Hey, I'm Dan Parmoly and January's What's Neat starts right now. The What's Neat show is sponsored by Caboose, sharing our passion for trains since 1938. This is What's Neat for January 2020. I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month we've got a really good show. First of all, we take a look at this beautiful layout built by John Schindler. This is one of the layouts in St. Louis that will be on tour for the NMRA 2020 show this summer. And I'm going to be sure to feature every layout, every single month of different layout that's going to be on tour on that show this summer, all the way through July when the show takes place. Otherwise, it's a magnificent layout, fully operational, runs in the car card system and it occupies its entire basement. Plus, for how to tips this month, I show you how I built this 13 foot long section on my layout. It took me about two and a half, almost three months to build it up to this point. So this is going to be part one in a two port series on layout construction. And in this, we cover everything to create the base, frame it out, essentially create a canvas for which we will do our scenery work on. So that's the lineup for January 2020 What's Neat. For this segment of What's Neat, I'm with John Schindler of the St. Louis Junction Railway. And John, this is a magnificently large layout.  Tell me about your passion for building this work of art. Well, when I was a kid, my dad had a layout. When I got old enough to figure it out, I put a staging yard on it because I didn't like watching him run and run. So the whole layout, the house was bought for an operating layout. So the basement came first in your mind. Absolutely. My wife did not like this house, but I converted it. I made it into what she wanted though. About what's the size of this room, this whole layout? It's 60 by 32. It's a lot of work. Did you have a lot of folks help you build this? A lot of folks. There was a group at one time called the Hidden Valley Rural Railroad Club. They helped a lot and most of the scenery and the structures are not mine, but I've done most of the structure, the track work, the operating singling system is all on me. I wanted to talk about that because it's beautiful. It is a great system. What duty do you use for that? It uses CATS for the graphics and rides on the JMRI platform. And then it uses Digitrax hardware to make it all work. What's your minimum radius on this? 32 inch in one place, the rest of it's 36. And I love the height and the curtains you've got. What's the bench work height on this? I think 54. Is there anything you do different starting over now that I've seen this work of art? Would you change anything? What's the way it is? The one, when we started this, my wife said you have to have wide aisles because she doesn't go on lay out tours and be butt to butt with people. And it works very well in similar things in operating. So wide aisles, you can see these are five, six foot aisles. I wish the one on the other side was only 36, I wish it was 48. How many years have you been working on this? I moved in here in September 2004 to a concrete basement. Wow. That's a lot. Now I understand you're going to be on tour for the NMRA 2020 show in St. Louis. Is that right? That is correct. When I'd be operating on one night and then also on a bus tour, you know, LD sick tour. It's amazing. I can't wait to run trains on this. The buildings are amazing. I noticed a lot of your buildings are printed out cardboard. Tell me about that. Well, gentlemen of mine by the name of Dave Rader is a master model railroader. He was helping me build things. He'd come over, he'd decide what he wanted to build. He'd make drawings of what he wanted. He'd go to his house, design them onto a software package called model builders. And then he'd come back over here. We would print them out on my printer, my photo paper, and my ink. And then he'd take a stack of paper home with him. And he would, in a few weeks, he comes back as these marvelous buildings that would have taken thousands of dollars and years to build in plastic or some other farm. And they work. I notice you've got, I think, two hidden staging yards. Is that right? Are there two? There's three in here. And I've also noticed you've got lower areas in the layout where it's like almost double deck. Because the one staging yard is real low. And when it comes over, it used to be completely covered, but we had to open it up because it was too far away without seeing the train. And then it goes into a turn and a half helix and then comes back out on the railroad. Boy, this is real eye candy. The people that go on this tour are going to enjoy it. John, thank you so much for sharing this beautiful layout with all the viewers on What's Neat. Thank you very much. For this segment of What's Neat, we're going to do that long-awaited layout construction segment that y'all have been waiting for, because I'm about to build a new segment on my layout. It's going to be 13 feet long, designed primarily for doing outdoor run-bys. So that means this piece of layout is going to have to be removable and easily taken outside so I can create the effects that I want. But to begin with, I want to talk about my basic layout construction and how I'm going to go about doing this. I'm going to start out with the simplest thing that y'all can pick up at the hardware store. And that's the simple closet shelf brackets. These things have been around for years, dozens of years. But the fact is, that's exactly what we're going to use today to create this section of 13-foot layout. Now, these shelf brackets, if you ever consider and look at them up tight and close, you'll notice that they're a little bit cantilevered. So that things that get put on the shelf roll backwards instead of rolling forwards off the shelf. And when we lay our layout, we want it to be level. So we've got to make up for that cantilever effect by simply when we screw this into the wall to make sure using a level that we need just enough room for the top screw to leave about an eighth of an inch of divide, which we can shim out, which will then make our surface absolutely level, which is what we want for great performance of the models. I'm using two different types of shelf brackets for this section of layout because the shelves that I've got that are already on the base sections, I want them to clear the metal brackets that run at a 45 degree angle. So the first shelf brackets, I'm going to use three of these to hold up the segment.  Now, what I like to do when I'm building situations, segments like this, as you've seen in past videos, I like to use metal studs as my basis for the subsurface. And the reason for that is metal doesn't warp. I can expand six or eight feet with one of these studs and have absolutely no problem with something sagging because these things stay rigid. But what we do is, as you see here in this video clip I'm about to show you, Mitchell Buffoden and I took two of these and we put them together into a complete box. We pop riveted them together by drilling out holes first, eighth inch holes, and then sticking liquid nail and pop rivets into the studs so that they wouldn't rattle, they wouldn't have any opportunity to make sound, but they'll stay very rigid. So what I did was I cut these studs to fit the 13 foot long segment after the shelf brackets were put into place so that they would simply sit on top of the shelf brackets. Now let me go back a step. I also used one by four material to shim it out just to make sure that I've got the length that I need for the width of the diorama. And these one by four simply sit on top of the shelf brackets in place just like this upon which I will then set my foam. So with that as the basis for the bench work, let's continue on with cutting things out to the right shape and size so that I have a nice narrow section of layout for a long double track super elevated curve to go through the scene with our metal studs, our wooden one by fours, and everything into place. Another thing I want to discuss is this. Now I've built the walls that are in my layout room. I know where the studs are. I know where the wires are. So I know where to anchor the shelf brackets into my studs to make sure I've got a securely fashioned bench work with no legs coming down. Now, if you're building in a layout room that you're unfamiliar with, maybe it's a home that you bought previously not too long ago, and you maybe it's a bedroom. Maybe you're building this layout in a bedroom area of your room. Area of your home and you do not know exactly what's behind the walls. So with that, I suggest you invest in a stud finder. Now these things are available at any local hardware store and they also make them where they'll discover electric wires in the background too. Because the last thing you want to do is end up screwing a screw for your bench work into a wall and hitting the electrical wire makes for a great fourth of July, but this isn't the fourth and that's something we're trying to avoid as a fire. So invest in a stud detector that will let you know where the studs are to securely anchor your bench work and also alleviate the fact that you might hit some electrical wires as you screw in your bench work. I cut one by four dimensional lumber to the width of the diorama using a radial arm saw. I then fit these pieces of wood parts on top of the steel shelf brackets. The metal studs will sit on top of this creating stable bench work as a base for the scene. I checked my work with a level ensuring a straight and level base for the foam diorama. I used liquid nail adhesive to glue the one by fours to the top of the shelf brackets. I built a one by four section to bridge the gap where two of the metal studs would butt together ensuring an even and level bridge gap. This too was attached with liquid nails adhesive to the shelf brackets. After the one by four dimensional lumber was set into place, I applied liquid nails adhesive at the top of the one by fours to which the metal studs would rest completing the bench work for this section of the 13 foot long part of the layout. I precut two inch foam gluing two layers together precut to fit into the space of the adjoining layout along the wall. One end of this module I needed to bring three tracks into the scene coming off of the small switch yard. The track closest to the outside front edge of the layout needed to have a small angle of wood cut allowing a smooth transition into the new scene with two inches of extra space on the outside protecting the modules in the event of a rollover accident. This would prevent the models from hitting the floor. This was cut from a scrap two by four with quarter inch oak providing a protective wall along the edge. Everything matched up on this end to the foam module ensuring a smooth transition. I stain and finish all of the sections of my home layout with oak plywood. This beautifies the room and gives structural integrity to the overall module. This module being 13 feet long, I needed this one to be wrapped with wood to prevent it from flexing when being moved outside for outdoor photo shoots. It also needed the oak plywood wrap to be placed on the back side now before I could lay track as the quarter inch oak fits between the wall and the foam dictating where the track would lay and line up with the adjoining ends of the existing layout sections. I use small three quarter inch blocks of wood that will be laid into the foam. The fence attached to the router keeps the three quarter inch router bit centered along the four inch thick diorama sides. I also set the router bit to three quarter inches deep to match the blocks of wood their dimensions exactly. Then I started the router and routed a groove along the entire length of the back side of this module that will fit up against the wall.  