So welcome to the select board meeting for Monday, January 21st. We'll call a meeting to order First thing we'd like to do is approve the agenda. Is there any changes or additions from anybody? Seeing none, take a motion to approve, please. I'll make the motion to approve the agenda as presented Second second that Any further discussion Seeing on none all those who wish to approve say aye. Aye Consent agenda items for tonight are the minutes from January 14th meeting Liquor license for back blackback pub Michaels on the hill sunflower enterprises And The last item is annual certificate of highway mileage, which there seems to be no changes So somebody like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda items I'll second that okay All those in favor of approving the consent agenda, please say aye So there's several liquor licenses there and a certificate all of which needed inside, okay And at this time is a chance for the public to make any comments It seems like we got a packed house here tonight must be People for go sitting in front of the fireplace to come down here and enjoy us Nobody's interested already Move right on to budget items then okay, I Sent The board budgets over the weekend on Saturday Nobody asked for copies. So I didn't make any Anybody in the audience needs any Carla has a few The first budget to be discussed tonight is the library commissioners The library department budget Elected library commissioners are all here. I think All means here as well So And Please Passing out right now. It's just numbers Circulations Don't throw out these programs Tendon's looks like right now Our budget situation looks like this year The big points Out of driver drivers and expenses you can see expenses are $12,000 I See some of the big drivers There's a decrease in our transfer From the library front, that's market driven as the fund does better We share more of it with the town and that's sizable Shares more with the time because the fund did so well. We've never shared before and so there's a big hit This year in that line because it didn't do as well So actually according to our formula, we would have shared zero with the town this year But the library commissioners felt like in some of the other lines in this budget that Was appropriate to allocate $15,000 for that fund to help this year That's Just so you know, that's about slightly less than 5% of the fund balance Ended about $10,000 at the end of December and as Dan said the market actually went down and The formula would have had a zero transfer Much like we thought that I'm meeting a couple of weeks ago and maybe the library commissioners were in attendance I did put together a memo for both boards about maybe we should reconsider the formula and the library commissioners have have done that so 15,000 is a drop of 20,600 from last year about it's $15,000 more than normally would have been transferred and I think going forward there's a Hope both for the library commissioners and for the select board from the tax stabilization fund to have a little bit more consistent Transfer and both funds are in a position that can withstand that In a in a down year as long as you don't go Commissioners agrees that $15,000 is doable You'll notice from last year we're overspent a little bit Be part of that in the regular pay need to switch directors and So we had our current director Chose to take health care. That's a difference Pay and there's the benefit line as well. So as a little points out in this letter as changes in staff happen that usually means that There's going to be an increase in In the pay line and Also On top of that, we also have situations where our previous director's leaving It's one of those to sort of pay out for Mary's So We do have another Expense Which we're asking for 20 hours at a new position, which is really a New position, but we there's an older position. That's a five-hour position that would That we wouldn't we would let go And hire someone at a 25-hour position. So 20 new hours of staff time And the reason for that is We're finding that our Librarians in different areas or children's library and our program library Our technology library and they're spending more time given these Increasing numbers that we see here Staffing the circulation desk and that's time where they're not being children's library and whether or not being a technology library whether or not being a Program So just 20 hours to free up the staff to do their sort of specialty areas It's meant to be from the outreach to the community And help our director do that So then patron services manager you see primarily staffing the circulation desk and Helping with some of the program Correct yet. So sort of some bullet points for their responsibilities primarily staffing the health desk Implementing those procedures around the circulation desk providing reference services To more outreach We've thought about delivery of books Kids to childcare providers senior housing homebound patrons Overseeing our volunteers Managing all your dues and helping out with youth programming right now. We see a lot of younger kids. We don't see a lot of teenagers I have a question. It shows that your youth program and attendance at youth programs was down 217 2018 was that something conscious that happened? Yeah, there's a note at the bottom That is that we have library Yeah So your anticipation as those numbers will probably rebound in 2009 for youth program. Yeah, certainly with having our youth library. And yeah, I think so We missed out on Month and a half programming. So, yeah, any other questions for your board No, I just say otherwise you're to be commended because of all the other increases in Use of the library. We're very pleased with the attendance I don't know when the appropriate time or even if this is an appropriate time to make a few comments I appreciate your efforts to try to keep the budget at a Reasonable Level I'm not speaking for the rest of the board at this time, but In the past 10 years or so, I think the fire stations were completed just before Irene The conditions of those fire stations if anybody remembers back were horrible have been horrible for a number of years and We finally were able to Bond for a reasonable enough amount to Replace both those buildings and the equipment that we have is Pretty nice equipment too as well And after Irene there, you know the troubles that we all went through here in town That brought us to the point of where we are today in this new building People remember back the hurdles that we went through To achieve this goal at a again another reasonable amount Satisfied some pretty great needs in this town At pretty significant savings compared to some of the amounts that we were originally looking at And now the town is faced with another issue It's not glamorous. It's not pretty But it's probably one of the most important issues that any town faces and that's the condition of our infrastructure When I got on this board six years ago One of the reasons I got on is because I could see that our infrastructure was starting to significantly deteriorate, you know, we've worked over the last few years here to Kind of band-aid things along But it's apparent to me that if we don't start to focus on Some of those issues That we're gonna be in some pretty big trouble here for too long So moving forward It's gonna be my effort To try to hold the line as much as possible I mean if you think back to the library that we were Operating out of in the fire stations in the municipal building that we are operating out of We've gone from macaroni and cheese to state And it's time to step back and You know work within our means With the great facilities that we have Try to bring all our focus on the next big problem, which is our infrastructure Last year we were able to double our CIP paving CIP From 330,000 in the past which some years wasn't even met The 660,000 and we were able to get a significant amount of Passfall work done That's just the tip of the iceberg of the things that the roads and bridges Work that needs to be done in this town So it's my goal to ask the department heads To do whatever they can to try to hold the line On their expenditures and live like I said live with the stake that we've got for now and Try to funnel what additional revenues that we can possibly gather up Into fixing our roads because you know, it's one of them. It's a hard read our highway budget is by large the biggest budget we got and It's following behind probably In a much bigger way, so Three things to also know Well for first, you know, we're still we understand the town's still paying off the building and that debt services The part of what you see in our budget still This position was originally asked to the commissioners as a full-time position and we understood that On top of the salary that all the benefits that come with it that wasn't going to be a realistic ask this year so we've we've tried to be mindful for all the things that you're Describing and so we're asking for 20 hours not 35 plus of all the associated benefits Also, this is not something new We had talked about it last year our numbers were still going up or were started going up Obviously last year Approvious director Mary wanted this position and we didn't go for it last year because we understood that the town was trying to go for a Forget what the tax rate was last year is a euro percent was it totally holding the line So we were cognizant of that and we didn't ask for it last year And thirdly we have made cuts in the past as the town has come back or we've We have reduced our budget in the past as other departments have needed certain things as the Other priorities in the town good priority. We've made productions in the past So I guess I just ask you to be mindful of those three Taking particular the budget at twenty eight thousand dollars. I don't have all of my records with me, but it's I don't think it's any higher at all now than it was in 2011 it is higher is higher just marginally and after the flood there was a number of years that They had dropped that down And I think last year was the first year they got it back up to 28 So it's it's not even an increase. It's the same level that it was five years ago and much to the surprise of some people Do still read real books, you know, they buy lots of books You know, there are ebooks and audio books or the else in that line. I've missed not all physical books, but the main You know, I think in my memo You know, there's about fifty five thousand dollars worth of things that either aren't personnel related or aren't physical plants related and and you know When when they were talking about the thirty five hour position One of the things that all me have done was, you know, the book budget went down the computer services budget went down You know Trying to make room for the the ask that she made and when the commissioners said No, we really can't afford to go to a thirty five hour position And frankly the big gamble with the thirty five hour position is You know, you could end up with twenty two thousand dollars worth of health insurance with that position And it's unfortunate that health insurance is still so Closely tied to employment, but that's the way it is when you offer good benefits like we do So when when the commissioners cut that back and made it net twenty hour gain as opposed to 35 hour gain that was asked for You know, I encourage them to consider putting Book budget back to the twenty eight where it was in the computer services budget and a few of the other things back to what the ask was You know, one of the things that we're going to try to eliminate going forward Chris and we can't do it this year in the library fund is to eliminate that volatility in the Transfer from the trust it was nice last year when we when the library missioner said we can transfer almost thirty six thousand dollars And like we said in the beginning they could have said hey our formula in a down year says there's no transfer Now going forward I think we're going to try to keep that Stabilized numbers and we avoid those ups and downs, you know between the unanticipated Resignation or retirement of Mary last year and then having to recruit payout Mary's leave time And a few other things that were related with that, you know, they they lost about twenty thousand dollars of fund balance at least on paper And the twenty thousand dollars that you're losing there and the twenty thousand dollars that they're losing in the transfer You know, that's forty thousand of the fifty two thousand dollar tax increase So I hear what you're saying. I think I understand we've had a lot of conversations about the infrastructure But I think they've tried to Submit the most Realistic budget that they can't yeah, don't misunderstand me Dan. Okay. I appreciate every department and when the effort they go through I was just trying to give you an idea where myself as a board member What I'm trying to focus on moving forward and you know in the past the infrastructure has always been the sacrificial lamb That's why we're kind of in the boat. We're in I know that the first thing when I looked at the narrative last night of your budget and Saw the difference between the what came out of the trust last year and what came out of it this year. I mean You have to be a dummy