It is 6.30. I'm going to be Gavling the meeting into order First order of businesses and executive session to and possibly three issues that we've done for the session So first order of businesses there a motion I'll move to find that premature public knowledge regarding a labor relations agreement with employees and civil living litigation Would clearly place the town at a substantial disadvantage and further move that we enter executive session to discuss a labor relations agreement with employees And civil litigation under title one sections 3 1 3 a 1 b and e of the Vermont statutes and invite time manager Eric Wells to join both Discussions and planning director Matt Boulanger and town attorney bariah Smith join the discussion concerning litigation Is there a second? Any discussion all those in favor say aye Opposed nay the eyes have it. We are in executive session. No modifications all those in favor of accepting the minutes say aye All those opposed nay nice have it next on the agenda public comment that the public Make comments and speak on any issue whether it's on the agenda or not Is there anybody in the room that wishes to make public comment if I yourself for the record? Yes Thank you. I'm William Buford. I'm the local president of the police union any PPA local 409s I just had a memo that I wish to read is thoughts and expressions of I do have copies if you guys would like them in wake of The budget defeats which have rocked Wilson and other towns throughout Vermont. We think the select board and manager Wells For putting in the diligent work necessary to bring this town forward the members of the union understand the nuanced choices made to propose the town's budget And understands the cuts that may be necessary to revise the budget in order for it to pass This process is arduous and labor-intensive and there's no way around it Before I start I would like to highlight that I am the second most senior patrol officer with seven years of service to the town of Wilson Three of our four supervisors and our chief are encroaching on retirement And we have one officer with 13 years of service one with five years of service two with four one with three One with one and two officers with less than a year of service to the town of Wilson But that being said I strongly urge the select board Members to avoid if possible to make cuts to public safety We understand that these cuts are going to be necessary, but this town is growing and developing at an exponential rate In the amount of residences in the amount of businesses and the associated traffic volumes associated with both This means that call volume in public safety is increasing in tandem with that said growth Historically we've seen on average about an increase of 10% in calls a year over the previous year Last year from January to April 2nd. Our call volume was up 47% over 2022. I Don't have the figures for this year yet That increase of last year was also while we were understaffed and we have been understaffed for the whole year in 2023 The town contracted as third own Police staffing level study in the last 30 years and the fourth study to address the police staffing If we include the 2009 regional police study conducted by a Chittin regional planning Commission Each of these studies have consistently highlighted the need for greater staffing levels These studies all outlined the benefits and trends that occur with adequate staffing in the latest study Worn about the pitfalls of ignoring this data We worry that a misstep of the failed initial budget proposal will be akin to not acting on any of the recommendations or any of the data from these studies This part is particularly frustrating Post COVID amidst the period dubbed the great resignation Where stress and fatigue is affecting all careers, but is especially rampant among first responders Headlines across the country read recruiting woes or retention issues But I assure you these are the least ominous ones Others reference deaths in the line of duty or current suicide rates. I Struggle considering cuts among public safety after the last two years of hard work Strengthening retention and morale in the police department. This work started with the members But was propelled by the the work of manager Wells and this select board. I Fear that cutting the public safety budget will limit the equipment that is desperately needed Inhibit growth of the department causing a stagnation of personal development for an otherwise young membership and cause fatigue to grow again But worse. I fear is That it will look like we have undone the support from the that this town has managed to retain employees and Draw applicants during this hard time. I worry that morale will take a downward trend Which will compound on all other problems. Lastly, I worry although making cuts to public safety may be an option Doing so will send a clear message to those working in this field and one that we may not recover from Again, the members of this union are aware of the challenges that the select board is facing But please keep in mind and consider everything I've outlined here. I hope that we can work together in unison To move the town forward in the right direction. If there's any questions or anything Don't hesitate to reach out. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions from the board right now? Yes, you know, thank you for highlighting, you know the challenges of being a First responder, what can we do as select board members to help you retain officers and make your Improve morale, you know, what what can we do in here to help you? I Think the last two years has been a good showing of At least a good start a good baseline, but I think that's a very nuanced topic that I could spend At least an hour on itself At the very least if you guys wanted any personal input were always open for Ride-alongs we love love to have people jump in cruisers and see what we're doing Immediately I think I'd be afraid if we were doing it right along we'd be making your job that much harder Absolutely not Thank you very very much need to leave a coffee. Are there any other Public comments for tonight Eric's anybody online? No, no one online. Okay Next on the agenda Chittenden County Communications Union District update Yep, whoever representative Mike Vance will take the lead here, but just to remind the public and the board This is a communications union district at the town and I think seven other communities voted to 2022 this is a separate government entity working to create universal broadband access utilizing funds from Community broadband board the towns the CUD itself has received I think over two million dollars in state ARPA funding for this work Mike are Representative he has chaired the CUD for the last year. They're getting into a critical phase here and Provide an update this evening and get some feedback from the select board This is a completely separate government that the town is a part of the town doesn't have a financial Risk in this as it's a separate separate Thank you Well, I believe you all got at least a small packet that kind of outlines where we're at for brevity's sake The the point of that was that we have come to a kind of crossroads as a group And that is to whether or not to award a small portion of money to consolidated and go forward or to make no award and publicly Back a larger bid that consolidated would make when the beef funding comes out next year For if you don't know bead is the big government handout It's two hundred forty nine million dollars to the state of Vermont forty two billion nationally That's nowhere near enough money to build all broadband to all homes or even all rural addresses in Vermont But it's a big chunk of them Chittenden County and our members are in a in a very unique state Compared to everybody else. We have almost no rural underserved customers As I outlined it's a roughly seven hundred or so addresses so the amount of money we have from the ARPA funds is very small and The bead funding would also be very small. It would require considerable extra funds to even build to those and We have no fundraising mechanism and we've not undertaken to be a business like some of the larger CUDs There's it's not feasible So where we're at in this crossroad is some of the towns want certain guarantees and There's a obligation of universal service that if we start handing out money and getting involved in There's no definite answer as to how you get out of that and We will be out of money by the end of 2025 with our pre-construction grant and we have no revenue generation built into the system the VCBV is not clear and Thus some of the members don't want to take The risk because even though like Eric said there is no financial obligation to the town The fear is ending up in a situation that say like Burlington telecom ended up in now They did some spectacularly unethical things, but in the sense that There are some CUDs that have already gone into the private capital equity markets through bond funding because they've already overspent and Underdelivered because this is an expensive proposition and going it alone Once you get started, it's hard to stop. So From that standpoint, you know, we've all decided as a board, you know, we're at this point where we have to make some decision and They're looking for feedback in terms of well, how does How does the town see knowing what you're now into what we could deliver versus what that risk might be And that's the unfortunate thing. There's no certainties here So that's where we find ourselves That's the update. We'll have to make a decision of some sort if I were to gamble I'd say we're probably leaning to Probably back a larger scale bead fund than to award the ARPA funds and that will alleviate us from any sort of Financial burden or oversight burden because as long as we don't start we have no requirement of universal service For for the Will Estonian at large for people who live in neighborhoods like I do in Southridge Brentwoods any crossing They will see no benefit of this because they are already considered served. That's none of this funds can be used to Do that if a carrier like a Comcast or consolidated chooses with their own money to do that They certainly can but those are arduous costs Above and beyond what they're trying to do to fill the the needs of people who are underserved For towns like in the Northeast Kingdom. That's where the money is going These are rural people who have no service now and thus they are underserved and they get larger and larger share of this this pot So in that standpoint, you know, not to belabor it, but how do you know, we're looking to see how the board sees Williston's kind of role in this and how they would See us proceeding So how many how many did you say? Addresses weren't served in your in the overall of the eight towns. It's roughly 700 Plus it's hard to be definite because the number is based on the state broadband map And that map is a product of every e9 one address combined with an overlay of every existing service provider services Number of things end up as the 9-1-1 addresses that are not places people live and thus you have to filter that out and That's a that's an arduous task itself It's one of the reasons things have been slow You're trying to mesh these maps and we haven't engaged that because Making less addresses actually reduces your money and it's it's manual tedious work to do So and it's not worth the money. We have to pay a consultant to do it So the also the upper money that you do have is not Enough to address all 700 and you're afraid that when you run out of that money Well that money. Yeah, I should have some way The estimates are for Chittenden County. It's somewhere north of 20 to 22 million dollars So that the 2 million we have is 10% from our from the from the one partner That's even got the feasibility to do this it's it's like Dangling a piece of bread to a shark. It's irrelevant. It's irrelevant million dollars for 700 addresses mm-hmm Rough estimates at the broadband build if you're building telecommunications network new build Take a customer times $6,000 six to ten thousand and then hope they don't have a very long drop That's what's undone most of the state work is that in places of the Northeast Kingdom people have very very long driveways Then you figure like a dollar a foot and if it's buried it's $28 a foot These are these are inordinate costs to do this and that's Where the money doesn't go as far as you think So It's easier if we were all pressed up against each other Because then for every mile you go you get a lot of customers Exactly, but I mean in any and that's how it kind of unfortunately, it's a volume play So yeah, but it's 700 not all of those customers are in Williston the bulk the bulk of them are in Underhill and Jericho, that's where the primary the largest is there is a fair bit in Williston So it's spread out Williston, South Burlington Essex and then Westford There's another chunk in Westford and as we do nothing at the moment Consolidated as you've seen along the roads and stuff They've been out building anyways and that's something that happened after the CUD process kind of kicked off I think consolidated was motivated to get into this market for fear of losing To something else. So that's a that's something that changed the landscape of all this in the first place I don't usually like to have opinions when I know all of seven minutes worth of information But it's a it's a really boring and complex topic even drop in the bucket and you know You're gonna need a whole lot more money I would be as it feels like you guys are too very hesitant to put my toe in that water until you have it I mean if you were telling me it was gonna take three million and you only have two that would be a different story But if it's gonna take 20 and you only have to the problem is is the people who we need they need to build to Are the end of the line? Sure. So you have to build everybody else who get to the end of the line So if you're from a standpoint of them, they're not going to pass these people and do nothing So there is you know, you have to do all this to get and that's where the cost kind of If we were talking 700 people a little on like a neighborhood then two million might get you near it But not in the way this lays it out geography works against us Be cheaper to give them all a Starlink subscription Yeah, and that's also a been a player That's changed the landscape However, the state the Vermont communications of vcbb and those groups do not view fixed wireless as Meeting the bead fund the bead grant will you minimum of 100 meg over 100 meg and Starlink can't deliver that It's been purposely written to kind of push out fixed wireless There's a view that it There's some work the vcbb and their their goals are different than say just getting people broadband There's there's a larger kind of social Play here.  