I ran a piece of quarter inch oak plywood through the bandsaw cutting this into four inch strips that will become the beautiful sides of the module. Now it was time to install the wood blocks into our newly cut groove. The wood blocks are placed in a pan of water and the groove is sprayed with water making everything wet. The gorilla glue reacts to water starting the curing process. Each block of wood is coated with polyurethane glue and pressed snugly into the groove. This takes time as I work along the entire back side of the 13 foot long module. During the curing process the gorilla glue expands causing the blocks of wood to be slowly expelled out of the groove. It takes 30 minutes for the glue to cure and the expansion process to stop. So I counter this act and the movement of the wood by pressing in each block back into the groove using a screwdriver along the entire length of the seam repeatedly as the glue cures over the 30 minute time. It is very important to stay on top of this during the expansion process. Once the glue has cured I simply remove the excess with a Stanley shore form planer making the side of the module smooth and flat. I then spray the side of the diorama with water making it thoroughly wet. I also wet the 4 inch wide strip of plywood. I then apply the gorilla glue thoroughly to the side of the diorama. As I press the plywood onto the side of the diorama laying it into the bed of glue. I follow this with an electric staple gun shooting half inch staples through the plywood and into the blocks of wood ensuring a tight fit as the gorilla glue cures over the 30 minute setup process. Now it was time to wrap plywood around the front of the module. Repeating the process with a few variations as it is curved making the wood work longer. I routed the 3 quarter inch groove in the foam about 13 and a half feet long.  I then cut 3 quarter inch square stock on the bandsaw about three and a half feet long to try something a little different. These pieces were test fit into the groove on the front of the diorama. These longer pieces of wood save time although I still needed small blocks to round the curve. At this point everything was dry fit into place just to make sure that the concept would work. All of the wood was sprayed with water along with the diorama's face and the groove. The gorilla glue was applied to the long wood pieces and pushed into place. The longer pieces of wood worked well on the straight sides of the scene. The curved part of the diorama base still required smaller blocks of wood glued into the grooves individually. I marked the face of the module with circles or lines leaving a gap in the wood blocks so that in the future I could add block switches for track and or street lights and building light switches and the necessary wiring that would go with this into the foam. Again I pressed the blocks into the groove constantly as the glue expanded pushing the blocks out. Over a period of 30 minutes everything cured and the pieces were set into place. Once the glue dried I used a planer to scrape off the excess making everything flat and flush to the surface. Turning my attention to the top of the module I had in mind to lay a long sweeping double track mainline with a gentle sweeping curve as this would make for a removable module with great outdoor video potential for shooting athern social media type of run buys. I drew a few lines atop of the module with a magic marker but was never really satisfied with the results until I could actually see the track in place. I painted over these black lines just to lessen my confusion and started laying microengineering code 83 track from the existing mainline on top of our new foam diorama. I also knew I wanted to lay a third secondary track towards the front of the diorama and either code 70 or code 55 microengineering track making for three tracks total running through the scene. I laid the track with a sweeping curve using prototype standards of about 14 foot on centers. Once the first track was in place it was easy to lay the second track alongside of this. I also plan to add super elevation to these mainlines raising the outside rail with 30 or 40 thousands styrene strips. One of the nice working characteristics of microengineering track is that once you have the curve you want it holds its shape without flexing which would turn out to be very handy for this project. I used atlas and scale rail joiners to connect the code 83 track together and proceeded to solder the mainlines into place. We will fill in the missing ties at the connecting joints when the track is eventually glued into place later on this project. The last thing to decide is whether the third secondary track would be code 70 or code 55 microengineering track. Code 70 would look really good and allow the models with deeper flanges on the wheels to roll smooth as code 55 track doesn't really get along very well with the european models that have deeper flangeways on their wheels. I chose to go with the code 55 for this third track and plan to bury this in the dirt with grass and vegetation growing all around it and also lay this third track about two scale feet lower than the double track code 83 mainlines. I wanted to cover the metal stud bench work with stained wood to match the theme of my entire layout room. I did this by cutting two pieces of oak plywood two inches wide and cut to the length of the two flat sides of the metal studs making up our 13 foot long bench work for this section. I applied liquid nails to the sides of the metal studs pressed the wood into the glue and secured the wood with small 12 inch bar clamps and let this set up overnight as liquid nail adhesive cured. To start carving the topography on our scene I used a bent horse rasp and started carving the shoulders of the double track mainlines. Just like the prototype imagine how the rainwater would drain away from the tracks. Notice that I had drawn an area where there would be a road crossing the tracks in this scene and I avoided carving this area. Now this process takes hours to perform but it is the one step in the process that makes your scene look realistic. Once the ballast slash track was carved I vacuumed up the loose foam to reveal our mainlines track shoulders. I then started carving the lower topography on the front of the diorama where the third code 55 track would be laid. I used a flat horse rasp and the bent rasp to carve the foam on this part of the scene avoiding the track bed areas. Upon vacuuming this area of the loose foam you can see how this area was carved about two to three feet in scale lower than the mainlines and still avoiding the area where the third track will be laid. Now it was time to carve the area where the code 55 track will be laid to match the scenery that is about two scale feet lower than the mainlines. I carved this with a straight rasp, cutting away areas about nine inches to a foot at a time, skipping a small area and then continuing on. I did it this way to have a base point to make sure that the track bed would be even throughout the length of the entire run. Once these areas were cut I then went back and carved out the remaining two inch sections that were uncut until the entire length of the roadbed area for the code 55 track siding was smooth and even. To cut the approach or the ends of the module where the siding track would transition downgrade from the adjoining layout sections I used a 14 inch long hand sander with 36 grit sandpaper to cut the foam. It was important to keep the downhill transition even and gradual as I cut the foam downgrade to scale feet. It was easy to feel or teeter-totter the long hand sander as I worked this area flat at an angle from the high point of the switch yard down to the low point about 20 inches in or so into the diorama. I did this on both ends of the 13 foot long scene. This may be unconventional and look very strange, but it worked because the microengineering track holds its shape. I was able to suspend the main lines above the foam module and then pull the module out. As you see I used simple masking tape to do this. I had to remove the module in order to carve the scenery and stain the wood on the back side. I used the bent rasp to again carve the scenery working away from the main lines on the inside of the curve. I then smoothed the rough cut area with a hand planer so that the scene could accept either a train station or a grain elevator to vary the video potential of this module. To contour the plywood sides that wrap the scene to the carved topography in the foam I used a cabinet laminate bead trimmer. The ball bearing on the trimmer rolls along the foam as the trimmer's sharp bit cuts the plywood flush to match the topography in the foam. With the wood shaped I stained the backside of the module with minwax red oak stain covering the edges and the sides with a very thorough coat of this. With the topography all carved I sealed the whole scene with brown latex paint. The plywood that covered the metal studs was stained in the same red oak stain to give a nicer color and overall appearance. The module was set back into position atop the metal benchwork and the main lines were released from the masking tape holding them up and everything was set back into position. The code 55 third track was bent and formed into position and placed atop the module creating a long gentle curve. The best way to curve microengineering track is to bend a few inches at a time working your way gently through each three foot section. It holds its shape and always looks very realistic.  I cut a four inch strip on the bandsaw and attached this in the same method as I've explained before with water and gorilla glue bending the plywood to match the curve and stapling it into place. The recessed blocks of wood every foot or so helped things in perfectly. It took about one eight foot section and one piece of plywood measuring five foot four inches to wrap the entire front of the diorama. I covered and filled the staples with wood putty to give the woodwork a more professional looking finish. Using the laminate trimmer I contoured the plywood's edge to match the topography in the foam as was done on the backside of the seam. I then followed up this with a Stanley shore form planer just making the plywood further conform to the scenery. Using a multi tool oscillating sander I sanded the wood putty smooth that was covering the staples. I then stained the front of the diorama with minwax red oak stain. Once the stain had dried it was time to put a high gloss finish on the wood using minwax high gloss polyurethane. Now I put three coats of polyurethane on this diorama to give it a real smooth real nice gloss finish but the one thing that I did do was after the second coat of polyurethane I used 1000 grit sandpaper and water and I wet the polyurethane and sanded it by hand giving a glass smooth finish right before applying the third coat of polyurethane to the seam. Now to finish up the track work on top of the diorama the code 55 track connects to code 83 track on the approach to the module on both ends of this new module that we're building. Now in order to connect code 83 rail to code 55 rail it's actually quite simple. Using atlas and scale rail joiners I slid the joiner onto the code 83 track. Then using a pair of pliers I flattened the rail joiner like you see in this video here. Then I placed the code 55 rail on top of the flattened rail joiner and proceeded to solder everything together. The transition is smooth on the flat all the way across the top on both sizes of rail permanently connecting these sections together. To bury the code 55 track into the dirt I drew lines with a black magic marker on both sides of the track. Then using a dremel with a flat bit mounted along with the dremel router