The Waterbury Select Board and the first item of business is to approve the agenda for the evening. So Matt. I would like to ask you a question there at some point about your information there that you sent on the police. The first question there perhaps at the end of the meeting or some point. Okay, we can put that under the manager's items if that works all right. Yep, do that. Okay. Having said that, I'll approve the agenda as it appears with the addition. Take a motion to approve the agenda. Okay. I'll second that. And that's second. Motion in second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. Next item is the consent agenda items which would be the minutes of the November 5th meeting and a first class liquor license and outside consumption permit for Pegasus LLC. Is there a motion on the consent agenda items? I'd make a motion to approve that consent agenda items. Okay. Matt made the motion. Your second Chris. Absolutely. All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. Carla, you've got the documentation for the license. Next item is public. Any member of the public care to speak tonight? There being no takers. We'll move on to the preliminary discussion of the work grant trails and facilities as Steve wants to speak. And Nick Maynard here to brief the board on this item. Okay. Thank you. So I'm going to talk generally about the program. And we also have Dana Allen and Amanda McKay from Waterbury Area Trails Alliance here. And we've been discussing this possible grant for a couple weeks. And let me just give a little bit of background for the benefit of the Slack board and people who are watching or in attendance. The governor formed the Vermont Outdoor Recreation Collaborative. I can't give you an exact timeline, but I believe it was in conjunction with the last legislative session. It's been in existence for a year or so. And it's a representative group that includes the commissioner of Forest Parks Recreation, Mike Snyder. And it includes another state cabinet member. And then it includes members of the non-profit recreation sector such as Mike DeBonis, who's executive director of the Green Mountain Club. And then it also includes people from the private sector who either market recreation products or have recreation businesses and so on. Waterbury Trails in the Northeast Kingdom, the Burke area is represented and so on. So they decided to do a pilot grant program this year. And this group is commonly referred to as the VORAC collaborative group. And so the grant program is referred to as the VORAC grant. Our understanding is that in the initial round, it's going to be $100,000 worth of grant funds. And they're looking to grant this in either one or possibly two grants to communities. It's intended to be a demonstration grant with an economic development angle or aspect. Promoting economic development through recreation. That's really the mission of this group. So we've been working with Alyssa. And the grant is due in mid-December. So it's December 14th. So we wanted to bring this to you just in a preliminary way and find out if you would support it. And then bring back a final proposal with a detailed budget at your December 3rd meeting. So Nick and I have been working with Bill Sheffalk and Bill Woodruff to develop a scope for this grant. And this is unusual in that they have a check-off in the more categories that you can cover, the more competitive that you are. So any grant program has a game to play, if you will, or objective I think is probably a better, more political way to put it. So we've got a number of projects that we're suggesting. Some of these are current projects that we've been working on for a little while and some of them are somewhat new projects in recreation areas. So what I think I'd like to do is have Nick go over his projects and then I'll go over the trails-oriented projects and then see if those from Waddinger have anything to add at that point. Could you move a little of that mic over a little bit? Alright, so some of the projects that the recreation department has been working on or would like to see done, the lights out here and at Anderson Field have to get replaced at some point. A lot of the fixtures are out, they're outdated, they've been around for many years. So the new updated technology would save money on electricity, well not in this grant could cover that we think. I mean as Nat knows the pool building is going through sort of a renovation, like preliminary phase to accommodate the handicapped and people who don't know how to buy. It's been many years since that has been updated too. So in order for electrical work to be done, it has to be up to code and so this grant could cover that as well. And then the signs, the previous REC director Deb Fowler had already quoted signs to get replaced. She had gone through a permanent process to get two signs put up at Hope Davy, which I've been told it's still good. I just looped that cost into this grant too. It's kind of miniscule in comparison to the other projects but it's something in this grant. It checks off one of the check bosses that Steve was talking about making it competitive. So as far as recreation is concerned, that's the recreation department, that's the projects that we have included in. Yeah, I think it's important to be reminded what both Nick and Steve said is that a lot of the things that have been identified that are eligible for this grant are things that will be doing anyway. There are things that are in our budget to be done, capital budgets to be done in the next few years. So the lights, for example, we need to change out those lights. We need to get more efficient fixtures. If we can simply identify that as a need, show the fact that we're going to hopefully get a grant from Efficiency Vermont to pay for half of the cost of the lights themselves. If we end up getting this grant, it will save us money from something that we were already intending to do. And it's a bit unusual because most grants are not for enhancing or improving something that you already have there to give you something different. But I asked Steve a couple of different times and he said, no, we're looking to give this type of grant in order to facilitate this type of work getting done. So the things that Nick just said, it would be a definite money savings, cost savings to the town if this grant is funded because we'd be doing these things anyway over the next two to five years. Is there a match requirement with this grant? There's no stated match requirement. When we talk about the budget in just a few minutes, preliminary budget that we were looking at, we would recommend a match. So that would probably be in the neighborhood of 30 or 40 percent. But our understanding is that there's no match requirement for this program. It's quite flexible. It would probably make it a little more competitive if we have a match. Yeah, definitely. That's always the case. So we're recommending a match that could come out of the CIP. Has this grant been given out before? This is a grand big pilot programmer. Okay, so you can't look at a previous year. No, no. This is a new group that's formed. They consolidated their mission and this is a new program. And I think the idea is that it's a pilot and they would extract these communities to go on and talk now about the trails projects. And some of the work of this grant would set the stage for more implementation. So they really want to see a program that would move forward and have an ongoing economic benefit. So the trails portion of the project were anticipating three different elements. And two of them would be on the ground implementation. One would be more on the planning side. And the first is the community path that runs from Lincoln Street up to the golf course and Gulfville Road. And this path gets a lot of views at certain times. It's used by the gravel grinder race in the spring and then by Lee Peepers Marathon. Many sections are grass and someone poorly drained just because there's been a little work done over the years as far as any grading or additional gravel and crushed stone. So what we're recommending is to basically resurface that path. And we would use a crushed gravel base of about six inches and then about six inches of stay mat. And probably a 10 foot width something of that. So that it really would be serviceable, especially for these events. These are really terrific economic development drivers in the community. I think we can make a good argument that this path will have benefits and then day-to-day benefits to where we can really boost the use of that path and the connection, and offer a connection paralleling Room 100. Then the second project would be another signage project. I think you know we're going to be doing wayfinding signage in conjunction with the Main Street reconstruction. It looks like that project's going to be able to move forward. Bill can maybe put in on that later. And so what we'd like to do is have a complimentary wayfinding signage that would be in our park system. And it would basically be oriented towards wayfinding, especially for trails across Vermont Trail, the community path, and also for the recreation facilities for people who were coming in from out of town. So we haven't designed the system yet. We would program some money for graphics. But the idea is that there would be complimentary mapping, complimentary to the wayfinding kiosks that are part of the Main Street reconstruction project. And we would probably have some trailhead signs for both the across Vermont Trail and the community path with maps. Those paths have trailhead maps, but they're pretty minimal. So we really want to expand that so people can orient themselves. And then the third project is a follow-up to the Waterbury Village to Little River State Park Connector Trail project that we did, finished up in 2016. And we really need to take the next step to work with landowners more closely and develop either easements or agreements. And this is a project that we would work really closely with WADA along with the other two on-the-ground projects to try to get that project shovel ready so that we could apply for implementation funds. We're really not there yet. We've had some really good preliminary conversations with really all the landowners that are involved in the route we've mapped out that we need to take up the next step. So that would be one where we set the stage for future recreation, grant funding, grant implementation. So as far as the budget, I mentioned that the pilot has $100,000 available. We've done some preliminary budgeting and it looks like the total project at this point in time would be about $70,000. And we would apply for $50,000 in grant funding, I guess in hopes that another community, I think there's going to be a lot of interest in this program, would also be interested in the $50,000 grant. And they would do two pilots. I think that was a scenario that we could maybe encourage in our own way. But we don't want to get overboard on what we want to accomplish. And this would give us good solid funding for the pool building, which is going to be a pretty substantial project for the family and gender neutral bathrooms and changing facilities and so on. And it would give us good solid funding for the lighting project, including electrical installation and then more modest funding for these other projects. So again, this is preliminary. We wanted to get some feedback of some guidance and then we would work with Valissa and folks from WADA to develop an application to bring back to you on December 3rd. Mark, I've got a couple questions there. When you're here for a good time for it. I'm not hearing. Well, I said I had a couple of questions there. It's a good time. Yeah, go right ahead, Chris. Okay. How much ability for the lighting is