Y22 and then $200,000 for later years be more appropriate? And Sarah, would that be a terribly difficult thing to incorporate in the calculations? It's just something to consider, since we did level fund the tax rate last year and then they're seeing a jump and just wondering if it might be, if not a bad idea to apply a little bit more money for FY22 than it is necessarily making it even over years in the future. I imagine it because I thought it was a good idea. So I, you know, I think I bore it, but if, you know, the recommendation was clearly to split that down the middle, so. Well, my thought was 300, 200, 100, and then we're back where we started over multiple years. But my memo with potential adjustments did suggest we use an additional 500, sorry, 50,000, decimals, 50,000. If we were to bump that another 50 to a full 400, I don't think that's a terrible idea because we have that 93 or 92, I can't remember now sitting in that other category. Let me just tell you what that does. So if we were to make that $400,000 use of fund balance in the current year, plus the $7,000 that Andy identified for the merger stuff in the select board budget and the $2,000 out of canine supplies, if not layered in the 2,500 land fill because I just want to touch base with Dennis. Again, I know I have an email from him. So we're looking at $407,000 in fund balance that puts us at a tax levy increase of 2.3% and the tax rate increase of 2.1%. And I just really like this 0% last year. That would have been a 2% last year that puts us at 0.1% over where we would have been last year. So 0.0006 over where we would have been last year or 0.0111 over where we were the last two years. So we're talking about just more than one penny on the tax rate at this time. Yeah, and I'm thinking that if there's a year to do that, if there's a year to reduce as much as we can, obviously I think that this would be the year to do it. Assuming that future years, we're not hit with COVID-22 or something along those lines. I'm knocking on wood. I just think that the larger reduction happening sooner would be more advantageous for a tax-paying populace, but willing to obviously go with the full board. I think I would definitely wanna know what everybody on the board thinks of about this. So with my finance director hat firmly on, this is really a question of risk tolerance. So the risk is this. If we use that fund balance to offset the tax rate in FY22, and then there are other unanticipated factors that either make expenditures over budget, which has not been the trend. I will absolutely agree with that or revenues under budget such as increased delinquencies. So modified accrual accounting again at the end of the fiscal year plus 60 days, anything uncollected on property taxes gets stripped back out of revenue. So if we have a year where we have, as we have increasing delinquencies, we're gonna have decreasing tax revenues over time. And then what ends up happening is, if you guys remember last year we had a bump or maybe the year before we had a bump in fund balance because we had tax sale in 2018 and we had collected a large amount of our delinquency. So we ended up with revenues over budget because of that timing issue. So the risk in using more fund balance in FY22 is that something else may happen causing lower than normal revenues or lower than anticipated revenues, higher than anticipated expenses in 22 or 23 or a combination of both. Once that fund balance is spent, it's not a self, it doesn't replenish. And so then there isn't anything to fill that hole the next year. I mean, that's just the risk. So there's also a chance that as we've seen, we'll be under budget and expenditures. We'll have vacancy savings and we will have unanticipated revenues causing an additional fund balance. So I just wanna be very clear with the board that those are really the two possibilities. I don't know which one it's gonna be. We've all seen the trend of there being fund balance at the end of the year. And so I would wanna make sure that everyone was comfortable. Everyone has a chance to weigh in on what is the dollar amount we should use to offset the tax rate in FY22, knowing those things. And? So some of what Sarah was talking about, the reason we have the 15%, what's the right term? On assigned fund balance. On assigned fund balance is to account for unexpected things that come up that cause swings in either revenue or expenses. So we have that buffer in there as well. That's true. So if we did have it close the year in deficit, it would close against that on assigned fund balance and it would reduce that balance. And I would, I could argue that having money that we assign for future, if we take money and assign it just for the purpose of having it in case there's an emergency, we're circumventing our 15% policy by making the number that we have actually set aside for contingency larger than 15%. And so I'm in line with Patrick.  Yeah, quick question. So once we set aside these monies for tax relief, are they like static and assigned? Like they cannot be touched. Like that's what we've decided. No, the board can assign, reassign, unassign at any time. So we make this plan to, you know, $300,000 this year. You know, and then we keep, or I'm sorry, I can't remember all the numbers. It's late for me too. And all the, so in the next year, if there's something crazy that comes up, we could reduce the amount that we're setting aside for tax relief and use that to like, I guess offset those unexpected costs. Yes. Andy, does that address anything? So, yeah, Vince, it comes down to how you look at it. I am very against assigning something for future tax relief and then deciding later, we're going to use it for something else. That is, you know, promising the, I mean, our policy says over 15%, you have to give it, unless we assign it somewhere else, you have to give it back for the taxpayers. And if we assign a chunk of money to be future tax relief, but then we decide later, oh, we're going to build a statue with it, I think that's a bad choice. I'm not, that's a bad example. That's just a bizarre example. But in the 15% that we have set aside as unassigned is supposed to be used to address that. I mean, that's what that's for, is to address emergency situation. And so