Welcome to the homelab show number 111 and yes, we're back. No, we're not gone. How you doing Jay? I'm doing fine. How are you? You may have noticed Jay is not where Jay was Jay is in a different location So we're gonna give you a quick update on you know, basically too long didn't watch Jay moved But we'll talk a little more about that. We have some firewall history I want to cover today as I think it's gonna be a fun topic It seems to be a hot topic of all the different firewalls out there and because I've been using these since 2000 I that's when I started getting well, maybe even 99 or 2000 the oldest photo I can find of me standing next to an open source firewall is all the way from 2021 So I've got a long history and I want to share some of that history with all of you and me and You've maybe 2011 or oh 20 2001. I'm sorry. Yeah I did say that wrong. You're right It feels weird to say that think that was like 22 years ago. All right now everyone knows how old that I'm old Is it the gray here didn't you watch my videos go the gray here? It it lets people know your old time But before we get into all that fun stuff and some updates Let's thank a sponsor and that is gonna be our friends at Akamai They've been sponsoring this podcast for quite a while It is a great place to host a lot of things that you may not want to host internally Or if you're just looking for a cloud playground They have a lot of offerings in terms of pre-built systems that gets you deployed quick and fast We've actually been hosting this podcast the website from it and everything else all in the Akamai cloud Even back when it used to be called the node for those of you wondering if it's a new sponsor No, that's a the same sponsor They just went through a little bit of a name change got some more features And we thank them for being a sponsor show you'll find an offer code to get started with them in the description below Along with all the show notes. There's a lot of show notes today for I like to send people on reading adventures Not everyone will go on reading adventures But for people who want to know how me and Jay came to be we spend a lot of time on what I'll call a reading adventure Rabbit hole of books and learning and knowledge So I always like to cite our sources for everywhere. We're getting this information so This history of firewalls and discussing them when we get to that later is two parts one Tom doing it in real time as I have for the last 20 years as we established in beginning 2001 when I've or 2000 whenever I started doing that all the way till present day But there's a lot of good intro entries in Wikipedia But I realized I may have to read through and try to dig up old emails I haven't see what more context I can add to some of these Wikipedia entries for long forgotten firewalls Absolutely So the first thing is as you know, Jay moved that's a Jay can expand on that if you want but Yeah, he's building a new studio Which that's always exciting, but also it takes you way You don't realize how long we put into building these studios until you try to build it again You're like, yeah, this takes a long time It really has been pushing a month I mean not necessarily exactly a month, but I have hands on it's been like two to three weeks and Fine-tuning everything the lighting is not installed right now So if anyone tells me the camera is washed out you you are right It is if you're watching the live version, but that'll be fixed. It's like a little bit of this a little bit of that It's fine-tuning everything So yeah, I moved and I've been in a new location the move ended up being Very long, you know, it never you always think it's gonna take a certain amount of time when it takes longer So it's like I haven't been on social media like during the move my fresh RSS server was broke So I had to fix that but before I fixed that up to set up the studio So I was actually out of touch with the news for a bit there, too So now I'm actually rejoining society or is this society. I'm in at home or whatever Online that's how we work in the tech role. That's how I put it So it's a work in progress and I think it's gonna change from you know bits and pieces from here on out I have I don't even know how many videos recorded at the last studio that I haven't updated yet or uploaded yet So I'm gonna start recording new content from this studio But then you'll see some older footage I recorded from the older studio It's gonna look like I'm just switching between two different places, but it's just a time warp. That's all it is nothing major Yeah, so you will the live streams are from new studio, but until the backlog of editing is done Yeah, there's there's a J puts a lot of effort into his editing and that take it takes a lot of time And there's always this when I recorded it versus when it's released I think the Vim series what it might have been a couple of months ago that I recorded it or were more two Three months ago and I don't really know because I don't have it in front of me the footage Modification times, but sometimes it can be two to three months be when I record something before you guys see it Unless it's something like a review for something that just came out Then I put it out immediately But if it's like an evergreen topic like I'm teaching a topic and nothing has changed then you know Haven't had a chance or situation yet where something has changed and I had to rerecord everything Crossing my fingers, but so far the system works, I suppose. Yeah, and I'll mention this check out J's Vim series So it's just released all of you can easily find it on learn Linux TV Real easy to follow along and learn Vim to get better I'm even gonna be going through it because I have all kinds of bad habits And I'm positive J will correct those through this video if I watch it So I'll get better at Vim and I'll need to search a little less often to figure out what I what is the key? I forgot So my most recent video is about Neo Vim so not that one although you could watch that one too It's awesome before that so I would say actually I you're right is Neo Vim, but I think the Neo Vim stuff is really good Yep That's the most recent one, but the Vim series if you use Neo Vim obviously you could use the same Vim series either way Whichever one you use if you go on learn Linux TV There's the courses tab click on that and it'll be right there in the list And they'll have all six episodes right there for you to watch Yep, I started going down there because there's someone who I Can't I wish I could find the videos I would have shared I actually searched for it We couldn't find it so all those late night Tom watching videos It was a person who went through and they did some real it was like a 30 minute video I think I'd watch it but it was engaging of all the different things They tried before just going why they started with Neo Vim and in the end they end up with Neo Vim and in between There was emacs and every other imaginable like notion AI and all kinds of things But they said in the end Neo Vim was just the best like they don't it just has all the Things they want Emacs was too heavy was the emacs the person really took the time to dive in the emacs, but they also said yeah, yeah This is this is heavy I will be switching the Neo Vim at some point I because right now my answer bowl He just pulls in normal Vim, but I think I'll be switching the Neo Vim as soon as I get a chance. So that's on my list Other noteworthy updates is the new version of Cobia, which is the true-nosed Cobia version They they're going by fish names. So Cobia is a fish so blue fin It was the alpha was angel fish and I thought that was cool Then they went to blue fin now true nascale is at Cobia. I'm still waiting to finish a review of it I would say though from a storage standpoint provided and I did a live stream covering the cave It's basically if you have some encrypted pools and you want to have unencrypted nested under there You're gonna have problems outside of that The systems I upgraded to it that are fully encrypted pools do work perfectly fine, but check that out It's the next layer and they're by the way They're not offering they get they did a point release to blue fin So you can stand a little longer because they were some security patches that need to be done So do the point if you're gonna stay on blue fin a longer do the point release Maybe you're waiting for the point release to Cobia because there are a few bugs one of them is Sis log is broken. I found that bug and there's a curly bracket in the sis log com that doesn't belong there I think it was a curly bracket. Whatever. I did a bug report and I was happy I was excited to help squash a bug that they they have targeted for the next release There's a manual fix for it. Just delete the curly bracket in the config file, but hey, oh Yeah, it's always a great feeling when something you put in a pull request for Ends up being part of the project like crunch bang plus plus was one that I contributed to like early on and it was just a spelling error And in one of the comments in one of the bash files, but I'm like it's a spelling error It's a valid problem. So I submitted it. It was accepted immediately Which is pretty cool and then I knew right then and there everyone else wouldn't see that spelling error But it could go from documentation all the way up to Hardcore coding whenever you can do it's always helpful. Yep So it's it definitely I thought it was weird someone actually commented They they thought it was odd and I was unprofessional by jumping on whenever there's a new release I'm like, what do you mean unprofessional? I'm a bug reporter. And yes I did take my production systems and that's what someone said it was unprofessional for me to take production my Systems my video editing not I didn't shut down a client to do this Like and I always like to test everything in my own world like I'm dog food in here I'm going to give you the latest release and everything else. I don't want to see if all my systems run on it That's why I do that and I current Jenny of you. I mean, this is how the point releases get better If if it is within your ability to load the latest version and deal with the troubleshooting one You get better at troubleshooting because you jumped in first and second those things get fixed Yeah That's eventually how they get fixed is when people like me and people like you that also have the time to participate in it You know, this is a community give back. I mean, I'd be able to write code, but I'll find a bug Yeah, it's like for me I'll tell people for example when it comes to a boon to use the LTS releases and skip everything else because it just Changes too fast, but I can't use LTS myself because I have to stay current on what's coming And the only way to do it is like you said eat it, you know dog eating the dog food So to speak I have to use the latest and greatest which also means I have a lot of things to fix But then that's an opportunity to make sure my automation system can get me back up and running quickly So that strengthens my automation system, which then strengthens everything. So Obviously, I don't have a company with thousands of employees or something that are going to scream at me I just you know if the Wi-Fi is down the kids might come down and yell at me or something But other than that, it's you know, it's it's kind of different when you are the sys admin and the owner of the company at the same time It's a lot of work, but you also have full control, which is kind of fun Absolutely now this is gonna be a topic that I'm gonna try to keep it relatively brief But as I said lots of reading down there including I found I was happy I found this because I couldn't remember the title of the video, but I was happy I found it to put it in the notes The untold story how picks firewall and that save the internet now The please know I didn't say the word Cisco I said picks firewall, but some you go isn't that a Cisco thing. That's a that's an interesting topic And it's great. This is a YouTube video by the serial port. They cover some computer