Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including Johnny Hernandez, Hi Tech Oki, and Martin James. Coming up on DTNS, can Twitter be the next WeChat? 3D printing gets fast and high-res, but not furious. It's very happy. And how close is Facebook to becoming Yahoo? This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, a Cinco de Octiogre 2022 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. It's just a day filled with glorious, fun news. And also Twitter and Elon Musk. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Overwatch 2 launched on October 4th, with many players reporting inordinately long wait times. Blizzard president Mike Ybarra confirmed that a distributed denial of service attack did hit Overwatch 2 servers, causing connection issues for users trying to play the game. Overwatch 2 or Overwatch No? Reviews are out for Intel's ARC A750 and A770 GPUs. The Verges Tom Warren found the A750 has some pretty good 1080p performance on most games with high settings. The A770 can play some titles at 1440p. And he found Intel's ZSS upscaling tech improved frame rates 9% at 1440p, compared to a 24% increase with Nvidia's DLSS on an RTX 3060 Ti. Pricing wise, both cards offer good values compared to the RTX 36, although Warren noted the cards are optimized for DirectX 12 titles and have some pretty significant driver bugs at launch. Been quite a month for security in Australia. The country's largest telco, Telstra, confirmed it suffered a data breach at a third party organization, which exposed employee data dating back to 2017. It estimates 30,000 people were impacted with names and email addresses leaked. This comes two weeks after another telco in the country, Optus, suffered a big data breach, impacting up to 10 million accounts. That Telstra one's pretty small, but with the Optus one recently, people are like, not another one. Amazon discontinued its kid focused video calling appliance, GLO, which if you don't remember launched last year from the company's grand challenge moonshot lab. It was the one that had a video screen camera and then a projector that would project things down in front of the kid. A lot of kid-oriented apps. Amazon said it will share updates and guidance with existing GLO customers soon. Starting this month, all Tesla Model 3 and Y vehicles built for North America, Europe, the Middle East and Taiwan will replace 12 bumper-mounted ultrasonic proximity sensors, relying instead on cameras and software. This move follows Tesla removing radar from the vehicles last year. It plans to remove these same sensors from Model S and X vehicles next year. Speaking of Tesla and the letter X, let's talk about what's going on with Twitter and Elon Musk. Now, we told you briefly on Tuesday's show that Elon Musk had sent a letter to Twitter offering to buy the company after all. And we now know in the letter were the words provided that the Delaware Chance Recourt enter an immediate stay of action and adjourn the trial and all other proceedings related there to pending such closing or further order of the court. Musk also filed this with the SEC, reaffirming that he's willing to risk securities fraud if he backs out at this point. So it does seem that he's fairly serious about it. However, there's been no move since that filing, meaning the court case is still proceeding. The Delaware Court of Chancery has authorized Twitter to conduct a limited investigation of former Twitter security lead Peter Zacko, aka Mudge. The reason Twitter is investigating Zacko has little to do with his SEC filing or congressional testimony. There's an email found in discovery that was sent to one of the lawyers on Musk's team from Quinn Emanuel. Quinn Emanuel is a law firm. It's from a proton mail account, and it says it is from a quote, former exec at Twitter leading teams directly involving trust and safety slash content moderation. So that could be Zacko. It also could be someone else. It doesn't say and Musk's team denied that it ever responded that it has ever been in contact with Zacko. Zacko has stated under oath that he did not contact Musk or his team, but Twitter wants to subpoena more documents to see if they can find any evidence to the contrary. And the judge is letting them look. That will all be stopped though. If the two sides do agree to settle, which Reuters says could happen at any time. It also couldn't. It may have happened by the time you hear this. In fact, the court case isn't scheduled to begin until October 17th, and Musk is saying things that indicate he really means it for now. He really wants to buy Twitter. He tweeted Tuesday evening that buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app. Now, MarketWatch notes that Musk started an online bank called X.com, just the letter X, back in the 1990s, it eventually merged with another company and that formed PayPal. Musk reacquired the domain name X.com in 2017. The company created the handle, the company was created to handle the acquisition of Twitter for Musk called X Holdings. The Verge reminds us that when Musk met with Twitter employees back in June, he said you