to not realize that The stock market in the last month and a half or so has plummeted which probably caused that to happen Or had something to do with it, but you know if I guess I would ask if there's any Any possible way I don't know the condition of that trust More could be eked out of it to you know offset that That difference at all would you would you consider it? But again just moving forward My goal Try to focus on the infrastructure problems we got before they get To go awfully much more out of hand, you know Appreciate all you've done the rest of the board No, I I just want to say that I appreciate what you did do with the trust fund Everything that's been said here. I What I heard was really given the formula that had been in place the expectation would have been that would have been zeroed out and The foresight of the commissioners they were willing to recommend that that adjusted amount and The proposal for the new position it looked like you Utilized an existing Part-time position and blended that together and still kept it at as reasonable a rate as you could you could possibly see Given the numbers that you're showing here I think it would be irresponsible not to support some level of assistance One of the things with the programming in any facility like that is if you don't have proper supervision and oversight It just leads to further problems down the road the growth is there and the request at A little bit over two and a half percent is certainly not an unreasonable thing Going back to what Chris offered up. We've got a lot of competing issues So this is one of those that we we need to balance out But I think the work that you did was a very reasonable and considerate proposal and it looked to Be sensitive to the issues that the town faces. So thank you The other thing too that I just point out and I I did mention it. It's kind of right in the third paragraph on the second page of the narrative Dan mentioned the debt service and the library does pay $124,000 this year towards the debt service but there's the other transfer to the municipal building operating fund and that dropped considerably from a hundred and seventy seven thousand Last I mean from seventy seven thousand one hundred and five dollars last year to Fifty two thousand seven hundred and eighty dollars and you know, fortunately that that decrease kind of Align I think going forward I'm not here to say that it's gonna drop again as much as it did this year, you know It went down What twenty four almost twenty a little more than twenty four thousand dollars, but You know as the building Matures and we'll have you know soon enough the building will be old enough that we'll have to start about thinking about painting and things like that, but a Lot of the time that Bill Woodruff Had to spend in this building just working out the bugs the first couple years of operation And have gone away now. So I think that's going to be a sustainable Number as well and going forward, you know, that might actually drop down a little bit. So I Think all in all on the budget side. It's about as good as we can do the only way to Make the tax rate less. I mean the tax increase less than it is right now is Either you got to say no to that position or you have to raise the level of Transfer from the from the from the trust and given the growth in the library We need to have the staffing to to meet what the public is demanding and the transfer If you transfer more this year, you just put future transfers in peril because you're going to take away too much from the corpus of the fund and You know, it won't be able to grow as you need it As I said at the in the last paragraph You know the the the only control that the select board really has is how much taxes it recommends to the voters And if you recommend 485,000 for $585 this budget can go forward just as it is if that number gets Forward by the voters Then the commissioners have to go back to the drawing board and decide how they're going to make up that difference But I hope it doesn't come to that And certainly not yet. We haven't got another week anyway to look at numbers and Things are looking a little better this week to me than they did last week I'm not in a position to tell you what tax rate is going to be yet But on the revenue side in the general fund things are a little better than they Wanted to make a couple of points that's on One is you may not think of the library this way, but a good a good public library is actually an economic driver for a town Just like having a good school system attracts People and businesses because their their employees are going to want to live there a good library also attracts people to the town And that of course always helps the tax base so and Then the second point I want to make is oh and and also the library itself does a number of things That helps people who are looking for jobs We have as you might know almost all jobs now are applied for online And we have public computers that we see plenty of people coming in and filling out their job applications Looking for jobs. We have a community bulletin board where Employers can post job job and training opportunities So we contribute to the local economy in that sense as well and What Chris was saying about having this wonderful facility is absolutely true But it would be a shame to have the facility and not be able to use it to its full capacity and full potential and the very best thing that we can do to reach that potential is to have adequate staffing because it's the staff is the most important part of running a library and I Would like to see that happen. So I hope you will support the budget Thank you If you could have more in the line for books or more in the line for computers or staffing Which would be and Stopping what's the answer right now? It's not always the case. But as of right now is I think the library's been pretty cognizant of Being watched by the voters As we have this new facility I know there were there's a sentiment out there Well now it's gonna have to be more people because we have this big new building. So we've been our previous director Mary certainly was judicious, but asking for for new new people And as I said last year She wanted to replace this position that we didn't Now we are before trying to be a judicious this weekend No, I just want to say again Dan. I appreciate that. I don't want people to misunderstand what I was trying to point out Okay, I appreciate all the departments and everything they do here No, honestly, yeah, I do. Yeah, so thanks for everything. Thank you Rest of the board also Yeah, I'll just chime in and say that I think it's great to see I always fear seeing a decrease in usage You never know what technology if that's really gonna affect a Library, so I think that's a great thing to see. I guess my one quick question is How does that do you have any idea how usage over population compares to other libraries in the area and Is there are there specific goals that you create there? Do you just try to do as much as you can to create an amazing resource and then people find it and continue to use it? one thing I'll say I'll be mentioned in a meeting a couple weeks ago that Just as a general trend Door counts, I believe are going up but circulation of print things as a trend is going down To the fact that we have an 8.6% uptick in circulating items is impressive What the trend is for public libraries right now And all the about just certain general trends versus where we are. I know the statistics I Know the statistics are available to compare Vermont libraries with each other at the Vermont Department of Libraries website I haven't really spent enough much time since September looking at those Or since December when I did the end of the year statistics So I can't really give you off the top of my head how we compare to other libraries of a similar size My guess would be we're on par if not slightly above But I could get you those numbers for my next quarterly update if you like I Had asked last time Omni was here if you had a guy's had an idea of Increase in out-of-town Either memberships or attendance Have you seen any Yeah, just curious For 2018 was roughly $2,000 in resident fees and the actual is 2570 so I Can tell you Sort of anecdotally you might be interested in this you I'm sure are aware of the Stowe libraries Flood that they had a month and a half ago or so and they've been closed since then looks like they're gonna be closed for a while And we have seen quite a number of Stowe residents come in From the very first day that that happened using our computers and our printers and so on and Now we've had somewhere between 15 and 20 Stowe card Library card holders actually get cards and waterbury, which I assume they will use until the Stowe library reopens And probably the largest number of our non-resident People are from Duxbury, which doesn't have its own public libraries, you know, so You I think the number is on there for the total number of new patrons that we had this year I think it was 406 or Last year rather to 2018 Which was a pretty healthy number. It was a little lower than the first year we opened But it was in the same ballpark, which was nice to see Technology library is also very busy these days Nice letters from folks in the community saying I couldn't teach my mother-in-law how to use her email but the technology library and it's giving her homework and managed to get it up and running and She's Busy as you can be right now All the people Doing one-on-ones with the folks teaching basic tech skills Perfect, I guess we got it. You also have all right So Evan is here we by lies and why she will Has always received a has received for many years a support And The operating general operating ask is $17,000 This is an amount you've given to us for many many years It's basically a thousand dollars a month for the support of revitalizing water grade plus a $5,000 He's that store-brained stewardship in marketing And then a couple years ago You began supporting our economic Development through revitalized water very and we are asking for a small increase that includes a salary increase for our economic director And that Increase would begin on April 1st after the town meeting if you We've also continued to support your Putting $5,000 in the planning department's beautification budget. We work really closely with Steve Lodge speak to work on many beautification projects in this town including the holiday trees flowers Banners a variety of things so That is our ask I Included a Graphic for you to show you how your support has gone over the years In the last three years you can see that we have continued to increase our budget But the percentage of our budget that is funded by the government or you has continued to go down This is something that the board of directors is incredibly cognizant up and we work on Very very carefully as we do our budgeting as we seek to support the activities that we do the other document I gave you is our Town report which I delivered to Carla on Friday Which sort of details everything we did in 2018 and we do a lot I think you're aware of our mission which is to preserve promote and enhance the economic social and historic Vitality of Waterbury, Vermont for residents businesses and visitors that goes out of development marketing promotion beautification town and Coming soon everything means We are in full operation mode to get plenty of get started on that we have an important meeting tomorrow with the The contractor for the project we work close to the bar bar that we translate song It's really a three-pronged team of Alyssa economic development myself marketing promotion and barred far Contract residents Person who knows everything about the contract and people So I'd like to ask tell me if you have any questions Was actually having a conversation about the reconstruction project today and and it's possible impacts here and in the village I'm optimistic that The businesses will Weather the storm relatively good Best we can hope for you know, and I'm sure with your help that will encourage people to support them and see us through this difficult time but People just have to keep in mind of if they can envision What the other side will be like I? Think the well worth at the end I think the operative word there is optimistic and we are incredibly optimistic Fact is we are somewhat excited about tackling this project because we are going to be rolling out Different kinds of programs to support the businesses Alyssa's already working on business support workshops We have marketing plans There's It becomes it's a broad range of activities and things that we know we're going to be on those street Daily we are hiring a market a part-time marketing assistant and revitalizing water risk solely for Main Street Who is going to be really helping us to execute all the activities? that funding comes through the state of Vermont from the be trans project, so it's a Restricted opposition but being able to add a second person a third person in our office to really support Alyssa and I to do social media graphic design Pounding on the pavement knocking on doors and asked helping and listening and taking care of tons Obviously, I think we're all excited. I mean really ready to get it started Yeah, that I was going to say it won't be for