We wouldn't have these districts. We wouldn't do all that stuff But nevertheless, this is where we are but people do take up Starlink and That is also shut cuts the numbers down because even though you build it doesn't mean people actually buy it Take rates are around 20 percent. I'm working for other CUDs Up in the Northeast Kingdom CVC V fiber maple broadband. They're building to a hundred percent of the addresses, but the take rate 17 to 25 percent So you you spend all that money and then they need a return because they're building that You know, so it's it's just because you bring it doesn't you know, it's not the field of dreams They don't come so That's where we're at and that's the the risk we feel we don't want to expose the two But we recognize in doing nothing. There are some optics that Publicly people go you had this money. Why didn't you do it and that's a fair criticism and that's where we're at So what are you looking for from us? Just whatever the general opinion was and no opinion is an opinion. It's it's a very very Difficult thing to kind of wrap your head around if it's not something you do so but it's just you know, this is From the standpoint of the Willis and residents the number of addresses a number are in construction Anyways, whether we get everybody in construction will only happen if Probably if someone like consolidated gets a grant because the one thing the grants do is they kind of force the hand of the provider Into building everything without a grant. They will probably build some over time But they will they will skip the most difficult and expensive addresses just because that's the way it happens and So we wouldn't you know, I saw even in front porch forum this week Someone was asking you know about it and I didn't I don't comment yet on those things because I don't have a Specific answer to give people but if I were to give it publicly is always like go to consolidated's website and sign up Anyways, put your address on the list They're they're a very simple creature. They see addresses the more the addresses they see the more money They know they can make they'll make a business case for it so Anyways, that's where we're at Definitely a difficult position, I mean and I really So grateful to to all of you on the board for kind of piecing through this because You know, I do feel that broadband access is imperative in this day and age and You know the reason we Wanted to form the CUD in the first place was because we recognized that and we really wanted to support the efforts To get you know, not just willow stone ins but you know all all folks, you know in the area That that access It does not sound like right now though that with the ARPA funding that that is going to be a reality And so if the ARPA funds could do it to all the unserved addresses in one shot I think the board would be more Less concerned about getting started. It's the lack of certainty. They're because Weirdly this the the community district now has to fulfill a role of oversight We have to become a layer above the Vermont Department of Public Service and there isn't a pathway To not be that oversight and that's the problem is financially. We have built no revenue into this system There's no, you know, we're not like any K broadband which collects a portion of the bill that goes to them actually have operating capital Without revenue We can't you know, they you essentially exist in a level of customer service Someone says oh my broadband is slow and you said it was fast and when the company said when the company says no It's fine and they disagree that's when they go typically to the Department of Public Service, but The the district is forced into the middle of those two things once they've once they've established a grant and handed it out and There isn't a clear path To an end there, you know, they haven't said ultimately the part the there's still legislation being written This is a bit of a flying airplane with no wings and they're building the wings as they go Analogies aren't so great, but There isn't there isn't a clear specific road map to how this is going to go they're kind of figuring out as they go and Because we don't have a revenue model in place There's almost there's it's hard to get started because we dip our toe and and we own it Whereas if we just sit back and write a letter of support That'll the the onus will be on the the operating company that takes that grant and that might be a better place for us But if that, you know, that would have been something if you had read that pack I said, you know what do it anyways and most everyone has kind of taken the money and done it anyways That everyone's kind of full speed ahead, you know, damn the torpedoes not worrying about it It's that's something we've taken. You know, we have our next annual meet our next meeting is our annual meeting That's you know, if someone you know, something's got to shake the tree To get people to kind of go, okay, we're good. We're going to do something Good luck You want help spending that arpa money we have some ideas True I bet that the moment if no award is given it does go back to the VCB be which it's absorbed into the larger And and it will be used believe me But you know that will be used for the kind of greater good but not in the town good, you know What does the CCC UD acronym? Chittany County Community Union District lots of C's When you're talking about the Northeast Kingdom and things. Oh, yeah, there's they each one has its own name There's about eight or nine of them Yeah, I mean it's a tough tough decision for you all Don't admire you having to make that That call, but you know, obviously You know, we're C statewide that, you know, physically, you know There's a there's enough momentum in this in the system that I think they're going to get there anyways And that the bead money will be a enormous leap forward when that comes out In 2025 and I think everyone will get there one way or the other but I but partially when everyone voted there was kind of this idea that We voted for this we've chosen it and tomorrow it will happen and Even if even if the all the money was there tomorrow, it won't be happening I mean at the company I work for we've been trying to build all our customers And I've heard will be done in five years for the last 10 years So it is it it's very very difficult to Visit every home in vermont And with You know, this is like doing it all over again You know that took a hundred years to do the first time It's not going to happen in two years totally unfair to even ask this but So the the bead grant money comes out in 2025 What's a hypothetical timeline for that grant to them? So yeah, so the beads the bead grant will have um You know, there'll be the bidding process and awarding process that'll probably move about pretty quickly The vcbb is the kind of the is the writer of the rules the rules have to be approved approved nationally and they'll hand that money out and For companies that apply they'll have to have skin in the game So the onus on them will be to provide realistic timelines In the timelines we were working with With the kind of proposal we have now Half of it would have been ready for For installation availability of customers sort of towards the middle to end of 2025 as it sits and then I would imagine You know 2026 2027 kind of timeframe The the goal of the vcbb and again the whole five-year thing when they started was to have everyone built by 2028 They have a kind of a built-in self-destruct mechanism on the vcbb that I believe by 2028. They're not funded past that so It's an unrealistic goal, but that is kind of where their goal. That's where their minds were thinking that Everybody in the state would be done by 2028 I they won't get there But they'll be closer than than they've ever been ever And it is a bit of a moonshot and in the 25 years I've been doing this There's never been kind of the funds for rural broadband like it there. It has been now so I don't think every person Will have the service available to them, but you will never have had a time where they we were that close before And that's where we say So that does bring us to the next fiscal year 2025 budget revote development discussions Um I could ask you to make an introduction to that Yep Yeah, um, probably the provided the board a memo that walks through a number of topics So kind of what we have lined up tonight. I'll go over timeline initially for for some discussion I'll walk through Kind of the scenario exercise we put together with some different benchmarks Look at some possible reductions at a high level here We have invited both of our public safety chiefs to provide the board of the public with an update on Demand for services and provide reminders kind of how how operations flow in those departments So we'll have we'll have that and then thought is after after that the board will get into a discussion and the staff's looking for direction to kind of narrow in on on the target here to to help this budget Revote proposal get formulated here So it's kind of what we have outlined for this evening So I can kick things off. We're kind of talking about timeline at this point. I First page of your memo kind of goes through what we talked about last meeting. Um, we're here on equal second Kind of talking about this narrowing the targets getting some more direction the staff Then thinking if you want to meet next week for a for a special meeting to kind of work and get things kind of In a point where you'd like to have a public hearing on that draft for april 16th and then Following that public hearing hold a special Brief select board meeting most likely later that week Kind of your final work following that public hearing on the 16th Then the board needed to take formal action to sign the warning So we would prepare that with whatever the final number looks like and then thinking about Potential mid-may revote And there's flexibility on on these dates. We we looked at the 13th and 14th The auditorium at the school is available on the 13th. So I saved it for then and Received word today that the armory is available on the 14th So those those are just placeholders for start discussion off here A couple logistics. I was talking to the town clerk about this more So the timeline you think town meeting we usually have the ballots you feed in the tabulator You have to get those printed There's a high demand for printing ballots right now just on a number of school budges Especially that are they're looking for official votes We're waiting to hear from them kind of what their truncated timeline is but To think about that logistically there needs to be lead time to print those ballots if you want to go that route The other option is you can do a paper ballot It's a simple check. Yes or no, but those have to be hand counted as as that so Probably more feasible if it's just a one vote, right? Just the budget. I don't know. We haven't had the discussion But I haven't you know if we decided to postpone both bonds It you know, yes. No vote on one vote is pretty easy to tabulate Yeah, yeah, so It was there kind of logistically the option to schedule the space and get the things to run an election Yeah, they're just as as all part of this kind of a nuts and bolts So maybe I'll either pause there if you want to discuss timeline now we can Get that out there as well Due to timeline You the decision between the 9th and the 10th for next week was We said the 10th was preferable or the 9th. I can't remember Yeah, the the drb has a meeting scheduled in here on the 9th We we tried to find a suitable location for them to move and haven't had a huge success with that We're answering other conflicts. So um, if you the board was able to meet next wednesday You can meet in here and the drb could keep their meeting here It's your prerogative. Um, if you you'd rather meet tuesday the drb can cancel their meeting or try to try to find a location that works I just have to let them know by tomorrow The first question is do we um, do we force the drb to move because we want the room? Or do we uh, do we actually just choose another day? Um, so it's kind of 10th works for me Yeah, and in my opinion we're either either we get to be bullies for no reason or just choose another day It's a close call If this was the public hearing i'd want to keep it on a tuesday, but since it's a work session, I think i'm okay Wednesday will work for me No, I think all the other issues that are relative to the budget are probably going to be that easy Is this what we just did there on the timeline? I do I have a little bit of a concern with the um, the vote on the 14th because If the school district does not get a passing vote on the april 16th, they're likely to be the 14th another vote for them as well. Um, and I just The amount of confusion with voters trying to separate the two pieces of their property taxes I would I would be reluctant to have that vote on the same day That's my only concern with And we can't go later because the problem is they probably would prefer to be out a week or two But they're not going to cause the town to have two votes in 10 days, you know, they'll they'll they'll pull it in so If we push if we push our vote, I mean like you have to pull it We I mean it would be even if we pushed it to the 21st or something I don't think you pull it in because they couldn't possibly be ready on the right So we would have to do seven. Yeah Yeah, if you you look for the 7th and thinking kind of that week at the 16th, I mean You can make a final call Seeing how the school what happens on the 16th with the school budget as as part of the information for finalizing your warning And whether it's the 7th or the say it's a week earlier on the 7th That just truncates things. Um, just for the the outreach component. You still have About two and a half weeks away after warning it for The public outreach component of it Depending what we learned for getting the printed ballots back You might get a little a little bit closer on that and may need to just weigh the the hand vote, but All these are factors to think about here the hand vote would be an option So the 7th would be an option. I I agree with jean I I I feel that we really need to work hard to separate the school budget vote Um from our town budget vote And that means pushing that up to the 7th, but then Then I feel like that's what's in our best interest For our town budget Maybe we could see how far we get next week and if it's you know, if we're pretty if we're pretty well done You know what then ready to go that would be more feasible if we're really struggling then Maybe it's not feasible Yeah, I know the board had talked about holding a public hearing before finalizing the warning so deciding if you still wanted to build that component in if Kind of how though how this time I would We can We can make any, you know on a staff standpoint. We I think we can make the 7th or the 14th Your objective how you want they want to proceed and we wait I mean would it be too late to wait until the 16th to make that decision? I mean is that If we Wait in to see how the school board their school budget vote goes on the 16th to make that decision We are meeting that night People can go vote and they can come to our public hearing Yeah, I mean I'm guessing we will not have any, you know by the time we're meeting on the 16th will not have the final decision there but I think part of it is You know deciding how far advanced you want the public to know the date is set If you wanted to wait until that week to decide on the 7th or 14th depending on the other outcome That's a two and a half weeks to the 7th from That point or three weeks to the 7th from that night But you know it could be We could communicate the best Right away, right? Yeah, we won't have a number, but you could communicate the intent Right. Yeah, so I think you can make that that option exists that week in the 16th, you know make that call after seeing what the school budget What happens there? You know we We can we can get the warning everything in place that needs to happen It's more of what do you want to do from noticing the public and the time might you want for How does the willis in school auditorium, you know is being reserved on the 13th? Is that A flexible date. Yeah, good question. We'll hand the armory to I guess more importantly than the auditorium Yeah, we we haven't inquired that yet. We can do that tomorrow I mean, maybe we can make I mean I'd like to know how the school budget is going to go, but maybe Just in terms of timeline for getting word out We could make that decision as you mentioned like maybe next week Um as we're working through