basically live on WeChat in China. If we can recreate that with Twitter will be a great success. I explained this to Scott on the morning stream today. Pending the far from certain given the players in this outcome that by Friday, Twitter has agreed to sell itself to Elon Musk for the aforementioned price and all that. If it were anything else, I'd say that seems very likely. I guess at this point, I would just say 51% chance that it actually happens. It seems more likely than not slightly. But let's say that happens. It does look like what Musk wants to do to me. It looks like what he wants to do is probably follow through on those discussions that he had with Dorsey that came out in the text messages that were part of the court case to make a platform that is independent of Twitter that would provide kind of a free speech area and anybody could build on that platform and Twitter, the social media message sharing part of the company might not be a company might even be a foundation and that what Musk would like to do is take the business of Twitter on that platform, create a WeChat for the United States and he is not the only one who's been trying to do this. Facebook has been trying to do it with WhatsApp for the longest time. They haven't been able to get the momentum to do it. They've actually had more success in India doing something like that, although they have to fight Reliance Geo for that privilege in India. Everybody thinks there could be a super app in the United States. Some people say the United States is too different. It's never going to get a super app. Other people say, nope, you just need to hit the right formula. Sounds to me like Musk wants to try to hit on the right formula. Maybe. I have so many personal issues with this whole entire thing that I will put to the side and not talk about today because I don't think they're relevant. I am like overly curious to see what happens to Twitter if he buys it and how quickly things start to change or be added or removed or created adjacent to or whatever his plans are. But to the larger question of whether or not there can be a super app in the states. I mean, of course anything's possible, but I just feel like if that nut has not been cracked yet, I don't know that it will be. I think we've got too much diversification in how we pay for things, how we communicate, and we like having that diversification. We like saying, well, I'll contact you here, but I'll just email that guy and I'll slack this dude. Oh, I don't like that. I'll interrupt you rudely to disagree. I don't like having to do that. You don't think people like having to? I don't think they like having to, but I know that people don't like having all their eggs in one basket. That I know. That's where I'm kind of headed with this. I'm not saying it's insurmountable. It's probably possible, but I bet you could find, at least in the technology world, cultural reasons why it works in other places and less so here. Why were that way? I don't know, but all those eggs in one basket, I think they make people nervous. It makes me a little nervous. It makes me nervous too, and at the same time, every time someone explains to me how much easier it is to do it this way, WeChat being the most obvious example, but there are others. I go, yeah, that is pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty convenient. Everything in one place. But yes, there's some American way, and it's not just this country that we happen to live in, but there's something about that where people go, no, then it's too much consolidation of power, and it's not fun anymore, and then the company can do whatever they want, and we're all just having to go along with it. And there's a little bit of a, Scott, I know you didn't want to get into it, but there's a little bit of a, well, if we are going to get a Super App, do we want Elon Musk to be the one in charge of it? And that is a question I think, you're going to get some different answers. I don't like the idea of that all that much, and I don't have any real problem with any one of his companies specifically. I wish I had enough money to buy a Tesla, I'd do it tomorrow. But yeah, the idea of the Super App and that being what Twitter is part of, and the fact that he certainly has made good on financial companies and that sort of thing, he might also be the one to do it, I hate to say it, but I don't know who else works. Also, to the point, Americans love to complain about consolidation, but their behavior seems to indicate they prefer to behave with consolidation, like Amazon for all their shipping, like Google for all their searching, right? People may complain all the way to consolidation, but it still seems to be happening in a lot of other areas anyway. And also, if they get big enough, it's hard to turn on them and make a difference, right? You can hate Facebook up and down until the end of your days, and still you're probably going to have to use it because how are you going to talk to grandma? It's so big, it's so there, and maybe that's what's app is in China. Maybe that's why it's so, you know... WeChat. WeChat, sorry. If