Good evening, I like to call the Monday, November 21st, 2022 the town of Barone, Slickboard, ready to schedule a meeting to order. To my left is Flo Smith. My far left is Joe Stobb. To my right is Carl Parton. And to my far right Dave Sawyer. I'm Brad Town. Vince Connie, our town administrator is here along with Diane Isabel Town Treasurer. Additions and changes to the agenda. There are two additions to the agenda tonight. One is the Fire Department Presentation Request. And Mr. Romoy's here for that. And there is a catering request permit that came in. Rachel's asked me to present tonight. And just want to alert you, it's a new format now. It's all about a line. We get these. You can review them. And the approval of the minutes will be acceptable. There isn't anything to sign. That's what they're going to start working like. So I'll tell you the business, what it's for, where it's at. It's capital city range. It's a private birthday party on December 10th. And this is the estimate? Yes, that is. So there's a third? I don't know what it is with that estimate. I don't know. I've been trying to get this on since August. I did send it out. You did? I didn't get it on here. So there is a third. And that's the review of the fire department's request of their radio budget. Are there any? Radio. All set. Any public comment? Hearing none. Right away from it. Yeah, I thought Mr. Legue was going to be here. But Mr. Lamerton had said he's working down behind the state police barracks at that property there. And he's going to go from two accesses down to one. There's water and sewer already there. And I'll let him explain the details. But he's basically may not even be working in the right away. It's just a precaution on their part. I don't know how wide the right away is there. The sewer and water stubs are out of the right away, my understanding when we installed them. And there's one abandoned curb cut where the third house on the south side used to be. And then there's a there's a curb cut for the field. And I got the road commissioner down there a couple of months ago and looked at it with him. And we've we agree that if we moved one curb cut further south, it would be safer because there's kind of a corner down there. So we're asking to eliminate a curb cut, move the one that we have a little further south. We we've been on probably two years get the permit to build this road because it has to go through the wetlands. And we have an Army Corps permit. We have a wetlands permit. And we have a storm water permit to build this road. The only way we can get sewer water and power to that field is to build it in the road. So that's all part of this project. So it's going to cost me $80,000. I figured 10% might be in the right away. We don't know where the right way is. But the sewer and water and power will all be outside of the right away as it's been left already. The only work probably in the right away is going to be the stone construction entrance to go on to the pavement. So you're not even sure that this is going to be in the town right? I don't know where the right away ends there. I know it's going to really wide page shoulder. We're not getting into the pavement. The sewer and water stubs were left with stakes when they were put in when the sewer and water was built. My understanding was that when it was put in, it was put in outside of the towns right away, the stubs, the end of the stubs. So we're connecting on to those. That would mean we're not in the town right away. But as you know, you have to dig back four feet further than the end of the stubs. So maybe we are. So I pay $800 and a fee so that no one could go by and say I was working right away with that permit. Any other questions for Wayne? Your motion. Make a motion for the board on the property budget. That's presented. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. There you go. Thank you. You may say something. No, I'm going to say something. Planning grants resolution to subject. So I believe the board is interested in pursuing a municipal state planning grant to do a study on the feasibility of pound assets and properties. You may recall that the clipboard, two types of applied to this grant and was denied by the state does the count at other municipal planning grants in the hopper. But we don't now. The town doesn't have now. So Vince suggested that we pursue a cluster planning grant, say budget, project budget of $40,000. $22,000 comes from the grant and the balance would have to come from the site board. And the applications do December 1 of this year. You have a copy of that in your package as well. We're coming to talk about the revolution. The she signed it. She did. They have a copy and a folder to sign. The resolution is in there as well. The planning mission that gave their blessing for this revolution. That means that this study would have to come up with $13,000. Correct. Isn't it $18,000? $18,000. I'm not the trader. Because if it's $22,000 from the grant, then we'd have to come up with $18,000 and $40,000. Yeah, maybe not yet. Any discussion on this? What's the studies supposed to do for us? Well, in the past, it looks at your existing infrastructure buildings. It looks at snapshot in the future 20-year outlook on where the town is going to go. And it assesses what you have and what your needs are. And it's a planning tool then, or the select word, to look at the economics, if you're going to replace something, what that's going to cost and how best to fund those projects. Now, would this get into, like, whether or not we need another well or anything like that? No, that's different. This is just for buildings. Town for reals. Our eyes shouldn't stay up here. Your motion? There's no other questions? You said just buildings. You're correct. I had a question. Where would this money come out of? What would it be, $18,000, but be the town's question? Again, four favorite letters. ARPA is available. I'm going to give you a brief on where we're at with the ARPA funds for the budget review on that as well. OK. When do the ARPA funds have to be used? They have to be obligated by 2024, the end of the fiscal year of 2024. And I'll double check this again to make sure, but spent by 2026. And what do you have left in there? That's going to, sorry about that during the budget. OK. I'll give you a document on that. But right now, we have a balance between what's spent and what's currently obligated of 603.569 is the balance. I have a clear understanding of the budget. And I prefer to wait. And what's a short time frame is they haven't looked at the budget and a full review of the ARPA funds. I think it would be premature to just say we're going to use those funds for this quick juncture. I move that we have a table of signing grant resolution, budget flow, and score juncture. The only thing is it has to be in December 1 if we want to forward it. So why don't we just take and pull forward it until after the Vincenzo's explanation of the ARPA fund. It's always in the meeting. OK. Excuse me, Brad, but I think if the SLEPRO would always have the opportunity to, if a grant was awarded, to not accept it. So if that helps your discussion in the future, then maybe we'll see. OK. Let's see. Tire collection decision and discussion? Yeah, that one is on there. As you know, we've got several, a couple hundred tires at least on the yard that just keep collecting.  We've got quite a pile. There's nobody locally that will take them at any reasonable cost to get rid of them. So there's a couple of large companies in New England, one in Mass, one in Maine, that I've contacted. Well, and behold, now they're one company. The one in Maine bought the one in Mass. And they need a minimum to come pick up of between six and 700 tires. So the thought was maybe this spring, just before and around green up day and tire change over, we do a townwide free drop off rather than picking them up on the side of the road like we do during green up day to see if we can get enough tires to get them to come down and pick them up and haul them off. It's going to cost 2,500 bucks for between six and 700 tires for them to come down from Maine, load them up, and take them away. And that's the intent of this. We do have $5,000 in the budget. Correct. For the cleanup? For the part of the cleanup out there. And you'll see that that's in there again this year as well. This year's budget proposal to clean that up because we've got our little crash area out behind the stone piles too that we're putting together, pulling out the steel and all that. That'll go to Bulldogs and then the other stuff to dispose of as well. So. Excuse me, Vince. You may know that Town Fair Tire is recently open. When they were going through their GRB hearings on it, it was requested of them that they consider taking town tires. They don't want 600 at a time. But now that they're open, they just opened last week, making it official or start taking them. I'll call the manager and remind him. I'll just promise to that end and maybe that can solve this issue. Yeah, that's better than paying if we can, yeah. That sounds wonderful. Take them. Yeah. See a little high at 700 tires. It's like 350. I've been here somewhere around 2 and 1 quarter to 250 tires. Seems a little high. Tracking things. Exactly. Seems to me it was a local company that was picking up. I checked with a few and I even called Cassella. And this is who they're using it and who they're recommending. They're saying they've got no place else to get rid of them either, locally, anymore. So we'll have to take and wheel that one to last week. Yeah, we'll check with Town Fair and see what we can do there. How many tires do we have out there? I'm saying somewhere between 200 and 250 at least. 