history stuff I think it was great so that is down in the list and definitely worth a watch outside of this to kind of Understand some of the history of how we got there with Nat and firewalls because that's how Nat came to be and it's a fun I love that deep dives in the history That's so my favorite things to watch on YouTube is people who articulate some of this old history stuff So I actually I'm thinking about maybe I'll make a really long video on all the firewalls I've done more in depth than I'll do in this podcast But it's still kind of an audio thing because I'm not gonna load every one of these I well, I can't say I I would actually try but it's just so much effort I was trying to get some of these old firewalls because you can find the old ISOs for them I try getting some of the work. They don't seem to like modern hypervisors So I would probably have to reload them all on hardware and they're not gonna like modern hardware So I can probably find some old hardware, but boy, I don't know if that's a project to try testing all these old firewalls It's fun in concept It's I started looking at how much time it would take and I don't know if I have time to do all that Maybe I'll goof around with it some more, but that's why I'm covering it here in a podcast form I think most people just want to we can walk through some of the history. Yep All right now as I said, this is all linked down below this starts from Wikipedia So this is where I get a lot of the dates from because even though I may have used a lot of these firewalls Don't ask me to remember when I used them because that's the harder part So as well, we'll start with one of the some of the original ones This is not exactly who was first because they were all kind of working Roughly around that same time. This was the 1999 2000 I was early adopter to jump on it was told by lots of people like oh, no, no, no Way you shouldn't be using these software firewalls is whatever one called it I always considered the other ones hardware firewalls versus software firewalls That was the big debate in the tech world of the early 2000s because they were saying like oh, no You're you're completely not understanding the firewalls and I'm like no, no It's still running Linux like it's so or whatever OS they have on these It's still running software on hardware and now today 20 years later Everything is well not everything but a huge number of firewalls are based roughly on Linux. I see people talking about 40 net They're not really an open-source solution. So I'm not bringing them up into this list. But yeah, the 40 nets are definitely a popular solution within the community. I'm trying to Narrow it for the homelab show here to people talking about open-source stuff. So IP cop I love their slogan. It was the bad packets stop here and they started. I remember that. Oh, yes I used to use that at a company. I used to work for a while back yeah, it was cool and It's just one of those things. It's like it was a cool firewall I was a big fan of it. There was I couldn't find it But I think it was mandrieva linux before I used IP cop used to have a firewall. I could not find it in wikipedia It was mandrieva or mandrake. I can't remember which one it was. That's all defunct now, but I Peacop is the one that really got a lot of community support. They were big They had this weird way of doing things at the time. It was new It was red. I think it was red green and orange were your firewall colors. So red was your van Green or blue. Maybe it was green was land. Sorry. This is this is the details were loading It would be kind of fun, but then you could set your DMZ to be like the orange so you can segment your network that way It was kind of a neat concept But that that whole project fell apart by 2019 was the last time I think they had any type of updates It actually lasted quite a while They used to have some decent documentation on it not amazing But you can figure out with this one of the important things about any of these is a Firewall can live and die on how much community support there is and how much documentation there is and whether or not there's enough Recipes out there if you will write up so how to get something done because if the company doesn't directly have documentation a big community Will help create the documentation, right? I kind of made that as a note to some of these where yes Some of these things exist. No, there's not a lot of documentation for them So you're kind of on your own to figure it out now adjacent to this was smooth wall Which started in 2000 last download for smooth wall express which would have been the open source one seems to be 2014 now smooth wall silk has continued on as a company as a commercial entity and I think that's kind of cool So they still exist. They still sell UTMs and things like that And yes, I see Veronica is in the comments asking doesn't IP fire still do the color thing Yes, we'll talk about IP fire because that is a fork of the IP cop We'll get to that one in a little bit here Because I think IP fire came out a lot later, but it's that's still on that's so one of the active ones you can try Yeah, it's funny. We're talking about history in computing Veronica Definitely knows a bunch of things about that and that's so fun to learn from her So check out her channel shout out if you're not already familiar with it a quick way to get to her channel Just go to learn Linux TV bottom right corner has a list of friends of the My channel which is are the same as yours. So yeah, and she's done good with SEO by having the name Veronica explains There's not that many Veronica explains out there that I'm aware of so she's easy to find But smooth wall his more is interesting because it's moved to kind of a split when in terms of You know, they have a commercial offering. So they still are Existing they don't seem to support their non-commercial offering And this is coming back to one of the notes we're gonna bring up upon On and off here, which me and Jay have talked about is open source can be hard to get support for In terms of people keeping people engaged to build the product itself I was if you go to the smooth wall express and They have a by me coffee, which is all the way from 2014 They have almost by me a coffee page and it lists only one supporter So like one supporter for the project still but it hasn't had a release since 2014 so I'm gonna pretty much declare the open source version of smooth wall to best of my knowledge according to Wikipedia and Me reading under site is not an available option anymore now This is where there's a couple Distributions and I seen someone mess messages. I thought this was cool and concept starts with Clark connect Clark connect in it. I don't remember it being Clark connect for very long before it became clear OS I didn't have the dates exactly when this change But clear OS was a successor to Clark connect and have the concept of being an all-in-one firewall VPN proxy email server web server print server user manager file server and then HP bought it and I Really feel like since HP purchased it that the updates kind of came to a halt I think the last update was like around 20 20 for it It's a neat concept because it's not just a firewall It was the everything box like first they targeted. Let's be the windows If anyone worked in the IT world Windows SPS small business server 2003 was the all-in-one box That did it all it was it was actually a really popular System because you didn't have to deal with the client access licenses for small business they had some cool ways of doing it and This was kind of an answer to that like an open source version where they packed in samba user management firewall VPN And it made sense at the time from the concept of hey, I'd like my users to have their file shares I want one place of truth for my users where I've got their email set up their file shares set up their VPN If they're not in the office set up so they can get in there cool concept like it was An ambitious project to put everything in one box now There's obviously some scary things by having everything in one box because they compromised the firewall They are also on your file server and your email server because it's one physical server I think this was probably a hard project to build and support but Yeah, best I can tell they they haven't had an update in quite a while HP purchased them and HP's where some things go to die now when Cisco buys something That's where things go to get monetized and licensed when HP buys things HP said a history of buying some things It just kind of got I don't think they put the right community around it and it just kind of flops I Was told I was just covering the HP logo on my computer while you're talking Mmm Yeah Now interestingly, it's not a fork that that I'm aware of is the ZENT YAL I think it's pronounced Zental very similar to clear OS start in 2009 They still seem to have a commercial offering their last open-source release was in January 6th of 2021 kind of same thing we want to put everything on One server But I they don't have a blog post since July of 2021 so I'm a fuzzy like the website looks current Someone's paying the bill to keep the website But they haven't had any news updates or updates for ZENT YAL But they're same thing they're packing in firewall and all user functionality just like clear OS It seems to be like a competitor for it But fuzzy that that's secure and up-to-date especially there's been some Samba a several Samba vulnerabilities And yeah, if you're not keeping these things up-to-date you you've got some Samba vulnerabilities in there so a last spin of January 6th of 2021 tells me that's probably not up-to-date Yeah, and if you want to enlighten us if you know more than that just send us some feedback Feedback at the home lab. Show I believe that's the address it up and since we're on that subject I think it might just be a good idea to point everybody to that because I want to do a Q&A episode It's been a while. So if you could you know grace us with some feedback. I would really appreciate that Yeah, I'm gonna look at on the screen the feedback at the home lab. Show. Yeah, please email us. We like hearing from you Not to mention this is all from Wikipedia. So I know there could be some errors in there or You know, maybe they've got a new website and I didn't know when the project's been forked again And there's no fork listed in Wikipedia for these particular projects. So I think that's it's an interesting discussion topic here Mm-hmm. Next one down the list is one I used a lot. So I use IP cop a lot. I definitely tested smooth wall I remember playing with Clark connect. I never tried Zantel Clear OS the successor. I never really play with but now we're down to Indian We actually used to use this in a business environment. I thought Indian was cool. It's another fork of IP cop There's still an active system. One of the big things that Indian was really cool was they had the ability to Import export VPN settings from one to another like you could build a simple config file that you could import in the other Indian system to get them connected It was just it was simple instead of manually building the firewalls It was one of things like I don't know other companies just have this kind of simple thing here to do It's kind of I like this now they started building in a lot of Filtering features and as people would be asking for your next-gen firewall features for traffic filtering and things like that That is all done in their commercial product. That is not something part of their open source one They still have a limited edition that you can find is a oddly downloaded via source forage still And they have a comparison page and I link those down below. So the Indian ones look it looks interesting I'm not sure how much love their open source one gets but at least it does see more up-to-date than any of the ones I've previously mentioned So they there is some active around there, but it seems like they're really trying to upsell you There's a lot of limitations so to speak features that aren't