this grant somehow tied in with the Act 54 there? Efforts to have 90% renewables by 2050. Is that what makes that eligible? The fact that we are upgrading them to a more energy efficient bulb? Yeah, I'm not sure what it's exactly tied to. The person that I've spent in contact with that, Efficiency Vermont, says that we get the max rebate per outdoor light fixture, which I think is $200 per light fixture. Yeah, it's 60 to 75% of what is used currently. So it probably is tied to, I just don't know. So Chris, it's not a direct tie in to that efficiency or the legislation as far as reducing your electrical input. It just happens that this is something that this grant will fund as an enhancement to recreation. And if we get the money, it's just helpful in that it will help us do something that we were planning to do anyway. The Efficiency Vermont grant, I believe, is independent of this. Even if we were not funded with this and went ahead with the lighting on our own, we would still be eligible for that Efficiency Vermont money. The second question was, Steve, did you say the budget amount for objects all together was what, $70,000? This is a current preliminary budget. We're still waiting for estimates on the electrical installation work for the lighting and the work in the pool building. This is preliminary based on various conversations that we've had with contractors and suppliers. So it would be about $70,000 and then we would aim for a $50,000 grant leaving a local match of about $20,000. But that could vary based on... I guess my question is that going to be asked as additional money as part of the budget for this coming year? Or is that something that you've already... is already in the budget? You know, is it going to be in addition to the normal budget? I'm just trying to get a feel for whether there's an increase in the current budget or whether it's kind of in there already. I think Bill's got an answer for us, Chris. It's mainly in there already. We didn't necessarily have a plan to do anything on this trail before this grant opportunity, but this is a decent opportunity. But as I said, the work that we contemplate to do for the lighting, the work that we're planning to do at the pool building in and of themselves in the signage is something that we were already going to be doing in the next year or two. So I look at this as a savings, Chris. There'll be a match, but it's not going to be as much as if we had to do it all ourselves, which is what we were thinking we were going to have to do. No, I'm not objecting to it. I'm just trying to get a figure in my head as to, you know, I've already got a kind of a figure in my head as to what we're looking at for, you know, the discussion we had here back a little while ago on truck replacements and paving of Loomis Hill. And we also got the police department addition coming. I'm just trying to get the numbers in my head as to what we may be looking at for kind of a whole increase for the next year. Yeah, well, I'm working on that too. I'm making some progress a little later in this evening's meeting. We're going to talk about some of those numbers. But, you know, there's certainly a work in progress and it's going to be January before we know them all. So just so that I can frame this the way I think I'm hearing it, it looks like the projects that Nick spoke to and the community path and signage pieces are something that you would be looking at to do solidly. The village to the State Park Access Trail is at a planning level point for this grant for further implementation later on. Okay. That's correct. This grant program is primarily to implementation, excuse me, but they do want to encourage planning for future projects as well. So I think that element is beneficial. All right. So what are you looking for from us at this point? You want to take exploratory steps, but what do you actually need? Right. I don't think we necessarily need a motion. I think we just need a sense of the select board if you think this is a good idea, if you want us to bring it back to you on the third with a more detailed budget and a proposal for a grant application. Right. Yeah, I'm very supportive. I'm excited about the community path and some research and signage, the way of signage makes a lot of sense. And I think if it gives us the opportunity to leverage some grant funding for expenses that we're facing anyway, that makes good sense. Yeah, I totally agree. I think it would be foolish not to explore it. Good. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Chris's comments about the energy efficiency of the lights. I think you could roll that in that you would be complying with that legislation and have a reason to do it. Next item on the agenda is the Waterbury Ambulance Service. Gentlemen. I'm going up to the table here. Introduce yourselves because I'll get your names wrong. We left the mic on for you. Thank you. Mark, is this the one that we, you had given me a couple of weeks ago? Yes. We'll update you just a little bit. Okay. So I sent this out to you folks over the weekend. I don't know if you had a chance to look at it, but it's pretty similar to what I shared electronically. I'm James Termanowski, trustee chair for Waterbury Ambulance Service. Mark Podger is executive director. Welcome. So if you remember a year ago, these folks came in and had a preliminary discussion. I've met with these two fellows a couple of different times and with Mark, along with representatives from the Duxbury and Moortown, the other two communities that are directly served by WASI, and they're here tonight to have a discussion with the board about where they are with their finances and how they operate to educate us and to share their concerns about the future and funding of this essential organization. So with that, have at it. All right. Well, we've prepared a packet for you with some general information. The first couple pages are not too much you haven't seen before. We did include, however, the transport summary as well as the illustration of the transports by towns from 2016 until the year-to-date. And as you can see, Waterbury is our largest user. In 2018, for example, we responded to 579 calls in the Waterbury alone. As with most ambulance services, most ambulance services in our design are facing budget shortfalls. The reimbursements are just not matching the expenses it costs to operate. For example, the Waterbury Ambulance, it costs us $999 of blood and sets pretty to operate. That includes a phenomenon that we call cost of readiness. We have to be ready 24-7, 365 days of equipment to hold that ready to roll. I'll give you an example. As far as the shortfall goes on the reimbursements, so Waterbury Ambulance charges $750 for what we call an ALS-1 call, advanced life support call. The Medicare reimbursement rate for that level call is $437. 20% of that is paid for medication. So just about 50% of what we charge. That same call for a Medicaid recipient, the reimbursement rate is $349 for that particular call. And we cannot back the patient for that. So we have to accept $349 for that call. Another issue that we are facing is with commercial insurance is paying the patient directly. And while most patients will turn around and pay us, we have a substantial number of those that don't. And back in three years ago, the Vermont Andrews Association, in which I am a member of the Legislative Committee, were successful in getting legislation passed, which basically says insurance companies need to pay the providers directly. However, they included words in there based on the terms and conditions of the health insurance policy. So the loophole that many insurance, private insurances are using is just that, putting in your policy that the patient will receive the check and pay. We are planning to meet with the Department of Banking and Insurance in the near future, discuss the women in that loophole. It was not the spirit of the legislation in the first place to allow that. Losses go from 100% volunteer to now one where we have two full-time paid staff, plus four for beams to cover the open ships. Calls are going up. The Q&A level is going up. Our protocols and our scope of practice is going up to include more stuff that we can do, hence higher charges that we incur. So what we are looking at, we're looking at a per capita rate of $18.83. And compare that to other areas per capita from around the state vary from anywhere from $60 to $3 at the Randolph down to $4.22 in Iraq. We have also been doing calculations included for various income contributions, the capital-west payment, the building, et cetera. And we also discussed, in light of this incorporation request, that our bylaws would be adjusted to reflect the appointment of one representative from each town that you serve, and that would be appointed by the select boards of the town. We already have representatives from each of the towns that we serve, but they're voted in by the members. And the members are people who are traditionally volunteered for WASI. They are the membership of WASI. We've also included in the back of the packet our 2018-19 budget. The registration of our half improvement plan as well as the balance sheet. So we see our budget in the next two last pages. And then our balance sheet, which is primarily capital reserve. And in the last few years, although it is capital reserve, we've had to use some of those funds to take the operating expenses. Okay. Now, it's clear from looking at the numbers. The bulk of the services that you provide are to the Waterbury community. And it's pretty clear from everything. And also in looking at the types of calls and what results in transports and everything, it's obvious that the bulk of your work is with serious life care. So no questions with that. We have Chris Viennes on the other end of the line here. Chris, did you have any observations you wanted to share with the group right now? Yeah, actually I do. On the bulk of the sheet, it must be it's been updated a little bit from 18, I got $18.78. What you're saying is $18.83. But the incoming, I guess, is the incoming credit. Is that something that you carry? It's going to be an expense to you every year, obviously, or expense to somebody. Wouldn't that just be part of your budget rather than you're basically saying that your shortfall is $70,000 and your water storage per capita is almost $100,096,454? Then you give us an in-time credit and that drops us down to $40,000, basically. Are you still having to try to dig up that $56,000? Are you considering it as a loss kind of but you're still going to be able to put the bill on it or is that just the normal part of your budget? So they don't pay those expenses. The dispatching is easy to explain in that when the red phone system went away a number of years ago, the fire department was switched to Capital West for dispatching and we rolled the WASI dispatching into that. So when Capital West did an analysis of their rate structure and then determined how much they were going to bill each town, it was a combination of grand list, the number of fire calls and the number of ambulance calls. Back in the day, and I can't remember right off the top of my head what year we first moved away from that, Waterbury's bill from Capital West and I'm just picking numbers out of the air now was $65,000 and we had a number that said the ambulance calls are worth whatever and picking another number was $30,000. In those days, Waterbury paid that expense to Capital West and then we sent a bill to WASI because they didn't want to burden the taxpayers at all so they paid their dispatching. Sometime right after the flood, Ryan Lindner and John Kiefner came to me with a select board and said just what Mark and we're being told now that our expenses are going up, it's harder for us to pay these expenses so