attachment I set the depth of the bit to the thickness of the microengineering ties on the code 55 track and then proceeded to router out the foam in between the black lines where the track would be further embedded into the foam. I used a rough diamond file to transition the routered section of the foam where the track transitions up to level. I then sealed our newly routed groove where the track would lay with brown latex house paint. I then released the track hanging above taped in place with masking tape and fitted into place in our routed groove making the ties flush with a surrounding scenery. Using dap quick seal plus caulking adhesive I used this to glue down the track. It really works well because it dries clear it is paintable which allows our ballast to adhere to the road bed. I put the aheez of on top of a tile and used a painters knife to apply it to the scene. Here you see how I use the knife to scoop up the glue from on top of the tile and apply it to the track bed areas and then press the track securely into the glue. It only took about 15 minutes to securely fasten the code 55 siding track into its router channel working the glue in the place and pressing the track into the glue. It was during this process that I added the missing railroad ties at the connecting joints where the track sections went together then pressing the track into the bed of glue running my fingers on top of the rails throughout the length of the module. Now it was time to lay the main lines with a super elevation using evergreen styrene strips. I used 40,000 thick strips on the sharpest part of the curve and 30,000 styrene strips along the rest of the curve. I laid the strips along the sides of the track figuring the lengths and about how many I would need in order to run the length of both main lines. I test fit two strips of 40,000 styrene under the outside rails of both main line tracks at the sharpest radius of the curve. Starting with the inside main I pulled or drew the styrene strips through the quick seal plus adhesive then proceeded to place each strip under the outside rail of the track creating our super elevation effect. Once I had the strips glued into place under the outside rails on both main lines I then proceeded to apply the glue using the painter's knife evenly under the track which will hold everything into place. This process went really quick as I secured both of the main lines into place. Once the glue was spread smooth under the track I ran my fingers atop the rails pressing the track securely into the bed of glue. I put weight on top of both main lines and let the adhesive set up and dry overnight. This dried clear and everything worked out great up to this point. The next day I painted all the track using Rust-Oleum camouflage brown paint. Actually Earth Brown is a name of the color painting both sides of the rail evenly. This eliminates the rails solder joints and the color of the white styrene giving the track a very realistic appearance. After the paint dried I sanded the tops of the rail with 120 grit sandpaper removing the brown paint from on top of the railhead. And just like that the first segment of this how-to video for what's neat on layout construction is finished. Essentially it took three months to build this this was August, September, October and part of November to complete this section of layout but I gotta tell you when trains run through this entire diorama in the super elevation part of it it looks absolutely fantastic to watch the train leaning through the scene. All we've simply done here is we've built our canvas it's framed with wood this is our base for the project. So next time on What's Neat we've got to build roads we've got to ballast everything create scenery decide where to put buildings lights block switches there's so much more to do on this diorama so stay tuned for a future episode of What's Neat as we finish this layout building construction project the brand new scene that I'm building for my layout and that ends this segment of What's Neat. All of the model railroad products seen in this episode of What's Neat are available through Caboose in Lakewood, Colorado or order online at mycaboose.com


So I'm just going to introduce Meng and Irene. Meng Xurui has more than 30 years of experience and passion for midwifery, and the women of families who put their trust in midwifery services. In 2010, she organised the Midwifery Annual Conference in China, which is the national-grade learning and communicating platform for midwives. Meng Xurui is also the founder and director of the holistic and enhanced modern maternity services system, the MMSS in China. She has made outstanding efforts in her contribution to supporting the normal physiological processes and her contributions have led to and continue to upgrade and develop of midwifery services in China. She's passionate about childbirth and about integrating traditional Chinese medicine and culture into maternity services and believes that the integrated model is the future of China's healthy and thriving nation. Irene Chang Kalnowski has practiced midwifery for 38 years and has spent her entire life passionate about midwifery, working across continents, observing systems, and learning more wonderful ways to deliver care and relate to women. She now lives and travels across China with the MMSS team as the midwifery advisor, supporting the implementation of integrated holistic maternity care and midwifery. That care puts the psychological, emotional and physical health of women, their babies and their families first, giving them voice and choice in all matters. I'm now going to hand over to Irene and Meng. Okay, if you can unmute yourselves now. Okay, so this is Irene and I'm just going to introduce Meng Xurui. I'm happy to have been with her for five years travelling across China, making wonderful differences through education and face-to-face training. So I'm going to pass you on to Meng Xurui who will talk to you a little bit about how we give midwives autonomy and voice and choice for women across China. Okay, Jenny? Okay, so last year you heard about Project One from Guangxi, Barma County Peoples. The first project was in Tiandong and today we're going to talk about the second project that we've got in Barma County Peoples Hospital in the remote areas of China. Okay, hello everybody. I'm very happy to share MMSS team and Barma training. Now I begin. After training months of training, the sex rate decreased from 26.89% to 20%. If you see no tummy rate, decreased from 6.4% to 1.4%. Okay, next one. Slides are not moving. It's coming okay. We've got a problem with the slides coming. We can see them have gone on to the next slide. We're on slide 15. Nothing's showing on our screen. Hang on. Okay. This is Barma Hospital, please. This is Monkey by the Mountains. I hope the Barma Hospital many, many BB births. We're just coming. I think it's loading. Okay. Big member in the 80s, 2018, the MMSS project, the opening subremonings of Barma. Okay, next one. There have been experts in education and training. The foundation of MMSS, Chinese traditional culture, Wang Yangming. This is important in the hospital training. Let every staff change the mind to have a happy walk. Happiness in the workplace. Okay, next one. Next one. This is looking, the maternal age, 30 to 22 years old, very young. This is a poor family who has experienced six births. This family not go to hospital to take the body. So in the home, poor birth. So they're both at home still and there's no prenatal care because it's up in the mountains and very difficult to get down. Yes. The children here are in a very poor environment because this area is poor in China. MMSS expert team came to the family to guide a postpartum mother to recover from sinfesis, subretion and pain. So the family couldn't get into the hospital for care. So we went to the home visit to fix this, to provide holistic care for this family. Yes. Our team gave the treatment and the nursing method. The first of all, there's no therapy, pubic semenosis suppressing in central oil formula. The second, homeopathic separate semenosis and postpartum would healing. The three Chinese medicine teach traditional massage after six hours mother can get up and breastfeeding and walk. On the second day, she can walk on the first floor. On the third day, she can walk downstairs to the street. She's the first ring of some signs after the birth and they invite us to have dinner with the family. We also made the first postpartum home visit to Obama. After 10 days of treatment and the midwife recover, the mother shows a happy and confident smile. The second case, 35 weeks, the baby died in the womb. The expert group launched the energy care with confidence to the extremely pregnant woman, giving her pre-mosal oil to soften the cervix. After 20 to 25 hours, they gave her chemotherapy for postpartum recovery. The mother was degraded from the hospital. The third case, worry caused veins after seaxing, peeling of the soles of the feet, dryness, muscle, relaxing of the legs, safe repoint, low energy, depressing, worry about worry caused veins. Insomnia, hope diagnosis, aromatherapy, acupressure, the family relays in shape, support and other methods. The mother improved. The case for the first child woman is 17 years old, pre-nutrition, emotional delay. The fifth case, after the vaginal delivery of the second born mother, the mother's left leg and pubic thin facies pain. We give her chemotherapy hot compress, Chinese medicine, acupressure and other nursing methods and the effect is remarkable. The sixth case, 20-year-old woman first pregnancy, five days treatment of vaginal cysts. We use the essential oil formula to the effect area and homeopathy to support healing. 50% glucose compressor, magnesium sulfate compressor. Next day, the abscess naturally ruptured pain stopped, then held no antibiotics used. The seventh case, infant ectema was treated with western medicine. Hormone, I admit, did not work. Our team applied ectema essential oil formula to the affected area and Chinese medicinal massage. The baby's skin improved and so did sleep and mood. Eighth case, the second child vaginal delivery at full term. No interventions in the whole process. The baby and the mother screen-to-screen and eye contact. The MMSS expert group meeting with the president head midwifery and director of optitricks. MMSS expert group works more than three hours a day. Hypnosis teach. We use hypnosis for teaching. We educate the midwives and obstetricians to use hypnosis. Okay. This is the key to the hypnosis. This is classroom teaching and we're teaching the midwives and obstetricians hypnosis. In the midwifery clinic we teach how to do within the woman. We teach the experts how to use how to do midwife and obstetric clinics. We use lots of educational tools to be woman-centered. We're moving from system-centered care. We're also looking at teaching correct abdominal palpation and how to really connect with the woman. We use acupressure points to also help reduce stress. And we're also bringing the MMSS experts to teach from all over China and from globally as well. So we get lots of hands-on face-to-face training. We do theoretical training, evidence-based practice for at least two weeks for each module. Okay, after the training the midwives has undergone a significant cut, change, treating the woman and caring for her as a daughter.  