We'll call the meeting to order. First on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Anything that you need to. Are we good to approve as is. I'm good. Printed. Second. Yeah. All in favor. Good. Good. We have no appointments this evening. So we'll just go right straight to public comment. So if there's anything that's not on the agenda, which the agenda is very short item wise, but could get lengthy, but we have the budget discussions and the town meeting warning. Which will pretty much be our agenda for the next couple of meetings. Give or take an item. So. Yep. So if there's anything out there that doesn't pertain to one of those. Items. Now is your chance. I'll go. Paul, it's all right. I don't see anybody online. So. After much discussion and debate and conversations with my family and friends and. Other officials whose opinion I respect and value, I've decided not to seek another third term. On the Bethel select board when my current term. Ends in March of 2023. I'm very proud to be a member of the board. I've had an easy decision. I've enjoyed the challenges of being a board member and very proud of all we've accomplished over the past six years. It's been my pleasure and privilege to have worked with a fantastic group of board members. Including also Mo Brigham and Kyle Russell. And our incredible town manager, Trees Kirby. I'll certainly miss the discussions and disagreements and consensus. I would encourage anyone who's interested. In this open seat to start attending select board meetings. Either in person or via zoom or via phone. Also all the select board. Meetings are videotaped and are available. The public viewing on the Orca media website. I'm not going anywhere. I'll still be involved in town government and some way shape or form. I've already been contacted by other folks that are interested. And I'll be speaking a little bit more of town meeting about my time here and whatnot. So there'll be a letter in the Herald this week also. Announcing this and. And that's about it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Six years. Now you're open to run for the school board seats. That's what I mean. Does it pay well. It's the same. Conversation a little different. But so I mean, as we all know, I mean. You know, we like to thank Paul. Paul's been on not just the select board, but many other boards that are in affiliated to the select board in the years. So. Yeah, he also comes in every week. I see they're signing off on payroll or accounts payable. And so he keeps a good handle on, on those things. And, you know, VCA chair, trustee public funds has been your liaison to two rivers on the social services committee. And, you know, so there's a lot, a lot to it. So. Now you just got to figure out how to make up that lost revenue that you guys can make it through the cold winter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No more star removal. The peace and quiet. He's gonna be like. Yeah. Oh, it's just going to be a different, some different aspects, you know, just won't. Now he'll be sitting in the audience. See, now it's a whole other. A lot more harassment then. That's right.  All right. All right. All right. Any other comments that may be out on the net? Nobody else here in person. Fix here. No, I said nobody else. Oh, besides us, I'm like, hey, I don't think so. Lenny. No. Okay. Nope. He's shaking his head. Pause there. Maybe. I don't think so. No. Okay. You're none. We will move forward. So continue our discussion in regards to the budget. So there's a couple of things I just received today. The updated numbers from insurance from VLCT passive. So those might be tweaked a little bit in the insurance column, but not in this draft. I got them today. I was going through the whole spreadsheet to sort out insurance. So that might change a little bit. I don't remember if I made any other changes. Obviously I gave you the information from Steve Webster, excuse me, and for White River Valley Ambulance because you had a question about that.  I had forwarded you this spreadsheet, but then I included it in the packet. So my number and his number don't match exactly. So I need to look at his numbers again. Yeah, I noticed that. Well, normally I take his actuals for six months and then I estimate an increase for the remaining six months. But in one of the pages of his spreadsheet, it looked like maybe he did the same thing. So I just want to make sure. And I didn't have a chance to get with you. I apologize, but that's okay. When I went through the details of the White River Valley Ambulance, I came up with about it. It was just under a 7% increase from last year. Yep. But your budget shows obviously. Yeah, because he was more than that. I think he had 21%. Yeah, because he had, I was looking at his, he was saying, you know, like I said, I saw his spreadsheet after where he's talking about his optional monthly payments by town for the six months following December. So there was 76,000. Let's get to that. Yeah. So anyways, I just need to go through his numbers again, but that's fine. We're still waiting. You have an appointment next week at seven with a recreation committee. So that'll answer what they're going to be looking for. So I'll update the budget in the warning about White River Valley. But what I did like was he did a very nice page to explain to you where his increases were. And it really looks like, you know, he's, they're battling some of the same things we are. Yeah. It looked like they definitely had the insurance stuff. Yeah. And they did do an increase of, and either they had pay rates, wages and salaries. And it also looks like either maybe they had some employee turnaround because they drastically on health insurance went from, you know, they went up quite a bit on their health insurance, which tells me that they, it was more than just a percent increase that maybe somebody came on that family plan that could be a single before or something. A couple of those, you know, because it's 9.8%. Yeah. They were at 21.6% because the board had proved a 25% wage increase. So then yes, they were, they also workers comp, you know, which payroll taxes, obviously that's just a big function of increasing payroll. But I had came up with a their budget overall was up $111,000, which we make up 15% of that. 15.47%. So that's where, yeah, what you had budgeted and what he has in there. Exactly. So that's quite a bit different. So I don't know what each town's contribution projection for 2023 and that number was 139 and change something like that. Yep. 139.824 is what I had. And then I think, yeah, Teresa had like 170 something. I did, I did because I took his or like I said, I took his original number and then I have to guesstimate what his increase is going to be following year. But I didn't hadn't seen until I went through it again. He does on one of his pages a little blurb about future. So we'll sort out that. I just wanted you to see why he had, they had such an increase, but really despite in the same fight we are. I don't think we made any adjustments to the revenue budget last time. You can see on the bottom of the revenue page down at the bottom because I, you need to make some decisions about, which will be a discussion tonight about the sheriff constable, what you're going to do there. So I did, but you could see a number at the bottom of the revenue page additional for library the 27,500 I did hear from Lisa and they want to move forward with that leaving some money in the budget and then voting for the additional appropriation and expense wise, I think we had the road for as a dumpster now and I had to clarify some software changes. So not big, but I think the biggest conversation tonight is should probably be what you want to do about the constable budget and Chris and I met with the, what do you want to call them Sheriff elect Ryan Palmer. So maybe Chris can give you the update on our conversation with him and then. Obviously you need to make a decision so we can sort out the budget. I mean, I think, yeah, so Teresa and I met with with him last Tuesday or Wednesday or something like that. So I think some of some of the challenges. He's got some plans to try to get into the smaller communities and join. Several small communities together to do some enforcement. He has a goal, but I don't think he has the infrastructure currently. He's working on trying to train people and things like that. So I think even he'd thrown out some numbers. So which is challenge. We told him that, you know, what we kind of looked like in our budget if we went to a certain number which we had been talking in the 70s, what would that look like?  But what he really liked to get to would be more of like a full time, which the price on that is conservatively higher. 125,000. So I had been thinking about a little bit. I mean, what we have right now is, you know, I was breaking it out. So, you know, what we have been budgeting is 40 somewhat thousand dollars a year, which is supposed to be 20 hours a week. And obviously, like we talked about last year and we've had some discussion senses, the challenge we have is and maybe we were spoiled for a little bit is it's it's very, very hard to find a part time constable, you know, at one point we shared with two other communities and that isn't really happening anymore. And all these law enforcement agencies are short and they're able to offer much greater than what we can. So it's hard to attract anybody. So what we and so we budget. We budget for 20 community hours at 40 some odd thousand, but what we're really getting right now is about let's say on average is three or four hours a week worth of time. So that now the challenge we have as a community is right now, I don't want to say free, but right now we have a constable that for constables that you know, use two or three hours a week, right? It's definitely not what we've what we want. But all the all the the calls that go in are being feathered through, you know, VSP or the Sheriff's Department or somebody right now that we let's say don't pay for directly, right? Now if you go to the Sheriff's Department, what happens now is you now pick up 100% of those calls. So and I don't like to use the word free. But so once the Sheriff's Department is on board and you have time with them, if they're in your community for two or three days a week, they pick up 100% of your calls for those two or three days, right? So so what you're doing essentially now is you're kind of paying for services that you kind of already had without directly paying for it. Yeah. Just not getting the coverage. Yeah, the community. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's that's that could be a very big deal. And I think I think the discussion where we went with it was I think we clearly have seen over the last couple of years that there have been some things in around the community that maybe we had gotten to a decent point that is now starting to revert back, you know, we're starting to see a little bit more theft or vandalism. There's some maybe suspicious activities that going on at different points in different times. And on the flip side of that is we are we're so used to having Vermont State Police being right there for us. And I think one thing we have to talk about as a community is is with how short they are now. I mean, we saw that the individuals there that came in at the middle of the year talking about their domestic issue that they had with that individual and how it took like 45 minutes to get somebody to the place is, you know, it's not like the old days where the call goes in and VSPs right here and we have a trooper in town in seconds right now it's half an hour or you know, and I don't want to say we've gotten lucky, but you know at some point in this community, we are going to have an event right or events. You know, we haven't had release any of those big events, but if we do have an event, you know, do we want to be proactive or reactive to that event right and but our options are very limited. It's either keep budgeting for something that we know that we can't feel right or as a community we have to say it's going to cost us X amount more to get a professional service and what that looks like, you know, and now if we want to get a professional service that looks like 20 hours a week, then at the Sheriff's Department, it's going to double our current budget. It'll be 125,000. You know, well just what I'm saying that two or three days a week like that. He said minimum 75 or 80. Yeah. I mean, he doesn't have the infrastructure yet. I mean, we pick up the call phone today and say we want to do that starting next month and he doesn't have all those pieces together yet. Right. He's sending. He's I think he told us he was sending six people to the Academy maybe starting in March, either be trained up or either their part time is going to full timers or people going to part time. I don't know. He said that he obviously had spoken with Rochester but has no commitment yet from Rochester. They're looking at either them or maybe out of some county sheriffs. He did also tell us that, you know, obviously there's some things up in the air with Orange County because both counties have new sheriffs. So, you know, I think it's just a matter of what what do you want? I mean, you could have your own you could hire a police officer to work full time and that would for a salary would probably be 75 80,000 and then you'd have to add everything else on top of it. But when that comes a lot of responsibility about making sure that they're fully trained that they're up with all their, you know, requirements and and all that where. So I think at this point you either you're going to stay the status quo, which you know you can't fill their Oscar does the best he can, but he has a full time job in Royalton and they are also short of staff.  You could go to 75,000 a year guarantee yourself at least two days a week of somebody being here or you pony up 125,000 and you have someone here in almost full time. So two days a week doesn't mean anything to me. I mean, if it's 6am to 2, is it midnight to 8? You don't get to call the shots. I don't think I will pay that kind of money. I might want to have little input. I think that it was 24 hours. Two hours shifts. I mean, yeah, I'll explain it to us. It's it's 24 hour service. So so if if you have two days worth of service, it's 24 hours of this. No, it's 24 period, 24 hours period. Either you're going to get. It doesn't necessarily mean like a couple four hour shifts or a couple 12 hour shifts and they will have direct, you know, they could be in Bethel. I'll make it up on Tuesday and Thursday could be their, you know, they work their 10 hour days, but they could be in a surrounding community on Wednesday or or, you know, or picking up a night shift in Randolph or something and they will respond to a call. He yeah, he also said that he did his goal eventually is to be is to be, you know, full time. So he's not just like 6am to 6pm so that they did nights and Janice Ryan Palmer had spoken with Janice Punger and Janice called me and she's in favor of the whole 125,000. She especially feels like at night. There's things, you know, that happen and we don't have coverage and so I know she was in favor of going to the bigger number and gives you for 24 hours. What kind of coverage do you have for 125 with that the quick fit in my mind? That's another 18 hours. Well, that would give you full coverage in the community. The difference is with 125,000 that is him employing a full time officer in your town.  They're not going to be here seven days a week there.  Exactly. And I think that I think it's very difficult when you have to share a flex because they have budgets that are going to be passed right in March. They take over in February if they have people going to be trained, you know, what is he? How he doesn't even take over the staff until February. And then I mean, right now we'd be lucky year is tough. I mean, if we wanted to do this, I think, you know, between him coming on and getting people trained, you're probably talking July or August of next year at the earliest that you would even see a transition like that. I think one thing that Teresa and I kind of talked about afterwards of going through it is maybe trying to stick similar to the budget we have had and maybe try. You know, we know right now that we're not going to pay or get coverage for the budget we do have. So maybe we could strategically use some of that money to have the Sheriff's Department come in for a period of time and see if we like it. You know, if we do have $40,000 in budget, do we do we try to get a one day a week that they come in and see how that goes or, you know, on a trial period. But I think we're kind of caught in the crossroads of the, you know, the old ways of constables have kind of phased out at least right now with everybody short-handed and last, you know, unless you get a special individual that, you know, maybe he's on the end of retiring or doesn't really want to pick up full shifts.  So there's that liability that we take on as well as a community. If you have another identity that, you know, if you contracted the Sheriff's Department or VSP or somebody else, at least they take on that liability. Granted, this town always has a little bit of liability, but most of it is off here. They're naming everybody, but what do you think? Well, I mean, have you guys heard? Well, I see, you know, there's, but there's also times that Oscar, I want to understand Oscar does patrol work and whatnot and doesn't charge the time to us for sure. I mean, when he's driving through, I mean, certainly he goes from Brandon to Royalton and I don't think he charged. If Royalton manages to get another officer, I'm sure they're looking, you know, they're in the same situation. They're looking to and if that relieves a little of his time, that's another option also. We never have enough coverage.  I mean, this stuff that goes on in this town has been going on for a long time and it's probably going to continue. But I can't see jumping the budget that much or that little amount of coverage. I mean, it's basically, it's a lot more for, for maybe what we're getting now as far as coverage, maybe a little bit more than what we're getting now for coverage. And it's a big jump and 125 is I know we were shocked when we heard that number. I mean, I understand his point. He's trying to build a fly. Yeah. He's trying to build a basically build the department. So if he could get a few towns to 125,000 and give him a full person, but they're not just going to be in the bath all. So he's trying, especially if he lands contracts around, but I mean, it's, it's, but you're right. I hadn't thought about that. If, if Loretta is lucky and chief, you know, Stahlnäcker and makes a hire, then you're right. That would free Oscar up. And I hadn't thought about her. I, last I knew there was two James, Oscar and just okay. I didn't know about James. We have three now. Well, my, what I, what I, the question in my mind is okay, South Wales and for all intents and purposes about the same size. Sure. They have more buyers. They have more opportunity, a big law school where they had the, the right group of people that might cause issues with drugs and whatnot. Maybe more so. Maybe anyway, they got three people. Yeah. I don't understand how they can, you know, what are we doing that's so good or they, well, what's going on here? That doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah. Well, I think that they've, I mean, I don't know Royalton's history, but I assume Royalton's had a police department for a long time and so it's part of their budget and voters have, you know, continued to support them and, and you know, I'm sure at some point they must have gone from a constable to a police force and they fit the bullet and did it. I think that when you have full-time coverage, you know, these people, they're managing stuff, you know, a lot more. They're probably doing house checks when people go to Florida, they're doing, you know, maybe they're doing truancy that, you know, there's probably a lot more services that the Royalton police department are providing than, than certainly we do. Things that they're providing, something that we're allowing to slip through the cracks that we, that maybe we're not seeing all the bad things that are happening. I think that's true. I think that's very true. I think once you, you know, have more coverage, certainly people, you know, people are going to be less apt to take chances. Why just calling VSP or not calling anyone and making more reporting. So, I mean, are you feeling like maybe we should, I think the budget that we put with the sheriff's office originally when I had talked to the prior, or I guess he's the sheriff now, but won't be soon. 72,902. So, I mean, do you, that for us, that was, we were looking at, you know, about 18 hours a week because we're saying $63 an hour or 65 cents a mile and also that included a dog warden. So, do you feel more comfortable that you want to put out the $70,000 budget and just, I mean, obviously it's all going to go to the voters in the end. So to have a bigger discussion at town meeting about what people feel like. Out of the queue. Okay. Because it seems to me that, that when this conversation started, we were not only talking about part time, but we had a lower expectation of the responsibilities that this person would have. Which person? The sheriff? The constable. Oh, okay. And that, that did, that was not full time police or that was not full police coverage. Right. However, however we, well, so our $40,000 was budgeting for part time and limited services. Right. Part of time. We were depending upon the state and the county to provide police protection. The state for sure. The county. No. Yeah. But we were not, we were not even thinking we were providing police protection.  But because he was authorized, does not mean that that's what we were expecting. It's a bonus. Right. All right. If, if our $40,000 budget was for both limited time and limited services, we're talking about doubling that, but we're also talking then about unlimited services for that period of time. In both police protection. Yeah. I mean, while they're here, but if they're not here, right? Yeah. But I'm, I just wanting to compare apples to apples. Because we've made two significant jumps in this whole conversation. If we were to think about a full time officer being here, that's both a full time and full service. Yes. That's the, the going from partial service to full service is a jump that we have not intentionally made. It has happened because the role of the constable, the requirements, the training, et cetera, et cetera, has moved the constable into doing more police work. Sure. Yeah. If you take Oscar out of the mix and you just say constable versus, you know, Sheriff, then yes, you're, you're right. If you use Oscar versus Windsor County Sheriff, then I think they would be offering you very similar services as to what we pay for now with Oscar because of his certifications and his law, but you're correct. If you were just thinking of just a regular constable. Yeah. So I want to be clear in our conversation about this that we're, this is not just about hours. This is also about moving from a constable model to a police model. True. But the challenge we have is the state has moved that model for us over the years. So I mean, it used to be, don't want to pick on constables, but it used to be, anybody could be a constable.   