they asked could the town pay the full dispatching bill. So we pay their dispatching bill which means we're paying the bill for dispatching not only in Waterbury but in Mortown and in Duxbury as well. It's the whole bill. So the look at the in kind and you see WASI's share of Capital West charges, that's the best estimate that I have as to how much WASI is responsible for for the bill that we're paying. So we pay that now. So what they're offering to do is say we're going to recognize the fact that Waterbury's already paying something. The building lease value and maybe Mark remembers the square footage and the numbers that he and I exchanged but we have a building, how many square feet is it? A couple thousand square feet. The town has provided that to WASI and we have a lease with WASI. They paid us $250 two years ago and that takes care of their lease for 20 years or something like that. So Mark and I worked together and just said, okay, if we were going to be leasing this property to them and actually asking a market rate for it and I kept it on the low side of the market rate but we figured that the lease value of the building on an annualized basis would be $20,400. So those are not expenses that they necessarily have. I think their true budget shortfall is $70,000 and they want to raise $70,000 and whether they backed into the per capita fee or not, they understood that Waterbury was providing in-kind payments to them that the other towns weren't so to cover the $70,000 shortfall they kind of did some backwards calculations and came up with this $18,300 and that works out that Duxbury pays almost $25,000, Morton pays about $5,400 and you have to pay the rest and I think... That the municipality has covered it kind of just struck me odd as to why it's there at all because that's been an ongoing thing and it's kind of part of the system that's currently in place. But if you didn't recognize that, Chris... Figure, I guess. Chris, but if... Chris, Chris, if you didn't recognize that, Chris, we would be paying more because if you took $70,000 and you divided it by the population of the three towns, it would be a different number and Waterbury would be paying more than we're paying. We are already paying the $36,000 for the dispatching is a hard number and they need to give us credit for that. If they didn't give any credit for this, they would spread the $70,000 over the population between the three towns and we'd be paying a higher amount. That's what I'm saying, that $56,000 is showing the recognition of those expenses that we already paid. Okay, I'm all set. Okay, thanks, Chris. Just a curiosity question on the part of your current structure and what you see in the future. I'm well aware of how the volunteer and basically public safety involvement at all. It's a tough field out there trying to attract people in and retain them. In Vermont, my understanding is that the model that we have here in Waterbury is one of the models that's there. There's another model that kind of incorporates being a subset of fire departments and the professional firefighters associated with that. Is there another variation that's out there that we're not aware of? Unicially owned. Independent service such as the one that has their own ambulance service which is not part of the fire department. Do they face the same struggles with staffing and everything? In the wintertime, I run with Northwood. Myself, I live there. In the wintertime, it's great because you have the Norwich students there. Beautiful. So, am I correct in understanding that you've made arrangements with the other two communities as far as items on their town meeting ballot? Or just left more town? Okay, so you're having the same discussion? Absolutely. Based on what Bill had provided us for previous information, it looked like there were a couple of avenues for that. I do think that this is an issue that the voters need to weigh in on. Your service is invaluable to the community and really folks in the community have to make the decision where they feel that would fall. The only issue that Bill had was about the general practice that we've had with requiring petition in order to get on to the town meeting ballot, but my sense is I wouldn't be inclined to bother with that. I think this is clearly an issue of concern for all of us in the community and simply adding it on makes good sense to me. Yeah, I agree with you, Mark. At first, I had inklings of maybe just approving it ourselves, but after a little bit of thought about it, I said it might be a good topic of discussion and transparency for the voters to weigh in on this and give them a stake in the game as far as the decision-making. I wouldn't think that, you know, just speaking for myself, I wouldn't think they would turn this down in any way she had performed, but it'd be good that they at least have the discussion amongst themselves along with the board at that time to reinforce it, you know? Your budget year is July 1st, did you try it? So if we pass this town meeting in March, the payment that we made will be after July 1st for the 18, 19 fiscal year. And you are meeting or have met with the other towns, right? Yes. Good. Yeah, no, I agree. I think that making them go the root of the petition is too much and I wouldn't recommend that. So we'll put it on our warning and we'll move from there. So just so you know, Chris, I was half-white before, if you took the $70,000 that there in the hole and you simply divided it by the number of people in the three towns, it's 6, 7, 4, 6, it'd be about $10.83 per capita and then you'd have to multiply our population of 5136 by 10 and it would be about $53,000 that we would be paying as opposed to the 40,000. So it's... the fact that they're reflecting what we're already doing for them is helpful to us and it's the right thing to do. I agree. Thank you very much. Is there any next step that we need to take? Just come to town. If you're prepared to speak to the article, I think it would be helpful. Do you have a pre-town meeting? No. We have all our fun in one day. Yeah. Some of you live in Waterbury here, so you can come. I think people will really appreciate being educated about this topic. It's important. Thank you. Thanks for your work, too. Thank you. All right. Moving right along, manager's items. The preliminary conversation concerning the 2019 budget. Yeah, this won't take too long. Chris, I don't know if you looked at your computer, but I did send you an email. I think my wife was working on printing off those six sheets. I don't know if she... They're not all that important. So we're going to start with those budget sheets first. So if you just take the top page off and turn it over for a second, we'll just look at the budget sheets. As I said earlier, I have started working on the budget and making some decent progress. And there's just some things that I want you to know about. As in every budget, there's expenses that are overspent and there are others that are underspent. The revenues are kind of a big part of the equation because obviously we take our expenses and subtract our non-property tax revenues from them to determine how much we need to raise in taxes. So the budget sheets that I have, I just want you to see a little bit of the good news, I guess you could say that we've received from the revenues and mainly from the state, excuse me. So looking at that first page of the general fund, which is Fund 11, the property tax line at the top, that fluctuates, that goes up and down based on downloads that we get from the state constantly having to do with whether somebody has a non-residential or residential property and it changes. Unfortunately, the changes don't affect any budget except the town's general fund budget. So the highway budget will get all its money, the library budget will get all its money, the school budget gets all its money and usually more because most of the downloads end up costing more to the education. But we only sent a bill out in the one bill in the summertime. Individual bills get adjusted, but any variation hits that general fund property tax line. So right now we're down, at the end of the year we'll hit a button that will turn the bill amount into an actual received amount and then we'll have delinquencies to collect. It's not unusual for that line to be well below 100% at this time of year. But moving down the page, the village administrative service fee, they owe one more quarter's worth to us and when they pay that, the $100,000 line item will have been met. Pilot, we broke the pilot up this year. If you remember, we put $200,000 in here, which is more than we had last year and we put the balance into the paving fund and we'll get to that in a few minutes. The reimbursement from Forest and Parks Recreation for all of the forest land that we have, Putnam State Forest, Mount Mansfield State Forest, we're actually going to, we have actually received already about $11,000 or so more than budgeted, so that's a plus. The V-Trans Liaison State Grant Line, where there's a check mark next to that. I'm not sure it will go all the way up to $49,000 but it will go up, that's the line item that we pay fire out of and whatever she spends will come in. So that will go up further. So just with the village and the, or year to date, that other governments is at $587,717 and at minimum it's going to be $611,840. So we're going to have a little bit more revenue in that than we anticipated. And then over on the second page, we haven't transferred the amount from the reappraisal fund yet. So our revenues in the general fund are going to be a little bit higher than anticipated, which is always welcome news. Moving forward, I just showed you fund 12 and I think on the back side of that, you'll see fund 13. We're going to probably be right on the money on 12. We will have a little bit more payment from that highway labor and materials line. The WASI fuel was up a little bit. The two main revenues in that fund are the property taxes in the Vermont state aid where we haven't received the state grant yet. If we don't get it, we didn't do the project. Fund 13 is the library. They're slightly higher than what they budgeted. The library fund is probably going to be over expended though. We did not plan for or know that Mary Kasamatsu was going to be leaving. When she retired, she had some leave time that we had to pay out and we hired another director and we had some unanticipated expenses there. The next fund, 48, we'll come back to that. That really goes with the memo that I had you turn over at the beginning so you can put that with that other memo and we'll talk about that briefly. In the paving budget, fund 70, and this is good news. The transfer into the paving CIP from the highway fund was 288,000 as budgeted. The transfer from the reserve fund that we had, that was the old roundabout fund, was a little bit more than we anticipated. And then the pilot proceeds, we thought we were going to get $270,000 of pilot money. We put 200 in the general fund which we budgeted, but the pilot payment was actually almost $282,000. So there's another $12,000 that went in and I put the excess into the paving fund. If you wanted to go into the general fund, I can switch it back, but I thought since we're gearing up for some major paving, having some money here would be helpful. On the expenses for paving, the Class 3 paving, and I believe I put this in a memo to you in my town managers report that I also sent out, we did all the paving we had planned to do plus more. We did Hollow Road this year that was not in the budget. On Whizzle Mountain, when we got up there, it turned out that while we had the water and sewer departments adjust all the manholes and water shutoffs and valves and the like, and then the highway department adjusted storm drain manholes and