this Yeah, yeah Do you you want no results of the school? Uh vote vote until Probably late of the 16th right after coming the ballots. Yeah So Maybe it just makes more sense to just next week see if we can we're making progress enough to have a vote on the Let's let's hope to do that, but if not we can make the decision the week after that We'll check it out I could always look at other locations but that people are used to that Yeah, I get concerned about changing locations and not giving people So now I can jump in the numbers a little bit and I'll Share my screen for this year's to me I really appreciate you went above and beyond the ask too in terms of Not a problem So the the board task staff at its last meeting to kind of run different threshold scenarios to I mentioned I had a Two or three and then we we pulled some other scenarios here as well just to show different ranges Um, so I'll get into the uh, the spreadsheet in a minute I kind of talked about the progression what we put together there But this on page two of the memo is kind of the snapshot of what these different threshold scenarios look like so this table our FY 24 budget is here And these are different bottom possible bottom lines of the budget So the number that wasn't supported at town meeting was the 15.35 So this next column talks about a percent reduction from that town meeting budget And that's on the expense side of the budget. It's a different percentage points here At the bottom, um, you know We request from the board to show what a level funded budget would be So we did that both for a dollar's amount and an inflation amount 12 month inflation cpi february to february was about 2.4 percent. So that built that in theirs from a From a uh, a scenario standpoint So then the next column looks at okay, what does that mean in dollars for reduction? Then we go back to Compared to the f y 24 budget what percentage increase are these different scenarios? So these are called 9.84 percent increase in comparison was our what was uh, considered a town meeting day Then there's associated dollar increase with with each of those as well so I I shared this and um I'll get into we'll go into revenue in a minute here. It just uh Gives you kind of an idea of dollars wise and percentage wise what what each of these are talking about. Um what I'm Asking the board to consider tonight is to kind of hone in on what what range target work we're looking at It's a expense and a revenue Well, I'll get back to that So what what we did as an attachment As we put together kind of all pop some possible reductions Um To be thinking about and what we did is I worked with department heads would with surely To look at things that um, would be possible to to defer Trying to have a limit on on service the best we could you know a lot Some of these things are certainly capital equipment thinking about that if we could get a little more time out of some equipments as well Looking at our different spending lines Tried to get around one and a half percent for each department or or so there's a couple variances of smaller departments different things here, but So we've flagged um I'll say as part of this list there there's some things in reviewing the budget that I want to bring to the board's attention I know that you may not be the most popular decisions. I'm not recommending one way or the other for these but just to Flag with spending reductions. I've included um the fireworks on the 4th of july. That's a cost of over 12 000 Could look at donations potentially for that as an an alternative to think about Wilson and bloom landscaping flower planting around town is about 10 000 We also have outside services the Community organizations funds that that's granted out. We have 32 000. We increased that line about 2000 this year Those are the small grants to nonprofits that the board's committee awards each year Lake Iroquois we provide them 10 000 and that's primarily helping with their reader program It's a state program for for the boat wash and from the reader down there So just to clarify that's that's not just somebody saying hi, this is a great lake That's somebody who's Looking at hey is your boat clean you're not going to bring Foreign species from your boat into the water. Yep trying to curb the spread of invasives in which that lake certainly has had Had a conservative invasive species Then bring up the environmental reserve fund again. It's uh 40 000 in the budget currently Discussion on that throughout the budget formation process, but Raise that as As a number as a point of discussion But for the I'd say the other items on here. We've worked at the staff level and Company worked with department heads that these are things that that could be backed out of out of the budget as you as you look at this So this includes the debt service that those two bonds that were not approved the town meeting We're talking about you know A bond is a way the town takes on debt and it wouldn't be that expense wouldn't be hitting our budget And it's a it's a repayment of of that debt So that first year we would have just made a key and interest payment on those two bonds that they were supported Of about 20 000 so We can back that out if the board's not not planning to have those revotes at this juncture Or to think about if you're you're thinking about maybe putting one back up in november we could leave some money in there, but Smaller details as you think through this So all those parts at the top of the spreadsheet is just over 300 000 dollars And those are things I mentioned like the fireworks and those other reserve funds I think if you back those items out I highlight it here 220 000 reduction just to start with those other items Then we talked about the new major items in the budget. Those were new positions The 18th sworn police officer for half the year The intent there would be once that was fully staffed to Move someone into detective role from an incumbent officer We're down two positions right now. We're hoping we can we can fill those and I think most likely scenario is getting someone in the Two folks in the police academy in august We need to hire someone to to be trained through the academy. There's a february academy. So That may be the timeline we're we're looking at but we would need funding for that that 18th position to to have them in the academy there HR director position we Pudgeted that for october 1st start date The board removes that from the budget. I'm just thinking about maybe building in something left for some additional consultant hours for to aid in HR as as we Look at that future and also the police body cameras and Leslie's little taser devices with a lease payment built into the operating budget as well another another major item Those major items in there just over 200 000 in the budget and then As you get into looking at these different scenarios and benchmarks You have to start thinking about services at a certain point if we're talking about a level funded budget or an inflation budget or even cutting five seven percent from the operating budget we can Do this look look at the first some things but at a certain point There's only so much you can do before you need to scale back your services in order to hit those those funding benchmarks So it's for illustration as Looking at scenarios if the board were to decrease the cola To non represented staff by a half a percent. It's about 17 500 dollars for each half percent reduction there We budgeted five and a half percent Similar to the to the step cola structure. We have collected bargaining agreements in town for consistency Delay filling open positions right now just as an example open positions the fire department if you delay that the first quarter $85,000 in savings. I'm not recommending we do that. It's just just showing an example as you think about further levels of reduction And then finally if you're talking about reducing services by eliminating staff positions Each staff position We've run kind of a blended estimate number, but the benchmark to use is about 95 96 thousand dollars per FTE That includes salary benefits retirements payroll taxes kind of a fully loaded position So if if the board were to look at you know for the level funded option of keeping the same bottom line dollar amount We had from last year. We're talking about Reduced it by everything on this spreadsheet To get to that number you probably reduce the town staffing level by eight full-time employees to get there And that certainly creates a different service delivery environment Just to illustrate it Based on those that's an area of discussion so I'll I'll just briefly go go through kind of the the revenue side as well Reminder a cent on our tax rate raises about 215 thousand dollars in property taxes We're projecting a flat grand list growth in FY 25 as well for a number of reasons We've reviewed the revenue budget. We're not suggesting any additional revenue be projected for services right now As a reminder, we increase our local option tax revenue by about 500 thousand dollars after we analyzed our prior years actual receipts looking how to build that projection And it's only a look back for those local option tax as well We don't have the data from the tax department to help model looking for we kind of use that What we've seen in recent quarters and helped build in a growth factor as well Halfway through this fiscal year. We've brought in about two million dollars in local option tax And we currently budget about 4.1 for FY 25 If there's ever a shortfall on this local option tax received the fund balance would likely need to account for that shortfall Depending on other factors as well if there were under spent years Our fund balance our latest audits about 3.6 million dollars We try to project out what we're going to use from that for this fiscal year next fiscal year We try to have a rough estimate if you if the town did need to use all of that conservatively what would be left And our that estimate is the ratio is about 16 and a half percent There I thought um the audit was ended up maybe you just said this I just heard it a different way But we ended up like a hundred thousand dollars better Yep So we could apply a hundred thousand dollars and be making the same decision we did two months ago kind of as far as What's left? Yeah, we uh the fund balance grew the under sign fund balance grew by about a thousand dollars Look in the shortly She's going to tell me it was 92 But if but if it was a hundred and we were comfortable with it before we could be make the same decision to be comfortable of a hundred additional hundred Okay, yeah, but and just every year's different too Yeah, just as as a benchmark always just went through and we also projected in this number Additional local option tax then budgeted to help build that into this to this carry forward for the for the fund balance ahead Okay It's based on the health of the box stores as well, correct Well, this was a update to the Looking backwards. So right so the assumption that We didn't have an audit when we made the first guess. So now it's better going forward. Yes. It's based on the health of all rest And that's um, you know, it's used to budget a deficit which the townhouse for many years towns budgeted Revenue from the fund balance To be used to balance the budget historically used about at least a half a million dollars each year for tax reduction that's gone a little bit up and down the last couple years, but We've gotten the cycle where we've brought in more local option tax And we haven't had to use that fund balance that fund balance is still there It's a rainy day fund. It's it's a tool for the board to think about but it's it's ultimately one-time money You know been in the cycle a little bit right now, but it's It is a finite account that can go up and down. So just to factor that and do you think from a policy level? But just to be clear, we're not changing any policy decision We just have a hundred thousand dollars of found money that we could apply to our big problem that we have right in front of us right now Yes, the policy decision is what you want the range, right? And what your common level is actually what is our fund balance policies between 10 and 20 percent 10 and 20 percent of the operating of the operating but right now it's 16 and a half or so and You know this model is I can put on the screen. We make assumptions with this too So there's the audited statement. There's what we budgeted in fy 24 our current budget year for tax reduction We've transferred that on the capital So that gets us to our estimated fund balance for june So then we built in an additional 350 000 for local option tax revenue over budget Other moving pieces built in and then Oh, actually 200 000 per the audit is what the increase was So what we did here is the local we know we had budgeted. I think was 3.6 million dollars for local option tax and 2 million and halfway through the year we felt it's comfortable to build in that projection a little bit more so then what we try to do is So what we think it's going to be at the end of this fiscal year And then reduce it by what we've put in the budget and then to see where we'd be at the end of 25 And this is where we haven't had to use these funds for the tax relief in prior years because we bring in the Moral local option tax or where we've understood So it so it grows So we take this as a conservative approach to try to model this a year and a half Ahead of time then we take this number and run it towards the budget proposal to get that ratio to give you what that looks like So there's a lot of moving pieces that could happen here This is just a model, but try to help you from a policy perspective think You know, where could this go if we had to use all of it in the budget? and just all of it more if we Didn't get the local option tax revenue projected as well But to your point if we if we That hundred thousand dollars we you know We had already kind of established that we were comfortable with it being at 16 percent And so if we used that hundred thousand dollars We'd still be at 16.4 percent And that's a hundred thousand dollars. We don't need to take from somewhere else Property taxes like yeah, so You know right there we can add that in and say That's a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah Yeah, you got it Nobody wants to do this, but we don't want to be cutting personality there. So, you know I I don't really consider the fund balance. I know what you're saying when you say it's one time money But it kind of isn't too. I mean one time money was arpa money that Or or a grant that is a one-time grant that you use to hire employees, which is a really bad idea This isn't that I mean this is this is a This is a balance that goes up and down depending on what the sales tax and and all the other local options tax is not just That It's it's hard to predict And it's therefore should not be relied on but it's not to say that You know, it doesn't get replenished. You know, sometimes it's more than we thought it would be sometimes It's less than we thought it would be so it's it's not the same as taking like arpa money and saying okay We're going to spend this on on salaries. Yeah Yeah, and the way I've looked at the last couple years too is to think okay We're we're using this for budgeting a deficit and we're plugging in this from the fund balance so Say depending where the fund balance level is You don't want to keep that same amount the next year say we had six hundred thousand dollars and then Okay, this is dip below that ratio. We only want to put four hundred thousand dollars in there this year But to balance the budget that was built in so there's a two hundred thousand dollar gap in that revenue source That would have to be made up