lack of trying on both our W's part and Municipal staff were gearing up for this Pretty much constantly of late the money that Karen just mentioned you know we We the town worked hard with With v-trans to get this money It's not it doesn't show up in the request that Karen is put before you, but the money that Be trans is making available We'll be coming through the town and then we we pay them. It was actually I don't know $8,600 or something last year that You'll see in a in a different budget probably next week, but Over the course of the Three years or four years counting last year. I guess I don't have the number Karen may know it, but All but about $6,000 will be covered by the trans and that's $6,000 Local contribution will come at the end of the project in the last year. I think so They're ready to go We're ready to go and just need a few more months to go by on the calendar and snow Be from one storm to the next know what's encouraging what's encouraging for me is I Guess a little bit of the ray of sunlight is the fact that you know TD Bank north had sold and somebody purchased it and Then across the road there Jeff Larkin's place, you know, I don't know if it's any competition to mark but the people moving in there and I think those if I had to guess those people are strategically positioning themselves for The other side of this construction project. So that in itself is encouraging well, I think it's one thing it's a little less a lot of credit for working with the Business owners and the property owners in this town to really make sure people understand the impact of Main Street construction Understanding this is actually great opportunity to get into town sort of work out the kinks of a business while you're you know while things are going on and then get started and We are really Ready to support all the businesses in many ways We've spent we've done a lot of research. We visited Middlebury Which is having a train Tuttle built underneath their main street Then we visited Brandon if you went to Brandon last summer you've got it We got a real glimpse of what we're getting and so it's gonna be dusty. It's gonna be dirty. It's gonna be confusing but the one thing that really stood out was the Personalities and the people who are working on that project and how happy they were to help us And the idea of having everybody in the community Be excited and understand that we just got to get through this and in the meantime It's my job This is job and bar's job to get as much information out there as often as we can You develop the library works comm website that was part of the 2018 money we spent for me trans if you haven't been there you should if you haven't signed up for the alert system You should So Waterworks comm which is will be the central place for all the information we've got going on At the same time as main streets going on revitalizing water will continue to do all the other work that we always do Which includes The promoting of the town and the community of the you know the tourism businesses in this town Beautification we have amazingly fun plans and ideas for beautification of this town when it's dusty and dirty and Supporting the the community the town and moving forward Yeah You're doing a great job already You know jump in and just say that I appreciate all the work that RW and its volunteers do I think you guys do a lot for Very little in terms of a budget Yeah, I mean as a business owner downtown. I have incredible excitement and fear at the same time. I think It's interesting that marks on your board and we saw just quickly You know what mark at craft beer sellers went through on a small construction project in front of his building So I think it's gonna be a lot of effort on all the businesses to try to figure out how to find Some something to celebrate and actually try to turn it into a positive and definitely try to come up with some ideas But I will tell you that for revitalizing waterbury. We spent 2018 not only exploring other towns But experiencing two things route 100 Construction was a great learning experience for us For example how a contract that could be written on stone means nothing when it's raining out So things change you got to be flexible and then the Elm Street project really was an example of sort of How important communication being on the ground being there in front of the businesses and letting them know that we're here to listen to them And that project was sort of we knew was going on but it was just sort of over here It wasn't right here and it was an amazingly good piece of information for us and the importance of having people on construction crews Understanding that they're part of the community while they're in town and they need to support us and we're looking for friendly attitude We're looking for people who are happy to be you know working hard to help us So it was amazingly important learning experience, and we have taken it and added it to our You know our plans of how to move forward Give you a little taste of what? Yeah What the bigger deal is going to be about yeah, well, I'm happy to hear you're excited about this and because I was one of those I was one of those folks that it was sharing my worry that this beautiful town that Is now fully kind of built out downtown. It's it's it's a much different town business wise than it was 15 years ago And we've got some great businesses down there. I'd hate to see anyone go away So I'm glad to I'm glad to hear that there's a cheerleading effort out there that they keep everybody's Spirits up and keep them looking towards the end game. We're gonna be yeah celebrating every milestone there'll be enough parties in this town You don't you know, we just plan on celebrating everything We've ordered from stand-tech Some before and after images so people can start seeing what it's gonna look like and be able to share those images out And so people will sort of understand where we're going. How are you going to share those? We kind of wish it would be on the time report They're going to be on the website whether there are postcards or posters and Flyers and places where people will see them Any of the board have anything else they'd like to ask or Go ahead What would be the best way to To approach you if you know, somebody stopped one of us on the street and started to express Concerns over something and you'd like, you know, I may may may or may not have the answer You know We are beginning to put together something that we're calling changing the end of the story and that is the idea of When people in this community leaders in this community have interactions in town with others Who are upset or angry or complaining that you have information and you have tools and your ways to help change the story Help them change the experience understand what's going on We'll be doing some trainings in the community for business owners and businesses will come Give us 15 minutes before his left board meeting will come here and train you guys to so you really understand Because we want you to be able to talk confidently about the project and to know who to go to and there are the The answer is if you don't have the answer Please call Barb Karen or Alyssa. Here are their numbers. They're gonna be everywhere Listen That's what most people just want to hear is have people want you to listen But I'm going into training mode right here. I apologize You're gonna be doing something with on WDV like a regular update using the radio station Yeah, we have a meeting with WDV Think tomorrow afternoon Wednesday. I can't remember to talk to them about there our partnership But Steve Cormier is really excited about being supportive of the project we will have a pipeline for press releases and Yeah, that will be a primary source of information as will what my record as will front porch forum as will email blasts I'm sure you guys have talked about it, too, but I think there's an opportunity to to Try to boost revenues before and after the construction. So instead of trying to push People into the construction scene there might be a more opportunity maybe to try to I mean like April's terrible for That's a dip in business April November at the two But if we can get ahead of the construction hitting downtown and throw party prior to it To try to boost revenues for everyone to help just have access cash for the dip because I know I took meetings years ago and Barry We met with some of the people involved there and they estimated the revenue drop was about 30% I believe and they had a parallel road. So it's a it's a big difference But I think there is some opportunity to say hey, it's gonna happen. Let's have a party and Now it's done. Let's have a party and let's try to like help everyone out who might be struggling. So Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, I think yeah, Gary's here Very Dylan fire chief Can you come up to your table Gary? Again, not to steal any of Gary's thunder, but I sent this out yesterday The the spending of the fire budget is about a 1% increase $7,300 and that $7,300 increase which is 1% includes a 5% increase that I put into the Transfer to the capital fund knowing that we never can have enough money in the fund We're gonna have to you know buy new fire vehicles down the line. So pretty much a maintenance budget, but Gary was very willing and eager to come in and share a little with you Well Yeah, you could have been like the firefighters there the other night I see on the news there that we're attending that restaurant that burned. I forget where it was That was misfortune Just the people that have the fire it stinks for the members that are standing outside The 20 below temperature that's it really does that's the stuff that keeps me awake on a cold night Because the house is warm Things don't work quite as well either do they There goes the maintenance budget because you just froze up two and a half or three pumps and your hoses Frozen up and you gotta find a flat bed to haul it back on Bill summarized the budget very well There are some things that we went over budget on last year But for the most part they were all areas that we had no control over So the things that we went over on were the pay Equipment maintenance, we just had a lot of equipment maintenance this year dispatching a little bit The internet and phone system that will be adjusted this coming year from the phone system water Heat generator vehicle maintenance was over a little bit. We've got two engines Costly to maintain because they're 20 years over close to it diesel We went over training by 93 bucks. I'll eat that one and traveled by $50 That said the areas that we do have some control in Like office flies the canteen for when we do have those calls tools Public relations and new equipment. We were under budget so We're not a department that All right, we've got a budget. Here's the money. Let's just spend every bit of it a Long time ago Somebody told me you should always go over your budget by one or two percent that justifies your increase the following year. I Don't necessarily Agree with that. I think you spend what you have to spend certainly in areas if you have a big fire and Something breaks you got to fix it. I mean that it's just the nature of the beast You know, we had to replace a portable tank and they're a few thousand dollars From the wall of fire There was so much heat that we had embers and we couldn't keep enough water in the tank because we just We're pumping more and more water we could get and so we ended up with some big burn holes and Little pinholes easy to fix the other ones Just became a tarp So we don't spend money just because it's there we spend money because we need to get guidance that we've identified sometimes We get better deals on the equipment that we list one of our big costs is gear and this past year we had less people that Needed to have your place. So that was probably the main factor for saving the $7,000 that we say That doesn't mean that we're not going to need to spend more out of that wine item this year and maybe not get something else so for the most part the members are taxpayers and we're aware that it costs us all money and It's kind of the way the officers look at it. I have some members that It's just like your kids when you say you don't have money to get something to go to bank. We have more and I have some members That say just spend it and you got to pay for it. It's not my philosophy If there are changes in in the budget in the line of animals I go talk to Bill and I did that this year We had in the budget to get one item this year Worked it out with the ambulance services for ID cards that we need when we go to schools and stuff for trills They're going to continue to print them for us And so we took that money and we changed it over to get some scpa mask testing equipment Because right now we would have to use the fire Academy and they come up somebody comes up on a particular day and The member sits down they put their mask on they do all these different things say these different things To make sure that the mask is appropriate to fit it to them and that's at least thirty five dollars per person Not counting whatever the cost is of the person that does it They didn't say I'll do it for ten dollars a person or whatever so we bought our own testing equipment and It's more