year 2020, starting with our first one on January 6th. If everybody has kind of reviewed the agenda, first thing I'd like to do is approve the agenda as listed unless there's additions or deletions. Make a motion to approve the agenda. Okay, well that made motion. Jane seconded it. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Consent agenda items are minutes from December 16th meeting and a liquor license for billings mobile, hen of the woods, prohibition pig and craft beer seller. Would somebody like to make a motion to approve that consent agenda please? I'll make a motion to approve that agenda. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those who wish to approve the agenda, say aye. Aye. Time for public. If there's anybody here from the public that wishes to speak, welcome to come up. Joe, Tom. There's a little button on the back here. Just, yeah, Carl, good. What's on your mind? Joe Lumber. I just have a couple concerns going on in town. I want a credit bill. I had a one-on-one bill the other day for a professional. Very wanted my concerns and he was going to address my concerns. I feel a lot of waste going on in town and Bill said that he was going to overlook it, which I have all the trust in the world and Bill to do it. Bill is way over burdened right now with taxes and everything else going on, but very welcomed me into his office to discuss the concerns. The only other couple concerns that I had is why we're looking at a fire truck down by the Sewers Department. And we have one that's leaking water. Now the one leaking water is very numerous accidents on the highway. Why are we not taking the motor out of the other one or switch your vehicles? Whatever. We have a perfectly good pumper out of one and I was on the board to order these trucks. It would be an awesome backup truck. Yes we do need two new fire trucks, I agree. I'm not going to argue with Gary or anybody else. The one in the center is the most incredible truck I've ever seen. But we have a huge fire. We need another truck sitting around. It could be sitting in the center stage. You know, we could have two trucks in the center stage. Not a mini pumper that we use for a gate valve. We could have a thorough break. Now I don't understand why it would affect our taxes. You know, and our insurance and everything else. We have the truck. We have a mechanic that's totally capable of doing it. Why aren't we doing something with it? Are you suggesting that we consider taking those two trucks and turning them into one and hanging on to it? Certainly. I don't know if Bill wants to speak to that at all. I think, yeah go ahead Bill. Yeah well that's one thing Joe and I didn't talk about on Friday but it's something I can talk with Gary about. We considered doing that instead of buying a new truck and we all agreed that given the trucks 20 years old, we need to replace the truck. Whether it makes sense to spend, I think the estimate was around $8,000 and so to switch the motors. Whether that makes sense to do and spend that and have another truck here. That's really a question for the chief when we were going through the process of buying the two trucks that we decided to purchase. There were some members of the select board mark in particular who wondered whether we already had too many trucks. So I'm not I'm not arguing with the Joe. It's just that that's more of a firefighting question as opposed to you know my decision right now. So it's something I'll talk with Gary about if we need another truck that's clearly the cheapest way to get it. I'm sure you're not suggesting go out by a brand new truck. Another brand new truck. So my question to the whole thing is we have a town mechanic who's totally capable of swapping these motors and we could have we're paying him by the hour. We could certainly pay him by the hour and you know we haven't excavated it's a perfect engine wise. I do this for a living. I I personally can do it in two days. There's just no reason why it's sitting in a snowstorm and my point to it the one that's sitting down there has invented four accidents. That that truck has less than miles than the one we have with the water leak. Why not give them the opportunity to have a backup pumper when they need it. We own them. Let's make one out of the rest of them. Greg we need two new fire trucks. I I'm not arguing that. I I no way am arguing that. But we can have an extra pumper. One freezes at thirty four zero. You stuck in another one. I guess I can just say I'll talk to Gary about that. It's my understanding that we already had. Maybe it's an older truck that's back up. We have three first we have we have three first line pump trucks. Two were purchased in in 2000. One was purchased in 2010 and this year you know what what we did at that special town meeting is to replace the two that were purchased in 2000 and 2000. So we have three putting Joe's idea into practice would end up with us having four. One being just kind of a thing around that until it really gives up the ghost you can use it for something that's what you're saying. Yes. Okay. We own it. We have it. The next next question is that we have the additional room. Yeah. Okay. I would say that Gary made a point that the number of calls has been down. So I don't know. It's not the number of calls that you were. The one big one we have. Yeah. You know if you had an extra pump truck I would still wouldn't say the wall is fine. One more try. But you have something like that. That's my biggest concern is we have it or the other was leaking water. Let's make something out of it. Okay. If we have to have two trucks by two trucks. We'll definitely touch base on with it on Gary and see what we can do. Go from there. And my only other concern I discussed with Bill is I've been seeing a lot of stuff going on in town. A lot of waste of time. Using a quote that we shouldn't be using to do something we shouldn't be doing. Bill said he would take care of it. Okay. I know that Bill's hands till next month and I'll come back if I don't see any difference. I will come back and bring it out. Okay. But again, Bill, you're doing more than we expect you to do. Nothing against anybody here. Just a lot of waste going on management wise. In the town as time. We can have a whole lot more things in this town. We took care of it. Yeah. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. We're all set. Anybody else? Okay. So Mr. Malter about throwing some trash at us. Why are there so many Because hen of the wood and prohibition pig are owned by the same people and they have like, there's two pubs at 20 South Main. There's three like outdoor catering permits or also Thank you, sir. And you're also doing third class licenses now, but you didn't have to use to have to be before. So there's like eight or nine for the two establishments. That was, uh, that was an efficient way to Your class is hard. Okay. Presumably, you go to the chair. If you want, please raise your right hand. Oh, the microphone. I love you. I love you. Green button there on the top. Is it on? Yeah. You, uh, everyone and we have to see it's nice and comfy here. The information that I brought is still a little bit in draft form. I was expecting a couple of more documents for the annual report. So don't put this one in the town report, but I wanted to give you something that's almost complete. And at that, the pretty much final draft budget, the financial numbers for the financial report. It was told will be available probably Thursday. I'll get those to Carla. So we can include that in the town report as well. I don't want to start out like Charles begins to say it's the best of times and the worst of times, but to a certain extent, it actually is. We have been blessed by a really good awareness on the part of the public within the Med River Resource Management Alliance in participating in our various activities, uh, and especially in our household hazardous waste, uh, collections to the point of, uh, we're, we're, uh, we're exceeding our grass foam. We had 622 households participate this year on our two events and reached a point where I actually had to hire a sheriff for our second event because the traffic from Harwood was going out onto the roof 100 and I was very concerned that, uh, people weren't going to be knowing the event from the hazardous waste that was being removed, but by the number of other kinds of activities that were going to be happening. We wound up having the perfect storm in our spring collection. Uh, the school had had a period, uh, a period of, uh, sporting events that were postponed due to bad weather and they decided to put them all in on the same Saturday that our hazardous waste collection happened to be. So, uh, we had a double header of baseball, a lacrosse game, and, uh, about 300 people from the world of hazardous waste coming and visiting. It was, uh, pretty exciting to say the least. Um, but we did, as I said, have a really good turnout. Um, Waterbury, uh, was one of the highest participating communities with, uh, 31% of the, uh, activity of people bringing their stuff. Now, that could be taken several ways, of course, meaning that if you sit here in Waterbury, you just have too much bad stuff and, uh, should be looking at less toxic alternatives or they are just, uh, being very aware of, uh, their environment and, uh, want to do the right thing. And I think that probably is it pretty much. Uh, what we're finding is that, uh, there's, there's a lot of groundswell of awareness from things on sustainability, from, uh, people, uh, hearing about global warming and reacting, uh, pesticides like roundup making the news on a very regular basis, uh, the PFOA, uh, contamination problems. All these things are, are, are, are, I think peaking the public's, uh, attention. And we're really becoming a focal point in the area as an option for people to do what needs to be done and get the stuff that they have in their houses, uh, out of them and doing it right. And like I said, the good news on that is that it is being done right. The bad news is, uh, it is killing our budget and, uh, our being the collective are of, uh, all of our, uh, resources are, are hazardous waste contractor that we've been using for the, uh, PS2 cycles, uh, decided that they weren't going to operate in Vermont any longer. And, uh, us and four other, uh, communities, uh, were then forced to go out and find an alternative. I put out an RFQ to, uh, four different companies and I got one response that was viable and that one response, uh, made me very aware that it was not going to be cheaper than the company that we had had for the last two, three, uh, year cycles. John, a little bit closer for the mic, please. Sure. Can you give us an idea of how much percentage was more expensive? Yeah, I was just gonna do that. Uh, it turned out, I had budgeted about $26,000 for our two events, which was about 15% more than what I had budgeted the year before. And it turned out to be in the order of 40% more. And, uh, that was a piece of the entirety of the, uh, the, uh, budget, uh, expansion as, as it were. But on top of that, with the higher participation rate, uh, we also were blessed with somebody brought in something that had PCBs in it and it was placed in a drum of oil and where our normal drum of oil cost $67 to dispose of it. It was $1327 