10 things were closer to 400. Yeah. Has there been an ad for them, like front page forum, or anything that maybe places that you wouldn't think to ask? That maybe someone might be interested? Farmers? Someone more than you didn't think to ask? Just my concern with that is farmers and things then. What's the liability behind that, right? Or all of a sudden we unloads? Understood. Several hundred tires somewhere. But the thing is if you advertise it, or even if you were to offer it as a service to the town, the volume is not guaranteed. You could have 600, you could have 6,000. Right, right. So we'll have post-comment to reschedule to the meeting. So second? OK. Delivering budget discussion events? Yes. OK. So last week I provided you with all the budget information so you could prepare all your questions and concerns and such. So again, the first drafts don't let the numbers scare you too much, but it shows an average proposed increase of about 20% as it stands right now. Some of the bigger contributors to that. Salaries, of course, the new hires. The insurances are up by almost 30%. It's 29%, right, Diane? I don't have the numbers yet. I'm anticipating we will have an increase, but I should have those sometime early December from the least cities and towns. The other one that we have, and I think Tom might want to speak to this one a little bit, is the, we'll look at the exact number on that one. Other boards and commissions, somewhere here. And again, I'm hitting the bigger ones at age. The, we included in that number, so it makes it look a little bit higher, right, is the, on the other boards and commissions we put in the Public Works Board as a request for $60,000 in their budget. And then Tom is here to speak on what that is kind of targeted for as well. If you'd like him to explain that, I'm sure. So I think I saw your packets put together a narrative. They have both of these from the town plan. And economic development is a key function of the County of Berlin. So I'd just like to read to you from our economic development section in the town plan. And it's the highlighted pieces. The highlight is what I've added. So under objectives, the number one objective of economic development is to focus commercial and industrial growth in the northeast, northeast quadrant. The northeast quadrant is the area we're in now. It's the Newtown Center. It's the hospital in that area. So that's the number one objective. The fifth objective there is maintaining balanced tax base that generates the revenue necessary to provide municipal services without unduly, without overburdening property owners. And so those are the two objectives in the town plan. The first policy there is ensure that the town government supports economic development, maintains a strong relationship with the town's business community, and assists business growth and development. And then under actions, the third action there is continue to extend municipal water and sewer in the northeast quadrant to support future economic development in a manner consistent with the smart growth principles as defined in the state. And the final piece I want to read is just on the right hand column is infrastructure improvements. Berlin's economic success is dependent on the provision of high quality infrastructure. The town is actively working to provide water and sewer to support future growth in the northeast quadrant of town. So this is water and sewer are key contributors to economic development. I think Vince often shared to you the feedbacks that the public board has done since 2015. There's N plus achievements. All of this has been accomplished through ratepayers' contribution to the systems. And the town has not participated in any of those activities. So you can see what they are. I asked questions of the questions. The final piece that you don't have, and I'll hand it out here, is you likely know that Berlin's most recent grand list is $507 million. The of that, there are 1,489 parcels that make up that grand list. The number of parcels that are connected to water and sewer are 369, which is 25% of the parcels. As I stated, the grand list is $507 million. Those 369 parcels represent, on the grand list, $294 million, or 58% of the grand list. So 25% of the parcels are making up 58% of the grand list. And so I'm going to copy this for you guys. So the water and sewer are key contributors to the economic viability of our town. And there are numerous projects that need to occur to create, to continue, to allow the economic development activity to proceed. The public support board would like the board to consider adding an annual line item budget of $60,000. That represents, depending on interest rates, about $1 million to $1 million, $250,000 of debt. And that would cover the debt service on million and million in the core of debt. To that end, the public support board really believes that the parcels that are connected now are contributing more than their share to the grand list. And hopefully that you post and give this consideration and help move the town forward. So I'll take questions or you could. I don't expect a decision tonight, but we wanted to come here and just talk to you about that. And the need for looking for some help from the town to help with the economic development piece of what's the water and sewer infrastructure. How is the economic development committee doing? Should have asked that when Wayne was here. They haven't started meeting yet. And there's still only three members right now that have agreed to sit on it. We're looking for two more members as well. Along with that grant that Tom mentioned earlier, I have talked to Wayne. I have not been able to reach Roberta yet, but she's to the second of the third members on there. About also when we talked before about a board or commission looking at our facilities and the growth over the next five, 10, and 20 years, what those needs are and come up with some recommendations as well. And Wayne has agreed to sit on that board or commission or do it through the Economic Development Committee if we can get two more members that are willing to be on there. He's willing to talk about taking that on with that board as well. So that grant that you'd like to apply for, that is going to be part of this thing what we need here for the town offices. Oh, correct. That's correct. The $40,000 one that we discussed. That's correct. So that would be a tool for the team to use as well. There would be alignment at that point. Let's see, so then there's the general expenses. Obviously, like everything, the cost is going up generally. So if you look at that, that's page 21. You'll see I won't read them all off, but there's a fairly significant increase in those costs as well, like our audit services, our legal services, our payroll services, all those, they've gone up as general services. And then the other more significant one is the capital budget as well. If you look at that one, you'll see the substantial, but a big increase. If you remember last year, those of you that were on the board, we had a reduction in the capital budget. We started to do a little bit more planning. We put money in there so we wouldn't have to take out loans for equipment and things, kind of a five or seven year plan really to have funds there when we want to purchase highway equipment, vehicles, loavers, graders, those big ticket items. We cut that a little bit last year by about 100,000 out of the capital. So that went back in again this year to cover that. Not an additional, but back to those original numbers that we took out last year. So we went from back up to 300,000 and 250,000 in that budget as well. There is, again, in the budget, we increased the police equipment for the two vehicles as well. It went from 45 last year to 100 this year for the cost of two vehicles. So that's what's driven the capital budget up significantly as it has. The zoning enforcement officers, that's in there part time. That is in the budget. So under the salaries and overall, that's still there. I think it was the salary was, I think, ended up being around 26,000 for that position. Well, that's kind of the overall summary of where a lot of the majors is coming from. Some of the difficulty in looking at the capital budget is as we know the local option tax didn't pass. It did not pass. By a very small margin. How something would get that back on the ballot could be voted for again? I mean, it was so close. It can, yeah, before we go to vote again, I think we need to, I need to come up with some thoughts on how to get more information out there, educate the residents. What it really means, because again, when they see tax, I think it's coming out of their pocket every time they go. And like food tax on food, it's not on groceries. Right. And so, you know, doesn't apply to vehicle purchases, groceries, exactly. So I think I've got to do some sort of, I want to say media blitz, but something put together to put information out there to spread the word and educate a little bit more. And then think about getting it on the ballot again. On a positive note, the town is really growing and expanding and the future is bright. Yeah. It just comes on the hard times. Growing pains. Growing pains. It's a good way of putting it. So there's 60,000 that is asked upon the public works. That's the annual annual thing you want the town to contribute to the public works board. My question was, is the public works board has been self-supporting through the water and the sewer? We just added a position to that department, like 100,000. Where are they? What do they annually would grow or net after all their expenses on the annual? How much? Is there some kind of, there's got to be some kind of thinking about that. You know, on the top of my head, I can't think of that, but they usually, thinking last year, they had a surplus, I think like for 100,000. 