than What it would have cost us this year to have the fit testing But it would be paid off in three years and it will last significantly longer than that so there was an upfront cost But it's gonna be a cost savings To all of us. That's what you call strategic planning. Well We try and do that. It's kind of like replacing You know here the year before you need to replace it So you don't have somebody go out two months later and all of a sudden it's destroyed So, you know if you have questions, I certainly would be happy to answer them I one other area that I think we're gonna save money that's really just come out I'm not sure how much is dispatching we're moving our our tower that we have Up in Waterloo Center at a member's house spent there for quite some time but The way that tower is set up that person gets a check from the mutual aid system but we also have to use the microwave system from this the state police and That's like $40,000 just for that and we got permission from Kent Squire and Quorum We're changing the location of our tower. We're gonna put it up to the DEV building on plus hill We will get better reception The valley departments will get better reception and we don't have to pay for the microwave and we don't have to pay for the building Let's just put it there. So how will that equate to our cost savings? It may not be much But it may be something right, so that that $40,000 he's talking about isn't all paid by us That you know no no no no no by the capital district And they're gonna seal a share of that Say $40,000 No, it's $30,000 a year that we have to pay public safety to use their microwave for the transmission. But we just had a mutual aid meeting this past Wednesday, last Wednesday. And the board is planning on sharing that cost savings with the rest of us. There's no reason to keep charging people for something that you don't need. Is that happening this year, Gary? Or is it next? It's happening this year. So they'll install stuff in 2019? Yeah. Yeah, it's as soon as they can, actually. How many other departments do you think will benefit from that? Well, the whole entire mutual aid system will benefit to some degree. But it's primarily for laundry. Middlesex, Mourntown also use it. They get toned on two different towers. So each, we had a call earlier tonight. We get a tone, tells us what it is. They wait two minutes. They tone them again, tells us what it is again. So Middlesex and Mourntown get four of those because of where they're located. Some of their members live in Waterbury. Some live on the other side. So they try and hit them with both towers. With this single tower, they're hoping, according to the engineer that's looking at the slope of the land and the tower, that they should be able to get Middlesex and Mourntown on a single tone or a single set of tones. So it'll help them. It probably won't do anything for a weights field as much. It'll still help them. But it also helps the other departments when they're calling for us for mutual aid. Excellent. Mostly on this end, I think the furthest we've gone is East Montpelier for calls. But it's the capital district mutual aid system that owns or is paying for that tower. So it will be about how many departments are in the mutual aid. Well, it's different because some departments are in the mutual aid system that don't pay into it because they don't even have red phones.  But there's probably 20 departments that are paying for the costs right now. So it's not a huge savings. But it will bend the curve down. They're on a fiscal year, so we have two quarters that are set. I think I put it in here and I just made a guess on the second two, an estimated guess. But anyway, that's good news, Gary. How have your responses or calls like on the interstate been this year in comparison to the past years? Is it a little bit less? Yeah, so although it's not good for your truck, this salt line is working. We saw a noticeable decrease, and we have each year, including this year, in the calls on the interstate for crashes. You still have a few car fires or overheated vehicles in every way, things around fire, so 20 people to call. But for crashes, our call numbers have dropped because of the salt line, the conditions are better. On a snowstorm like this, it's just not much you can do, especially the people that think, oh, stop snowing, and I can now go back to eight miles an hour and they can fall off the road again. I wish a road conditions were like this pretty much all the time, because they're just fine as far as I'm concerned. Completely drivable. I drove the Berlin today, I drove at a reasonable speed, and I didn't make proper stand on road. No, I was just curious, because that didn't seem like you guys were visiting the interstate quite as much this winter, yet knock on wood. We haven't been up there through this storm either. Now tomorrow will probably be a little different from people will think, oh, I can again get back up to speed and they get off to the side a little bit and it's slushy and pulls them in. But what we've really, over the last couple of years, pushed back on is if somebody sees a car off the road in the median, as an example, you get five people that call 911 because they saw the car there. And when the dispatcher, the 911 call paper, takes the call, they ask a couple questions. Is there any injuries? And are there any fluids or hazards? And when a person is driving by at 60, says, I don't know, we then have to get a call. So what we've been doing is either on the way to the fire station or when we get there, we make a quick call to the dispatcher and say, do you have a trooper in the area? And most of the time they do, yep, we have one that'll be there in a couple of minutes, we hold our response. There have been times when they say, you know, we've got one coming from East Montpelier, then we're gonna go.  It might be her, but for a two minute delay or less, we'll hold because we're talking about an engine that, you know, the replacement for it is over half a million and people that are on it. There are some departments, they literally will bring a tower truck on the interstate to use as a blocker. Fine, if you wanna do that, we do use our trucks to block an accident scene and it's paid off, we had a tractor trailer hit one of our trucks a few years ago because it was going too fast, but it saved the people that were at that scene. We had a rescue truck that same year that was hit, not a lot of damage. And that car almost hit three members, but we are pretty aware and we always have somebody watching traffic on the interstate. Even if we got a big working extrication, we have somebody standing there just watching traffic. And it was a local person who was, Icy Rhodes on her phone and lost control and her response was, I was trying to hang up. I was like, wow, wow. So that's what we deal with. Yeah, the number of calls on the interstate has dropped. We have had more fire calls. We had three working fires this year. One was the Wallace Fire. We had one down on Founder Street, the old steel warehouse. That was Arson, they know did it. They were able to identify that.   We had three working fires here. Two of the buildings are still standing, probably gonna come down anyways. And the Wallace Fire was probably the most traumatic. Certainly no loss of life, human life, but I had, during the middle of that fire, I called some primary chief officers from our department and other departments saying I'm open for suggestions. I mean, the issue was we were trucking water from the reservoir and we were connecting the hybrids on Kennedy Drive. And that was the water supply. It was just nothing else we could do. And until Weitzfield got there with their tank truck, we were finally able to balance out the need for water with the water that we were getting. But we were literally dumping our tank trucks and stoves and sucking the tank dry and literally shutting one holes down, operating the other. Shutting one holes down, operating the other. We just couldn't keep up with it. Well, hopefully she's on her way to recovery to some extent. Yeah, I haven't been in there. Apparently a local person is building her garage and house. Yeah. I think that's great. It's not just her, it's the whole community that has benefited from that fire over the years. They're slowly disappearing. Yeah. Unfortunate. Yes. Very good, Gary. I don't know if... Gary, you wanna just talk briefly about the trucks? Yeah, sure. Prior to the merger of the departments, 19 years ago, it would've been, at this time we were already in planning and identified, but next year would be 20 years and that's the NFPA recommendation to replace engines. And based on the maintenance that we're spending on them, it certainly makes sense. But we bought those two trucks when we were separate municipalities, the town we bought one, the village we bought one. We've had a committee that's been working all last year on identifying replacement trucks. Bill and I have talked a number of times over the last couple of years about the best way to approach this. Do we move one forward a year, move one back a year, split them up? There's a cost savings by buying both at the same time, not a huge cost savings, but cost savings nonetheless, especially when you consider, if you wait two more years, you have that increased cost. So, I think Bill will be looking at providing a recommendation to you folks on the best way, most cost effective way of replacing both of those engines. How many pumps, pump trucks do we have? Three? We have three. Not counting the tower, we use that for something. No, I understand, but just in case somebody says, well, can we push one back a year and then try to get five years apart as opposed to on the same year. There's already another one. Is it five years out? The third one, is it five years? No, that's actually 10 years out. 10 years out, all right. So, if we could turn the clock back, it would have been nice if they had separated and buying about seven years each, but we're not there yet. As I understand it, the cost savings is about 2.5% or so. You're talking about, Well, you buy two. Right. Vehicles that are about, before you do much, $489,000. So, two of them, you're pushing a million bucks to buy two. And the 20-year-old vehicles that we have, I'm not sure if this information that you got was if we would trade them into the company that we're gonna buy the new ones from, but we're talking about $15,000 to $20,000. If we sold a private sale, we might find somebody who would give you a little bit more than that, but based on our past history, I mean, Gary's been around in the fire department as long as I've been the manager here. He hasn't been the chief the whole time, but we're not gonna sell one of these vehicles for $50,000 or $75,000, it's not gonna happen. They're expensive when you buy them. You don't get much in return. Yeah, we would anticipate in talking with the likely person that we'd buy the new trucks from. He also sells when he can, used ones. He said, it's really based on the market and what somebody is looking for. He said he had, he just sold one for, I think it was $30,000, but it was 10 years newer that was used. So the longer you keep it, the less valuable it becomes and then how long do you sit on it? A number of years ago, the village sat on an engine because the board said, no, we can get a lot more money and we ended up essentially giving it away for $1,000 because it literally sat in the highway, the Armory Garage, and just rotted away. So you don't want to sit on it long and you want to try and take a good price for it. You got to balance that weight. We haven't looked real closely yet. The difficulty and one of the reasons why the trading value is so low is they're 20 years old, number one, and number two, the NFPA says that you can't, they're not going to give you credit if you have equipment that's more than 20 years old. So I'm sure there are some fire departments out there that will buy a new vehicle and then keep it 14 years and try to sell it while it still has a little bit more life. But we haven't done those analyses and for the size of ours, it's just, that's a lot of shuffling. We have a lot of other things that we have to buy. So we're not going to have a recommendation tonight. Next year is the 20th year, right? So one of the things, as Gary said, was well, would be wiser to move one up to this year and then push one off to 2021, 2022, something like that to get a little bit more separation. We don't know yet. And it's unfortunately not just the fire department that we have to look at. We've got baby, we've got highway vehicles all come out of the same pocket. And we're certainly aware of that. Trying to balance what everybody needs. There's needs and there's less important wants. But if we were to put one off a couple of years after the first one, then not only are you losing that savings, you're increasing because it's going to cost more because it's two years later. So you have that increase in percentage or maintain it for those two or three years. That's the vehicle maintenance line item. That's the bulk of our costs for those two engines. And just so you know, Gary will know exactly, but there was savings when the two departments merged. We did downsize the number of vehicles. They both had two full-size pumpers before. So we did go down to three from the four we had. And I know that the center used to have what they called a mini-pumper. You repurposed that, you went a different direction. So the merger did save the community significant money when you're looking at $490,000 for one vehicle. So we did realize that savings, but that savings happens once and that was 19 years ago. Right, and we've changed the direction for our engines because we go on interstate. Although international is just down the road and their trucks aren't overly, I guess for a truck, overly expensive compared to some Peter Biltz and some other trucks that are out there, they're not as safe as the newer engine that we got. They're fiberglass. And fiberglass just doesn't hold up, they can crash. And it doesn't have to be our fault that they crash. Like I said, we had one that was hit by a tractor trailer and it cost, I think it was like $35,000 in repairs. But the engine that we have that is 10 years old, the newest one that we have in that cab is a roll cage. So the people inside there are safe, relatively compared. There's no airbags, but it does have a roll cage in it. Everybody is seat belted. I have a very strict policy.  