catch basins, and we rebuilt a lot of those things. So the public works crews worked pretty closely together to get all that done. When we got there, it turned out we didn't need to reclaim anywhere near as much as Whizzle Mountain than we had anticipated. So we did more paving than we had planned. There's more black top down on the ground. There are more streets right now that are smooth. I won't promise they'll stay smooth for 100 years or even 10 years, but we did a lot more paving than we anticipated and it didn't cost us anywhere near as much as we thought. So we budgeted $550,000. We spent $374,000. That will all drop to the bottom line. So between the revenue that we have, and I didn't look at the unbalance coming into the year. I didn't have time to do a full analysis, but we had higher revenues than anticipated. Significantly lower expenses than we anticipated. So that what we carry forward into next year will be higher than we expected that it would be. So that's good news for next year. I'm not saying that we won't have to finance if we pave Umis Hill, but we've got more resources in the paving fund already than we thought we would have. So I'll stop there. If you have any questions, anyone including Chris? Chris, you probably don't have any information to look at to have any questions, but was... I've got the information in front of me and I don't have any questions. The only comment I have is that in a perfect world, it'd be nice to leave that money in the paving CIP and not, again, in the perfect world, not have to use it as part of the financing for any additional paving that we were thinking about doing next year but use it as on top of so we could, if possible, do even more next year. Well, it's going to be hard to... It's going to be hard to do more than we've already thinking that we're going to do next year. I mean, that's a pretty aggressive project to get all of Loomis Hill done the way that we're anticipating doing it. We can have this discussion later, Chris, and the money is going to be staying in the paving fund and whether we want to use the money to reduce the financing, that might be necessary or if we want to just leave it there and do more later, either way, it's an asset in the paving fund and we'll have an opportunity to discuss how we'll use it. I'm pleased that we were able to do more than we thought this year for less money and that gives us options going forward that we didn't think we were going to have and we can have the discussion how we're going to use it later but it's an asset that we have that's a little bit unanticipated and that's good news from my point of view anyway. Absolutely good news. Yeah, we'd just echo that because I know the year before we weren't able to achieve even what we had planned to do and we bolstered it this year in the hopes that we would be able to get more done and we did, so all around that's a good success. We did and we didn't spend as much as we thought. Anyway, the other information and I know if I could see Chris's face I'd be interested to hear what he's thinking. We did get some news the other day the Main Street project was put out to bid by V-TRANS as you know it's a V-TRANS project. The bidding was on Friday and the estimate was 25 to 30 million dollars. There were four bidders for the project. J.A. McDonald was the low bidder at 21 million dollars in change. So that's good news on two fronts I think. One was only slightly more than the 20 million dollars that was estimated several years ago and it was not as high as they were fearing. So the 21 million is a good number. J.A. McDonald is the company that did the roundabout work. They were excellent contractor to work with. This project will be run by V-TRANS and their relationship will be directly with V-TRANS and the V-TRANS inspector. Our people will be obviously involved in the background and will be very much in tune with this job. But at 2% of 21 million the local share is about 420 thousand dollars which is a little bit lower than we were estimating. I'm still working now to divide out from the 420 that the local is responsible for how much of that is water and sewer. I think the last that I was talking with Barb about she thought she had identified about a million and a half dollars of water and sewer. That's something that we may discuss a little bit. If that's the case, if it's one and a half million for water and sewer the E-FUD would be responsible for 75 thousand and would be responsible for 345. If it's a little higher than 1.5 million their share would go up and our share would go down. The 345 thousand, if we just accept that as our estimated cost right now will be over three construction seasons, two and a half construction seasons. So we're going to have to factor that into our game plan as to how we fund this. I don't know yet. I haven't been able to get into the weeds at this point and I'm not even sure if anybody could. I don't know how much of the costs are front loaded in the first year versus the second year or the third year but all in all it's about as good news as we could get in terms of the price and I think we've got a really good contractor which I hope will bode well for a fairly smooth project. They did an excellent job on the roundabout. Any observations, Chris? No, that's great news Bill. The issue of what's going to be our cost over the next three years, I mean if we just kind of cut it down to center and said it was a little over a hundred thousand dollars a year I'm just again trying to keep in my head constantly what we're going to be faced with so the discussion we had a while back about Pave and Loomis Hill, the new trucks and highway trucks that we're going to need and with the police department additional costs there and now tonight's discussion with the ambulance service so if the additional police department is 185 over what we've paid this year plus another 40 from the ambulance that's two and a quarter and if it were a hundred, even numbers, a hundred thousand would it be safe to say we're going to be... I'm not ready to make a prediction yet. There's a lot of things that's going to be factored into the equation. I've got all the things that you're talking about already kind of in the hopper and I'm working towards it. If we're lucky maybe I'll have some preliminary numbers either the first or more likely the second meeting in December but I'm working to get as much of this information as possible and there are some revenues that will be going up. The pilot payments, the formula for pilot payments have as one of its factors tax rates so if our tax rates go up all things being equal the state uses a higher tax rate in their calculation and they would pay us more. I didn't bring next year's budget but that Forest and Parks money at 6368 is going to be higher next year than it was this year even though it was already $12,000 higher than we budgeted so there's some things that will be working in our favor they're certainly not going to make up $150,000 worth but I'll have more information in December but all the things that you've identified are already things that I'm working on pretty hard to try to solidify the numbers on. Okay, excuse me. If you go back to the memo that I wrote to you this is a discussion that I've been starting to have with the library commissioners a couple of months ago and I thought it would be something that we should at least talk about from the town's perspective. This memo basically lays out from 2006 to the present what we've transferred to the general operating funds from the town's tax stabilization fund and the library's trust fund and as you can see especially if you look at the town in 2006 we had prospective budgeting at the time so we would kind of look at what was happening in the markets look at past performance and pick a number that we thought we were going to hit as far as a number that we were going to be able to transfer we budgeted $25,000 in 2006 it had a really good year and we actually transferred $64,000 then the next year we budgeted $53,000 in the market it still did pretty well but it didn't do as well as we thought and we transferred $31,000 then in 2008 we had the financial collapse and basically from 2008 through 2011 we had planned to do nothing and then we got hit by the flood which caused even more consternation so for five years we didn't transfer anything and then in 2013 and 2014 we kind of made up for lost time we transferred some big numbers that were outside of the formula that we had typically used and that was all given discussion that the select board had with me at the time and we picked those numbers and did it in order to help buffer the tax rate a little bit and then in 2014 we actually changed the way that we calculated the formula we actually looked at the performance that we had in the current year so we looked at the performance in 2013 and then applied the formula and said okay in 2014 we can transfer $55,000 so we budgeted it and we transferred the exact amount and since 2014 you'll see that both in the library and in the town tax stabilization fund which is on the left hand side the actual transfer was actually the exact amount of money that we budgeted the library there was some rounding errors but pretty much dollar for dollar that we budgeted was transferred what I started talking about with the library commissioners because they had a pretty hefty transfer last year $35,700 they had a particularly good increase in their portfolio the town had a good increase but not quite as good because the town's portfolio is significantly higher than the library's and we were able to transfer about the same amount of money so in both cases a little more than $35,000 was transferred and it was based on the formula when I look at this I'm just a little concerned that even though we're looking prospectively now or retrospectively now and we can hit our budget number exactly there's still volatility from year to year we transfer $44,850 in 2015 and then in that year the market doesn't do well and we don't transfer anything the next year we transfer $28,000 then this year we transfer $37,515 and it's looking like for 2019 if we apply the same formula we'll probably not be able to transfer anything because the market is down right now so we don't have to make a decision tonight I'm sending this off to the library commissioners as well they make the determination from their trust fund but I'm wondering rather than apply this formula if we should maybe just look at averages and say for the next five years we're going to transfer I pick the number for the town $25,800 and for the library $15,000 put that in the budget both funds are frankly robust enough that you could transfer $25,800 even if the market had an average down year and then if the down year was like 2008 and it was 50% you could adjust that in your next year's budget and say you know we really ought not to take anything out of this because it took too big of a hit so we can talk about this more as we get into the budget season but what I'm trying to do is be able to consistently plan on a certain amount of money and you avoid that swing because when we went from $44,850 in 2015 and dropped to nothing the next year everything being equal we had a four sevenths cent tax rate increase that year because we just didn't get anything so that's just something for your consideration as we start heading into budget season the fund 48 that I told you goes along with this simply shows you that to date we've earned $10,000 of interest on the tax stabilization fund but we had $11,190 of unrealized losses and that was actually through October 31st and November has been worse the market was down to 400 and something points earlier today so I think the unrealized gains are going to be down and in a normal year if it turns out that we