100,000. I believe, yeah. Water did not. Because water is not at a break-even point. Sure. Sure. This is the sewer day. But the two combined, I mean, even if the water is not at a break-even, I'm wondering what that surplus is, the two combined that runs that public works board. And what kind of, you know, we just added a position that's 100,000, 120,000 salary investments. Results benefit salary. Yeah. I'm just curious where the surplus number would be. You know, between the two, the town starts contributing 60,000 to the year annually. So is there a question? Right here. Is the amount of the salary taken away from what would have been used to help with the expansion of the water and sewer that we are now adding the 60,000 for itself? Well, it's kind of in my mind. Yeah, I'm looking at it and saying we added 100,000 dollar position to that. I'm just wondering what kind of surplus after that was added. How much money do you have left to earn annually? Yeah, there's a couple ways to look at it, too, we're also paying two contractors. Well, we got two contracts. We're going to reduce. We're going to reduce. We'll cover that. Some of that, or should I understand that. But at the end of the day, the surplus should remain about what it is today once those contractors are out of the picture as well, right, which is just the water alone was 100,000. No water, sewer. Sewer, sorry. Yeah. Yeah, last year. And I'm just talking about the document. Sure, sure. I'm just, I think that would be it. I'm just thinking of the surplus last year. Yeah. But part of it, the surplus last year and a year before, is that month, two year, we had budgeted a certain amount for what you call the waste treatment. Yep. And we got some money back on that in a significant amount. So that really did help us. Yeah, I guess we kind of helped to make a decision for whether we wanted to try and put 60,000 into it is to know how much they've got in surplus. We get a more portion of that. But I can bring that next week, if you don't mind. We can have a detail. My question about the, is that a residual surplus or a yearly surplus?  But that would be related over years? Or is that just? And that was just not one year. Just one year. There were extenuating circumstances on that. But we both see it as a year before we took advantage of it. However, I think the next meeting, I will just bring the report from last year as the audit report. Because that would be accurate in a worse. Yeah, it'd be nice to have it over a couple of years just to see what the average is. Just to see next perfect sales. Yeah, I'll grab those all. Other questions? Comments? How would it affect them? I guess one question that I have is how would it affect them if we didn't contribute to 60,000 based on what was presented to us this evening by Tom? Again, I think my understanding of that is looking at that for a loan leverage to expand the system. So he doesn't have that. They would certainly have to scale down their rate of planned expansion. Thank you. Where have they been expanding to? But that's a question we'd have to ask them. Because I didn't get into the details of where they thought that would be. I can find out what they're thinking is. What does their five-year plan look like? Right? I've been thinking of a long-upstored rotary like that. We're not talking about Scott now? Not long ago. That's a good one. The other thing with the expansion, too, the revenues increase in that, too, because of your connections. I think also the other big one that may be driving some of this is the connection to the hospital and putting in a redundant line when they do that as well. Because right now, there is no redundancy in the system. Well, I think that's one of the big ones that they're thinking about short-term, short-term, next couple of years type of thing. Is there an anticipated date for the connection to the hospital? No. Nothing. Nothing's finalized there. And I think Tom also said that that was going to be paying off the interest of the debt, $60,000. He said it before we understand what it was. I think he's talking about the proposed debt, right? Proposed debt. All right. They have the interest now. Yeah. I think he's looking at annual payments against maybe a bond. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. That's exactly what's going to be worth of bonding. Yeah. Anything more of it? Unless there's questions or information that you want on certain areas or other details? Well, this is only the first round. Right. Exactly. It's the first round. So the telephone, I was looking at all different areas of their own allotment for the telephone. We have a new telephone system, right? No. We have ones coming after the first of the year. OK. The one integrated phone system with the buildings, the utilities, the garage. Yes. What's the CAT TAP? CAP, TAP, state licensing, page 11. It's under-assessing. It's under-assessing. Yeah. Yeah. That is the piece. We have a program in Grand List that's called CAM. And in that program, which is run a lot by the state, OK, there are fees in order for them to be able to tap into that information from the state and the state reviews it because they have a way of getting into our program. So there are fees that are fixed fees. I think it's at least $600. And I think there's another kind of fee, too, for assessors. But it goes along with a program in a Grand List called CAM. And we have to have it. Thank you. You read some things out here, Vince, on page 20 of the town offices, the equipment contracts and the internet. So I mean, more than doubled. Yeah. Some of that is how we kind of put the budget together this year as well. But we have things like, let me look at which one. I want to talk about equipment contracts, right? That went up a lot. So that's the list I was looking for that you had given me with all the contracts on it. But again, there were increases in those. We have contracts for things like the copier. We have contracts for the mowing. We have contracts for the roadside mowing. But when roadside mowing goes in a different year? It goes in a different year.  And I think I gave it to you. Well, that's what I was looking for. I thought I had it in here, but it's not. New phone system. We have that. But that's... I will put the trailer in there. The trailer runs. Yeah, that was 11 of it. Yeah, and there's... We have a breakdown list, but I don't know where I put it. To be quite frank, I thought it was in the budget folder, but it's not here. And I will send that out as well of what's included in that. On the webpage, I can understand it having gone up for 2023. But for 2024, why would it stay? It's a standard yearly rate for the new website that we have, because that web comes with, unlike the other one where we didn't even have admin rights and couldn't do anything really with it. Plus it was very hard to do anything with anyway. This new one, we have the access. We also have a website manager that will assist us and give us thoughts and ideas on how to make it better. They usually talk with them once a quarter to see how it's going. And so that we get service to the website now that we didn't get before as well. That's included in that. That's part of why it's more. But that's a yearly fee of $4,900 with that. Squarespace is the web service that we use now. Thank you. Yeah, talk to Google about getting the old one out. Yeah, out of the search results. Yeah. What was the other one, Carl? You wanted some information on? Just above it, $6,000 internet. We also have that red, so caught my eye. Yeah, you and your color. $6,000, we just got it. It's $9,000 internet. OK, yeah. So in that one, we have our internet service provider is in there. Did we put, is polymorphic in that one? Polymorphic's in the contract. They're in the contract, right? What else did we have in