And there was a challenge for some people. Well, I'll just put my airbag on because they're locked into a lock system and I'll just wear the airbag. For some people that go to crashes, they're like, well, I don't feel safe, seat belted. I have a pocket full, don't care. And now with the trucks, when they come out, they actually have a monitor on them and the truck doesn't leave until all those little seat belt indicators go from red and green. We will sit there and sometimes the driver or myself and the officers, theater and other officers will get snappy with people. It's like, bubble your seat belt so we can go. And you know, when you're going to something serious, two seconds seems like a half hour. But it's safer that way. It's, that's how people get hurt. People get hurt when the trucks are backing up and nobody's backing up. We have a very strict policy about that. You better be able to explain why you're backing a truck up and nobody's behind it to guide you. I just don't believe in close calls. So that shows up in your workers comp numbers that Bill shared with us. That line of work is not exactly a low risk thing, but to be able to see a decrease in workers comp insurance is remarkable and it's a true testament to the adherence to the training and the use of proper equipment and everything. And it's a credit to you and your department, that's for sure. Well, it's the officers that really, I just see what the policy is and the officers enforce it and I'll help them. But, you know, we have a training committee. We have a training officer and his job is to work with a committee of three other officers to develop the training. Training satisfies our needs to maintain our national certifications. Keep the training interesting. But sometimes it's basic elementary stuff. You know, just because you go to a call and all of a sudden something didn't work just right and rather than brow beating and we just include that elementary type training in our next training cycle or schedules done for the year. So unless we get some opportunity to change that, I know what we're doing all the way through the end of December. But that training hits all the requirements that the state and our federal certifications require. Is your membership there for your volunteerism holding strong? 50, today. So. I mean, any indication that that could go one way or the other in the future? It's odd because everybody around us is hurting. So, Fire Department has a great department but they were the premier department. They had a waiting list for a long time and they've dropped and it's the people that are now living in Stowe. Well, that's probably the problem with Stowe is that if you look at Stowe's municipal staff, almost nobody who works for the town of Stowe lives in Stowe. Correct. And they just, the local folks who used to join the Fire Department, they don't live there anymore. And it's too bad. And I think we're fortunate here. Housing costs are higher here than they used to be and it's tough for some people but we've been able to maintain that. I think it's also a testament both to the leadership in the department and the community that supports the department here. People wanna belong to an organization that care about their safe and care that they have the equipment to do the work. And it's an investment. And I think it's something that I think we've all worked hard on. I mean, I'm not a member of the Fire Department but I think if you ask those folks over there, I listen and I hear what the needs are and try to figure out ways to make sure we give you what you need. Yeah, so. There's no question by any of the members that I did certainly verbalize it to me about the support that we get from the community, the board and certainly Bill. We certainly would like some guarantee that we don't have calls when it's 20 below. But that's when people use more space heaters and stoke up their wood fires. But now we're happy. We tend to, if I had to average amount, two new people a year because we have attrition. We have people getting done, hey, I've done 25 or 30 years or sometimes it's 10 years and I've had enough and then we get new people on. We've got a new group of people that just completed the firefighter one, two training last year and out of that group of five that we put through the training last year, we got two more new ones this year to go. They are full of energy and it's good for the older folks too because you got these young people saying, hey, I want to show me how to do this, show me how to do this. It makes the older folks feel a little bit better and say, well, okay, you have energy now you're forcing the energy on them. So we got a really good balance and getting new people, young people is great because it is not as easy getting up the next day when you've been wearing an air pack for a long time. And I don't do that very much. That's not my role. But I went up and helped Stowe do a training burn and I wore a pack and I wore it for six hours. And for the next few days, I was feeling my age. But it was fine, made me feel good that I could actually still do that stuff. Yeah, I guess that's why I was asking there. Just, and I'm sure you're fully aware of it, but to keep an eye on that particular aspect because you don't want it to become a problem before it's too late. Right, right. Yeah, well, I don't know, you probably already know that Stowe's current fire chief marks again as it's getting done. And Stowe's going to a full-time fire chief. There's some legitimate issues.  I just retired, I do not want to work that job. But Stowe's a different animal up there a little bit. And so they are having some different issues with recruitment. And they're hoping that they've got a firefighter slash animals member that is, they're paying to do more work. And part of his work is recruitment and retention. It's good to recruit new people, but it's nice to keep the ones that you've put a lot of money into.  But he said when he's done, he's done. And I don't blame him, he's put in a lot of years. I have a quick question before we jump off this. And I know it all doesn't have to be talked through tonight. Back to the pump truck. I know it's not this year's budget, but that is a major concern, obviously, that we might have to look at that large of an expense. Like this year's budget. What's that? I said it could be one this year. Maybe part of the strategy, and I look to you as an answer is potentially buying one new one used and what's your opinion on used equipment? Is there a window there that makes sense to create the offset? And are the depreciation curves straight or is there a potential opportunity to try to look at some used equipment to help save some money? That sounds like the one that's 10 years new or sold for 30,000. That sounds like a pretty big discount off of half a million. But I understand that you're also looking at more maintenance. It has use, more risk, I understand that. So I don't know. Engine. That's what we're talking about. It's less than 20 years old, it's extremely rare. You then, you're not getting the lifespan out of it, but you're also not paying as much, but you're also stuck with what you got. So when you, that engine is available, it looks like you have a price, you buy it, you're buying what's there. You're not buying what works for water. And, you know, the gear ratio makes a difference. A lot of those trucks that get replaced in the cities are beat. So you might have one that's 10 years newer, but I'd be willing to bet that you wouldn't find an engine that's like our 10 year old engine down in New York City or Boston that looks anywhere near as good as ours does. For a lot of those people, it's just a job. That there's, they go in, they work, they leave, we have people at two o'clock in the morning and something wasn't working right. We'll stay there for another hour and figure it out and fix it before we have another call. So, yeah, you can, you can buy a used one. I certainly would never support that, but if you, this board said, this is what you're gonna do, I'd make a decision. But I certainly wouldn't recommend getting a used engine. Yeah, that's good, I wanna hear that. Yeah, the tow truck's different story. I would never support buying a new tow truck because the amount of use that we get out of it in a number of years is a good balance buying a new used one. A brand new one, off the mark, is $1,000,000. I think it was like 1.3. Yeah, so, you know, it's, that's something that you can certainly buy into is a tow truck and getting good use of it. We got a great deal with one we got, we've had good service. And, but an engine, you're getting somebody else's truck, they're getting rid of it at 10 years for a reason. Yeah, that's the one thing about fire equipment. You know, you're talking some big numbers and like you said earlier, at the end of its life, there's not a big market for it. No, there's a limited market out there. You will find a small department that will say, we don't care about NFPA rules and we don't care about the insurance, we just want to use truck and we're willing to pay 15, 20, 30,000 dollars for a used truck even though we know that there are some downsides to that. But the upside to the trucks that we have is we keep, we have all the maintenance records from day one. So all those maintenance records go with the truck. So they can actually look at it and see what we've done, do monthly maintenance work on. So the first Tuesday of the month, we do maintenance at the Main Street station and then the third Tuesday, we do maintenance at Maple Street. So at least twice a month, everything is started and turned on, run, pump, anything that can turn on or start is done. That certainly leads to some of the town mechanics work when you find something's not working, but that's the way it is. That you're mad and out of fire. You leads to a question, still feeling that you're getting good value from Eric, the town mechanic. I cannot say enough good things about the value that we're getting from Eric. I didn't really know Eric other than he helped a local person build fire trucks. I knew him from that. So I knew he knew fire trucks, which for me, when he came to work here was a plus. The amount of money he has saved the town because he does the work, as opposed to saying, man, ship it elsewhere. We do sometimes for warranty worker, big stuff, go down to like Clark's. But the cooperation we get with him and Celia, I'm the only one for the most part that communicates with him. On a Tuesday night after maintenance, I get an email from the officer that was in charge of that maintenance night. Here's a list of stuff that we found that were an issue. Sometimes it's just bulbs. Then one of the members will say, oh, they'll take care of it or whatever. But if it's a maintenance issue, I send an email to Celia and Eric, and I prioritize. We had a pump that stopped working. And so I sent them an email saying, this is a priority, the next day it was fixed. So, and we've actually called Eric at night. That may not be fair to Celia, but at 11 o'clock at night, he came and got our truck started when it was over by the old state farm. And got it running for us. And then I sent her an email saying, didn't mean to step on you, but it needed to be done. And soon he's been great. So I got no complaints about that. Good, cool. Thanks, Gary. Thanks for your help. Appreciate it, Warren. I like the cold. I like the cold. My house is sitting here. This is your shoe patch. Well, I can't even mind this. My wife would be rolling her eyes right now. Thanks again, Gary. Yeah, no problem. Steve. Yes, good evening. Okay, so Steve's here. Again, pretty straightforward budget. This year in the planning department, it's $10,440 higher than it was last year, but that's only if you include the historic district that the Historical Society asked a question about. That's, Steve didn't get to it, but that's about $11,000 and $12,000. So with that out, and I'm not suggesting it can take out, but I put it in the planning budget simply because it's a project that Steve's department would have something to do with if it's all for us. So with