somewhere else whether through property taxes or expense reductions So just using it as a as a balancing mechanism in the budget it can you can have those variances So that has to be picked up somewhere else It sounds like you're recommending not to use it No, I I think you know, it is a rainy day fund for the town. I'd say this is a a stormy situation It's just it's a comfort level for the board within your your policy And just knowing that these things can affect the future. But you know, what degree of risk do you want to take to? What type of risk does the town have that we have a storm and we have a lot of You know Water damage and we need some extra money One of the chances during the course of a year that we And it's that bad and there's no FEMA money. I'd say slim Right. I mean you have a two million dollar problem in your town There's probably money coming at you. I mean a lot of our towns are dealing with that right now, so I mean, I think I've been very clear that I Feel most comfortable when our fund balance is closer to that 20 percent But I think this is extenuating circumstances right now. So Yeah, and I would support Putting in that extra $100,000 So then this is to close out the numbers here looking at it from a from a taxation standpoint This table in your memo looks you know our current rates 30.3362 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value for that median home Value is 300,000 in town Our 20 f by 24 current year median home taxes thousand and eight dollars for that home or 84 per month Each cent the rate increases is about 30 dollars per year for the same median home or about 250 So this kind of polls here looking at the overall budget increase year to year What that expense reduction from the town meeting budget would be and then just replacing that Looking what the tax rate would need to be if your expenses are going down You won't need to raise as much in taxes if you're just looking at on a you know a one-to-one ratio right here And there is a typo here. This 2.4 percent was really a million dollars. I just I transposed the number so the expense reduction is uh This number But so for the board's exercise say you wanted to have a two cent tax rate increase target for next year. So that's this column So increase the taxes two cents. That would be the estimated rate the amount raised by taxes That would mean you need to reduce the spending side of the budget 435,000 or a combination of Expense reductions and new revenue sources. So if you're talking about using more from the fund balance or Option tax projection. That's where that gets baked in here Your magic numbers for in 35,000 to get there So Looking for your your direction tonight kind of are where you want to land those attributes and I can pause here and turn things over to our public safety chiefs to to walk through their their presentations Have a discussion That'd be good You know those in eclipse one thing What Things are getting dark The good thing is i'm not a novice in budgets This was my 38th one right 40 i've done in the last 37 years as a police chief and i've had the ups and downs and The failed budgets and going back to the drawing board, but What we're going to do tonight myself and sergeant eric shepard Just over the past year what we've been doing and highlight our call. We've been doing what the brown walls are As mentioned earlier, you know The police detectives position that has much discussion is already in the budget. It's already not Chain of command that position's been there for years. What we do is when we're moving somebody into a Position that's vacant. We need to backfill that position. So that's what the 18th position is We currently have as as mentioned is that Authorized strength is 17 positions. We have myself the chief We have vacant lieutenants position that we're in the process of filling within the next month Four patrol sergeants and then complimented by patrol officers and to include our comfort door person Each day shift we try to comprise of a sergeant Plus three officers at different times of the day The beginning part of the week, which is monday tuesday wednesday and every other Monday something monday tuesday and every other wednesday Two officers come in at seven one comes in at eight and then one comes at 11 They were 12 hour shifts at the other part of the week the wednesday there's a friday and saturday and every You know Thursday friday and saturday it starts three people come in at 7 a.m. Then we have a third Of course it comes at 11 so we have overlapping shifts and then the night shift is covered by a sergeant On the beginning part of the week the sunday monday tuesday Is a sergeant plus one officer and at the end of the week it's a sergeant plus two officers We do this based on our patrol services And we've done it Using Way of identifying calls so we know where our workload is so You know, we don't really need extra people out there. So Over the last few years we've seen you know numbers going up especially ever since the uh the pandemic some of the highlights This past year for 2023 we do was on a calendar year January december for our calls Uh And this past year we transitioned our dispatches into sxpd So pretty much and we're from 18 to 20 hours of data is to dispatches on a shared work between both agencies We finally filled out a vacant third full-time position So that has really helped us out So if if sx is busy and we're slow and they need more people our dispatches work with the sx Dispatches and vice versa. We're busy over on the side of the river sx shares the dispatching duty. So It has worked out good We enjoy it The communication the radio system is working good The unfortunate part is our cell phone services in this area of the town. So that kind of creates a problem But we're working on that. We're working on that Since I've been here this coming this coming october we get my eighth year here Shortly in a few weeks, I'll begin my 38th year as a police chief this past january. I begin my 48th year as a police Which I started back in 1977 in berlington bermont walking church treatment church. She was church street But again budgets change. Um, it's a way of life of running The city or a town But but crime is consistent Um, you know, we're We're fortunate to have all the big businesses here to assist us in our taxes But it also it draws a certain type of element that keeps us busy this past year Our calls for services and what we do is we separate some of the pommits Combine all their calls. So whether or not, it's you know, somebody 911 Somebody calling about a box of war a traffic incident or a traffic stop. It's all combined But we separate our our calls so our calls for services this past year was 7581 calls for services and our top five calls for services were With traffic stops Suspicious events and this is this is it could be a combination of things somebody calls up and says hey I think there's something going on in my neighborhood, but I can't really tell you we call we generated a suspicious incident for that Till we get there to decide what it is Uh, we know what's retail theft. It's category is a retail theft But we have a public assist that people pulling in, you know, my car's locked. I left my keys in and those type of things I I misplaced some some items agency assistors we share a lot with our neighbor neighbor communities sx self brollington hindsburg Richmond we assist down Richmond and in the state police And our alarms our verbal alarms, which is high our offenses Actually what We rely on a lot is our retail thefts last year we had 433 Lossony combined petty lossony and grand lossony 117 Arrest on in-state warrants for 89 and that That stat is is is nice to know that you know, there's warrants that will make a lot of arrests But the way the system is working depending on time of day you arrest them Besides whether or not they're going to go to court that day or they're going to get locked up that night Correctional facility or they're going to be so-called site release means that you know Give them a citation. It's like an arrest, but they got to be back in court the next morning 30 so Biggest uptick this past year was driving law under the influence of intoxicants 82 this past year And violation of conditions released when people go to court There were rain the judge issues conditions.  You show up the court when you have to come back and Maintain, you know, whatever We're trying to get them to do a little more on those. But that's that's a process in the Legislators this year Also, we had 806 arrests Last year and those are actual physical arrests Where we we charge somebody and again retail theft was the number one category 256 90 Again, we're arrested on warrants 73 we're arrested for a DUI and Also for conditions of release And unlawful trespass and what we're doing most of that is people that get charged with retail theft or some crime in the businesses The the businesses Wants them trespassed. This is not something that we do. We like the mediator on that It's the business that's trespassing them And they put their name on it. They put their business on it. They tell us how long they want it and then we We like to condo it in there. So a lot of times people get trespassed from Walmart. That's by and They means nothing to them. So they get you know, so You know a day begins with with these type of crimes as early as uh, this morning it started at 4 30 this morning Some days at 7 o'clock some days we might get to noontime before we get up for us Call for retail theft or trespass or you know violation of conditional release and they go as as late as 9 10 There's really no downtime So, um, that's one of the the things why we're hoping to get extra people and fill out positions. So That position of detective slash vci Can do follow-up work and work with you know Businesses and try to come up with a better solution During during the christmas holiday. We invited all businesses here and the town manager sat down with them and explained how We we function how we work here and what we need from them because a lot of the businesses don't call us anymore Most of the calls when those businesses are getting Um That's taken. It's the general public people in the park a lot People that or anything registered Ready to pay for their merchandise and somebody's walking out with a shopping cart full of stolen property We maybe have a handful of businesses that will call us But we so that's why we met with all and so okay If you're not going to call us but you want to report it after the fact these are the things we need We need statements. We need the videos and all that But we've actually had Go hands on with people that rip the shopping cart out of their hands not the Stolen property out of their hands follow them get plate numbers get pictures. So it helps us along the way Um chief if I could interrupt just first let's say one of the things that we heard the last meeting was that Person here said that the They talked to the uh, they saw somebody stealing from one of the box stores and they called it the Store manager some officials attention and that the what they were told was that The police aren't going to do anything anyway. Um, and I just wanted to be clear that's that's not true Most certainly not true. So we are absolutely responding to things. Um, one of the struggles that we're having is that we are taking action and we're finding that Uh, these folks are showing up to court or things may get delayed in the court system We're finding that sometimes when we do respond these stores are Not always willing to provide all the information Maybe because they didn't witness the theft or it was some third party that saw it and they may not have all the facts So it may appear on the face that maybe we didn't do anything, but we we did we are showing you're absolutely whatever says show Absolutely everything we are doing a a full and thorough investigation And sometimes people get arrested out of it because we have enough for problem with us Sometimes unfortunately, you know, we can't substantiate that sometimes it may take a little bit longer of time And the stores don't always see what we do on the back end Of the house Thanks What is the difference between a national business, you know, like a wal-mart or I don't want to pick on any But business name actually but in a local business difference on retail theft They're all treated the same way Retail theft is retail theft. So we don't That's why we invited all of them we went out and You know 40 And all that we gave them packets of Statement forms we gave them trespass booklets. We told them exactly what we needed. So everybody was treated equally So the mom of pop stores. I had somebody go in there and steal still, you know beer Or food and all that and they're treated the same as somebody walking out for a A drill or a store from one of the What about the store policy of shoplifting They have different policies between, you know, the national Oh, yeah, most of them do that's why we're we're we're lying on the public most of the time to assist us Some of the major stores because of liability issues don't want their employees to engage and Trying to stop somebody where they will get hurt or injured Um, these people that we're dealing with, you know, they don't There's no force for them to to stop and they go they they they can help run us and get away with it and You know, so it's basically, you know up to The business decide what what their priorities are, but we've seen that most of them have stepped up to give us the call And all that, you know, we we might get calls from somebody who is an employee there, but they can't tell us who they are You know because of their fear of being, you know Terminated or reprimanded and all that so we we are we have instituted foot patrol in the businesses So the officers are informed to go out and walk in and walk around in uniform we have you know other people that We allow our people they want to go and spend a couple hours in plain clothes It's like having a playbook Going through a ball game.  A lot of them don't go out the front doors anymore. They they know where the exits are Again, it's an issue that, you know Try to beat us to have a getaway power in the the alleys.  