included in the open source one that they try to upsell you on their commercial one But hey, it's an option. It's it exists. I can't really it's been forever. I mean, I haven't used it in over 10 years So I did use it in the past though. I think it was a pretty neat project Yep now IP fire also a fork of IP cops still active, but you're gonna find no wire guard support Very little documentation just a lot of people asking questions in the forums and Like VLANs. I wanted just to go through how the VLANs are set up on there I didn't find it in a documentation There's a lot of discussion in the forums and there seems to be a lot of limitations So I found it kind of confusing when I looked at it This is this is where even a modern firewall so to speak in terms of it's up to date and has the package updates And there's an active community around it like there is for IP fire you may find that The VLANs up is very challenging and the lack of documentation and there's not like a ton of posts on this There's not many tutorials at all that I found on YouTube Maybe there's a couple that if I search for the right terms I find it seems pretty basic and If I'm not remember, I believe it was a developer from IP fire Can I talk about they're not going to bother supporting or putting in or building in Wireguard to the system, which is weird because it's a Linux face firewall So it's in the kernel already. Maybe they just don't want to write the interface for it. So Yeah, it's it's a neat project. I think you could probably use it I don't know what my confidence level is in Security of it. This is and any of these unless they have a commercial company actually having a commercial product that has support Their adjacent one is going to be really Challenging because you're gonna have to ask the question here in 2023. How secure is it? This is what divides my You know my network from the outside world where there's people who would like to if they if they can find the opportunity Exploit things. So you really want to make sure your firewall is locked down and doesn't have bugs in it itself This is one of the reasons probably many of you are here in the home labs because you're going well Yeah, all the consumer ones seem to have absolute lackluster security and you're not wrong. There is definitely a lack of security lack of validation testing that goes into the Average generic ones that you find off the shelf and with the problems that have been found including things like I remember It was some of the links this one's whether you even though you could toggle off things It wouldn't actually turn them off. This was a few years ago Maybe quite a few years ago now, but that was a big that was all the reasons people started pushing for updated Firmwares on their links devices because there was just no security on these That allowed people to pivot into your network without you Doing anything like you didn't have to open it up to the world. It was open up to the world by default which is It's not doing what a firewall That's the worst that could happen. Yeah And that'll lead into open WRT now. This was that firmware replacement. This started in 2004 it's still active. I get mixed signals from people on how easy it is to use that's kind of a Back and forth I get some people say they like it I don't know how good it is for complicated configs Some people mentioned you just got to go to the command line because it's running Linux and start configing it Which may be fine for people But they do have quite a bit packed into it It's one of the things I might want to poke at myself Because I seen it's popular with the Zima board because you can pop in a four port network card and some of these Smaller compute devices with a few network interfaces open to WT also source Wi-Fi So this is where you may not you may kind of have Wi-Fi support in the other ones But I think open WRT my understanding is it does it better, but I haven't loaded this project in a long time But it's definitely something out there for people don't want to play with in a home lab There is a lot of commuter the engagement around it. So up definitely You know good now back to that security thing I mentioned is there a Security validation that goes into it. I don't know how good they are at that because I don't think there's anything that I've seen commercial behind it Which will then lead to one that does have commercial support And I think this is an odd recommendation for the home lab unless and I this was a big discussion in my forums Unless you are going to have a discussion on I'm building my home lab I would like to run vios because my goal is to understand How a cloud level data center level firewall works that's mostly driven from the command line for the majority of the features Even though they're building a web interface vios is definitely a powerful system now they have a Free version if you will this is how they work so vios is a fork of viata viata It's been around for a while it used to be developed by Broadcom Broadcom dropped it so now we're at vios and They have their latest snapshot builds are compiled the stable builds require a subscription But you can compile from source the stable builds yourself So if you want a stable build compiled and this is you know I don't know exactly how much work it is compiled viata, but hey that is a lot more effort to have to compile I don't know if there's some automation script that just has an easy build Version, I don't know how hard it is to upgrade when you're doing the stable builds That's something I really explored the subscription price What do you take a stab if you haven't looked already Jay? Have you cheated and looked you know how much description prices for viata or for viata literally just looking at it I'm gonna guess. I mean, I'm just gonna throw a completely random number $500. Yeah 8,000 years where it starts Okay, I would not have guessed that at all don't get me wrong it is a It's kind of a niche system You can definitely run it at home, but it's really targeting that enterprise market The fact that it's be as popular as it is and my understanding from talking to a few people And there was actually someone in one of my other live streams really mentioned if it's used Quite a bit, but like in the data center, which there's not that many large I mean there's actually a lot of large data centers, but it's not as big as let's say the homelab market So while you could use it but Yeah So it's one of those things that I don't think it's necessarily bad I don't think it's going to be targeted at the majority of people running things in the homelab Right. Yep Yeah, that's Chat the chat room mentioned, you know, I'm basically not talking as much well For anyone that's new Tom and I we take turns being the teacher and student His channel is more focused on the firewalls than mine So he's going to definitely own this topic quite a bit So, but then we'll circle back around to a linux topic and then I usually We'll not always take over. I think we both know linux very well, but Well, we both have specialties I guess yeah, and I'll even I'll even mention Because someone called Jay the ansible guy This is actually we'll let we'll actually we'll we'll dovetail this together here You can and someone even mentioned it down here Building BIOS Rolling release to an ISO deploying with terraform and configuring with ansible. Yes, you can This is definitely if that was the topic today This is where Jay would shine because he's quite the ansible expert and Check out any of our videos on ansible push and pull and Jay's debate on that I was I've learned a lot from Jay. I sat silent on that one I almost wonder if we should just Bring up ansible again at some point in the future because I think it's been a while and there's probably a little bit to talk about Yep Now all the things I mentioned from top to bottom here not by accident We're all linux firewalls and open source firewalls on there Now we're down to we'll focus on the ones that are really popular here today Because all these is you notice there's a lot of caveats with them that make them kind of challenging of You know, whether it's an eight thousand dollar your license for the stable version Or it's just the fact that I don't really have a clear picture on documentation or validation testing for security on these For how big the projects are with, you know, some of the exceptions that have commercial backing Now we get down to mono wall and Mono wall was based on bsd. This is kind of what made them different So while everyone's running around building firewalls in the linux world Mono wall was saying no no bsd is the way to go. So this is some bsd people building it And mono wall project would actually discontinued around 2004, but there was a lot of popularity on it Which is what led pf sense to pick it up which pf sense Picked it up essentially but renamed it pf sense. It's a fork And then that starts in 2006. I believe was the first release of pf sense I didn't start using pf sense till probably around 2008. I think or nine I'm trying to remember exactly sometime around there. So I've been using it a long time myself now pf sense all the way till present is still developing and I've covered that I've got two recent videos Just on some of the changes of they changed the license They changed it back for their plus version not for their ce version now the benefits of pf sense one net gates a big commercial company that does a ton of validation testing net gate I've talked about this before they are a massive code contributor to The free bsd project because they write a lot of the code that ends up in the firewalls They sponsor a lot of code projects and commits that go in there And this is a the the open source challenge of any of these companies when you're relying on things downstream You're at the mercy of the project above and what those people would like to get done When you sponsor the code and you're a firewall company You obviously are going to sponsor a very specific code to be written That is needed for firewall. So pf sense and juniper by the way because juniper that I I believe in someone commented They aren't as based as much as they used to be if they were also a free bsd firewall I believe they've kind of wrote some of their own stuff juniper is a huge commercial company with the large product line But they actually still do a lot of commits back to free bsd because some of their product lines still requires Free bsd support. So those are your two contributors. I believe net gate is like the third or fourth top contributor overall to Free bsd This is like you can be mad at them for the license changes and all that and I've talked about that I'm not going to get off topic on it because those are in other videos But you have to look at how an ecosystem works and for example We all love our intel 226 drivers because those two and a half gig Uh cards are becoming rather popular in these small firewalls. That was actually something written by net gate And without net gate writing it in bsd. I don't know that it would have gotten written I mean would someone have wrote it? I don't know who someone is that would have Understood how to write drivers. That's not your average person that writes kernel level code. Matter of fact, that's probably worth noting Take a google search and Type in how much does a kernel developer make? You'll find that these are not your average Um jobs. These are jobs that pay 150k plus a year Especially when you have a specialty or expertise So this it's not a small feat to just sponsor some code commits. It's actually a lot of development I just want to make sure that's clear. This is not in defense of anything net gate did This is a fact to what keeps the ecosystem going and why All those firewalls are kind of wishy-washy with the exception of vios has clearly got a good support plan option But when it comes to the bsd There's so little if if something happens to these companies then It's kind of like the the cards tumbling down of when no one's committing a bunch of firewall updates That are to the open