to get rid of it. And, uh, so you see how things escalate very quickly. Uh, we also, uh, like I said, had to hire a sheriff. Uh, we get reimbursed, uh, for pesticides through the agency of agriculture. And they've been very good up until this summer. And they're still very good, but financially, uh, they put constraints on all of the solid waste alliances, districts and municipalities, uh, because they've got budget issues. And as a result of that, where we were getting, uh, about $8,000 plus for reimbursement of our hazardous waste, uh, that was pesticide derived, we're now limited to $5,000 and it's a four year contract. So we know what we've got available and we're going to go, uh, as a group, solid waste group, uh, to the legislature to try and get this modified because on top of the fact that we can't get reimbursed for anything beyond that, uh, there is a piece of legislation that says if people bring pesticides to our event, uh, we have to accept it without charging them for it. So, you know, no good deeds going unpunished. And so we, uh, we have to deal with that and pesticides are several hundred dollars per drum for proper disposal. And never am I going to tell somebody we're not going to take this because we have to do the right thing and we will continue to do that. But this is just all part of the, uh, problem that we're confronting and, uh, trying to do this in the manner that's, uh, you know, keeping us sustainable. So John, can I ask you a question real quick? Sure. That barrel of oil that was contaminated, um, were you unaware of the fact till after we, they were unaware of it until it came back to the, to the processing, because when they bring the drums back, they then go to transfer into larger tankers and they sample them before they do it. And that's where that one was found. So, uh, yeah, better than having it there at that point than having it later on. And unfortunately, there are some basic tests that can be done, but there are, there are problems with, you know, you've got a lot of stuff coming in. And, uh, this is the first time we've had that happen. And we've been doing this now since 1994. So I like to think that we've been pretty fortunate. And there's also a small chance that I will be able to get that one drum, the cost reimbursed through the, uh, association that, uh, is the solid waste managers around the state. We have, uh, a contingency fund for extreme hazards. And this one certainly offers that from the financial side as opposed to testing it on site because of the problems that, you know, you got so much coming in, you're trying to deal with it. Is there a labeling process that, uh, you know, whoever brings it in, you could label them on that specific sample or barrel or whatever. So that you're, you're invited to be one of our volunteers. Uh, no, it's, it's a really hectic time. I mean, you've got people coming in with five gallon cans, one gallon cans and jugs. And, uh, they're trying to get the tables cleared so they can help the next person. And we're looking, I mean, I love our volunteers because they're trying to facilitate making the, the, the, the wine go so people will get their stuff through and be able to be on their way and, uh, not have the, the wine back onto room 100 as best we can. And we have this year after the spring event, we have redone the diagram of how people are bringing their stuff through the parking lots. It's definitely a better situation than it was, but it's hard to be able to sample everything, uh, to that extent. Could there be a labeling requirement that if you want to turn something like this, you got to have, you know, your, your label there on it. I just looking for other ways to try to prevent this from happening. For the homeowner, I think that would be pretty impossible. And, and the question is, uh, how did it happen? I mean, there, there is, you know, PCBs polychlorinated by fennels are associated with transformers and they're associated with, uh, you know, kind of protecting, uh, different electrical equipment. They're supposed to be able to deal with high temperatures and not a lot of people have them, but somewhere it was there. Yeah. Okay. You know, people wind up having stuff in a barn that they don't really know what it is, but they buy the barn and it's there and it just kind of becomes a an attractive nuisance that has to go away. And, uh, that's just part of what we deal with. We do the folks do do some very rudimentary testing, you know, for pH and for chlorine and a few other things, but there isn't something to that degree until you're getting it sorted out down at the transfer facility. In this case, in the answer, um, we also in this world of, uh, trying to keep our budgets going as best we can, uh, the town of Roxbury has indicated that they are going to stay on their side of the mountain and they're going to join up with the mountain alliance. But we don't know when because they have to have a vote by every one of the towns in that organization to welcome them in. And so we expect to have a partial year of their participation and then they'll go away and solid waste implementation plan, grant that we get from the state, which we use entirely on the household hazardous should be safe for this year. But next year, I'm going to be looking at about a thousand dollar loss in that plus the the towns per capita, you know, donation, if you will. So those are things that are coming. Those are the major things that agriculture department and the town of Roxbury. Other stuff that's going on. And I'll be quick. I know it doesn't sound like it. I'll try to be quick. I just wanted to give you a couple of highlights, because it really is. I think something to be proud of. We we collected over 15 tons of tires, both with green up and with the folks bringing their tires in in the spring and then wheels from warmth. We had a roll off over it. And it was like a 20 yard roll up as well. So we did a lot of collecting of that. We collected over a ton of scrap metal during green up day between the volunteers here in Waterbury and the volunteers down in the valley. I have two pretty well attended composting workshops here in the alliance. And so compost bins and green cones. And we talked about things that were coming because the Universal Recycling Act, which was passed in 2012, suddenly the distant future of July 1, 2020, when suddenly our food scraps at residential levels were to be diverted is here. And suddenly there's an awareness on the part of the public that is it really this year? And every every newsletter, I try to remind people that this is coming. And the important thing to recognize is that food scraps to the state's desire does not include me does not include fish does not include fats and greases and stuff like that that can still go in the trash. So people don't have to worry if they've got a backyard compost bin that the bears are going to be attracted or the coyotes or whatever to that. Of course, they can be attracted to the recycling that you put out in your garage while you're waiting to bring into the transfer So what was the underlining reasoning for excluding those types of things from Well, primarily because they are a couple of things they as they're breaking down, you could wind up with vectors that maggots and things like that. But they also definitely attract more of the wildlife to come in, even though we talk about how to minimize the odiferous emanations by making sure you have as much carbon as a impact material over that. But Oh, Smoky the Bear is a growler and a howler and he sniffs the air. And it's not just for fires. He's pretty good at detecting stuff. But I expect Bill probably gave a presentation on composting after he took the class to all of the folks here. I took it too. That's right. That's right. Yeah, we were in it together. You guys probably bear notes. So that's the other thing. The other thing that has happened is that the single use products law has passed and plastic bags for taking your groceries home are going to be one of those memories that will fade away. And the Waterbury Rotary Club is selling those bags over there as a replacement for those single use bags and they work very well. Also straws, stirrers and styrofoam clamshells are going to be a thing of the past here in here in Vermont.  And the Lake Champlain Gire will not exist like it does in the Pacific Ocean. I think we're doing the right thing. I think it's got to be done thoughtfully. I think there's still more to accomplish. And it's all going to be a matter of time and money. And as long as we're careful with how we proceed, it should work. All that being said, now I'll get to the end of my soliloquy. Our budget has to go up to deal with the costs that we're confronting. I put in a proposed per capita of $7 from 6.25. And that's meeting the budget and it should meet the budget with Roxbury even coming out. What it does do though, and I'm not, you know, we don't have a lot. There's no fat in this budget. What there is is my hours are going to have to go down. Because my board asked me get a raise this year. And so they agreed to a 3% raise, which is the first one since 2013. But at the same time, I've dropped 20% of my hours to be able to make the budget fit. It's like being damned with fake braids. This is not healthcare. This is not education. But it's important. And we need to make it work. And I'm going to continue to do that. Is that why education costs are less for 2020? Well, the education costs really aren't less. They're just put in different places. And we used what we had there. A lot of it went into my hours in terms of what I was doing. So even though you show an increase less, I'm mistaken here.  And then your expenditures are down a tad bit too. So it looks like yeah, because that's because his truck is always right. That's what's that's the reason of it. Okay. And and I have been the safety valve on this. I didn't all of my hours for this year aren't in my because we were going to be so tight. But it's it is what it is. Well, I hope it doesn't get to a point where cutting your hours too much jeopardizes the quality of the program. It's not gonna. I mean, I just I will be doing the work as I do some of it now without getting paid. It's just it's just and I don't just do this for the money. Now I don't do this. Let's call it this way. I do this because I enjoy doing it. And I think it's an important thing for the people in this area as well as throughout the state to do it and do it right. And if I can help, I want to continue to do that. So back to the quick question there with the loss of Roxbury possible loss of Roxbury. This is just a hypothetical question. Would that in a sense just wash itself because you don't have that participation and I mean, you lose a little bit of revenue but you also I wish that Roxbury was a more vital player. But there's 691 residents were 1.9% of our participants in the hazardous waste collection activities. And they I have asked on multiple occasions, the representative from Roxbury to try and work with the town, you know, public works guy that have a dump truck, bring stuff over to our collection, try and make it easier. And basically, being on the other side of the mountain, it really makes sense for them. And, and they've got a sweetheart deal that I really, I can't, I can't match. Yeah. That's unfortunate. Yeah. Okay. Y'all said then. Yeah. There's two things. Number one, you need to approve the budget. But number two, and more importantly, you've got to give me a decent representative to the board because I've been dealing with this guy. Joe, you got a question? That button right on the top, just push down about halfway. See it? Yeah. Yep. Yeah, push it in. Is it green? Yeah, I guess we'll just push in hard. I just have one question from where I come from. For four years. You're talking PCPs. PCPs. Yeah. And they just show up in drums.  Yeah, you know what I'm saying?  This is not a friendly world we live in. But what I'm saying is why is there not a state representative there? You know, somebody that deals with this stuff. Oh, the people that are the technicians that are with the company that takes the stuff are perfectly capable of safety claim is who we're talking about. No, it's a company called Tredebi. But the point being is somebody as I think Chris, are these coming in labeled? There should be a label on that container before you guys even touch it. Well, you know, in a perfect world, I would totally agree. I 100% agree with you. But it's your safety. And it's our safety that is done right. Oh, yeah. And I think that for the most part, the stuff that comes in is adequately labeled. But there was a time when Harwood's bus garage used to accept used oil from various locations. I used to work there. I know. And they wound up getting perforated and everything else in the oil. And so we like to think we are sensitive and aware of everything that comes in. Unfortunately, said that don't well, but I think the biggest issue that we wind up confronting is the folks that have a garage, a house that they bought, or there's a barn and there's this container out there that's been there for God knows how long and they need to finally get rid of it. And we have no idea. They have no idea what might have been in it. Right. So my dilemma don't mean to interrupt you. But my comment is, you have one of those 55 gallon drums. The person's name should be on that drum. Well, if it is a chemical you can't deal with, they should be charged back for that. Well, number one, it's not a 55 gallon drum that they're bringing in. It would be a one gallon jug that looks like oil. And that's I think what was probably done. But how hard is it to label that container? And yeah, he I think he understands Joe. I'm sure they're probably doing all they can do to to mitigate that problem. The whole point's well to not be able to label it properly either. Well, unfortunately, the homeowner, they don't know many cases doesn't have any idea what the material is. And I've gone over to I've had people call me and and I've gone over to their houses up my my husband died. I've got this stuff in the shed. And I'm really concerned. And I've gone in there and it's a bunch of stuff. And I've taken it brought it to the collection. Could be a could be a number of thinners and oil and all kinds of stuff just mixed together. Okay, John, appreciate your time. Oh, so do we need to approve? Do we do that? Yeah, we do all the apartments. Okay. So you're good for now. Do we need to approve the budget? Well, so, no, you don't have to approve the budget. We have been told that the per capita fee is going to be $7 per capita. I'll put that in the budget. Very good. Thanks again. Reason to ask Alec. Yeah, he might have something out. Anything you'd like to add here before you guys take off? I didn't know. It's not work for. Okay, the board forced and put his budget three percent raise. And then he had to cut his hours. I think between now and July 1st, we're going to do our best to make people aware of the options to deal with their full waste. Yeah, things are coming. So you're going to be selling the compost bins and the green cones again? Yeah, but we're going to triple the price. Just for me. No, we are. We are going to sell them. I have to get them out of the old armory. Yeah, if you need any. I do. I'm going to need a couple of green cones. I have one and I think I need two more. Okay, Bill, so all your game from here on out. So we have a through D under my items here. And if it's all right with you, I request that we put items see on now and you can deal with Nick and then let him go home instead of sitting here for another half an hour or whatever it takes. So you look like he's enjoying himself. How you doing there? So as I indicated in the memo that I sent out 2019, I think was a successful year for the recreation department. I'll let Nick fill in the blanks. You know, I think participation in many of the programs that we generate fees with are higher than they have been. We reestablished the middle school program for the first time since way back in probably the late 90s. They were over at Wesley Methodist Church. Revenue in all instances, all the revenues that we collect were higher than they have been passed. They were all higher. Well, in aggregate, they were higher than the budget. There were a few of them that were lower than the budget. But those were mainly mini camps. And as I've told you many times, if mini camp revenues are only, you know, $5,000 out of an $8,000 budget, well, that means we spent less to run those programs too. It's really a program that that only runs if there's participation and if there's no participation, we have no cost. So with that little brief introduction, I'll turn it over to Nick. And then we can get into the budget too. Okay, so this summer was pretty successful for the rep department and all the programs we ran. Day camps hold out 19 minutes for the full camp, just shattered the previous impressive record of like four hours. So and now we're going to be opening up the extra spots for fourth through seventh grade in addition to kindergarten. We ran a variety of different mini camps. So we only camps. A mini camp could also be like a one day camp. So we ran a lot of science camps out of CrossFit Brook, like science, engineering sort of deal. And then we ran, we started like a new basketball camp called Central Vermont boot camp. And the first year we had 18 kids. So that was pretty successful. Next year should only grow or this summer should only grow because the word is out. And the instructor we have is pretty good for it. Was that run out of the school too? Yeah, CrossFit Brook. Yeah, we had to be flexed like pretty creative on the hours because CrossFit Brook's gyms really looked in the summer, surprisingly. So it was a half day camp. We're hoping to make it a full day camp this year. So yeah, excuse me. While we're on the mini camp subject, looking here at the previous budget for 19 and then the proposed, it looks like you're what you actually had for 2019 versus what was budgeted was down substantially. Is there is there a decrease in interest in expenditures or revenue expenditures? We just ran it pretty efficiently. We had probably we had for 3000 less than what we 3000 and we had less projected and revenue for it. But Bill said if we spend less, if we make less, we spend less. So yeah, so in the rec program budget, there's two lines for expenditures that say mini camp, there's regular pay mini camp at the top of the page, where we budgeted 6000 spent 3900. And then down towards the bottom of the page, there's another mini camps budgeted 53 and spent 4826. So maybe you can explain why those two lines. Okay, yes. One is for pay. So we would pay instructors or staff that run it. Mini camp also includes I said day day only camp. So we did like new this year to overnight at Little River State Park, introduce kids to camping. So we pay staff out of that line, but we'll pay for materials out of the mini camp plan. So supplies for some other camps are for pay out of the mini camp plan, or fees, I assume, to the right, right? Yeah.  It's pretty normal. Yeah, it was just, you know, even on the revenue chart here, you're down, you know, budgeted 15, you're down 11, actually pulled in 11 to and then you budgeted for 2020 12,000. So I just, I just threw up a flag for me saying, is there a lack of interest there or declining lack of interest? So it doesn't sound like there is. That's good. The revenue from mini camps has increased by 3000 since 2018. So yeah, so that for some programming is pretty successful the pool. I think we made $8,000 more dollars and I was projected for revenue and budget for it. For the most part, there was no major issues at the pool. The feedback from the new renovations that we did for adding the family changing room, the new toilets, the updated checking system, we had a lot of positive feedback on that. The if you include the revenue that we received and the expenses for the lifeguard training and stuff like that, we actually were 9970 to the good on the pool, we took $9,970 more in revenue than the body. $8,000 just on the pool memberships and then the balance on the lifeguard stuff. That also includes the off seasons of lessons, but right. Yeah, they're doing very well. The outside of the pool, I don't have anything else on the pool. It was successful. A lot of good feedback. Yeah, rec camps were really well. It went really well this summer. It was really busy. Try some new things. We did the training for trauma informed care. So our staff had both lifeguards and camp counselors take it just so they knew how to handle situations with children if issues arise. And subsequently, we didn't kick anyone out of camp this summer. We had some sent homes, but it was very much parents Ron included in the discussion. And there might be a few that didn't agree. But we're like, Okay, we'll just understand. So the training paid off in a sense training paid off and then just kind of restructured our behavioral system altogether. So it sets children up a little bit better for first success versus and we plan to do that again this year. Yes. Yep. As long as the come the agency we partnered with, we were a pilot program, they did me in favor by doing they've never done it before for anyone. So they're going to work with them to do it again. If not, I can bring in other people. So so how many enrollees did you have in the middle school camp? This was the first year that we 37 were registered this summer for the middle school camp for the eight week session. And then we opened up five slots a week. Your grandson took advantage of that new feature. So we I don't have the numbers from that, but you can add a few more for the middle school camp. But the middle school, the expectation is that that will continue to grow, right? Yes. Kids who have younger siblings that are going to graduate out of the elementary school camp will move up. Yep. Potentially. Yeah. And there's a lot more awareness about it now that it's started up, whereas kids halfway through the summer in town are like, Oh, I didn't know I could go to rep again. So yeah, hopefully it makes sense that it would grow. And only the middle school is it cross it broke the younger the middle school is at the Wesley Oh, that's right. Yeah, the church in town in the basement. Okay. But we use that mostly as like a drop in like drop off pickup and thunder shelter. They did everything else out here. It wasn't raining. What's the relationship with the senior citizen center in the meal program? And how how do we participate? How many Yeah, so just like in school, the free lunch program, they do it in the summer, the Vermont or not the agricultural department, I think, right? I think that's what offers it. We utilize the senior center that you reimburse for every kid that needs like the qualifies for the lunch. And in the summer, they can't really turn it to qualify. So any kid under 18 qualifies for their lunch program will get reimbursed for it. So we send probably on average 60 to 70 kids just from our camp to the senior center every day during the summer for lunch. Senior center did a great job accommodating us. And it gets pretty crazy when they have that many kids and building that size with older folks that are trying to enjoy their meal. So but overall, well, senior center had good feedback. So that's our relationship with the senior center in order to make sure that our kids are fed. That's going to be a kid's bring their own lunch or something or was that the balance of the kids bring their own lunch? Yeah, we just say it's like 25% or something go to get free lunch up like 65%, 75%. Oh, yeah. I mean, if I was a if I was a kid, knowing probably what I know, I'd want to eat at the senior center every day. The heck with bringing my own lunch. Pretty much. Yeah, outside of summer, the off season programming has been successful. We in the beginning of the year we offered some adult ukulele classes that filled up. I took the first one, just because I wasn't sure if we're going to hit registration numbers and later to having the max. So I sat here and learned how to put the ukulele is fun.  We tried to partner with around dojo to do some karate intro to karate for children and adults. We offered off season in addition to off season some lessons that first and fitness we offered life off season lifeguard courses that is in part trying to solicit new guards for the summer. But the need out there and we're kind of the Red Cross hub. So organizations work through us to get their staff training. And just so you know that getting lifeguards is a continuing challenge. I think it's going to continue to be a challenge. What that means is we have to pay more. There's not as many young people who are taking the lifeguard course. That's why we offer it to try to stimulate some interest in it. There's a lot of competition. There's the swimming hole up in Stowe. I think they pay more than we do. Then you've got Barry and my period who have swimming pools in the summer. There's other places. So it's a challenge. And you know, we budgeted $51,000 for regular pay in 2020, which is just slightly more than we spent last year. Minimum wage is going up. And you know, Nick and I talked about it a little bit. And I feel that we'll stick with that budget number. And hopefully if we end up having to spend more for lifeguards, that it will be offset by additional revenues. So you know, we're marketing the program. As I said in my narrative, swimming pool revenue for us is very dependent upon the weather. If you have a really cool and rainy early part of the summer, it really dampens the interest in the pool. It's an eight week program. And if it's, you know, 63 degrees until the fourth of July, you kind of there's no big pent up demand to go swimming. So it's a little bit of a roll of the dice. The minimum wage is going up to what? 1070. And it was 1070. So it's going up about 20, 25 cents a year right now. And and that does impact us because we we do we are an entry level employer for many of the young people in the community. They come in to be either lifeguards or camp counselors. And usually they're started off at that minimum wage. And that's going up a little bit as well. But I think the budget is reasonable. I think there's, you know, we tried to keep the budget on the expenditure side as close to the bonus we could. There were things that Nick had proposed to me we talked about we ended up lowering the budgets a little bit. And understanding that sometimes we go over budget. We're hoping if we go over budget is offset revenue. So we took in more in recreation fees last year than we anticipated. So because of that, because that's been a little bit of a trend lately. I think that I'm not being as conservative as I have in the past with the revenue side of the budget. So if you look at the fourth page there of the back. Oh, yeah, the back page.  We took in 93, I actually proposed 95 this year. I'm hoping that if the middle school program grows a little bit. And with fee increases that we'll talk about in a second that we can maybe get that 95 number the mini camp went down. But you know, we're budgeting not quite as much as we took in in 19. But we are budgeting for donations this year where we didn't budget for that last year.  Any other questions? Just a couple of quick questions here. Computer service was up substantially. And the advertising record is that because you're just trying to be more aggressive about advertising or the advertising is specifically for job posting. So this bill said we have a lifetime shortage. Last year I had a lot of turnover. I inherited from the previous year. So I had to put a lot more ads in the paper and on social media and different channels in order to try to fill off the roles. In addition, we started a new camp. So I have more staff I needed anyways. So on the computer services, the $2,895 that we spent in 2019 is the fee that we have to pay for the my rec program. I believe isn't that correct? Our registration program. So we didn't spend anything else last year. And, you know, Nick, he has a computer that we provide, but he also has his own laptop. And there's programs on that that we both use. We should pay for some of that. So it's a it's a more fair budget. We if you look at probably what we spent this year without reimbursing for some of the things that we that we that were purchased on our behalf, it would have been a little bit higher. That my program, though, I think definitely is worth its worth its existence. You know, Deb found that program for us. And, you know, just by virtue of the number of journal entries, I have to approve, which indicate that we're getting cash from somebody's credit card that the bookkeeper needs me to sign off on before she can post it. We get a lot of people love to be the ability to sign up for rec programs on the on the computer using this program. And it's really, you know, the $200 that we spend will save a lot of time. One of the main reasons why the revenue has driven up so high, right? Because it saves time processing all that paperwork to get. Yeah, I see an increase in the directors pay line. Yeah, so that overtime and increase in pay as well. Yeah, so the pay last year. I did not factor any overtime. I thought I factored some overtime into last year's budget. And when I looked the other day, the 43 425 was simply next pay for 52 weeks a year at 40 hours. And he worked overtime with a mistake on my part not to budget any overtime for 2019. The 52 776. I forgot how many overtime hours that you worked. But 248. I talked and the number of overtime hours that are budgeted this year is significantly lower than that. Nick told me the other day that I evidently had indicated that maybe he was overwhelmed with some things last year. And he said I wasn't overwhelmed. It's just that you didn't budge for time for me. And there were a number of new programs that he had to run. So how many hours did we budget this year for overtime? Like 142. Yeah, so it's significantly fewer hours than last year. I am proposing higher than inflationary pay increase for him. I think he's done a good job. And, and I think he deserves that. So that's why the $50,525, I mean, 520 is there. And the only other question I had on the workman's line items almost in every, every place I looked there. Does it seem a little bit excessive to you? I mean, it seems like the roller coaster. Well, they often do. Unfortunately, for us, the roller coaster is still being pulled up by that chain up the first hill. Let's continue to go up higher for the year. The town, the last several years has had pretty poor experience with workers comp claims. We've had a number of people, not just in the highway department. We had a librarian last year that that lifted a box and ended up with fairly severe injury. We've had a number of out of not only medical claims for workers comp, but last time. So eventually you pay your claims.  And there's a rate for your workers comp. And it's the workers cop rate for Carla and me is like 44 cents per 100. But for highway worker, it's $9 and 57 cents per 100 for a librarian. It's $4 or something for the rec department and $6 or whatever the case may be. So, you know, but our then they apply a modification factor and modification factor of one means that your average with the rest of the group out there. So we get our workers compensation through a lot of cities and towns. So if we had a one for a mod factor, that means would that our claims history was average. If you got a 0.85, that means you're, you know, 15% better than average. Our mod factor I think is 1.6 right now. So we're 60% worse than average of late. So yeah, it's gone up. Fortunately, it's, it's not as big of a price. But the workers compensation rates, I mean, the unemployment rates went way down. So you'll you look through the rest of the budget, you'll see some savings there. But yeah, the workers cop, we've had some bad experience. And hopefully we've seen the last of that for a while. But it takes it takes a few years to, you know, have good experience to run out your bags. Of course. I see on your recreation program rental fees, really nothing's changed other than the daily group rate. What are you looking at? Things that Nick handed out. So I asked Nick Thursday, I think last week, whether we were doing anything with fees. And he said, Well, no, we just, we just adjusted fees last year, thought about it a little bit. And, you know, started talking about the full eight week camp. And, you know, for residents, we're not even charging $100 a week. And even with with the proposal here, we're still not charging $100 a week. So I asked him to look at rates that he administers that he ends up collecting and telling folks that these are our rates. This is what he gave me this afternoon. I haven't had a chance to really look at it. So if you have any questions, you should ask your rationale for increasing the summer camps in the lake by $25 or $50, whatever they are. So yeah, the, as Bill said, the eight week camps are last year wasn't even 100, even for non residents wasn't $100 a week. In comparison, child cares, if you hire a babysitter for the nine hours that we provide childcare in the summer, you'll pay at like $10 an hour, you'll pay that babysitter the same you'd pay a child that would be in that camp for that week. So we're substantially less than you look at other programs, the YMCA runs the camp out of Thatcher Brook. They charge a couple hundred a little over a couple hundred a week. And they do per week sessions. So any comparable area camp where we come in under and we provide a lot I think for what what we do. So but at the same point, the reason we sell out 19 minutes is because of we're keeping it affordable. So when Bill and I talked, I had already, we'd already raised it about $50 last year, or $25 and $50. But it made sense to raise it residents 25 and non residents by 50, just to offset the cost of the wage going up, our busing potentially could get more expensive. So just just other things happening to it makes sense. Then we have week only sessions. And those I've requested to be increased 25 each it again, it keeps it $200 or less per week just for the week only stuff. So which is comparable or cheaper than to childcare in the area. So I think Chris's question, I don't mean to put words in his mouth, but there's a whole lot of no changes on the page. There's only a few rates that are increasing the camp rates and the daily group rates for the pool are going up. But everything else is no change. And why why that? Okay, yeah. So the facility rentals where you approved a three year structure in 2017. We're at a spot where that we're 2019 fees shouldn't go up another year, it may be a year or two, we'll have a conversation about that. But for now, they're comparable to other areas, facilities like that we have here in other areas. I just put this on solely so you had an idea of what we were charging. For the the programs that have no change. Same same thing. We're would make sense to charge more than $100 for instance, for a resident for our family pool for family for the pool for membership this year, but in the future, maybe we're going up but they're they recently were changed before I'd come in. So they're not they're not anything that won't increase yet. Yeah, I would recommend not increasing yet. You know, I'm looking at the summer camp fees. And I just brings to mind my what my son has to pay for daycare for one child for a week is $320, which is staggering. So I guess my my soul concern here, and I knew that kind of the reason that these fees hadn't much much is because we kind of had set set of fees for a couple of years here before we decided to start making any increases. But I just want to make sure that we don't somehow start to fall behind in keeping with the inflation costs of, you know, operations here. So yeah, and still try to offer is as affordable. And I know that you're probably on top of all that. I think we're doing that. I think our the total burden on the taxpayers is 2% less than it was last year projected. So we're definitely keeping up. If not doing better. Yeah. No, it's you're doing a good job. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, I want to say I'm really impressed. I know you took on a lot. We know the transition from Deb. She had set the path to turn these programs around and turn them into look for ways to make money. And that we're pragmatic, like the training of the pool made a lot of sense. Because you're training people that can come to our pool to for swim swimming lessons and everything. But these other programs, I think the mini camps and the middle school tapping that population is really important. So I just feel like the whole I think you've done a great job. And I feel like the whole vibe of this is really positive. And so much. I just think it's very responsive to our town with that my wreck and everything people being able to sign up so quickly and easily. So good job. One other question I had, you spoke of life guard rates, pay rates. Yeah, highly compare some of these other towns. How do they compare? Are we like way off or for way off? For instance, this whole pay $15 an hour for a life guard. And we pay as low as a minimum wage. I guess a comparable guard. We had some experienced ones apply midway through the summer, excited to recruit throughout the summer, because we were still kind of short. We would have to like the most we could offer someone would be like 1250 or $13 an hour. And that would be them. Yet being sold on my charisma and the director is like, oh, they seem like they'd be okay to work for like, I guess I'll work for them. But yeah, that's where we're off. But that's something we can work for next year. It just means it's going to be a higher pay line. And there's only so much money you can get out of a seasonal pool. That's outdoors. So hence my concern about the I want the great affordable summer camp costs and maybe some point you have to take a look at balancing or, you know, increasing that a little bit in order to offset some of that. Yeah, to get to attract more. It's a balancing act. And we're absolutely right.    I mean, if it becomes problematic that we're starting to have a tough time, then, then I guess we need to right. And you know, I need to deal with it. Yeah, but we're, we're getting creative for triumph. Good. Oh, thank you for a very nice presentation tonight. And all of the feedback that I have heard throughout the town has been awesome. There's a lot of super psyched kids out there. Yeah, I think it's great we can offer these programs. Thank you for that. Thank you. Okay, zoning compliance letter. I think I did a fair job in my narrative. If you read that, the zoning compliance letter is something that we've been writing or issuing for a number of years now. It seemed like a good idea when when the select board was asked to do it. I don't frankly remember when that was. My guess is it might even happen around the flood time. And I really wasn't paying much attention to it at the time. But as I said, the problem with these letters is a, it requires a lot of staff time to go in and research and me, even if you do all the research might still get something wrong.  As I indicated, we did run this by our municipal attorney, and they said, Yeah, it's probably a better idea. If you don't require them to be issued. They brought up the fact that the zoning administrators do these are pretty narrowly defined in the statute. There's no discussion of these letters. So I don't think anybody would probably take it a quarter over it. But there is question whether there's even the authority to issue these letters on behalf, you know, on the zoning administrators part. So Dina would like not to have to deal with these letters anymore. And I think that it has taken a I won't say an inordinate amount of her time, but she spends she has spent a fair amount of time on this issue. And if she doesn't have to do it, there's other things that she can be more productive with. So since the select board was the board that directed the zoning administrator to issue them, it needs to be the select board that says there's no longer authorized to be issued. So this is this is not the letter that comes with your zoning zoning zoning Z that you get in the mail. This is a letter that says, they missed a fish. You asked whether, you know, all the permits necessary for what's at your property now or in order and they are. And if it turns out they're not, then you might be mad and say, Hey, you told me I had everything I needed. Yeah. So it's not the letter that you get with your zoning program. I was just double checking that because I do remember seeing copies of this letter was on the DRB and I thought it was kind of sticking our necks out. Yeah, it really is. Do other towns that we know of go to the extent of issuing these letters? I think they do. But I was with the bigger staff, but I think that there's a movement towards getting away from them again. Like I said, it's it was one of these things I believe and I'm not an expert on it. But I think it came up as a this is a service that the public wants they want us to tell us everything is in order. Yeah. But once you do that, and if you make a mistake, then you've made an enemy there. And if you make a different mistake, there's other people that might be upset. So I'm few can always come in and make an appointment and go. They can come in, they can go through the files and talk to staff. Yeah. So I and you have you spoken to our attorney about that? Yeah, we've we've asked our attorney if we should be issuing these and they said it's probably better that you go. So there's no current guidelines or any any laws that state that the zoning administrator has to has to sign off on that. So if somebody was having a closing, a lawyer wouldn't say, where's the notes, the contract? That's the opposite. Okay. So do we need to make a recommendation? Yeah, I would make a motion. I would ask one of you to make a motion to cease the that the zoning administrator cease the issue with so zoning compliance letters. I would make a motion that we that we just continue the zoning compliance letter by the zoning administrator. Okay. Oh, it's further discussion. Okay, all those who wish to approve that motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Dexbury fire contract. I sent that out. As I said in the narrative back on December 12, I did a preliminary contract for them. Based it on I think based it on $722,000 of $724,000 in spending. And you can see that on this budget that I still have that I sent that out. So I projected on December 12 that when we hit the end of the year, it would be 724-857. And if it's that amount, the contract would be $114,100. As the 31st, we have spent about $722,000, but there'll always be some money's posted back. It will probably be slightly higher than the 724 that I projected. And I actually went to a Dexbury select board meeting. They asked me to go there. They were fearful that their contract price is going to go through the roof because of the fire truck purchases that we made. And I explained how we pay for our fire trucks out of their capital fund and that capital fund out of the operating fund wasn't going to increase dramatically. So anyway, the select board was happy with this proposed contract. As I said before, I said the same thing last year. My recommendation to use to offer this contract to Dexbury at $114,100, even if our year-end spending is slightly above $724,857. You know, if it was $745, like our budget was last year, the contract price would be about $117,000. And I think it's better to keep happy neighbors that are willing to pay $114,000 as opposed to, you know, trying to get every last penny out of the agreement. And that's only $100 higher than last year, as you said. Yeah, last year, it was actually a little bit higher than that. We rounded it down to $114,000 this year. I rounded it up a couple of bucks. I think it was came out to $114,028 or something like that when I did the math and rounded it up to $114,000. Yeah, you got it in here as $014,075 and the general fund. Well, the revenue of the general fund budget shows shows $114,075 as opposed to $114,100 because this contract runs from April 1st through March 31st back about five years ago. Bill Yacoboni said, well, you really can't credit all that revenue to the year that the contract that your budget is for. So he deferred essentially about $25,000 worth of the of the revenue. And then every year, I've got to make sure that you don't have the balance sheet. I have to make sure that the balance sheet reflects that we defer one quarter of the payment. But that's already on the balance sheet. So I have to adjust it by a few hundred dollars every year. So that's why that number is slightly off. Okay. But Dexbury will pay us $114,100 if you approve this contract. You know, I'll see you in a minute. So paragraph 10, when I read that, I was thinking about any scenario that if Dexbury voted not to agree, and they were left with nothing, and a fire took place, what would happen? I mean, we get called in as mutual aid, or well, are they SOL? Yeah, neither. So Dexbury is not eligible to call any department through mutual aid because they don't have a fire department. So the way mutual aid works is if if Waterbury goes up to the Wallace farm on Blush Hill finds a fully involved structure, we get on site with a fire truck and make an assessment and say we can't handle this. So you call the mutual aid and you say send Stowe and Middlesex to assist. So they tone out Stowe and Middlesex and they come. If one way goes to Dexbury and finds a fully involved home, the same scenario would happen. If more town shows up over, you know, over by Harwood and for the section of Dexbury that they show, and they find that they're fully involved, they can call mutual aid. If you don't have a fire department, you don't get to call mutual aid if nobody shows up at the fire. So what would happen? Probably Waterbury would eventually go and then you'd have to negotiate with Dexbury how much you're going to pay for that call. But I'm not sure that we would that the Waterbury fire department would simply not go. I mean, especially given that there's been a contract in place for so long, they would probably go just because somebody's life may depend upon it. Yeah, I didn't know if there was some state law that pretend to negligence whether a contract was there or not. I'm sure that, you know, we would, well, I'm not a lawyer, but if there was no contract in place in our fire department, when I think we would be covered, our liability would be covered. If there was any issues, you know, I mean, anybody can sue anybody right off something happened. But our insurance would cover us. I think Dexbury's select board is happy with this contract. There were a number of people at the at the meeting. I think you were at the meeting. There were a number of Dexbury residents at the meeting who I think had been ones at previous meetings who spouted off and wondered, you know, why do we have this contract with Waterbury? It's a lot of money. It's going to go through the roof. I think Dexbury's select board doesn't let people participate in the meeting as if it were a town meeting. They get to say their piece at the beginning of the meeting, and then they sit there and listen. But I think everybody was satisfied with what my explanation was. The select board said that they would be bringing it to town meeting and they would be recommending that it be funded as it has been for now. I think this contract form has been in place since about 2009. Did you say it was the same as last year? Essentially the same. $100 difference. And what did they do before? 2009? They had a different contract with us. But has it ever been voted down? No. So the contract that that was in place before was more favorable to them. This contract basically spreads the cost of our fire department over the grand lists of Waterbury and Dexbury. So they're paying essentially the same that you are. Now because a small portion of their town is covered by more town, if you did the math, we still pay a little bit more here. But, you know, it's out of the department. So I guess that was my question. But you know, I'm not going to go along with anything as time goes on. And I think two years ago we absorbed probably a little bit more than I won't say that we should have. I mean, to make them happy. And as time goes on, I want to just be cognizant of the fact that we keep chiseling away at, you know, what we're participating, what they should be. I wouldn't want to have too much of a despair. No, I understand. And I told them that.  If something happened right at the you know, the last week of the year, and we had a, you know, let's say we had a truck that had $10,000 worth of damage that wasn't insurable. And we weren't in the position of buying a new truck.  But what I try to do is, you know, they start their budget process a little earlier than we do.  So they're on different schedule than we are. And they like to have as much information as they can. So I try to get it to them and try to say, you know, if it's a minor amount, you know, we'll, we'll deal with it. And I didn't, so I did tell them. And I said, and if for some reason, it's if the 722 that I projected is 724 that I projected is, is way too much. And it should be less, you know, we'll adjust it for your benefit too. I think the difference between what I've done now and what I think we're going to end up at is just going to be very nominal. And it's just as easy to say, we'll offer this. And you're feeling good about dispatching costs at this time? I mean, when does that information usually happen? The dispatching costs are already known. They, they grow up all the time. Right. I don't have the fire budget here, but, you know, just, I told him that. I mean, Mike was at the meeting.  So that's where you start, you know, so. Okay. I'm glad you went there. Yeah. Sounds like it was good for everybody. Yeah. I mean, it's just, I, in my perspective, it was worth, yeah, a while. So do we need to make them, yeah, I will make sure to ask you to make a motion to admit it, to approve. To approve a fire contract offering contract to the time of Duxbury for $114,100 for the period, April 1, 2023, March 31, 2021. So moved. So second. It was easy. Motion has been made and seconded to approve the Duxbury contract in town of Waterbury in Duxbury, with the ensuing year of $114,100. All those who wish to approve it, please say hi. Hi. General Government Budget. The real, you'll quickly run through this. So the, what I sent out on the paper that looks like this has the yellow highlight on the first page. I'll run through the general fund all together from a perspective of 2019. And then quickly talk about revenues for 2020, which are general fund revenues. And then we can quickly talk about the general government department of the general fund. The proposed my, my schedule right now is next Monday. We'll talk with Gary Dylan about the fire department. And we'll talk about the planning budget next Monday as well. And we've already done recreation. And then two weeks from tonight, we'll talk about the highway budget. And the library commissioners will probably come in briefly that night. Right now, things are looking good. I haven't spent really any time yet on the highway budget. And that's the, that's the biggest one.  But I'd like the best information I can get to present the highway budget. So we'll wait until the 20th to do that. You want me to keep going? You want me to wait for Jane? No, you probably should give her a second. It's unfortunate that the other two aren't here tonight as well. It's always too bad. Budgeting season should be all absorbed by all members. Yeah. Well, I sent out the information. Yeah. We didn't want you to miss anything, Jane. So we waited. Okay, so the first page of the general fund budget and the general government department is the general government revenue page. Look, and it's all on that first page. So if you look at the bottom of the page, we budgeted $2,921,270 of all revenues, including property taxes. Through the 31st, we've taken in $2,853,000, which is a little bit more than 97%, $68,212 under budget. And when you look at the very top of the page, you can see where $68,000 under budget in total at the bottom. And at the very top, we're under budget by $96,248 on property taxes. So that means everything else were over what we expected. You got that? Yeah, I do. I have printed it out at home, but I missed a few lines of mine. Do you have an extra? So anyway, through the end of the year, we've collected all but $96,000 of the property taxes for the for the general fund alone. All together in that 96,248 is the total delinquency of 2019. The highway fund and the library fund get all of their tax money. And the general fund takes all of the all of the delinquencies all together. And you don't have this on any of the papers that I sent out. We, you know, if you add up all tax delinquencies from all previous years, including penalty and interest, it's about $130,000. So when you figure that we, we build $13 million. It's, it's pretty good collection rate. And we have a tax sale that is going to be scheduled sometime in early February to deal with some of the older ones. Anyway, so the revenues to note, if you look at that yellow line in the middle of the page there, the state grant, that's the money that comes in to reimburse us for what barb fire is doing on the main street reconstruction project. We budgeted $65,000 for 2019. The 58 581 is what we build out through November for reimbursements. Barb told me this morning that the December reimbursement is going to be ready. So I think the total reimbursement for 19 is actually going to be about $63,000. So it's just a couple thousand dollars off of what we anticipated. The 65 that I've proposed there for 2020, I'm still working with barb. I think that's the number it's going to be, but I don't know for certain yet. The other things that to note the pilot payment, which is under other governments three lines down in that second section. We budgeted 204. We received 204. The balance went into the paving fund and we had some additional and I think you remember the last meeting, we decided to move the extra money into the into the recreation CIP to offset a deficit there. I'm anticipating right now a 2% increase in the pilot payments from the state. So 208 next year is the number. Excuse me at the top of the page. Do you mind if I ask what's driving that just in rate of inflation type? Well, yeah, so the funding source for the pilot payment is the local option taxes that the communities are doing and inflation, you know, so something that cost $100 last year might cost $102 this year and 1% local option taxes on a higher higher sales value. So it's been going up. Yeah, but isn't pilot based on appraisal of state facilities or state assets? Well, there's there's a couple of components to the formula. So the state pays based on the insured value of their property. That should not be changing dramatically. The other part of the equation is how much money they generate from the local option taxes. And that part of it should be increasing a little bit because sales costs. So I think it'll go up a little bit. Yeah, because I was kind of thinking myself, how can the appraisal?  I mean, something else must be right. It's the generation of local option taxes that drives it. And then of course, you know, the state hasn't done anything yet. But they're still contemplating some additional renovation at the state complex, you know, if they do anything with Lawson Hall, or, you know, tear down Stanley Hall and build something new, there's potential that it could go higher yet. But this is just based on the sales levels, Chris. At the top of the page, I have reduced a little bit the penalty and interest revenue from delinquent taxes. And I've reduced those a little bit because our delinquency rate continues to drop. I compared things back to, you know, back late, the first decade of the 2000s, about 10 years ago, and tax delinquencies when, you know, the economy fell off the cliff after the whole banking debacle and everything else, delinquencies were much higher. We were collecting, you know, in the $30,000 range for those penalties and interests. And now, you know, we weren't even to make $25,000 on the interest and not made $28,000 on the penalties. So I adjusted those down a little bit. I adjusted the village administrative service feed down from 98,000 to 90,000. There used to be a fairly complicated formula as to how much the village would pay the town. And back probably around 2013, the two boards agreed that we would just use instead of recalculating that formula every year, because all the players basically stayed the same, it was my pay and the pay of the other staff people that do things for the village and office supplies. That was fairly constant. So we started to just add an inflationary component there.  