That was it. I mean, it was Wild West. And then the certifications, they have added and added and added to the constables to the point now that there is very little difference between a constable and a to E or whatever level that is that that we would say is a fully trained police officer. So there's there's like this much room now and and they do that because state law statute is that everybody in the state is granted full time service from Vermont State Police, right? So that's we're all under Vermont State's police's umbrella. Now, and then when you have any type of additional service will say you have your own police department or your own constable, then that is like we're talking. That's an extra layer of policing that you have accepted in your community. So we have VSP and then we have our constable. But the problem they have now is regardless of why if we're moving to a model of police protection one way or another state induced or or because we've decided made that decision. Uh, de facto, uh, the the citizenry needs to know that because the citizens under don't necessarily understand that one of the reasons we have difficulty is that we have difficulty finding people who are qualified to serve in that position. And we no longer have the option of a constable the way we used to think of it, right? I actually and if that is no longer an option, I think we need to say that right up front to the town. And and so then the question becomes do we have any do we as a town engage any further police protection other than the state? I think that the select board prior to this select board made the decision that Bethel was going to go towards a more police model the minute that they hired Oscar and gave him the authority to use his which was within their rights with just within stage. That you to act as a as a police officer as a law enforcement person as a to E. So I think it was not this board. It was the board prior when they hired Oscar and they gave him the authority to do I would say the town had agreed to like we talk about everybody has the umbrella of Vermont State Police. And I think our community has agreed over years to have that extra protection, which was a part time protection, which which we had talked about, which was 20 hours of extra service a week that that's kind of what we have talked about as a community. And I think right now the reality is that phone call that used to you pick up 911 and somebody from the barracks is at your house in five minutes now might be 2530 45 minutes, right? So you've kind of lost that umbrella piece and reality is that payroll wise were three hours a week over the constant, right? So I mean, that that's that's all the protection that our citizens have right now is a VSP that is stretched and making it very difficult to respond appropriately and account and we don't have the luxury of a constable that's able to put in that layer of extra protection. So I think at this point we need to do we wanted to just keep it as as is. Let's see what Lindley says to go ahead Lindley. Well, I was going to say I have a question, but Lenny's had his hand up for a while. So I want to give him. Oh, I'm sorry. I couldn't see it, Lenny. I'm sorry. Well, I think I just have a question like to want you to address two things. You kept saying full time. But not defining what full time is or what this this sheriff elect means by full time. And the other thing is to tag on to what Jean was saying. I was thinking it would be helpful to to clearly define the difference between a constable and a police so that if we are moving that way people really understand and really are informed to vote on that. That's all I wanted to throw out there. But if you could explain full time, that would be great like what he sees as full time. This sheriff elect. Okay, we'll come back to that. I think I mean quickly Lenny what so like we were talking about the the differences in qualifications between what a constable and a we'll call it a fully certified police officer is very narrow nowadays. So I wouldn't say they have to have the same accreditation but they're very close. So they have to be part times right. So they've officially moved what required what a console is required to do to become a constable. Yes, and that's just like, you know, extra trainings that they need to have because of everything, you know, and then I think when we talk about full time and that's where it gets it's confusing for the citizens is especially in Bethel is because we were so we have been so used to having not only Vermont State Police Barracks two miles outside of town, but we've always had a member of our society being one of those individuals, right?  And so a combination of Vermont State Police is thinned out where their their response time to calls is getting longer to our citizens. And because usually this is what usually happens. So if your constable is on duty and there's a call out, your constable is going to take that call or a majority of instances. So unless it gets into like something like a domestic thing where there might have to be multiple officers or something like that, but a majority of the callouts when you have somebody that is in your community that is working, they take those calls. So that's kind of what we're saying is the commitment we've given to the community is 20 hours a week. So that would be 20 hours a week. We have an individual that is in our community that is being seen, is doing traffic control pieces, working with the community, but also while they're on duty during those 20 hours, they take those callouts or most of them. And so when we talk about the Sheriff's Department is because their level of accreditation is when they are on patrol. So if you have them, they're on schedule in your town and they take 100% of the callouts because they are trained for all the scenarios. Obviously, there's certain things where there's multiple officers have to by law, by different things, but they take 100%. So when we're talking full-time service, that means basically the call comes in, the Sheriff's Department handles those calls for you. Even if it's four days a week, they're taking 100% of your calls for four days. So we're not talking about full-time for 125,000 is not seven days a week, 24 hours a day. That's very okay. That's not an hours or something like that. It's and it's very difficult. Okay. It's very difficult from Ryan was telling us, you know, kind of how the process works and when you're on duty and not on duty and how the, how they, you know, basically when you're on duty report and dispatch knows you're on duty so that you now have all the calls. That's like Oscars in town and he's working. They know he's on duty and he takes all the calls and people call him at night and weekends and he answers a cell phone and that sort of thing. He also does all of our dog issues. So animal control officer. But yes, the state changed it several years ago. So a constable has to have, has to be at least part time certified by the state. So constables are now police officers. Oscar is more than that more has more certification than that. So, so I think that the question that is with our board anyways is the options that I see is do we want to stay the course of what we have now, which, which what we have now is we're budgeting for, you know, not counting the signage that we, you know, put in there. It's roughly around $42,000 a year that we budget to have budgeted 20 hours of call time, but is really three or four hours. Yeah. So do we want to keep the way it is? There is the potential for longer callouts to services being that we don't have somebody immediately. Or we could continue the budget, maybe take some of that money and do some selective callouts with the sheriff's department, like you could have them on one day a week or two days a week, right? And we could use up some budgetary money, right? And I have some selective times that they around. Yeah, about 73,000 is what we had in this. We could go or, or we go to the sheriff's department instead of having a constable for the 20 hours, you know, that part-time service, we have the const or the sheriff's department do that part-time service for us, but that is going to put our budget doubling it to $75 or so thousand dollars for that service that we want. So last year we budgeted $57,000 and now we're looking to go to 72, which is a $17,800 roughly pump to get it to the 72 and change. So it's not 40,000. We bought that. I'm taking a signage out. Okay. You take that 15 grand out for those speed carts and signage stuff that we got. Okay. The other option you have is to do what you've done before, which is say you're going to go to, maybe you're going to go to 75,000 and then do the residents want to have a conversation about policing and maybe they want to go to the 125,000. I don't know, but sorry. Do you have a break down budget of what the annual expense or amortized expenses for the cruiser? Because you go this route, you won't need that part. Right. Yep. And we did subtract that. So currently what we budget is budget $5,000 a year to go into the cruiser fund because we just buy used one every so many years and then we budgeted $3,000 on top of that for maintenance. So you're right. In the iteration I did for Windsor County Sheriff, I removed all that stuff and basically the big hit was $63 an hour plus 65 cents a mile and we would have to get a dog warden. So I came up with 63,232. This was after I spoke to the current Windsor County Sheriff and that's Sheriff-Elect. And then so that's how I'd come up with that number. So you also have another option we didn't really think about is you could keep Oscar and set him to X amount of hours a week plus contract with the Sheriff's office, but that would be a really big budget because then you'd have to add the cruiser back in and all that sort of stuff. Well, I didn't hear anything talking about the fact that when we first started talking about increasing, maybe going to full-time policing or whatever was Oscar was saying, you know, he's 20 hours a week. If he had any incidents at all, he spent more than half of that time behind the desk. You're right. So if we're only going to get 20 hours and they have two incidents, we're going to have them on the streets about four hours. You're right. So to go less than full-time, think about it. The potential is you're not going to have even what you got now.  I'm just saying we haven't talked about that piece. You're right. And that's a big, that's a big deal. If we're paying $63 for an hour for a bookkeeper. The other thing I want to make aware and I've heard and correct me if I'm wrong and I have heard this from one of the Constables is that. I don't want to say that they don't want to pick up hours with us, but for them to come to Bethel to pick up hours because we pay less than their other potential. So for instance, making it up if Oscar did, let's say had eight hour day or something or he could come in four hours here and four hours there, we pay 1825 an hour. Right. And he could easily go get 28 to 30 bucks an hour to not come to Bethel. So one thing I was doing after the fact was what if you know what I took is, you know, if you did 20 hours of time in the community, what if we increased our pay to something more 28 bucks an hour, yeah, keep the same type of service and see if maybe for this next budget cycle, we could maybe attract our current Constables to want to pick up some of those hours because right now for them to want to pick those hours up, they're losing money. You know, I mean it, then I want to say that they don't want to come to Bethel. But it's like, it's hard. I want to come but for $18 an hour when I can get 28 bucks, why would I want to do that? And some of them too. We're on, I think Justin was on mandatory overtime for a while because the Constables and that's the other thing is we, that may be a better option because we also don't know at no offense to any of the sheriffs. How many of these people will leave because they don't want to be under the new sheriff whereas so if we do bump that's an idea of we bumped to 28 bucks an hour, 30 bucks and whatever you want, you're right. Maybe there's somebody who currently works for the Orange County sheriff or Windsor County sheriff that may not want to work for the sheriff elect and you may the Orange County is expecting to lose a couple. So maybe if we tried to sweeten the pot, maybe they'd be somebody who would be willing to. So I guess the I guess what the number I came up with was why don't we