That's a good day for us. Some days we probably six seven deep And in retail thefts and it's not just, you know, doing through the investigation. It's the paperwork You know, an average arrest takes anywhere from two to four hours And if it's a lodging where we're going to send them to, you know, bring them over to the quarter, bring them up to, uh Northwest if it's a male and chit and if it's a female but more than northwest That's a 90 90 minute ride around trips and that's not not to include the time at the jail because if it's busy there You wake in line So and that means that at a certain time of day or night at the police the town one body And if it's persons give us a hot time that you got to run two officers with them So it'd be accurate to say that You know, the I don't know the the national stores are more of a shoplifting Threat Or you know, there's more shoplifting They're they're I guess the the thieves are targeting the specific stores I don't know how to word it, you know, oh, yeah And again, that's that's a day for a different story and and to explain that if you want to come in one day I'll chat with you on that. But the thing is is that Most of the people we're dealing with are stealing And these stores have addiction to mental health alcoholism or drugs and we're probably nine He's close to 90 percent. It's a it's an addiction to to drugs And they need to feed their habit So they know what they can get and they can probably sell it on the black market and they get their fix for the day But it's you know, we can just ran we've we've got stories where people are crying to us that they need that property Because they need to get the fix and we're not going to give it to us the citation because I'm going to go to another store and steal That's how it's right out They don't like that Yeah, the other thing we have is is uh, we do have a lot of traffic in this town And we have three out of the top five busiest intersection in chenney county And over the last we've done we did well during the pandemic because a lot of people weren't driving So our crashes went down, but over the last two years They've increased Last year we we investigated 340 motor vehicle crashes Which had 26 individuals reporting injuries Which was an increase from the 243 so 100 more accidents crashes From 2022 And then in 2021 it was 315 So again, you know this afternoon prime example We had a three car crash in wilson road and at goya park and we should you know, we limited that to one lane That was right at 45 minute tying up four cruises for four officers That means the rest of there's nobody else patrolling the town But again, you know the visitor busy having more people out there more officers doing traffic enforcement Lessons Crashes because people are worried that the police are out there The other thing is is that we are mandated by training every year The white criminal justice council mandates 30 hours of training heavy officer and They set priority Classes you need to have Use of force some years domestic violence some years Fair and impartial policing. You always have firearms firearms every year You split first aid and cpr at your odd even numbers The the good thing is that we we don't limit the training for our officers I believe there's never too much training and prime example is like last year Even though we were shorthanded and we had 678 total training hours for the officers So it reduces your liability And we try to specialize in training for the officers to give them something to do, you know People like, you know, we're sending at the end of the month another officer to the drug recognition Class the di rate which detects drugs in your system and all that so that'll allow us three officers now We got two people in field training this week field, you know, fto train So we have additional officers treat teaching on new people We have somebody went out to peer support school We have a drug therapy dog that goes to our classes My administrative assistant here the sergeant Authority officers went last year for a day and a half on recruit And retention of personal because that's a big thing. How do we get agencies to attract people to this town? By having a management study done that shows that over the next five years We need more positions here towns growing and that's how do we track that group? So, uh, we've got some training coming up some what, you know, some Recruitment coming up down down in mass And in parts of New Hampshire. So we're gonna put the team together and send them out and see what we can do You know, we've got a good incentive here by By offering the you know, the hiring bonuses. That's a little, you know, carrot for for us But there's other things we need to look at so hopefully Every time some agency outside Vermont advertises like I grabbed the job description and see how we can gather Next week Sarge and I going down to a a vendor show down in mass and they'll have boots there We're gonna we're gonna take notes Give highlights about you know, Eric here is is our data collection. He does all my stats and all that But he's come up with some interesting interesting numbers, you know, before I close up my presentation We're seeing If we take traffic stops out of the mix just looking at raw calls for service I mean from 2017 and 2023 we're seeing an 18 percent growth Just just that alone We're seeing over a 200 growth and arrests and much of that is fueled by Retail theft, but a lot of it by DUI and a bunch of other crimes that are in there including warrants Traffic stops are a whole different Piece of this, you know traffic stops are proportional to the amount of staff that we have and the amount of What I'll say is more or less extra time not necessarily, but kind of is You know a call for service where we're getting a retail theft in progress We are 100 going to respond every time to that sometimes traffic stops simply have to wait So the folks that live in town that live in the neighborhoods that are calling us up saying, hey You know, we've got a speeding problem stuff like that That's proportional to the amount of staff time we have and we really want to be attentive to that And we want to go in the neighborhoods. We don't necessarily want just the speed car We want our cars sitting in those neighborhoods and people seeing us doing things And responding to their requests for us and Traffic complaints are certainly the number one thing that we hear from residents parking winter parking Stop signs Those of you who have been in town for quite a while can can certainly appreciate all those things and we want to be attentive to that Started in 2009 here. I think we were authorized 16 at the time and we're now authorized 17 Uh folks full-time and you know the growth just in the last from 17 to 23 has been enormous It's asking a lot of of each individual officer When I when I look at the situation that we're in right now I sit there and I get nervous because we we really do need more people to Uh to combat some of these issues and to be responsive to the residents just as much as we are the businesses And that's not to say we're not in the neighborhoods. That's just saying and we because we absolutely are That's just saying we we want more time To respond to those we would really like to be in those neighborhoods all the time if we could There's some pushback to traffic stops though, right? There is but being in neighborhoods doesn't necessarily equate to traffic stops Sometimes it's just merely our presence is a deterrent for burglary It's deterrent for people who are speeding or who may be running stop signs And I I like us to just slow down when I see it Exactly that's exactly to that point. I I want to be in the neighborhoods. Um Sometimes it does mean traffic stops education is a huge piece of that and enforcement is a is a smaller piece of that And that's why you'll see our speed carts will probably appear in the next two weeks or so And I'll shuffle those around in the middle of the night With my crew and they'll appear they'll appear magically somewhere And we do use that data to determine where we should be so that way We're not making as many traffic stops in areas that don't necessarily need that so To your point. Yeah, it's a way of crime deterrent Mock unit and it's a good way for community policing Um during the pandemic, uh, we dedicated Streets to every officer. So H12 so I had a certain Number of streets that they had a patrol during the pandemic So they got to learn the neighborhoods and all that I enjoy going through that Now everybody sees me out there, but I enjoy falling down my window Somebody walking the dog and chat with them and I'll ask community policing 101 So that's why we got them out of the cruises and go into the businesses now Offset that so, uh, you know, I don't want to take too much time But the other thing Eric mentioned, uh, Mr. Tom Andrews is that cooperation between us and the Friday finally You know, we have an excellent working relationship We work together. We show up on falls together when we we are needed We got their backs and they got our backs and Thanks, except not really good. So Guys and we need them and we we saw it a couple calls we've had here a couple months ago This year's crashed on the road here at monster hill, you know, we had everybody out there You can stay pleased they heard our quality came and within an hour and a half We had to see diagram and cleaned up people that needed to go to the hospital into the hospital and You know seriously look when we got there, but you know It's not you know, so everybody survived it and all that but you know, even with the storms the floods we've had and all that I'd be interested in having any questions you want to ask So last or two weeks ago, we had people in who are Turned about the number of cruisers that we have do we really need the numbers that we have the six We we have a total of seven mock units And then I have two one mox or three on mox one one's that's there for the bci position one we use for You know Quad or doing you know training and all that so we don't But we divide we have so many offices we try to limit Poor cruiser, right? Two people per car is generally what we do So so seven mark cars, you know, there are sometimes when we have four people on shift That's just a little a little over half the cars in use We find that we try to have 50 percent Duty usage on the cars. So they're working essentially 12 hours a day Anything more than that and it just becomes you're racking up a mile so fast That you need maintenance so much faster And then when a car goes out for maintenance We have to use other cars in its place and we start racking up the miles on those cars We've determined the most efficient way to do it is exactly that two people a car operating 12 hours a day Any more than that becomes problematic for us That's helpful for sure and I have my own cruiser the comfort dog has his because The dog And it's not a new cruiser to hand me down So as we look at what cruisers we're going to replace we look at the miles Uh, we we send the cruiser that we want through the auction We get a good resell from you know back on so, you know, it's we're not trading a minute and all that and then we just move them so You know, it we're into what I tell you know It was a sales person who I did business with down in Massachusetts for our cruises And he always said well tell people that you know when they bring their car home And I leave it in the driveway leave it running every 15 minutes go out there and open shut the door That's a police cop And that's 24 hours a day seven days a week 365 And how long you think that's going to last so so if we defer purchasing One car this year what effect will that have? Well, we would we've been talking about it sergeant. I and we'll just go back and look at the miles on you know Study shows that when you're pushing 75 to 80,000 there's a lot of wear and tear on them It's not just like replacing the tires Brakes and all that it's just the the body of the cruiser. It's not aware and tear You know, uh, we use a lot of salt On the roads in the wintertime. So you have corrosion and all that hence life comes a liability Yeah, if they're not going high speed every day that you can get a little over 100,000 more on them But the way they're designing cars today Two and a half years you're pushing three years. We did it during the pandemic and um, we're noticing, you know Of course, it's not, you know, for repairs to start to go up and the newer cars then, you know, the replacement form It's not, you know, it's not the 29 95 brake jobs you're going to get You know a lot of hours We look at what we got here, you know, and we do our best, you know, we constantly We don't replace the lights every year We try to get at least two cycles out of the lights and the cruises because by then there'd be a new style out A new color out and then that year So by having, you know, the the auctions of the vehicle we have that money that we can use to outfit the vehicles So likewise with them, uh, the data terminals we have the computers in there You know, you get two maybe two cycles, maybe six years out one before they They break and they they wear and tear and the new computers are out. They're smaller You know, they're lightweight, you know that so again, it's You know, that's why, you know, next week when we go down to the vendor show, we'll see the newest things coming out and we plan Hopefully some ideas after uh, July one My last one is the you I'm sure you would know that the the speed monitor and old stage road Hasn't been working for a number of weeks and Sh, I travel that I have to take the entire sign apart last time I downloaded the data from it We actually had to bring the sign back to the office and it is getting a little old and unfortunately The signs are in high demand And ordering them is going to take a little bit of time I'm going to try to bring it back and refurb it and Probably replace the battery that sits in that box. So yes, we I I do know and it is on definitely on the list I figured it was just so cloudy for the last month We try to order a battery big enough to handle that because yes, it is very cloudy and The winter time really does take a drain on those What time you need that? One of the in addition to the you know, kind of 18th position for the department The other uh, addition in this budget was the body cams. And so if you could just speak to the you know, kind of Why body cams are important for our department to have and the you know, I know you talked about it Previously but but the fact that we are One of if not the only department without them Yes So we are done research We are the last agency in chitin county without body cameras and without tasers, which is a less lethal option They are a liability reducer for us and for the town They are liability reduction for the officers and when your questions as to what happened It really makes it easy. It's nice to have those to go back and say this did happen or this didn't happen And part and parcel with that same in the in the line item is are the tasers and I think I've spoken to you guys before we've we've had a couple of folks get injured on duty that Those could have potentially Cut down on it's a liability in terms of insurance. It's a a staff issue as well for us And it's a safety issue for us. So those those are really really important and I don't know how chief feels about this, but I'll say this I would rather something else come out of the budget if some if you guys said tasers and body cams You know need to go or you need to find a reduction. I I would much rather Look somewhere else. That's how important it is. It is to me working the road at night When I know that there's only a handful of officers on duty and when I need help It may be tough to find folks. So I need some stuff to to level that out And eventually the state's going to mandate it. Yeah, there's talking to legislators in Alaska. So I get it We're looking at grants again, but we're a small agency Um, and it's not just, you know, local. It's, you know, state federal local tribal in aladdin. There's a lot of police agencies and there's very little A lot of money out there Yeah, we've had situation and more recently we're seeing where you know Would be nice to have that and you know Way we're up for anything is that we're not buying everyone their own tasers By so many of them and they check it out. So it's the way we, you know, check some balances on them So we know, you know, they're not playing with them in a lot But you know, again, we have in our cruise videos when we do traffic stops But it's nice to have that, you know, we've had situation where, you know It would have been nice to see inside the place when something goes wrong So it's a liability reduces liability and Makes everybody happy Great question Chief, my only question is the Opiate situation Is the and for that matter, I guess legalized marijuana the DUIs have that Have are they still, you know, back in the 90s. It was almost all alcohol We're in the 21st century now What are we seeing and and a separate but related question about Overdoses and the interplay between the police and the fire department on that Well, everybody carries knocking, you know, everybody has them on their vest Um in their cruises So if they usually have one