Not a lot in the delivery rooms. This picture is a natural delivery after two C-section mother-in-fact skin-to-skin to activate the first breastfeed. MMSS team established an obstetric appointment center an obstetrician clinic a midwife clinic and prenatal education. Obstetric clinic, midwife clinic a call a call just happened to be involved involved before the husband not in the clinic. Each clinic is equated equipped with a prowess and a draw and educational test. MMSS R3 attaches importance to comprehensive preventive health education. MMSS obstetrician experts professional training obstetric in emergency and ultrasound. Before in China the midwife and obstetrician count to do ultrasound. MMSS lets other staff midwife and obstetrician basic skill ok, professor Edison said that if an obstetrician would do a basic ultrasound it would help the mother to solve 90% of the problem at the time of delivery. This picture MMSS experts what wrongs with obstetrician and midwife. This picture is MMSS experts private and teach health education for pregnant women and families. This is Erin to do. This picture is MMSS training infant water education before the baby not to do swimming now. This is Obama obstetric team obstetric team daughter team midwife team midwife team ok and for our foundations for our training we make Sue and I have actually delivered the books the prenatal education manual, we've done a labour and birth manual and to follow is the postpartum care manual which will be the basis of integrated comprehensive care for all hospitals in China working with our MMSS project. So thank you all we wait for your questions. Thank you all for very interesting presentation and with lots of photos it feels like you're right there. I have a question for you does the team and the experts so they come from the staff that you go to to the hospital that you go to or are you bringing in new staff to that hospital? No we bring only experts that have a holistic integrated midway free mindset so they come from around the world and they also come from our MMSS team that we choose from experts across China they must at the hospital so they can continue then? Yes so we plant the seeds in the hospital and then the hospital team become the experts and they come and teach us, I hope. Excellent. That sounds really good. Okay so if you have any questions just pop them in the public chat box. I think that Meng's done a really good job because she's only learned English this last year so I think she's going to bring it up. My English is very personal I'm very sorry I have five years in China all I can say to the midwives is what any, I love you! Yeah, maybe for example isn't it? I want to show you more but my English is not good so maybe next year maybe if you're all coming to the integrated conference in New Zealand in September we will we're working on the English. Very good. So is this the third hospital that you've taken the MMS project to? Yes it's the third one and it's the MMS project that we're putting into whole hospitals but we've been training for the last 12 years across China so many many hospitals and we're going even bigger because Meng and I have designed a midwifery training curriculum for comprehensive care and to be working with the midwifery colleges to implement it so it all tallies in with your presentations that you had earlier so it's wonderful we're so excited I think we can help them go to the university teach the midwifery, use the MMS Yes we're teaching the midwifery educators to use the MMS philosophy framework and background for midwives so that there will be a continuum so the student midwives will have systems supporting the midwifery philosophy we'll have a continuum so we're very excited I think we've lost the sound No I'm here, I just thought it was amazing Meng has a question here do you have any information on the outcomes of your project? Yeah well we're collecting data it's in the early stages we're collecting data each month from the hospitals to see the changes and we're actually starting research a research centre will be developed this year so yes we are collecting as much as we can and we're getting the experts to come and help us because we're jack of all trades but not master of all of them How many outcomes are you interested in getting? How many what? I didn't hear that What sort of outcomes are you interested in? Yeah everything from not just birthing outcomes and hospital outcomes but outcomes from the midwives and feedback from women and to actually start new research with the integrated care we have a software system that's just been developed it's just been transcribed into Chinese to help us with this So we're going to monitor student midwife outcomes and training and that will inform our research and education Awesome and can you just let the people know who are listening what you mean by the integrated care what factors or what different areas are brought into this scale around the therapy What else do you bring in? Well we have midwives and obstetricians in the same classroom in China and we teach them all the basic skills for aromatherapy, homeopathy hypnosis, massage all the things the midwives should be able to do we believe all those basic skills and safe skills and we've got referral guidelines for what they can do and what they need to refer onwards For the midwife research we can do so we teach all those skills because our ex-brother team have a doctor midwife and a nurse and another expert together so we are a big team Yes and we're growing, we're growing very big we're growing rapidly and we've got more and more hospitals queuing up so we're going to be constantly growing so we're very excited We're going to do this 10 years 10 years ago again to do this we're growing fast and changing mindsets because if you're going to the cities a lot of Chinese women are so used to see sections and medicalised care but we're coming out from the remote areas so we're sweeping inwards we're coming from out within to make these positive changes happen and they are happening And so the reason why we're doing that is because there is a different philosophy or mindset around birth You've got to look at the history We've got more Chinese hospitals Chinese medicine hospitals out in our remote areas because you have to remember what happened in 1929 when they sent the missionaries to outwash Chinese medicine homeopathy There were actually four homeopathic hospitals in Shanghai in the year 1909 but this was all wiped out with our pharmaceutical research So if we go to Beijing it's still medically controlled you've still got obstetricians controlling birth and it's hard to break so we're coming in from the outside because midwifery needs to be where it needs to be and in an integrated form So we're bringing back Chinese tradition and we're bringing back the philosophy and we're integrating care So we have a question from Deborah Davis here I'm also interested in Chinese women's expectations around childbirth Is physiological birth something that is desirable? Of course all women want physiological birth except for we have such a high C section and it's just no different than if you go to Australia and other countries where women have been shown the medical way and they accept it and we have to change those mindsets in the bigger cities but if we're in the rural areas the women want normal So it just depends which region we go to every province is a little bit different So we're destined to change these mindsets and we are seeing normal birth and we've got the Chinese government supporting us supporting that they want that reduction in interventions and C sections So we have that support Yeah that's really excellent How do you find I guess if you have such a high C section rate or first cesarean how do you see the reaction around VBAC and are women keen to try for VBAC? Well that's because yes they are because we created prenatal education around VBAC and because we've trained the obstetricians to have a midwifery mindset to support normal philosophy, physiology So we've got midwives and obstetricians on the same line which we don't see in our western countries I never saw many obstetricians in the same classroom learning about normal birth with the midwives and this is what we're able to do here in China Yes before the obstetricians not learning normal birth So now we are training all the staff about normal birth So we have obstetricians learning about how to move the pelvis Yes And they're showing the women in the obstetric clinics how to move their pelvis because that's the way it should be Absolutely that's fantastic You don't end up with a divide then with them and us culture which is what happens in me and the countries If you're all starting from the same viewpoint then obviously women are going to benefit from that It's a huge difference and also the thing is that we not because we've all got the same philosophy what I've found as well is we've got systems supporting everyone I've found that as a midwife you go out and you're a woman's voice but then you're dealing with a meditally system so then you end up taking the bullets and you get stressed out which is all what about we had earlier in the presentations today So we're trying to avoid that to preserve our midwives and obstetricians and keep them happy in the workplace and love their job and then women benefit too Thank you so much Questions, I can't see any there There's some very positive comments thanking you for the great job you've done and it's a great step towards changing practice and we need obstetricians from all countries to be this open minded Yes some very positive comments for your work so hopefully in future VIDMs you can come back and tell us more about the projects that you have done Hopefully next year we can talk about the model that the curriculum was put together for midwives and also we're very proud because Mainsture and I met and we're both midwives leading this chain so we feel very special It's an energy field where midwives know about their normal labor That's right That's why we can change the obstetric mindset here which is so much easier and that's why we appreciate all you midwives across the world with the challenges that you have So thank you


Hi, you guys Lindsay here welcome back to my channel inside the him and welcome back to the trick-or-treat series Okay, so today is the third part of our series and we're gonna be talking about steam allowance and how to Make sure that you are keeping an even Seam allowance no matter what the seam allowance is So if you're doing a larger one inch two inch three inch him Or if you're doing a smaller quarter inch half inch him or if you're either doing the standard five eighths inch him This is a neat trick that will or is supposed to anyways help you keep that Seam allowance even through the entire seam. So let's see how it went Okay, so this is gonna be a fun one for me probably very humbling But we are going to do a little experiment where we see how accurate I am sewing Unusual seam allowance like one inch. I have the one inch line marked on my machine But you know, sometimes it's hard to follow that so the trick is supposedly Putting this rubber band here and the rubber band acts as a guide where your fabric brushes up against it Barely and keeps it in line. So we are going to do two seam lines One using the rubber band and one not using the rubber band and see if one is more accurate than the other So these are for all those fun hems That we do from time to time or even sometimes Like you're wasting you need to do something Other than five eighths so far it's very easy and mindless I will say It's kind of guiding it up on Here right where it's touching a verb and for the first time And now we're kind of not in a straight line anymore. So So that is using the rubber band. I have to say fairly easy simple to do Now let's take the band off and again, it just slips on right underneath your Sewing foot make sure your needles up obviously I'm gonna add this back on And we are going to use the other side Well, that's a really crooked line Let me straighten that up some. Okay. So now we have a straight line again So let's line it up on those same one inch line