keep it? Keep it the same right now. It's budget to 20 hours. We don't know what's going on with the sheriff's department and probably won't and probably one year would probably be nice to see what does happen. Plus, I think it puts us in better negotiation. To, you know, if they like right now, you don't want to be the first person to have the sheriff in the area because you're going to get taken advantage of where if they do hire somebody in this area and then they can't find enough hours for that person, you might be in better negotiation power to say at the end of the day. Yeah, what can death will get for 50,000, right? Where right now we're paying the full vote for it, right? So I was looking at why don't we just keep the 20 hours but budget $28 an hour for our constable. So that number instead of 57 went to roughly 67. So it's about $10,000 more for the budget. So it's less than the sheriff's, but it's more than what we currently have. And then what I would say is I would sit down with our two constables and say, listen, this is what we're willing to do or this is what we need. Yeah, we need 20 hours of your service a week between the two of you and we are willing to pay a wage that is competitive at $28 an hour. And I need commitments from you. And if I don't get those commitments from you, then I'm going to put it out for bid and we could put it out for advertisement. And I think at $28 now we'd have an, you know, not maybe there would be somebody that's came from Orange County that's looking, you know, that has the credentials that could spend 10 hours a week or something. And I'm just thinking that because the complaints I've heard is that, you know, Bethel isn't paying enough money. So it's, you know, not really that they don't want to come here. It's just, and it makes sense, right? And then it gives us some time to kind of kick the can on the sheriffs and we can have some more discussions in regards to how police services look like. That's kind of what I was thinking. What do you think, Lindley? Yeah, I mean, so I'm just digesting Chris's new add on originally I was kind of where both Paul and Jean were kind of hitting on of like these are big jumps in general. And also, you know, just going up to 72,000 was a jump and then going to 125 felt almost not sustainable given the conversations we've been having within this budget and being realistic forward thinking knowing that we don't have the 50,000 that we currently have in the budget from the transfer station sale that that's not real moving right that offsets it. And so that like that jump to 125 felt unreasonable in my mind, but I'm intrigued by Chris's idea of actually making it a competitive rate and seeing what happens and kind of almost maybe even holding holding Oscar and Justin's feet to the fire that, you know, I think some of our frustration is that they're not available to us in the way that we all felt they would be. And I think that they felt they would be in the beginning and then with the change, you're right and then see what they can do and and and Chris may be right about sweetening the pot. I don't know. I think it also bumping up to 63 gives us some flexibility then to make a little bit more of a different decision moving forward. If we can't find somebody then we still can entertain the contract with the sheriff's. It's not going to be a ton of hours. It's not going to be maybe as much as we wanted, but it's still something, you know, and then we look at it for future years. And it does. Yeah, it gives you the chance to see what Orange County Sheriff's going to do and what Windsor County Sheriff's going to do, right? Right. Lindley. Yeah, there is a part of me that also says maybe this does go to the voters for more of a final, you know, a final appropriation amount. I just think what's difficult in that is what are we taking to the voters? I don't think any of us have clarity on what that would be at this point in time. Yeah, exactly. And the other point is too is once the budget comes up for discussion, the entire budget's up for discussion. So if we'll just stick with Janice just because she was going to call me if Janice wanted to go to 125,000, she can certainly come to the select board next week and talk and she could also stand up in front, you know, at town meeting and say, Hey, I want more police service and this is what I want. And then it would be a discussion there for the voters. But I mean, I'm happy to do the next iteration of the budget and remove the Sheriff's office line and up the wages. And then if that's what you guys are in agreement with that hours and the moneys that are available now, you could even do that sooner rather than lady wouldn't have to wait till you're right, you have to wait till the next budget you're right around. You can do it almost that almost now. You're right, because we've saved so much money because that's there. That's true. That's a really good point. What is that? What do you think, Dave?  Just a funny look. Well, you know, the numbers are not going to be totally correct. You got to crunch the Medicare, right? Social security. Yeah, I'll do that. You're talking $20,000. There's a significant amount of number that goes with that. Yeah, I'll run the number and see and I agree. I agree that it's on. It's the way it is. You're not, you're not, you can't, my daughter works at McDonald's. You can't get anybody to work for $18 an hour for burgers. Mm hmm. So they're going to put on a uniform and get shot at $18 an hour. I don't think so. That's a good question. So is that what the board wants to do for now is to just another something to throw into the mix is that to have 24 seven coverage requires four full-time people. Sure. Okay. So that's, so when we're talking about $125,000 a piece. Well, what we're talking about is 168 hours in a week or eight hours is 5% of that. Meaning 95% of our coverage is coming from someplace else. Right. And so part of the question is if we would go to 24 hours and three shifts, three shifts of eight, we're talking about 15%. We're still talking about 85% of our protection coming from somewhere else. I think we need to, we need to ask ourselves and the community needs to ask itself whether that's acceptable. Meaning we should pay nothing or we should pay more. One way or the other, if we're only getting 15% cover, I mean, police services are needed 24 seven. Right. Seven days a week. The, I just seems to me that if we're But you get 24 hour police service currently. We do. We get 27365. But you do, but your response time might be, but the response time is two hours away. So Mike, I just think that as a community, we would be well advised to think about what that really means. That means 85% of the time we're being covered by somebody else with or not covered by with that 40 hour or that four hour German Shepherd at home. I'm covered 24 seven. Well, that's, but that's my, I just think that's a piece of the puzzle. Yeah. That is worth thinking about as we're trying to figure out how much money it costs to prove the police protection that the community needs. It's it's a bigger it's a big question. I don't have an answer. I just want to raise the issue of what it is. We're really talking about. I think a question for Kirk White is going to be what there has been rumor for years that there may eventually be legislation that forces small towns to take on some of their own policing and especially with the SP stretched and apparently covering a lot of Burlington because of the issues that Burlington is having. So it is interesting. It would be an interesting question for Kirk to to see if is that something he's heard of? Does he think that's on this radio radar or what? What that the Legislature might do that? No, about Burlington. Oh, yes, I'm sorry. So it looks like Lindley is handling questions online. So nice job, Lindley. Local Constable was just having the presence and the eyes and ears out there and what value there is between relationships with them and how they hear about things going on and just thinking about back in the baby. Wendell, whatever, you know, he was to be out here in the parking. Someone pull up and say, Hey, and whatever. These are good or bad, but that's kind of a you can't measure that really. Other than it's just by able to be there. Somebody in and was touching on what I kind of said at the beginning, which is you know, I think as a community and I don't think it's going to be solved today tonight or in this budget cycle is, you know, do we want to be proactive or potentially reactive, right? And because, you know, when you start talking about it, think of how much time that we are on our own, right? If something happens and as a community, I think we have to say is how much proactive do we want to be in regards to something that could happen or how much, you know, responsibility do we want to take for ourselves on that? And but again, it's tough because like even the sheriff's like, you know, we could contract right now, but it doesn't mean that we're going to have somebody here because they don't have the infrastructure put together. So it might be like we're saying it's better to let them play out. Maybe we get a better negotiation seat at the table. I don't think we want to go like, I can't remember what the talent was. I was reading about on Dagger that Dave said, you ain't going to show up. We'll take your business. It's in the moves. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, vigilantes. Yeah. Owen has his hand up, Chris. Yep. Hey, I really liked what Rick Benson just said and it kind of brings me back to this question of what are we actually asking for as far as services? And I think there is this piece that is the community contact piece. I've heard you say it, Chris, like waiting outside the school and kind of being that relationship, building, you know, being the ear of the town, what's going on, what's happening, and also being a trusting steward of the town. And I personally don't think that has to be a police officer. I think we could envision, we could dream a little bigger about what does it look like to have someone who is essentially doing like community policing, community accountability that doesn't wear the badge, that doesn't have the same law enforcement role, but could be in contact with the SP as needed. And really that's a model that's more like prevention. If you have somebody that's listening that can go knock on the door and be like, hey, just checking what's going on in here, you know, that's, you could avoid a lot of worse, worse things happening. If you have that type of trusted person, that's just one idea. And also I think, I think it just keeps coming back to me the question of, you know, are, is this 20 hours a week, even if it's actually happening and happening well the way the town wants to, is it actually addressing the need of the town? Because it sounds like, you know, the issues that we've heard about with substance use and speeding and, you know, these things 20 hours a week just seems like, it just doesn't seem like that much time, especially if it's not at the right times. And so I just wonder about, yeah, there hadn't been an idea a while back of, you know, moving away from the idea of having our own constable. And I guess just for me, I support that idea and I support thinking outside the box about what does the town actually need? How do we prevent the issues that are happening instead of just looking for people to respond to them after they've happened? That's my thought. I think that one of the things Owen that Sheriff Elect Palmer had said was his goals for, you know, very big on community policing and his goal was he would like to have a social worker on his staff. So that, you know, he had another layer of, of, you know, that someone to help officers or to help people that, you know, are neat. And he was really his goal is, is very, I think of the word I want, but I mean, it's a great goal. It's what we would all want him to have to be successful with his model, which is having very