there? Squarespace for them. No, Squarespace should not be in that one. They're separately on the web page. How hard is Comcast? Comcast, that's what I was going to take up. And Comcast is, we have what, three different bills we get from them? Yeah, and they've increased their rates. Yeah. Significantly. And on page 14, under zoning, the increase on telephone for 24. That's the new contract for the new phone system, I believe, in that one. Oh, no, on zoning? Under zoning, on page 14. It had 1,240.2. Oh, yeah, that's just the rate, basically, of our phone provider going up as well. I guess I would call it. My old life, I'd call that the cost of business. And those guys on the left one, yeah. Admin software support, Carol. Is that the next one that you had mentioned? That one up to 15? Quick. Another page 13, and we're looking at something you can't do anything about, necessarily, when you look at health insurance. Yes. But that is a $240,000 increase from 23 to 24, by my back. I think that's something to keep in mind. That is an extreme value added and an increased benefit when we're discussing payroll and increases. So that's something to think about. I'm not sure what that is for individual here at the town office, but if we have 24 people, that's $10,000 increase in salary and benefits that work. On the health insurance? Yes. Yes, absolutely it is. So question on health insurance. Do we have multiple plans to choose from? Two. We have two. We need to have two. There's one that offers more coverage, has less deductibles. And our insurance does not have high deductibles. But there is one that just offers a little bit more benefits, and most of the police department tends to get on now, and they have to pay the difference. Work at the town will pay a certain amount. And if you get the other insurance, then you have to pay the difference between what the town pays and what the sub-insurance costs. Yeah. And we do a front-to-seek with a lot of credit people. The basic plan is 100% paid by the town. And if you want the supplemental plan or the next level-off plan, you pay the difference. Yeah. Town gives great insurance. On the basic plan? For the families. On the basic plan? Yes. And then, again, if you want, as Diane said, lower deductible and a bit better coverage, then you pay the difference. Does that also offer two part timers? You have to do 40 hours a week. It's full time. Well, I think the last page, I think I've seen that in years, also is of interest, will be of interest. It's page 30. It's the wage proposal as well. And again, what I used was a straight 8% to match the inflation rate. So you'll see where it was and where that 8% brings everything. So that one will be of interest to take a look at. And of course, the police defy the union contract. Yeah, that one's a done deal with the union contract. Besides, so it was a pretty well set for the next four years, three years. Do you have a question for Liz? Anything that you want as far as additional details? I've got those at UNS or Carl as well. And I'll get those out to you this week. I'll put those together so you can look at it in a little more depth in certain areas. I would ask, as a first year board member, I would ask Brad and Bo and David more of a procedural question. How did you discuss how did we decide to make the decision going forward on the line items or how in the past has an item been brought up increased or decreased within the budget? How does it work? Well, usually we take and go through the budget. We will take and change the line items as a group. And then if we can, we just vote the budget. We push forward and we vote. And what's our timeline for that in case it's February? We have to everything into the Town Court by February? No, I think it's before that. Yeah. A little bit before that. Yeah, I think it's February. I think it's the end of January. I had to have it in last year. 2026? Was it 23rd? 23rd, I think it was last year. Yeah, I think it was the 23rd. That sounds about right. January last year. So we have four or five meetings to discuss the budget and say it comes to our consensus. However, if we can pass, we have to expect it to be budget. Religiously. Yeah, I think we had two last year. Year before that, when Tom and Dana were here, we had nothing to have five or six. We did it every week. We had a budget. And you just tackle sections of it? Yeah. And typically what I'll start doing is at the next budget review, I'll have Tim come in. So we talk about the highway budget. And then at the next one, I'll have the chief come in. We can talk about the police budget with him. And they can give their little bit more specific. Yeah, this is just an overview. And they can get into more details there. And at that point, we ask questions. And a lot of times, you know, give our yeas and maize to certain things that are being proposed to us. And we look at percentages and where we want the budget to end up and how that will affect the residents and whether we can maintain as opposed to drastic increases. But as we know, everything's getting more specific than ever. And that's why I mentioned like, you know, had the local operation tax passed, that would have helped us a lot with the interest that we anticipated with the capital budget. Difference on the capital budget. I mean, it would have reduced our overall down to about, well, the capital budget would have reduced down to about 5%. So let me know when you're going on the fire department coming in, so schedule a vacation? Yeah, a vacationing. Any other questions for Vince on this? If you think of any, send me a note too, and I'll get the information out to you and the rest of the board as well. You know, if you're going through it, the question pops up. Don't hesitate to send it to me, you know. I'll get the details out there. Well, some of my questions would be just for to educate myself with what these count names are. All the count names. So I would know what we do. We could probably build a cheat sheet for that or something of some sort like that. Put them out there, what's in each one of the major ones or something like that. We'll look at that. I like when we talk about everything further. You know, for example, on page 11, the tax maps in 2022, 2500, 23, 2500, and then going down to 2000. You know, things like that, it just helps understanding where the rise and the decrease, and so we have a real clear understanding. Right. The tax maps, especially, I think we'd always over budgeted for tax, and finally, so realistically, we've never gone about this before. Yeah, we've looked at the last couple of years of what's been spent, some of these, and we've never reached the budget goal. So, you know, it's a nice point. Why would we keep budgeting, you know, $1,000 over? And sometimes you can't anticipate what's going to happen, like what happened with our fees for auditing. You know, that was a huge increase. And sometimes you just have to swallow hard and move forward, you know, we get great service. You'll see an increase in the highway when we go through that, because it fuel costs. There's a few things that we don't have a lot of control over, but need to have. And then I'll let you, if you're done with this, I'm happy to present the album as well. Do you want to just quickly have an overview of that? I tried to print it as small as I could, but I did put a lot of color in it. There's a little portion of this. There's a color pop now, a little bit. But we put it in the budget itself. No, not yet. I didn't have the goal, but we'll put it in there. The top part is a little more detail, and it's kind of color coded to tell you what's done, what's obligated, and what was out there for discussion at the time. But the real summary is at the bottom and the box is at the bottom. So you can see that we received $831,358,000 and 13 cents in ARCA funds. So those are the four payments that we've received. What we've paid is in the top box on the right. It says paid as of November. And it tells you where we spent those funds. So we've spent $55,953.22 to date and then we have obligated below that things that we've approved for ARCA payments right now. Can you remind me what the retention funds were for again? $9,000? Yeah, the retention funds, the highway guns. That's right. Those are the retention payments that we authorized for the highway group. I'm gonna write that down so don't forget it again. And then we've obligated the radio funds for the new radios for the highway and the police. We put the assistant treasurer in there as well. We do need to add her benefits into that. Yeah, that is not a fully loaded amount. That's just their salary that's in there. And then the balance that's owed on the Lister's office trailer. So those are the obligated funds that come to 188, 835, 16 that we have obligated. Leaving us a balance of 603, 569 in our platforms that are not obligated and not spent yet. Well, it's 18 that he was looking for on the grant portion for that for the, you know. No, the planning grant? Planning grant. Yeah, that's not in here yet. But that does qualify. So that's the summary for you on our platforms as well. I'm forward so