maybe two two units to take one when they go in, you know We're seeing where We're getting there and they're coming off So, you know, less uses, you know, I'm not sure what they're using and all that But we still when I can't where we at the beginning, you know, maybe a year ago a year and a half ago It seems like every day we're doing overdose Therapy and all that With the DRE, you know driving while under the influence of drugs, you know, the old days marijuana maybe pills Looking at the labs I read the lab reports every day every time I get one, you know Then I can sit down with the with the officers It's amazing what these people have in their system. It's not just marijuana. It's cocaine. It's methamphetamine. It's heroin It's spectrum And that's just one person haven't evident it It's it's it's like a cocktail of stuff and all that and these people are on the road These people are on the road that can walk the road run head on as somebody and It's amazing and that process takes anywhere from three to six hours To if you get you know, if they don't cooperate with us We have to get a warrant and get the judge and all that and get the hospital to do it But it's the old days when you know people used to smoke marijuana in the confines of their house and then get out and drive And maybe had six pack going with him. That's all you're fine with now. It's amazing every you know pills You know Xyrosine and So it's a it's a mess. I'll ask So this is a tough one for me. I really want to support this detective. I really get this detective in the budget But one answer one question that just kept coming up that I couldn't really answer and I think it's probably because of all the Focus right now is on retail theft like why do If we're not if these people are just getting released and we can't make a dent anyway What's one more officer going to make a difference? We need to wait until Laws get fixed or something else changes because otherwise If we're just arresting these people and they're getting right out Why do we need to do more of that and you go after the head of the organization and take it out and steal for them Give Melissa stuff. They need to steal all that. You know what? That's exactly why I supported this in the first place Was that story because I think that that's really powerful I think if we're going to keep this in we need to be able to To say more than this is Someone who can you know follow up or something? We should have come in three years ago. We had a story of an obfuscation out of it When we had the AG's office the state's attorney's office trying to work with us They try to form an organized crime cash for us that happened because somebody left and went on to another job and all that We're trying to get that but again when you know every agency has has shortages and all that But it's not just the retail theft. It's the drugs. It's people coming in A month ago, maybe a month and a half ago. We took down a guy at gunpoint in the parking lot of Dix He was one out of the state of Connecticut on a parole violation And we took him at gunpoint He had two loaded weapons both stolen from different communities here in Shredding County and He's the only one that comes up and there's a lot of people that come up here We need to focus on those type of people and push the you know He was upset that he went to jail that day because he was told go to Vermont. You don't go to jail So I I need somebody to to go out there and start talking to businesses new follow-ups Because like we were talking the last time I should have mentioned it, but tomorrow is the last day of Officer Buford's platoon So if he catches a case tomorrow like at six o'clock in the evening, he's off for the next three days We have nobody to follow that up if it needs to get statements and needs to follow up Maybe maybe it's a serious felony. You know, we've had people that you know, we've found in vehicles that were deceased And you know the officer catches it. We had no detective, you know People need to follow up identify these people. You can't do a patrol shift when maybe it's only you and the sergeant And you and an officer on because we can't backfill the position and I can't have leave The town to follow it's not just retail theft. It's beyond the retail theft, you know And work with people work with you know organizations to try to find places where these people go and get treated You know, that's what that's what we want to do. But retail theft is the big thing and it's an organizing And I would love to try to get that taken down We've had a lot of stories, but I just don't have the bodies to spend hours and hours hours on it And take them away from the ship. I can dedicate somebody in detectives to do that That's great. That's that's what I want to hear The big difference is the the folks that are in patrol are beholden to the radio the beckoning call of the radio So when you get that retail theft, we're absolutely going Where you know when you get somebody on a a burglary that may take some more time than detective Is not beholden to that radio and they do have that extra time that they can spend to solve that So we can get those successful prosecutions for the things that really do count that really do affect people And not that other crime doesn't but I I want to we want to focus that person on the ones that are that really truly matter the most It'll help to uh Get that message out. I think I got deluded with we need to build our department. We need something for the officers Blah blah blah. It's like oh and here's the detective who's going to do paperwork So we really need to if we're going to support this because this is a tough year to ask this town for anything We need to be able to articulate how it's going to actually make a difference So thank you for that. That helps chief. Uh, I don't want to take up too much time, but real quick that In the in the 90s and early aughts. I guess that's what they're called um that That the drug distribution situation tell me if i'm wrong on this but it's my recollection from working in this field in the 90s was that um a lot of a lot of drug runners would create their own network in vermont they would have a a Supply a large supply of back then it was cocaine Um, and then it would go up and then they would build a distribution ring as as they went um with the drug situation now because the retail cost of heroin in vermont Is so much higher than it is in other cities You can buy retail in new york harford connecticut springfield mass And then come up here and couch surf for 48 hours and make a massive profit And by the time law enforcement knows that person is there they're gone um Contrasting that slightly anyway with with the organized retail theft That is an organization. They they are they are Directing people this is these are the kinds of of goods that I want you to steal Um, this is how I want you to do this where you know, there's there are people that you can go up the chain and and that's that's the way Drug interdiction worked in the 90s as you would You would intervene or arrest with a a the lowest person who was dealing Flip them and and go up the chain until finally you had Pretty people who are pretty high up And that's not the case necessarily with drug stuff anymore, but with the retail theft stuff, which is In many ways feeding people's Habits by giving them the money to buy the drugs That a detective would be able to apply Him or herself to to at least that component of it, right? You know, you gotta start at the ground level You know, uh, some of the people that we we do grab sometimes I'll have a piece of paper and They'll spell out my walkie-form and and what type of move they give up something quick We will let them go and but uh, it's always pretty much the case these days Is that they've been told I'm out here for this store. This is what we want and how many people You know, we had a guy I grabbed probably a month ago That at eight o'clock in the morning came out of all up with a very 55 gallon Um storage being full of Legos walking down the street carrying on his head Grabbed him got him We arrested him and he said he goes. Yeah, that's that's that's the choice right now. They want Legos So I'm not sure where he went afterwards to be turned around. I'm trying to find another source. Um, Legos Again, so that's that was probably almost a thousand dollars worth of Legos Wow And it's those those stories, you know, but it's a constant thing, you know, when you when you refer to the person by their first name Now because you've had so many You know, but you know, like I said this one four 30 star Thanks. Thank you. Thank you Good evening and welcome Greetings. Welcome Yeah, thanks so much I thought the police department would be quick. Yeah I'm just gonna pull up my notes that are underneath the presentation here. So I could follow along This is chief Colette's getting ready. Um, you know, just just looking at our numbers from our original budget Chair and I worked to design, you know, public safety discussions this evening was The um Looking at police and fire budgets of our overall operating budgets about half 7.2 million million dollars for public safety service We offer 24 7 police fire and EMS service to our community Increases that were in the original draft budget were about 65 percent the overall increase was tied to police and fire departments I shared this around, you know development of the prior version of the budget But these costs deliver these 24 7 services are are increasing In Wilson, we're just a handful of communities in the state that can provide this 24 7 service for these critical public safety areas We've built the capacity to provide that level of service to meet the demand Looking to to meet those needs moving ahead and service delivery of this sort looks very different in other communities And many of those play a greater tax rate than the way it is in Wilson right now So understanding, you know, there's been a lot of media coverage just on emergency services and the staying capacity to provide those and Some towns that are all volunteer or don't have a police department and the very different type of environment And Just reminding folks watching at home. Just the contact. Thanks manager. Well, it's erin collect your fire chief Thanks for having me here again to join you Really, I want to take the opportunity to provide some education and I think probably For the majority of you folks you've heard this before My hope is that people at home are going to tune in and watch this and if they had some questions that may be through this Presentation that they can Maybe better educate themselves on what happens at the fire department The first slide that I show you here is that of the fire station. So we're we're very fortunate have a you know A beautiful facility and I think In some ways it provides A false sense of security and what I mean by that is you see all the apparatus and you see all the bays And you see the the grandeur of it But what you maybe the public doesn't understand is that at any given time There may be only five firefighters assigned to that fire station. So that's the minimum staffing that we have in there So we staff the engine and the ambulance out of there We'll get into that here in a minute if we can have the next slide Services that we provide primarily our number one Incident response is advanced life support through our ambulance. So Ems is our bread and butter. We have One staffed ambulance when we're at minimum staffing levels But we have other reserve ambulances that sit that are equipped but not staffed We also provide fire suppression hazardous materials seen mitigation Motor vehicle crash mitigation Including extrication of patients from those motor vehicle crashes Fire alarm responses investigation system restoration for commercial fire alarms technical rescue including ropes water and ice Community risk reduction, which is about educating our public and looking at ways to prevent illness and injury For our public both in the traditional sense that you may think about reaching out to children in the public schools about fire safety but also in our Elderly community as older Adults enter into the community. We can look at fall prevention or other ideas There where we can try to limit our risk not only for Call liability, but to keep them safer in their home We also have a public information officer program and robust social media campaigns that are staffed by our captain Next slide please This is the organizational chart for the department Myself at the top. I obviously answer to the manager and your new folks I have a deputy who works with us the deputies in charge of really fire prevention activities And also code enforcement and being out it works hand in hand with the state The division of fire safety. He also works to manage their call staff at a high level We have a single call staff lieutenant and our call staff firefighters, which is kind of an ebb and flow number And it keeps dwindling so we'll bell it up and we'll lose them to other departments. So But the the meat and potatoes really falls in our career staff. We have a captain who works Monday through Friday Weekdays and we have three shifts that work 24 hours on and 48 hours off each shift is led by a shift lieutenant And a minimum four firefighters. We have Ideally six firefighters assigned unfortunately today. We're carrying vacancies on all of those shifts for career firefighters spots We find that we're competing against neighboring departments to fill those vacancies This next slide shows you the breakdown of incident responses for the calendar year of 2023 Again, I told you our bread and butter was ems was 1600 ems calls 44 fire calls. I won't continue to read down through there, but 2324 runs As we keep to see this every year We see the number of calls increase Just as an example and and I appreciate data the manager understands how I appreciate data We have a robust new records management software So I like to pull data from there and I wish I could figure out a trend But there isn't necessarily a trend on our time of day The day of week or anything like that Other than to say that around one in the morning we are slow And but it starts picking back up around six in the morning So there's a bit of a break in there But most of the other time as an example since 4 30 this afternoon or 4 20 this afternoon the On-duty shift has been on seven runs In the last What I think we're personally four hours lost track of time here now Um, you know, it's so erratic and so that's why that career staff is important because the availability of our call staff is unpredictable and We really depend on them to be able to answer the call This is just a year-to-date snapshot. This was through March 28th On the next slide. Thanks, Eric Um, just to show you that the trend is continuing so we can almost look at this first quarter And we're still headed right in that direction to likely exceed around 2400 runs If we continue on this trajectory Here's the past three or four years excuse me of incident responses to show that growth And as many of you know when I first came to the department in 2020 My analogy would be it looked a little bit like the wild west You had a single person riding the engine when you're at minimum staffing and two people on the ambulance We worked with a third party Consultant ap Triton they came back and they made recommendations on an immediate increase in the career staffing of the organization that would let us to hire nine additional staff that That recommendation that document Much like the law enforcement document that colonel baker did Suggested that the department continue to grow Over the next five years and so We are seeing the trend where the demand for service increase Where that