highly trained community oriented people as well as having social workers. And he's talking about, you know, even if homeless people, if someone's homeless, having officers and people find them a place to go and know all the services and things. But so certainly he definitely has some laudable goals, which and we hopefully he can do it. And, but so, so definitely, oh, and he is thinking of those things too. So I just wanted you to know, even if we don't do it this year, but if we ended moving with him, that is one of his goals too, is having maybe even a school resource officer and because he had that certification as well. So he definitely has some really big community oriented goals. He's the chair of the select board in Windsor. So he certainly understands towns and town needs and things. So I just wanted you to know a bit of what he said. And I think when we were talking about full time service, we had left that out. But, you know, full time service for the most part means that you have the same individual in town, but you're covered at all times for all call outs in a quicker response time than you would currently get. But there were some other caveats like, you know, a social worker that can deal with certain cases and things like that. So those were definitely some of the pieces and they'll just come with that. His goals, but he's not there yet. But I also got from him that, you know, even if we said we want to do full time service of him, that 125 this year could turn into like 150 or more the next year. You know, I think once you get bought in, it starts ratcheting up type deal. And, you know, so that's why I think, you know, maybe he just needs time to get his ducks in a row as his board and then maybe you'll have more options. But so anyways, I'm happy to do your new iteration of the budget. And I think the call makes an excellent point, which is there's already enough savings in the budget and I can crunch those numbers, Paul, to see if that's something that we could move to sooner with Oscar and Justin. And then if someone's unable or unwilling, maybe we look for somebody new. So then Paul's right. 15 eight that was in there for this, this budget year now. Yep. That is for that is the moveable sign. It's for two more speed signs like we had last year, the solar ones and for a speed cart that you could move and put like on church street or move here, move there. There was like three items. Yes. What's the status on those? You're just not ordered yet. I was waiting. I was honestly hoping because the $8800 speed cart went up significantly. So when I first looked at the beginning of the year, so I was kind of hoping as things people's backlogs of from COVID got better that maybe the price would come down a little bit because the $8800 I budgeted was now 10 something. So anyways, I'll have to get them ordered because I know I have to have them by the end of June and I'm not going to install to my. So that has to be in this. Yeah, I'll spend it. Yep. Yeah.  Yeah, 15 eight. That's what it is. Yes. That is it. So as far as the budget, really not any more tweaks than, you know, a little bit here, a little bit there and also to next week when you meet with the Recreation Committee, we'll know what they're looking for as well as and like I said, I just got the insurance, but I think overall. The budget is pretty darn close at the 6.8% amount to be raised by taxes, which actually because of the growth in the grand list puts you at less than 3%. So I don't know if anybody else, let's see. So that put us at a. Well, I mean it put us before the add-ons. We're basically at level funded. Yeah. But if you if the add-ons did get voted in, which was the sheriff extra in the library, yeah, then it would go up about 2 cents. Yeah, the current budget. It's actually down right now over last year, just because of the growth in the grand list. So it's. So a couple of things that you really want to get confused. Yeah. So my numbers that I was looking at overall. So I was looking at like I was talking about adding $12,000 to the Constable budget. Yep. Not the not the sheriff's portion, right? Just the existing one. Yep. That would give us that $28 an hour. Yep. So I was looking at adding $12,000 to the budget for that. Yeah. But then I was looking at and I could be wrong, but I think you can take $20,000 out of White River Valley Ambulance. Yeah, I got a look at the work. I think you can take $20,000 out of that budget. I was going to move that $20,000 to the highway department for our matches towards our grants that we have. So move it to a capital fund. Right. And then I looked at adding another $25,000 to our capital roads on top of that, which that would when I looked at that, that was a net net add of 37,000 to that 106 tax rate, which that would be about a penny and a half. So that would be 107 that would have put us at 107 something, which would be up a penny from last year. Recognizing the adjustments to the grand list. So we would be at what I call a base budget of 107 and then we would still have the addition potential addition of the library for 27.5, which if people voted that in that would be another penny just over a penny. So that, you know, would be at like 108 something. So that would be. Yeah, you'd be be just under three pennies if everybody added all that in and the reason why I kind of got to those numbers is that, you know, that has been the number that we have targeted for years on that 3 cent increase to get us to that realistic budget number. And the only reason why I say, I think we got to that realistic budget number about a year ago. And the reason why we didn't see an addition last year is because our grand list grew faster than, than the added costs that we had added. Cause we thought we were going to be raising it almost 3 cents. Right. It ended up coming in level funded because of the grand list. Changes. Right. We got that $54,000. There you go. That's. That's two and a half. Yeah. But it's in this budget. Yep.  Four wasn't in there, you're going to go up a five and a half. Right. As yeah. If you look at it here right now, if we did nothing, let's say we didn't have that. Money in there. Just the additions for what I would say is. Inflation type numbers that we're seeing with the. Salt and material and diesel. Oil and. And all of that. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to do a little bit of a, a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of salt and material and diesel. Oil and. And all that we would have to ask for at minimum of like. Two and a half cents this year just for that. You know what I mean? So what.  Right. I guess is. Yeah. That's the way I'm looking at it. But what people may not understand is the money that Chris is talking about is the fact that we sold our interest to the transfer station. So we get 54,000 a year for five years. So that money will go away. So the select board is trying to keep a handle on that. So you want to be careful because if you raise your budget. Right. $54,000 than at five years from now, you're going to have to come up with. Two and a half cents more in one year. So if you move it to a capital fund, you're actually better than increasing it to like. Wages or salt or whatever. The reason why I say that is we have, we have four grants that we have received that we have to. Do in the next. Two years. So we have the, we have, well, we have the sidewalk, the pleasant street sidewalk grant. We have the sandhill. The sandhill infrastructure. Yeah. That's going into your bond. But yeah. Well, not, well, the, not the 150,000 match, but then paving and, you know, the whole, yeah. We have the Christian Hill grant that we have. And then we have the, um, the watershed bridge. Oh, P vine bridge. Yeah. That's P vine bridge. Sorry. Yeah. So we have those things at all that we have grant money that's been granted to the town that we have to take care in the next two years. So, right. And to see it as an opportunity to try to match those funds. And that's certainly where, why we moved so much of the ARPA money into that was to cover. Certainly you're looking at 1.6 million in grants and a lot of that has matching funds with it. But the other thing too is don't forget about the skate park. Um, you know, I have built the budget around $10,000 just to go into the capital fund. We don't know what the, I did ask Ellie the other day and she's coming. They're coming Monday next Monday at seven. Because the power was located in a position that would not allow them to do the 20 by 70 edition. And because D trees out, I, I want to see a site plan from them because the land water conservation grant requires them to do extend this sidewalk to make it accessible. And if that's going to go over that power that may require. Well, it can't. But if it does, it's going to require us to dig it in for concrete, but I don't think they'll let you do that either. I'm not sure if they will either. So that's what I need to see the site map is to see where they're connecting from to get to the addition. And if we can't do that, I'm not sure if they will either. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if they will be able to get to the addition. And if we can't do that, then they can't honor the terms of their land water conservation grant and there goes 50 grand. So. She, I did ask her, obviously we can't develop further to the. Right. I'm going to say right. So the Northwest East, whatever, but too, because that's catch them's property. And they've already built a nice end. So I'm not sure, you know, length wise, you can't expand further because you're going to go one of them. But I think it's interesting. There's certainly a lot of creative options that the right committee will come up with. And, but they'll talk to you about that. So this doesn't include any additional money yet for that. But we know that's a possibility that if you don't take the amount that they request from the capital.  So just keep that in mind too. There's just a piece that we don't know yet. But it's definitely on board for them. Yep, they are. They're very excited that, and they're going to be Lisa's getting together. They're, you know, what they're going to do. So there's 70 which would have 7,500 in the budget. Plus they're asking for an additional 27,500 because, you know, the financial situation that the library is in. So it'll be interesting to see. I think it'll be a great discussion. Well, I think we also somehow happen. And if we vote to increase 27,500 on that item, the conversation needs to be more futuristic on that as well because yeah, once it's in it's going to be and it's almost like if we if we do put that in 27,5 then that's something if we want to have the library at a minimal value. That that is the right appropriation yearly that we would have to give them, but remember that was minimum, right? That wasn't even, you know, they really said to be a functional library. They needed 100,000 from me and their budgets. What's their budget? 