source bsd project. We don't get a lot of things downstream. Now, of course, this leads me to Open sense and this is interesting because open sense forked from pf sense in 2015. There was a lot of arguments, but essentially I'm not going to get into the drama, but they started doing their own appliances open sense also sells a business license if you want a more stable versus the The latest release I've commented before open sense has more releases than pf sense But more releases means more breakage. You can read that in their forums But that's part of the feedback if you would like a stable version. They do have a subscription you can buy they also fund it with selling hardware and So you have both of these offering of services so it's not like pf sense is the only one Having a version that you can get for paid on subscription But pf sense still has their ce or community edition, which is open source the plus version has a few extra versions in there I don't really clear on the business license other than the fact that it keeps you on a stable release And support is not with that. You buy support separately per their page You can see that at open sense now some of the challenges are and there's a discussion in the open sense forums You can find I have commented that they do the most minimal of code contributions back I've never said zero, but I have said they minimally contribute back to code this is kind of a challenge and you can follow franco the project lead at open sense and See them asking for community help on kernel things There's even a recent some type of kernel panic related to I don't know exactly which related to but it's in it's in the recent forums where there's some back and forth discussion They open sense relies on everything coming downstream Where this is a problem is of course when you look at free bsd and the problem with open ssl This is just an easy example Open ssl 111 has been deprecated the open ssl people are saying yep 111 is gone This is not a free bsd specific problem This is open ssl 111 across linux and free bsd is no longer supported We have moved to open ssl 3 if you're wondering what happened to open ssl 2 That was reserved for I believe vips Someone can correct me on that if I'm wrong But I believe like the two series was stuff for vips and the three series is the current now You can't just swap the library Um People asking that question is a common one and that means you've not had to actually look at how that's coded It's not a one-to-one swap. There's things that are deprecated functions that don't work Calls that may not be the same therefore when you move to open ssl 3 Breakage happens you can't just drop this in so with this is in the forums over at in the latest version I think it's a late october that was released of open sense. They have penned To the 111 version which is no longer supported and no more security updates because they don't have a roadmap for exactly when It will be updated via free bsd 13 to fully support all their packages That's kind of a big security problem. I have right now with open sense and if you have packages That can't be updated and then we find a vulnerability Where does that leave you scrambling to get it done now? If you can't get it done now not under duress what happens under duress When there's a vulnerability in a vpn that's related to open ssl because open ssl libraries are generally Heavily used without with throughout the vpn systems. What do you do turn off your vpn until? someone Refactors all the code because you're not going to get an update for the 111 version You'll only get updates for the 3.0 version. This is actually why Netgate and they have a whole blog post on this has put substantial efforts into refactoring all the code for both pf sense community edition and pf sense Plus to support open ssl 3.0. That's right now a big status, but this leads me to the bigger Topic of who supports all these people are really angry. They're like i'm never going to download The free version of pf sense again. I'm going to download the free version of another one. Okay, but how are we going to support the projects? That's the big question i'm asking because exactly get these If we don't have a mechanism to sponsor the developers to keep them working because someone asks Well, what if the developer what if we forked pf sense for example?  I'm sure he'd do well, but he's he's going to have a learning curve So you can't just hire a kernel developer You need a bsd kernel developer and they all happen to be working or sponsored by neck gate How do you put them all on your payroll and and support the project because if you said I think they have like seven or eight kernel developers on there And if each one of them let's just say make 200 000 a year because it's an easy number and we multiply that times eight I think that's 1.6 million. Did I did I do the math right if you if you have eight people making 200 000 a year? My math brain is not working today Check my math Yeah, but that's just that's not validation testing That's like payroll to get them to do updates not not the actual build process and then the validation testing So it's just it's just a thought process. So when people talk about things like hey, um It's one of those things if you want to build in fork of firewall, that's fine in the modern day ecosystem This is actually the history of why they failed leads me to what i'm saying now All these companies if they don't have some type of model to keep it going The level of testing you have to do to build a secure firewall is harder today than it was before We have plenty of tooling but that validation testing because of the security threats because of the very complex things If you look at the debrief on the sysco now, this was effect the latest sysco vulnerability That was released only a week ago. I posted about I can't remember the cve number exactly Even sysco, this is one of their supported products had some challenges getting this fixed because of how complex the attack was You have to validate against these things and sysco made a mistake Someone found the mistake sysco made and exploited it You hope all these companies are doing the same neck gates at least well used enough I know there's a ton of poking at it. They've had very few cve's and That is a good thing because of the kind of goes to the testing They also take a minimalist approach to build and once again, this is not a defensive neck gate this is just how they build things and It's important. They only build into the firewall what's needed and not extra. That's one of the ways they're able to avoid Having long release cycles but still not having a cve in between Because some of the cve's that were posted even though they were free bsd ones were not things compiled in at the time And this is a bigger problem As j knows, how how's the framework programming work in the modern age? We throw everything in but the kitchen sink even though we're not using it, right? Yeah, that's how it and even Linux distributions have a bunch of things by default that we don't want so Yeah, the prune basically Yeah, no one does the pruning anymore. So this is how the web p vulnerability became such a big deal where you have Everyone like for example, we found the web p vulnerability because that library was in one of our tools It's a tool that doesn't view images But they baked because they built it with the same framework. It always includes web p But there's what they refer to as yes, you have a vulnerable library within this build By the way, there's no path to execution because there's nothing about this tool that calls that particular vulnerable version But they baked it in because they grabbed the framework and said yes So the product that they build is actually that much bigger This is where taking a firewall approach You don't want those extras in there and this is important for some of the minimal builds And Yeah, this is kind of that, you know the the end of my discussion here on the firewalls and one of the reasons And I have my forum post which you'll find linked in there as well I'll add that to the notes, but it's not hard to find my forum post on Uh pf sense license changes. I've referred it to those several other videos on there But there's a reason I stay with pf sense and it's that security I can completely and do disagree with the way they handled their plus change But for those of you running pf sense ce nothing happened to you You're still running ce before the license change after the license change the license change doesn't affect your community addition This was all them being a I don't know short-sighted and poor communicators and Not smart about how they handled the license changes when it came to pf sense plus And that's life. It's commercial companies doing commercial company things And I use pf sense as well, but you know using something On my end and I'm sure yours doesn't mean it's perfect It means it might have you know edged ahead of something else doesn't have to be ahead by much Or or whatnot. I agree with you. There's a lot of controversy there. It makes me a little nervous But then as you're talking last night looking at the alternatives I don't like what pf sense did But right now it's better to stick with them on my end You just make that decision for yourself based on what you see, but we've uh Kind of went the direction right for now staying with pf sense But that doesn't mean forever and it doesn't mean it's perfect, but right now. I mean the it's it's working pretty well So it's one of those things that the the challenge is it's one of the best options out there Just you know, you set aside the controversy and for people using as I said ce They could have ignored the controversy. It literally it did not affect them But the open ssl is kind of This is where things are ramping up. There's a reason open ssl ones being deprecated. There's a lot of spaghetti code in there It's hard to maintain I get it. Uh, that's why they wanted to move But these type of complexities because we want firewalls with lots of features The only firewalls out there that are you know that have these large scale features unless you go fully commercial Don't get me wrong juniper support these Halal those got some great support supporting that you're going to find all kinds of commercial vendors that have Firewalls that have matching features. You're not going to be able to download the screen. They're not open source and Yeah, and I see I already see someone out there just get a palo alto. You see time that the challenge would be so you're looking at a The same thing more expensive firewalls. It's not something you're going to open source and download for free and run your homeland Not same palo alto is bad or anything like that But for a lot of the homelab community the budget doesn't necessarily lend itself to palo alto Yeah, and you look at something like in PF sense has bgp in there. So you're going cool.  