that I had there were ran down and see how it goes Well, the first thing I noticed is that wasn't able to go as fast and that's annoying. I like to go fast but in terms of accuracy I have my Seen gauge here and you can see that I stayed on the one inch mark Pretty much all the way throughout Now part of me wonders And we'll see how I did on this side part of me wonders that If it weren't marked right here like let's say I wanted to do Two inches which is all the way out here Or even further like if I wanted to do a three inch hem obviously there would be no guide So let's try the two inch And see how that goes So you just slide the rubber band on Line it up with that two inch mark making sure that it's perfectly straight all along the plate And then we're just gonna use the same fabric Line up the raw edge with the edge of the rubber band see how much faster that goes So much faster So that's cool Now let's try it without a rubber band this back on and Again, we're trying the two inch seam line Okay, so although I think I'm fairly accurate in Sewing using this little grid that's on my sewing machine Um, it's really interesting that is not a two inch Wait, what is happening? Yeah, is that not a two inch seam line. Oh my word No, it's one and three quarters. Maybe that's why I've been having so many issues with my hem That's two and three quarters one two three and the edge of the plate is two inches interesting Okay, well, I learned something new um Even though I was accurate at sewing the one and three quarters seam line all the way through I think that's with practice if I were a beginner I think the Iran trick would be really great or if you wanted to do Like a really wide three or four inch Hem I would put the needle down Butch the hem guide right up on it like so and then put the rubber band on Maybe put the rubber band on first Then needle down then hem guide and then make sure the two Kind of line up Like so and just make sure that that rubber band is on there straight and then you would be able to get a really good Accurate three inch hem up to I guess I could do up to maybe four and a half I don't know why I'd want to do anything longer than a four and a half inch seam But if I did I could go all the way up to where this guy is it's as far as we're as far as the rubber band will go Well, there you go. So I think that because I'm a bit of an experienced sewist I'm pretty good at using the plate or is it the throat of my sewing machine And I'm pretty good at keeping the fabric steady, but Yes, Lindsay from five years ago who was just learning how to sew definitely needed a rubber band around her sewing machine I will say though putting the rubber band there there now Did allow me to go faster and sometimes I like to sew fast Sometimes I just need to get something done really quickly But still accurately and I feel like the rubber band helped a lot with that Like a lot a lot. I also feel like if you're doing something like a hem where you've got a Layer folded under and then fold it under again to make a hem and you're you're sewing on top of your fabric And you can't see all those other layers, but you know you measured them So, you know, there are a certain width from the fold of your fabric This trick will help you make sure that you are catching that hem every single time You know I'm saying so I do feel like there are some definite pros for beginners absolutely every beginner should have a rubber band on their sewing machine and For those advanced those of us that are advanced so it's I feel like there's a lot of advantages too So two thumbs up for the rubber band trick and I say it's a treat and it works Okay, so tomorrow's video We are going to be doing a trick that will help us We're supposed to help us gather fabrics more evenly more easily and Just better than the usual Task of sewing the two basting stitches and pulling them through and hoping you don't break one and trying to get them All even and yada yada yada. So tomorrow's trick is going to be for gathering a theme whether it be a skirt or a ruffle or whatever So stay tuned for that if you want to see any of the videos That I've already gone live from this week check the description box I'm going to be putting all the videos there at the end of the week Every video will have a link where you can jump around throughout the series or reference back to it Anytime that you need so until tomorrow. I will see you all very soon like tomorrow


TLO what's poppin? We are on kick KIC cake calm We are not live so you could just leave a like comment subscribe turning up post notification bells Let's continue to go to family from Chicago to the UK Channel above You miss alive. That's what a highlights will be got the patreon That thing that's on there You get me We also got the merch Check it out the links are all down in the description below in a it's in something called a link tree So it's a link down there in the description. It's called a link tree. Click it all of it will come up Quintessentially British means number 60 And please don't think I'm being lazy today.  Don't think you thank you is not good for health.  I can't rip you off on the food. This is honestly the best way to sell stuff Yeah, with humor, where do you have been a dorm? I was really good to you you will she not hot I bring you some cashews Okay, but she was them big bag of Told you I can't rip you off on them All right, I guess I'm on a Louie through binge now. Thanks tiktok Anyway, we've covered the most depressing episode and I've just found the funniest one by far If you did take steroids, yeah, would you inject them? Yeah every morning. Oh No, did some guys put it if I was to use steroids I'd be a very mild user and I have once would have if I had have ever tried it I would have tried it once to use a lot and and didn't really notice the great deal of difference Do you know what I mean? My bro don't even know how to lie He said if I the one time I well if I have once have used bro. You've used a lot of women Take would take four to five times of the amount that I take Would take yeah would take Wait, what show was that? Let's the square. This is the square. There's no holding hands on the platform. No holding hands on the platform The feeling against my wellies You're a Introducing the ungun the non-lethal self-defense platform Lightweight and simple to use it utilizes an easy-to-load five round magazine So what if I put approach somebody with an ungun and they got a gun gun Then what? No, I've got some new merch Gotta be cold people tripping Is some of the best stuff that I ever seen in my life and her lawn is very well manicured She tripped over life She tripped far too. She was all the way over here. My bad all the way over here This is this is not open right Wait, wait, this is not open but you see it's pretty still guys listen How did he make it all the way from out the store and not notice that Yeah, I'd be heated. I'm talking about it's only 45 people. I'm going back to the store That clean too, I didn't even know crumbs in there Her life is terrible Hello, yes Confirm, okay, what's your name general practitioner John Surning Lewis John Lewis, okay So are you teen depression? I'm afraid the consultation is only 10 minutes. So you're gonna have to You know book another appointment for What would you prefer to discuss today inside your depression which one's causing more havoc in your life?  Not much why not? Because you're depressed so you can't do much Try to go for a walk No, you're too depressed But you walked here Didn't you? Maybe just keep doing what you're doing You tried bath try getting in the bath bubbles are not helping Are there any Puerto Ricans in the UK? Like are there any Latin Americans in the UK? I just I've always been curious about that I've never really seen a Latin American somebody who speaks Spanish in the UK. How would it work? But they have a UK Spanish accent She kind of looks Spanish like Argentinian or something, but that's a I'm interested Try paying some brain docs in there. Yeah, no, not working either Well, I suggest that you just carry on doing what you're doing you can yeah, because you're doing amazing Lee You managing to have a shower This is a long tit-tat You're like five minutes the nails are trimmed Yeah, I think you're doing quite well Okay, I mean, there's nothing else that I can really say. I mean we've gone over Bubble bars to try having a cup of tea. Yeah, let's breakfast. I heard a cup of tea makes everything better That's what somebody from the UK told me you walk shower. What do you prefer? Yeah, okay? No, I can't refer you. I'm afraid Stop doing that.  Okay, but you only get ten sessions. Okay. I'm just gonna give you this leaf Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Bye. Oh like what night Sam being impatient Got your whole car flipped two three times In total. No, it's me. You're all right Yeah, good. Yes, I'm good. Um, just uh John. I wanted a quick favor if that's all right and One of our light bulbs have gone. I was wondering are you right to you want to change the light bulb? Yeah, could you help me? It's just one in the sitting room, but I can't reach it Yeah, but you know how useless Lee is John that man I was like here you idiot I'm literally right here I've changed all six bulbs in there Yeah, when it was darkness Yeah, oh John I was getting in for a tick That's funny. Tlo leave a like comment subscribe turn on your post man. Hopefully they let me post this police interceptors That's really what I want to go up today, but if not, uh stuff is where you know where it's going Patreon


and welcome to ongoing election coverage by town meeting television. This is one of many forums we are bringing you in advance of local elections and town meeting on the first Tuesday in March, March 1st, 2022. Town meeting is traditionally where voters weigh in on local government representation, municipal budgets, school budgets, and local ballot items. All candidates on the ballot are invited to participate in town meeting TV election forums. Town meeting TV election forums introduce you to community decision makers and connect you with the issues that shape your local community. If you're watching this live, we welcome your questions at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Again, if you're watching this live, we do welcome your questions at<PHONE_NUMBER>. You can watch town meeting TV on Comcast channel 1087, Burlington telecom channels 17 and 217, as well as online at town meeting TV's YouTube page. If you go to Google and type in town meeting TV, you'll find the YouTube page that way. Today we have the very well-versed and organized team to present the Williston budget and ballot items for the town of Williston. We have Eric Wells, the town manager. We have Shirley Goodall-Laki, the finance and HR director. We have Erin Collette, the fire chief. And we have Terry McKeg, the Williston select board chair. Thank you all so much for being here. And we welcome you to present your Williston budget and ballot items. Thank you, Annie. I am Terry McKeg, the chair of the select board. And I have the great opportunity to welcome our residents of Williston to our annual municipal budget presentation. Annie has made the introductions, so I won't do that again. But the, instead of doing a real town meeting like we have done in the past, except for last year, we'll be doing simply a public information hearing on Monday night, the 28th of February at 7 p.m., doing a virtual meeting using Zoom. So there'll be no in-person meeting due to COVID again this year. And that's disappointing, certainly to me and to the select board. So all of the voting will be done by Australian ballot. And the ballots can be sent in either requested for an absentee or early voting and either sent back by mail or hand delivered to the safe ballot box or safe boxes in the parking lot or to the town clerk's office. So the absentee ballots we expect to be available towards the end of next week or early the following week by February 10th. So this presentation is going to be about the main topic, which is the town budget, the general fund budget that we have unanimously approved, the select board is unanimously approved for this year. So I'll turn this over now to Eric and Shirley to run through the first parts of the presentation. So Eric. Thanks, Terry. And hi, everyone watching out there. Appreciate you tuning in and listening to the show this year. So I'll get started here on the general fund budget proposal for FY23 and always before again is the fine details. I was going to take a step back and take a look at what a budget is. So what is our municipal budget? You'll find it as article three on the town meeting warning. The budget's a plan to deliver services to the community, including what level of services to be provided, the cost of those services and the revenue sources to pay for those services. The budget's the best revenue and spending model made with the information available as it's developed each year. And development of the budget starts in August and it culminates in March a town meeting. There's a lot of work that goes into putting this budget together at both the staff level and a sweatboard review level to get it where it is now on the ballot for consideration. So we'll take a look at the numbers here. The operating budget is just over $13.1 million. This is an increase of just over $1.5 million from the current FY22 budget, or 13.63% increase in operating expenses. The estimated property tax rate has a .0383 cent increase. What does this mean? For a median homeowner in town, this would be an increase of about $115 for the year, or $9.58 per month. As a reminder, the final tax rate is set in July after the grand list is finalized by the Listers. And this estimated tax increase was reduced during the budget development process using town reserves and American Rescue Plan Act. So now it's the story behind this year's budget. So we'll examine this increase in two parts. Half of the $1.5 million increase is for the addition of career firefighters to provide fire and emergency medical services. The town engaged the independent consultant named AP Triton last year to evaluate how our fire department delivers services and the community's risk. This budget adds three firefighters per shift, or nine total. This was a recommendation from the AP Triton report. Driving this proposed change is a sharp decline in fire call staff members and they their availability to respond over the past five years. It brings a foundational shift in the department's personnel resource structure to address the reality of resources available and to build the necessary depth for a more consistent response capacity. And the call staff division remains an important part of the department, but realistically it cannot be called on to complement the department's operations to the extent it once did. The town greatly appreciates any time our members of our call staff can give as they balance commitments at work and at home. And our fire chief collects joining us today and you'll have more extensive information overview on this a little bit later in the show. Other piece I want to speak to, the other half of the increase to the budget is a number of factors for service delivery. These include increases in the capital budget for capital items, additional new staff positions, one being an energy and community develop services planner, a police dispatcher position that was added during the current fiscal year. We have new collected bargaining agreements in place for our police and fire unions, a market-based wage adjustment to recruit and retain public work staff was made last October. And as I'm sure everyone's aware, we're looking at inflation right now in the country and this has led to a cost living increase of about three and a half percent per staff. This affects materials and services throughout the budget. And then for a quick visual, if you look at all our town departments here, this is how the expense side of the budget is spread out in the FY23 budget proposal. So that's the expense side. And for a budget, you need to balance it with the revenue side. And I'll turn it over to our finance director, Shirley Godell Lackey, to walk us through revenues this year. Shirley. Thanks, Eric. So how are our services paid for? So we have many revenue streams, user fees, probably many of you are familiar with. We have permit fees, fees to use the ambulance services, also learn fees, fees for recreation programs and recording documents. So there's a variety of fees. And we look at those generally to help offset the cost of running the department. State and federal grants, we only have one state grant that we receive annually that is included in the operating budget. And that is from State of Vermont for our class two and three roads. Although the town has many grants, we have a separate grant fund, and that is outside of the scope of the operating budget. Post town fees. We have agreements with the Chittenden Solid Waste District and Casella Waste Management for the operation of their facilities within the Williston borders. And we collect a fee for 10 inch from those contracts that again just helps to offset the cost of maintaining the roads with the extra truck traffic on the roads. Just an additional source of revenue for the town. Local option tax, which I'm sure you all have paid, is the 1% on rooms and meals and sales and use. About 90% of the local options tax is from the sales and use. And we get that from all purchases in Williston or for all purchases that are delivered to Williston, including all those online sales that people have been doing in the last two years. So the state collects the 1% for us, but they keep 30% and we get 70% of that back. Is a huge help to offset our property taxes. Property taxes you're all aware of that help pay for the budget. And as Eric already mentioned, the property tax we have is proposed based on our best estimate of the grand list right now. And that'll be finalized in July. So the reserve and ARPA funds. The reserve, many of you would probably refer to in your own budget to Serenity Day fund. So that is the excess of revenues over expenses over several years. And that is how the town looks at it's an accounting terms. It's a undesignated fund balance. So we are able to have that money there. So when VSP couldn't dispatch for us, and we had to add that third dispatcher this year, that's where we got the funds to be able to do that. So ARPA, what is that? It's the American Rescue Plan Act. Those are funds coming to the town, every town and city in the state of Vermont was receiving those funds. We'll receive approximately three million over two years. In this budget, we have $542,000 used, $300,000 is just to generally offset expenses. And another $242,000 is being used to fund the capital budget. Instead of the fund balance or operating expenses, we've used that to help reduce the taxes. As for the reserve, we have used almost three quarters of a million dollars in our reserve to again help offset the tax rate increase. We'll move forward, Eric. So here's looking at a pie chart of our revenue. So 49% is from property taxes, probably not a surprise, but the local options tax at 26% of our total revenue collected. That's a significant amount that in the budget for FY23, that's $3,430,000. And I guess to put that in perspective for you, our proposed tax rate is 0.3104. If we did not have the local options tax, that would be 0.474 or 1.64% for sense increase in your tax rate without the local options tax. So if you move forward, Eric. So Eric mentioned this already, what does that mean to you as a taxpayer? So from our assessor, we got the medium home assessment value of $302,000. So if you look at our current day taxes, that's $817. If you put that into a monthly figure and say, I'm doing my budget, that's about $68 a month. So with the proposed rate at 0.3104, that's about $78 a month or just less than $10 a month. And the actual tax rate increased for you. Go ahead, Eric. So what's happened for the Wilson tax rate over the last seven years, including over the last six years, including this year. So in 2017 was the year of our last full reappraisal. So from 2017 to 2022, our tax rate has remained the same. Actual math is it has decreased 0.007. But part of the reason for that is if you look at the grand value list, it has been increasing, which is because of the commercial and residential growth in the town of Williston. So that increase in the grand list helps to minimize the increase in the tax rate. And chief will talk shortly about the increase as Eric already mentioned it, but the public safety issue that we are addressing in the FY23 proposed budget. And one more slide, Eric, and we're almost there. So these are the FY22 current tax rates. You see, Williston is second to the bottom lowest tax rate in the county. Williston has been in that position for many years. And those towns with asterisks, those mean that those towns have a local auctions tax, which again, I think points out that that tax does help reduce our tax rate. But even with our proposed tax rate of 0.3104, we are for FY23, we would still be lower than St. George's tax rate for FY22 at 0.32. So our estimation is that we probably aren't going to change from that next to the bottom slot for the lowest tax rate in Chittenden County or the next to the lowest tax rate in Chittenden County. And I'm all set. And I'm going to pass it on over to Chief to talk about the fire staffing. Right. Thank you, Shirley. I'll introduce myself again. Aaron Collette, I was appointed as your fire chief in September of 2020. And when I came into the department, I came in here with my eyes open, my ears open and watched and learned to see how we delivered services. And in that short amount of time, relatively short amount of time, I started to see a trend that was quite alarming to me that I found that we appeared to have some difficulty with assembling enough persons to answer the call volume and the type of calls that we had that we were occurring across the community. So concurrent calls, meaning calls that occurred at one time or at the same time as others in addition to demand per service and then participation.  And I'll take you through that in a minute. But currently we operate three shifts of four personnel, career personnel per shift. And those shifts can operate down to a minimum staffing of career personnel at three people per shift. And I'll show you what that looks like here in a minute. A decline in call staff personnel, increase in EMS call volume, an increase in the community risk, and the potential for us to not be able to meet the demand for service, which then resulted in an increased risk to the public and to our firefighters. Eric, if I could have the next slide. So here's a snapshot of what the current career staffing looks like. So when members of the public drive by our beautiful fire station, you'll see a number of apparatus in the inside of the bays of the station. One engine of that group, that fleet is staffed daily. And one ambulance is staffed daily. So we prioritize the ambulance where two people will always staff that ambulance. And the engine either runs with one person from the 24 hour shift, or for a full staffing, they run with two people from the 24 hour shift. Monday through Friday, we have an administrative staff, which includes the deputy chief and myself, as well as a career captain who has the roles and responsibilities of not only answering emergency calls, but also as the training officer for the department to help set the goals for knowledge, skills and abilities of our members. I could have the next slide, Eric. So some of the current call staff challenges is that unfortunately we've seen a real decline in call staff participation across the department. In the graphs that will follow this slide, I will show you what that looks like. Where at one point, in 2016 and 2017, we had almost 30 members on the roster. Today, in June of 2021, we were down to eight persons on our roster. We also saw an overall decline in participation across the call staff. And that's not unique to the town of Williston. We're seeing this as a national trend across the fire service. You're going to see Senator Sanders and his team address this tomorrow on Saturday, the 29th, in a town hall meeting forum where we're going to hear the pleas across the Vermont fire service and what that may look like. We also saw limited shift coverage participation. So our call staff members don't always need to respond in from home. So if they live a distance away, that would be prohibitive from them to respond emergently into the station. They will come in and work shift coverage, meaning that they could sign up and work 12-hour shifts. They're paid a minimal stipend for that. But we really didn't see a whole lot of participation in my early arrival here at the department. We've also seen unpredictable availability for emergency responses from call staff. That meant that maybe members of the call staff were working their primary jobs. Maybe they were tied up with family obligations, children's games, maybe their coaches. Any number of things that could take them away and not make them available to respond to emergencies to help the department. For those members that do live here in the community, delayed response times from home means that it could take some folks as long as eight to 10 minutes to respond into the station, which is obviously a delay in the delivery of emergency services. We have no assurances or response on recall of call staff personnel, meaning we don't know at any one time how many people would be available to help augment the department. And unfortunately we have limited numbers of persons that have EMS certifications within our call staff. So here are some of the challenges that we faced. Eric, may I have the next slide, please? Here's an example of the number of call staff on payroll. Like I said before, in July of 2016, you saw as many as almost 30 persons on the on the call staff payroll. And in June, we were down to eight. I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into that. So I ask Eric to advance the slide. And what we have done here is taken an analysis of the call staff payroll. And call staff payroll is a little bit better of a barometer to show the actual number of hours that a call staff member may be participating in. And as you can see in 2016, especially the summer months, we had almost 1200 hours of call staff participation. And we see that decline in sub 200, even 100 hours in our entire call staff in the June of 21 timeframe. So that shows that we just simply didn't have folks available. And they weren't in the firehouse or responding to calls. May I have the next slide, please? With that, we saw an increased demand for EMS, which is emergency medical services. This graphic represents the actual number of calls excluding vehicle crashes that our members responded to for emergency medical services. And you can see that that increase as many as almost 1200 in 2021. And in calendar year 2021, this is the fiscal year and calendar year 2021, including car crashes were over 1300. So the demand for services continues to grow as it relates to emergency medical services, which works against us in some ways. When we transition to the next slide, you'll see that when the ambulance transports to the hospital, you remember what our staffing look like. If we are minimum staffing is at three persons. We only have 1.3 full time firefighters that are staffing a single engine company at any given time when the ambulance is out of the community and transporting to the hospital. That means that you could have a single firefighter show up with a fire after hours unless someone is here at the station performing shifts on a very serious incident, which is a recipe really for unsafe and prohibitive challenges. The consulting group AP Triton when they came in, this is one of the safety issues that they called out and recommendations, which led us to this recommendation of increased staffing. When we look at what some of the tasks specific to the organization that need to get done, we talk about critical tasking and critical tasks are simply those tasks that need to be conducted in a timely and efficient manner by fire firefighters on an incident scene. And that my role as the chief of department is to make sure that our staff is trained and equipped and ready to do that. And unfortunately, we fall short of a number of the benchmark goals of critical tasking. Let's take, for example, a cardiac arrest. When we show up and we have a patient in cardiac arrest, we have five critical tasks that we must be able to meet. And unfortunately, we cannot currently do that. So we have to juggle between who does what role, we need a lead EMS provider, that's going to be the lead patient care provider. We're going to need someone on airway and then someone on performing chest compressions during CPR. That leaves the question who is driving the ambulance, who's the incident commander providing for psychological first aid training and informing the patient's family members about what actions or interventions are occurring. And then also looking out for scene safety and responder safety on that incident scene. Those firefighters silhouettes that you see in red are unmet critical tasking needs that we currently cannot do with our meet with our current staffing. Let's look at another call type and that being motor vehicle crashes. With a minimum staffing of three persons, that means we are limited to an incident commander who will perform scene safety, as you see here, who's overseeing a patient extrication specialist. These two firefighters in the photo are working to extricate the patient in the rear of this car. But it begs the question, who's the lead EMS provider providing patient care, who is the ambulance driver, who's the engine chauffeur who's providing fire suppression, putting a protective hose line down, or who's also checking for secondary care attendants, looking over additional patients that may be on that scene or providing BLS care to others. These firefighters silhouettes with the blue Xs through them are all critical tasking needs that currently aren't being met. As it relates to structural firefighting, we look at additional goals that have to happen. And what we've done is escalated the incident types from these complex to more complex. And certainly this is one of our greatest risks. This deployment of initial firefighting personnel helps show you lay citizenry about some of the tasks that need to happen on the fire ground.  That person is critical to that mission, as well as the two firefighters that are inside to put the fire out, put water on the fire.  I'll take you to the next slide, please. Those other functions include the search and rescue team, a rapid intervention team, which is required under the OSHA law, which says that for any firefighters that are working inside and immediately dangerous to life and health environment that you have to have two firefighters at least who are trained and equipped on the outside of that to rescue the firefighters if they were to get in distress. That means that you will need to have additional personnel that cannot staff a backup line. There was no provision for emergency medical services. So if we came upon a patient or had a patient that was injured, you would have no one to treat that patient and no one to ventilate the heat, smoke and toxic fire gases out of the building, nor incident safety officer. So these are again all critical tasks that our department has challenges that are being unmet. The addition of hiring nine personnel on the next slide would at least allow us to staff a rapid intervention crew, which is the requirement of the OSHA standard. And potentially if we're at full staffing, allow us to get a search and rescue mission underway to ensure that we can make sure the room, the building of origin doesn't have persons that are trapped inside of the building and help to get them out to safety. Next slide, please. So you'd say that, hey, we're surrounded by other fire departments, but when AP Triton came in, they looked at response times and other challenges associated with mutual aid. We saw that there is prolonged response times because of the delay through dispatching because we operate under multiple dispatching platforms where actual telephone conversations occur and add more and more time to the notification of other additional responders. There's limited responder availability as seen in the call staff numbers, the number, the call volume of mutual aid agencies is increasing as hours are increasing. So are our partners and our neighbors around us that share borders with us. And so their availability is just as limited. And they're often taxed in some cases, such as the city of South Brent and even greater than we are. And it's also our own ownership. We have a local responsibility for public safety. So these are the challenges that we have. And this is the hope that the addition of nine career personnel will start to meet that, to deliver a better product to ensure safer community. And with that, I will transition back to Terry. Thank you, Chief. And to wrap up my part of this, the articles that are usually voted from the floor, of course, will now appear on an Australian ballot. And article one is the article that would set the dates of the tax payments, as we usually do. Article two is to accept the annual reports of town officials. And article four is to authorize the town to finance the purchase of an ambulance out of the mount, not to exceed $280,000 over a term, not to exceed seven years. And this is a replacement of the 2014 ambulance that was purchased that has now reached the end of its useful life for the town. Articles five and six are for the election of select board members. Article seven is for election of the Lister. Article eight and nine are for two library trustees. And article 10 is for the Champlain Valley District School District for the one director to be elected. For early and absentee voting to receive a ballot for earlier absentee voting, please contact the town clerk. And her phone number and email are on the slide. You can visit the mvp.vermont.gov. Ballots will be mailed out when they're available, probably around February 10th, as I mentioned before. And you can return your ballot on the postal mail or use the drop box behind town hall, which is a drive-up box. Or at the armory, you can vote in person on March 2nd between 7 and 7 p.m. So I'll turn this back over to Eric to wrap it up. Thanks, Terry. And I just noticed a typo on that slide. It's March 1st for voting at the armory. Apologies for folks looking at home. I didn't catch that earlier. So just to clarify, it's March 1st for in-person voting this year, and you can certainly vote over it if you'd like to. So where you can learn more, we've done an overview with this show today, but if you visit our town website, town.wilston.vt.us, you can find a complete detailed line-by-line and extensive summaries of our operating and capital budgets for review. We'll have a copy and report on the website and available at town hall probably mid-February, if you'll arrive. We'll also have a sample ballot, and up there soon, we have the town meeting warning on the website today as well, along with a