that, I'll just quickly turn it over to Steve. Go forward. Okay. You have one already. Thank you. Good. Three different things, and Bill said nobody requested paper, but being a good planner, I always come with a plenty of paper. So, but I did try to really focus on the things that I thought you might have questions about. There's a copy of Bill's memo to you about the budget, which really just hits a number of highlights, and I'll go over those with you. We also have three members of the Conservation Commission here, I know they've been very patient through the way through all this budgeting, so we will catch their budget, and I know Alan and others, the two women may have something they'd like to contribute about their work and their mission and what they have planning on. I want to encourage that. So I'd like to start from the top, and Bill, did you want to say anything about the pay-related items before we get into the other items? Yeah, I think it was, I think I included it in my memo to you. I haven't made a final decision yet. Steve and Dina and I have not talked, Nat and I talked a little bit after the last meeting. In 2018, Dina I believe was budgeted for 30 hours a week, and she worked about 35 hours a week in 2018. We had the zoning rewrite, I'm sure she was involved in that, as you can see from the amount of money that we took in planning fees in 2017. It was $22,075 a night. And so she's worked a lot. So right now this budget has her up to somewhere like 37 hours. I think next week we'll talk about it. I'm seriously contemplating that maybe we just need to go to 40 hours. I looked back over the last five years for the planning fees and I can't remember, I don't think I included it in the memo, but I included it in notes to myself in the budget. Every year since 2014, the last five years we've been over $20,000 except one year and that was about 17.5. And I was thinking that it was an anomaly last year, but really it's, the revenue has been fairly consistent. I think it averaged about 21,000 over that five year period. So we may have to go to a 40 hour time slot for Dina. Now unlike the library, if we go from 30 to 40 hours we don't risk any big, we're already paying retirement, we're already paying health insurance. So it's just basically the wages plus incremental social security and incremental retirement. It's not putting you into a whole different level. So anyway, go ahead Steve. Good, well thank you Bill. And I think what I would like to add is that our developer review board has been very busy and we're averaging about three or four projects every, well twice a month at each meeting in other words and this really drives a lot of the time that Dina spends. I help her out when the meetings are busy because I think it's a really important part of the service that we provide. Many of the projects are residential, they are waivers but people are very appreciative when we get them through the permit process. It is not always easy but we manage to try to be encouraging and almost all the applications are approved. The commercial projects and we have had a significant number of some really good projects that I'm sure you're aware of and that's driven the fees. That's the reason that we've been able to sustain these higher levels. It's a reflection of our economic activity and even though the main mission is issuing permits it's the process of getting people through the DRB which drives a lot of our time and I do help out Dina when I want to make sure that we really provide a good service I'll often sit in and kind of be the assistant through that process. So that's really just adding to what Bill was saying. So let's go down through the items and if you take a look at Bill's memo he highlights the professional services line. The Historical Society as you may be aware is very interested in doing an historic district survey for our's addition and I'll just send this map around. It's basically the area in the vicinity of Crossroads Beverage and the post office takes in Butler Street, Wallace Street, Prospect Interveil and there's a surprising number of really nice historic buildings in that area. Most of them you're familiar with and there's some very interesting ones. Of course the former Valley Rental was a car dealership as many of you know, Maxi's Market. There was a Creamery where Zachary's Pizza where the Multifamily. When is Squam? Oh, there we go, good. So we have some good historians in our midst. So the long and short is that we got a proposal from Scott Newman who did the survey work on the resurvey and the expansion of our Waterbury Village. District is a little over 11,000. Bill's put a $12,000 figure in here just to have a little bit of contingency. So this is a project, I think it's your call whether we would do it this year or not. But Bill wanted to get in the budget for discussion purposes. If you have questions about that, I'd be glad to answer them. I am involved. I was very involved in the resurvey and expansion for the Waterbury Village District and I think it's good for our process and I don't really think there's a down, any significant downside. So I think what I'd like to do is go down through the budget fairly quickly and if you have questions, please interrupt me. Can I ask you on that? You said there aren't any significant downsides. I guess the one question is, I know that when we define things as historic districts there is potential for limitations on redevelopment and since it's an area outside the floodplain I would think that it would potentially be one of those identifiable zones for if we are looking at density that is walkable to downtown or is in the downtown area. Do you feel like potentially labeling that as a historic district would limit that? Well it comes into play in a couple different areas in the development scenario. Certainly active 50 if any projects have to go through active 50. I don't know if there are any lots that are over an acre in this area. I don't know of any properties I can think of that are under active 50 jurisdiction. I may be wrong. Conditional use does have no undue adverse impact to historic resources. That really hasn't typically been an issue. If the Planning Commission were to recommend a design review district in this area that might come into play. That really hasn't been a restriction on development but it certainly affects someone who might want to demolish a historic building, this type of thing. I think overall it adds to quality but it really depends on how the community wants to use a designation. I don't think there are any properties in this area that are in the floodplain so that benefit doesn't go with designation. So it really depends on how the community decides to use this as a tool in terms of whether it's likely a restriction or not. Okay. Speaking to active 50, have you been able to track or have any information on the proposed possible rewrite and how that might impact this particular issue and others here in the town? They're talking about possible changes. To active 50? Yeah, have you got any word on how that's progressing or what possible changes might? Right, I can give you just a real quick update. I'm very involved in the Vermont Planning Association and we as an association have been very involved in that process. We had a committee that worked. We had a representative advising the active 50 commission, which was five legislators and they've completed their work. They've sent their commission has sent their work to the legislature. So now it's really gonna be in the hands of the legislature to move any legislation forward. Nothing has been proposed yet. I think there's gonna be a process, a betting process to look at different options. So I can keep you posted because I'm on our legislative committee for Vermont Planning Association. And the other aspect of our own development regulations are we're back into looking at that rewrite and we definitely wanna look at the whole one acre versus 10 acre threshold for active 50. So I think that whole topic is we'll have more conversations later. So moving down through the budget, many of the items are remaining the same or about the same or slightly reduced in terms of legal costs. One of the ones that has gone up is travel. I've been doing more travel lately. I mentioned Vermont Plans Association. We have a three state Northern Greenville chapter of the American Planning Association being I'm the treasurer of Vermont Plans Association. We're reorganizing. So I've been going to the three state conferences and some other meetings and I'm also involved with the Green Mountain Byway project which has now expanded to include five of the Memorial County Towns, Morris Town, Johnson High Park, and Cambridge. And it's a really good project, good for economic development, good for tourism promotion, I think good for Waterbury and Stowe as well. So I've been traveling up to High Park once a month for that project. Let's see, office equipment, we are finally going to start replacing our computers. We've got a proposal from Bob Butler. I've gone over that with Bill. He's put in 1700 into the proposed budget and then they'll be some of Bob Butler's time. So both Dean and I need to have our computers replaced. Mine will be done this year and Dean is the following year. So we've got also a couple of grant projects. So I'd like to move back up and then we'll shift to the conservation commission. So let's see, let's take them in the order that they're presented here. There's two, there's one which is called Special Projects Reservoir. This is the so-called Greeter Program. We work with friends of Waterbury Reservoir. This I think is the fourth year. We have, to be honest, we have not heard yet from their board, whether they want to move ahead with an application it's due in the middle of February. So Bill and I put a placeholder in of $2,500 and they received a grant of about $2,500 last year. So that's the reason for that figure. It's a pass-through. The money comes to the town and then we cut a check to the friends of the Waterbury Reservoir. So that's in as a placeholder. The other one that Jane and I are very involved with is Label Trees, Special Project Trees. There's a $2,000 figure. We're both on our tree committee. I'm also the tree warden for the town and this year's program that the State Department of Forest Parks and Recreation has put out the so-called Canopy for Trees exclusively geared to the Emerald Ash Boar and as you may have heard, Emerald Ash Boar has been discovered in Berrytown, earlier in the late Plainfield. So it's kind of on our doorstep. Once there's an infestation, it starts at the top of the tree. It's hard to detect and all of a sudden you find that trees are dying due to Emerald Ash Boar and it will take out probably 98% of our ash trees once it's here. So it's unfortunate. We want to be prepared. So we want to apply for a $2,000 grant. I passed around a description of our project. It would be two-fold. One is that we've started an inventory of our roadside ash trees on the town roads that are within the town road right away and we've done some inventory work on Little River Road where there are a lot of ash trees. We've done Shaw Mansion Road. We've probably got somewhere in the vicinity of eight miles of wooded town roads that will be inventorying. The Centralmont Regional Planning Commission has funding to do these inventories. So this would actually be the match for the $2,000 grant and then we'd like to spend the $2,000 to hire probably a forestry consultant or forester to do a preparedness plan. So that will look at issues such as do we want to do some proactive removal of ash trees in the town rights of ways? Kind of a preemptive annual removal because once the trees die, they become very brittle. They're much more expensive to remove their hazard trees and so many towns in areas that are becoming infested are being proactive and they're starting a removal process. So prepare this plan and we'll look at that. I got just a question about that. You said that 98% infestation. Can you explain or have any information maybe you or Alan about where it goes from there?  