It's kind of hard to move away from it And money the much of the experience I'm bringing to those videos is the fact that we have this deployed at lots of our businesses Like this is something we use in a commercial environment as well ourselves. Uh, so it's challenge And someone says uh, palo alto has a homelab version. It starts at like 400 dollars. That's interesting Mm-hmm. Yeah, I see people not liking palo alto support support So I can't speak to it because I I'm not a palo alto person We have clients, uh, because we do like co-managed it. So I've run into them. They seem happy I haven't it's not the part they're complaining about it's not what I'm consulting on usually Yeah, and uh, these someone pointed out and I'll specifically because I have a video on it If you want to dive into it if you want to know how egregiously bad the cve vulnerabilities were for 40 net I mean 40 net and uh, zike cell there another one out there zike cells built on Built once again on open source, but does not is not an open source firewall Both of them had some pretty serious back doors And that were bad One of them was a coding accident on on 40 nets part where they accidentally put a back door in At a customer request that it wasn't supposed to make it into the main code base and it did So 40 nets just like if you read the history of it, it's so dumb its face palming You're like, how are you a commercial company? How do you not have code sanitization? How did you have a customer request a back door be put in a vpn to reset passwords and it accidentally ended up in the main code base? You really can't make these things up No, and zike cells the same thing. They've accidentally hard coded passwords too many times to be an accident I don't I don't trust them Uh, and it's a whole thing It's just there's a lot of challenges in there. So mm-hmm Yeah, it's I it's a it's a challenging thing. That's kind of the history of firewalls some of the options Uh, but when it comes to security documentation everything else It's one of the reasons and like I said call me out if I know people have differing opinions, but if there's some Wrongness if you will in the way I stated it with pf sense not from an emotional standpoint of them mishandling the ce stuff but from a Firewall that has a lot of features is available for the homelabbers Has a ton of documentation and works. I I still think that's probably one of the best bets out there for it Over wrt. I do want to play with that's that's at least one of them Uh, there are there are some videos on using it with the little zima boards. I think it'd be fun So that might be a fun project. Uh, it's definitely novel I don't know that I'd run it as my main firewall But hey definitely something else to look at because I'd like to see A good version of open wrt combined with some good hardware to build For the basic people going, you know, I want it all in one box with some wi-fi I you know, they don't need multiple access points like one little wi-fi for an apartment on an open wrt box Um, that makes sense. I think that's if I can make that work and build something Rational with it with my uh zima board. I will definitely do a video on it Mm-hmm. That'd be fun Yeah, so all right That was a lot. That was a lot. All right. I I got it done as fast as possible and it still took 47 We're 47 minutes in and we started it like I don't know like the nine minute mark Yeah, it's like this has been your lesson on the state of firewalls today in 2023 Yeah feedback at the home lab dot show What you love what you hate because I'm sure this is going to cost some controversy But uh hit us up there. We love hearing from all of you We are back. We are well, we'll have to work on next week's show schedule because I'll be out of town But we're working on our regular cadence again. Jay's building a studio back up I have still a little bit of a travel schedule, but yeah, absolutely Mm-hmm So on time. All right. Thanks everyone for joining and see you next time. See you next time


See that we have a quorum. The agenda is in your binders. The first item on the agenda is to call the order. Next is to approve the agenda, which I assume the agenda is acceptable to everybody. The next item on the agenda is to elect a chair for the board of abatement. And so the floor is open for nominations. I nominate you. Second. Are there any other nominations? Alright, we can declare that I accept the election as chair. Next item is to adopt the rules of the board of abatement, which was, they were also, sorry? Do you want to vote it in? Oh, he went by unanimous. Yeah, my inclination, yeah. There's no other candidates. Next, the rules of procedure were also provided to everybody. And so I would ask for a motion to approve the rules of procedure for the board of abatement. That's what it says. That's all it says. So I will move if we... Is there a second? Any discussion? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we have three abatement hearings scheduled for tonight. And I was discussing this at our council meeting last night, and I realized that the clerk and I had a different understanding of what we decided to do a couple of weeks ago at a board of civil authority meeting. But what my understanding of what we had agreed to was that for any of the assessment, any of the requests that are based on flood damage, that we would take the evidence at the night of the hearing and then hold all of those until the very end and then go through all of them and make it in deliberative session at the end. That way we can make sure we're consistently applying the standards and treating people fairly. So I'll repeat this speech probably at every meeting to let people who come know that they're not going to be leaving with a decision tonight. However, someone whose request is not based on flood damage, we can discuss and make those decisions at the meeting. And the first meeting, the first appellant is Susan Apto. Would you raise your right hand please? Do you solemnly affirm subject to the pains and penalties of perjury? The testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Thank you. Thank you. All right. And this is parcel number 019-032-000. And we have your request for an abatement. So why don't you just tell us what's going on? Okay. Well, I checked the third box down in terms of requesting the abatement. So I am a person that is unable to pay. And I've paid my, I'm caught in a cycle. I don't have that much income. But because the assessment came, and it doesn't account for my homestead, my homestead was already submitted before the assessment. So I need an abatement for one, I think one year. I don't know if it's one year. I don't know how it all flows. But I need an abatement until I do my homestead for this year. So when you fill out, do your taxes in April, you'll submit the homestead. And you were able to make it with the income sensitivity that you had up until that point? I am. Okay. I hope. That's what you told me. I don't know. Sure. I'm sort of in the dark here. Does anyone have any questions? Tim. Just quickly, because in the packet we have, we have your last year's tax bill and this year's tax bill. And it appears that you're getting the homestead education payment on the tax bill. I can, the difference in the two tax bills is $1,194 increase because of the value, the value change. She is getting homestead. Correct. Well, I got the homestead before the new assessment. Oh, I see. Okay. Thanks. And so if you look, that's a good point because I did submit my taxes for both years. And my taxes basically, well, they sort of doubled. $3.23 was my, and $0.64 was my old tax. And my new taxes are $6.22, $21. So it's not quite doubled. Bob, you had a question? Yeah, I was looking for the, I see the sheet for the $2.23 tax. That wasn't nothing about it. Yeah, the other one is sort of, after it keeps going, that they just didn't, they weren't applied correctly. Okay, I see this one. Okay. Carrie. So just so I can clarify what's going on there, we have file your taxes in April with the state. And the state looks at how much your homestead is worth as of April 15th or whatever, when you file your taxes. And then the state says, okay, we're going to give you a certain amount of credit on your property taxes based on the value of your home and what we think your taxes are going to be in April. And on your income. Based on your income, yeah. And then after that, the tax bills come out. And the tax bills this year also came out after a reassessment. So the tax bill was higher than the state thought it was going to be. So this is a problem of the state, not calculating things in an appropriate way. I think it's an issue in a reappraisal year because they don't know what the values are going to be until August. So we're, it doesn't make sense to me that the city, I mean, I think that it makes sense that the property owner should get the appropriate amount of help from the state. But it doesn't make sense to me that the city should be making up that difference because the state doesn't calculate it in an accurate way. Is there any way to respond to that? I can, I called the state because I appealed my amount that I was reappraised at. And that's when I called the state and I was told I have to work with the city, not the state. So I worked with Marty. I did my best. So the question is really, I think the question is really, should the state have some method for a person to file an amended homestead declaration or something once there's a reappraisal? Because this has to happen like in every town where there's a reappraisal, right? But the state's payment is based on a new assessment at 2008. So the assessment here, the state payment of $4,600 and $79 is based on the income that you filed and the new assessment. It's not based on the old assessment. Where are you seeing that, Bob? If you look right here, the state payment is $4,670. It's based on the income she filed this year. The state that was the calculation based on what the current tax is, not last year's tax, but based on the current tax. And that's why you don't know what it is until the tax bill comes out. And you can hear before what her taxes are lower, the state had a lower payment. And that year, the last year's tax is the thing was her sheet. $47,000. Yeah, so there's a letter dated June 30th from the state saying this is a credit we calculated and it says house site value, $200,700, which is the old value. So I think that their credit of $46,79 was based on the old value of the house. That's what the state told me. The state won't have a final grand list until August so that they wouldn't be able to give an actual house value until then. Yeah, that's very weird. Yeah, because the house site value on the new tax bill is the 340. The city knows what's what. The state does. The state doesn't know yet. Yeah. So what do we do about that tonight? I think we had a situation we had for every single person in Montpelier that's getting a home credit. Would we have the same home? Not everybody's got an ability to pay. Yeah, but there is definitely an equity issue. Oh, the states, yeah. I mean, they measure their ability to pay. Well, I think what we do tonight is we address this property owner's issue and maybe talk to the tax department about implementing some way to... Well, I'm sure this isn't the first time that this has happened with the state so I can call them tomorrow and find out how they've been handling it. Is there a procedure to file a supplemental request to the state? That's what we're talking about, whether there is or not. Yeah. I don't think the state has a supplemental procedure once you've received your adjustment. It's based on your income. That's how they determine it. I think that's right. Yeah, Carrie. Yeah, I think the appellant has told us that she tried to do that with the state. And they said no, there's no way to address that. So you've talked to the tax department and you said this is a change now. I can't afford it now because the assessment's gone up and they said... Well, there are other reasons, too, that I can't afford it. But I'm $82, $82 over my budget for crisis fuel.  And they had to take the money that... That's my phone. Yeah, that's my phone. They had to take the money to give to the flood victims. So they couldn't give the money to me. So I've gotten crisis fuel for... One crisis fuel for, like, over about ten years. And this year, I'm $82 over. Can you imagine? I'm just so struggling. Now, I've tried to pay. I paid my... I paid more than what I paid last year. I paid $340. And I've paid my water bill, even though... Oh my goodness, I'm just going to sound like... Just excuse what this sounds like, but I haven't had a hot water heater since July, but I'm not a flood victim. Okay? My hot water heater has been on the brink for a whole year. It was before July that I knew that I needed a hot water heater, but I was sort of hobbling with hot water. And then after the flood, right after in July, I'm not sure what the date is. I don't know if I've said it on this thing, but anyway, I had a flood in my basement. Because the water just... So when I went down to my basement, and I saw the flood in the basement, and I heard the water going, and I turned off the main water valve, that stopped it. I don't know where the water went from the basement, but when one of my adult sons came over, the water was leaving the basement. So I just said, okay, we're just going to let things... You know? I mean, what can I do? So when I went upstairs, I realized by turning off the main water valve, I have no water.  