number of videos, recordings from meetings starting in last October through November, December, and January. We discussed the fire staffing reports and fire staffing, and along with a budget review by the select board. And we'll have the public information hearing coming up, as Terry mentioned at the top of the show on February 28th at seven o'clock, and they'll just be over broadcast over Zoom. And we really encourage and welcome your questions on anything related to town meeting. Can reach out to myself as town manager or really anyone on this panel, we'd be happy to make sure your question is answered. We want you to be an informed voter coming up for town meeting day. So I will stop sharing my screen now. Let's see. That was wonderful and wonderfully informative. Sorry, Eric, I think I interrupted your final statements. Oh, no. That was a presentation, Annie, but we're certainly built. Is there any questions on the call line right now? Sure. Let's find out if there's any calls. Any questions or comments from the public? No calls. No calls currently in. I have to say that I kept up with the whole thing, and I don't, I feel so informed right now that I feel like I could vote. I'm not going to go vote in Williston on Living Essex, but I feel that your presentation was thorough. You got somewhere for people to ask questions. The budget is very clearly laid out. Certainly your pitch, Chief Collette for the fire department has my heart, and I'm hopeful for your budget. And I can't personally think of anything that you haven't answered. If you all have a random question that you think somebody might ask you, you can present it, but I think you're pretty solid. You feel good? See my panel nodding, so yes, I think we're in good shape for this presentation. Great. Perfect. I hope I haven't over talked. I got a little nervous there. So thank you. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you for your commitment to your community, to Williston, and thank you for the roles you play and the jobs you do that are so integral to the functioning of a town and the way that towns are here in Vermont. Certainly each of your roles are so valuable, so thank you all for the work that you do. I'm sure that you, like me, would like to thank Town Reading TV for what they've offered us already, especially during this pandemic, this ability to interrelate. And do you have any parting words before I close out? Anyone here? We certainly do appreciate the Town Reading TV to produce this type of a show. And also for attending our meetings and broadcasting them for the Select Board meetings and DRB meetings as well during the course of the year. So thank you. Great. Anyone else? You all feel good? Yeah, thanks very much for watching. Thank you so much. I'm going to close us out by saying to the public, thank you for tuning in to Town Reading TV, ongoing coverage of local community candidates, candidates, budget, and ballot items, as we had here today for Williston. You can find this and more forums at www.ch17.tv. Don't forget to vote on or before the first Tuesday in March, Town Meeting Day, March 1, 2022. Early voting by mail is available by contacting your Town Clerk's office. Polls will also be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Today you've heard the Williston budget and ballot items from Town Manager Eric Wells, Finance and HR Director Shirley Goodell-Lackey, Fire Chief Aaron Collette, and Williston Select Board Chair Terry McKay. Thank you all so much and thank you from a personal note to Town Meeting TV again because I think we're just also fortunate here in Vermont to have this ability to communicate. So thank you all so much and stay well and have a great day.


I'm sorry, I have no access to it. Hey, my goodie. What would you have done if I had ordered something other than just grapefruit? I don't know what you haven't. Let's do a half a bag. Look at that. That's just beautiful. Put it down to the desk there. Can you really slide things aside? Okay, and we have to sing before you blow it out. All right. I think we have to sing. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, Mr. President. Happy birthday to you. Well, from the USO. Well, thank you very much, all of you. Now I got to get them all out. Did you listen to that record about you celebrating the birthday and the first family rides again? Oh. You've tried about six times. Now wait a minute. I'll catch my breath and I'll give you the other half. All right. We saved up a few more of the presents that came out too. What would you put that on? Hey, probably open this one first. Since that kind of goes with us, you may read the card. Oh, yeah. I guess you have to read this one first. Open this one first. That's the jellybees. I think we need a pair of scissors as much as you've got. I got to set it up on the right. That's the Wilson plan. That's it. I've got to... That's my sports coach made out of it. Oh, I've noticed. I think they got it in Canada. In Canada. Better check for your coat. Maybe a plain black packet. Now that gift is from Bob Carlson. And that is made out of the same material as the pillow. There's no sports coach left. That's what we made in the past. Read inside the history. Well, this says a gun. G-U-N-N. A gun married to Wilson or something. Comes from the far north. Territory, fluid, and clay, and caithness and subtlety. They claim to be sent from all of the black. The chief of the clan and the George gun who held office as coroner of caithness and is historically known as Crowner Gun. Lived in magnificent style in his castle of Clyde until he was killed by the treachery of the Caiths. In 1460, were we going to Caiths working for us? His death was avenged by his grandson. The feud continued in the latter half of the 16th century. The guns quarreled with the earls of caithness and subtlety. By magnificent archery, however, they defeated the combined forces of their enemies and outbound. Well, for heaven's sakes. Yes. I didn't think you should just have an ordinary pair of scissors and a desk. Well, now I've got scissors and with knives, not much paper, I have to pick up. There's nothing that weighs fastest over the side of the desk, but I have to keep picking up paper before I leave. Sit there. Oh, listen, thank you. This goes with... Follow the time of harvest with the present. Giving you all his weapons. Well, this has to be recorded, doesn't it? It already has. Sorry. Make the first cut, don't I, Eddie? Leave the decision as to how thick the piece ought to be for you, Eddie. A lot of room for dessert. I had a birthday last year. Yeah. We had a cake about this tall. Yes. Well, this is just for us now. That's right.


It's been my first time at each of you and for some reason I got involved in so many things and there are so many events and sessions going on. It's really overwhelming but on the other hand I think it's really good to meet so many people. It's been really good although it's been a really big conference to attend. It's nice to get my research out there. I managed to present an oral presentation yesterday afternoon. It was really interesting to get some feedback and reviews and comments to that. I kind of hoped going away to get at least one contact out of it and I've had quite a few people coming up to me and speaking to me. So as an early career scientist it's really useful to get my feet on the ground and get my research out there and make some contacts. It's been really useful for that. As a whole when I think about the EGU conference for me it's a great way to put faces to the names of the people that I've heard multiple times. As I'm researching, as I'm writing papers, reviewing literature and yesterday at my poster session I was talking to individuals that I've been familiar with their names for years and suddenly they show up at my poster and they want to talk about the research that I've been doing and this was really the highlight for me to be able to connect those faces with their names and also have an opportunity to discuss science with them. That was important to me. For me the highlight was actually going to a session that's outside of my usual field of research. So I'm a sedimentologist, geomorphologist and I'm more familiar with those areas. So this year I thought I'd go to some climate dynamic sessions and a guy presented just by Fluke a talk that really overlaps with my study area. So afterwards we went for lunch, started chatting and I might go and visit him to give a talk in his department and set up a collaboration. So for me this was really profitable. I think going to a session in a slightly different field is a good way of learning who's who, learning what's going on and really getting a quick foot in the door. Yeah, I would definitely recommend EGU for early career scientists and I would say mostly because of the short courses because this is something that you won't find at any smaller conference and it really gives you the possibility to learn a lot of new stuff and I had the chance to co-convene one and to be a panelist of another one and it's really nice to see so many young people involved and what others do from different background areas. One event I think I'd just come out of actually it was the policy interface event with the young career scientists, the early career scientists event just then talking about how science and policy making can come together and obviously make good policy out of good science and that was a really interesting event to attend. It's a really good way to meet up with people that you know already and talk about what you've done before, promote your own research but at this stage I've just started my first postdoc so I'm also spreading out into other areas and thinking which research avenues can I go down so it's the quickest and easiest way to see who's working on what and where I might go in the future.


Hi, my name is Alan Cates. I was born in Allington. I graduated from Allington High School in 1963. When I got married I bought a house in Allington. I lived here all of my life. My wife and I have raised two children here and we luck the town a great deal. We've been very happy to live here and we think it's a great place to live. We've been involved in the community. I've served as Chair of the Allington Boys and Girls Club Board, Sims Hospital, Zoning Board of Appeals, participated, supported local charities and we have supported building campaigns to preserve the community, starting with rebuilding the Ineternity and Church, which had a terrible fire in 1975. We've contributed to capital campaigns to the Boys and Girls Club, to the hospital, to the Robbins Library and to our synagogue. We are believers in progressive policies. We have voted against starting in 1980 when we voted against Prop 2.5, which we thought was a terrible idea. We support affordable housing. We think it helps maintain the diversity that's established in the town. We just don't think this is a good way to fund affordable housing. Affordable housing, if we value what we need to fund it with a more regular supply, not from sales of houses. We're 70 years old. We lived in the same house for almost 50 years. If we believe in affordable housing we could have contributed if the town decides how real estate taxes are the way to do it. They should impose a larger real estate tax. They should not wait for someone who's selling their house to fund this. We need more money for affordable housing. So in conclusion, I would say that I would hope that you would vote against this article and that you would consider ways to more adequately fund affordable housing in the community that we all find so desirable. We should not limit it to receipt of revenue once, sporadic sales of real estate, but rather funded on an ongoing basis in adequate amounts. And I would urge you to do that.