The 98,000 was 100,000 a couple of years ago, when the village disbanded and went away, and the police department went away, my administrative work for the village was cut dramatically. I only reduced it by $2,000 from 100,000 to 98,000 from 18 to 19. The eFUD commissioners asked me a year ago to kind of do a time study, if you will. I did that mainly with my time and Karen's time, because Karen is the tax and the utility billing clerk. She's the employee of the municipal secretarial staff here that works most for the utility district. And it really does show that it should be less. So I'm proposing 90. I think the eFUD commissioners will be happy with that. Traffic control income a little bit higher than we budgeted. So I bumped that up to 4,000. Forest and parks and current use, the forest and parks is on a schedule. So I'm pretty sure that 91 is, while I know it's, it'll be slightly below what's going to come in. I think we're scheduled to get 91.3. And the current use fluctuates a little bit. But it will be in that area. Nothing else. Significant there. Ducks prefire contract we already talked about in the, go ahead. Disforced and parks. I just saw a little blurb on the news the other night about the increase in federal monies that the state's supposed to get. And I saw a pretty substantial increase in the Waterbury dam line item. Disforced and parks have anything to do with that? No. So the forest and parks. So under the pilot program, the money that we receive that 204,000 that I budgeted 208,000 for 2020. That's for buildings. So on the pilot list, in addition to the state office complex, all the lean twos and, you know, sheds and, and, you know, staff buildings that are in Little River State Park, those are all buildings we get paid for those buildings on from the pilot payment. The forest and parks payment is essentially the current use payment that the state is giving us for all the forest land. So Putnam State Forest, Mount Mansfield State Forest, that's what they pay us.  It's still a fraction of what it would be if they were, even if they were, you know, private landowners of current use, they'd be paying more than they're paying. But that's what that is. And then the current use, of course, is that's the use value appraisal program. And people who have forest land or farmland, and, you know, they need the state's criteria. The state pays us that in exchange for the reduction in taxes that those folks get on their own tax bill. So that's what the forest and parks is, Chris. It has nothing to do with the money that they get to operate the dam or to maintain the dam, that kind of stuff. So how does the dam come into play in this budget? The dam comes into play in this budget only, only in the fact that Green Mountain Power has value in that dam for its electrical generation. It's under the grand list. And it's in the grand list to generate taxes. That we get less taxes now than we used to because they changed how that dam operates. It's a run of the river operation now they can't, they can't store water anymore. They used to have a basically a four foot differential, they could raise the summer pool by two feet in the summer, and then draw it down two feet below. So they had four foot of head, they could hold that water back for peak demand purposes and sell it at the highest rate through the wheeling system. Now, whatever comes in goes out, they can't, it's not a peak demand dam anymore. So their, their grand list value has been taken down a notch because of that. So I'm wondering what that 20 million appropriation Well, it might be, you know, the dam needs repairs, the tainter gates, the tainter gates need to be repaired. They can't, you know, the state's goal is going to be, you know, their last FERC license for the operation of that power dam there requires the pool to be maintained year round at the summer level. There's not going to be any more winter level. They're going to deal with, you know, spring runoff by closing the gates, as opposed to lowering the pool in the winter. But they can't do that until they fix the tainter gates. And, and, you know, if they got, I'd be surprised at that 20 million dollars is going to repair those they might get some study done, but I didn't see the report. So I'm not sure exactly. And $20 million was the estimate that repairs 15 years ago. Yeah, I know we Number two, if they try to close the gates at this point, things have shifted. So they might not be able to hold them. It's, and so they have to take out all the three gates that are there now, and replace it with two larger ones. But they do close the gates now. It's just that they're concerned that they they don't work as well as they should. Well, I knew a few years ago, because we talked about this a couple years ago that that project had been kicked out quite a distance here. Right. So I didn't know if they were actually going to start working on that with this appropriation, but that's that's another discussion. So that really has nothing to do with moving on on these revenues. If you go down to the middle of the page, the service fees made Carla, you want to tell them about the town clerk's fees, you know, the budget is increased by $25,000 there in terms of what the expected revenue is. Right. And the reason for that large increase is that the legislature passed increase in fees, according fees, mylar fees, well, pretty significant increases as of July 1. So that's why we're fire over budget on revenues. So that's the money that we take in about a portion of portion of it goes to the state. No, no, this is all money we take in that goes to town. So they just raised the rates for the municipalities? Yeah, it's a it's a battle with the legislature. I mean, on the one hand, it's good for consistency.  It's nice to have it kind of a uniform rate. But the legislature really has a pretty tight control on almost all the fees that we have to collect. But they did increase it as of July 1, 2019, it went into effect. And I think you told me Carla that of the 74,000 that we took in in 19 about 45,000 things since July. So 45,000 times two would be 90,000 hedging the bets a little bit might I didn't ask for all of this my anecdotal estimate, I guess is that probably get more fees toward the end of the year than we do at the beginning of the year. There's a lot of construction that's happening now and property transfers, I think typically take place more in, you know, better months of the year. So anyway, $85,000 is welcome addition to the budget. $25,000 higher than last year. We've already talked about the recreation fees. Did they approve the fees that Nick? No, they didn't. Do you want to do that? Or do you that cheat that he did? Yeah, you want to just make a motion to I'll make a motion to approve the fees as presented by the director 20 effective immediately. I second that. Those in favor say aye. I thank you. So we've talked about the recreation fees. Steve will be here next week. We'll talk about the planning fees. I think the recommendation we're going to have is to leave the planning fees alone. This year, I budgeted the same as we budgeted last year. We took it slightly more than we budgeted. I have asked Steve and Dina both to do some research and other towns. It's been a number of years now since we've changed any of his own fees. And we just like with direct fees, we should kind of keep up with what's going on elsewhere. But we're not going to have that study done. Bye. Early enough to implement this year to change the budget anyway. If they get it done, we might be able to put it in place later in the year. But I think for now, we'll leave the budget the same for that planning fees. And then the last thing, the investment revenue, which is second from the bottom section there. We had another good year in the tax stabilization fund. Carla just got the statements and balance them today. I was able to see them online the other day. So I have a pretty good idea of what what happened. We the town meeting last year authorized the transfer of up to 5% of the final value of the fund to the to the general fund. And that fund for the first time ever now is above a million dollars. So $50,000 is not quite 5%. But I think it's close enough. It's a couple thousand dollars higher than last year. On that note, just so you're aware, have a meeting tomorrow with the town's financial planner and brokerage firm where we have our investments. And I've been analyzing the urine statements. Probably going to take some money. You know, we've had a couple of really good years. Take some profits, if you will, and take some money out of the mutual funds that we have. We can find some reasonable fixed income investments to put that money in do that. If not, just leave it as cash for now. You know, it's every once in a while, we should do that. And I think we'll probably take some investments off the table as stock market is still almost at its all time high right now.  But I think it's wise to maybe rebalance. So I'll be doing that probably tomorrow. So just real quick, something that was on my mind when I did see that whole issue with Iran and the prospect that oil prices may increase, you know, moving forward, that may end up affecting when we get to it, we'll have that discussion about our paving abilities. Yeah. I have already started to factor in who knows what it is. But I'm thinking about, you know, 10% increases in fuel costs right now. At this stage of the game, probably, if the paving, if the asphalt costs spike, you know, unless you give me different directions, it's just going to mean we're going to save a little less, or we're going to have this, you know, figure out how to spend more. We've got really the one road in the budget this year, you know, we're looking at Howard Ave, as we we had Maple Street, and then one other smaller road that we could fit in with the half million dollars that we're talking about. So we'll keep an eye on things and see what happens. We'll be getting bids on those. Oh, not until a few months anyway. Okay. So any other questions on the revenue side of things? For me. So our non property tax revenues, I calculated yesterday, I forgot to write it down. Our non tax revenues are higher than the more budgeted last year. And that's always a good thing. So lastly, the general government budget of the general fund is on the next page. You know, there's, there's other budgets, fire department, rec, planning, special articles, how public safety that we're not going to talk about tonight, just the general government portion. And really, there's, there's almost no change there. I'll go through a line item by line item if you want to. But right