They were already turned off, but... So anyway, I ran some water upstairs, and I went down to my basement, and I saw... I didn't hear any water. So anyway... So my water bill was pretty high for me. It was higher than it normally is, but I paid it. So I'm really... I've lived in my house for 36 years. I might have been late one time on my taxes, but I'm very conscientious about it. I'm not like a... What do you call that? Fly-by-night kind of person. Well, you know, you shouldn't feel bad about requesting this. The statutes provide for this relief for people who can't afford their tickets. Well, this is the first time I've ever had to come before the Board of Abatement, and it is a little bit nerve-racking for me, because all my information is out there. Sure. Folks, do we have any other questions, or is there a motion? Okay. Tell me what your request is. Exactly. Well, I'm requesting the taxes above $340. It seems like what you were saying was that you would have the ability to pay the $320, $364. Well, I pay $340 by really just being very, very, very careful. I'm paying the $340. And so, I paid my last water bill in December, and that was high. My water bill would be low. You know, this next water bill would be really low, because I haven't used any water. I mean, I've used cold water, but I don't have water. I'm waiting your request. Is it $298.57? Well, and then I was told there were fees by that bill. There. $28.57 per quarter. Yeah. So, I really don't know. The fees are automatically abated if the taxes are abated. So, good to point that out, but yeah. So, $298.57 per quarter is your request, as I understand it. Yeah, why don't you second it? Okay. Okay, now go ahead, Bob. Yeah, looking at both machines again, getting my head straight on it. In the current tax bill, the tax rate is, the education tax rate is lower than the rate than the previous year. And that's because of the reprisal of the reprisal of the state purposes dropped the rate down. I don't know if we have a policy on supplemental benefits that the state doesn't give. Does the city have a policy plan? I mean, does the city have, how do we measure the ability to pay up off and beyond how the state measures it? The state measures it on the income and the current taxes. The city does for people who pay their, the state doesn't give them enough. And I guess the way I would answer that is that the statute is wide open. It simply says, for people who don't have the ability to pay. And so it's always the judgment of the Board of Batemen whether we think the person has the ability to pay. And what we've heard from you is that you're going without some basic necessities, like hot water. Like food, I'm going without food. I'm okay in the summertime but I haven't been okay in the wintertime. And you're also in a situation where your income hasn't changed. No, well my income has, you mean for 2023? Well, I mean you're not working where your salary might fluctuate and my crop won't grow. No, no, I'm not working. But you've got a cost of living adjustment here, but yeah. And I have medical bills that I really have to, I've been disabled since 1993. So I have medical bills that I have to pay. So, anyway. Carrie. So just a procedural question. Are we able to abate for the whole tax year or only for from now and into the past? I think we can abate the whole tax year. Okay. So then I want to make a motion that we abate $1,128.84. And is that the four times? That's four times the difference. And Kim made the motion, but it's good to have the math. Okay. I just want to clarify that that's the inverse of what was being. You said you had the ability to pay $340 per quarter. Well, that's what I've I wanted to show you that I'm trying to pay. Yeah. But not necessarily. No, but I interpreted that as she was able to pay that one time. One time. Okay. But she's not committed to paying it the whole time. So you're just clarifying that it's the difference between last year and this year. $1,128.84. Really? Is that right? No, sorry. Well, the last if you look at the last paragraph on this little sheet right here the last paragraph I didn't use a $340. $1,194. Okay. Is there any other discussion? Charlotte. So what you're asking to obey is not only municipal but also education. I think that isn't the last one. So the question is are you asking to obey both the education tax and this town tax? That's a fine point. Well, I'm just looking at municipal net tax and education tax. On the tax bill you can see so I just... Well, because in the city it's still going to be on the hook for the other tax. Right. But if we abate that all from the city tax we don't have to pay the school fund anything. But it's over. She got so much they came on it. Do you see it under the municipal fund? So it's 958.62. Is it in this? Is there a municipal 148.290 on the the net municipal tax? Yeah. So that's under... So we're okay. I'm working on that. So the motion is to abate 1194.28 of the municipal tax? So can I ask... 148.290? Okay, so if I pay am I going to be responsible for paying 3 23.64? Yeah. Same as last year. Well, no, that was this year. Last year was lower than that. No, last year, that's what it was. Same as last year is what the proposal says. Because I really didn't know if it would go higher after I do the homestead. Sure. You know what I'm saying? That's why I pay the 340. Yeah. I'm still stuck on the state as a program to face both the education and municipal tax on someone's income. We are going to say that we want another particular taxpayer's situation where they say they can't pay. We want to abate the municipal tax because you know what percentage of income we'd be looking at. How much someone's supposed to pay out of 27,000 in income I think it becomes pretty arbitrary in our part. It sort of sounds like it's a little bit irrelevant because she's telling us she's requesting based on her inability to pay and she's saying she's able to pay what she could pay last year but she can't pay more than that. And we're saying that the state formula doesn't measure everybody's ability to pay by when you show your income they don't look at your medical bills they don't look at all that and that we should build something into the municipal system. I mean that's what we're doing here. We have a standard plus capacity to do what we think is right. And what criteria do we use? Kerry. I think this is a good question and we have to take them all on a case by case basis. So the state does whatever the state does. I think there's a huge problem with the timing of the state's decisions but what's before us right now is we have someone who's come to us saying what I paid last year and I can't afford to pay more and she's brought us evidence of her income she's brought us evidence of medical bills she's backed it up sufficiently for me to say okay I believe you and so I think that for me that satisfies the criteria of ability to pay. And there is no definition in the statute of what that means. We just have to say do we believe her or not. Some people may not have a mortgage. We're getting into an area where we don't really judge the ability to pay. We're just saying we'll obey taxes. John. I think the thing is that somebody with a mortgage or without a mortgage is going to be in a convenient situation. They may have the ability to pay even if they have to. Someone with a mortgage and this income may have less than that. That's where we have to make our individual judgment on a case-by-case basis. That's the question. Do you still have a mortgage on your property? Well I have a mortgage with the city. I had to replace by furnace. So you got along from the revolving long fund. Got it. So I have $12,000 that I own. But there's no interest on it. And there's no payment it'll come to. No, there's no payment. Or when my heirs sell my house? It'll come out of that. Yeah. So that's the mortgage I have. My heirs are cognizant of they're knowledgeable about that $12,000. In fact I think the city has the title for the, has the title for my house. Until that's paid off. So yeah, so that's not like a mortgage where you pay every month but it's a lien on the property. I'm very fortunate that my mortgage has been paid off for a few years. Irene. Oh my goodness. I hate sounding like I'm just like whoa is me but after Irene I had to submit an insurance claim. Because oh my gosh I'm losing it here. I'm forgetting. Oh yeah. The storm door on the deck they put in and they put the deck in by code at the time but the deck had been put in in 97 96, 97 and so Irene happened in 2011 so it was many years afterwards. And now the code is different with the deck. And so last year. I think there wasn't really a question. I think John's right. It's vested in the judgment and discretion of the board of the Bateman. Each of us gets to make our own decision about whether we think this is an appropriate case that we've been satisfied by the taxpayer that she can't lacks the ability to pay and next year it'll be different and next year any taxpayer has the ability to file another request for a Bateman but we're just dealing with this request now. I have my fingers crossed that next year it will be different. I don't know. I really don't know. I'm hoping. It will be different because taxes are going up. I mean it's inevitable coming out of the process we're in so it would make sense to not plan on it being better. Well it's not plan on what? The taxes going down or the situation being better? The costs are going up dramatically. The next year it will be based on the current assessment. Okay. It will be based on next year's assessment. Which is reflected in the current assessment we have. It will be based on the new assessment next year. No it will be based on what's on there now. Well that's the current assessment. That's what he's saying. It's the current assessment. So it's going to be based on the current assessment. Well this statement's based on the July 1st 23 assessment. No. Oh 23 yes. Okay. Because of the new grand list and the new file so there's a new value. Well that's not going to change her value. Yes it should change the results of the year. We're talking about something that could come up next year. I'm ready to vote. Okay. Is everyone else ready to vote? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? So we need to do a roll call. People should have introduced themselves anyway. Oh right. So we'll do a roll call. Kim. Charlotte. Tim. No. Kerry. Aye. Rosie. Aye. And on the on the zoom machine let's have you introduce yourselves and say Sal. Jude. Jude Newman. Aye. And Donna. Donna Bates. Aye. Please remind people to speak up around the table. It's very hard to hear people. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. You'll get a notice from her. She did ask that everybody's come. You can technically appeal anything from a quasi-judicial. Okay. Next up. Thanks for coming in. Thank you everybody. I have two separate of the Charlotte Capital Theatre LLC and so we should take them separately. The first one is 148.09300. Can you introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Lily King. I'm here on behalf of Fred and Mary Bechara. Anne, would you raise your right hand? Do you solemnly affirm subject to the pains and penalties of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Great. Thank you. And we've developed them. Lily King. K-A-N-G. Nope. C-A-I-N. Okay. And we have a set of questions but why don't you first just tell us what you are and what's your role? I'm Lily King. C-A-I-N. I live in Montpelier. I'm part of the Bechara family. We own the Capital Movie Theatre. 