if you have an emergency situation, technically, I would say that you would spend that money first and then, then looking at what's your fund-violent situation, you may say, well, we're below 15%. So we have to fill that back up and you could take that from money that we've allocated for future, for, you know, so it may be semantics, but I think it's important. Right, no, I totally understand that. My, you know, my thing is like, we're talking about like a worst case scenario, like Pat mentioned, you know, COVID-2 knock, knock on some wood, you know, it's like, for me, it's more about like, if we're worried about risk over the next couple of years, you know, and we have something that comes up that is, you know, extremely unforeseen, like how risk averse are, how risk averse do we have to be with our money if we know that there's a pool to address some emergent concern that's out, that's totally outside the realm of our thought process and normal way of like budgeting our fund balance. That's, I don't know if that makes sense, but that's kind of like my thoughts on the matter. Like I don't think we have to be that risk averse or like that risk averse over the next few years, not because I want to assign that money to some things, to some disaster, but just that like we have that money in the event that there is a disaster. Right, I think I get what you're saying, Vince. Evan, do you want to respond to Vince or can I have Antha Pat go? Well, first let me ask Sarah, let me ask Sarah a question. What is in your opinion the highest risk that we face in terms of revenue? And we should do these, I should ask you these questions in advance, you know, during the day, but in your estimation, what is the highest risk we face? Well, I think the highest risk has to align with our concentration of revenue, our main revenue source is property tax income. So I mean, sure, you know, maybe we risk some grant funding that is not what we're relying on for revenue stream here. Is that what you're asking, Ian? Yeah. How much of a percent of our revenue is from property tax? One moment, please. And so the reason why I asked that of the board, you know, of Sarah for the board members is we were very concerned several months ago about what COVID's effect would be on the property tax. We actually did much better than, we did better than expected, but that doesn't mean we will always do that. Right, and that was just the first payment and we level funded the tax rate and we implemented the grace period, we reduced the penalty, so we still suffered, you know, losses. Yeah. But not at a rate as high as we were concerned about. So we rely about 90% on property tax revenues in this just general fund and that's last year's numbers. So for everybody when we asked the question of how risk averse are you, it would be best to know where your money comes from and how tied to the economy you are as to being able to pay your property taxes, which means you're tied to jobs, which means you're tied to, you know, listen, it's really nice that the government sent out $600 checks, right? But is that gonna pay your mortgage over six months if you're unemployed? Is that gonna pay your property taxes? You know, it's six or seven, you know, $6,000 at $280,000 value. These are the things that Sarah and I and others probably wake up some nights, mornings and go did we cover our risk appropriately? So again, if it's something that you wanna talk about 25 or $50,000, interesting, but it's already on top of 300 or 400,000. I'm more of a guy that likes to think the long game. So if COVID sticks around another six months or a year or we have another surge, what are we gonna need going forward? That's all I ask. I accept whatever you guys wanna do this year and next, but just please understand, our largest revenue source is property tax and that's tied to the economy and people working. Pat, go ahead. I mean, I do hear what you're saying, Evan, but I think something else important to mention is that this relief that I'm proposing is not spending the full 600,000 by any means. And it is going to come when, honestly, I think that we'll probably get some clarification tomorrow night, but the vast expectation is that school property taxes are going to rise significantly in the upcoming year. So if we do have a way to counter in whatever small way we can as a municipality, the amount of taxes that our citizens are going to be paying next September and next March, I think that this is worth pursuing. And they spoke to it, we do have the 15% to cover emergencies and I'm not advocating, spending that full 600,000. I'm just thinking of ways that we can help reduce what we know is going to be a difficult year coming up for property taxes because of, again, I anticipate we're going to see school taxes rise quite a bit unless there's some sort of federal government intervention. Maybe there will be, maybe there won't, but right now, what we do know is that there's a whole education fund that needs to be filled. Andy? The other thing is this is our first go at Australian Ballot for our budget. We have no idea how it's going to go. We have the discussion we've been having with the village, right? There's concern about taxes that are being paid into them. And I don't want to, we could get a surprise. I don't know, I don't know. So I think being cautious about the tax rate this year is a good idea. Like you said, I don't vote, but I just wanted you to know your risk. Sarah, can you talk about the gradual step down you had recommended 300, 200, 100? At the end of that, is there zero? Does that mean that at the bottom of that step down we are no longer planning to set aside or an option is that we no longer set aside money for reducing the tax burden so that we don't have the risk of continuing to do it one year and then not having the revenue and not being able to do it another year? Not necessarily, no. I think that on a $15 million budget, this one is upwards, is pushing the high end of that. To give me a percent, what would you, other than 100% on target with everything, what would you say a damn fine job would be at the end of the year? 98% on target for budget? Like let's say, what would be a perfect year knowing that perfect is not a possibility? Let's say it's 98%, that's $300,000 surplus every year. Or every year we did that, but it might be 102% and then we need to have that backfill. So I'm not saying that we should get away from this practice of using the fund balance to offset the tax rate because we end up having the funds there year after year to do that. I just wanna make sure that everyone is aware that it is a possibility that they wouldn't be there. And so that we're all just to just understand the concept before making a change to it. Because going from 100,000 to 400,000 is a large increase in one year. Right, that was my point. And I don't mean to imply that the budget is being managed in a way that we can't count on a surplus, that it was not my intention at all. No, and I don't mean to be flip or suggest that at all. I just wanna make sure that with such large numbers and then things just happen. Right, my concern is that it has become an expectation that we do this every year. And I understand the desire to increase it to deal with the particular emergency we're faced with right now. So I get all that. Sarah, can you or Evan talk about what aspects of the fund balance were helpful this year with COVID? What did remind us whether we had to tap into it at all because of COVID?  You know, what are some impacts that this emergency had on our fund balance and our budget in general? And then did we receive or will we receive any grant funds to replenish what was spent related to COVID? You go first, Sarah. Grant funds, no. Evan, how about you take a stab? Having a fund balance occasionally lets you make a tough decision easier. While it didn't necessarily fall directly on the town, I would say knowing that we had the fund balance allowed us to take a chance with daytime school childcare and not charge our residents for that when all other entities charged their families for kids while their kids were not in school. I would say that anybody can have a bad year, probably not Amazon anymore, but they've had bad years before and your bank account lets you, you know, move things around so that you can make things work. Other than that, I think that last thing, I never know what the next storm is gonna be, whether it's ice, whether it's 18 to 20 inches or whether it's a gully washer that wipes out a whole bunch of roads. And I could tell you, while the federal government will eventually declare a disaster, you need to get things done before you see the money. And so it's always good to have some funds in reserve to be able to deal with something as terrible as a storm or, you know, whatever you can think of that comes along. So that's my answer. Hopefully that sparks something for you, Sarah. That was kind of what I was getting at, Evan. Thank you. My concern about using more of the fund balance than we normally would and more than is recommended by staff is the risk that we take with being able to make investments on the fly should we need to in the event of an emergency. I just wanted to point that out. Do you have any thoughts of, okay. So we've reviewed the budget and Sarah, you were gonna get some additional suggestions from, I believe, Andy, about additional reductions in aggregate. Board members, do you have any additional questions about the budget memo? Not seeing. Okay. Vince, are you good to go? Okay. So at this point, so Sarah, are you saying that it's okay for us to sort of table this and talk about it again on Monday? Tuesday. Tuesday, thank you. Yeah, that we will need to finalize it Tuesday. Okay. To vote to warn it in order to get it all in time. And then have we settled on hearing dates for the budget? Because these will be particularly important seeing as we won't be, we'll be having Australian ballot for the first time. The budget meeting, the budget discussion definitely needs to be available. People need to know about the hearings as much as possible. So have we set, Evan, have we set dates for that yet? I was going to ask Tammy, because we were talking about that. Tammy, can you unmute? Do we have those dates? Yeah, the dates in front of me, but that was, let me see. I had to approve the warning tonight, but if that's not going to happen tonight, because we were going to hold one of the public hearings on Monday the night, or Tuesday the 19th. So you're talking about this for this operating budget. And then the capital budget would be at a later time. So Tammy, does that bump us up against the warning deadlines to move the hearing a week later? Look at that. I think you could, I don't know why you can't do that at the same time as the capital hearing. Because that would be on February 1st, if we were to stay on schedule. I really would have to rely, I would have to look at this again. I'm sorry, I'm not as quick thinking on the fly here with all of these dates. Because also we've got in there, we're gonna have a couple of public hearings now for the merger question as well. So there's gonna have to be two public hearing dates, one on the first and one on the 16th for that. Right. So you're talking about actually holding several different public hearings in the next few meetings. Right. So just to jump in, sorry, Tammy, I'm just found the budget calendar. Our first day to Warrantown meeting is Thursday, January 21st. And my notes say the last day to warn it is the 31st. So if we approve the budget on the 19th and have the hearing on a different night, we're going to have to have a special meeting in order to do that, I think. In order to finalize the budget for the 25th, because right now we have select board doing some separate voting on the 25th specifically for the capital budget because of the same reason. Even though it's a joint meeting night, we have some vote, we have that on the schedule for them to do that on the 25th. I think we talked about that last week. Yeah, to fit in that window. So what I was trying to do here was to save the board and the staff some time and take care of the smaller budget adjustments in aggregate, but if it's better to not mess with the schedule and stay here longer this evening, we can go through Andy's list of concerns about the budget right now and not mess with the warning calendar. Is that, would the board prefer to do that? I'm concerned because Andy says he has $30,000 worth of suggestions for the budget and while