Does it come every 20 years or something? Yeah, it started out in the Midwest in Michigan. Alan you're more than welcome to jump in. It moves slowly just naturally like a mile or two a year but it's moved primarily by moving firewood and other products. So the answer to your story is the infestation peaks. It's about a 10-year cycle from early infestation to complete devastation. Devastation I guess you could say. There will be some ash that are resistant just like the elms. We're gonna see probably some survival but the bug stays in the area, it declines but it stays and reinvest just like Dutch Elm disease. So I think it's gonna be with us for the long haul. There may be some resistant ash that will appear or will be developed and I certainly hope so. There are antidotes to this treatment. Put your mic on, Jean. I think the battering might be good. There's towns are investigating, cities are investigating for street trees. Inoculating. Treating, inoculating the trees. It's expensive but I can't give you a dollar amount. Rutland initially, their tree warden was going to cut down most of the trees in Rutland. He's reconsidered and they went out and they actually purchased equipment. There's two arborists that work there. I know about this because I'm on the Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Council. So now they're reconsidering, they're gonna be treating selected trees themselves. About 1% of ash are supposedly resistant to this and there's studies being done now in Ohio and they are beginning to look at trying to develop resistant trees that can be sold. It's devastated trees in Michigan, the Midwest, huge areas of forest. On the other hand, with the state, urban and community forestry program is doing, is promoting a slow the spread program to slow the spread of this disease by limiting moving of firewood and that sort of thing. And there'll be a lot more about that and I would guess that might be something that we at the tree committee can also be doing some education in the town in the next year or two years as well. Do you or Allen know what percentage of the trees in the forest around here are ash? It's about 5% from what I've heard. Yeah, in the town of the forest region of Waterbury, in the village it's a very small number of ash trees. Yeah, I'm talking about in the forest, about 5% of the trees are ash trees. Right. Some municipalities have planted a lot of ash. I'm not a proponent of ash trees just because they're prone to many different kinds of boroughs but certainly Shaw's has a lot of ash trees in our park and a lot of community national banks so we'll be working with some of the private landowners. And the treatment is fairly effective and has to be done over two to three years if there's specimen trees they can be treated. A lot of ash up in the higher, not high elevation but kind of media over high elevation. Yeah. To our mark there's substantial amount around that area. So part of what we're requesting tonight once we get through the conservation budget is that we would request authorization to apply for this grant, a $2,000 grant from the Vermont Department of Forest Parks and Recreation. So I think with that unless you have other questions or Bill, unless you have some other comments. Do you have to get authorization for that grant tonight? Yes, because it's due next week, it's due the 31st so we do. Should we just do it right now? Yeah. Yeah, if you'd like to just do a motion then. I'll make that motion. Your second. I'll second that. Okay. Any further discussion? All right, all those that agree to prove the grant for $2,000? $2,000 that's correct. For the tree services? It's the Vermont Department of Forest Parks and Recreation caring for canopy grant programs title. Like I said. There you go. There we go. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Steve, I was out of the room for a minute. Did you talk about this, the history? We did. Okay. I gave them the background on that. And the match for this $2,000 grant is gonna be coming from the Regional Planning Commission? Right, it's not from the Regional Planning Commission. So there's no cost to the town. Thank you. In-time services from the treaty. Thank you. So with that, Bill, do you wanna say anything in introduction in terms of conservation coefficient?  Yeah, Aaron Hurley is here as well as Alan and I'm not. Oh, I know, I'm sorry. I was gonna say I didn't know who the third person was and there's John, he's always there. Anyway, these folks are on the Conservation Commission. I met with the Commission along with Steve a couple times this year just to re-explain kind of the budgeting process. There was a little misunderstanding maybe about how the Conservation Commission was funded and what is being left in the Conservation Fund's fund balance. It's not very much money, but it's never been very much money and the Conservation Commission's budget. A few years ago that came out of Steve's budget was about $300, probably something to do with the flood and just not enough time to touch base. There wasn't a lot of activity in that budget so it has been cut to about $150. And this year the proposal is to have $700 go from Steve's planning budget or the town's planning budget to the Conservation Commission and they have a budget of about $1,100 that they would like to spend and somebody here is gonna talk about what you'd like to do. I sent you the budget that Aaron and I had worked on, but I'll let her do the explanation of it. Yeah, sure, thanks. My name is Aaron Hurley and I am the newly minted treasurer of the Waterbury Conservation Commission. We put together this budget because we saw an interest in the community for more engagement events and to have speakers come and talk about conservation issues in Waterbury. We hosted one in December that was standing room only with some local partners and we've been kind of cobbling together these speaker events with partners without a budget and we realized now that they become so popular that we would like to properly host them and we have some speakers in line. We'd really love to have come talk to the town and have speaker fees. And so this is an estimated budget and this is for at least two events. It would depend on who we get and what their fees are. We certainly don't think we'll go over this by any means, but we just wanna be able to host some engagement events and it could be on things like we talked about like invasive species is a really hot topic right now and a lot of people in town care about them and how to vent them, how to identify them. That's one thing we thought about doing in the spring. And so we are looking for this is not one of those things like we're asking for $700 this year and then $1400 next year. This is very much that we want some budget so we can do some things in the town but we're not necessarily, this is not a grand scheme to like keep asking for more money every year. I think that the interest is there and I think that Waterbury is a town that has an amazing natural resources and people are here because they wanna be in the woods and exploring the natural beauty and are really interested in the flora and fauna and this is a really great way to educate and make connections with our local partners. We've had great success in the past in these endeavors and would like to continue with a little, similar support from the town. Well I agree with you about the natural resources. I'm always amazed when I turn off 100 on the Gupto Road and I can just look at the Worcester Range and the other day it was all snow capped and I just said to myself, no wonder what continues to bring people up here. I just been here 59 years and never get tired of it so I completely understand what you're saying. I'm glad to see that you're interested in having new people come to speak about different things such as invasives because I'm concerned about that as well. So I'm interested to see what some of these people have to say and I think as time goes on it's important to try to, as a town continues to grow, it's important to try to make people aware of the fact that we have some important things here that we need to do what we can to try to hang onto because as you grow those things, whatever reason, slowly get eaten away at and disappear. I've said it more than once that picture that's behind your head will probably be some of the last real things that you could look at that tell what we once had because farms are going by the wayside left and right so it's great that you guys are sticking with it. Yeah, yeah, it's really nice. The commission right now has a lot of really good dedicated members that are working really hard and I think that we are well suggested and that we have a lot of connections in different organizations so we don't need a huge budget to do a lot of work and help promote all the great work that local nonprofits and other committees are doing to help preserve Waterbury and I think that the town hosting an event where everyone can come together and talk about an issue that really concerns everybody like in business species, it's just the president's opportunity for us to really host a forum of concerned people and make those connections and at least hear itself too. Good thing I want to add is that the conservation commission has been really well engaged with the planning commission and one of their members is now attending our meetings and is getting engaged in the unified development regulations. We'll be looking at the higher elevation areas and other aspects of the regs that are natural resources oriented so I think that's really great that we're collaborating, we've collaborated on the municipal plan, that was a really good start and I think that's going to continue, we'll be looking at the Schudtsville Wildlife Corridor and other travel corridors for wildlife and how we may want to address those through the regulation of development. So I think you'll hear more especially as we get into some of the details on the development regulations about the collaborative work that you're talking about. Am I reading this correct that basically it's a net cost of $300? Is that, am I looking at the wrong for the conservation commission? There's a revenues of 800 and expenses of 1100, is that the total budget for the conservation commission? Yeah. Is that enough? I mean like we look at all the other departments and how much we're putting into them and I mean like I don't see, I mean the ask is almost nothing and like I feel like if it's where you feel, do you have any feeling like if we give you an extra $1,000 what would that mean to the conservation commission or is it just not, I don't know. I've never seen you jump up so quick, Alan. I've already made like a 75,000% increase. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe we'll ask for my next question. $800 does not include the fund balance that's already there. So I didn't give you this. I forgot to hand it out, but they've got a fund balance of about $380. The ask this year right now is $700 coming from property taxes which would come out of the planning budget. I just suggested that they might get $100 worth of donations, people helping to pay for some of the speaker events or the refreshments or whatever. So they'd have $800 worth of revenue and then add that to the $382 worth of fund balance that they have and spend the $1,100 that is in Aaron's budget and they would end the year with about 80 bucks. So yeah, I asked them to go slow and they were really good learners and they did what they were asked. But I think I also tried to encourage them to put things in that they thought that they needed. And Alan, maybe while you're answering Mark's question, you can also give them an example of what some of these conservation projects might be. So the budget that we presented this year is essentially operating budget and the conservation commission's mission is to promote cultural resources, natural resources, historical resources, recreational resources. It's a big long ask and the job of the commission is to kind of guide the community's social wants and then to try to collect resources to help those conservation. Actual conservation activities. We haven't done much of the conserving side as much as we have just trying to do some education outreach. So this is a continuation of the education outreach projects, but over the last five years we've really garnered a lot of interest. It's almost to a culminating point that over the next few years we're gonna be closing on three to four pretty high profile land conservation projects that we'll be putting some acreage into perpetual easements. And through our partnering organizations with the Shootsville staff. So Vermont Land Trust, Nature Conservancy, Stole Land Trust have all kind of garnered their own pot of money and to date we've been supportive just by engaging with the community, but haven't asked our own community yet to point out any dollars. So I actually expect that sometime in the future and especially as we start to see growth occur in Waterbury that we're gonna start to come to the town and to the residents to start to ask to increase budgets not necessarily for operating costs but to use tax dollars to support conservation activities. We haven't done that yet, but land values in Vermont means that conservation activities at least from a kind of a perpetual easement side of things are expensive projects. And just for the sake of privacy, my property is a 30 acre property. If I wanted to sell a conservation easement on that property it's valued at maybe $75,000. That's a really rough guess. But you have various pots of money that then the town would be, we can go to the town, the municipality and the residents to be helping to pay for some of that cost. Much of it would come from kind of other funds, but we would be essentially coming to the town for that money in some point in the future. We've got about a half a million dollar budget for some of these upcoming projects, most of which will probably just do our own private fundraising for. It would be great that in the future, and I expect this to happen, then in the future we'll come to some town meeting to make a grand pitch for something like that. So you think at this time Mark's suggestion is... It's worth receiving or is there no reason unless you've got something in front of you that it's putting it forward to, is it? You do have, there is a conservation fund that was adopted in April 2010 by the select board. And we do see that as an opportunity for something that like