8070. Oh, sorry. What's the library's budget right now? That they, that they run off. 60 something low because they were taking 30, they said that somebody told them the library that size should be running off $150,000. Yeah. And what they've been doing is, what they've been doing is they just been drawing money. And I mean, they're, they're literally if they're only a couple of years away from just being done because they didn't, you know, they're endowment or whatever they just been drawing that down to nothing. Exactly. So it's either do we want to have a library and if so this is how much it's going to cost us. Right. So putting that out there this year is not just a. No, it's going to be a one year fix. This is would have to be every year what people would expect for an appropriation going forward as well. It's going to be all sizeable like that. Make sure that people understand that. But so do you want to move on to the warning? We have anything else. Want to answer. There's been this whole other conversation on zoom about speed bumps and this and that and the other. So, um, my advice would be that the Du Bois and King will be coming to the select board in February. I believe January, February, the date hasn't been set yet to go over their better connections, kind of big reveal. We just had a big event Friday. You can certainly go on the website and see all the information that's out there now Du Bois and King is putting together a, it's just a plan. There's no money behind it at this point doesn't say any of it's going to happen tomorrow, but certainly making recommendations about maybe parking on one side of the street. Where's the best location to have crosswalks, proper signage, where should we increase parking? How can we have handicapped parking down street? Can buildings be made handicap accessible? So there's a lot of information out there. And if you just Google Bethel for all, I think it'll take, you know, you'll see their website and um, and they've been gathering a lot of information so. And which, which meeting are they coming to on that one? I don't know yet. Some point I talked to Chris, um, Sergeant Friday night because we had, I think it's going to be in February, but we haven't set the date yet because there's, they have to get the final iteration of their plan together. That's why they were doing a big thing Friday to get more ideas and more feedback on the plan so that they can kind of finalize the ideas. So, um, so we'll see. Okay. So let's be having anything else on the budget discussion for this evening. We will move to the drafting of the town meeting warning. All right. Should we have a copy in our yep. So there's a couple of things. So obviously, um, I don't know, I did put number 12, the recreation facility for the skate park just in case, you know, as a placeholder, um, I will get, as you know, Paul will always, you know, provides us with a social service numbers. Um, I'll correct the White River Valley ambulance numbers. Then item 16. I don't know. You guys never really settled on if you were going to do just 16 or 16 and 17. 16 is shall the town of Bethel elect its town officers by Australian ballot. Then the second is shall the town of Bethel adopt all budget articles by Australian ballot. I kind of felt like the last discussion we had about this, you were leaning towards doing officers only and leaving the budget to be discussed at town meeting, but right. That was a special. Yeah, I'm not really sure where that knows you ended up on a decision. So I threw them both in here. So going through the warning here. So just kind of going from top to bottom here. Sure.  So this is the three year and two year seat. And then Lister. So Pam Brown's seat is Lister. You have that only in for a one year? Because you appointed her for the balance of a term. So she has to serve the balance of Louise's term, which will be a year. So I'm just trying to get there. But is it Louise's? Is it normally a three year term? It normally is a three year term, but Louise had a couple of years left. So Pam finished this portion of her term, and then she would just run for the balance of the term. And the balance of the term is one year. That's why it says Pam Brown. That's why I just couldn't wrap my head around that. Is that because isn't even though you may be filling one year left of a three year. Don't you still advertise it as a serving one year of the three year term or something? I don't know. Well, that's, I mean, so she's serving. Because it says I guess for a one year to succeed, wouldn't that still be like a three year. Well, I guess what we could do is say this three years as of 20. You know what we 2024 or something like that. If you look at the wording on number nine for Paul, I could say for the balance of a term of one year. How does that? Because don't Rick, don't we normally. Because wouldn't you say that the balance of a three year term ending in 20. Yeah, if it's only one more year 2024. So look at number nine. If we word Pam's to look like Paul's on number nine. He was the same wording at take care of it. Yeah. Okay, so it would be but it would say for the balance of a three year. For the balance of a term of one year. So his term expires and I can look at this trying that it didn't look great to me. All right. Well, you know what I can look at some other way I can look at them again and. Like, I get what you're saying you want them to know it's a one year of a three year. Right. Okay. Let me look at some language. Me doesn't. Yeah. But someone in theory run against her. Yes, absolutely. I'm not I'm sure she's running. So I don't know she's just the yeah absolutely somebody could run against Pam, Chris, Judy, anybody. This that's just who Bethel has always worded it this way I think Rick could say that could answer that question. Who's who that or who's you normally list who served it current who's in it currently yeah. So that's why it says Pam and I don't even know if Pam's running again. I mean I understand if you have the full thing like you know my seat to two year turn. Yeah. I don't necessarily need to say it's going to be over in 2025 but but if you're in a seat that is a partial. Yeah, you know when you want to put the, you should still identify that that's a three year seat. Right. I'll look at it and when it expires. Yeah, it's a three year seat would expire in 20. Yeah, I just didn't know if the listeners had like no no they don't have any like are they all three year or like do they have like one. 10 years. Yeah, okay. Yeah. So no that's fine Chris I can. Pam though would have to be a town resident. Lister. Yeah, everybody here has to be a town resident. Yeah, okay. You can't run to be a local official. No I mean just with with the Lister. Yeah, yep. Just like a select board member town. Yeah, that's right. Um, so yeah so I just made a little note to look at six and nine and come up with the wording so let me make it. Morning. Look at the six and number nine. So it looks like that day we will have the Australian ballot for cannabis retailers. Yes, so so do you want to finish so I can move on to that but do you guys want to answer the question about 1617 first. What's the pleasure there do you want well hold on a month I haven't even made that for okay. Alright, I'm on 11 but I don't know where else is so so with the the library it says appropriate the sum up. Yep, up to the sum of 2775 but isn't that an additional 2775 from what's budgeted. Like, because aren't they going to get the nine, the 7500 plus 275, which they would discuss for total 35, which they would discuss in number 10. Because they could only discuss the 7500 in number 10 right budget is approved that 7500 is its own. Because you said you got then here you say a sum up to a sum of 2775 additional. I know how confusing this gets a town meeting day and I remember remember that one year where everybody thought they were cutting the. They were adding 54 but we ended up cutting 54 and that was my first year getting on the board and we had to cut $54,000. Okay, I can make additional because we thought that that was our add ons and I'm like I'm sitting in the stand like, I'm pretty sure that that's not how that works but. Yeah, because you all had said you want to leave the 7500 in the budget and then let them take the chance so I can say additional or or do you put. Shall the voters appropriate up to the sum of $35,000 for the library knowing that 7500 is what they've already appropriated and 35 is the number that would be more confusing. The only thing I'm thinking is people need to understand that 35 is the number that the library is going to be looking for every year. Yeah, so additional just take additional okay yeah because plus two you guys already promised them last week that you would leave 7500 in the budget and then let them take their chances for the 25 so I'll just add additional. Oh it will get confusing anyway so I know that's where Rick comes in he sorts it all out makes it logical. Some people like where'd Rick go. I called him the other day about Australia about so. Yep. Yes. So as I mean, of course, if that course 12 right now is a question mark if it's even going to have the word additional in there. And that would be something we'll have to talk about as a board once we find out all the information. Right. Yeah, that way or not. Yeah, Ellie has her appointment for next. Monday for Monday night at seven next Monday since we meet back and social services Paul they always they'll sort out their number and let us. It's not going to be. It's right around what it was last year. Okay. And war but I will look at and yes, before you ask I checked all the dates and all those 15th are in the middle of the week they're not on a Saturday or Sunday. So I flipped through my calendar because I'm like, Chris is going to ask about this. And as far as remembering the conversation we had from last year was was, we had, we had agreed as a board that that we would put the Australian ballot by officials, but continue to keep the budget and any informational pieces during town meeting that that was my recollection. I know we talked about all the various different pieces but I think that was the only one that we could get agree right is is, if we put in 16. Is it amendable. No. It's not. I just wanted so that if somebody wanted to include the other they will not have that little, they would not have the option. Right. Is that true right. Well, what was your question. It could could one could they add say, we want the listeners to be included. 17 Australia ballot. Right. You're saying could 16 be amendable to add additional. Right. Could 16 be amendable to include all articles. Or just. Yeah, so let's say 17 not there. No, because, because that would be. Right. The reason is because it would be expanding the scope of that article beyond what was warned. Yeah, you can change monetary values. Yeah, and you can change little things. Yeah, but that would be a major change that wouldn't. Okay. Yeah. So Owen is asking this year's town meeting this years. The two prior town meetings because of COVID we're all done Australian ballot this year will be in person. So. And to change any functions of town meeting you have to go revert back to your original. Yep. Approved settings. So, so if you want, so like, like we talked about last year because we went to Australian vote based upon the COVID restrictions, you couldn't vote. Or Australian ballot because the only way you can do that is you have to revert back to your natural settings that you have so we'd have to wait to the next time we could do it in person to vote in person on changing that. Yeah, what do you mean? Yeah. Oh, and because we vote from the floor, we have to vote this article from the floor. So if you want to vote your officers by Australian ballot, it has to get approved at town meeting. And you're currently approved voting process. Does that make sense Owen? Yeah, I don't have the draft in front of me that you're reading from so the proposal is that you would vote officers by Australian ballot and budgetary decisions would be made on the floor. Yes. All right. Okay. Yep. Not this year. It would be has to be a right. But yeah, right. Yeah. Okay. And the reason for that is that when the nice thing about voting from the floor Australian, or your budget from the floor is you can have a discussion about it and get more feedback and understanding when it goes Australian ballot, there's no feedback. There's no that doesn't pass. You don't know why. And if people want to say, and Bethel has done that add more money for social service agencies, you know, if you vote Australian ballot, you can't do that. So that's one of the one of the things. So the question I had in regards to the cannabis piece. All right, so hang on. Let me see. I'm trying to. So being that the state of Vermont put in their guidelines that has to be voted for through Australian ballot. Yep. So being that that has to go through Australian ballot. Does that now open it up as its own item? Do we have to have like our own informational meeting for that