95 State Street is the building next door and then the Yellow House is the one that will be afterwards 97 State Street. And so this is the Capital Theatre building. Yes. I think the information you filed was really quite clear. I'm going to go through a list of questions and John said it's going to be mechanical people and we're doing this so we can get the right information and the same information from everybody and members have the ability to ask other questions too. But was there a 50% or greater loss in value to the primary structure? And was there a total loss of use of the property? Was there a loss of use for 60 days or longer? Yes. And I noticed when this was filed it wasn't clear when the theatre was going to be reopened. Correct. We actually opened the movie theatre in November 17. Okay. Good. Was there a loss of access to utilities for the primary structure for 60 days or more? The building that we're talking about is the big movie theatre that's 93 State Street and then what used to be the community national bank that's part of the same tax bill that's 95 State Street. We'll have to fix the agenda afterwards. So in 95 State Street which is the rental property there was no electricity for the 60 days. In the movie theatre we did have electricity and water. What we didn't have was phone and air net for more than 60 days. They're utilities but they're not primary utilities. We're only talking about the theatre. No. The theatre is so in the agenda it was typed wrong. The first one we're doing right now the tax bill that we're talking about is 93-95 is on the same tax bill. The second hearing we're going to do is 97 State Street and that's the yellow building the yellow building next door. Got it. The property record cards will have the different correct addresses on them. Was there a condemnation of the primary structure of their federal, state and municipal law? No. It was posted that all approved contractors could be on-site and owners but it wasn't connect. The next question is if you know the answer to that the answer is it's not just damage to land only. Correct. 100% of the main building and the private sidewalk. So in front of the theatre if you recall it's the pretty brick work that we put out there we had to replace and repair some of those bricks as well. And has there been income loss? Very much so. It was from July 10 through November 16 anywhere in previous years of $164,000 and lost revenue up to $215,000. And do you have the structure's total square footage and the estimated square footage of the damaged areas? So it's 100% of the building I don't know the square footage of either property 93 or 95 would I did as I took that it says the lot is .43 acres and really the only bit of land that isn't the building is the sidewalk underneath the awning that stretch there. So if you take .43 acres that's 18,730 square feet I'm going to guess the building's about 99% and the private sidewalk would be 1%. The theater part of the building 100% of the square footage the bank side of the building are there is it just one story? It's the first floor of the basement. Okay, so again the bank side of the building was 100%? Yes. Okay. Is there any other questions? There's no second floor in the theater? No. I mean there used to be a balcony I'm just looking at the picture of it and it looks like there's a second floor The old projection rooms I guess the projection rooms are up on the second level which is what used to be a balcony. But they were effectively not accessible because of the logo. Correct. You said there was a 50% or greater loss to the property meaning the damage was more than 50% of the valuation? That's how, yes the valuation was just over a million dollars and we were looking at we were estimating 1.2 million dollars of damages I think hopefully we're going to end up being just below the million dollar mark so that's a good thing But awfully close to 100% Pretty close to 100% of the value of the building It was worse than in 92 Yeah Does anyone else have any other questions? Keeping in mind we're not voting on this tonight So we'll move to the next property and that is parcel number 148 dot 097 0000 And that is 97 stage 3 And this is Office building And I will ask you the same questions Was there a 50% or greater loss in value to the primary structure? Yes Was there a loss of use of the property by the property owner for 60 days or more? Yes Was there a loss of access to utilities for 60 days or more? There was no heat There was partial electricity We ended up switching from the furnace I think it was cotton oil I'm not sure I think it was cotton oil in the basement We switched that to efficient heat pumps Was there condemnation of the primary structure? No, again just posted that only contractors and owners could go in Is the damage to land only to an outbuilding only or both only? Both But not outbuildings The primary building Was there income loss? Yes The tenant on the first floor moved out immediately after the flood So it's been July until now We've had no tenant The upstairs tenant although their property wasn't flooded because they were affected by the no heat and the electricity and everything else they were asking for reductions in their rents as well I'm not sure how long they're going to stay So they've paid their rent but they're trying to get refunds on that The construction took a lot longer than we anticipated in that building and it was noisy and when you're putting in heat pumps they're cutting into the ceilings in the office space So he was disrupted and we understand that And again I think this last question we could probably get from the property The structure is total square footage and the estimated square footage of the damaged areas 2873 Pretty good I said 2400 That was close That was close Counting ceiling tiles And so the whole 100% of the first floor the basement was storage that was all damage that had to everything had to be removed out of there and then the effect on the second floor again was the no heat in having to replace the entire heating system Okay Any members have any questions? Lily, when was the first floor ready to be rented back out again? Um I think January 1st was pretty close where we're still kind of in there now kind of going in Do we want this is more of a procedural Do we want to ask everybody what the amount of the income loss was or should we just say was there income loss? John, do you have any We do have to be a little careful as Bob mentioned in the two main specifics of people's income just in place to tread lightly So but if we ask was there loss then that's enough to cover us with the state stuff I think it is Anything else? Anyone on the Zoom? Yeah Bob Just one question, which rent was paying for which part of the property? So the left hand side was where we had a tenant Is that upstairs? No, upstairs was the one that they continued paying rent They continued paying rent The left hand side moved out right away And the right hand side was The right hand side was vacant ahead of time We actually had just moved over our offices So even if you impute some rent payment from your business to this to the property it wasn't rentable or usable It was not rentable or usable It just barely is right now And are you requesting both quarter Yeah because you said January 1st Okay, I don't I think we are set unless anyone else wants to stop me from adjourning us We got one We do I didn't I saw Paul on the Okay I have one more to go I was wondering while Paul was here Well, okay Thanks Thank you very much everybody Appreciate all your consideration in this Okay, sorry Paul I was wondering why you were here because you weren't on my list here So just a second Yeah This is going to come back to us in a month or so And what kind of record are we going to make in the way they transcribe John's taking notes of everything So we'll get a start So we each don't have all of these notes So you have a sheet for each one Yes So just to clarify when you said a month or so I think when we approve the procedures it says within 30 days so we really need to have this result in a month, right? Okay Which looking at the schedule that seems realistic so I think it's realistic Yeah There will need to be because we have the more trickle in there will need to be more additional meaning afterwards but I think anybody else who comes in because the trickle will go on forever I'm just going to steer them to the annual board of obeyed meeting that we're required to have under the charter in the first week in June I think So we can mark the calendars for the first week in June because we'll have some more But that's way far But just so you all know that's the thing Okay so the third or the last one is Paula Fowl Hi Paul and we are this is this is actually a parcel number okay this is parcel number 131 to 133 Elm Street parcel number 043 1-0-0-0 and I think many of us may not have the have your filing with us Paul so why don't you tell us what my original okay hold on a second folks okay we'll make sure everybody gets a copy of what you filed and why don't you tell us what the basis of your request is well my original request was for abatement of water and sewer payment but I would also like to be considered for tax abatement as well essentially during the flood I had water heaters in the basement and they all got floated up and tossed around and the inlet pipes broke off there was water pouring into the basement aside from just the flood and this all came out of my attention because I got a water bill which usually is in the range of water and sewer in the range of $400 combined and this one was like $2,258 so I'm sure it was because the hot water heaters were broken off the inlet pipes and there was water just pouring out when I I went down I wanted to go in the basement and turn it off but of course the basement was totally full of water so I called the city and they sent some folks up from DPW and they were hoping to turn it off at the street but they weren't able to because this I guess the sidewalk was put over the shutoff valve so they had to come back the next day with a backhoe and they had to chop everything up and dig down and they were finally able to turn it off but meanwhile the water was just gushing out of the pipes for couple days or more so that was I was hoping to get an abatement for that particular bill I also was looking at the criteria for tax abatement and I'm thinking that at least some of them I would be eligible for I think what we should do with the tax abatement is how you file a request with the way the other people have done and we will take it up but we don't have that information in front of us now okay I did send the information I just gave you I sent an email to Serena Baker and she told me that that email would suffice as an application or as in lieu of filling out the form that you have that's for a while that's for a while Sarah do you know something about this what works you know something about this I don't I just prepared the binder it came as a supplement later because this was one that slipped in at the last minute I don't think we got any kind of supporting information the form is not required it's something that we point folks to but really any kind of written request is enough to so it's in the email from Serena December 13 there's an email changing the way about this am I right that there are other people in the room who don't have this in front of them okay well there's a on the next page there's kind of just the water bill the water bill stuff there's a typically besides it so Jack if we've got Paul on and we don't have to have a written application can we at least ask the five questions and be efficient about this I'm happy to do that okay so Paul you've heard what the questions I asked the other taxpayers so I'm going to go through them and ask you the same question with regard to the taxes can you hear me okay okay and I'm going to really ask you to speak up because you're trying to get a lot of people to hear you okay so Jack can you hold off on that until just I think maintaining silence in the room is important oh okay just getting your copy yep okay with and again we're talking about 131 133 Elm Street was there is that