I realize that going through them $100 at a time or $1,000 at a time is a little tedious, I don't wanna throw off the warning budget but the warning calendar. So I'm asking the board if you would be willing to sit and go through those adjustments together now or take, we make some adjustments to the calendar. What is the board's pleasure? I'm willing to stay if it needs to be done tonight. Okay. I'm willing to stay as long as we can take a five minute break. Yeah, that's a good idea. Andy, are you willing to go through your list tonight? Yeah, if you wanna do that, I can, yes. Well, by all means, let's get started. Or should we take that five minute break? Yeah, let's recess for, let's come back at 9.55. Right, excuse me, 9.50. All right, everybody will recess until 9.50. I don't know, Sarah, if the easiest way would be to bring up the budget charts, they're the, because they're gonna hit a whole bunch of them. I don't know. Yeah, we can do that. I'm just looking at your email now. So let's start from the top. So without department head input and just seeing this for the first time, I'm not gonna be able to answer your questions at all. I think that we can go through one by one. I just looked through the list. I know that community, the only one I would vote against is community development, printing and binding, the others, or no, let's just, let's run them. All right, let me resume in.  Sure, town admin. Printing and binding. You got 200 in there. I was just suggesting cutting in half to 100 because the low usage, 45 in 2019 and nothing in 2020, or FY20. So that's the first one, just minus 100. Like I said, there's small ones and then they end up adding up. Clerk, the election expense I mentioned, I brought up, but this is again, you said it needs to be a discussion with Susan on that. Pretty sure she said in the meeting that the annual election, a single election is on the order of seven to 10,000. So I'm wondering in an off year when we don't have a major November election, why this is so big. Andy, that's without the postage and printing the ballots and stuff. That's just election workers. And by the way, just remembered, aren't we gonna have a vote on cannabis? Probably late summer, early fall. Yeah, so that's the one I'm talking about, right? I mean, or are we saying that the town meeting is now gonna cost more than $4,000? That's typically what we budgeted in a town meeting only election year is 4,000. Well, I think we can do that. So if we do town meeting at 4,000 and we do an extra meeting or an extra election in November, that's, I don't think that adds up to 20,000. I just don't know the answer to that question. And that's really the big one, right? That's the big one. Yeah. Board members also feel free if you have questions or comments on these particular items as well, please weigh in. And I just, Andy, a lot of the comments that you have in your email are like changes based on history. So I just wanna make sure that some of the changes, some of the histories you're referring to, is it because those funds weren't spent in the past year because of COVID or is it actual history that like has shown over time that the budget maybe is a little off? I don't know the answer to that. Well, I understand that you don't. And what you're saying is change the budget based on history, but I would be reticent to change a budget item. If the reason it wasn't spent was because COVID happened and prevented something from happening. But in other previous years, it was spent. And so cutting it now would just lead us to raising it later. So I just wanna make sure that we're extended. So Elaine, I didn't look at anything. I wasn't done yet, Andy. Andy, please, I just wanna finish my sentence. I just wanna make sure that we are giving or understanding completely what the history is where we're relying on to determine whether these cuts should be made. And that's department by department. And none of us can answer that at the moment. That's the only observation I'm making not trying to be disrespectful or doubting what you're trying to do. I'm just trying to understand and make sure we're doing the right thing. Yeah, I'm sorry I interrupted you. But yeah, in no case did I use a single year to suggest a history change. Okay, that's great. I looked at all years that were available in this chart. And also I wanna make it clear that I included all of these comments last week in the input I've provided last week. So these are not new questions that I'm asking here. To that end, if you wanna talk about elections, if you go back, the highest we've spent is 12,000. That's almost 13. You wanna play it somewhat safe. Maybe you could cut it down to 13 or 14 if that's your goal. I'm fine with that, but I don't know what others are. I'm concerned about not understanding the context that Susan asked for that increase. She is usually spot on. So I'm guessing there's a reason why that's a 20. But if we wanna reduce it at this time, we can be prepared to increase it if need be on a case-by-case basis. If we end up having all the meetings we're expecting to have to special media or the town meetings that we're expecting to have. Any other board members interested in making a change to this dollar amount? Not seeing any hands and I can't see faces at the moment. So Dawn, go ahead. Sorry about that. I disconnected myself. I dropped my budget book on my internet connection. As far as the election expense goes, I don't know, I hope I didn't miss too much here. Part of that may be updating the, some of the, I don't know if it's hardware or software for the voting machines that have to be adjusted each time. I'm not sure if that's included in her listing, but you know that this last election that we just did, the village alone had 32 election workers. And if you just pay them, I think it's $10 an hour. I'm not sure. I don't know for sure. That's $3,200 for one, just the village part of the election plus the town had at least 20 people up there working. So I don't think she's over estimated what she needs. Pat. I mean, with all respect to the changes, I mean, I realized just now as we're getting into it that without the department heads here to explain them, I'm going to be very hesitant to accept any of these changes. I just, you know, and he said them in last week. And if we don't have answers to them tonight, I mean, why would we change them when the department heads submitted these? We have to trust in our people that they submitted what they feel was an appropriate budget. And you know, I, you know, we just, we don't have all 15 of them or whatever number here to explain them tonight. You know, Evan, I'm sure can do what he can. Sarah can do what she can, but they both said, or really, excuse me, Sarah just said that she's not comfortable, you know, guessing at what the department heads, you know, put on.  