Facebook wishes. But yeah, maybe that's why, and maybe we get there, but parlay Twitter into that? I don't know, man. All of it feels weird, and that's why I'm kind of weirdly excited to see if any of this can happen. I mean, Facebook is... Well, Meta has tried to be a super app for quite some time, with some success, but it's also so hated by so many folks that it's like, probably not going to happen. Yeah. Yeah, if anybody could do it, though, I almost think that's why. Maybe he can. He's got the money anyway. Let's talk about a big advance that doesn't involve Elon Musk. Indeed. Scientists at Stanford, rather, published an article in Science Advances describing a 3D printing process that is up to 10 times faster, that's a lot, than the fastest high-resolution printer on the market currently. You can also use different types of resin in a single object. It uses continuous liquid interface production, or CLIP. Love that. A technique developed in 2015 by Professor Joseph DeSimon's team. DeSimon is one of the authors of the new paper. CLIP uses a layer of oxygen to stop the resin from curing, so it doesn't harden, keeps it a nice liquid pool, and then it uses ultraviolet images transmitted through the resin to harden it into the proper shape. So the images will, like, basically set the pattern so that the proper parts harden. As the solid protein rises, the liquid resin fills in behind it, following a smooth, continuous printing source. So it just flows on in. One of the downsides, though, to CLIP previously was it relied on passive suction to put the resin where it was needed, and it doesn't work real well if the resin gets too sticky, or it's too viscous, or if the object rises too fast, so it slowed it down. Yeah, this is a known thing to a lot of printer folks who love their resin printers. So for this new process, what's the difference? They put a syringe pumps or syringe pumps on top of the rising platform. This adds extra resin where it might be needed. They call the modified process iClip, a little lowercase i, for injection continuous liquid interface production. This improves the overall reliability of the process, allows for using more viscous resin and adds to the ability to print with different types of resin. You need just that syringe for each type, each type of resin gets its own syringe. Yeah, so you can actually print with different types of resin in the same block. You just need a syringe for whatever types of resin you want. So to test this process, the scientists used three syringes with three different colors of resin, just to demonstrate that they were really bringing them together. They successfully printed a bunch of things, among them a red, white, and blue model of St. Peter's Basilica, a blue and yellow model of St. Sophia Cathedral, and printing proceeded at 50 to 80 millimeters per hour. Yes, for high-res multi-material printing, that's fast. That may not sound fast if you've never done this before, but that's faster than the other stuff. They expect it to be used for more complicated items, maybe if you need a different optical properties, like printing lenses, advanced sensors, energy absorbing, lattices, stuff like that. Well, it seems like the world, the printing world, 3D printing world, has really moved in the direction of resin in general. People like the finish, the resolution, the ease of use that's a little bit more complicated in terms of the production, because you've got a lot of chemicals and curing and all of that, and you need to wear a mask and all that stuff. But I feel like the writing's on the wall, kind of resins where we're headed, no more big rolls of PVC or whatever it is you're using. The big hang-up, though, in the past has always been two-fold. One is, how do we get better resolution and bigger objects and this sort of stuff? But the other has been, how do we get more speed out of this thing? That has been where the rubber has not met the road. It's just been slow going. It's like, think 24 pin dot matrix printers compared to your fast laser today, but even slower than that. This represents a huge jump, potentially, in speed, and that's the big bottleneck right now for a lot of production needs.  But if your goal is to really beef up your Etsy store and sell a ton of these things, let's say kyber crystals, although don't tell Disney you're doing it, but let's say you're making them, this means you're going to get them a lot quicker, potentially. Yeah, I think 50 to 80 millimeters per hour certainly is faster, certainly better than overnight printing for a hobbyist. Certainly something, if you were to get several of these together, maybe 20 or 50 of them, they are cranking out at a good clip and it seems like it's great technology. It's still not where I think a lot of people who aren't involved in 3D printing's imagination is, which is press a button and in five minutes, I've got my thing. We're still away from that. The science fiction version of this, which we've all seen in various films or whatever, we're not there yet, but I feel like this is a really important step in that direction. