conjunction with hopefully the revenue we received from the local options tax on how to plan ahead for these expenses. You know, prop, I don't say we're not properly expending them, but property plan longer term to expend, you know, these revenues and, you know, get the best deal for the town that we came. Yeah, good tour. Thanks. But getting back to the question, where do we cut. Has Tim said how, how, how the black top roads are. Well, I know we do still have the contract out on airport road. That was a state grant that the vendor was not able to get to this fall and we're first on the list to have that paved the spring. So that will still come out of the fiscal year 24 budget. We deferred paving. So Pine Hill road last summer. I know drive. Yeah. Which was 100,000. So we do, you know, so that's probably our first priority this year. You know, this year meaning fiscal year 25 is to plan on paving that. The asphalt budget. Is level funded 160,000 from the current year to next year. Now, if you know, with all the other work we're doing. On the roads with flood damage and everything this. This is a discretionary area that we have some flexibility in. My concern is that. You know, we get into the. Mindset we've always had much gets us in trouble as we just keep deferring and keep deferring. And then it becomes a crisis. Do you know which road. Tim was expecting to pay this coming year. I like to carry over from Pine Hill from last from, from this current year. And then been hearing a lot about Scott Hill. I know some work had been done on Scott Hill, but I hear there's still a lot of. Work that needs to be done. Yeah. Now, you know, another option is. You know, I've got 400,000 baked in for the unreimbursed. Local match of the FEMA flood damage. You know, keep in mind this number is. You know, a very rough estimate, but there could be. Opportunities to spread this over, you know, several years with with bonding. I don't necessarily like that idea. But I'm not opposed to it. Keep in mind that the public's work is talking about Scott Hill road. Tearing that up. So you may want to look at that schedule and make sure that. We don't pave it and then tear it up within two years. So. Yeah, just to pave it again. Yeah, right. Pave it poorly. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe there's a way the select board could have those conversations with. Public work work is that paving is baked into that into that project. May alleviate the select board from having to put all that money in the Scott Hill road. Scott Hill road did any, any patching in the meantime, or. I can only use so, right? I would assume so. It's going to be a pretty rough day. But I don't know that it can last two years. That's what they did on Scott Hill anyway, that short stretch going up the hill. That's a patch job. Yeah. And I'm sure that didn't came with a price, but that wasn't too awful expensive, I'm sure. Well, I was just thinking if Tom is saying they're going to take it, dig the road up anyway. I don't hate to put any money into it to have it torn up. Right. Well, that patch job they put on the hill, it's not going to last. If it goes two years, I'd be really surprised. Yeah. I'd be surprised that the pups work board got the Scott Hill road within three years. I just, I can't see it in three years. You mean the re-going it? The actual putting the pipe in the ground. There's a lot of work yet to do. Is that going down the edge or is it going down the roadway? You're not really sure, but there's road work to be done. Yeah. And there's paving money baked into that budget. So the assumption was that it's going down a paved section of the road. So it's not on, they baked in a pretty good amount of dollars into that. So what's, I can't put my head around this because I don't know what the cost of maintaining it until then versus the cost of paving it is. So I don't know how to make it, how to even analyze this situation. It's a million dollars a mile, right? For paving, probably more than that now. So it's got to be less to keep it up between now and then than it is to pave it and then rip it up and repave it. I would assume. I would think so. But I don't know definitively what that is. Number one. And if you don't pave that, does that mean you would do a different road? I mean, I don't know what this paving program is, but would you do a different road or would we just put it off? Well, to take and get the budget down, you'd have to put it off. Yeah. Well, that was my thought. But yeah, kind of makes sense to me. Yeah. Well, I was just trying to come up with ways to take and narrow the budget down a little bit. I hate to take and do it today and then have it cost me down the road. Yeah.  But I mean, if you're looking for a certain dollar amount, you know, nickel and diming it isn't going to get there, right? No. It's got to be something fairly significant to make an impact. Well, the paving budget is. Yeah. Right. But at the same time, I mean, it doesn't do any good to take and let the roads go. That's just false. Well, no, I mean, you'd have to be maintained, obviously. False economy. Correct. Dore, how much of this increase in the budget is inflationary? We have no control over that. I would have to. I know like the insurances went up quite a bit and we've talked about this at previous meetings.  I think about 10% or so. Of course, figuring in, you know, a 10% increase in health insurance rates. That seems to be the standard rate for several years now. And no release seems to be coming in site. You know, figuring in increases and. Fuel and utilities and everything like that. So. You know, things are getting more expensive and, and. You know, we have to plan for it. Now, you know, one thing we talked about last week was for the planning commission. An increase in the consultant. Beaks. To $50,000. Carlos, did you get a chance to talk to Tom about this or. Tom's here. I did, but since he's here. I, my personal opinion is planning commission drives a lot of what's going on in this community. It's adding to the grand list. I think out more than any other entity in the town. I think they, they've proven their, their, their metal. They've got 3.8 acres over, you know, at the, at the new town center, which is, you know, that's going to be a couple of several million dollar project when it's all said and done. And, and if we do it right, that'll add grand list value. To me, $10,000. And there's, there seems to be other, other buckets of, of monies that spend a significantly more than $10,000. And I, I, I think the planning commission has, has added value to it. But again, it's a select board decision. If you think $10,000 is going to be a nut, then, then do it. But again, I think the planning commission along with the recreation commission are the ones that are driving the growth in this town right now. Well, my question is, is there a specific project. That the planning commission will be using this money for, or is it just something to wait and see. The planning commission with the recreation commission has, has several projects. This ice rink project out here would require some match. The, the, the, the, the, the, doing that Blind Street municipal park up there that's going to require some match. This, what, what has proved to work is that if you are in effect shovel ready, and, and part of that is having lawn votes to that end, you, you become out. The eligible for more grant opportunities. And, and so having these funds at, at the ready at the reserve, I think affords this community the ability to, to grow both in its, in its tax base and its livability. And we did get money to help with the improvement at the gateway, right? We did. Yeah. So, you know, that will open the door I think for more possibilities over there with the path in terms of grant funding. So, I do agree that, I mean obviously, you know, you may think I'm biased, but I think there's, there's a lot of potential based on what's happened over the last year where we didn't receive a lot of grants. Now I think we might be better, more competitive. And there are several projects that add value to the grand list. We're going to be here something later today. The, the planning mission I think is having a program this coming Wednesday. The developer is coming in. Do we bank any of this into, into, that would be FY26 budget if anything came to fruition there. Is that correct to her? As far, I'm not following the time. Like if it does, if a project starts, let's just say, let's say the Starbucks project starts over at, at, on Berlin Common. And it's, it's halfway through construction in calendar year 24. That, I believe, will be assessed at a higher rate than, than it is today. Does that add, does that add any significant value? Do we as, do we as a community look at those projects and, and say that, that this project is going to be 10% complete, 40% complete, 80% complete by the next go round. And we could then point to our constituents like we, we're going to point to them with this reason, with these dollars that are in reserve. Right. We could say at town meeting, but these are the projects that are in the work. We anticipate this amount of, of grand list value added to this within the next year. And we understand it's X percent now. And, and, and just state that these projects will make the next cycle better. Do we ever, do we ever look, look at that? Does that get baked into, into, into the formula? Well, I don't know that there's any way to bake it into the formula, but it is part of the, you know, the vision for the town and where we want to eventually end up with the town. You know, I think the problem is that we're asking the voters to approve this very short term, you know, this one year budget, you know, very finite amount of budget. And, you know, they're looking at what's the impact on me, you know, as, as a property tax pay, then hearing the same things coming out of the schools and everything else where they're talking, you know, 20, 25 percent increase in their budgets, you know, that's, I think that's where the disconnect between the, you know, the two thoughts come in. But, but I think, Tom, are you suggesting that we present, calculate what that would add to the grand list and how that would impact taxes? On the go forward. On the go forward. Yes. Which I think is not a bad idea. That gets a little touchy, though, because those values are put in as of April 1st. No, but I mean, just hypothetically. Right. But they're in there. So if you make changes three times between April 1st and that's what I'm saying. I'm just saying, in theory, if you add a million dollars worth of value because of Starbucks, this is how it impacts the grand list and the, that's what, you know, just some hypotheticals. Not, I don't mean you actually put it in your system. Yeah. But even looking at that. So if they're, you know, halfway done in June, but then, so you look at that in June, but they're going to be complete by, you know, April 20 or March 20th. So it's, it's going to change in that piece. So it would be very rough. But you're looking at it very, very technically. And I think we're talking just like, from a high level, what would, what would the town expect? The anticipated increase in the grand list. And I understand. I don't, I don't begin to know what you're, how are you doing? I don't even know what you just said. But. Yeah. The concern I have, the concern I have with that is, you know, but, you know, and, you know, we, we sell this and then something happens and Starbucks doesn't come or one of the other projects, some of the lots don't come or something. And those, you know, never comes to realization. And now, you know, while you sold us this, but it didn't happen. I think, I think a potential for some, you know, ill will. Yeah. Being there. I like doing more with the concrete and that what we know will control these numbers and budget we can control. And again, I would only use project projects that have come in for a zoning permit. You know, not something that's more nebulous that, okay, yeah, this is a good project that we've heard about it. I would, I would just use actual applications. People have spent time and engineering on to, to present to the Developmental Review Board. And I think you're going to see a good bit of this in the next three or four months. People are going to be dedicated to the projects. Okay. Well, I don't know where to go. So I'll let you experience this all. Tour, I have a question on, on the flood work. Yes. So I'm going to say, do you have an idea of how many different types of smaller projects to kind of clean it all up? That would be some more ditching possible new culverts and stone lining these ditches that we haven't done yet. We have some of these projects that's going to carry through next summer. Right. Most of that has been completed. This 400,000 is just for the Paintern Pike, Richardson Road, Darling Road, and a Colvert Junction Road. Yes. The four major, what Westema calls CATC standalone projects. All the other work is basically completed. There's still some grappling that needs to be done in the spring and things like that. But for the most part, everything else has been completed. Now, the next thing is taking a look at culverts and not the culverts that were damaged, but any remaining undersized culverts looking at the state for medication funding, can we take some proactive steps to keep these culverts from failing in the future? That's additional pot of money from FEMA and from the state, which again requires a local match. But we're not at that point in time yet. With a good capital improvement plan, we've got something we can start planning for. The only reason I ask is because if our focus was maybe still on some of these back roads, and we're looking at $160,000 on a paving program, which we only used near about half of last year. And that's because we're on the back roads all of last year. What if we cut that paving about half? That would, well, that would get us, that would not be able to do Pine Hill, if we still want to do Pine Hill. No, that would give us enough money to do some leveling or patchwork only. All right. I get it. I think the two projects that they might have done for paving that was substantial was that Scott Hill and then Pain Term Bike North at the intersection of 62. That's correct. And you've got to realize that, you know, that section right there at 62 and Pain Term Bike North was done in the evening. So that comes with a little added cost as well when they're paving at night. There's also savings from traffic control. But it wouldn't eliminate the ability to do some of these smaller paving projects. And I think you're going to have, do we have some leftover from the flood that we have patched but, I mean, truly those patch jobs are temporary? Well, also keep in mind, we reserved, for you reserved 60,000 in asphalt and marking last year, which would be available. So if we cut what was budgeted, 160, right? Correct. And so if we cut it in half, that gives us 80 plus the 60. Is that what you're telling me? Take it down to 80. Well, if we cut the 160 to 8 in half. Okay. And then you said we had 60,000 in reserve for paving. Is that what you just said? Correct. 65. 60. 60. Okay. So now we're back up to 120,000 in paving. Right? Wow. Wow. Yeah. Okay, great. 140. We're nearly back up to the budget. Okay. I like that. Well, thinking of it that way, knowing the whole story, I'm saying, okay, we could cut it more in half. That was in my brain too. But what's the nut? What's the nut? What's the dollar number you're trying to get to? Is it $50,000? $200,000? So what's that? What's the nut to work? Well, that's your decision. That's not my decision. I mean... I mean that's the worst decision. Well, I guess I'd like to know what brings it back down to the current tax, the same tax rate. You know, just for reference. You're talking about 10% of inflation. Right? So we're looking at an increase of 4%. That's all you're looking at. Oh, you mean realistically. Realistically, it's 4%. Now, try and sell that to the community. It's still tough. Well, I think looking at this way, our current budget is just under $4.19. Okay. Now, if you figure in, let's just say we're going to increase everything by 5%, which is, you know, I don't want to say steep, but much more doable than the 14%. That would take us just under $4.39 before we get into the, before we get into the funny money of reserve funds and ARPA funds and things like that. We're at $4.67 million. So we're still looking, you know, $300,000 higher above that 5%. I'm not opposed to the reserve funds and stuff, but, you know, I think if we look at things as far as, you know, overall impact and what people see when they go to the polls, I think that message gets lost on and they just see the increase in the budget. So you're, am I hearing that you think we should, that the 300,000, so we should cut, you think there should be something cut out as opposed to just using the reserve or counting the reserve? Is that what I'm hearing? Because they're going to see the actual budget and not the revenue side and how it's being reduced. I'm trying to understand. Well, that's what I'm trying to prompt you for is, you know, what is the balance we want to go with? Okay. You know, cuts versus. Okay, gotcha. And stuff like that. I would like to see some cuts myself, but I am very much a tight wad when it comes to such things. Wow, that's not a bad thing. Okay, so to Joe's point, 100,000 could come from the asphalt piece and still leave 120,000. To start? To start. Well, you're talking about somewhere about cutting 300,000 dollars instead of using, or cutting 150,000, yeah, something in some, that's what I was thinking. So instead of cutting 300,000 dollars, let's just look at it a little easier and say, let's see if we can cut 150,000 and only use 150,000 in reserve. Let's look at it that way. Just to kind of start getting close to a number that's reasonable. And I hear your point, Tour, that the revenue is lost on the constituents, but that's then just a poor job of staff and the select board of getting the message out, right? So if we put some time and effort into explaining that, there should be some value to that. I don't know how much has been done in the past, but there should be a concerted effort to do that. I mean, it might be too late for this, but it's probably too late to do one of those informational... Yeah, I think it's too late for that. But again, we have a lot of interaction with the community. And we can have four or five public forums. We can go to various locations in town and neighborhoods in town and have a community forum like we did with... Yeah. And we did the zoning. Yeah, I like that. Yeah.  So, Tour, we have basically a $600,000 increase in the budget. Is that right? Correct. Roadside mowing. What is that? Is that 8, 10 foot swath? Is it two passes? Two passes. Two passes. Where are you can? Where you can. So, where you can is... there's a lot of travel in between, so there's a lot of where you can. And we're just driving that vehicle. I'm not saying we contract this out. Where maybe if your focus was on intersections and, you know, they could focus on the intersections in one pass. And I'm not saying you're going to cut that in half. No. But you can cut a chunk of that out. But the trouble... what's the roadside mowing for $10,000? Well... You got budget to 12. It's well. Yeah. Well, it's not a one-stop shop here. Just encourage you to come up with what the nut is and work towards the nut, right? Well, let's think. I mean, you're not going to be able to stay static. You're going to have to increase. I mean, just the evaluation of the dollar proves that. You're going to have to... I mean, for me, I would be looking at an increase of $300,000 to $400,000, $300,000 or $200,000. So that's what you're going for. There was $100,000 in paving. Right? So you're getting third of the way there, right? Callie, are you writing this down? Right? Right? And I mean, until we get the firm number on the