10. This is an Apple Watch out. Cool. I want to start before. Yeah. All right. I call the town of Essex Select Board meeting for Monday, October 3, 2022, to order. First thing to do is do we have any agenda additions or changes from staff? None from staff. Any change requests from board members? Okay. So we'll move on to public to be heard. Public to be heard is the time when folks attending the meeting can speak to the board about items that are not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard, you can raise your hand in the room or use the raise your hand feature in the zoom application where you could, if you move your cursor down to the bottom of your screen, there's a reactions button that will open. If you click on that, it'll open up an opportunity to raise your hand. If you'd like to speak, please be brief. Please be civil. And I see Bruce Post's hand was up before yours. So I'll come back to the room here in a minute. Bruce, go ahead. Thanks, Andy. Bruce Post, one city lane. I just want to ask a question if you're going to be allowing the public to speak later when you take up the MOU for the tree farm agreement? Because I have some things I'd like to say. Yeah. The MOU is an agreement between the town and the city. And so we will be having the discussion about the MOU in public. Yes. So at that point we will take public comment. I'll wait. Thank you very much. Okay. Right. Hubey, come on up to the microphone. Introduce yourself. Yeah. For those who don't know me and maybe those are trying to forget. My name is Hubey Norton. And for full disclosure, I've always wanted to say that I'm on the zoning board, but this has nothing to do with the zoning board. And the way in I saw the sign, welcome to the village of Essex Junction. I suspect they may be changing that sometime soon. My point is probably it needs to be, and this may already be in the process. Some new signage that needs to be added to the entrances to the town of Essex, like on the river road to a, on, yeah, main street headed to the town, welcome to the town of Essex. So that might be appropriate. Thank you for your comments. And then Brad, I think I saw your hand. Okay. Okay. Okay. Any other hands in the room? I don't see any. Anybody online? Anybody else online want to speak during public to be heard? Okay. I don't see any hands. So let's move on to the public hearing for the public nuisance ordinance. Chief from Lieutenant Kissinger, you guys want to come up? Oh, there's a public hearing. We've reviewed this document several times before. We did we, we adopted it. We approved it. The languages you passed it. We passed it. The last meeting. Considered for final passage, although we do have a change that we'd like to propose. Select Board accepts that change. It would have to warn another public hearing, which we would target for October 17th. So after, after hearing a concern, I believe it was from Tracy in regards to the aggravated panhandling section of this, we went back and spoke to the town's legal counsel again. He had already reviewed this prior to this, but he went back and took a look at just that section. And since looking at it, he is giving us advice now that we should just strike that from this ordinance because he feels that it could be problematic. I think the opinion that we were given was not that it couldn't be successful or be used. It was just that he believed that it wouldn't be. It could be contested in court. It could be found on unconstitutional. So his advice was to go ahead and strike it from there. So that's the adjustment that we made. He did suggest that there was another section that could probably capture a lot of that behavior. Yes, the disorderly conduct section. Yes. So we would still have, have that covered under there. It just wouldn't refer to specifically to panhandling and that type of thing. Okay. Since this is a public hearing, I should have asked the public to speak rather than you guys up right away here. But thanks for that update there. Is there anyone in the room like to speak to the, the public nuisance ordinance? Part of the hearing. Brad, you can come. Yeah, you can come on. I'm sorry. I guess. I'll give him a spot. I'm Brad Kinnison from a town of plastics. The first issue I wanted to reference was table a excessive sound and I wanted to ask the chief and Lieutenant, what was your source of information to arrive at those numbers? Yeah, sorry. This is the awkward hearing. Those numbers from the chart came from the town of Wilson. They're the only ones that actually have a decimal reading. We started this endeavor with the fire chief who wanted the ordinance not to be objective on having actual number. We adopted numbers to go about objective. Did you ever consider looking at the CDC guidelines? Okay. Specifically for the decimal reading. Okay. So I went to the CDC guidelines on noise. And it's right here. And some of the decibel readings that you have in there, according to the CDC. So normal conversation, 60 dBs. So in the evening at a residence, you would be in violation according to the CDC. It would be from the other person's property line. Not from there. I can tell you from what we used to have things about noise from pub on Park Street. That would not pop 60 decibels from where the old chicken bank used to be. So it's a lot of noise complaints. So for something to carry a property line. It couldn't be above that. Okay. Shouting or barking or shouting is 110 decibels. If somebody did that in the evening, they would exceed that decibel range. And so technically they could be in violation of this ordinance. So that's a lot of noise complaints. So do you think you saw reasonable numbers? You're welcome to take a look at this. If you'd like. I kind of questioned some of the readings. I think they're awfully low. And I hope and I don't think that you would be using that just to target people. I don't believe that. But I think you should look at other sources as well. I think you can do that. So you're welcome. And we have some data in the labor in town. And then the select board used CDC guidelines for the pandemic. It might be something you might want to take a look at. Yeah, you can have. You can have that. Thank you. You're welcome. So in. Let's. 12. So it says the use of firearms when used for hunting in accordance with the state Fish and Wildlife Laws and I remember in the previous meeting that the reference to firearms other than this was struck from the ordinance because state statute would take precedence. Is that correct? Okay and so state statutes takes precedence in the case of Fish and Wildlife as well. I would suggest amending that to read that the discharge of firearms for hunting and at sport shooting ranges as provided under the Constitution and the state and Vermont state statutes or just eliminating it completely because the Constitution and the state statutes take precedence anyway. So there's really no need to even have that in the ordinance. Brad can you give me the section you're looking at again? Oh I'm sorry. 611-040-G in Roman numeral 12. Page 13 of the PDF. Do you want me to state that again? No, no I see what you're saying. I mean we did have a discussion about the fact that we by omitting other references here that state statute does apply. I don't think we wanted to explicitly say that state statute applies because then you'd have to put that everywhere. I mean what other we don't want to necessarily have to have an exhaustive list of where state statute applies and where it doesn't. I mean it always applies. The Constitution and the state statutes apply to fishing and hunting. Do they not? Yes they do. Actually I don't know. I don't know. There's absolutely the right to hunt in the Constitution and then there's I don't know if the Fish and Wildlife it says laws here so I assume they are a statute. So either you know I think the statutes and the Constitution take precedence so there's really no need to even address that in this ordinance I wouldn't think. It's a I mean it isn't going to hurt. As you say I don't think there's any harm in the language the way it is. Because that would take precedence over the ordinance anyway. Okay thanks for that. But anyway it's up for your consideration. And reference 611-100, aggressive panhandling. You just addressed that. I think there was some reference to constitutional rights somewhere. I would like to know if that's in the Constitution. I don't think that you would find that. Anyway so my point and my opinion is that panhandling should not be an acceptable practice. And the reason why is when you go to the Agency of Human Services and Department for Children and Families that the DCF provides benefits and services for over 200,000 Vermonters. Because one third of our population through 23 different programs that they provide for needy families, individuals and families. And then they reference another nine. So there's private organizations. So that's 32 programs that provide services and help for individuals and families. And so our tax dollars are going or being used for that. And our generosity as citizens to various organizations provide help for these folks. And so I don't see any need for people that are standing out on the corner panhandling when there's help available through our state and through our communities. And I want to bring up since firearms was discussed at many times during the previous meetings. Just to refresh your memory, I think you and Andy and Greg were involved in the firearms ordinance discussions. The rest of you were maybe or in attendance but weren't on the select board that there's a letter from Bill Ellis August 15, 2018 to Greg Duggan referencing questions about the town's legal authority to regulate a discharge of firearms at existing ranges. And in his conclusion, he said the town may not through a noise ordinance or otherwise limit the use of sport shooting range in existence as of May 22, 2006. Rather, such a range must be allowed to continue to discharge firearms at the same level that existed as of that date. And that was upheld by the Supreme Court in the North Country versus the town of Williston and they affirm the same. And the last document was a letter to Travis Sebastco from Fred Satink from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and had to do with the liability of the town if they start regulating fire shooting ranges. I just wanted to bring that to your attention once again. Thanks, Brian. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Any other, Hubey, you want to come up again? Again, Hubey Norton and I'm on the zoning board. I'm not speaking for the zoning board. I'm speaking for myself. And I'm here primarily about the new ordinance and the sound provisions specifically. But one of the things is I'm trying to figure out exactly what part of the current ordinances are being changed. Normally when there are changes like this, the old language is lined out, new language is inserted. This was not the case here. We just kind of got a package. And there are some portions of this new section, 6.11 that are actually covered in other parts of the ordinance, like on fires, for example. So it's not clear to me exactly what is being changed and what isn't being changed. My next question, really, the crux of this is what is the reason and the rationale for wanting to make this change? And I posed this question to Lieutenant Kissinger and you all on an e-mail. And the lieutenant responded, and I'll quote kind of not exactly. But currently the town does not have a noise ordinance and relies on state statutes, VSA, yada, yada, noise, and disorderly conduct and so on. Only enforcement action available under those statutes is to issue a citation, which is a criminal act.  So anyway, so again, I was looking for specific information. Where's the data that says we got a problem, you know? And so he again responded and said that he suggested I fill out a records request and sent me a copy of the form. But really that is for like a particular incident, not for general data. So I didn't feel that that was really going to, you know, answer the questions that I had. Looking at the police report from the police report in the town report for 2021, there's five years of data. There wasn't anything specific in there about these things that are covered in this proposal. And granted, there were general categories, burglary, murder, yet homicide and whatever. So I understand that the police report in the town report wasn't that specific. So again, I'm not really taking issue with a lot of the updates. So I have questions about a couple of them. But anyway, it's confusing again about exactly what's being covered and what's being eliminated in other parts of the ordinance. So the current section 6.12 only covers, excuse the pun, public indecency. It's only two pages long. The proposed 6.11, which apparently is replacing 6.12, is 14 pages long. Covering numerous items, many of them, which like I say are currently covered in section 5. That's part of the confusion. Although some of the descriptions in the part about nudity are thought were looking, I wonder if the police department is going to become the fashion police here. But anyway, my primary concern was the portion about dealing with sound. 6.11 has five pages on sound. And cutting to the chase, where is the data that supports the introduction of a noise ordinance? We're trying to address a problem that doesn't exist. My interest is in the number of noise incidents or complaints that have been handled by the police department within the town, not the village. I heard comments about a restaurant in the village in the town over the last five years. What are those numbers that say that we need to have a noise ordinance? As I said, I'm on the zoning board, and I will say that rarely, rarely have we had to adjudicate issues specific to noise. There was one case many, many, many years ago where we actually had testimony from an expert witness, a professor from UVM talking about noise, and he was very explicit, got into the intricacies of sound and covered them in great detail. The short takeaway is that sound, not noise, is very subjective.  Well, we live in a subjective world. This is an analog world we live in. It's not a digital world. We think we live in an analog world. Things are subjective, and noise is very subjective. So, UV, there's a meter that is available that the police have that can measure the sound. So, it will not be subjective. Well, that's part of the problem. And if you, there are, measuring sound is tricky and it's conditional. You mentioned measuring sound, decimeters, okay? You look up decimeters and it says there are devices that are commonly used by sound professionals, to measure sound levels. Now, I'm not a sound professional, and I suspect that the town doesn't have any sound professionals either. When you measure sound, one of the things that we heard in testimony is, you have to start with background, okay? You can't just go out and measure some sound. What was the background noise to begin with? There is background noise all around us. Hearing the hum of something over here, there's always a decibel level to start with. So, in order to determine if you are now having a problem, you have to have a starting point. How do you get to that starting point? So, there's a process in measuring sound. And again, all due respect for the police department. I'm not sure that they are professionals entrained in detail to measure sound. The five pages are trying to cover a real complex subject, set parameters for enforcement, that I don't believe are reasonable. I believe they're unreasonable. One description of noise, noise, not sound but noise says, it's a very subjective term. It can refer to any unwanted sound but is more correctly used to describe sound that isn't rhythmic or pure. So, when does sound become noise? What is pure sound? You know, talk about subjective. So, the paraphrase, one judge that comments about pornography says, I can't define it, but I can tell if something is pornographic when I see it. Similarly with sound, it's difficult to define when sound becomes noise. It's in the eyes or the ears of the beholder. So, however, what may simply be sound to one person may be noise to someone else and vice versa. When we come to trying to cover all the bases within this ordinance, they've tried to sort out what is acceptable sound and what is not acceptable sound. So, there are so many exceptions. I've got a neighbor that's got a lawn mower. It sounds like a 747 taken out. But that's okay within certain hours. So, I think that, and I don't have a problem with this, he can mow his lawn whether he chooses, that the table, that residential receiving premises table, that's confusing in itself to look at that and try to discern what do those numbers mean and how do you measure them. And Brad already made comments about some of the noise levels. I started looking into that, but it's like, it gets complicated, very complicated. Some sounds may be unpleasant, very unpleasant to one person, not unpleasant to someone else. So, you know, like leaf blowers, lawn mowers, emergency vehicle sirens. I live on Sand Hill Road. I hear the fireman coming to the fire station. I hear the fire truck going away. Talk about a sound that is not real, very enjoyable, but I understand that. That's part of living in the community. Change sounds, firearms, et cetera. So, those are sounds that are commonplace generally wherever you may live. So, I'll go up on an assignment to say that the police have a great deal of latitude in enforcement, like in issuing certain kinds of tickets. And I would suggest that they would also have latitude here. I believe that many times when people are creating what may be a problem to someone else when they're approached, that they may not have understood they were creating a problem and will try to correct it. And that that could be a first approach and not have to be out measuring with trying to measure something that is difficult to measure in itself. And I don't want to burden the zoning administrator or any more than she already is doing. But within the zoning ordinance, the zoning ordinance has many, many places where noise is described in a subjective manner. Sound is described in a subjective manner. It says objectionable noise or noise that adversely affects or will not generate undue noise or create noise, vibration, air pollution, fire hazard or noxious submissions that will disturb or endanger neighboring properties. These are subjective terms or noise generated will be a minimal. Those are all terms that are within the ordinance and they're subjective and they're there for a reason. So that reasonable people can make a determination about something, whether it is reasonable or unreasonable. And I know that in some cases you want to have things that are not subjective. This is the case where it is majoring trying to determine noise and the difference between noise and sound is subjective. It needs to be dealt with that way. So my recommendation is that this portion of the noise ordinance that not be not be included. If the political well says that there has to be a noise ordinance, I think it should simply say something like, no person shall create objectionable noise, un-customary to the area. There's something similar to that. And that would provide an avenue for the police to approach someone and say, hey, you're making objectionable noise. This is uncommon to the area. You've got a cease and desist or I'm going to come out here and nail you with disorderly conduct or not probably not. It wouldn't be the best approach probably, but anyway, that could be the avenue. So in essence, it would be like to strike the entire remainder of 611.040 and just leave the parts A and B where it says it shall be unlawful for any person to make or cause, to immediate assist in making or continue any excessive unreasonable loud sound, et cetera. And then B shall be considered a sound disturbance and public nuisance, provide the sound sources plainly audible from the receiving property. Those are general terms and that could be sufficient in order if, again, I would say not to have that in there at all. But if you must have something, if you feel you must have something to address noise, leave those two phrases in there. But don't get into the measuring decibels and excluding this and making exceptions to that. It just seems like a conundrum to me. And that's my, that was my point. Thank you. Thank you, UV. Hey, any other hands in the room? Want to speak? I don't see any other hands. So let's go to online. I didn't know who put their hand up first. I think the zoom is telling me it was Lorraine. Hi, Andy. I think it was me too. Thanks. Lorraine on center road. Interesting to listen to QB in terms of wanting data. I personally don't call because there's no point in calling because there's nothing to call. There's nothing on the books to call for that would make a difference. I live right next to the ethics discount beverage store and has keeps getting louder and louder and louder. So I don't know what's considered normal to an area. I think Ethan had commented to me once that something about well, you knew what your, your, you were buying next to it. That was already there before it wasn't there before we lived here first. And the store expanded and more traffic has come down the road and I'm not the only one to make this complaint. But I don't have anyone to make a complaint to there's no, so you're not going to have any data from the police in terms of noise complaint. There's nothing on the books for me to be able to do anything about in terms of enforceability. I agree with you be I don't know how you enforce something like, you know, all the modified mufflers that sound like guns going off. It's a fairly consistent thing there are times in our home that John and I can't even talk to each other. It is so loud. I don't think that's unreasonable to want to. And that's not a siren. That's just the traffic. It's unreasonable to want to be in my house and be able to hear the TV on a regular basis. So, you know, part of this to me as well is a health issue. It's not healthy to be subjected to that kind of noise on a consistent basis either. And it's where the kind of the canaries in the coal mine as we expand our population and we create densities without any kind of sound barriers or buffers or mitigations for noise pollution. And statistically, those who get hardest with noise pollution and pollution itself from cars are the people in the densest parts that live next to roads. So, I don't know that this is the answer per se, because I do think that it would be very difficult to enforce, but I do know it my piece is disturbed consistently where I live, and I would like to live here. I don't know if there's also maybe other ordinances on the books that are disturbing the peace kind of ordinances that maybe this is not necessarily because maybe it would fall under that. But yeah, anyway, if you have a place for me to complain, I'll I'll call the police and complain on a consistent basis, but I don't think that's helpful either. But thanks. Thanks for your time. Thank you, Lorraine. Patty Davis. Am I unmuted. We can hear you now. Okay, I just wanted to say that I just barely came on, but not everyone has common sense. And I find that Essex town is is, you know, especially the suburban area of Essex town is getting more and more populated. For example, we had our house redone and we had very, very, we had roofers really gun hoe they worked 14 hours, and they wanted to borrow our running headlamps and just keep going going in the dark and I have a metal roof so the sound of bang bang bang. But I had enough wherewithal to beg them to stop because they had there's a newborn baby diagonally across the street from us. There's a five year old directly across the street and there's two young kids that live behind us, but they would have kept going they were great, but to have the common sense to be to be respectful of your neighbors. Any comment on the ordinance. Well, I think there should be standards because this is our towns growing. We need standards. That's my comment. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Can did you want to speak. And don't. Is it okay. This that's okay. Thank you. I can signal. Chainsaw is about 100 decibels. So if I read the ordinance correctly, hopefully somebody will correct me if I'm wrong. I guess I'd be in violation if I was anywhere near my property line cutting trees. I do that all the time. I'm concerned that a number of these settings on that table. Basically would limit a person's activities near their border because they would then be at the borderline and the noise they'd be creating would be source. Even a conversation if you have two neighbors in an urban area which are not getting along real well somebody might just have a loud conversation at their fence. Just to annoy the other neighbor and then the other neighbor would call the police and it'd be interesting to see how I'm trying to stop somebody from having a conversation at their fence would be. A problem I think. So I'm concerned basically that because of this fixed settings. Noisy activities that normally take place chainsawing trees for example at a border. There has to be some adjustment there I think chainsaws 109 decibels on the average. That's it. Thanks. Thanks. Can I make a quick point? Sure. In the ordinance there is an exemption equipment for maintenance of lawn and grounds during the hours of 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. including but not limited to lawn mowers, hedge trimmers, weed trimmers, chainsaws, no blowers and leaf blowers. I want to ask the chief or the lieutenant maybe I'm misunderstanding but they would only have to enforce this ordinance if somebody makes a complaint. Yes, would have to be a complaint. Right. It would have to be a complaint to the police department for them to even act on any of this is my understanding. So we're still in the public hearings. Let's have sorry. Let's let's finish public comment and then we come back to these questions. I get this. Sorry to make you guys get up in but it looks like we might be winding down on comment. Any other comment in the room? Anybody else online? Okay, so then let's close the public hearing. Make the motion we close the public hearing on noise ordinances. Thank you, Don. I have a second. Thank you, Ethan. Oh, any further discussion? All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion passes 4-0. So now we can ask our questions. Here we go. So am I correct in assuming that you can only have an enforcement ordinance if somebody calls a complaint? Not exactly. So if it's a residential or if it's a commercial place, something like that. We're certainly not out driving around looking for people making noise coming from their house. One of the things that we have been asked to do, however, is to look for vehicles that are making excessive noises and that type of thing. So in that case, we would be patrolling and looking for those types of things. But residential and commercial violations that might come up, we're not out there looking for those things. That's if someone complains. So like when Ken stated his chainsaw, the only time you would have to respond is if some neighbor near him complained about his chainsaw, he might fall out or whatever. He did it after a lot of time, yes. Generally, we would have a conversation like they suggest that we wouldn't necessarily issue a violation the first time. And as it stands now, because there is no standard, then we would have to go out to that call, talk to him about him using his chainsaw, or at least get his side of the story. In this case, if we had this ordinance, we would be able to say there's an exemption for chainsaws. Thank you very much for calling us, but there is an exemption for chainsaws during these times. Thank you. Ethan, go ahead. Alright, I have a couple. So the first one I want to start with is the exemption for firearms. I thought we were all on the same page that we were eliminating, even the one that was in coordinates with state and fish and wildlife laws, because if we refer back to state statute, which I thought we had talked about was, with this exemption, I need to exempt livestock, protecting of livestock. There's many other reasons to discharge firearms after hours that are protected under state statute. You know, coyote hunting, raccoon hunting. Well, those are hunting, but a lot of those could be for, you know, if I have my residence and I have to discharge a raccoon and it's 11 o'clock at night, I'm not hunting. No, it's not protected under hunting, but it's protected under state statute and Vermont agriculture. Say that one more time. If you were hunting raccoons, did you say? No, I wouldn't be hunting raccoons. A raccoon would be killing my chickens for three weeks and then I would be discharging it. Right. A nuisance. You know, it would be like if, you know, for an example, if you had to do it with a fox or anything, you could call and get permission from the wildlife. But my whole point was that all these things are protected, you know, for discharging a firearm. I just didn't understand. And you guys made the comment that it was, I don't know, do we need that line there? Can we strike that line? Well, I'm not, I'm not 100% on the on the fish and wildlife laws because that's not really my forte. But I, but I believe that fish and wildlife laws do cover you using a firearm to protect your livestock, correct? I believe that there's, I know that there's a law that says that or to the best of my knowledge that there is, but I'm not sure whether it's a fish and wildlife law. I think that it is. I think the language in there, Ethan, just because a lot of residents don't know that you can do anything in there. At least they're here. We could point them to something that says it's covered. Right. I think that's specifically why it's in there was left in there is to educate people that there are laws that do protect that type of activity. Okay. And then my only other question was going to be about, and I'm going to move on from firearms after this, but like there's no law in the state of Vermont prohibiting gunfire at any time. You can shoot whenever you want at any hour. I believe noise in nighttime would cover that. Right, which is then prohibiting firearms. And that's where we're, that's what we're trying to do with this is to not rely on that state law that says that there's no state law about discharging a firearm at night. If you're creating noise in the nighttime, that is a form of disorderly conduct. It's its own separate statute. And is there a reading on that? There is not. And is there a sound measurement on that? There is not. Because I'm just thinking of, you know, many things, but my situation would be not my personal, but I've got a hundred acres shooting in the center of it. Somebody could hear it in the distance, but it's not disturbing anybody. Where's the judgment there? Well, if it's not, if it's not during the times that are listed in the middle of the night, right in the middle of the night, right? And it would, then if you would roll over to the sound, the decibels, right? So it would have to be that, but it would also have to be either an instantaneous maximum or it would have to be over a period of 15 minutes. Okay. Yes. Okay. I just wanted to know the distinction of that. And then my next thing that I want to move on to the, I've really been on my mind since the beginning of it. And I didn't really make a stink of it until the panhandling was addressed. Panhandling is being removed because of constitutional practice. I know it's not in the Constitution, but it is an upheld Vermont law, public nudity. And we do have language in the nuisance ordinance about. All that. Kind of find a lot about it. But the only thing that has continued to come up, and I just checked the statues again to see if I could use a different word was back in 1846. And the Supreme Court was asked to decide state verse Millard. And he was found guilty of wooden lascivious conduct. After he exposed his parts several times to people, which will hardly agree with him that should be his covered in our ordinance. He has a tent to eliminate the practice, which is, you know, only upheld with a with a town ordinance to disallow public nudity. Because you could, not that we have one now, but you could have a public road that decided that 15 people wanted to live there and create a colony. Don't build a walk on their private road under this ordinance. So that at that point you'd be private. You know, this only dresses out in the public. Public road though. Like I think back to Milton, you know, if I'm not. But I just, I just don't understand. We're going to allow people to beg for money, but you're not allowed to follow up with a wall that's been upheld since 1846 to leave your house. And I mean, I'm talking about people flashing or the incident that happened over here on Susie Wilson where there was somebody doing that. You know, it just seems a little odd to me. We would never be able to have a naked bike ride for a fundraiser or any of those other things. There's very few towns in the state of Vermont. I can only find six myself, but there may be more that actually have an ordinance against public nudity. So this isn't new. We already have such an ordinance. What's that? We already have a public nudity ordinance. Currently. Yeah. And do we have a panhandling ordinance currently? No. No, the panhandling was struck down there. There was two proposals for panhandling and aggressive panhandling. The original one was struck down by a town attorney. And the aggressive one, initially when this was reviewed here two years ago, that one stood. But as changes in case law, kind of this is what made him dissuade us from falling up with the aggressive. Because if someone's being aggressive, it was pointed out by Tracy that that would be covered under sort of conduct. An attorney thought that would be just as suitable to cover under sort of conduct versus aggressive panhandling. So am I missing in here panhandling on a standalone writing? It's disorderly conduct. It's just a disorderly conduct. So panhandling is going to be a legal period. No, no. That was struck down, taken all out. Okay, that's my understanding. So you're removing something that was in the other ordinance. We did not have it previously now. A lot of these things other than... But you have nudity in there before. That's been... Two years, you said? No, the nudity has been in there since 1996. Really? Yeah. That was the point that I made. I saw.  So, I'm good. Okay. Since I passed along an email from a member of the public with this concern and it's been raised, would you mind if I read that to give some background? I received an email that said, I just wanted to flag that attempting to codify a ban on aggressive panhandling has not been well received by the courts and is frankly most likely unenforceable. This is why Burlington repealed its ordinance in 2018. Frankly, it's protected speech to ask for money. And if your behavior while doing so becomes illegal for some reason, it would fall under the disorderly conduct piece of the ordinance or state law. You just can't... You can't just penalize poverty. There are other tools in the toolbox to address any problematic behaviors. So, that's the background where... So, has there been a case where somebody has fought a civil violation for republicanity? You know? Has contested it? Yep. I don't... Not that I'm aware of. Okay. Honestly, I don't... That's where this came from. My idea had come from. No, absolutely. You know, it really... It means a whole lot to me. I'm just thinking like out of here because when I read the email, it clearly says that it's upheld by state law, in which case I'm sure it was contested at some point, probably in Burlington, where the courts found that it was, you know, protected under the constitution or under state law and statute. So, that's why I was just curious. And like I said, there's not a whole lot of research about the... The whole public nudity thing because I think it's few and far between. And, you know, it's a lot of people who are probably out in the... In the more rural parts of the world, in our state. So, I'm just curious how one could be upheld and the other one can be. And if there is legal concern about it, but... It was all... All right. Thanks. So, I guess at this point, because we've made that change, are there any other changes anybody wants to make? I think I didn't hear any. Since we took out the aggressive hand-handling section, we do need to have another public hearing. So, the request from staff is to... The recommendation in the packet is to... There's a motion in there to warn another public hearing. Isn't there? There is. There is. There must be... Is it the end then? It's item 6A. Yeah. Probably in the... Oh, my God. Okay. That's not it. Well, I do. They're easy to find. I don't have an amendment. I have a recommendation. Sorry. The way the ordinance approval process works and... That sticks through the town charter is that you have the... Pass the ordinance, which is what you did last meeting. Then you warn a public hearing. After the public hearing, if there's no more changes, you can adopt it. If there are changes, you need to, from what was passed, you need to have another public hearing before it can be adopted. So, since staff is proposing that we strike the aggressive hand-handling section, there's been a change. And that's her. And so... Right. So, we need to pass it again. We need to pass the new... This new version that doesn't have the aggressive hand-handling section in it and then warn of another... Okay. I got it then. So, I make the motion to select board passed the public nuisance ordinance with any desired amendments and authorized staff to warn a public hearing to consider final passage of the ordinance on October 17, 2022. Thank you, Don. I have a second. Thank you, Tracy. Any further discussion? Point of clarification. The desired amendment is to strike the hand-handling section. Correct. Thank you. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Motion passes 4-0. We'll have another public hearing at our next meeting. Okay. Moving on to the... Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And Lieutenant Kissinger. And thank you too for all the public comment. Moving on to business item 6B, presentation from a discussion with Essex Rescue about financial report. Do you have the presentation? Yes. Yes. Introduce yourselves and have at it. Thank you. So, my name is Colleen Ballard. I'm the executive director for Essex Rescue. Peter Murtholo. I'm the president of the board of directors and a 10-year AEMT volunteer. Great. So, we sent over a presentation to discuss tonight to share some of our challenges financially here at Essex Rescue, which has an impact on our budget request this year. So, without holding things up, we can't get into that if you want to change the slide. So, first, just giving a little bit of background. You know, we're an established organization. We've been around for 50 years. It'll be 51 in July. We are strongly supported by the community. We have demonstrated financial responsibility, and we currently have our own building ambulances, staff, volunteers. Policies were established infrastructure. Next slide. So, we currently have no loans, no leans, no bonds, and had strong capital reserve practices. We have put away money to purchase our own ambulances, do repairs to our building as needed, purchase critical equipment like our cardiac monitors, which are around $52,000 each. And as long as we've had this money to put away, we've continued to put it away. And we can use it as for budget deficits when they arise. Next slide. So, our current building right now is insured for over a million dollars. Our ambulances in total are about $750,000. We have a fly car, $35,000, and our equipment is estimated at $287,000. What's a fly car? So, it's like a first response vehicle. It's not as fun as you think. No, no, there's no means. It's simply a vehicle that's used smaller than an ambulance to meet other ambulances on the road to provide a paramedic. That's not a transport vehicle. It allows you to get from scene to scene. Okay, gotcha. So, where does our revenue come from? This is always a question that we field. So, our subscription, which goes to all the residents that live within our surface area and takes care of everybody in the residence. It's not a per resident. We do bill for our insurances. We have, I mean, you can see there's a lot of governmental insurances, but there's also private. And then there's some that are uninsured and it's a self-pay. We do receive donations for memorials and standard donations, municipal contributions, and then rarely we are eligible for grants. We did just finish a grant with a combination of Williston Fire Department, cold gesture rescue. I think there's one more entity. I can't think of what it was, but it was to fund putting people through paramedic school. So we were able to get in on that grant because the fire department was involved. We did utilize COVID money, the HHH money, the PPP loans, and over the years have been able to use certain assistance to firefighters grants if they are open to private EMS organizations. So our subscription plan, we always evaluate whether or not this is doing us any good or if we're putting more money into it than what we're actually receiving. So about $90,000 expenses, about $85,000. It may be a little bit more this coming year just because of cost of things. This last year we wrote off $22,000 due to the subscription and people that were subscribers, but we have a net benefit of $59,000. So it has proven to be useful in getting some revenue. So the next piece we're going to go into is discussing how, when we bill for our transports, how that's broken down. So these terms are important in understanding how the money comes back to us. So the charges that we're going to talk about are any costs that we accrue that we then bill out for the services provided. So if I was to take Peter to the hospital, we're going to bill Peter's insurance company based on a set fee, based on the care that Peter was provided. So those are the charges. That's the total charge to the insurance company. The allowable is an amount that right off the top is a contract written off amount that we will never, regardless of what we do, be able to get back and that number is decided by Medicare. So Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, Tricare, all of those follow the allowable. Commercial insurances, some of them pay more than others. Some of them follow Medicare as well. The expected, yes. There's a question about that, though. The Medicare rate is determined by Medicare. It's not determined by the state. By Medicare. By Medicare. Expected is what we anticipate to collect. And then collected is obviously what we actually get in hand. So, Annie, just to clarify your question, it might be a state to state differential, but Medicare sets the limit for what we can bill against their insurance carrier. So anybody we pick up who's on Medicaid has a top limit. I don't have the exact answer as to whether or not that is equal across states, but it is a Medicare limitation. The reason I'm asking is we have something later on our agenda where we're talking about what the Vermont League of Cities and Towns is going to lobby for in the next legislative session. One of the items is increasing the Medicaid reimbursement for EMS services. Medicaid different than Medicare as far as reimbursement. Okay. So Medicaid reimburses 100% at an even lower rate. Medicare is an 80-20. So they'll cover 80% of the allowable and the patient is responsible for 20%. Whereas Medicaid will cover 100%, but the reimbursement is like 300 bucks regardless. It's capped. So I don't know if that's what you're thinking. But we can get information back to you as to whether that's Vermont's specific rates or I'm not 100% sure off the top of my head, but it is a limitation that we are up against. Medicaid also has, you'll see it come up this year, our last Medicaid does a tax. We're taxed for transports and it's based on our full revenue. It's 3.3% of our all revenue collected that we pay back. And it was in theory to assist with reimbursement at the time. So everybody pays into this pool that then pays out. Unfortunately, those that have ambulances services specifically, if you have less transports, it actually hurts you because it's based on a percentage. So if you don't transport very many Medicaid patients, you're still paying into this pot based on your full revenue, which I know has been up for discussion a lot. Next slide. So here's where we get into more of the data as to where the money comes from. So in our area, Medicare and Medicaid pays 64% of our total insurance revenues. That's a large portion of people where it is a fixed rate. We have zero impact on that, regardless of how many of those patients we transport. So that's 64%. And the rest would be commercial insurance, self-paid, uninsured, high deductible plans. You can see that the allowable rate for Medicaid or Medicare, the highest is $495. If you have a $200 bill, that is our $2,000 bill, $495 is the max reimbursement for. Medicaid, $389 is the max that we would receive. And that is, like I said, 100% with no copay with a patient versus an 8024 Medicare. Next slide. So misperception that an increased rate in call volume means increased revenue. We found that that is definitely not the case. Our call volume continues to increase. And as you can see, not all those calls are actually billable. So the call volume continues to increase to 2021, where we're at 2,754 calls. 1,800 of those were billable. I will say that we have a good recovery of funds when talking about that on a national average. The national average is about 50% recovery of the allowable. We're up in the 80s, which is actually really good. But it still leaves us with a deficit. So if you look, we'll just for time, we'll go to 2021. So we build out $1.6 million in charges. We had allowed just over a million dollars of reimbursement. We only received 874,000 of that. And that's pretty standard. Our recovery is anywhere from 700,000 to, we're hoping maybe 900,000 this year, but there's really no way to tell. Next slide. The call is only billable if you transport. So we can bill for, so what's allowed to be billed and what insurance companies will actually cover are different, but we do bill for non-transports if we perform an assessment. But a lot of insurance companies don't, they don't pay for that. So it'd be on the patient to pay. And that's $150. Many do not pay. We can request reimbursement for some protocols change. And we're now able to work a cardiac arrest victim on scene and declare them deceased if interventions prove unsuccessful. That's a really hard line to walk to then ask the family for insurance information and follow through charging them, which would probably be a substantial amount of money. We have not, we started to do that and it was proving to be very unsuccessful and not really, it was not working good. So we chose not to do that. But that's very few. So there are some calls that we can bill for that are not transports, but yes. How do you guys, I guess I say how do you, how is it classified for like uncollected funds? Is it just kind of like medical bills or is it, can you? Yeah. So I'll actually talk about that if you want to see if I answer question next slide. So here talking about this year, we're still collecting and this is back in July, these stats are from. So there are a little, I'm sure we've collected more. I haven't looked at that number since, but we're still actively collecting. So 1.8 million charges, 1.1 million is allowed. And so far we had received 881,000. So to answer your question, unpaid claims before we had written off, we started using collections this last year. We have about $87,000 in collections. I'm sure it's a little bit more than that now. The reason we have opted to stay away from that in the past is because we never wanted anybody to not call for an ambulance because they were concerned about a bill. We offer a subscription plan. We're doing our best to get the word out, which would for residents specifically, it would allow them a break from a bill that they couldn't pay. We have run into situations that we haven't ever faced before, such as insurance companies deeming a transport not medically necessary. So they refuse to cover the bill. We've had people giving false names. That's happened five times in the last year. And then we've had people who were frequently overusing the ambulance, racking up substantial bills, had insurance, wasn't following requests for information, so the insurance company was denying to pay the bill. So those things we can't fix. And unfortunately, we can't just send one person for doing that and not somebody else. So the best way to do it is to send everybody. We do allow people to send in paperwork if they are struggling financially. And we'll look at those on a case-by-case basis. And if their finances are what would be considered poverty level based on a standard set by our billing company, which is what everybody uses, then we'll free them of the bill under those circumstances. But it does involve sending paperwork back, which most people don't. And we do have pay-over-time. Yep. And as you said, we just started investigating collections of which there's... It's not... I mean, it's not inconsequential, but it's not... When did that start for that number? We started that last year about this time. It's about a full year. We've been considering it for a number of years. As Colleen mentioned earlier, one of the things that we're always trying to balance is what is our perception by the public versus what is our financial need. And so typically, the people who are unable to pay a medical bill aren't going to be able to pay the medical bill even if you chase them for it. But we are taking a step towards first notification and that tends to catch people who are just avoiding the bill versus not able to pay. So we've tried to make it as equitable and community-focused by also not harassing the people that can't afford to pay but trying our best to recoup those open invoices. So they'll receive three notices that they have an overdue payment and then they receive a... You're going to be sent to collection on the fourth time and if they don't respond to that letter, they're sent to collection. So there's plenty of warning. It's not just a... Because obviously that's a huge impact on somebody's financial well-being. Any other questions on this one? All right, we'll move to the next slide. So what is pretty significant to note here is that our reimbursement is limited by what is allowable. There is a certain percentage of what we charge that we will never recover regardless of what we do. We're doing well, as I mentioned, about 82% of recovery, which is above the national average. So just some information about our organization compared to others that compared to others, our agency should operate on a budget of $2.1 million. That's not where we are. We are 1.4, so we are trying to be fiscally responsible. Increase call volume, as I stated before, does not equal increase revenue. And anytime the ambulance rolls out the door for a call, regardless of whether or not they transport or can receive any sort of reimbursement, it's about $500 if you figure why item fuel the personnel on the vehicle. It has a cost, so it's not insignificant. Slide. So it's also important to recognize what the population composition is and whether or not we have an impact on that either. We have a high elder population, especially here in Essex, and they are the highest user of the ambulance. Although the average rate age for all of our service areas is about 56, so we do even that out probably with those wee-wee new ones to the older ones. That was kind of surprising to find, but our elders are on a fixed income. They're insured by Medicaid and Medicare, which are the ones that set that minimum reimbursement. And so we're not allowed to... We can't also... Something called balance bill. So if Medicare covers their portion of it, we can't balance bill the remainder to the patient. They have their 20%, and it's done there. Lift assist, like I said, that we can bill for those. Whether or not we receive reimbursement for them really depends on the individual. And we should clarify too, I think this came up in one of the questions that the lift assist we're referring to here is a lift without transport. So this is an assist for a patient or for a person at home who calls the ambulance service solely to be helped off the floor, refuses an assessment, refuses transport. Right. That was my question. I also note that lift assist accounts for only 5% of the calls from the town, so I'm curious. It's actually 14. Yeah, I don't know where the 5% came from. The calls that I've listed, it's only the first, like, 10. And the I sent over, I don't know if you distribute it. Another, did you receive this? Yes. Some said yes, some said no. But on page... There's a breakdown by disposition. Yeah, page two of that falls is 14% of the top reason for calling. Does that graph? That was going to be my additional question that I was going to ask, was are the ones that are actually transported, are those classified in that chart as falls? And the lift assist is only those who are lift assist and refuse transport or assessment. No, so these are based on the dispatch reason. This is not based on we get there and find out that they have a broken leg or they are having a heart attack and they passed out and it came in as a fall. So this is only dispatch reasons. This doesn't tell you anything about whether or not they were transported or does that help? Yeah, I wasn't making the connection between it's the major reason why I had an elderly call but that it was listed as 5%. That just didn't make sense. So when people call and the dispatcher takes the information, whatever it comes in as is what's documented here. I don't want the dispatcher to dissect the signs and symptoms and report why they were actually transported because there's a lot of different options. Yeah, and I do see that falls is 14% but I was asking specifically around lifting assistance which is listed at 5%. Oh, so that would be those people that call and say I just can't get off the ground but I don't know. Sometimes they literally call in and say I'm not injured, I just need help. So that falls into a particular category. It's confusing because falls can also contain we get to the residents and it turns out they said that they've fallen but they don't know the word to say lift assist so it just comes out differently. Or they fainted. Or sometimes we get to a lift assist and it's like no, sir, you or ma'am you really need to go. If there are more call explanations or breakdowns that would be helpful to understand let us know because these are our dispatch. EMS has tons of metrics and sometimes it's hard to know what's useful what's overload, what's confusing so whatever you guys are looking for to be helpful to understand it, we're happy to provide. Next slide. So some of the challenges that are similar to what you heard last year when we were here fuel is we're spending about $18,000 a month alone now on fuel it wasn't quite that bad before. The reimbursement rates we have our elder facilities now that are well established and I think that's probably one of the reasons why we're seeing this hurt a little bit more this year the call volume is going up but the reimbursement for those transports is not matching that. We have looked into other means of funding and have not been successful at targeting anything that's going to significantly improve. There are small things that we've done and are continuing to do. Our building continues to need costly repairs we just put a new roof on the building that was about $52,000. We have a vehicle that needs to be replaced this year even if we were to order it we are about three years out because of the whole line of manufacturing but the vehicle won't fit in our ambulance bay so it's not possible to replace that right now anyway. And then just the general building we have people that I can't even put all of my staff in one room so trying to figure out that whole piece. We planned on started a capital campaign to build a new building. We had worked feverishly for years we were able to between past members and current members raise about $200,000 and that all went into planning and site work and all of the initial stuff to find out that our building was going to be close to $9 million for something that was 2,000 square feet more than what we're in right now. So what we were hoping to be maybe a $2 or $3 million project at nine was just unaffordable and not anything that we were going to be able to raise money on with a capital campaign anywhere in the very close future. So that project is currently on hold as we re-strategize with some marketing folks to try and help us with that down the road but as of right now, secondly I'll state that that money is sitting in a capital reserve account and is not part of our operating budget. If you look at our 990 online you will see that $200,000 as revenue or to, yeah, $200,000 as revenue. We are going to do our 990 differently. The problem with 990s is it's based on a taxable corporation. It's not meant for nonprofits although we have to complete it so especially on page 10 if you look at the item allocations it will never match our operating budget because it's not meant for nonprofits. So if you were to look at our 990 you will see that we have an excess of $200,000 but that $200,000 is not part of our operating budget. It's in a capital reserve so if that was a capital campaign. If you have questions about that too we hold transparency on the operating budget, the 990 form where our funds are coming in and where they're going. Next slide. So the increased call volume preferred a number of times. I was anticipating hitting about 2,900 calls this year. We're going to probably cap out closer 3,100 calls. The we can't, so this question comes up all the time about how come we're not turning down some of these transports or repeat customers or we legally cannot legally deny somebody access to health care so we have to find creative ways of handling some of those. I spoke with Greg prior that I've had conversations with some of these facilities who are using the ambulance when they're waiting too long for a non-emergent transport that often have to be arranged ahead of time and when they're not getting that need met quick enough they will often call us and we are kind of the easy transport. So I've had conversations with them about what's appropriate to call for and what's not appropriate to call for but getting the crew up at 3 in the morning for a sore on the nose is not really something that they want to get up for. It's really hard to keep people when they're getting up for things that are really not within their expected transport reasons. So loss of a workforce. No one planned on COVID. We can all attest to that. We are still everybody even outside of EMS is still struggling with that. We lost a significant amount of our workforce where we were turning over an average of 20% a year. I don't even know what our numbers are but we lost a lot of people to COVID. We continue to lose people. The high stress we're definitely seeing the challenges with mental health and people just needing to take a break from the everyday stress of this job. There really isn't a lot of interest in volunteerism. Most of people that we have coming into the organization are med school bound, PA school bound, nursing school bound. They're from out of state. They're not locals. We get some people like Peter here who stick it out but a lot of times these are short one, two years. Average time for a volunteer in the past was about five years. We're lucky if we get to these days. So we've changed some of our rules so that unless you're certified we're not going to put the time into somebody who really can't be of assistance immediately. The classes are accessible and there is ways that we can help with paying for their education once they're with us for a little while. One, we can't just pay people to have them walk out the door and go work for somebody else for money. Two, it's a burnout to our staff for continually training people that just leave. That was another one of the questions that came up about workforce change. I don't remember who it came from but we can address that now if you'd like to go into the specifics of the workforce because volunteerism is the number one thing that has changed and that's happened within the 10 years that I've been here. So the way our model works right now briefly give you a summary of it. The way our schedule works is that when people come into the organization they know that they have to work before I don't know why they picked the numbers that they did way before me but they did and on the ambulance we typically have when I started almost 20 years ago it was about there were five people to one ambulance that's a lot of people we were the clown car we don't do that anymore there's not enough room it's not safe. But the numbers slowly started backing off to now we're lucky if we get two people on an ambulance. We do have some night crews that are a little bit more packed and some of those people are highly trained and experienced it's really hard to push those people to different shifts when part of the reason they're here is the camaraderie of it and that network. The new model is going to force our providers to step into more independent roles of being the two front seat people on the truck. We will guarantee an ambulance staffed by full-time staff which we currently have which will be 24-7 we will have one ambulance staffed by all paid staff we'll put all of that staff resource into that truck. The second truck which we were able to staff partly before the volunteers and staff we just don't have the people. The second truck will come up with volunteer personnel only staffing with a minimum of two people per truck there's a couple of ways that's going to benefit one it's going to give us an additional resource two it's going to force these people to grow some confidence and independence and function at their actual licensure level. This is a pretty big change for them I know they're capable of doing it otherwise we wouldn't have them in those positions but that's probably the biggest thing is spreading that resource out so that we don't have everybody clumped in one spot so that would guess. I want to finish because I want to just back up a little slide constant request made by ER for mutual aid strains your system is it because everybody else is in the same boat of desks and they can't respond there's a little bit of a shared wheel right now where everybody is in the same boat where the call volume is going up and the number of resources that they have to street are not matching that so we go into other services when they need us and other services come into here when we're already out on a call. Colleen just mentioned the redistribution of the workforce to ensure that primary ambulance staff 24-7 we're going to throw out a couple more terms so that you know what Essex Rescue is providing for you. ALS is advanced life saving there's BLS which is basic life saving in advanced life saving there's AEMT and paramedicine. Essex Rescue only puts out ALS ambulances so our ambulances when they go out the door have that ALS capability every time and the redistribution of that workforce is also helping us get closer to another goal that we've had of 24-7 paramedicine so we are the closest that we have ever been to having a medic on that truck 24-7 and the other thing that's coming back which has been waning the past few years and as Colleen mentioned COVID had a big impact on us but the what the volunteers bring to the table for us is now going to be entirely evident in that streeting of the second truck. That becomes a real banner to hold for us that the volunteers together with the paid staff are now putting two trucks on the street for Essex Rescue so again there's a tremendous amount that we could go into in terms of how we've gotten to this change I don't want to bore you with all the details but if there are any questions happy to dig into how we got where we are what's your FTE to volunteer ratio so right now full-time employees are eight so there's going to be a struggle in answering that because we have a lot of people that even though they show up as a number they're on leave where they only run a certain amount of shifts so it's not really an equal with that caveat in mind I think the last vote so where we get these numbers from is all of our members can vote and we just did a vote this last September and we had 28 voting members so that doesn't include the people that Colleen referenced to are on leave and that doesn't include the people who are coming into our organization who hadn't gotten there yet when I started we had upwards of 70 volunteers and as we've been talking about the national average of volunteers is waning we're seeing a volunteer deficit right now we're hovering right around 30 so to answer your question 8 to 30 it's not where we want to be the workforce model that we're talking about also alleviates a lot of the challenges that we were hearing from our volunteers that we're taking them out the door overworked inability to have time away from the truck and inflexible schedule the anticipation here is and the expectation is that this will actually increase our volunteerism so our model is giving us our best foot forward to get as many of those volunteer hours back as we can um excuse me I can have a curiosity question from how what led you to this model um I don't I know covid's been different so it's probably been different the past year but how often have you found yourselves only being able to staff one truck often very often right now um more than not which so we haven't fully discharged this new model yet so um I know the hours are there if everybody stays with us and is willing to embrace this change which I think they will we have the hours they will have to do a certain number of hours a month versus shifts a month which is where some of the flexibility comes in but the hours work I think what 144 hours extra in excess a month which means that this would allow some freedom for people to take off without hurting other areas of the schedule so my hope is that it will actually spread people out and reach better but this really hasn't been tried here this is a very very very big change and just to follow up is the truck that you staff now like on a basis is that mostly in employees or is it mostly yeah most of the time we have two staff on and that's it there's a lot of shifts we don't have is that like on a three shift rotation or something daily the the staff they do three shifts they do three totally curious yeah they're good questions yeah um any other questions on that um we'll keep going here um so our annual costs they keep going up in our our remaining amount so in our operating expenses that includes the money that we would typically set aside to go into our reserve account for the purchase of future ambulances and equipment so when you're looking at these numbers you'll see that that that is included in there and you know the tonight the 19 to 2020 year $8,000 would have been in excess we continue to go down continue to go down as we're hitting COVID as we're hitting loss of volunteers we've hired more people and even those that we hired um just as we were getting them trained would leave to go somewhere else we had one um who joined the Air Force and left us for the last 18 months um and she wasn't even with us for a month before leaving so those types of unexpected things have really hurt us um so 22 23 that's this year even with the increase we requested last year we're going to have an anticipated $190,000 and that's if we make our um our revenue exactly our revenue goals um hopefully that will prove to be better than ever but um we really can't hope too much on that next slide I have a question about this slide sure it could be totally wrong but what makes the 1920 and the 20 21 positive compared to the 21 good question I'm glad you asked that because I forgot to mention that um during those times with COVID we had the PPP loan we received hazard pay from the state to pay our volunteers for working in hazardous conditions we received some of the paramedic grant um so and that also covered some of our payroll because they were doing clinicals um so a lot of that was offset by those grants which we won't have going forward they've they've all ended awesome thank you um so the cost of providing service um our we can only sustain ourselves based on billing and contributions uh the increased population is having an increased effect on us low volunteer participation means that we have to hire people and our payroll expenses are more than half our operating budget and that is paying people minimally um the services around here are um very much competing over resources so um I have limitations on what I can pay to keep somebody working for us um which is still unfortunately you can go deliver pizza for someone and make more than some of my incoming providers which is very sad um but with limited funding I we can only do what we can do next slide so the question always comes up of what we're spending our money on and without um I mean this is really that the big pieces of it there's our payroll um communications is like our radios replacement batteries there were some pieces over at the PD and the dispatch center that needed to be replaced um so some of the parts came out of that um common utilities anybody would have our IT fleet maintenance I will tell you that this year that number is going to be up um thanks to road paving we lost a lot of tires this year um billing services they do all of our billing for us um insurance is a big one as it would be for any um agency workers comp um and you'll see the um I mentioned the Medicaid tax that percentage the 3.3% of your revenue so last year it was $27,000 I expect that it it may be a little bit more this year um next slide medical supplies that's all going up um you know none of this should be a surprise um based on what I'm sure you're seeing in your own budgets um our capital reserve for an ambulance so the next ambulance purchase were around $350,000 the power load stretcher system which is now a requirement by the um the people that that put out the regulations for ambulances um monitor replacement luckily we just got our last one so hopefully that will be a little ways out um education recruitment and retention so all of these things I mean this is this is a majority of where our funds go to any questions on any of those items we can provide you an itemized list of our budget as well so you I mean if you have questions we're more than happy to um share what each of those are in more detail is this still your anticipated fuel cost for this year uh no this is fiscal year this is this is the share yeah so yes um I will tell you that that may not be that's why I was curious because it seems a little well just keep changing and we're only two and a half months into this year we started fiscal year July 1st so yeah next slide I think we've gone over a lot of this what we're trying to do um to improve areas of our organization that may not have been as effective efficient um or financially um efficient are there any questions about this one of my first conversations with um Evan when I met him was about impact costs um I know that there is some investigation into that um unfortunately these organizations are already established so there's we're not going to get very far with that but I'm glad that it's being looked into because I think that that has had a pretty significant impact on the services specifically that we provide um any questions about anything on the next one um I spoke to those Peter do you want to talk about the board stuff so I think one of the big things that we're trying to do here is make sure that we're not leaving any stones left unturned uh we've completely changed over our workforce model as Colleen has alluded to it is a radical change for us but it is going to give us the best way forward to really bring in that volunteer recruitment and get our um target back up to the uh second ambulance redefining the membership we talked about a little bit what the volunteerism aspect uh is here with our agency and at time when I joined you could only be a member of the agency if you were a volunteer we're being a lot and not only a volunteer but a clinical volunteer meaning on the ambulance there are a lot of jobs at sx rescue that don't have anything to do with setting foot on the ambulance and we're extending membership to those roles we're opening up more ability to become a guiding member of the organization without just being a clinical volunteer and we're expanding the role and the reach of our board of directors so for those of you who have been around for a while you might remember the community advisory board that sx rescue had many years ago it sort of slowly died off whether it was active or passive not 100% sure but one of the things that we've recognized over the past few years is that our lack of direct communication and full involvement in transparency has led us to a mismatch with our community partners so we want to reinvigorate that relationship whether it be a seat on the board community advisory board or some sort of representative model open to hearing what's available what the interest is because as we said before we're here to figure out how to make this work and there are a lot of things that we have to change from what we used to be able to do so our organizational change is focused on two things continuing to support that mission which is getting out excellent emergency medical service to our community and doing it with a community based support in mind so that's going to include that expanded role of the directors and the membership in the agency big reveal the big reveal so last year when we presented this budget we were hoping to only move up to 13 a little over 13 dollars per capita and looking at our budget and the deficit this year if we had stayed there we would have had a negative budget of 339,000 which would not only mean that we would be taking again out of our capital reserve which we've done for the last two years which means we wouldn't be purchasing another ambulance so when that one goes down that leaves us with two and nothing to fall back on if there is a mechanical issue with another which isn't that uncommon and the only way for us to move forward and not constantly catch our tail and just try and get ahead so that we can start with smaller increments that are more appropriate based on the economy there was no other way for us other than to ask we know it's a big jump I mean it's not what we had planned this certainly if I was in this role a while ago would have done things differently but I was not and I don't think any of us were prepared for COVID and the effects of that especially on a volunteer workforce who knows in the future maybe this number could potentially go down if someday if this works and things get better we certainly aren't looking to pad our budget we are certainly there's no padding in here so this is the expense only I think in the night unless you guys want to talk per capita based on the towns the next slide incorporates how it works into the budget I was just curious about the asterisks sure Jericho is a partial coverage of the town it's not the full coverage but I was like I got to ask yep yep same with Westford yes it's split between another agency based on proximity so then you can see our projected costs there the idea here is just to show the trend that we were on with 22 and 23 is projected and that continuing deficit and to show what the additional funds necessary that we're asking for along with our projected operating expense and other revenue increase is still going to put us just below the black but at a less egregious so 2022 doesn't look as bad as it was anticipated I think it was supposed to be like 290,000 it wasn't because we were still they extended one of the grants because the paramedics students were having a difficult time getting into clinical sites so they extended that and we were able to use some of the leftover funds that never got used to put towards needed equipment which was hugely helpful so that's why that number didn't end up there was also some expenses that we were able to avoid so that left us a little bit better than we anticipated so I had question on this looking at the municipal contribution is a percentage of the operating expense in FY22 it started at 9% give or take 23 it went to 23% and now we're looking at 36% now I wouldn't expect those numbers to be the same but I would expect that municipal contribution to be somewhere within the same percentage of the operating expense why the discrepancy so first of all the largest jump there looking at a per capita rate we have been at $3.87 for a very very very long time longer than we should have that number should have changed a long time ago but it didn't so we hit COVID and lost a bunch of people there's no way to recover from that when we're still operating at $3.87 per capita we were the second to the lowest in the state I wanted to jump that way and my plan was certainly not to do these jumps the way we have it was part of a four-year plan but if we keep it at a four-year plan by the time we are done with this growth it will be more than $18 per capita because we will be trying to back into a capital reserve and keep our budget going so I think also to add a little bit of context to that question and I think you've heard us talk a little bit about it tonight but to put it into perspective when I was running on the ambulance five years ago we had 70 plus volunteers and made up about you know 85 to 90 percent of the shift coverage was volunteer based especially in those lead roles our anticipation of where we were going to need to go in terms of full-time support was just that supporting the volunteers and within the last three years it has entirely flipped right in front of us and we've gone from being able to reliably street that primary ambulance with volunteer service to now not being able to street that and ensure that we're going to get that vehicle out the door without full-time support and so one of the other things to consider is as we spoke about before with the difference in our workforce model that number of full-time employees is going to continue to support that full-time ambulance so while we had a big ramp up to get to here the next ramp up would only be if you came to us and said we now need you to street two ambulances 24-7 with full-time employees then we would talk more about full-time employee costs we're not going to have to come back to you about the range of how many more full-time employees we need we've got that full-time ambulance covered as they roll right by you can hear them so the someone should talk to them about the noise I know sorry um again I would I don't know how much depth to go into with that but there is a lot there in terms of where our agency has shifted so you guys understand if we're giving you enough there or if you want more conversation and more details about that I know a question brought up I sent a a sheet with some comparisons from different agencies and someone asked a question about Garnet I did actually reach out to Garnet this afternoon I spoke with their operations director Jeff Patterson who advised they have zero interest in taking any sort of EMS pre-hospital transport right now they're focused on working with government funding doing vaccination clinics and they were big into the COVID testing they're also working on a mobile healthcare unit to bring to places like 18 Carmichael which may in the future help with some of that if they want to buy into it which they have been reluctant to do but I did ask the question that if they were to be approached what would their per capita rate be and they said it certainly wouldn't be $18 so I know that this is maybe not so much the $18 per capita as it is the jump again and as we have been told many times this has nothing to do with service we're providing which we're very proud of and have done for a very long time um and it certainly is not an easy ask we know that this is a very difficult time to be asking for money and I certainly wouldn't be here in front of you if we could do it another way well I guess just a little bit of feedback if I may it's very difficult to be in this seat and not knowing that these problems are being exacerbated throughout the year and seeing you once a year with a 5% increase over last year so that's why I'm I really want to dive into to understand fully where the issues lie why the increases are what they are so I hope I'm not coming across as adversarial it's just I really want to understand what the drivers are yeah you know we have a emergency man just me but it was also the fire department police that had this discussion with breg that the population growth being as aggressive as it has in the town of Essex specifically has put a huge strain on resources I had the same discussion with Evan I think we're also a little bit and so I appreciate the canner and I think the other reason that I'm joining Colleen here today I participated in some of these a number of years back but we want our board to be more transparent with you to have a better working relationship so that it's not just that cycle of you see us when the budgeting time comes up we're also here with full transparency so if there is something that we have overlooked we're open to figuring it out we're not making the assumption that we have all the answers we have spent a bit of time doing some due diligence going through the things that we could turn over any questions budget transparency the ability to participate in our board not only do we want it but we need it so I think we're trying to turn around that relationship to a much more inclusive one both for the elimination of these kinds of difficulties but then also for context because EMS is one of these strange sort of services we're not an essential service so that might not necessarily mean something as a term but legally that means a lot we don't get access to a lot of grant funding we don't get access to a lot of expected municipal support that fire and law enforcement automatically do so yeah I hope that we're not coming across as defensive because we're not feeling adversarial from you at all we welcome the questions and the insight so please know that this is not a small ask from our side members of this community I live in under hill I have a long history here so it's not easy for me to put this before you guys either appreciated having said what you just said have you not considered joining up with the fire department partnering with good question and that was I spoke a little bit with chief Colette of the Wilson fire department who you know they they've went through this they didn't have an ambulance years ago we were the next one after St. Mike's that's not so the fire department being municipal would mean that our agency would also have to become municipal that's not a problem other than we're going to leave several other towns without an ambulance service I don't know as though that would be the cheapest efficiency hasn't been obvious either so one of the things I mean it's an we're talking about combining services there's there's an assumed efficiency but one of the things that happens is it's not as though a full-time fire department and a full-time EMS when they combine use half the people you still have fire calls that are independent of EMS and no one's going to be happy if the fire guys out there and the EMS goes unanswered so I think what we're looking for are the efficiencies of perhaps combined facilities we're looking for a new building Colleen mentioned in the capital campaign for another building open to that possibility of figuring out what is the most efficient way to move that forward now that wouldn't have any change in our operating budget but when it comes down to being the sole owner of a building over time it might I don't know if you were able to look at Wilson fires the town still doesn't have full-time firefighters yet crack their per diem most of them and volunteers accurate Wilson you know here oh yes so that is not something that you necessarily had budgeted for right off but if you look at the Wilson fire department combination apartment they a 3.4 million dollar budget I believe and they're bringing in $400,000 in revenue for their one town and I don't know it's not really for me to say whether or not it would be you know financially makes sense I think there's pieces in parts that we all do well whether or not it makes sense under one roof is really yeah yeah I just had a question about if and just if you guys have looked into the cost to services to the to the more rural town you know we're talking mileage here Jericho under Hill and Westford is there been proven any more costs for fuel maintenance vehicle wear and tear staff transports out to those towns right as as at the same rate I don't know that we've ever looked at it that micro good detail I will say that I think their first responders definitely proved to be very helpful in that situation because the lift assist that we get all the way out there to find out that they don't need anything at all but because of the distance we're stopped long before we get there that tends to be helpful you know there are also typically fewer calls per capita in those areas one of the things that we do yeah yeah we do come up against the question of I just didn't see any cost comparison to volume I don't know that we've ever looked at that it certainly again open to it I think one of the challenges is per capita at least gives that level objective playing field of these are how many people we are supporting in ambulance service for there's also the opposite which is like we're closer to the junction which means the response times are a little shorter so is it a shorter service meaning better service or a longer service meaning more charge the per capita has felt like the most even starting point to make sure that all of the towns feel both represented and supported but if there's a comparison to do certainly open to seeing what kind of a difference that would make from a percentage of how many calls we go to in the different areas it's fractional so the majority is Essex and the junction so last year you came to us with 216 percent increase request with the intent to roll the second ambulance and it sounds like is that or is that not happening that you actually have the second ambulance that last year was supposed to we did have it most of the time the problem was when we hired certain people and they didn't stick around we all of a sudden had a deficit again there's really no way to stop that from happening can't control the people that enlist in the service and we can't control those that go somewhere else because they get paid better this is a we are we have a serious problem with workforce and EMS that is why the government is looking at it so heavily but to answer your question Andy I think that the initial expectation of treating that second ambulance was again based on that staff support of volunteerism which is no longer viable so our staff is now primary ambulance 24-7 with volunteers taking on the mantle of that second truck so I don't understand sorry I'm asking a question here now because we were told that the and that was the intent 216% increase was to pay for additional staff to roll another ambulance but now your intent was to roll it with your reason for not having a second ambulance is that you're saying you don't have enough volunteers so that's where a year and a half ago we had more volunteers where we could street an ambulance and a half so an ambulance and a half being the clock and then that extra ambulance with the combination support we don't have that it's just the volunteerism is not there the burnout has taken its toll the lack of volunteers coming through the door has taken its toll and what we are redeploying is a guarantee of 24-7 ambulance to support volunteerism to get us that second half of that shift and as Colleen mentioned right now the hours based on our volunteers that we have support doing just that so we can street the full-time ambulance and the second ambulance once we get this model in place that is definitely the intent so for the first ambulance had volunteers on it that allowed us to pull staff and spread people out basically we put our staff where we needed to and supplemented with volunteers as we've lost those people we've lost and we had on the first truck there's no longer a choice of where to put the staff you're still getting the money to pay for it that's where and now you're asking for 65% more I'm struggling with putting together piecing together last year's request and this year's request why they're so so far apart if the intent last year was to roll a second ambulance or another half ambulance I guess it didn't work right is that what you're saying we were still at it so the increase this what was proposed this year would have gotten us out of the hole based on where we were with the staff we had not only do we have an increasing gap because the call volume is going up revenue is not changing we have all the staff we need we've lost all of our grant funding and we still have raises look at what the CPI was this time 8.5 it's going to be 15% next year so if I can't pay people and give them the raises that we set up on a schedule for them when they start with us we'll be out of service just because we don't have anybody so this is simply to get us to even ground we knew that we were going to have a deficit last year and the year before like I said you can look at all of our we're happy to show you our budget if you're concerned about where where money is going but last year our increase was 100,000 just for just for raises and the additional staff are full of 10 so you're saying that you're saying that those 15% is a huge raise for anybody that's what you need to do to keep people from leaving no we have a CPI increase that is not something that we can choose to do or not do like we have to stay commensurate with what the cost of living is for this level of employee so we have an expectation of matching what the CPI is for our employees that's just a point of view that the board has taken to make sure that we're staying commensurate with what we can offer. The policy decision you've made to the employees at that rate. And the other part of it is the solidification of those full-time employees of which I'm going to have to go back and look and see exactly if what you're asking is the question of we came to you with the same number of employee requests last year for additional ambulance services and now we're providing what appears to be less ambulance service and asking for more money I'm going to have to look at how to answer that question best because there's the same workforce that we're deploying we have one more full-time I was 90% sure that we included an additional full-time employee to get us to a total of eight so I wanted to make sure I had my numbers right before I went back and looked I'm pretty sure last time after Caitlin told us she was going to into the military and then we secured her position and brought on another position to make sure that we could street this ambulance 24-7 with full-time employees so it is additional personnel along with the restructuring of how we're deploying them but I want to go back and look and make sure that I've got those numbers right for you so it's not just a level ask for the number of employees that we had last year so the all of your dispatch is provided by the town of Essex has been and the town of Essex is now 42% smaller with regard to its tax base so now fewer people than before are paying for that 100% of that bill but we pay the same rate as other municipalities that are using your service if the town would like us to pay for dispatch services I've been given an estimate and we can just roll that into the per capita rate that was I think it was $111,000 is what the dispatch services per call would be I think that's going to happen to us anyway given that they're trying to regionalize dispatch I think that's just coming down the pike regardless but certainly want it to be fair and equitable for everybody so if that is something that is a challenge for the town then we've never been asked to pay for it so if that's the ask and it's not taken lightly that's totally not true because I have asked many years well I can tell you from my experience I have not been personally asked in this position but it's also not invisible to us that that is a service that is being provided to us but it is keeping our operational costs where they are so that is one element that we don't have control over if you're able to continue to support that service we will definitely take it if not it becomes a part of our operational expense so I mentioned the 42% change in our tax base we're to be blunt facing a pretty large tax rate increase for our residents and this exacerbates that actually if you look at the number it's actually a smaller number but it's spread over smaller because our contribution was 241,000 in this current fiscal year next year you're asking for 207 so it's a smaller number smaller number but you're people supporting that number and so it's a big chunk to swallow all at once is there any phasing you know last year you proposed a schedule that you were going to intended to follow or proposed following that I can find it here was 1091 to 1326 to 16 to 1785 now you're jumping all the way straight to 18 is there any room for any kind of phasing like that so the conversations that we've had at the board level about where to go with so Colleen mentioned our capital reserve account which is something that we've been very adamant about continuing it allows us to do our capital expenditures without coming back for a particular requirement but it is not meant to be a replacement for our operational expenses so the money that goes in there is allocated towards future expenses so anything that comes out gets put back in at closer and closer to the time when we need it which means it's more and more I think the only opportunity that we have to absorb anything would be a minimal take from that capital reserve account but with the expectation that it's then going to be returned which would wind up with a higher trajectory than where we are so I think we made the decision to come to you with this ask and as we've said open to trying to talk about what the best ways to present it are so if that is a more reasonable way to go about it and to explain how the capital reserve replacement would require a more aggressive change over time happy to back with that we didn't work those numbers we felt like this was the best initial approach I have one more question I hope not just one more but go ahead I might transpire into a couple and I was trying to do two different calculators to figure out a number here but I wish I had these paper right down come on Don so my question is if you already know this what is the average cost per call such a great question so I have the numbers right here I just need that piece per call it depends on the level of service being provided do you mean cost to us cost to the as what I'm looking at okay specifically is in the town of Essex and I'm including the city of Essex junction in this because for this year that we're finishing right year point two it's coming from the town's budget so I see a I use an average right there's 911 from 118 31 which is 8 months they have another 4 months I added it up it came out to 1366 which is 74 and a half added calls compared to last year no that's not gonna work we have 200 and right now we're 232 calls ahead of last ahead of last year so last year was 1292 this year you're already 1500 we're more than that and then my next question would be how many of those came from the town of Essex if the increase is that large I'm happy to go back I don't have those numbers off the top of my head but I will just say that anecdotally they have almost stayed proportional so as the call volume goes up if we get 10% more calls across the board it's almost identical that Underhill will get 10% more Jericho so Essex in the town so right now we're at call number 2276 and we have October November and December left to go as of right now we still have until the end of December so that runs on a calendar year our call numbers I don't really mess with that that's all towns correct yes okay you're looking for just the responses in the town of Essex I was including Essex Junction for this year just because I couldn't tell you but what I was going on was on an average from Essex and Essex Junction as of 831 you had reported 911 calls that number's not not more than that like if you use an average it would be 1366 I think it came out to be 113 calls a month roughly just the town of the junction that could be accurate which looks like years past but my point was that it brings you to a 74.5 increase maybe it's going to be a lot more than that I don't know we don't know you might know but I was looking at the numbers for the per capita of $7.99 per person increase and the call volume doesn't reflect that and then the budget itself you know the way even with an 18% increase you're still losing well if the budget comes in from what you had projected before and what it comes out on you're going to be here next year asking for a 5% per 5% increase on the per capita on top of 18 next year you won't be able to operate under the budget that you proposed with your revenues I think it's a consistent pattern almost 5% in these numbers what's hard to determine is not all of there's no way of knowing how many calls are billable and that will actually result in billing of insurance or not there's so many variables it's very difficult we've tried to play that game it does not often end up anywhere accurate unfortunately what I found by doing the math was even if we had 50 calls maybe 5 of those would be billed and then at what rate they're billed I mean there's no way are you trying to do a projection based on call volume increase next year and what your increase will be next year and what I came up with is another 5% because you're not making any more revenue this year than you did last year I can tell you that it's not going to be based on call volume increase but this year that was the largest factor you said in the full-time employee but I was just reading call volume was one of the factors but not the largest the largest was the loss of our volunteer support by our none our workforce loss is what's being made up by the increase in the payroll of the full-time employees now that's exacerbated by more calls more frequently being woken up overnight more frequently having multiple calls that take you beyond your 12-hour shift during a COVID time so we can go into all of the levels of exacerbation but the number one thing that has caused our bottom line to erupt is the change in our everything else is on an upward trajectory which you've seen in all of your budgets but you haven't had to drastically change where your workforce is coming from and in a solidified state where this is what I meant about sort of going into how much detail we've never taken the stance before of making sure that full-time employee is the starting point for our ambulance response it's always been full-time supports the volunteer that has been a long difficult transition to make that it is now full-time that supports the volunteer that might sound subtle I'm happy to get into the nuances of it but that's a really big cultural shift for us I'm just going to follow it up with what do you think the budget will be next year if this is if things fly at 18 what would it be next year it's a really good question Ethan I wish that we had the answer for you for what we're projecting for next year the energy and time has gone into preparing for this so I'm happy to go back and do those projections and try and come up with a reasonable forecast for the next coming years but as we've gotten into the change from last year to this year and the amount of effort that has been put into what we've done as a basis is say our full-time employees are now the core of the agency so the expectation there is that it's much more in line with traditional economic indicators like CPI so I can't predict where the CPI is going to go but I would hope that it would be commensurate with that so I'd like to offer the public opportunity to comment or ask questions so I guess I'll first say are there any comments or questions from the room I didn't even look behind us we've still got people who are patiently waiting well this is only the second item on our agenda we have a couple hands up online Mary Post go ahead hi thank you I just want to say that I'm actually really annoyed at the way this whole thing has been going I think it's important to grill people to find out where our tax money is going but these EMS people do a huge huge important job it's always messy it's very dangerous and I don't think we give them enough credit I'd like to say that when it comes to comparing how we treat our own town employees we have been asking to be told what we pay our town employees and we don't get it at all there's no grilling there for the public at all and we've been asking and asking there's absolutely no transparency when it comes to the police department I appreciate our police they're very important I don't have an argument with them really but they come and they get their budget they're treated so much differently and yet there are a lot of complaints about the police department supposedly, I don't know if it's true people say they don't answer calls I almost never see a police car on the road and yet they've got a big budget what are they doing? Mary do you have a comment about the Essex Rescue? I have a comment that they're very very important I don't like the way the questioning I just don't like the attitudes then I don't think that we appreciate them enough and as far as I'm concerned they just offer them what they're asking thank you thanks Mary Lorraine Zaloon I just want to try to get a better understanding of how the funding works so I hear it's not an essential it's not a recognized essential service which the police department and the fire department have the luxury of if I understand right from last year's presentation or six months ago it gives a lot more access to grants at the federal level is that true? yes that's true and so do you know from when you researched with the Wilson department it sounds like they're combined with the fire department did they give you a breakdown of the grants that they were able to bring in to support them? so we get all sorts of notices we get them as well from FEMA from Homeland Security and often times you have to be part of a municipality or a fire department or a law enforcement agency except for the newer one that has come out that Bernie Sanders was pushing I will say that I did meet with three house representatives on Friday who were very interested in the neglect of EMS in general especially in private sectors that are not municipal or linked to the fire department and they were very concerned especially about if funding doesn't happen for us what is going to happen to our EMS system because nobody can absorb the calls that Essex has so to answer your question we're hoping some of that is going to change in Vermont and get us more of that funding but the eligibility really comes down to whether or not we're considered an essential service and really what type of entity we are I also want to say I just have to call out our local fire partners because they've been excellent at including us in those grant proposals so I want to make sure that it's clear that while we are not necessarily considered an essential service we have been met with open arms whenever there's an opportunity to partner with a Williston fire or an underheld Jericho fire or when it comes before the town and the junction I'm not sure if we've been in a grant the radios while some of the bureaucratic stuff is still stacked against us I do want to just make sure that you're aware that we do get a tremendous amount of support from our local partners so if I'm understanding right so certain things like equipment you are able to access some grants for equipment because the fire department applied for a grant that you guys could share in correct correct part of it and we can use some of that for educational purposes we put paramedics through the rigorous training that they require to get more of those on the street so yes it's both equipment and training beyond that it sounds like that's a federal definition it's not at the state level in terms of essential status is at the federal level not at the state level I'm not 100% sure where that comes from I honestly don't know and I haven't been able to get that answer even when talking with the health committee it's at least federal I don't know that state can supersede that I don't know that the state has an ability to indicate yes or no at that level but I'm going to follow up with Andy's question too about the Medicare Medicaid at the state level so I don't have a good answer for you on that because I'm thinking certainly at the state level there could be some law pass that would allow more revenue coming from the state that would alleviate some of this so two years ago the state got behind all funding for EMS training and for a year we didn't have any training costs for incoming personnel but that only lasted the single year if I remember I know that they've been in front of the state legislature trying to get us to be an essential service but I don't believe that's been successful so there are strides but it hasn't taken full hold so right now do you have access to any state grants too that aren't reliant on and is that related to not being an essential service? They all have a lot of the same criteria where you have to be a municipality or a fire service or a named law enforcement it really is excluding of private EMS agencies specifically so you could apply to essentially become like a municipality your own entity municipality ties you to the town entity so as Colleen was mentioning some of our sister agencies our municipalities Williston, Colchester we are an independent non-for-profit corporation and we serve the five different communities so they're within Essex Rescue there's not an easy way to say we're moving from private to municipal The state is full of non-profits that are in similar situations and larger ones too, rescuing non-regional that they're they're hurting for funds and they're looking for ways to Yeah they have taken on massive debt and loans to do inter-facility transfers to make up for lost costs in 9-1-1 And so also like the fire department the police department do you have mutual aid kind of compacts with the other towns or it's just that Essex Town fully and then we hope to get the revenues back from the other towns through billing Yeah the other towns give us money too or from their municipal budget I'm sorry I missed the question do the other towns support Essex Rescue outside of our five community response partners? Outside of billable hours do you also go to the other towns and ask them for money to help support that comes out of their municipal budget just like you are today Let me just see if I understand the question correctly we have our five partner towns Essex the Junction Underhill Westford and Jericho outside of those if we go into Williston we bill the patient and their insurance we don't bill Williston So right now we do but it's just billable it's not you don't go to the municipality and ask them to budget like you are today from Essex No I think I think you you ask don't you ask Underhill or Westford to provide all of the municipal towns that we cover for primary service we do go to every single one of those and request the same per capita rate if we go mutual aid to a town of Williston for example we do not because it was not expected that we are going to provide regular service to the town of Williston it would be no different than Williston providing an ambulance to us when we are currently out does that make sense yep so it's just billable to the patient in that case that is correct and then in terms of the other towns in this regional agreement basically do they proportionally give the same amount per capita as Essex does well there's a quite there's a lot of amounts but a lot of it depends on whether or not they're municipal or not but I believe the highest per capita that I have seen is $82 per capita you're talking around the state with other agencies I think Lorraine might have been our community partners we per capita charge or request a contribution for each at the same rate yes yes and have this in compliance throughout are you going to is this going to be a big leap for them as well we are having the same difficult conversations with all of our community partners so from the city from Essex Junction which is about half when I look at the numbers they're going to be asked for 300 something thousand I heard from our president it shows the they're going to be asked for the same so they will be responsible for $190,620 based on their population it's the second to the last slide if we missed it from the presentation but Lorraine if you have those any of those kinds of questions you can feel free to follow up with us at quarters I don't know how much deeper we want to go into the public I'm happy to answer whatever time you guys there it is so Lorraine right that's extension yeah request is $190,000 so it's basically the same so it'll be interesting to see what the city does I appreciate your time it just you know for us and I remember we have this conversation last time because the essential services to me was a big mind blowing to me that it's not and clearly to me the other thing that we work on in terms of the police and fire is that the mental health crisis which to me I would love to have folded in and because there is a national push right now for separate services for crisis that include mental health services so you know if there's a way for us as municipality as well to help move forward that you guys are a third essential service in town let us know because certainly we can do letter writing campaigns and everything like that because to me the broader service this should be paid for out of federal and state as well not just from the local municipalities so sorry to cut you off I appreciate your work I just want to let you know we do appreciate your work do know that we can want you hire a lot more people that is your biggest cost to any business and so I'm not shocked by the numbers because we have to hire people so thank you for your time thank you thanks Lorraine any other comments or questions from the public hey I don't see anymore we the select board is meeting on November 4th to have our first discussion about our FY24 budget this will be one of the line items to be discussing there a couple of things I thought I heard was you some consideration about the dispatch you know whether there could be some in kind contribution associated you know I thought you had said that I think the safest way to do that in respect to everybody else would be if you would like us to pay for that service we make sure that everybody is contributing to that just a line item in the operational budget oh I see oh so your okay I don't know any other way that we could offer that without it being shared amongst the other communities without it being fully transparent into the budget which as we said before it's not inconsequential that Essex supports us with that if that's where we need to go then that's what we'll include the other thing I heard was the potential for a robbing Peter to pay Paul situation where we would have a higher rate later for a lower rate now because of the capital reserve support the other huge hill we have declined with regard to the fact that the city is separated from the town and our tax base is very different than it has been I don't know if there's a proposal you want to make there so I mentioned the November 4th date because that's the date that we would want to be talking about this if there's anything any other alternatives you could propose around either of those topics that would be what we'd like to see it before that anything else anybody I just have a good question if you have the number but do we have a definitive number on dispatch cause I didn't see it broken down it's never been quantified as an actual bill for service cause it's never something that we've been asked to do Colleen had an informal conversation she spoke about what it would cost I believe it was like 45 dollars per call come on up do you want to kneel I can stand right here the conversation between Colleen and I was basically what would the estimate be if they were to pay for dispatching services the number that I quoted her was the same number that I had given to another town that's near us under hill last year when they were looking at having us dispatch 45 dollars per call would be a pretty good discount compared to paying for dispatched services if they were to go with such such a central dispatch up in St. Albans or over in Shelburne so having been community partners for a long time that was the number that we kind of came up with for under hill and that would be somewhere in the ballpark of what we would charge them so just roughly with that it would come out to about 111 or 112 thousand dollars per year for that okay and I understand that then you would want to spread that expense across all of your gotcha alright thank you so much thanks for all the time for being patient with our questions and for answering them really appreciate your service as well as said by others very important thank you for the work you do I want to second that thank you guys very much alright let's move on to business item 6c consider appointment presented to the sx rescue advisory board when I spoke to Colleen and Peter last week or the question was how did the towns have more input into some of this budget preparation and their operations and one of the offers that they suggested was to appoint to somebody to the advisory board you heard them speak earlier tonight about how that might grow into more of the beyond advisory role but right now they have an advisory board and have welcomed somebody from sx to become our member of that whether one of you wants to step up or if you want us to advertise and try to find a volunteer from the community I'm happy to do that I think with discussions going on and where we are right now and timeliness if one of you select board members wants to step up I think that would be great and the most timely way to do things but open it up and leave it to all of you for discussion would each participating municipality also have a seat is this kind of like a one for one or I think they would have the opportunity to up to the other municipalities to step up and I spoke to yeah I spoke to a colleague in another municipality and had a similar presentation and that wasn't an option so I just want to know what the make up of that would be because I got free time for this just so to fight me for even my bread and butter for three years drag if you can't it's not a big deal I ran out of the parking lot so I guess we can so it seems sounds like Gracie you mentioned you'd be interested yeah I'd definitely be interested sounds like Ethan also has an interest I'm interested but do as you wish the powers go around here so sorry sorry I just had a question on the sx rescue advisory board well well now I just I know completely disoriented whether that would be a one for one sort of representation from participating municipalities is that the intent yeah so I think that's such a good question right now we have a provision in our bylaws for a community advisory board that is available to us at any time it asks for a representative from each town it doesn't demand one it's something that we can put in place as soon as people have the ability or the interest in joining us we also are looking at reshaping our bylaws and how our board of directors is put together as part of that discussion would be perhaps a voting seat if there is an interest level of the towns having a voting participatory level on the board and then how does that look is it one vote that all of the towns come together for consensus is it one vote per person per town I don't I don't have a lot of answers other than I think we would want to approach it as an equitable representation from all the communities and if it's an invitation then it's an open invitation to any of the communities to provide a representative you do have a colleague in another municipality and when I asked if like who their representative was completely blindsided said that knew nothing about it so I just wanted to I felt like I let the cat out of the bag no no no no no since we've talked to the towns about it because there used to be much more participation but as I said we haven't re-approached it so the only people that we've spoken to we had a meeting with Underhill and Jericho and then you we have one scheduled with the city and then we have one with Westford so until we get to those they haven't been told so it's not like we're holding it back you didn't let the cat out of the bag everybody will be given the same opportunity and hopefully so that's why it was the same conversation you must have missed it well they could reach out that's totally fine I'll make sure then that we go back and clear that they have the same invitation to participate at the community advisory board as soon as people have an interest and then I think that would really be instrumental and we're trying to figure out the minute that you put it into a voting position then that requires a certain amount of participation and understanding that everybody's already allocated before we go to that level of requirement we wanted to make sure that the interest and the opportunity was there we certainly have the desire to have you guys participate so so our next agenda item is to potentially appoint somebody to this board but this board won't actually convene until you have enough folks to participate in it community advisory board is ready to go you guys can jump on as soon as somebody is able to that it's not a voting position at the moment it is a community we've had members in the past the last one I remember was Mr. Plagman who came a number of years ago he was from the joint commission between the town and the junction and so he was the sole representative so I have no problem if we get initial people from the town of Essex be great to start there the bylaw change takes time but if we know that involvement and interest then it makes it a lot easier to just kind of our board tries to meet monthly so it's about an hour and a half meeting and outside of that it's just ad hoc conversations so depending upon the level of availability we could have somebody start up right away other board meetings open to the public they're not typically open to the public we take minutes and our proceedings are open like our budget is open and things of that nature but it's not a publicly posted meeting so since we seems we have two folks that have expressed interest in and I guess you maybe we should maybe you should stay in case there's more questions should we I don't know how we want to handle this we've got two people interested and there's four of us to vote are you signing up for anything else meeting with any other committees or subcommissions anything like Don has get two or three I don't know it's up to Andy and Don I guess I'm staying strong I love to be a part of it right so it's all in your hands you know I love both of you but given the fact that Ethan has worked on all these numbers and it seems to be on top of all these numbers and this is the first time Ethan has volunteered to serve on another committee I guess I would throw my vote to Ethan so she's basically sitting on the cell phone I will step back it's fine can you make a motion I make the motion that we appoint Ethan Lawrence to be on the Essex Rescue advisory board I'll second that for the discussion I just have one question is there going to be an issue that I can potentially end my term before this is over then we'll just appoint somebody else okay that was the only thing that was going to hold it up but I wasn't going to tell you that at the beginning so okay didn't think about that either alright thank you Tracy for offering this to everyone both of you but all those in favor please say aye aye opposed no you better vote I'll vote no for Tracy you voted no okay so motion passes 3 to 1 alright Ethan now we really are done thank you perfect awesome I'll grab your email from Greg okay so given where we are on the clock and then we have Megan waiting for to talk to us about town meeting tv can we adjust the agenda to go next no objection make the motion that we modify the agenda to move item E ahead of item D on the agenda thank you Tracy for the discussion those in favor please say aye aye opposed I didn't hear you okay motion passes 4 to 0 Megan come on up we're going to jump to you instead sorry thank you for waiting for so long apologies for the you have nobody from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns wait a minute that's me that's me because I'm the rug for that so yeah hi hello Dawn and Ethan I don't think we've met yet hi Tracy Andy so you should have all received a memo in advance and I'll just do a quick a real quick overview rundown first and foremost town meeting tv we consider ourselves a partner with you in helping to provide access to and expand open the doors of local government community members this before you is a quick review of some of the highlights of FY 22 the continued live meeting hybrid meeting support hope this is kind of going well for you and makes working both with your colleagues in person and your colleagues online effortless with the help of bot moodies not only technical expertise but kind and friendly public community service which is not always easy to find people who have both technical ability and have emotional human intelligence so the redundant and reliable archiving so not only are you at these meetings being recorded but they're part of an archive of meetings that go back municipal meetings were archived beginning in 2015 town meeting tv archive goes back much further believe it or not you couldn't keep meetings because they were on vhs tapes were too expensive but we are now archiving all of meeting content and have that in a place that folks can view it regularly it's redundantly backed up in multiple ways we're in the middle of our election program election season right now so we just finished we're finishing up about 36 election forums local election forums in some cases that's the only place that people are going to see their community representatives in a televised format we do hopefully fair and comfortable community elections for everybody across the ballot we're open to all people that put their names on the ballot I think it's important to underscore the marketing and outreach the work that we do letting people know excerpting municipal updates giving people highlights to keep them interested in what's going on in local government and connect to them so my hope is that people show up at your meetings to participate because they've seen something sometimes that we've shared with them and let them know that that's happening we do a lot of work with school folks and internships so we always have people coming through and we're in the process right now of the second year of a neighborhood media internship it's the new thing the cohort-based learning opportunity for kids around media skills and civic engagement one of the things that I want to hand out to you is related to the work that the Vermont Access Network which is the closest thing to a trade association that we are part of it's a volunteer-based organizational loose coalition of access management organizations from around the state and we're now in 2018 we began doing the work of figuring out how we were going to replace municipal, I mean not municipal cable funds so as you know all of this work that we do here in the realm of PEG public educational and government access is paid for by folks who buy cable and pay a PEG subscriber fee and we started coming to you as municipalities and asking to make a contribution CCTV the mothership that runs town meeting TV fund raises and does grant collection and does advocacy work and has been working with action circles lobbying organizational advocacy group that to find ways of replacing that PEG access fee cable subscriber fee to support this work into the future the legislature and FY22 and FY23 combined allocated 900,000 to those 24 access centers around the state so that for town meeting TV in two years was 12,000 and then a 24,000 dollar contribution we're expecting to go back to the legislature over the next two years and ask for more bridge funding so that's out of the general fund general fund budget it's like a general appropriation while we're working towards an actual mechanism to replace long-term funding and this handout which is now part of your packet so I hope I can hand that out it's just a quick a little bit to brief one page overview of what the Vermont access network has been doing in the legislature so I'll pause there if there's any questions about what we do you also see our budget here and let us know how we might be serving you better I mean I think it's important one of the places that we really rely on is for the trustee any member of the public any member of the select board to let us know if there are things going on outside of the municipal meetings to cover in the community so that kind of general community programming that helps connect an