I think it's a good to go through and reduce where we can. I just, I'm not going to be able to support any of these changes tonight. Okay. Okay. So with that, Vince, are you, how are you feeling about the change to the clerk's budget that Andy is suggesting? I mean, I, again, I'll kind of echo what Pat said. Like I would really like the department heads to be here. And I kind of think that that's what the meeting is for when we have the department's head here to bring up those questions. Not no disrespect to you, Andy, but like I would have rather seen that concern brought up then and then, you know, we could have worked it out in the moment with the department head there. I understand like we missed some things here and there. But I just like, I can't in good conscience say, you know, 20,000 isn't going to cut it or 10,000 is going to cut it without knowing why that line item is there. So are we focusing on this one just because it's a big one? I mean, a lot of the other ones are small, but... If we have other ones that are like, you know, that you're concerned about that are like more minor changes, like I'd be willing to go over those. And you know, which is like, yeah, go ahead, Sarah. Or sorry, that's a little... I'm looking at the list. Could I run through the list? Andy, would you be okay with that? And I'll flip screen. I'm fine with that. There are some that I can't answer. There are some that I do know the answer to now that I've seen them. So let's just table this one for a lot of elections. Your next one on your list is that the increase to the capital contribution in IT was not explained. I don't have the specific increase there or the specific explanation there. I can tell you it appears like we're inching that up. You're over a year. I don't have a problem. You know, if you guys want to bring that down the thousand dollars, I would hold that one out for some discussion. I will just hold it out. I'm just going to run through the list. It will circle back to the ones we want to talk about. And this one in particular to get to Vince's point, I did bring up, I asked Rob this question and he didn't know the answer. That's why I asked it again. He didn't know why it was increasing and I haven't gotten the answer. So the next one is that the assessor's office had higher than actual on repair maintenance vehicles and equipment. Andy's suggesting a $500 decrease. I actually already got that one in my memo. There's a sister line in community development for another 500. So I picked that up too. Next up, assessing also had $150 for advertising that historically has not been used. I don't see a problem with pulling it, although if we're going to be, and I can't remember exactly when Karen thought reappraisal was on our horizon, but I think she did say maybe a couple of years out. Now reappraisal funds are available for that kind of stuff. But sort of I think she might have been thinking like RFP, getting some stuff out there in advance, some communication around that. So I don't mind we can circle back and say yay or nay on that, $150. Community development printing and marketing that is at the level $500. I know that the ETC Next project is wrapping up and that there is going to be some printing costs associated with that. Yes, we do have the fund balance item. But this has been in the budget year over year. You had suggested maybe we reduce it by $200. There's the fund balance item for community development. The ETC Next is wrapping up. I think if there were any consulting fees around that project that still needed to be paid, the fund balance is a good place to pay them. And then we are going to need to print and publish that document. Economic Development Commission, you're suggesting we come back down, come down by $500 on the appropriation to that committee. I think that that was increased because we're proposing a part-time person here. And if there's a part-time person to work with that committee, hopefully that committee will be able to leverage those funds to do the work that they've been tasked with doing. The next item on the list is the canine supplies. We covered that. I'm good with that. In recreation, the first one was travel in the admin segment. One of the things that Allie had talked about was that previously her costs to attend the National Conference have been covered by the Vermont Parks and Rec Association because she'd been the chairperson or on the board. And so I think that the change or I think that she's not expecting those to be covered this coming year. Again, I don't know about reducing it or not, but that is one of the ones on the list. The next in parks, small tools and equipment, I would feel comfortable reducing that $150 and fine with that. Between that and then the small tools and pool, there's been some plans that haven't materialized. In the senior center, your note is that COVID has been used to justify an increase in postage. I think that I would argue to keep this in here. I do think that I know that there's been an increase in mailing to the senior center. It's not showing in the FY20 actual column because that was covered by the FEMA grants that we got over the summer. And then the 25% match was covered by the elder grant that we got. But I do know that Nicole and Allie has talked to us about communicating with this population and wanting to do more mailings to them. The seniors, the other purchase services, reducing that $500 or $600 based on what was actually spent, I don't recall what that one was. But I would make a case to leave the postage in there. The library, the rental of vehicles and equipment, this is their copier. So this is monthly copier fees and then the rental charge and then usage