an extra thousand dollars could go to that. And we could, do you want to talk about a little bit of the type of projects that we could do through that? Look at small pots of money that could support some of these community collaborations that are working on very large things but need a little bit of money to throw, you know, lawyer, you can... Yeah, 250 dollars in your budget for that. Yeah. So the conservation fund is a separate line item in the budget that would accumulate donations or tax dollars. And then it would roll over every year and we would, if I wanted to come to the town and say, hey, can we support Allen's conservation easement of his property, we go to the conservation fund for that pot of money and it would accumulate over time. That's the hope that it would just accumulate over time and then conservation commission that would be asked to entertain applications to draw from the conservation fund. And if using Mark's example, we don't need any more operating budgets but if we were to increase the budget of the thousand dollar increase to $2,000, $1,000 of that money could go into the conservation funds who are slowly accumulating the conservation fund so that when we do have a conservation project and somebody needs a big pot of money, once every 10 or so years, we've got a big pot to draw from and... When you say big pot of money is 10 years at 250 dollars is $2,500, is that big in that world or is that really... Or 1,000 dollars. We're in the real estate world so it's not... But I mean 1,000 dollars a year even if you went to the 1,000 in 10 years you'd only have 10,000 dollars. So the conservation, that line item for 250 dollars is your intent to just save that for these types of things because that's... That comes from a CIP basically. But if that's what we were talking about, I thought I tried to steer you away from that because when the... And none of you were here when the select board kind of agreed to establish a conservation fund but there was animated discussion amongst the select board and there was the same animated discussion at town meeting that we're willing to set up a conservation commission but we're not willing to put tax dollars in too for conserving land. And I'm not suggesting that's a stream that you never can cross but that conversation would have to come up. I thought this conservation project was something that you were gonna... Another program that you were gonna run, go out and pull invasives or something like that this year, I was not expecting that to be set aside because if it was gonna be set aside, there'd be money coming out of the planning budget and it would go into the revenue line up in the top of this page which I failed to send out to you. And there's donations in trust and donations for conservation projects. Yeah, we were expecting to do something with the $250 this year as in like supporting a community effort in last year. Did we have something with River Cleanup or? Well, we will be able to spend that $250 on a conservation project like the ones I described. It's not $10,000 but we... Well, that wasn't, I mean, that's up to the board that's up to the voters. That was not my understanding. My understanding was it was gonna be some type of hands-on project that was physical work or something that was done like that. I guess we're waiting to see what the community might need, correct? But I think, I mean, do you wanna... And I wanna make sure that I'm not against setting aside money for conservation, for the type of conservation Alan is talking about. I think it's very worthwhile and I think it's a discussion that we should have. I think from back in 2010 when the conservation commission was established, it was pretty well understood then that we weren't gonna be setting tax money aside. And if somebody made a donation, if I made a donation to the conservation commission and said, put this in your donations and trust line and then you can use it for something that Alan does, the commission has the ability to do that. It's just whether it should be done with tax money or not right now. And right now, all of their funding has been tax money. Would you suggest it be more appropriate if they were like this $1,000 that may go into a kit? Wouldn't that be wiser to put in under a special article? Well, that's your choice. I would think. Yeah, so there's a lot of fees associated with land conservation too. And there's a lot of studies and things you have to do prior to like being able to purchase land. And so we, there's a, as far as shootsville goes and there's some other land community that revitalizing Waterbury now has the, what are they calling it now? That's a Waterbury land trust with a... Waterbury land initiative. That Waterbury land initiative, thank you. And so to have, if someone came to us and wanted town support and, you know, coming up with some extra money for a river project or for like fees or, you know, something to get something off the ground and started and have Waterbury town support it. Yes, of course, with $250 or, you know, a thousand extra dollars. We are not buying land, but there are a lot of steps that the town could support in. And it would look good to have the town support in partnership with some of these.  And then so we'll see kind of the needs of the town and how we could use that. And it was the idea was to create an opportunity. If the intention was that this $250 be used for the types of things like, you know, the conservation easement on Allen's land, I wouldn't, I would just say, instead of having $250 in the expenditure lying out of conservation projects, that there would be, you know, of the 700 that we're giving, you'd put 500 in the, from the property taxes and then you'd put $250 into the donations and trust line. And then that way that, that would be earmarked and it would, it would stay earmarked for future conservation project. And it couldn't be spent unless the site or approved it like we had talked about before. So just a matter of semantics. But I was thinking that the $250 that you were asking for this year was really more going to be for a river project or something. How you were to build a project like that? We were answering the question, if we were cutting the need to get more money, the town was going to be supporting it in a much larger way for conservation that we could find. So I'd say that I would certainly support increasing the budget, because I think it's been kind of underfunded for a few years. And I think that we have a great need for more community education on this topic and community activities to bring us all together. I was at the Standing Room Only event in December. It was fantastic about connectivity. And we're at a critical location at the junction of Route 100, the interstate. And then we have all the state forest, natural land that really needs to be conserved. Some of it is conserved already because of where it is located. But I just think our town is a big issue for our town. So I would definitely support in the future entertaining going forward with some other mechanism which maybe in 2010 seemed to be difficult, but maybe we are at a point going forward where we could entertain some mechanism to put some revenue more into the Waterbury conservation. So that some projects could actually be purchased or easements could be facilitated because it seems really like a great need that we have that's unmet. I wondered too, the fight that we did with the cell phone tower, would that be considered something that if we were funding something on a yearly basis, we could have looked to help if it was a CIP that that would help fight projects like that, that ended up costing us probably 90,000 or more. But that came fast and more. Yeah, so that came fast and unbudgeted where we didn't really have a fund to pull from there. It just became something on the yearly budget. But even potential future fights like that, I think if we were slowly funding something that could help with those, I think it would start to make sense. But I'll leave it there, I don't know. Can I provide two other updates from the commission while we're on this? In support of the Schutzfeld partnership, the Nature Conservancy just purchased a few acres across from Ruby Raymond Road. So they now own what we had kind of called the Keystone, a Keystone parcel. It's just a really small parcel right on the boundary of Ruby Raymond, right on the boundary of Tolstown. Stonewater, across from Ruby Raymond Road, next to Law and Rangers. And it's a few acres, eight acre parcel. They bought it outright for, it was a high number, but they're not gonna be, they don't wanna hold onto it. They bought it to kind of take it off the market and they'll be looking to find some new owner or new ownership model. And they've settled numerous occasions. Allen, why didn't you go ask the town this evening? They wouldn't take the parcel this evening. Okay, maybe. So the purchase of that parcel is the intent to preserve it, correct? They bought it and they've put a permanent conservation easement onto it. And they've accomplished their first goal of that. So that's kind of the, that's the first conservation project associated with the Schutzfeld partnership. I anticipate seeing a few more this calendar year. They would like to sell it. That particular transaction, they don't wanna hold onto it and perpetuate it, right? Are they interested in selling it or just having somebody hold it? I don't think they can give it away. So yes, I think they're interested in selling it. But I don't think, and like with your question, also suggesting they get rid of the easement too. Pardon? To sell an easement or like donate an easement? Donate it. But they just didn't wanna hold it on their books. So they needed somebody to hold that easement. So the town could hold an easement? So the town could hold an easement. What do you mean the town would spend the money? Hey, that's already happened. So if a piece of property like that has an easement on it, basically restricting anything, how is that taxed? And is it always, I mean realistically something like that shouldn't have any tax value at all. Because there's really nothing that humans can do with it. It's being left to wildlife. That's the problem that, that's one of the problems that the Conservation Commission, I believe, has to deal with is the fact that somebody's gotta own those properties and if there's a restriction on it, preventing development at all, the burden is still there to some degree of taxation, property taxation, correct? Right, but I mean, I don't know what the easement is, but it doesn't necessarily restrict every activity. And I think about this property, but you could probably manage it for a woodlot or whatever. It's a 30, 50 year cycle where you can do anything, but it would be taxed at its use value, like everything is supposed to be on its highest and best use, and at that point, if you can't develop it, its highest and best use is minimal. Yeah, is that what, am I understanding things incorrectly here? Is that why you think that people wanna, perhaps, either turn the easement over or turn the property over because of the tax burden? That's just a question. They don't wanna be in the business of being landowners anymore. I see. It's a nature conservancy? It's a nature conservancy. Is it still a land trust? Interested in? Yeah. We're not gonna be really interested in that. That's something conservation organizations deal with all the time. It's a big, municipalities need money, residents only have so much, and the formula is taxing on the development value, so the other update I wanna provide is that the Waterbury Land Trust now is a nonprofit organization that was formed in December, which- It's not called the Waterbury Land. Waterbury Land's Initiative. I gotta get that right. W-L-I, Waterbury Land's Initiative that I'm on the board of, and our mission is to kind of facilitate land conservation and culture, more culture of recreational kind of conservation issues in a nonprofit kind of private side of things taken away from the municipality. So there's another entity. Currently, we're working on an auspice of revitalizing Waterbury, who serves as their fiscal agent. But we might sort of put a new version of the group there. We're just gonna grow. All right. The board's all set, and you guys are all set. Thank you. Thank you. All at a night. Okay. Yeah, once you have questions. Thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you. You got that? Gonna bring it over there? Okay, I take it we'll have to go into executive session or not.  All right. See you later. Too easy. Okay, so the first motion I will make is to find that general public knowledge of the details of potential litigation involving the town of Waterbury would clearly place the town at a substantial disadvantage. And that needs a second. Second. Okay, the motion has been made and seconded. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? Say aye. Aye. Aye. And the second motion is to enter executive session to consider potential litigation involving the charge of Mr. Oak and KO versus town of Waterbury and related confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing legal advice to the town. Is there a second to that? I'll second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? Say aye. Aye. Aye. Good work.