item? Nope. It specifically states in here that or how do how do we formally talk about the item because now it's going to play. You could talk about town meeting day but people could already have voted on that for town meeting day. So how do you formally have the discussion as a community you about the item before voting on the item? I think unless you want to schedule the date after the meeting or I think that what you're going to do because it says right here in the in the state budget, the vote must be by Australian ballot, but no informational hearing is required. My suggestion is we hold to a budget informational hearing. So we basically go through the warning. We have to do it 10 days prior to town meeting plus we do it another time. We just have, you know, it's, we just discuss it if somebody wants to discuss it, they can. And then, so this is a little different. So because of this you're, and I had this I called Rick and we've talked about them we talked about again this evening. After 16, it's going to say this discussion of items to be voted on Australian ballot. The following articles will be voted by Australian ballots. I think I'm going to renumber this as article one. Shall the town of Bethel authorize cannabis retailers in town pursuant to seven BSA 63. Then after that, we will go back to eight number 18, which is the non binding other business, how you end the meeting. And it does say on the warning polls will be open Tuesday, March 7 2023 from 8am to 7pm at the White River Unified Middle School Bethel campus so you're right people may have already voted. So 18 left off hours. Yes, because I had to tie had Rick I sent you guys a draft and I sent it to Rick and Rick realized what I was missing because we had to remove it from the past two warnings because of your Australian ballot because of COVID. Australian ballot does not necessarily mean that there would be mail in voting or advanced voting. I mean, it would still have the absence. And so you would. So for that particular item. It seems to me we would want to have an informational meeting before the polls open or before voting begins. As I, yeah, as I just said, we will handle it in the two informational meetings prior. One of the meetings needs to be what I want. When did the quote, when can when does voting begin that's the question. Voting begins. Let's see they have to have the ballots. I think they're 30 or 20 days prior to maybe that's town report. I can't remember, but anyways, you're going to be voting Australian ballot also on your school officers. So there'll be a ballot for school officials. They'll be a ballot for cannabis and, and hopefully we're going to have a bond vote on the water project. So, I'm just saying that that information meeting needs to be before people start voting. Yeah, and I think what we were talking about is, we need to, we normally have two informational meetings just for the budget. Yeah, and you just do it then. So I think what we're going to do is we will encompass that into the budget. But we'll probably have to maybe advertise it a little differently. Yeah, those days. Yeah, and because it's tricky because like we talked about with the cannabis piece before is, you know, the tricky part of it that people have to understand too is how they have this setup is once you voted in as a community, right? So, so like we had talked about before, Paul, remember, like, if you, if we vote this in as a community, and then somebody decides to put a retail spot up, right? So we voted in and let's say in April, somebody wants to put a retail shop up in the downtown or wherever, anywhere in Belgium, right? And then let's say the voters turn around and say, we don't want this. And we vote to have it expunged. So that retailer is now grandfather clause. Yes. So once they're in, even if you change your voting after the fact, they are grandfathered for life. Right. Which is a kind of a weird scenario because I mean, it's kind of like, like alcohol, right?  So you can sell alcohol. If we all of a sudden decide we want to be a dry town, then there would be no alcohol, right? Yeah. But in this case, with the way that legislation did this with the marijuana is if we turn around and decide at another time as a town, and there's someone doing business, they have more rights to continue the business than we do as a town. My guess is because they put money into it to start the business and who knows. The answer is the carts in front of the horse. Like, you know, but. So don't forget though, you can have discussion of this item because that's one thing that Rick clarified for me was discussion of items to be voted on Australian about so you can have a discussion at town meeting about the town of Bella, and you can have a authorized cannabis retailer. So, and you probably have some people in there that, you know, obviously that haven't voted that attend town meeting and participate in the discussion, but yes, you will have had some who may have voted. Prior, but we don't get a lot of early voting for town meeting when it's on the floor generally. There are two as far as 16 can't discuss the officers. There can be no discussion on the officers at town meeting. Right, you can't say. Right. Yeah, we yeah like or don't like yeah. Yeah, you're all in. Yeah. So I can't. I want to be. Yeah, yeah. That vote comes after we've already elected this year's right. Okay, and that's what we talked about before the pros and cons of the whole thing and, you know, the uniqueness of having everything on the floor is that within reason, as long as it's not a major chain right. You can change things, you know, like, like we talked about the one year where some human services appropriations were left off so you can say, Oh, this was left off we want to add $2,500 for this for, or let's say nobody's running for policy. And then the day before somebody somebody decides they want to run for it, they can stand up at town meeting day and have their five minutes of fame and get up and talk and, and you can vote that person in rather than have to do a right in campaign that like, like me, for instance, I did the school board right in campaign and I didn't get enough votes. Right. So, you know, I mean, so then you have to do like an appointee thing so it's there's a lot of pros and cons to it but so the rest about cannabis is on the bottom here is, I picked the question, shall the town of Beth authorized cannabis retails, because the other one says the legislation says, or you can vote, shall the town authorize retail portions of integrated licensee operations in town, but they also tell you at the bottom this is the advice from VLT, VLCT, Vermont League of Cities and Towns, that voting on integrated license isn't necessary. And technically they're only for medical cannabis establishments already in place. Therefore, if the town wants to allow retail cannabis only in portions of integrated licensee operations, it doesn't have to be established. It should use the second model, but it's basically saying that when the town votes on allowing retail cannabis operations, the allowance is going to extend broadly to both retailers and retail portions of the integrated licensee operations. Anyway, so it seemed like that was the question that you'd want to ask. And obviously if this passes, then the town doesn't have to, but you should establish a cannabis control board. And whoever's on that is going to have to have some idea about zoning, because we've discussed this Rick and I, because Rick is also the chair of the planning commission and the cannabis board. And yeah, we talked about, because you can't zone, we can't zone out cannabis, it can be basically cannabis retails are allowed where retail operations are allowed. So that means like in the downtown area? So if you didn't have a retail, if you weren't zone retail for the top of McIntosh, you can't put cannabis there, because they do have to follow, because you can't zone it out, but they have to follow existing zoning regulations. So right now, you know, you can have retail operations in core, the village, maybe Hamlet. Yeah. So, just so people know. I see cast is on. Did you have something you wanted to add cast. Justin, can we make Justin. Yes, we can make just, you can make just whatever you want. We are actually interested in maybe trying to make a portion of our Richardson store into a cannabis retail store. That was, you know, I'm not really sure what we needed to do. Obviously, it sounds like it's already going to be on the warning for the town meeting. So that's great. And I guess I would want to attend any of the informational meetings that we're going to have before this as well. I don't know. Just check the select board agenda. We post them on, you know, the Friday, the Friday before the meetings and we'll probably once we do this, we actually both. It'll be bigger. Yeah, it'll probably be both meetings. And sometimes we have one off the schedule a little bit if we feel like the budget is a big item or some other item is a big discussion. But if I remember I have both your email addresses, I'll try to remember to send that to you directly. If not, certainly just call the office ask Kelly and look at our website. But yeah, because they've changed the the rules. Significantly obviously there's some towns I think Randolph did the opted in right away. I think that maybe they have an establishment I heard a rumor that they had somebody opening up. And yeah, and so we obviously if you're going to grow cannabis that's a different permit that the town doesn't. Yeah, that's the state because we have had one of those issued already. And that goes directly to the cannabis control board. If the town does not have its own local control cannabis control board. Then it we leave it up to the state to decide and they certainly have no idea of our zoning so I don't know how that would work out but so it, I will say this it's. I have attended a training and I have another webinar for another it is confusing as anything so hopefully by the next meeting will have a little more information because the cannabis control board got behind because of coven and I think they've kind of been trying to play catch the rules but certainly my advice for you if you want to, if you're considering opening is reach out to them or Google them they have a website and they have a bunch of information and, and you would need a zoning permit. For sure, but other than any other state regulations. I would, you know, check with them because we're just honestly just not as informed yet.  But I'll try to remember to let you guys know and if not just keep an eye on the website or check with Kelly. Thank you. Thank you. Of course, yeah. If I understand what we what you just said a few minutes ago. If it is already zoned for retail, then that's where the position that's where the store the store or the retail outlet has to be. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, because you can't zone it out. But you can limit it to that which is already zoned. Yep. For retail. Yeah. It's an interesting caveat for sure. So, all right, so I'm going to remove number 17. I will label the cannabis article one, and then I will add 18 that Rick pointed out on Friday that I'd missed the other business that we put at the end. Yeah, I had put this language on the bottom was really just obviously I'm going to delete it I just wanted you all to read it to understand what cannabis retailer means integrated licensee so we'll have to come up with some information to maybe do some front porch forum posts. Facebook posts kind of gets an information together so people can understand what the cannabis vote is or is not. It doesn't allow people to write it's just like you can't drink on Main Street and open container law it's the same thing. You know it's not just because you're allowing retail doesn't mean you're allowing people to use up you know on Main Street and stuff so. So, it, it looks. None. Things that are in the warning. I see for that are would not necessarily be in every town meeting. There's the library vote, the recreation facility. The Australian ballot for officers and cannabis. So we would want to in notifying people of the discussion times. I think we would want to say these are four items that will be coming that are distinct to this meeting. So that people know that they can come to those meetings and share what they want to say. And just remember we haven't 100% that the recreational facility. Placeholder in case we need to allow it in terms of what we have how we promote these informational meeting. Well, we'll get we usually get the sample warning out ahead of time. Yeah, that's all that'll be out for for people to see and. Yeah, I mean we talk about it just like our but everything else. And then and then normally, you know, between Rick and I will do a pretty good job of navigating people through it and I'm simply wanting before we get when we announce those special meetings that we call people's attention to those four items or three items, whichever turns out. Because I think otherwise we get people showing up at the information or a town meeting saying well I didn't know you were going to be you're going to get all that. There's only going to be four people at this informational meeting. I understand that. I want to say. And in the past we have. And in the past at the informational meetings to we've also gone through the warning each time. Yeah, I understand what's on that warning. Yeah, you know. All right, anything else on the warning. Pretty good there. I mean, just report anything left there. So I did, we had five I should I guess brought up during the budget but we had talked about right pulled Joe's looking MVP versus or blue cross blue shield versus MVP trying to compare the same. But the policy that that I was trying to compare to compare to what we have is not the same coverage. So I think it's hard in this. Thank you, Rick. I'll send you the draft again. Thank you. That it's I think it's difficult in this climate week to find staff to cut benefits for existing staff. I did there would have I looked at the numbers to see if there'd be savings and a premium, but the coverage this isn't the same. So I'm not comparing apples to apples. So I just wanted to let you know that I've done that. I also received a letter today from Mike Tarrant, which is Brian Wright's attorney. It got forwarded to our attorney. So let's just sitting out there. Right now, Eugene. And I'm sure I'll have more for that in my pen, more for that in the future. But that just came in today. So, oh, I haven't I'll be about the town report dedication. I'll just send you an email about that. That's it. Can can AJ make sure when he does his right along program that that's during the daytime between certain. Yeah, so that you can attend there. You can because I gotta be two o'clock tomorrow. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, you got the two o'clock. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, so when Lee's not here so we can nominate her for the two a.m. shift. Thank you. Yeah, that's right. So I saw that I was like, it's tough because it's tough. It always snows like at night. I mean, you know, I mean very seldom is it during the daytime. I know I'm working and stuff like how you put that together. But if you haven't done one before I've actually done a ride along with a road crew before. I've done a ride along with the chief of police before so that's always a that's an eye opener right there but you know but it was really interesting to do a ride along with a road crew because I picked the steepest route the whole thing which is what AJ is offering and he's got this and it's amazing.  I mean I don't know how when you when you see the snow hit. Oh my God. And lights and yeah it's it's really crazy and but it was really interesting to and I was I've always been so glad that I had done that so but certainly reach out to AJ. And he really wants. He's really wants people to do that and I just really think it was is a good thing. Obviously we have another seasonal employee Curtis so if you see Curtis he was out on the sidewalk. Yeah, say hi. Yeah, yep. And where is he from either Sharon or Royalton I'm sorry because I don't remember his faith look familiar and then when I just read Curtis Barry and like that.  And so what else so you saw the hours that we're going to be closed for the holiday and then Oh DWS RF so that's a good. We're, I'm working we're working with Amy of DWS RF she took for Ashley and that is actually promising now. They had some data that was inaccurate. So it looks like we're so we're definitely on for the lead subsidy. And it looks like we should be getting the 40 year you know 0% interest. Plus, there may be a disadvantage subsidy which we didn't think we were going to qualify for plus. What everything they always from Bennington. Yeah, right. So we are all our Bennington money. Yeah, so those numbers are looking definitely looking better so I was very happy to meet Amy and Of course, I'll tell you what you want to hear until you've got the project and they're like, well, forget it. Yeah, she's actually not a qualifying one. Very good. So, so retired or left. Exactly. But I have to get some more information because they want to see our draft budget for the water department for next year so Yeah, so when will we see the information in regards to that phase two water line pieces, if we are going to put that I mean we're doing the easements right now they're working on the final design we just added. We Richard had got an estimate received an estimate for a lot of work that needed to be done at the reservoir so we wanted to add that to the bond. So we gave that information to them so soon. Dick Adams. Yes. He's passed away. I had it signed. Well, Tim was still alive. He asked me to get it taken care of and I did if that property sells easements still good. Yeah. Okay. So that easement is all take care of and then I'm working on. I think I have three or four other easements I'm doing now I just discussed one with Renee turns you on today. And there's a couple others. So, a lot less easements this time than last time. So, so yeah, so we're moving forward so once I have something more, we're just kind of trying to figure out the financing and all that. So, yes, town meeting. Hopefully we will be voting our case to if it doesn't work out then then we'll probably do it in, you know, April or May or something. And it gets was on the warning March 7. Yeah. Yes. Yep. So that's it. All right. Select board meeting minutes from 28. Any amendments to that are we good to approve it as written. Lindley's giving you the thumbs up. Okay, moved by Paul. Lindley's second. Lindley's second. Okay. Any other communications. So I gave you the recreation information, just though you would have that. But again, I don't know what. And you can see my cost estimate that we actually had a good estimate for the 1400 square feet, which would have made them short $53,000 but once I cut that to 700 thinking, you know, and like I said, I just dropped 8,000 off the commission. I put in big letters, guesstimate only. I didn't ask Dylan to go back and redo that. They would only be 300 bucks shy. But if they are still wanting to 1,400, they're 53,000 shy. So, and I gave all that information to them. And all the members of the rec committee and Ellie. Yeah, go back. Yeah, I did it for Ellie. Yeah, she asked when I got here, if I could do something for her. So now I update it every year on a regular basis and she's actually very helpful she was there was something in there that was inaccurate and she pointed that out to me so it was good. Sounds good. So remember we meet Monday again at 630. I will be here. I'll be skirting over here. We have a game Monday. I'll be running right from here to there should be over by then. Hopefully. Well, good luck. We win. Oh, sorry, I'm here. Okay. Sounds good. There you go. See you later. Bye Lindley. Bye Owen. Thank you.


Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin recently spoke about the Dravidian model. But what exactly is the Dravidian model? Does it amount to welfareism? Is it feasible in a neoliberal economy with centralized federal structure? Professor Venkatesh Atreya talks about it in the context of the Tamil Nadu budget 2022-23 presented recently. Dravidian governments of both varieties. Is it they have all been generally very reluctant to devolve finances, functions and functionaries to elected local bodies? That continues. See, this is the contrast with Kerala, where Kerala hemmed in in many ways even more so than Tamil Nadu, especially with the disaster they had to face in a series of disasters since 2016 and especially COVID, which they handled quite brilliantly, I must say. They have had a long legacy of decentralization, democratic decentralization, inspired by Kerala's Amadri Pada. Now, of course, people's plan already about 20-odd years old and so there is a tradition in Kerala's political culture of devolution and contestation for resources at the local level. And that has stood them in good stead. It is because of just contestation for resources, it is also participation. So, they have participated actively in development issues, including handling of the pandemic in Tamil Nadu because we have not devolved, we have not encouraged the culture of decentralization. There is still a resistance to, of course, the elections held. Yeah, that is very similar to the union government, right? Yeah, but no, this government has held elections to both urban and rural local bodies to its credit. But that is different from the powers you vest them with and the resources you devolve to them. On both those counts, much more needs to be done. Some little has been done, but much more needs to be done. So, the other area where budget could have done better would have been to promote greater devolution of both finances and functionaries as well as functions to elected local bodies. So, what is this conflict that you are talking about in the Dravidian model? No, no. You see, the Dravidian model is supposed to foreground people's welfare, right? But to me, it has always seemed like what is being given the name Dravidian model, whether elements of it is very valuable, okay, social justice, fighting caste operation and so on. What is significantly missing is, of course, core land reforms. The followers of the Dravidian model say, well, there is no need for land reforms. We have, you know, social justice, reservations and all that. And we have the PDS and some welfare actions. I do not think that is quite adequate. And I think that especially since you have PDS and other welfare expenditures are critically dependent on what the Indian government does in terms of the sources that come to you. These make it precarious. So, it is important. The whole idea of land reforms was not just about as an economic measure. It was meant as a measure that would have broken caste hegemony and caste oppression in the countryside. One reason why you see that the oppression against Dalits has still remained an important part of the public discourse in Tamil Nadu continues. It takes some very severe forms, as in the case of inter-caste marriages, is that we have never had comprehensive land reforms. And this is something that the Dravidian model does not consider as being necessary. But that is what Dravidian model has explained by academics. Now, the CM had referred to a Dravidian model when talking about the victory of the DMK front in the local body elections. I do not know in what sense the finance minister has used the term Dravidian model. He has repeatedly alluded to it. But there is a, whatever one may think of the Dravidian model and its limitations as well as its strengths, there is obviously an inherent conflict between a purely neoliberal policy framework and a policy framework that seeks to address the welfare needs of the population through PDS and other state measures. So, there is a tension there. And it is not clear that Jagrajini has recognized that fully.