don't transfer anything to the tax stabilization from the tax stabilization fund unless we have a return that's greater than 3% the first 3% stays with the tax stabilization fund the next 5% gets transferred to the general fund and then above 8% we split on a 60-40 basis leaving 60 in so in a year that we lose money we clearly don't make a transfer or we haven't so anyway this is just for your consideration if you have questions now I can answer them but it's just to think about a lot of times investing philosophy tends to lean towards a long view anyway so using a larger block to make your adjustment the only thing for me would be having that circuit breaker piece in there that if things consistently were down that we would shy away from that I think the sense that I have with this board is that conservative enough that that would be the case I mean the fund itself started at $644,000 if it ever went below that we were prohibited by the action that the town created to set up the fund from going below that but I didn't bring the town report with me and I didn't print the balance sheet but we were in the I think the year started and the fund was about $935,000 so we've transferred from the fund about $520,000 in the 27 years that we've had it and the fund is still it's about $300,000 higher than it was when we started and we've transferred $521,000 into the general fund for the benefit of the taxpayers so it could certainly withstand in a normal down year $25,000 transfer we would miss the really big transfers in the up years but in the year that happens it's great but you kind of set yourself up for even if you have an average year the next year you set yourself up for loss okay the last item we had was Chris's piece with the police reporting so Chris why don't you go ahead yeah thanks Mark I was noticing on the information that you sent the percentage of the calls that our contracted police force had entertained and of calls that I'm trying to pull it up here real quick percentage of calls that middle sex kind of handled that 43% of the middle sex troopers and 57% of the resident troopers I was curious to know is it an assumption that at some point the resident trooper graph or portion chunk of the pie might be greater or is this the result of simply a result of the fact that our resident troopers aren't on in those specific times when the middle sex troopers are doing some of their calls you know what I mean it's kind of a two fold thing in this month one of the troops was off for vacation time so he missed seven work days so that's basically a week's worth of one shift that wasn't covered the focus on tracking that really is is to show whether or not we really need that presence in the community and when you're seeing the amount of workload that the troopers that are assigned here are it's pretty clear that it's worth having them around the piece about it is the difference in the response time and the fact that they cover calls that probably wouldn't get any sort of response otherwise but the other side of the coin is that we're still looking at at least 20 to perhaps 40% of the workload in the town that occurs outside of those hours that we've got shift coverage and folks just need to know that there's activity that is taking place I think Bill and I had talked about the prospect of trying to get the lieutenant here for our meeting on December 17th and we can get the perspective from him on what the feedback has been on both sides both the resident troopers and the station troopers I know when I talked with them during the last month it's still a very positive thing having the resident troopers here takes immense burden off the station troopers and even with that the station troopers when they do come here it's kind of like a new experience and I think they're a little more engaged in just the perspective of oh we've got to go to another Waterbury call my concern was that this graph would deter middle sex from wanting to continue with this program because I didn't know if their expectations was that the resident troopers would be taking more of the pie but the way you talk it sounds like they're working in their favor already anyway it's been the feedback that we've been getting tomorrow night I've got the community advisory board meeting so I'll have better information on that but I think if Lieutenant White can join us at the December meeting we'll all have a chance to have first hand discussion just as Mark said Chris we have a day and a half that we don't have coverage under this contract we don't have any coverage from the resident troopers on Sunday and then on Monday well actually it's more because we have only a half a day on Saturday so it's probably about 23% of the work week we don't have a resident trooper on anyway just in those shifts and then we're in the hours from 2 in the morning until they come on at 7 or 8 you know those those 5 or 6 hours when everybody's home in bed if there's a call then it's going to be middle sex that takes it so you're probably pushing 25% of our time we don't have a resident trooper on anyway and then as Mark said when somebody's on leave time they're on vacation the contract if one of the troopers just goes on vacation for a week the contract does not contemplate that they fill that in with another resident trooper if somebody went on vacation they just put somebody in to fill them while they're gone no they don't also suggest maybe that based on this graph if a lot of the activity is happening on that half day Saturday and the Sunday is that safe to assume no no because it it has variability and what we've got for numbers I'm not able to parse that deeply into it but I have seen on occasions where the resident troopers are on duty here there may be one or two other troopers from middle sex that are making traffic stops in the area so I've seen activity that shows a double up like that okay alright so you're welcome so we are at time for adjournment is there a motion to adjourn I will make a motion to adjourn alright and Matt's got the second alright well Chris good luck with the rest of your trip yep you all have a good Thanksgiving thank you I'll see you when I get back


This is the way to do it. This is the way to do it. This is the way to do it. Welcome to Youth in Action where youths are no longer the leaders of tomorrow but of now. Today we have Hyrol Matete doing an amazing job as a teacher. Hyrol, Karibusana to the program. Thank you. They say being a teacher is a calling. What do you have to say about that? I think just like any other profession, being a teacher could be a calling, being a banker would be a calling. So yes, being a teacher is a calling. And there are different fields of teaching here. So what field do you operate in as a teacher?   You have been recognized internationally as a mentor. Talk about that for a bit. So I joined a program called Akili Dada. Akili Dada is an incubator leadership program where young women from all over Africa, mainly East Africa, they get a chance to be mentored on how to run the organization.  So that is what we did at Akili Dada.   I would like to know how did you come across Akili Dada? Is it something you knew about? No, it's not something I knew about it. I was just on my social media and then I come across it. Wow. And you're doing a great job. Thank you. What other activities are you involved in? At Angels of Sunset. Yeah, okay. What is Angels of Sunset? So I am the founder and director Angels of Sunset. It's a talent academy for children and teenagers. So we take children between the age of three to 16 years. We train them on music, dance, modeling, acting, public speaking and generally performing arts. And then every school holiday we have events where these kids get a chance to showcase what we've taught them. And then people pay to come and watch them perform. So part of the money we raise from our ticket sales is used to equip a community library that we have in Maniata, where children from Maniata Slam can get access to workbooks used in school that their parents cannot afford. So Angels of Sunset, that name is striking. Where did it come from? So you see when the sun sets, there's so much hopelessness, there's so much uncertainty. You're not even sure what will happen. You know, it's dark.  You don't know what will happen tomorrow. And that is the case for most children in Maniata. They're not sure of where their next meal will come from. They're not sure of their education. They're not even sure if come at the Mimalizah school, will I go to a university? Will I go to a college? Will I go to a high school? So Angels of Sunset, an angel comes in to show you that there is still hope. There's someone who still cares. There's someone who sees you as a child in Maniata. There's someone who really wants you to have a bright future. So that is what happens with Angels of Sunset. So that is what we do for children in Maniata. And also, just as we said, there is so much darkness when the sun sets. We also run a program at Kibo school for the blind. Just from the name the blind, it's dark. Those children are always in darkness so that it's during the day or night. So some of them have never interacted with books. Some of them are brought to school at a very late age when maybe they are 10, 12, and it's when they're in a nursery school. So they've never even interacted with books. So Angels of Sunset comes in to just read to these children. We run a read allowed program for them and just help them interact with books even as they go through this other world that people who see cannot experience or cannot even follow. So speaking about working with the children from Kibo School for Blind, do you have a training that works with children who need special needs? No, I am not trained to work with children with special needs but passion drives you to do things. So I read a lot and I try as much as I can to just find ways that I can make it easier for them to just interact with education because I really believe that children are the future and we are looking for that inclusivity in everything that we do be it in fashion, be it in education and we do not want to let any children be left behind. And how is the experience working with the children from Kibo? Do you know those children? They really love when people visit them because very few people go there. So when you just go there, there's just that energy that they give you that you do not experience working with any other normal kid. So I feel working with them as much as our resources might be strained but it's so fulfilling. And by resources being strained, what do you mean? You know, when you're going there, I have volunteers who will read to the children so you need to transport them to that place. You need, there are just some logistics that needs to go into place. You need to have different books. You need to buy those story books that you read to them. So there is a lot of logistics that goes into the read aloud program. And do you have supporters or partners that you're working with to make sure that that is done? We believe that we cannot just do this alone. So we usually call out for people to come. So sometimes when we call out for people who can just come as reading assistants, we have friends who will show up with their cars. At least now we are sorted with their transport. We have friends who will just say we are buying snacks for the children. We have friends who will just say that we are doing photography for this so that people can see and it can get the publicity that it needs. So at the moment we are working with Crowdoll. Crowdoll, it used to be called Amazing Kisum. They've been great supporters of our projects from the community library that they've helped build. We are working with Ella Movers who have also been a great partner in making sure that people get transport to Kibo School for their Blind and YGAP who have just been like donors to Angels of Sunset as an organization. We're also working with companies like Jade Collection who have supported Kibo School for their Blind immensely and they've really gone out of their way. Just being a business and not a social enterprise. So they're not even looking at it as a CSR. They've just gone out of their way to really do it for Kibo School for their Blind. So we really appreciate Jade's Crowdoll and Ella Movers and YGAP as a partner. And so what is the driving force behind Angels of Sunset? Seeing that you're working with these kids and you're going out of your way without their training, without their, is just passion. So what is the driving force of it? So as I said earlier, I'm really passionate about children and education and I really want to see that inclusivity and we fight for more policies that will include not just children from, let me say normal for lack of a better word, not just children from normal families and normal schools. It will be so nice to have people who are supporting children from special needs school because as much as any other kid in Kenya, any other kid in our society, they really need people to show them they love. They really need people who can be parents and friends to them. And working with kids sometimes you have to be a parent to them. How do you manoeuvre that seeing that you're not a parent yourself?  