right Paul that address is correct the question of 50% of greater loss of value is that what you're asking me now yes yeah you know I think that if I were to actually just before the flood I was considering putting the house on the place on the market and it was brought to my attention that if I were to were to sell it right after the flood that I would probably not get 50% of what I would ordinarily have gotten so I'm not sure how to how to evaluate that question other than that okay cost of repairs there is a question about cost of repairs do you have any information about the cost of repairs I do have I do have information I'm in the process of repairing it now and I can you know I can only guess what it's going to end up being you know I don't know for sure at this point but the repairs are not I mean repairs wouldn't come to 50% okay but if I were to try to sell it I can't imagine that I would have gotten 50% of the value was there a loss of use of the property for more than 60 days or more it's still not being used the way it was it's a duplex and there on one half there are apartments three stories three apartments and on the other half there are offices and currently it's totally the building is empty except for one brave apartment weller who is still there aside from the building could it be inhabited or could any of the floors be inhabited at this point well again there's one person living there but it's just beginning to be habitable and so far as everyone needs to come in through the front entrance and it was all torn apart both sides were torn apart the steps to the front porch were torn off by the flood ended up down the street and we've since brought it back and reattached it but there's still quite a bit of debris on the in the entrance way where you in the front entrance way of the building so it's difficult it would be difficult to access any of the spaces so I mean I suppose if someone were willing to put up with that but here it is now what like six months out from and it's still not back together again okay thanks um was there a loss of access to utilities for 60 days or more uh we had electricity out not for 60 days but the heat has been out for back on now but it was certainly off for 60 or more days okay and hot water as well and was the property condemned uh has there been income loss yeah definitely yeah I haven't been able to have been able to rent the spaces out since the flood were they rented was it fully occupied before the flood um pretty much I think there's one office that was vacant but by and large it was nearly full and we have the information about the would you say that the damage was to the first floor and basement and not to the second and third floors okay okay we can compute that information based on that and about 240 square feet 2400 excuse me okay what attempts did you I don't know I want to be fair and ask everybody the same question but what attempts have you made it sounds like it's still not rentable for the most part but what attempts have you made to to make it rentable I'm sorry it's still not rentable is that what you said what attempts have you made to make it rentable to do the repairs oh we've been working on it I've hired Vermont construction company from Colchester and they've been working on it since then questions from members of the board so Paul is the current is the current tenant paying rent the full amount well she um I forgave her rent for several months but she's back to paying as of last month she's back to paying full rent last month being December she paid full rent um December that's yes yes and and January okay thank you board members have questions Donna and Jewett Ailes if you need your hands up thank you Jack Paul quick question for you do you have to move up any utilities out of the basement like your heating system or electrical yeah all of that we had to move we had to change from oil furnace in the basement to propane boiler up on the first floor and electrical panel up to the first floor as well so you lost living space to make a new mechanical room so you've got less room a little bit of a little bit of authentic space to do that um Chuck Ciccio who's a magician with heating systems manages to squeeze it in thank you okay Paul you've got what I said at the beginning in your mind we will go over this along with all the other flood damage requests at the end of this process and thanks for being here should we take the water one separately I think we can take the water one now yeah so what was the total amount of this being requested for the water one I put a value on it I just mean I thought it would be but I usually pay and it's people who are willing to do that and to forgive the difference okay and we have he submitted to us some water and sewer bills from historical water and sewer bills anybody calculated what the average previously was on Serena's thing if you look at and yeah I'm looking at this table and I'm not understanding it do you see the next page she's got two and a half the number of gallons where is the two and a half coming from that's the city's if you want to process oh okay that's your knowledge that's your knowledge that's your knowledge oh okay that's it check Jack? Donna can I ask a question of order yes there seems to be a person giving information that's not at a speaker I don't know if she's staff but could anyone who's giving information at least come to the table be close to a speaker oh that was Charlotte Hoyt she's a member of the board and she's at the table but then get next to a mic because we really couldn't hear her so looking at this looking at this table the the 2258 92 that was the bill that you got after the flood and then and the 913 62 is what is the adjustment that's being proposed and you're you're asking for a further reduction to your historical payment yes that's true and how much how much time does that well it almost doesn't matter how much time does that cover it was really a couple of days less than a week or something this water bill or the broken pipes yeah we're talking about one month one month's payment oh you mean the 2200 instead I'm not clear on what you're asking I'm sorry well the the the water was leaking for a short period of time after the flood maybe a few days or a week fine yeah a few days so this huge bill was accumulated within a few days so you're asking you're asking for an abatement of this one month's bill to your historical your historical rate okay thank you bye yeah I don't know either is it the 2258 minus 900 no no what the 915 is just what the city was on people that have leaks the city that but he wanted more than that so he came to the board yeah this was seemed like more kids all basically asked I believe for the that total about less is typical quarterly payment yeah that's what I was 2250 it's 1346 does that sound right it's he's at the city was the two and a half times was a 913 dollars is what they would normally get but he didn't feel that was enough he wants to have whatever his request was and Donna are you hearing that yes so in case people don't understand when there is an issue like this that comes up there is I guess a one time where the city will I don't remember exactly what the number was Charlotte Charlotte said well we'll give you a break of a certain amount I think it's two and a half times the normal average bill so that offer was made but it was not sufficient to the taxpayer so the taxpayer came to ask for above and beyond that I had been using it using extra water I would understand but this was beyond my control and I walked through the proper channels and they weren't able to shut it off for me so I'm kind of stuck with it Donna you have your hand raised well I wanted to get some more information dealing with how long was that the same period then the street the city's workers are out there tearing up the sidewalk to find the valve to turn it off right so was that within 24 hours of you recording it I believe it was well they came out at first and they tried to dig it out just with shovels but they realized they weren't going to be able to get it so they had to go back the next day get a backhaul and come and actually tear the sidewalk up and then dig down with the backhoe to get the turnoff shutoff valve okay so this was more than just quote your league but then we had a the city had our own issues and trying to turn it off so it lasted longer okay thank you yeah so the 9 13 62 is two and a half times what your average bill is for that particular period which I calculate to be 365 45 does that sound about right it's about right okay so we can back into that if we divide 9 13 62 by 2.5 that gets you what figure so uh well I I erased it but I'll do it again I wrote it down you said 365 45 365 45 yeah okay and so our I think the request from the taxpayer is 22 5892 minus that 365 45 so it's 1893 44 okay 1893 44 uh-huh does someone want to make that motion just for discussion to say it because there is a standard for the city it's kind of a reason for that this happens in many different ways to property owners throughout the year it can be running sinks it can be a bypass thing we had it happen the city has generously done the 2.5 percent so it's not a unique situation and I do think consistency is is part of fairness too I'm curious it sounds to me like the volume was higher than average because of all four just being thrown away sure yeah we had it happen in our properties yeah it happened all over time all right so the chair would accept would entertain a motion for some something yeah yeah calculation an exact calculation of what the normal water uses water uses compared to what these extra bills were until the time that it was stop I think that's the last page okay Donna maybe I didn't understand everything but I feel this is a difference of what Tim was talking about when we the city showed up and didn't get it turned off within 24 hours so I would propose that we reduce his bill back to the 365 dollars and 45 cents yeah okay so okay that has been moved is there a second now one of the things that's complicated about this is that I think the way he described it the situation to us he didn't even realize that this was a problem until he got his next water bill so so the water was flowing into the basement of this building way after no no it was within days is that am I right Paul or not within several days it was shut off oh okay okay so okay so discussion on the motion of that that we've heard from Rosie the the abated amount sorry yeah the abated amount is 1893 47 we want to be technical about okay it seems reasonable that if he asked the city to to turn it off and the city wasn't able to turn it off that we would give something but I also don't want to give leeway here when other people are we gonna vote on the motion we're I'm waiting we're still having discussion so and Kim's about to say something well I'm a little uh the city would normally give a 900 some on credit yeah credit this is almost twice that because they for some time and couldn't be fixed right away by the city I think that's the argument yeah the reason it was undetected was because there was so much other water due to the flood that you couldn't even get into the basement since I understood it so you're saying it doesn't meet the normal standard that the city uses it's over and above the standard that's what I'm understanding and so is there just cause and it seems to me there is this was in pretty unique situation there was just one meter was spinning and nobody knew it and nobody could stop it for some period of time I think those were extraordinary circumstances do we have enough to have heard enough to vote if so Bob you don't think you're ready yet what what is the exact number 1893 47 all those in favor signify by saying aye anyone opposed okay you'll get a notice from the clerk Paul telling you that the abatement's been granted in that amount just the water on the water bill thanks paul you're welcome so at this point I think we can we're adjourning this time right okay at this point we are going to recess at 7 55 p.m