staffing really means are we going to be able to meet that Demand for service or we're going to leave calls unanswered One of our larger Challenges we have here on the next slide is this concurrent call issue so the The blue shaded areas on each one of those columns Represents the number of calls that we have where our units are already on a call and committed So around 20 of the time we're already out on one call when a second call comes in And so we when we watch this Who answers those calls? When the minimum staffing level is above five personnel We have a bit of an ability monday through friday with the captain the deputy or myself To backfill either the ladder truck or the ambulance wherever that next run is So we can have a driver for that ambulance and then a Patient care provider But when we're below those when we're at minimum staffing levels We don't have the ability to staff those other pieces And then we often rely on mutual aid from outside agencies The next slide just simply shows you the staffing here are the stuff that I've already talked about But what I wanted to point out on this slide is that all of our career staff Are all licensed and the minimum licensure is em and ems is the emt basic The majority of the staff are advanced providers including a handful of paramedics on our on our staff um These their roles And their ability to serve our community at that level Is really second to none, right? It is the premier level of ems that you can expect And that's what I would want for you. That's what I want for our family And that's what you should expect of your fire department This next slide just shows a little bit about our call staff Where we do have the three shifts that are authorized to seven Positions we have three career vacancies, but the call staff we only have 11 rostered and actually The manager doesn't know this I had another call staff member come in today and announce Their pending resignation. So we're going to be down at least two other positions here. So that's going to dwindle As they're moving on into a career service outside of outside of Williston Um There's limited availability and there's no prediction of their availability what we found is Rather than move a respond from home model We've actually endorsed a Ride out and pull a shift model where they could sign up for 12 hour shifts and then we know that they're there Uh and available and so they're in the station They're working beside the career staff a lot of the times really the career staff is mentoring them And that's a feeder Into the organization to try to anticipate If we do have more career vacancies that we can use call staff to come into there because we've trained them And put them into the career spots Unfortunately, our call staff has limited ems licensure at this point. Um I would say Less than four people have ems licensure of the call staff. So they're not able to staff the ambulances Again, so just to show you a little bit about what that looks like The primary engine is staffed every day with three people The rescue is staffed with two and then the reserve pieces that sit in the rest of those bays in the station Don't necessarily have staffing When we have the Career staff the deputy the captain or myself there or greater than the five Career staff on duty. We're able to either staff latter four or rescue to that second ambulance So we can address that concurrent call issue. So that's why the importance of having more than five people on a shift and available to respond Just a little bit about critical tasking critical tasking is really how we look at how job tasks are performed in the fire department Um, who is responsible for what and that's what makes us an effective team We if you want to go to the next slide for me, man Eric As an example cardiac arrest you've probably has seen, you know, when we teach lace layperson cpr It's one person doing compressions and one person doing uh respirations with a bag mask or Artificial respiration. Well, that's great. But when we're coming in we're coming in with the ability to actually convert that patient's Rhythmia and so we can apply defibrillation. We can apply Um advanced cardiac life support medications to those patients and then we need a team lead So when when we look at a cardiac arrest, yes, they probably teach that to lay citizens But we're coming in as an extension of the hospital and we have the tools and equipment on our apparatus to give you the best chance at Survival by coming up with this five-person team and that's where uh, it's important to have that level of staff But a single person a single firefighter Performing cpr is not effective Looking at motor vehicle crashes as you heard chief fully speak of those numbers continue to increase We've been faced with a number of very severe Motor vehicle crashes recently He spoke with the one on monastery hill as an example. There were five patients that we transported out of there We had four mutual aid ambulances. We had a complex extrication of the injured driver who was trapped inside of the car We managed that scene and we had all patients off of that scene in less than 26 minutes You won't find that in a rural area in the state of ramon okay When the snow squall hit us a couple weeks ago and we had the tractor trailer truck go across interstate 89 northbound on french hill That uh, the deputy the engine and ambulance were committed on an initial call The deputy and myself staffed our Engine two which has extrication capability and in route to that call The dispatcher updated Via state police that a second tractor trailer had just crashed into the first one The deputy's been on the fire department for 24 years He says the first time in his career that he's gone the wrong way down the interstate on especially down french hill with Two inches of snow Into a blind car crash We did that with education. We did that with technology. We utilized ways. We understood what our liability was We knew that traffic wasn't coming up through there So we could enter that safely We were getting reports from the ambulance that was primary ambulance on that which was rich richmond rescue Richmond rescue told us there at least a quarter mile from the initial crash scene backed up And they can't see the original crash, but there's multiple other crashes I believe there were six crashes six vehicles that made contact in that chain of crash Firefighter wells who is joined here behind me He walked the length of that to triage all the patients up to the crash The original crash scene with another firefighter to make sure that we hadn't missed anybody in that link You can't perform these level of services with minimum staffing right with Poor staffing We need to have people to be able to mitigate that scene We ended up with three mutual aid ambulances on that crash During that crash. There was again the concurrent call issue while we were out there We requested mutual aid assistance from the sx junction fire department sx junction couldn't get an initial crew And we had a second crash that occurred on route two We ended up with a engine company from the city of south brongton fire department And the primary ambulance came from the burlington fire department because that was the next closest ambulance out of the out of the old north end so When we talk about how fragile the system can be on a given day You take something like the interstate highway as an example That we are stealing resources from one another It's great that we have these mutual aid compacts and relationships because we train together. We work together We practice this together But at some point that responsibility becomes that of the local municipality and when the demands of service are there We should be able to meet that demand for service and not have to rely on a mutual aid more than we should more than expected Critical tasking for structural fires The national fire protection association has two documents a 1710 document in the 1720 document Which again, we're referenced in the ap triton report Essentially for us in our setting it says we need to have 10 people on that incident scene within eight minutes or less on a 2000 square foot home for our jurisdiction We have a difficult time doing that We May get that if we're fully staffed and it's a daytime fire But certainly it's not something we're we're able to meet And we're not measuring that with much success right now Next slide, please I told you that we had a new records management software. So this data is out of that new product So we we began entry entering data into that product and January one of this year and so one of the metrics that we were able to Extract out of that is the response time for emergency medical incidents within the town of williston So from the time that we receive the call into the time we show on location The average so far this year for the first arriving unit that has medical capability is four minutes and 39 seconds The bullet that you see down below that talks of is from the national institutes of health. This says The optimal response time threshold for survival to hospital discharge for out of hospital cardiac arrest is 6.2 minutes So we're we have the ability to meet that when we have our ambulance staff when it's a williston fire department vehicle responding to that scene Conversely, I'll ask the manager to show the next slide And so when we go outside of the community and what I'm going to ask you is We don't have the the data from the other agencies But what we have is our response time data to those other communities and this is what it's showing so far So when we go to the city of south brogdon the time of dispatch to the time we arrive on location is 11.45 minutes So we can infer that it would take the same time for them to come back into our community Richmond at 12 minutes down into heinsberg, which they don't have an ambulance So that really kind of falls a little bit there But s6 town over 10 minutes and and then the junction at 11 minutes so The three agencies there that are on that graph that have ambulances All exceeded 10 minute response time when you look at our data and we're in that four plus minute time And it's certainly sub 6.2 minute It matters that we have the staff here in our community You have your best chance of survival if your williston fire department unit is in the state and available and This is just one of the significant fires that Actually the same shift the two gentlemen behind me were both on this incident on pumpkin hill A lot of credit goes to early notification, but this was a A beautiful home that was saved because the efforts of the homeowner and the efforts of the fire department to keep that loss at a very minimal Otherwise it would have been a several million dollar loss I just want to take a minute if I could on a note of personal privilege I just I had a discussion about what is a firefighter And I wanted to just read something here if I may it says Many of you and I hope there was going to be a crowd here, but I'm kind of speaking I guess I'll speak to the select board I said many of you here in the crowd have a vision in your head of what the paradigm may look like of a firefighter I'm guessing that each of you are focusing on a traditional connotation of a person dressed in firefighting clothing With a helmet who sprays water from a fire hose in the burning buildings climbs ladders and wields an axe Well, that may have been what the historical firefighter looked like, but I assure you the position has changed When we speak of firefighters today specifically your will is to in firefighters You cannot define their roles or responsibilities in a single sentence You see your firefighters, of course are trained in fire suppression alarms and firefighting techniques But they're also expertly trained emergency care providers Who both have both clinical and life experiences serving our public in their time of need They're an extension of the hospital emergency room From the treatment of complex multi-system trauma cardiac stroke difficulty breathing endocrine emergencies anaphylaxis And everything between your firefighters deal with these situations every day Increasingly they're faced with patients who are experiencing mental health crisis who are suicidal threatening self-harm Or even threatening to others Your firefighters are trained in the detection and mitigation of hazardous materials spills and leaks With hundreds if not thousands of chemicals located in or traveling through our community every day We must be on the cutting edge of hazmat mitigation to ensure that we keep our public safe from harm Your firefighters are trained to address complex technical rescue incidents such as ice and cold water Rope rescue advanced vehicle extrication including that from commercial vehicles A portion of your firefighters are trained swift water rescue flood water rescue confined space trench and structural collapse rescue In the firehouse. They are housekeepers cooks it specialists mechanics and carpenters They work every day to maintain the station that you Allow them to work in to keep it orderly and well kept when off duty They proudly carry the titles of husband wife father mother brother sister or loving partner You may have heard me say this before so bear with me But when the public calls 911 they don't do so to schedule an appointment Your firefighters may in fact be one of the last remaining services that you can summon and receive an immediate response Regardless of the situation found It may be as simple as showing in the homeowner how to shut off the water in a leaking toilet Or it may be as complex and it has difficult of having the responsibility of informing a family of the passing of their loved one I'm sure that some of you are thinking we don't need the firefighters I would challenge that opinion for the paradigm is likely skewed. Perhaps this that childhood vision of what a firefighter is still sits there I will show you that the role of today's firefighter has changed I was trying to best capture what today's firefighter might be described at in a few words and I landed on this Today's firefighters are truly ambassadors of humanity Ambassadors who in the public's time and need show up We're collectively to make things better and we should celebrate this for their few professions that continue to serve others as much as your firefighters do Gladly answer any questions I had one but I can't ask it now That was great. Thank you very much for that. Um, would you take that slide that was like move the third one in or something? I had the number of incidents last year or something This might be a data question or just something about going forward That was I always have this question because I'm amazed at how often I see our fire trucks out with only 44 fires. So The big number there is rescue and emergency medical services and to me that's kind of two categories because if someone's I call because my husband's having a heart attack. You don't send the fire truck We do So it comes back to that critical tasking slide. Um, so all of the roles that come out there So it's not we don't ever leave a single provider or just the two providers on that call So we the situation found the report that we get Through the dispatch without a CAD Right without a computer aided dispatch and we don't have the ability to filter that Okay, so right so a stub toe. It would make sense. Hey, we could just deal with the driver the ambulance itself They can deal with the stub toe But for a difficulty with breathing call or an Unresponsive person we assume those calls to be the highest risk and that's cardiac arrest where we need all those players involved So the people to manage the airway to manage the drugs the person to run the lead as the crew chief Somebody to drive the ambulance