You will have to be an adult and just see how you can work around it. So I also have nephews and nieces from my brothers and siblings. So it's just something that comes out naturally for me because I've also raised my nephews and nieces. So it's something that comes out naturally for me. Wow. And what would you say is your greatest achievement in your journey as Angels of Sunset till now? The greatest achievement that we've had not for me as an individual but as an organization and as a community that we've built over time is we've been able to build a good community library well-lit and child-friendly that children can access and use those books that their parents cannot afford. That has been our greatest achievement. And also just having children come from our mentoring program and go to events like Little Miss Kenya, get to represent Kisumu, get to represent Siaia. That has been one of the greatest achievements that we've had. Wow. You've mentioned Little Miss Kenya. I believe that is a fashion industry. So let's talk about it. Are you part of it? Are you the founder or how is it? No, I'm not the founder. I am the county director, Little Miss Kenya, for Siaia and Kisumu County. So Little Miss Kenya does the Nature Kids talent in the modeling world. So we have events at the county levels. So you participate in Siaia, Kisumu, Transoia and Nairobi. And then after all of each and every county has held their event, the winners get to represent their county at the national level. So when you win at the national level, you get to represent Kenya for Little Miss World. And as we are talking about the achievements we've had, we've actually sent two of our children to represent Kenya for Little Miss World. Two children that actually come from Kisumu. So you see it's a really great mentorship program. Yeah, it's really impressive. And speaking of working with kids as models, is it something you wanted because you would have chosen to work with adults in the fashion industry, but you chose kids. Why is that? So modeling was inspired by what happened in school. So when I was a teacher, when I was doing my teaching practice, I realized a lot of children were dropping out of school. This reason was not because they didn't like school, they were just being stubborn. So there are very few books, if you've studied at a public school, there are very few books in school. So one book you will share among four or five people. So when the teacher comes in the morning, the following day, you either have the option of taking another person's book or copy.  So I realized most of the teachers were sending these kids out of class and they felt these kids were lazy, but it wasn't even because of that. So these kids who are getting ridiculed in class with their peers, they are getting frustrated and abused with teachers. So most of these children's self-esteem had gone down. So I was looking for a way, how can I make change? How can I boost their self-esteem?  So that is how we started the modeling journey. So we started doing modeling so that we can boost their self-esteem. So these children were really looking forward to coming to school because they knew how to do it. So at least it's something that will keep them inside school. But that wasn't going to solve the problem. The problem was they were not having enough books. So that is how we started doing the modeling and then we have the fashion events. People come, pay, we buy books. And the modeling sector, do you also involve the children at Kibos School for Blind? Yes, last year we did a fashion show that was immensely sponsored by Jed's collection, where we just heard these kids for the first time in Kisumu in Kenya and in Africa having a fashion show for blind children. So yes, it's something we did and we are looking forward to having it this year. How did you do it? I'm curious, how did you do it? How did you tell them that this is what we're doing, work like this? How? So, and Joseph-san said, normally we have children who see. So and then we also have these children from Kibos. And something that we are trying to create as an organization and we are just trying to make sure that these children, we have blind children and then we have us who see. So there is that big gap. So we are trying to find a way where our children will just be together.  It's just something that they're born with. So our children were working with them on the runway as their guides and then we also had trained dogs that were working with them. And then there are those kids who have low vision so they can see some color, something that is bright. So we used a yellow string and showed them this is the runway, this is the end of the runway, this is where you need to pose, this is what you need to do. Wow, I'm so interested to see that for myself. So you talked about the mentorship.  What about yourself? How do you, how do you purpose to continue into the future with Angelic Sunset? Well, we want to make sure that we mentor a lot of children and then you also know you cannot just give from an empty cup. So you also need to be mentored. So I have people who, I also have women who have supported me, who have mentored me through this journey as a young leader, who has also mentored me through this journey as a young organization that is trying to come up and is trying to make a difference. So as we continue, I am looking forward to having other women who will support my organization, who will support our journey, who will support also the children that we work with. And while working as Angels of Sunset, any challenges you've encountered so far that you feel like you need to mention them and a solution should be brought about from that? One of the greatest challenges are just the resource train. You see for the, the read aloud program at Kibo school for the blind just as I had mentioned, we really have, we really need people to come in and support because those children really need us to be there and out there for them. For the community library that we run, it has been hectic because you see the Kenyan curriculum, it keeps changing. So every time it changes, we need to upgrade our books and sometimes we do not have those resources to immediately upgrade the books. So maybe today we are having KBL doing, we are having science, primary science, and then the next time teachers want KBL and then in the next two months teachers need work, need breakthrough. So you know the way the syllabus keeps changing, it's training, it's training our resources and it's also, we do not get to deliver so much for the children that we need to deliver to. And do you have people that help to develop the programs as they keep changing according to curriculum? Yes, I have a team of people who work, we have teachers who are volunteered for the program and then also have the, we have the reading assistants who usually help with tuition, we do have free tuition for children within Manyat. So what can the community, how can the community help? So how the community can help with, you know, education is something that, as much as we are all saying that we feel that we are so a light and people automatically know that parents in the slums, borrow we get food, borrow we get shelter, that is all. So we realize even in our program a lot of parents come up to me to do homework, they feel like, and you know the children do not want to go without doing homework because one day you're ready, they'll be sent out of class. So in Manyat, parents have really not embraced so much that because most of the children are coming from broken families, they're coming from parents who are just neglecting, so they do not see that as an option. So we maybe if we just get a way of educating more parents, we don't, let us not just assume that parents are really out there for education, parents are out there to look for food and shelter for their children, they do not care about education. And have you, have you tried to get some systems to help educate the parents? Yes, we've tried, we've worked with a few other people like Kefiado, Kenna Female Advice Organization, who are just trying to help us also equip the parents with knowledge that education is not like a tertiary or a secondary one for their children. Interesting. And so there is a young person out there who feels they have a calling to do a certain thing, but they've not actualized it as you have. What can you tell them? Usually we take so long because we think that we need a lot of money, we think that we need a lot of resources and we need a lot of crowd following us before we start doing something, but we'll just encourage them that if you have something that is going to impact, that is going to change our community, that is going to change our life, just start. Because at the end of the day, it's you waiting for someone, someone else is also waiting for you to start. So just start, you'll get people to mentor you, you'll get people to work you through the journey. So any, at any particular time just start. Wow, wow, wow. You're working with kids and that is so commendable. I love your work. I would want to be part of it. So congratulations. Thank you for coming to the show. If you have a calling to do something, go ahead and start. You do not have to have a lot of money. You do not have to have a lot of resources. As she has said, just start, you will get the mentors, you will get the right resources, you will get the right networks to complete your task. This has been Youth in Action. See you next time.


In sports news now, 18-year-old Ahmed Hafune of Tunisia stoned the pool when he swam an event winning time of 3 minutes and 43.36 seconds in the men's 400m freestyle. His medal was the first of four swimming medals of the 2020 Olympic Games which were awarded on Sunday. The 18-year-old also ended the dominance of Australia, New Zealand and Asian nations in the men's 400m freestyle. As we know from our side Asia, Oceania has not won a good medal in the event of the Olympic Games since Barcelona in 1992. Ahmed Hafune, Tunisia's second Olympic swimming finalist ever, stepped on the podium in his short. His medal was second by the country at these Olympic Games, having won silver on Saturday and they were the first to win by any African country so far. In the women's 400m freestyle relay final, Australia grabbed a new world record in 3 minutes 29.69 seconds.