you'll have that. If there's any questions on that, Joe, you're thinking of one I can tell. Well, Tom's requesting was that 18,000? For the planning grant. Yeah. And then just, I didn't print out multiple copies of this, but again, just for whatever it's worth just to kind of put some things in perspective as well. I went through, there were 170 municipalities that reported into the VLCT on the salary reports and surveys and things. So I kind of sorted it out in four different ways to give you an idea of where Berlin sits among all the towns that did participate in the survey. So for example, if you look at the percentage of their operating budget worth 36 out of the 170 that report. So we're the 36th lowest, not lowest, but from the top of 136 out of 170. I think we're 45% of our operating expenses or overall budget is in the top salary. Yeah. And then for operating budgets, 29, that's where 29, sorry, excuse me. No, I'm just saying that wrong again. Operating budget, there's 29. The population were 46 out of 170. And then overall, you know, we're at, this one's just, this is just the overall year. That was the one that was 35 and that's actually the category I got highlighted here. Operating budget, yeah, it is right. Okay. That would be my own school work here. But that'll give you some idea of how we compare to other towns within our own population, with our own population size and some of our own demographics. You know, you can look through and look at the hospital towns and see how we compare to them as well. And if you're looking at that and you want it sorted any other way to see where we are, let me know. Again, I can pull it up and do that so you can see where we stand. Or if you just want to pick out a handful of towns to see how we compare to those, you send me the list and I can sort it by that as well and give you that just to help you see how, where we stand in comparison. Again, it's 170 of the towns across the state that did complete the survey for the Leeds of Cities and Towns. 80 of them didn't, 80, 80, whatever it is, didn't do that. I think there's 250 towns. So I think it's, yeah, 250, one or 253, something like that. Yeah. And again, the benefit, it takes us a little bit of time. Diane, I do part of the survey. Diane does part of the survey. Probably she does probably the bigger portion because they're looking for- Yes, I do the biggest portion. And the benefit we get is we get this report free. The towns that don't participate if they want it, it's like a hundred bucks for them to purchase the report. So how would you take in the great cuts? Are we favorable so far? I think what stood out most to me was where we stood based on the salaries percentage. It was a little higher than what I anticipated, what I thought it would be comparatively. But that's the one that stood out to me the most. I don't think, you know, when you take, again, I think salaries are wages. Wages, wages, overall wages, sorry. Are you salary? It's kind of hard to- So the higher, if people are working overtime, you get, you use your, excuse your figure, yeah. Yeah, the other thing too is this is just, you don't know how many employees it is to just look at this for a time.  You have to go to the details of the report. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of variables you have to look at, consider in that. And again, to me, the big difference is you can't, when I look at it, I can't compare us to towns of the same population size. Because we're, demographically, we're not anything like those, you know, those smaller towns, they don't have the, you know, the infrastructure that we have with the malls and the hospitals and those things. So it makes a big difference. Yeah, because if you were to take that, looking at, looking at salary-wise- They don't have police departments. I mean, and that's a big one. Well, yeah. Most of the towns are science. They don't have- They're electric departments on there. They're things too, because it's a town, you know, it's not just, it's electric, it's a town road crew, the police department. Yeah. And they're just, I mean, they're just a little higher than we are, they're not a lot higher. But I guarantee you, they've got a lot more employees. Right, right. So, but again, as you're looking at it, if you come up with anything that you'd like to see, send me a note, I'll pull it up and get that for you as well. But again, I just thought it was good information to see. It kind of gives you a little picture. Thank you for bringing that forward, Ben. Sure. And if any of you want copies of those, I can, you know, send them electronically as well. I would like that. Okay. I guess it would be interesting to know if Hardwick is actually, if the Fed Electric Department, because it is a town electric department, whether that's in their salaries on that or not. It'd be an interesting question. I don't, you know, I think on it would be no, because I'd be considered private enterprise, kind of like our sewer and water, because our sewer and water, you know, when you're looking at it. That would, that's not on there. Yeah, so, yeah. It would be interesting to know how many employees. Well, VLTC should put that up pretty quick. I have access to the electronic report now. Yeah, so you need to find out how many are in each town. Yeah, yep. It's not all calculated, but yes, I can. Is there another animal out there that you don't like? Not really. No. You want to compare the demographics. We've got to go to someone with a population that we have. We have no other thing. Pretty unique stuff to make. Just by where we're located and what we have, we're pretty unique for population size. Any else on this? Yeah, let's go back to the planning grant resolution budget. I'll be quick. Sorry. I just wanted to jump in before we leave this topic. Does the board have a preference for the next budget review? It'll be at the next meeting. I'll put it on. Do you have any preference of who you'd like to see? Our highway police, any particular order? Or do you want to have a long meeting and have me bring them both in? I just didn't want to. One at a time? OK. OK. Well, the police should be fairly short. I mean, a lot of that's just all under contract anyway. Short of there, quick. Well, the police, the budget is mostly equipment. Of course, there's no labor questions. It's just the equipment and fees and training online. We're having a better understanding about this planning grant and stuff like that. Maybe we'll make a motion to approve the $18,000 for that out of the average funds. We're talking a second. Any further discussion on it? Possibly. So we're approving and giving them the permission to seek the grant. The five-year grant. To give the understanding that we will decide in the future to contribute to $18,000 or we already ought to want to figure out $18,000 a big amount. We can always take a rescind. But I would say if we approve the grant, then we are going in the, one of the troubles here is that the time frame, December 1st, and the other problem that I see is we don't have a clear idea of the Economic Development Committee because we don't really have an active committee yet. We're trying to locate two more members. And those would be the, that committee would be the ones that would take and, I'm assuming, would take and look at what Berlin needs. That's what I'm asking, right, to do an assessment, look at the facilities that we have. But if we do get the two members, this is an excellent opportunity to give them a tool to work. Yes. It'll help them. Yeah, it'll help them do the assessment. They'll have some, yeah. So is there any idea how long it's going to take the folks to take and get their report ready? VLCT? No, no, no. Oh, the Development Committee? Yeah, not a clue. I don't have a clue on the timing on that yet. You know, I'm asking. Was that? You're talking about the grant, right? How long it would take? Oh, the grant? If we approve this, how long would it take that study to happen?  