on top of it. In prior years, patrons, when they print or copy, they pay per page and that revenue is netted against the cost on this line item. With fewer people in the library, we still have to pay that monthly rental fee for the copier. So do you think that this $1,500 is a good spot for this copier to be at? Library training conferences induce. I know that Caitlyn has plans for her staff to go to more trainings. You can see we increased this to $1,200 from $700 and FY20 budget. That didn't happen primarily because of COVID and then also staff turnover. I think that she has some new staff there. I think that we should support leaving this for them to pursue the trainings and conferences that she has in mind for her staff. The technology subscription and licenses is an order to beef up the books and the online, yeah, the e-books overdrive and getting particular subscriptions just for the Essex Library patrons and not making everyone stay for some of the more popular items instead of being part of that statewide waiting list pool. And while this is definitely boom during COVID, Caitlyn talked to us about this being a really popular service as well. Yes, Andy. I was just gonna go there, right? If this is driven by COVID, and it shouldn't be a permanent, it shouldn't be an increase to the budget, it should come from contingency, but you're saying this is an expansion of expected future service as well. Yeah, and I'm also saying it's kind of too soon to tell for some of these things. So it may be that we go back to normal, everyone gets the vaccine and then we have this whole population who've discovered overdrive and e-books who no longer wanna go to the library as often. And so I don't know, I don't think any of us really know if this is, if this is gonna be a sustained increase in demand for service, but right now it is an increased demand for service. Well, yeah, okay. So it's a question, right? But is there an offsetting reduction in hard copy books? Probably not. No. One of the things that Caitlyn has said is that, again, the state library, if you'll call it, of electronic materials, if it's popular, you're gonna get a long wait. So her idea and thought was, if we buy it, then there's a much shorter wait time. So that seems to be growing and growing. We had the same issue with Brinell. They wanted the same. So there's gotta be a trend in there. And then on the library, other purchase services, the $260, that's because the state cost, the courier cost is going up. So the contractor that the state- I thought this was the curbside service. I think that that's reflected in supplies because what that is is paper bags to put books in. But also the processing- My apologies, then I think I put this in the wrong place then, okay. And then also supplies is also going up. So for paper bags and for the place they buy books, the processing fee where they put the protective stuff on is gone up as well. And then we touched on the landfill certification. I don't have a problem having, using another $2,500 of fund balance for that since it was in the budget previously. Sorry. PW Admin. Oh, that's in buildings. PW Admin buildings, general supplies. Wait, maybe not. No, PW Admin general. It's just PW Admin. There's just, let me find it. Looks like I have that one labeled wrong. I can't find it either. There's a lot of lines. Stormwater, other purchase services is up at $12,000. You're suggesting to reduce that by $2,000. I don't recall. Let me see if I can find the... My assumption is that it wasn't clear in the details, which is why it's in your email, so. Would, Sarah, which one is this? Stormwater professional services? Other purchase services in stormwater. Yeah. I remember, I think so many details, but I know that we're going after several grants that that may be where those expenses are. So there are, so Dennis has $7,000 in there to storm drain to use the camera and the storm brace to identify problem pipes. $3,000 permits pet mitts for per hour stormwater permit and then $2,000 for storm drain markers. And so that's what Dennis has in there for the full $12,000. And now that I read the TVing of the lines, I feel like I remember Dennis saying that they weren't able to get it to as many as they had hoped in recent years and that they're behind. So yeah, here's your mentioning here to reduce the Village Highway contribution based on the net of 16, 17, 18 and 19. I'm gonna skip that. Sounds like a future discussion, yeah. The $5,000, I'm gonna circle back to some of these. The $5,000 select work professional services to use merger-related fund balance instead. We already picked that one, I'm fine with that. And then we're already using fund balance for the merger-related legal costs. Okay, that is the end of the list. So I think the ones that need some discussion are whether or not to cut the IT transfer to capital, the assessing advertising, printing and community development, the EDC appropriation, travel in parks and rec and other purchase services in seniors. So that is $2,000, I think. Overall, on those items. So the list that you guys went through, is it exclusive of the clerk conversation? Is $2,000 in total changes, Sarah? That's what you're saying? I'm saying the ones that I, as I was going through the list, the ones I felt like I wanted the board to weigh in on. So there were some that I'm okay with. I think I made some notes. I hope that I was also thinking out loud and there are some that I already had and there are some that I think we should not change. You want the board to weigh in or you want the department heads to weigh in? No, I'd like the board to weigh in. Okay. Please, sorry, it's 10 o'clock and now there are no banners. It's totally fine. Yeah, so we've gotten into the point where, right, it sounds like it's probably not worth going through the exquisite details of each of these, if it's on the order of, if we have too many questions about some of the bigger ones to even address. And so I think that maybe the, and if we're gonna go talk down the Patrick's suggestion of increasing the amount of fund balance that kind of washes that whole thing out anyway. So it by a long shot. So I'm okay with instead having the discussion about where we wanna park fund balance rather than going through the minute