Hey guys, Chevrolet 1000 here today We're going to be opening this up. It's called night angel It's a nightlight Stay tuned. Hey guys, Chevrolet 1000 here today We're going to be opening this up. It's called night angel It's a nightlight Stay tuned. Okay guys today what we have here we have oops It's called the night angel. It's a night light that allows you to Use both of these you don't have to plug it in the lights actually come underneath they shine out underneath There's your sensor. It comes on on automatically real easy to change Okay, so Let's open this up. It does come with a little instruction packet But we are not going to need it on this you may need it all you're going to do is take your old One of these things your old cover off and this will clip right on now how this works Is right here see these? Right there. There's one right there And it runs down to them lights in the sensor These when you clip it in will make contact with each side of your wall outlet Right there So now first thing you should always do is cut the power when you're doing something like this now. I Have not cut the power This is for demonstration purposes only now. I have not cut the power because I'm just trimming some paint there so it doesn't peel the paint off Or so you don't do that Hopefully she won't notice that but anyway I I've got I'm saving a video right now that that I just Shoot I just added it edit It a video for you guys So I'm going to be uploading it here soon, but it's saving so if I cut the power of this I run it go in the other bedroom that power cuts to and if I do that we have to do all my saving again, so It's like I said demonstration purposes only don't do this Okay So let's look it's I'm using one of my old cameras Won't do is won't take this off just the one screw Okay Now you don't have to take any of that all inside here on the sides is Your it's metal tabs there. We should fight the zoom in for you Some little metal tabs right there. Oh, there's Metal tab right there No metal time. There's one on the other side that that these two metal tabs are gonna Click in and they're going to touch. So let's back you back out here. There you go Are you going to do?   I don't know if they have other colors Let's shut the light off for a second see if it comes on Says I'm running. I got four minutes. So There you go guys. That's pretty cool. So now just a little upload for you I won't get off here. I've got I'm running out of disk space. So like I said, I'm using an older camera. So there you go real easy to do It's pretty cool. So far. I like it. This is for Bruno. This is his room and he doesn't like the dark. So I'm going to get off here now and say Shaber 1000 the myth man legend. I'm gone for now guys. Thanks for watching. Bye. Bye now. See you soon


Good afternoon. Let us begin. I have a question where someone has asked to explain how to add more than one function in one file in our own module. So, I am writing a file called utils.pi. So, we define the function here. What function? Let us say gcd. There is gcd in this, then let us add another function called LCM. I have called it utils.pi. So, now what are the things imported? We can take a look. See gcd and LCM. We can use gcd. Of course, this will give an error. We say utils.gcd. We got it. So, there is no real difference to using multiple functions in a module. Simply type them. Now, of course, we have not added any test code here, but we can and we should do it with. So, that is about it. Any other questions anybody? Some people are asking something very specific. I must show on the gray scale. Please send the question to Moodle. We will answer it there or rather I will I cannot answer it now because I do not know. We will have someone who knows answer it. We have a question. When and where do we need an else in the for loop? Let us first understand what is an else in a for loop because such a construct does not exist in other languages. And by the way, it is not specific to the for. The while also supports an else. It is probably a little easier to understand in the context of the while. So, let us start with that. Let us look at this scenario. There is a loop which is there on a condition and inside the loop you break based on another condition. Then such a thing happens. How do you know at the end of the loop? Let me write a fictitious loop which says while just so that there is no error, I will create some artificial values. But I write some statements here and then inside that I check something else. If I have such a loop, I have written a dummy function now so that it will work. In this loop what happens? When the loop is over you do not know why or when the loop ended. It could have ended because the condition a less than b changed or because the condition is perfect square of a star a plus b star b changed. Obviously, there is no working statement in between that while loop and the if. But assume there are other statements there which modify a, b or both. Now, sometimes at the end of the while loop you need to know how it actually changed, how it at the while loop actually ended. In that case you use a while. Let us look at one of the classic examples given in the tutorial for that. Let us say you want to identify the primes. How are you going to loop? You have to check. You are wanting to check. A number is a prime. Let us say that is a function you want to write. You will start by dividing by factors from 2 onwards up to square root of n, because there cannot be a if there are no factors below square root of n there cannot be a factor larger than that. I cannot use a break here, sorry. Give me a minute please. Let me organize my example. Sorry, that was okay. We want to test up to square root of n. What we do know is if it is 0, we know it is not a there is no need to check for factors after that. We are trying to check whether something is a prime. If it is 0 by 1 number that is all that needs to be done. Now, here now I have a problem. If control comes here it could have come because of two reasons. It could have come because f star f is greater than n, in which case n is a prime or it could have broken before the loop ended. Now, the classic way to check this is to put one variable here. In the if condition you reset that variable and outside the loop you check. Now, you know that if break is true the control came out of the loop because of the break statement rather than anything else. Then we know this is one classic way to deal with this sort of problem in normal languages. In other words we are trying to check whether we broke because the condition is true or because the condition is false. The point is if n percentage f equal to 0 if for example, n is 22 we know that f is 2 and n percentage f equal to 0. So, f star f is not equal to n. But it has broken even though f star f is sorry not greater than n still it has broken. Now, this checking setting a condition inside the while loop and then checking it outside is definitely looks like a rather poor style of programming. So, it is a good idea to use the else here. So, the else gets activated if the while loop exits normally. Think of it as a if statement if f star f is less than n else means f star f is not less than or equal to n which will happen only if the while loop continued all the way and then came out. So, that is the easiest way to understand how else in a loop. The idea is similar for a far once again the else statement makes only sense only if there is a break statement inside the loop. If there is no break statement inside the loop then it does not make sense to use an else. The else is used to discover whether the far or the while ran all the way to the end and then the loop exited or if you exited the loop by a break in between. So, to summarize you use the else in a looping statement under two conditions. One there is a break there is an if and a break inside the loop. Two just immediately after the loop it is important to know whether the loop ran all the way or whether the loop was exited via the break statement. When these two are true you use an else and thanks for a nice question that was from VIT Velour Institute of Technology. Another question how to use python in a web development? You need to use a python web development library the most the ones with shall we say most buzz or Django spelt with a D Django or there is a later framework called Pramed. There is a simple web 2 pi the programming test you enter which gets validated is built using Django by the way. Then web 2 pi one of the most famous website built during using web 2 pi is a site called reddit.com. It is a very simple news aggregation site with a very minimalistic interface it is a lot of traction. So, that is a good example for the type of sites which are very good for web 2 pi. Django is lot more large little more complex but it is generally useful for this big web applications. You also have something called turbo gears then Zope. Zope is considered very complicated even by experienced developers. So, these are a few choices but like any open source product or any open source project the number of choices for doing web development in python is very large. So, it is not like that the Java world where you have to use something specific or no. There are too many choices but you are likely to see one of these Django or Zope or turbo gears more often than not. But definitely those would not be the only ones you will see you will see lot more others. Next question please can we make a class in python and inherit that. Yes python is a multi-paradigm language and it does not insist you write in a single paradigm. The code we have been so far writing have all been good procedural code. The good part may be debatable in some cases. Procedural code we can write good reasonable functional code which in my opinion is better than writing object oriented code. But yes you can write object oriented code and inherit etcetera from there. Instead of using the keyword def use the keyword define a class I am not writing the exact syntax I am just telling you how it works define whatever you want to do here I am doing a dummy statement. Then you want to instantiate another class sorry you want to define another class y which derives from x do this. So, I have just written a very very high level picture of what you do. So, this is the way to inherit from a given class. The next question is how to find the execution time of a python program. I think yesterday Somaya asked me a question and in response to that question I showed the answer. But anyway I will do it again. This is nothing to do with python any program can be timed in the Linux world if you are on windows I would not know how to do it. I do not even know whether it can be done without some complicated extra fitting from either a third party or Microsoft. The way to find out the execution time of any program is to call time on that program. So, I can say python I want to run a program that is semi-couple dot pi. So, you will find first the program is executed there is no change to the program output yes Bhopal you got the answer right that is a way to do it. So, that we will finally tell you what is the real time what is the user time and what is the system time. So, effectively the program spent about you can find out you can do man time to find out what the three different times are and what is the relevance and so on. But this is the way to measure a execution time of any program in Linux not necessarily python program. Next question when you are on the subject of measuring please remember this measures more than the run time of the python program. It also measures the time taken for the python interpreter python language to load itself and so on. And given that it is an interpreter there is no way that time can be not taken into account. But in some other sense the same program is going to run twice the program may not take the same amount of time. So, may be it is worth figuring out how much time does it take to. So, here we are printing all 5 digit ones now we will print the whole thing. So, the next question is is there any efficient way to count words in a file. Again the answer depends whether you are on windows or Linux if you are on windows it is hardly likely you will be interested in doing anything efficient in the first place. So, we will answer for Linux the answer is yes you just type w c minus l sorry w c minus w. So, all these files. So, this is the somebody given example saying cat file name pipe to w c minus w l that cat file name is redundant you should probably do directly this or this one of the two. What is the difference between the two is something I will leave you to explain since you already done shell scripting and basically nox you should know what is the difference between the two. Because there is a question on multimedia modules I have no idea I do not like writing code about any graphical user interface or on graphical user interfaces. So, this please explain using python program to count words in file all right we should that be a difficult thing it is going to pivot very simply on how you define a word. So, assuming you define a word as something that is separated by what your split command gives you can simply say we will try and write it as useful program. So, that the file for which you have to count is come in the command line. So, each line how many words are there. So, line dot split line dot split gives you breaks up a line into its constant components separating on any combination of white space. So, number of words is simply the length of that tells you how many different words are there and in the end of the file when you finish processing you know the total number of words in the file. So, to run 10 times it took 3 minutes and 52 seconds. So, that gives you an idea of a more slightly better idea of the time than anything else all right. Is Bhopal does it is this what you are looking for or were you looking for something else when you ask the question. There is a question about python database connectivity well python has separate modules for connecting to all norms standard databases MySQL, PostgreSQL as well as to some of the modern no SQL databases like MongoDB and so on. So, but that is a separate module and these are third party modules not part of the python standard library. For that matter please remember sci-pi is also a third party module not a part of the standard python because the standard libraries are just those which we think in day to day usage every person will need. If a person needs anything more than that person can import an additional library that is the idea. So, database connectivity is part of an external program we import sorry external module you import and then use.  