It would be nice to have the committee and the study done at the same time. And the study at the same time. Yeah, I'm trying to get the committee together and up and going if I can get two more volunteers, right, and have this before the next budget season. There are thoughts and recommendations before the next budget season so we can start planning on what we're going to do. Because time's going to go quick, right? We have an obligation to the downtown center to have something over there in X number of years. And that's going to go by quick. And we have no idea yet what that's going to look like. And this money is for the infrastructure study to look at the buildings and stuff, correct? Yes, that's what the study is. The property that we have, the buildings that we have. And I'm also, with the board's approval, going to ask them to take a look at the fire department buildings as well throughout this. Because we've been talking a little bit about them coming on board as a municipality. If they do that, do we have any opportunities there without those properties as far as buildings and what we do as well? Maybe the public service facility. How long will it take a rough idea and I wouldn't think the study to take place? No, I don't just have any idea what would happen. For me, as soon as I can get the Economic Development Committee up and running, Wayne's ready to go on it. I need to talk to Roberta. Wayne's looking for people. Also, if anybody interested, and I need to ask Roberta the same thing. Yeah, that's right. She's the third person because she asked. No, actually, the third person that accepted is also on the planning committee now. And that's Theron Lace-Leeper. I know Pat McDonald's interested in selling these number number four. I would say. Great. If you guys have any thoughts of people that might be interested, I'm happy to reach out to them. I won't give up your name and say that you recommend them. It's necessary in order to have the discussion for bringing the fire department on board. I know we've talked about it extensively. We've just never brought it all the way forward. Could that be done without being part of the study? Oh, sure, sure. Again, it's just, again, thinking forward, planning. What do we look like, 20 years from now? Five, 10, and 20 years from now is the idea, right? What does the foreseeable future look like? And will there be any more growth? Will we start to slow down based on what they look at? I don't know. Any other discussion on this? Those in favor? All right. All right. Motion carries. So now we move on to what we do with fire departments. You know, day with day show. Yes. Good evening. Matthew Romeo, Brolin Fire. Each year the US Department of Homeland Security grants a big old pile of change to the Department of Public Safety in Vermont. And local businesses never get to apply for that money. Certain percentage of it has to be passed through to local agencies. And normally the timeline for that grant is they open the request for proposals in January-ish and then they usually do right around my birthday in March, which is the first week of March. They usually give us some conditional idea of whether or not we get the money or not in around Independence Day, around of course July. And then we usually get a subrecipient grant agreement where we can spend money sometimes September, October-ish. Then you have a year beyond that as part of your grant performance period. So what would be released this January, we would start looking at actual acquisition of things come October. Quite frankly, that has been challenging in the last couple of years because widgets that we get quotes on in January for $18,000 all of a sudden became $25,000 widgets by the time we got to when we could spend money this year, so it was a little bit challenging. This year we've had a kind of an unexpected re-release of money. They didn't spend all their money in a prior grant year. So they've got this undetermined chunk of money out there. I have some swags about how much it might be, but they wanna get off the books. So things that the fire department has been looking at coming to y'all and talking about applying for in January, we'd like to apply for right now. And the way the grant functions after we go through all the paperwork and approvals and stuff is we buy the widget and then we submit to the Department of Public Safety for reimbursement. It's usually a 30, 45 day turnaround. So it's just, it's numbers on paper and as long as we don't go out of our budget, there's no match or cost on our end as far as the ones that I've done at the state. Back to since this discussion about us becoming a town entity, because we're not a town entity, we can't apply it directly. So what I'm looking for tonight is basically the approval to apply for the town or the fire department. In that, and I'm sorry you didn't come in earlier, I was gonna catch you before the meeting and let you know that I was looking to do this because you have to have basically someone that could sign on behalf of the town, which I assume would be nuts. And you also have to have a fiduciary, which we're looking at you, so. We've done three years of, I've got about a half million dollars worth of this done at my other job. So I keep a list of things on the shelf. For us, what we're looking to do is the first item we're looking at replaces our hazmat trailer. We are one of the two designated decontamination units for the state hazmat team. And some of them aren't, the other is Berry City. We, that trailer that right now sitting outside of the full corners, we're about to move it down to Rivendin for the winter. That has a full decontamination. So the last time it got set up for real was during the Chem Lab accident at Spalding High School several years back. But there's two of them here in Central Vermont and basically one of them would end up going to a scene, the other one usually ends up going to the hospital, which is why we have one. And they get re-cleaned on the way in. All of our firefighters that go through firefighter one also get the hazmat operations and technical decontamination training to do that. We deployed it twice last year, I think, the three times, excuse me, three times. Once to Northfield, once to Williamstown, once to the East Montpelier, Montpelier border on Town Hill. So it is a regional asset. It does get reduced. And that trailer is knocking on 20 years old. It's okay, but in that time to replace it, we probably need one that's a little bit bigger. And I'm also looking to try to add some specialized equipment in there that would help us if we ever have to evacuate a mercy call. I don't wanna do that again. But there's always the possibility. So we're looking at some items that we can put in there that would make us a little better suited to deal with that. Second big item that we're looking to apply for this year is a utility truck, a three-quarter ton or one ton pickup to pull that trailer. We currently have one, it's a 2011. We're not gonna replace it. We're looking at one in addition. We've been in discussions with agency transportation, the rail division and with the state hazmat team. One of the vulnerabilities we have coming through down the Berlin rail road. We end up having to put people down the tracks a couple to a half dozen times a year, usually down in Riverton for, and quite frankly, usually get some idea out of the river. But it's a tough thing to put we should not be putting vehicles down the railroad tracks that are not designed to do that. So we're looking at picking up a utility truck that also has that Highline kit on it. We're working with the guys from V-Trans to get the specs right and everything. They ordered a half dozen out of them a year. So we're just going off of their specification package. So that would do a couple of things. One that would give us another vehicle to pull a hazmat trailer. Our utility was down in the shop for a week. Just here lately. And it would give us something to actually tackle those rail incidents. When I pitched that idea to the state hazmat chief, it was like, I can't believe no one's done this before. So he thought it was a great idea. So they are on board back in both of those applications. The last thing we were gonna try to put in for this year, they've won one of the rare occasions they've opened up radios on the grant this year. We don't usually see that. That's usually, because they don't wanna get people billing their daily operational needs off the home and security grant. It's gotta have some nexus to supporting a response to terrorism or weapons of mass destruction or bad things happening. So, but we are gonna try to pick up a few of the more expensive radios for about five grand a pop. But it allows us to operate in multiple frequencies and environments for what we do. It's no impact on the town budget other than our hours. So that deadline is a week from Friday, which is why I got added to the agenda tonight to ask y'all for that authorization. So that's kind of my pitch. What we, if we, we're not gonna get everything we asked for off of this mid-cycle grant. Whatever we don't get off of this mid-cycle grant, I'd like to just take that application to roll that right over into January's request for proposals. That was my question for you. So this mid-cycle grant won't impact or regularly schedule. You had a nice regimented schedule of how a grant application usually works. You don't think that will affect that regular schedule request from the home and security board. Not at all, because this is spending old money that they're basically, they're trying to get off the books. This particular grant cycle, I didn't wanna do this off of memory. I know the regular one because it's just, it's like routine every year, but applications are due December 9th. Okay, I may have gotten my dates wrong. I thought it was weeks from Friday. Might be two weeks from Friday. So guys, no cost to the town. We just have to help you with the grant application. It won't affect the future grants. I think you might have oversold it. Oh, sorry. Because I think we're already to jump on board with this. Yeah, so I mean, we'll be able to offer this mid-cycle. We'd be able to spend money in February. That's two weeks. I'd like to make a motion. And we'll be being approved and