details of line items that are only gonna end up at $2,000. Okay, we did, I didn't say I was good with tapping $2,500 in fund balance for the landfill stuff as well. So I'll just, I'll talk that in on this screen. I do have the 400,000 that Patrick proposed, which tab, which tab in here. So those things all considered were at a 2.2% tax levy increase. That's $314,000 looking at a .011. So 1.1, yeah, .011 tax, estimated tax rate increase, which is 2.1% over the prior year, which was level funded. So looking at that, we're still at that .1%. So we're looking at, I don't know, there's so many ways to say this that an estimated FY22 tax rate level funded to what 21 would have been had we not level funded it's FY20 or about 2.1% up, which is lower than our three year average, not looking at FY21. Bottom line is a 4% increase. Remember, we do have those new initiatives for a total of $15,986,414 plus the change in the human services. So Sarah, thank you for providing us in your memo with some alternatives. And Andy, thank you for taking such a close reading of the budget and looking for more opportunities to save. So board members, do you have any other questions or comments about the budget? And if not, I think like we're at a point where we could go ahead and approve, Sarah, we've, is there anything outstanding that you need to go elsewhere to get information on? I don't think so. I see a hand, you probably see that as well. I do, well, I see a member of the public and I understand that and I will recognize them when we're ready, but I want to make sure the board has all the questions that they needed answered and they have all the information they need before we make a decision to approve the budget. Everyone's okay? Can we clarify what it is we're actually gonna vote on? We've just voting to warn it. We don't, do we approve it tonight or do we approve it some other night after it's been warranted? I mean, not warranted, I mean, sorry, we've warned the public hearings. Do we approve after the public hearings? Right, we were just, go ahead, Sarah. I was just gonna say based on prior year memos, what we've done is we've adopted or sorry, you're right, we have just warned the public hearing and we've plunked that total amount in once we've landed on it and I think we've landed on it. Right, so yeah, your previous memo, well, which item number is that memo for? Is that? This is the warning. So looking more closely at my memo, it really just asks the board to discuss and determine which adjustment should be made in order to finalize the budget and I think that we're there. And then we warn the public hearing, we hold the public hearing. After that, the board will be asked to adopt the budgets so that we can warn annual meeting. Right, okay. So then the conversation was our, but a business item, 6E, so unless the board has questions before we move on to approving the warning, I'll open it to the public, but I want to make sure that the board has been satisfied that all their questions are answered. Does anybody have any further questions or comments on the budget? Dawn, go ahead. With all the changes that are going to be going to give us a national number to put in it later. Dawn, I'm sorry, can you say what we're getting at? With all the changes that we've just discussed or Sarah's going to make, at the bottom where you're warning an amount, is she going to be able to give us that amount tonight? Yes, I have it all right here. I knew you were awesome, thanks. Okay. I remember the scramble from the last couple of years so I set myself up for it. And so also we are going to be needing to go back and approve the fund balance memo. So I'm assuming we will do that after we take care of the budget, if that's okay with everybody. Okay. So I'm not seeing any other comments from board members so I will, with your agreement, will go to the public. Go ahead Ken, you've been waiting a very long time. That's okay, thank you so much. I didn't know you, if you saw me I thought you were going to go to approval and didn't notice I was there. I'll be quick, it's late. I just want to point out that we have $780,000 left over from fiscal year 20 due to either over-budgeting or under-spending or a combination of both, which is great. And there's a few suggestions to reduce the budget by somewhat $30,000 and I'm frustrated by the pushback on that. We have a pattern of having excess money for at least nine and maybe Sarah can fill in your nine out of the last 10 years, quite a track record. I'm not worried about a little extra adjusting there and then maybe having to dip into the future fund balance left over to cover some of these expenses. One last thing, if you haven't noticed, we're in a state of emergency. The governor continues to extend it every month. The 15% fund balance is for emergencies and if for some reason we need to hoard more money to reserve for future emergencies on top of that 15%, I would suggest that maybe the 15% is a little too low and needs to be adjusted. Otherwise, what is it for? That's it, thank you. Carry on. Annie. Yes, I'd like to thank you all for taking a deep breath and staying longer to just get this work done. That was really great of everyone. And also I agree with the respect shown to Susan. I think she just crushes at her work and I really appreciate that you guys took a beat to respect her ask in that budget item. Thank you. Thanks, Annie. Anybody else from the public wish to speak on this agenda item? Okay, so we're gonna move on to item 6F and proceed with the warning. Would anyone like to make, excuse me, before we do that, Betsy, do you have something you'd like to say? Yeah, yes, thank you, Elaine. I'm just wondering, when we do this budget presentation, I've never gone to a budget presentation before for the town. And do we also include the school budget so that people understand the total tax impact? That's a great question. Normally no, the school has their own annual meeting at which they present their own budget. We are responsible for just presenting this one. Would it be helpful to the public to be able to have those two things together at the same time when you go to the meeting tomorrow? Would you ask that maybe they can do that? It makes sense to me, I don't know. Thank you. Thank you. Any other members of the public? Okay, so board members, unless you have further questions or comments on the budget, someone can go ahead and move to approve the warning. I just put the number in the comments. I see that. Okay, thank you. I move that select board warn a public hearing for the fiscal year 2022 operating budget for the town of Essex in the amount of 15,985,320, oh, it just went away to be held on January 19th, 2021 at 6.35 p.m. online. Second. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Dawn. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much, Sarah. Thank you as always for your hard work on this. Board members, let's backtrack to the fund balance memo. So we changed some numbers here with what we just did in the, oops. My phone is recording what I'm saying to, let's see, so we changed some numbers. So second page, please Tammy down towards the bottom. So what we decided was we have $5,000 that's coming. So in the new, in the budget document, I now have $409,500 coming from fund balance. 9,500 or 7,000 is from already existing lines here. The 25, additional 2,500 is the landfill monitoring. My recommendation would be that we make the reduced property taxes in FY22 dollar amount, $402,500 that we adjust against the line right below it. And so that's what we're going to do. So that's what we're going to do. Line right below it. And that would be my suggested change. Is everyone clear on those changes? It would be $402,500 for FY22. Taxes, 170, I'm sorry, that's not, those are not the numbers. 197,500 to increase that line that's reduced to reduce future taxes. Does that make, is that logical enough? Or is that kind of weird? I understand what you're saying, Sarah, and I'm making Dawn go ahead. So where it says reduce property taxes for future years, we're taking 100,000 and putting it into the line above it. And then we're going to take the 195 and put it in that reduced property taxes for future years. Not quite, Tammy, do you mind if I draw the screen? What if I just, can I just steal it from you? I think I can. I made some notes for myself, but I haven't. So what I'm suggesting is that instead of 300,000 in this line that we actually make it 402,500 and that 2,500 is the landfill monitoring that was raised in a prior year. And then I'm suggesting that in order to make all the numbers still work out, that then this one becomes 100 and not, oops, that's not right, 197,500. And while we're looking at this, whoa, wrong one. I'm just going to highlight the ones I changed. And I would ask that whoever makes the motion to call those out in some way so that it's recorded and I don't, in the future, come back and just look at my original memo. Right. Please. I can tackle that, I think. I move that the select board assigned fund balance in the following amounts, reduced property taxes in FY 22 in the amount of $402,500, details assignment for future budgeted tax reduction, reduced property taxes in future years in the amount of $197,500, detailed out fiscal year 22 proposed budget includes increase in use of fund balance. This will need to be stepped back gradually to avoid a spike in tax rate. I'm realizing I probably don't need to say that. Transfer to capital in the amount of $189,717 for a total of additional assignments of $789,717. A second. Thank you, Dawn. Thank you for that. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. We have our fund balance assignments. Sarah, thank you again. Thank you all. I will send that to the auditors. They'll be very happy. We definitely want to keep the auditors happy. Okay. Earlier in the meeting, we amended the agenda to pull the minutes of December 28th joint meeting out of the consent agenda so that we could amend them. Andy, did you have specific changes you'd like to make? Yes, I do. We had modified the order of the agenda. So I would like lines 222 through 234 to be moved after the trustee's adjournment because that's when it happened in the meeting. Flo. Okay. Kathy, you got that. Was that 222 to 230? 34. 34, thank you so much. Yep, I've got it. Okay. Any other changes to those minutes? No, not for me. Okay. Before we vote, we have a hand up in the audience. Go ahead, Irene. Thank you. Couple of corrections, if I may, line 96. Talks about promotion passing the trustees by five to zero, but there were only four in attendance. Online 100, 101 and 102, there are four, one, two, three, four, five people who are listed as representatives or senators who are only elect. So I would ask that their titles be amended. That would be by Hofsky, Black, Dolan, Chittenden, and Roth. Same correction, please, to line 181. The Hofsky is a representative of elect. And finally on 180, I believe Mr. Murray was asking about statewide introspection on policing, not community-wide. So I request that change with his permission. Thank you. Pat, we have an audience member making a change to something you said. Do you approve? Yeah, I'm reading that now and that is correct. It was statewide. Dawn, what would you like to add? No, I don't have it. My hand just never came back down. Thank you. Oh, okay. Okay. Are there any further amendments to the minutes? All right. Would someone like to make a motion to approve them? So moved. Thank you, Vince. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Pat. All those in favor of approving the minutes as amended, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Moving on to the consent agenda. Does anybody have any questions or comments on the consent agenda? I make the motion to accept the consent agenda as presented. Thank you, Dawn. Second. And was that Pat or Vince? That was Pat. Thank you, Pat. Any further discussion on the consent agenda? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. And thank you. Moving on to the reading file. We have the addition of the letter from Andrew Brown. Are there any comments or questions from the board? So, unless any other questions or comments, I'll take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Thank you, Dawn. Seconded. Thank you, Vince. At least that worked. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you, Evan, Sarah, Tammy, all the staff who are here. Thank you, everybody. Have a lovely evening. Good night, everybody. Yes. Thank you, staff. Have a good...