now I budgeted 937 750, as opposed to 922 65. That's a 1.9 percent increase. The last I looked inflation was running between 1 and 2%. So that's kind of right on the money. The two lines that are in yellow. I think the amount sent to the municipal building operating fund might be a little less than this. What was in yellow? I don't have yellow. So that 45 thousand is a placeholder. That's what we paid last year. I'm still debating there. And then the county tax line. That's something that I just have to wait on. I estimated 5% increase on that. It's based on our grand list. I think I told you last year, Waterbury is now, I believe the second property, the property values in Waterbury are second only to Montpelier in Washington County. We're higher than Barry. Maybe it's third, maybe Barry towns a little ahead of us. But anyway, that's a number that I have to wait to get from the county treasurer. I usually get it sometime in January, but my estimate right now is 6395. I'm hoping it might be less. I don't think it will be more, but I don't know yet. There's really nothing else at this point that I want to talk about on the on the two municipal building operating fund. There's two places that we transfer money to fund 76. And the library does the same thing. One is from this line. And then the other is from the debt management line, which I don't know. I think I think you have that. But the debt expense will be going down slightly because we have a declining amortization schedule. I put a note in the budget in my budget notes last year to look at the fund balance of fund 76. We couldn't do it right away because we were just still dealing with the, you know, the upfront costs of this building. And then within a couple years after coming into the building, we decided that we should spend $100,000 to put a generator in. But the note that I put in my budget notes, which you don't have here is that I would like to see after five years of being in this building that the fund balance and fund 76 would be $20,000 so that we have some money when it comes time to start dealing with mechanical replacements, painting, electrical upgrades, whatever have you. The fund balance for fund 76 right now is about zero, where we came into this building January 1, 2016. So this is four years. So at the end of 20, all things being equal, I'd like to see $20,000 in there. And that basically I'm saying, if we could put $4,000 a year aside into that fund balance, it would be a beneficial thing to do. So if we keep going as usual, the fund 76 should have lower expenses in it this year, because the generator is fully paid for. So I want you to think about that a little bit. And when I, when we get to talk about fund 76 in a couple of weeks, we'll talk about this. Obviously, the money that comes from the general fund that goes to those capital funds or reserve funds affects the tax rate. And if we can't because it's going to, you know, make the tax rate too much of a burden right now. I'd just like to plant that seed that we should start doing that. We haven't been able to do it yet. But I think it's time that we should start. So you're suggesting start with a $20,000 base and then just an annual $4,000? Well, what I'm saying is that by the end of 2020, it would have been nice to have a $20,000 cushion there. If we can't have it, we should continue to push towards having a $4,000 per year surplus. So at the end of 10 years, we should have $40,000 in that fund is what you're saying. We might not need to get there all at once, but I'd like to start getting there. Yeah, I think, you know, I think that's a minimal. I mean, ideally, yeah, and on a $3 million or $5 million project, you know, $5,000 or $10,000 a year would be better. But very tiny percentage. Yeah, we've got to do what we can't do. Yeah, no, I understood. So with that, I've finished my formal presentation tonight. I will say, Chris, just before you ask the question, I did send out the entire general fund budget revenues and expenses. So I told you that we budgeted revenue 2,921,270 we took in 2,853 or expenses. We budgeted 2,910,540 so it almost looks like an exact copy of the other number, but there's a little bit of transposition here. We spent through the end of December 2,893 so we're about $17,000 to the good on expenditures right now. There will be some more expenditures posted back to 19. But all things being equal in the general fund, we're going to be within a couple percentage points of where we thought it would be. I think it's been a good budget year. I believe we'll have a modest deficit in the Highway Fund, the Library Fund, a small surplus. And we did start the year with more money in the bank than we thought, than I thought, which is a good thing. The transition from Bill Yacoboni to the new auditors, 2017 was the first year that they audited. They didn't get to that until the end of 18. And you know, we didn't get to audit 18 until a little earlier this year than we did last year. But as I get more used to how they want things presented and how they say we should do things, I believe the differences between what's on our financial statements and what they're ending up showing as audited numbers are getting closer together. But we had a higher fund balance coming into 19 than I thought, which is a good thing. We'll be able to carry that forward. So a long way from being able to tell you what the tax rate for 2020 is going to be, but the 2019 budget, I think overall is positive. Why did the commercial audit number go way down? Yeah, I wondered that too when I saw it. The bigger question for me was, why did we budget $30,000 or whatever it was? Where's the commercial audit? All right. So what happened was, it's on the second page. So we budgeted $30,205. We spent $32,246 and are budgeting $227. When we put that project out to bid, they gave us a schedule for the town from 2017 through 2022. And the number that they gave us for 2019 was more like 21,000. I'm saying, why did I put $30,205 here? Well, it's just, they ended up doing the work later. So if we look back at what they charged us in 2018, it's about, you know, half this amount. So it's just where it fell in the calendar. And I think the 227 numbers is going to be more in mind for what it will be this year. I looked at that yesterday. I looked at the detail and said, okay, we spent a lot less than 18 than we budgeted. We spent a lot more time. I figured it was an overlap. Yeah, that's what it is. So to just get a comment there about the auditors, are you seeing a substantial difference in the way things are being done? And is there a degree of more difficulty on your part because of it? Or do you think over? Well, it's getting easier. So the transition year is very difficult. They do things slightly differently than Bill Yacoboni did. Bill Yacoboni, there are things that we never did before. And it doesn't really apply to the town. But for instance, in the utility district, the water and sewer departments are their proprietary funds, which means unlike government funds, they run more like a business as opposed to government accounting for general fund operations. So in the in the water and sewer departments, they have debt just like we have in town. But the debt in the water and sewer departments is supposed to be shown on the balance sheet. And the payment is supposed to be off of a liability line, as opposed to out of an expense line.  And so we had to adjust how we posted all of that stuff. I have to, for the village or for the utility district, I have to calculate a crude interest. So if we pay a bond on, you know, make a principal payment on a bond on November 15. And then the next principal payment is until the next November 15. And the interest is $100,000 for the year. I have to take the $100,000. I have to divide it by 365 days. And I have to multiply it by the 45 days that are in this year and charge that interest. So all those things I learned from them in 2018, and the the 2017 audit for the town and village was very, very difficult to do. And getting our books in order was very difficult. Once we did it, and I understand why we did it, how we did it. Now I'm trying to do that. So 2018's audit was much easier than 17's audit. And I talked to the auditor today, and I said, I think that our financial statements are going to be almost exactly like you want them. So moving forward, it's going to take less time than it did. But the first couple years were a lot of time spent. And I joke with them and say, you know, this, you know, the one person in the town that I know, know who reads the audit report is me. I don't know if anybody else who reads it. Anyway, you just have to learn a whole bunch of logarithms to get out. But I'm, it's better than it was. They charge more than the old one did too. So we have to do more work. They get more money. So it comes to mind there that, you know, your term here may be shorter to live than the rest of us probably want to see, but whoever may come take your seat. I hope they're reasonably versed in doing the same thing. Well, that's going to be up to whoever hires them. So, you know, I did mention a few years ago, when Leanne was retiring that it might be time to think about a finance director. I still think that's something that should be thought about. I'm not sure, you know, I've grown into this job. I did not have the skill set when I was hired in 1988 that I have now. Now, on the other hand, we didn't have then what we have now for money. You know, we had a general fund in the town of the village and a water and sewer fund. And that was basically it. We didn't have capital funds. I helped create those. We didn't have tax stabilization funds. We didn't have investments. So, you know, I've learned a lot along the way. And, you know, I'm still not an accountant. But I can, for a long time now, I've been able to work with the bookkeepers and say, Okay, I think we fix this this way. We got to post this transaction that way. And I just described some of the things that we have to do to put the financial statements in the form that the auditors want to see them. Most town managers that I know don't have big time accounting skills. You know, it's a different skill set. I was going to ask you, you know, the town manager installed fairly well. Does he also deal with the same things that you do? Or do they have somebody? He has a your sister in law works there. So he has a finance department. He has he has he has a finance director, a finance director has two or three bookkeepers. They have a whole department that does what what Michelle Carla and I do here. So anyway, was there motion to adjourn? I just have one comment about the paving. It seems like general knowledge that you get better prices for paving projects.  I don't know that we exactly has anybody looked at that or just something to think about. We haven't talked a lot about it yet. Okay, so I just thought I'd put that out there. I've told the public works folks that we're going to put it out to do this year. A lot on the plate. We'll do it when we can change color reminder to you should sign this by a contract with Duxbury. We'll send it over to them. And then they won't sign it until after their time. So then we can have a motion to adjourn. I second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye, aye.