request to help facilitate the grant application. I second that motion. Any discussion? I do have a question, okay. Who does make the payment? Let's take it radios for instance. And I know in a subrecipient type of situation you have to pay in advance. You do. Okay, so is it the town that would make the payment? The town would cut a check. And then we submit a, so we have to submit a request for reimbursement. So like, if you wrote a check today, I'd have to the end of the month of December to submit for reimbursement. And the biggest holdup I've found in doing reimbursements in my other job is getting a copy of a canceled check. Okay, I have no issue with that. Well, it's, no, I know. But it's just, it's like so odd. It's like, wait a minute, who checks it for her? But they have to have a, getting them out of the state system is difficult. So. I do understand that process. I just want to make, you know, what my role is. Absolutely. Yep. You'd have to make sure I don't, you know, buy. You'd have to front the money. Yeah. You'd have to front the money. Usually for about 45 days. Any other discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Thank you. Entertainment. Here. Oh, the catering. Yes. I gave you all my copies. I have a copy of that. You got one? Minutes. Minutes, two minutes. So again, it's all electronic now. This is what Rachel's providing me. So what we're going to do in the future is we're just going to take an excerpt from this and I'll put it on a Word document just to say what it is. So Caledonia Spirits. Cater permit for the date of the event on December 10th, which is at the Capitol City Grange for a private birthday party. Is that because it's a liquor? Licorice being served, is that? Yeah. The whole purposeful. That's the whole purpose. I make the motion to approve the permit as presented by Vincent. Include that it's three o'clock to five o'clock on December 10th. Yes. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Are there carries? It's the approval of licenses, permits, vouchers, and applications. I have that here. I make the motion to approve payroll warrants 23-10S for payroll from July and your honor, which is at $130.32. I declare a police shooting contact being on $16,738.26 paid on November 10th of this year. Also payroll warrant 23-11 for payroll from November 6th, November 19th of this year, paid on November 23rd, also this year in the amount of $5,472.05. Payable warrant 23-09 with checks 22-444 to 22-502 for payables in the amount of $94,091.97. Here's a second. Any further discussion? Not on this one. I just want to remind you, the fire department has one more issue to cover. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. And the fire department again? So a while back, we approved the purchase of the radios. They upgrade for PD and Highway Group. And in doing so, you're changing the ability for emergency management for communicating with any of those entities. Since then, I've had one of my people reach out to Burlington Communication who is the same company of which the town has gone with to upgrade the base radio, both in Riverton and Four Corners. So they would then have the ability to communicate freely with the road crew or PD in the case of, let's move back up. So the fire station is the ELC, so Emergency Operations Center. And that is where emergency management would set up shop, basically, and communicate with whatever we might have going on as far as flooding or, I don't know, weather related, anything that's going to affect the town. So there is an estimate for the two base radios and two portables. So the portable would be, you'd have one radio right now that the fire department could communicate directly with the ELC either at the base or remotely. And that's a total of $29,437.14. Of course, this estimate was put together in July 18th of this year. My understanding is that's still a good number. I just had my guy check on that a couple weeks back. When I was talking with at the last emergency management meeting, I'm kind of surprised we don't have them here today. They were going to come and talk in favor of us. Bruce is online. Bruce is online. Nice. I'm here. Can you hear me? Good evening, Bruce. Good evening. Yes. As Chief Staub said, this was something that was discussed. And I'm not the radio expert for the emergency management team. That would be Tor Nelson, but I did talk with Tor after our meeting. And he says that it totally, of course, makes sense that the fire department be able to communicate with the rest of the town departments that would be most involved during an emergency. And that this would be a big upgrade as far as what the emergency operations center would be able to communicate out with in the past during some of the bigger emergencies that we've had like Irene and Sandy, there was any communications with the people in the field all had to go through the fire department radio. So they had to have somebody at the fire department manning those and then they would take the message and bring it down to the emergency operations center room. So that, you know, it works, but it's not ideal. And this would give a great, I think a definite improvement there as far as giving information in a timely manner. So we did want to say we support this and think that it would be a good addition for capability of the town. Sorry for those questions. I know we just approved a radio upgrade for the fire department, didn't we? Were we talking about that earlier? Highway and police. Highway and police. And in that quote also, well, it's not quote anymore. It's done. We also get up on the tower up here so that they will have access. We won't have dead spots on the other side of town. Yeah. This isn't anything that's a potential Homeland Security grant that we're immediately applying for. The only thing that might be included in there is two portables. And that is something if that's on the tail end of what we're really looking for. Looking for the trailer, looking for a truck with a high-rise pack, whatever it goes with that. So it can go on the rail. The radios is kind of like an added thing with the presentation that we had from very city, Chief Ballsworth. They will have, we're gonna have the ability to order radios. They're gonna freeze the cost of those radios for two years. So what we don't get with the grant, we're still gonna end up having to purchase it. We'll have two years and I'm gonna say, in the next 12 months, we'll start at two years. But that is not the base radios, really the more expensive ones. Are these radios, ARPA? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, ARPA-worthy, I don't know. ARPA-worthy, they're ARPA-worthy, yes. But if you do these radios, why are you expecting these are expected to last a long time? It depends on how well they're taking care of it and everything else, but yeah, you're looking at probably anywhere from six to 10, yeah. Pretty much the same with any radios. So where does this come in? I mean, the fire department has a budget already. Is this supplemental to the budget? Was already approved for this year's purchases? No, this is in addition. Yeah, in addition. This purchase in these radios just cuts out the two-step process that you've been using in the past and it's just a one-step process to be able to communicate to me. Fire department, you know, they're super accurate. The only question that I have is just about the price of the subject to change after 90 days. They had filled it on July. So that price is still good, right? Right. It's much like, I think we ended up sitting on ours for 45 days. All right, yeah. Oh no, it was longer than that. Yeah, it was quite a long time. Yeah, but I called them as well to get an extension on the price if they would hold it. Yeah. And they were pretty good at that. Yeah, they were fine with it. The payback was they're making us wait a long time to get our FCC license and the radios in stock because they're still not in stock. And that's not unique to us. No, it's not. It's everywhere. So there's an A and a B line and don't, I can't quote this, but we are so close to Canada that any frequency change or anything like that has to be signed off by Canadian officials as well. And it's like sometimes when the wind blows just right, you'll hear taxes on our car frequency. But there's that and then I think the judiciary department waited nine months on radios that used to be on the shelf this year. Yeah. When did you just have to be voted on? This one? Yeah. It depends on how long they're gonna hold it. Go for it. Okay. My only thing is the monetary items after the award. And we added this on tonight. Yeah, so I can put our uses of discussion in this way till the next meeting. Yeah. I'll put it on the next meeting for a moment. Sure. Thank you. I would do one. Thank you, bonus. All of them. November 7th, 2022 minutes. I make the motion to approve the Monday, November 7th, 2022 minutes. Not in terms of content, but just grammatical issues, changes, you know, spelling, names, things of that nature and I've made no patience for a second. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Any other discussion on this? You can get a flow of red cash. Yeah. Other than that, all those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Brown table, Joe? Aye. Yeah, so the fire department is still actively looking for another member of the board of directors. And it's actually appointed by the strike board. Jerry Diamantiz was our last member and he stepped down to work a little more diligently with the CD fiber. So, I'm just putting it out there, looking for volunteers. This is the member from the public strike. Yeah, it would be a, yeah, somebody, a resident who is not a member of the fire department. Anyone else? Well. I do not have anything to say. Thank you. Carol? I'd just like to say we're pretty fortunate here in Berlin, I talk about our volunteers at the meeting we've had at the range, but we're lucky to have a dedicated and knowledgeable chief and fire chief. So, thank you both. Yeah, kudos. Hey. What's your name? Vince? No. Oh. He's smiling when he says that. Anything on executive session? Not tonight. I need a motion to adjourn. I make a motion to adjourn tonight. I'm currently scheduled, so I'm forward meeting. Second. All in favor? Aye. Those opposed? Vince? Yes, Mr. Delcore. Could you forward me the budget materials? I thought they'd be in the packet, but it sounds like you'd provided them earlier. I did. Okay, if you could do that, that'd be great. Yes, sir. I can do that. Have a good night. You too.


Hi, Tony here! It's shout-out time! Shapegrammers are fantastic people, and I'd like to acknowledge some of them. Shout-out to Indian Lake Elementary for being creative with Shapegrams. Students there love the endless creativity they can bring to each lesson. They also like that Shapegrams build upon one another. That's what really can level up your skills. In honor of Indian Lake Elementary, I have a lake joke for you. So, a friend of mine used to live in a lake filled with ducks. He eventually moved away from that lake. Do you know why?  If you'd like a shout-out or would like to give someone else a shout-out, go to shapegrams.com slash shout-outs. Bye-bye!


Our facility received donations, we then sorted filtered through items that were approved unapproved as we were trying to respect their religion and their culture as best as we could. Donations would come in, we would sort them by sizes in our building and then we would send them to our house facility where they would build clothing kits and then they would hand them out to our guests as they were coming in. And now we have a distribution site in the pods to hand out clothing as it's needed. We provided 35,000 clothing kits. That is not including the clothing that we put out before we started making the kits or the clothing that we have given out since stopping those kits. I believe it was 1.5 million in total donation sum. Around 110 tons that was sorted and donated. We received donations from not only all over Germany but all over Europe. We had Belgium and Turkey and bases from everywhere sending shipping containers, eight car caravans full of stuff. And we had local stores and communities gathering money coming and asking us, what do you need? What can we get you? And then coming in full force to supply us with what we could take at that time. And we had local stores and communities gathering money coming and asking us, what do you need? What can we get you? And then coming in full force to supply us with what we could take at that time. So we didn't have a scope for how much we were really doing. We weren't focused on trying to meet a goal or a minimum. We were just trying to get as much as we could done with the volunteers that had stepped up to come and help us. So we didn't have a scope for how much we were really doing. We weren't focused on trying to meet a goal or a minimum. We were just trying to get as much as we could done with the volunteers that had stepped up to come and help us. But then at the end of the day, you would hear the numbers at our end of the day meetings and it would shock us each day that somehow we had managed to go through even more than we had the day before and clothed more people than we had ever expected to in that day. So I actually came in because my neighbor asked me, hey, I know you still have your moving boxes. Can you come and bring it? So it was already three days into the volunteer. So brought the boxes in and that was at the time they said, okay, no more boxes because everything that got rained, the box disintegrated and everything got wet. So we just used the boxes as transport instead. When I arrived on site, I mean, you could see the need for volunteers. I had no idea what signup genius was, any of that. So I just said, okay, I got a couple of hours. What was a couple of hours ended up being stayed the rest of the night until I said, hey, we're closing down and then we'll start back up again in the morning. And then I just stayed the rest of the time. So the first couple of days, I was trying to get the lay of the land. So I was more of a runner. The neighbor that I was with, she was talking to the commissary manager. We brought commissary carts over. So that's how I started running from the front side of the room and the back side of the room. So the front side would just be the sorting part. They would screen sort and then I would run or transport them to the back. And the back side was much bigger. They had tables laid out and labeled so that all of the clothes that were already sorted according to their sizes and stuff would go straight to that category. So eventually it got to a point where someone needed help in the back and I guess I don't know how I got myself there, but I just ended up taking lead in making sure certain items go to where they were at. I would make sure that the front was communicated.  And then she would communicate that with her front people. So pretty much that's what it was. It was organization and communication. So brand new to the base, I would say about a good couple months. This is our first duty station here. So meeting people, it's different. So just to meet them and in flocks of them, it was super nice. Talking to them on a daily basis, especially for the ones that kept coming consistently, getting to know everyone personally. So it's not just within everyone's unit. So it's a mix of stuff. So even high schoolers, all that. It's making sure that we're all going for the same cause, making sure that these people, whatever the uniform people say, right? So if they need this and they say we need help, that's what we do. So it's more of like not just the military support, but it's also for these special travelers here that also got what they need and that they're covered for too. I'm the webmaster and also the person sharing the information on social media, mostly on the spouse page. And I collaborate with the first sergeant council who manages the Facebook page for the first sergeant council. And we try to have the same information all at the same time and basically pushing everybody to our website so that there's no mixed information about our needs and the closing and opening time. Are you a civilian employee? I am a spouse. My husband's Andrew Wilderen and he was the one who started the donation process. And I accidentally got pulled into this and I thought it was supposed to be just a couple of days and it became into a big thing and I just feel like I need to stick to it and see it through. Okay. So the other task that I do is when emails come in from the website or if there are questions from Facebook because at the end it feels like I was the name that people would contact as a point of contact for just asking general question, is this accepted, is this not accepted, where can I donate this and so forth. So fielding emails, if I receive something and it's not something I can answer, I have all the point of contacts. I have majors, lieutenant colonels and my husband and I would just forward them to who I think would be able to answer the question. But for the most part they're general questions that I was able to answer but that's mostly web mastering, PR work and email responding. So the impact I see is that we're able to provide needed items for those who came from a place where leaving your home and you only have maybe a small suitcase or even nothing with you and we're able to provide a bit of clothing, a bit of comfort for the children, a bit of fun and hopefully that will help them during the waiting process and be able to go to their final destination. Probably the most memorable moment is during the peak time when everybody seems to be coming at once. I think at one point the one week was 20,000, 16, I don't know, a lot of thousands of people and just the rush of trying to gather everything and I think the best part was the community support that it doesn't matter what your beliefs are, who you are, everybody's just coming in to donate, to volunteer their time and just reaching out to do whatever they can to help people they don't know, just our guests and that was I think the most memorable thing for me and personally just being able to know these people, some of these people personally and making friendship.