and then someone to worry about how you're going to clear that patient out and patient movement back to the ambulance So in a lot of ways, it's a risk management tool one to prevent injury for our staff The population unfortunately is getting larger And so we have heavier patients. So we actually utilize the extra staff to reduce our liability with moving patients It also the idea of crew resource management Means that you have more eyes on a scene So if i'm mentoring a new emergency medical technician in the role of crew chief I may be there and pick up on a other clues That i'm seeing or signs and symptoms of that patient that that provider is not So when we run that tiered approach, we have the higher Likelihood of catching those illnesses because the number of providers that are there and the level of experience that are there So it's a team approach It never it allows us as an example Last week we had a very complex mental health patient If we had a mental health would seem like We could de-escalate that and use two providers right and not have the engine company We actually used all staff on scene that day We worked in concert with law enforcement who did an outstanding job And again, I'll echo what they say it said about the body cams because that would have been a great call To utilize the the body cams for limitation of liability for that that scene because it documented it But in that scene there was a collaboration Between fire and ems We used all hands there We everyone had a role and it was it was orchestrated With all the people there To make sure that that patient was dealt with in a very professional manner They were safe and they were getting the best care that they could do And I'll publicly shout out to Jeremy Who was the lead provider on that who did an outstanding job on that that very complex call It was a simple mental health call That we needed all hands on deck for and so In the absence of knowing is it a stubbed toe We give that that patient the best option So if the units aren't committed that engine will respond right from there to take that second run to initiate care Because the the engine company is also set up With all of the advanced life support equipment that the ambulance is So including the 12 lead monitor and All of the advanced drugs We're sitting on the engine as well Chief I did I forwarded you an email That I received Wondering why There are so many firefighters and when we don't have that many fires in town And I think that your explanation tonight was Directly on point. So Thank you. Yeah Thanks for letting us again educate education. If you want to see anything stop by the firehouse Speak to the staff. We'll be glad to to help out answer any questions in the meantime So if the hour is getting late The uh, we're not going to reach a resolution on any of this stuff tonight obviously, but what I'm wondering is if Would be a good exercise for people to um Take no more again given the hour no more than a minute or two if you are comfortable with Putting out possible Budget decisions that you would be Uh Throw out for consideration now And again, we can take up the reasons for those At our at our next marathon session next week But uh Anyway, it's that that's it's a proposal not anything else. What do people think? I think give staff some Ideas about where we're coming from maybe hopefully we'll have some Um agreement on the things that we propose work to increase the budget and decrease the budget Hearing no objection and given that you were the one to smoke first And I'd be happy to do that So I would support a a budget that is uh, that is an increase of 6.73 percent That reduces the expenditures by 435 thousand Which relates to a two percent two set Decrease in the proposed budget that we had that was defeated Among other things I would support the The 18th foreign police officer the starting on january as well as the bodycams and tasers I would not support the decrease in the Cola for staff I would not support leaving the current the firefighters vacant and I would not support reducing staff In town staff at all Well, you fit on the number. I agree with the number that I like that that case of um of a two cent tax rate The 435 I just as soon apply a hundred of of revenue and do the 335 I think that's achievable Um Well, I think we need an age hard director. I think this is not the year to add that so if Staff feels they need to add something back for for a patch For this year. I that would be okay with me too Thank you very much for all I know I know how hard I just put this kind of lists together So that's a lot of work. I think there's a few things on here. They're just Adding the fourth of july fireworks is just See if we can get away from not cutting that one, but um, otherwise, I think that's that's That's where I would go, you know 335 335 thousand out of out of expense I'd like to keep the detective as well I would like to support the bodycams and tasers. I think that's a good insurance I think I believe it's necessary to support the police detective Taking care of the root cause of a lot of the retail theft and what's going on in town I think it might might make everybody's job a lot easier I do not support reducing town staff. I think we understand with Other departments that once you we lose staff members. It's really difficult to get them back I like to keep, you know, they're valuable people that we have I agree with Jean I get you know, this is not the year to add an hr director Okay I'm tired. I can't remember everything No, I think I mean, I think I'm on the same page. I I agree. I think that actually that 6.73 is kind of exactly where I had You know and looking at the numbers kind of targeted It may seem like a small thing I'm a bit but I also do not support Taking the the July 4th fireworks out of the budget primarily because I see it as a community building event and I think that the fastest way to have a healthy community is to have Events and and things where communities get together and celebrate together. So but In terms of the police detective positions support that support the body cams and tasers Um And would be wholly unsupportive of in any way taking the cola or merit for non-union staff I am we have such an amazing staff here in town and I want them to know how much they are appreciated And that that is deserved right and I would actually echo Fundamentally what terry said, but I put the number at 333 35 as gene recommended no leaving Firefighter Physicians vacant And Basically, I was listening to terry thinking well, that's pretty cool. Yes, I agree with that So that's that's my ditto except for the 333 335 with the uh We're not going to go through every single line. I hope tonight, but I I would be I would be sad if we Can't give the library their $4,000 to expand their hours, too That's a little thing figure out how to do that So does that last What was last year's Cal and increase percentage wise There's around Yeah, tax rate around three and a half cents, uh bottom line It's around seven ish, maybe It was around the Yeah, there's an inflation metric that it was above I remember but I think it was around seven percent So we're in we're we're in line with last year Yeah, I would say in that it might even be a little bit lower than it was last year I think we were in the sevens last year I can I can confirm that Big increase in cpi this past year Yeah, and we tend to look at things on a you know a 24 month Window as well. So, you know, we see those Inflation has been cooling a bit, but we we take that 24 month picture part of that will we'll see all the outlook goes in the future, but we've seen the last period start to a little bit of inflation there So does that what we've said give you enough guidance to come back enough guidance? We could have given him five different answers Give him one Appreciate if there's a line from the from the board here initially makes you know makes the task ahead Easier to get to a conclusion. So really what we've kind of outlined here You know overall, I I'm not really counting any below my new major items in the budget I just illustrated those to you know, the cola delaying filling positions reduce network forces to show If we were to get to level fund and we have to make the board have to make decisions Going into that that realm at some point We had about half a million dollars identified and in reductions and some are Like well, I anticipate from the board not not going to support just numbers are out there just to illustrate possibilities You know now including the HR director, you know, that that's a hundred thousand I I think to get to that 335 number. I don't think we're far away. We might even be there right now Part of the things are some of these other components like the erf funding that community organizations Funds like you're a coys fund some of these Smaller details. So what I can we can do for next week is kind of clean this up Feedback from tonight kind of see where we are Building that an extra hundred thousand of revenue from Fund balance here So, you know that the pathway might be you know formulated You know once we're a little more awake and put this clean this up a little bit for the board I think we may be there close to being there Right now There may be a discussion with some of these things. Maybe there's some slight reductions to think about Wednesday we'll come back with that and I Yeah, I guess we'll initial discussion on timeline here. Um, kind of think about that as well I think you were going to check to see if moving it in a week was possible Facilities wise, right? Yeah, we're going to think next week about what not with a quick We'll get that answer and then I'm just thinking how the board wants having public you know the public feedback component I know that's important to the board and if you know trying to What kind of has to be the 16th because the next week is the schools closed and said there'll be a lot of people out of town Yeah, and yeah, so I think if you regardless that makes sense to start kind of warning of a public hearing feedback The the working draft of the budget Okay, sorry That sounds like a good plan Okay, so That takes care of that agenda item Next manager's report Thank you guys. Thank you so very much. Good luck tomorrow for everything stay off the interstate Oh This legislative update I've provided further testimony about the um state police barracks So that would tarry a bit as the house committee some language What what's in there through the house is to authorize this private authorizing the sale of the police Barracks It's intended the general assembly to consider a report from the town of wilson next january Or in the potential for the town to purchase the property and if the town desires to purchase the property Potential future uses of the property envisioned by the town So essentially it buys time for this conversation. We're starting the site analysis component with our consultant here over the next month The community center component. Um, I don't know if this will make it through the uh, the senate side There may be a conference committee over over this detail, but um, we felt it was the best week we could do This request so now it's not committed to anything and this doesn't commit the town anything gives us More time to make a make a more formalized pitch if That's where that is Just updates, but you know the eclipse is monday. We're gonna close town hall at noon that day We're anticipating a lot of traffic around town. We're um, we've done some good staff planning the last couple months on this We're gonna meet that morning to evaluate the situation and just think it's resource-wise. It's it's traffic potential for accidents Things of that nature, so It's exciting events exciting to have in this corner of the world, but hearing up operationally what that means The message out to folks if you may be stuck in traffic a bit. There's the town can only do so much You know, I don't anticipate us closing roads and having people out directing traffic We don't have the staffing capacity to do that. So think of our class two roads the mountain views two or two way south road People may try to cut through some of the neighborhood roads old-stage road for example This is gonna be a thing where you may have to wait a while to get where you're going and might be good They get where you want to be early and stay there. So try to get that message out a bit Hope people I've had people comment on your post. So I know they read it. It's like I have to make sure I have a full tank of gas I think it's very good. Yeah, Aaron's taking done a great job taking the lead on this for us and just getting those tips out there Yeah chargers He's stuck.  I was on a call with them last week You know the FY26 the concern there is they may need to reduce their services by upwards of 30% based on an impending deficit They're facing Used a lot of federal money. That's running out at the same time fairs have been bought. So it's creating complexity so I'm sure we'll have the folks agreement and transit here throughout the Later this year part of it is if they do need to reduce services it plays with the town's assessment valuation because Of that reduction in services the towns wouldn't be paying as much Similar exercise the town's thinking about it with its budget So bring Sarah with the board to keep you updated and Okay, great Other business But is this an upcoming select board meeting list? Is this on your managers report or is that other business? Where did I find that? I think it's in the managers Uh the one pager and probably probably select board goal setting is not going to be on the top of the agenda for our next meeting That'll probably be a main discussion And did we have the uh To put on the other other two schedule where we're going to have cjc and I think right or is that on here that I miss it Um, I just haven't planned that um, okay, put it on if it's too scheduled. I just don't want to get lose track of it That's all yeah, I'll make sure that song. I kind of a running list of policy Right discussions. I'll make sure that that's on there. So other business a couple town clerk share with me some additional Tobacco and liquor license renewals a similar to last time no violations with these where they Trickle in So they're a chef's corner of the scale poke bar good water brewery cds pharmacy Catamount golf course and tobacco and license for Shaw's Or consider a license to to renew the our motion to renew those licenses for for the next So is there a second? Second any discussion All those in favor say aye Then there's a circle us back to executive session discussion on a potential settlement for a zoning violation um Suggesting for the select board to settle a town of wilson versus hazelton and stewart Um, this was a zoning violation for an accessory dwelling that was built over a property line We have an agreement with uh with the residents to cure this A fine of $1,500 in agreements to remove that structure by labor data to cure the violation Of course, it's for the manager entering into that career on behalf of the town a motion suggested Chair would entertain a motion Move that the select board approve the proposed settlement agreement with mr. Hazelton And the stewart to resolve the town's zoning enforcement action against them And authorize the town manager to sign the settlement agreement on the towns we have Is there a second? Second Any discussion on the motion? All those in favor say aye All those opposed may the ayes have any other other business I would like to I would like to mention that only having 10 things on the agenda fits in my binder nicely. Thank you very much For the record, I'm very happy today So on that note, we should probably adjourn I think so. Okay, so We are adjourned