undesignated, if it's $800,000 of undesignated, you might be able to get the $300,000 in one swoop. But until we get that number, we're kind of guessing. I mean, if we can get the $300,000 of undesignated and still leave us with $300,000 that's undesignated for us for emergencies, then I'd be happy. So there's three buckets, right? There's the general slack board, there's the highway, and then there's the police. Shouldn't it be $100,000 from each one of those? And there's your nut. You've got $100,000 from the highway. Come up with $100,000 from over there to come up with $100,000 from over here. It seems to be fair. There's a difference between fair and right. Fair doesn't always mean equal. No, I get that. Well, what is the police budget go up this year? 14, you said, Jeff? I think it was 14%. Well, it was so... It was 524, it's 145, $1,456,612, $1.58. Now it's not working. Oh, I didn't film it. It's a little over 8%. And I think the police is pretty lean the way it is. So the budget went up $128,000. There's probably a lot of baddest wages which you don't really have much control over anyway. Well, one of the things I'm always bothering you with is the police has so many expenses there that you can't really control. We have them liability insurance. I think the only control really comes with the size of the force, right? Yeah. And that's not going to be changed at this meeting anyway. One concern I have, and it's not derogatory by no means, it's just if you look at the actual FY 2023, the police over time is incredibly high, and we understand that, and we know that there's the reason behind it. But then when we look at the upcoming budget, it's considerably less. And that concerns me. If we're really high now, how are we going to be less than that going forward when there's an increase in crime rate, et cetera, changes? With the short staff? Short staff. So you had multiple people at the academy. You had people out on leave. And so that was the increase in the overtime. Right. Are they fully staffed now? Yeah. They are fully staffed now. And healthy. And healthy. I don't think it would be bad to go line by line in certain areas what you were indicating about going section by section per se. I don't think we necessarily need to do that, but maybe we should go down through and just take the time to say yay or nay to where each of these line items are and what we can derive from there. Or like you have said, where's the nut? I don't know. I'm wondering if we should take this home and make our remarks and comments on it and then if it's like we're meeting, we can go over it. Do you want to try to do another meeting this week or because we do have to have finalized by next Monday at the latest? I'm good with having another meeting. I think Brad's right. I feel like I'm maybe. There's to be enough time for everybody to. I think shots. I think having the reserve number is going to be important for that meeting too. So as long as you think you can get that by them. That's wonderful. Thursday. Yeah. How about you Thursday? All right. That's why I said Thursday. It's fine for me as well. Yeah. Okay. Thursday at six. Does that work for everybody? Works for me. Okay. So. Motion of table to Thursday. Second. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Okay. So we're, we can move on to. The executive session. Door. I move that we enter. And. But. I move that we enter. Into. Executive session. And the courts with one VSA 3138. Two for discussion of real estate. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor. Hi. Hi. Motion carries. We are now in the executive session. So there's no decision to be made from the executive session. So, Tom. I'm going to attempt to do this. As you everybody know that. Staff has been working on. Media campaign for the local options tax. And we have a. We have a video. I hope that. We could show it. Have you given me the ability to. To. Show something on zoom tour. Let me make you the host. Oh God. I love that technology. I know. He's a huge fan. I understand where he's coming from. So you should be the host now. Okay. Go back in here. In the zoom. First time I'm going to zoom on my computer. Computer went through an update. It's like. Why at that moment. Yeah. Zoom didn't load right. Okay. I'm going to hopefully everybody could see it, but it's not these guys here. We'll see it. I don't have it there. The next couple of hours. The next couple of hours. I just want to tell you that. Everybody can see it, but not these guys here will see it. I don't have it there, towards. is home to regional health care, retail and institutional organizations that attract patients, customers and employees. And all of these people contribute to our vibrant community and enjoy everything it has to offer. As our town continues to thrive, so does demand that our roads, water supply and sewer systems. Unfortunately, the responsibility to maintain these vibrant resources falls lately on Berlin proper near its shoulder. The town of Berlin is committed to supporting