So, you can catch a named exception alone that is why I showed you the names you can catch you can have multiple except statements each one catching a different exception and dealing with it as appropriate you have the usual final a classes and so on. Please remember python is a modern full fledged programming language. So, if you before you think of asking does it have a assume it has probably a b c d x y z and a little bit of alpha beta gamma and a lot of delta for any value of a b c. If you want to use python as your primary programming language for doing any job you have to do you would not be far off. People used to normally talk about performance is slower on interpreted languages. So, compared to see definitely python is slower compared to java it is probably a little slower, but normally you do not worry about at least today in 90 percent of the cases you do not worry about the amount of computer time that is taken this discussion of performance of code is a throw back to the 1960s and 70s main frame when you are paying some 500 rupees per second of computer time. Today what is lot more expensive is programmer time your time and effort is lot more expensive than any amount of computer time. If you have to figure out something over two hours in order to get a program to run faster by one second forget one second even if you save a run time of one minute and it takes you one hour to find out you better be expecting to run the program at least 60 times to break even. So, remember that and as practicing programmers yes we may have concerns on certain areas of performance because there are other parts of the system there are performance mechanisms and so on, but by and large if you are trying to do some computation for your purposes particularly scientific and engineering computation and general purpose scripting general purpose programing there is absolutely no need to look beyond python it contains everything many many things you are not even thought of asking are there in python. Next question is why are his and some other commands called magic commands they are called magic commands because they had to find some name to distinguish they are not python commands they are not operating system commands, but they use some internal mechanism in i python to find out some of these things. For example, I am saying c d here and normally if you do I am sorry I am running c d here to change the directory using p w to find the home the current directory and so on. So, like this there is it has built in lot of hooks. So, percentage is the percentage commands are generally referred to as a magic commands and that plus this you can see even p w d is referred to as a magic command because it has to go outside of itself and do something and come back. So, some name was required and please remember the open source community is a little interested in humor. So, they chose magic how to create g a applications in python like web development you decide which g a application toolkit you want again you have lot of choices some of the choices are oldest and the most probably most often used by anyone coming new to python is called t k and t k inter then one of the largest and most comprehensive is w x python then you have q t yeah this would be the three most well known g a tool kits in which you can write code to build g a applications in python. Of course, if you are on the windows environment and you are fond of paying the microsoft tax and you have either paid it and got visual studio or magically manage to have visual studio appear in your hard disk you can build the usual windows based microsoft u a based applications as usual by using the version of python packaged as part of the c l r called iron python then you are using the usual windows g a tool kits available these are operating system independent tool kits all three of them w x python q t and t k next question alright the question is as follows. So, I do not know what the question is yet, but I will attempt to answer the situation explain in the question at least your function f of x for convenience we will simply f of x just returns x could have written anything complicated does not matter. So, we know we can call it using f of 10. So, we have so this is a way to use it now what happens if I say f equal to 10 nothing happens, but you can no longer use f as a function because now you have over written the value of f now it is just a type in let us try that again now look at what is type of f it is a function now the moment you say f equal to 10 it is like a same variable being assigned two different values you assigned a equal to 1 assign a equal to 1 and then assign a equal to 2 the value 2 is lost sorry the value 1 the first assigned value is lost, but here you have simply change the type of the value itself. So, you can no longer do anything with it that is it if you delete now you can no longer use f as a function if you tried you will get a big complaint integer object is not callable. In fact, you often people end up over writing built in variables because of this I will give you one standard example we often see let us say there is a there is a built in function sum which will give you the value the sum of the values of a list often sum is such a natural variable name we say something like sum equal to 0 now we can no longer do this it will complain, but since sum is anyway a built in object you are only over shadowing it. So, you can recover the use of that sum by doing a del sum that cannot delete the built in internal function object will only delete a variable defined in the local scope and you will get it back. So, this is nothing peculiar to your own defined once, but the difference with your own defined once is once it is lost you cannot delete whatever is covering it and get it recover the other one. Next question, there is a question is python used for programming in artificial intelligence. I would like to ask a question which book textbook they will consider the standard reference today for artificial intelligence. Which textbook would you consider the standard reference today for artificial intelligence? Do you know Stanford university recently opened the their course on standard so, artificial intelligence for everybody or a still Norvig. Do you know what Norvig is doing? I am asking do you know what is Norvig's role, what does he do? Is he a college teacher? Is he a developer? What does he do? Do you have any idea? Do not know. He is director of search quality in Google and the latest edition of his the standard textbook you recommended uses python as a language to implement all the algorithms. In other words Russell Norvig uses python to implement all the algorithms. Does that answer your question? In fact, please go to Norvig's site you will get some wonderful insight into python as a language pitanovic.com right. You can see pitanovic is not a great believer in graphical interfaces. So, he has some wonderful articles on very many things. You will see his thoughts on python. The best is to look at python for list programmers. It is a wonderful article to read. I understood more about list from this article than any books I read. Norvig is worth looking at and he will also give you some very good ideas for writing code. Possibly the best is how to write a spell checker, spelling corrector. Please read this article. It tells you how to work on the level at which people like pitanovic think. You use python to write a simple spell checker to explain the algorithm behind Google correcting your spelling. When you search for something and you make a spelling mistake, you will often find Google asking you did you mean something else and yes, he is giving you an algorithm which does most of the work of the same in python. But, unlike us we simply jump in and write code. You will see he explains some probability theory. He uses some corpus text. He uses a testing corpus then an actual corpus in order to do everything and the way it is written, it is corrected. The whole thing is approached with a level of rigor that will make us think we know nothing about programming. And Bhopal, if you think rich and might is the ultimate reference in artificial intelligence, you are a little behind times or you are spoiled by UGC and its book recommendations. Alright, next question. Fine. There are no questions. I will do one last bit of show about the real power available to a python programmer if he or she is interested in writing good code. And when somebody asked me about classes, I made a comment in python you can write in multiple paradigms. You can write in the pre-or procedural code like we have been writing or I said something about we can write functional code. I am sure many of you, some of you at least know what pure functional programming is. But, just to show you how easy it is to write such very powerful code in python, I will take two examples and then finish off for the day. The first is a very simple fairly ordinary program. If I remember right it is the first program in project Euler website. By the way, if you want to have a supply of good programs to test your understanding of any new language, the best place is project Euler dot net. Go there, take a look. There are some 300 odd problems. All of them are centered around mathematics as the name project as the name Euler should tell you. But, they form good exercises to hone your basic understanding and skill in a language. That said let us look at what is this first problem I am talking about. It is a problem like find the total of all multiples of 3 and 5 below 100. I think it is below 1000 in the, yeah it is below 1000. So, it is not a exciting or a difficult program by any stretch of imagination. But, there are some interesting things you can do. Classically you are likely to do something like this. A procedural program will do something very similar to this. We will assume below 1000 means 1000 is not to be included. Like I said nothing very fantastic, very nice to even talk about. But, does it mean we would not make mistake in these type of programs? Yes, we can. Already I made one in the code. Forgot to increment n. Now, here there are many things that are characteristic of a good imperative program. There is a while loop, there are if conditions and there are two variables namely n and total whose value change, keep on changing. Now, let me rewrite it in a slightly different way. I will leave it here and go to the interpreter to do it my way. Now, what is interesting about this program? If this one line can be called a program, do you see any variable which is being modified? Do you see any if condition? Nothing.  We can write code, we use we write code using recursion lot more and we do not use variables whose values change. If you recall the collats I wrote that was written in a very functional style. It called itself and there was not a single variable which was changing. Now, did you do the Armstrong problem by any chance? We have done the Armstrong numbers also. So, let us look at I will just write the code. I am sure you know how you will write Armstrong. So, if I am going to write Armstrong, how am I going to do it? Let us start from the top. I will assume I am going to be given two numbers a and b and I have to find all the Armstrong numbers in that range. How will I do it? Simple. That means, I have to write the e's Armstrong function. So, how do I know whether a given number is Armstrong? So, if the sum of the cubes of the digits of n which are two different functions, sum of cubes obviously returns the cubes of this and digits returns the digits of a number as a list. Once again no variable which changes its value anywhere in the program.  This style is something that for many people is lot easier to think about. In fact, we can improve this program by saying you know what sum of cubes there is nothing about cubes in Armstrong. If I say 100 to 8000, I must do fourth powers. So, I would not say sum of cubes. I will change it to sum of powers and make the power another argument d comma n and say instead of this, return this and here say power equal to d equal to digits of sum of powers of d comma length of d. So, this solves the generalized Armstrong problem. If I give something like say 100 to 10,000 this will work. Let us save it and see whether it works or whether I am talking through my head. Like I said the most notable thing about the program is there is not a single variable that changes value anywhere. You could also look at the collats I wrote. So, this is one of the real powers of python as a language. It is a genuine multi paradigm language does not insist you write in one particular style. You could write good procedural code, you could write good object oriented code or you could write a mix of procedural and functional code or you could write a predominantly functional code. Whatever suits your style and whatever suits the nature of the problem under development. That is about what I wanted to share about python. Thanks a lot for sparing your weekend. We will stop here.