its residents and maintaining infrastructure. To achieve this delicate balance, we are introducing a solution. The 1% local options tax. This fund was a bit way we can come together to invest in the future of Berlin. It also helped Berlin taxpayers by sharing some of the work with those who visit our town every day. Together, let's build a stronger, more sustainable support for 1% local options tax and invest in the future of the town of Berlin. Yeah, sorry, I couldn't get it on. So is there one with interviews too? All right, I think that goes gone. Who's that girl? You didn't you do one with interviews? There are. We did. That was good. Yeah, it was nice. Nice. Right up till you're talking about sewer and you're showing water connections. But anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah, but can't have one with the other. That was a good message. Yeah, what? And it's on our website now. It will be there, I think by end of the week. Wonderful. Very great. Tremendous effort. And there's, as Carla alluded to, there's some interviews with some constituents. It'll be rolling out. We're doing like we did with the 2 other programs that we have. We're using then social media links to talk Facebook to then bring people to the town website to take a look at it. So what we'd like folks to do when you're sharing town business is to send that link as part of your email message. Say, oh, by the way, please go to this link. And then people who could do that you are discussing town business, even though they're not a town resident, the more buzz you can get going, the I think the better it can be. So are you going to send us the link? I will as a button on, right? Power of a percent. So, so true. 1% will help so much. Well, the only thing I have, I have found is that when we sometime ago when we were doing the free up to the to the local options tax, I was running for office. I was going around and I was speaking of the local options tax. It never ceases to me.  That's it. Yeah. They're they're they're seeing that 1% they may have to pay. They're not seeing the hundreds of value added. Yeah. Without the that's what our job is. Yeah. It's almost like it should be local option equals opportunity for the future. I think we should just name the capital improvement. You know, yeah. Well, any of them will work, I suppose. Okay. Anything else tonight? If not, go ahead, Tor. Nothing here. Okay. I see you forgot to put down round table, but we'll live without it. Thank you, Tor. Thank you so much. Good job. And a motion to adjourn. I make the motion to adjourn tonight's SWAT board meeting. A second. All in favor. Thank you.


For anyone that's looking to play a professional sport, yes, the physicality component is a piece of that. One could argue the most important piece because without it, you've really got no chance. Kevin Durant and Victor Oledipo were certainly born with certain genetic predispositions that would allow them to be good at the game of basketball. But there's a lot of people that were born with some of those favorable dispositions and a lot of people don't actualize them. So what actually allows someone like Kevin Durant to be a very talented 14-year-old and then ascend to being one of the best scores in the history of the game, there's a few components. One is a belief in the basics and a commitment to the fundamentals. It's a respect for the game and not trying to skip steps.  Another part is simply passion. Kevin Durant and Victor Oledipo are two of the most passionate players that I've ever met. There's no place in the world they would have rather been when they were teenagers than in the gym working on their game. They didn't play the game of basketball for money or for notoriety. They played it because they loved it and fame and money and notoriety were just a byproduct of that. It wasn't the intent or the purpose, they loved the game. Something else that makes those guys in particular unique is they did a masterful job of blending confidence with humility. They were both very, very confident players because they earned the right to be confident through the work that they put in during the unseen hours. But they always had a humility and an openness to the feedback and an openness to being coached. That no matter how good they were, they never thought they arrived. They never thought they were done. Kevin Durant would never let you put him under museum glass and say he's a finished product. Even to this day, he's still constantly trying to tweak and refine and get better at his craft. So blending that confidence and belief that I deserve to be here and I am a great player and I'm going to get this bucket mixed with, I'm still open to getting better. And if you can see a room for improvement or an opportunity for growth in my game, then I'm open to hearing it and I'm open to being coached. And when you take the physical talent with the mindset and the toughness combined with those attributes I just shared, you have the recipe of being elite at what you do.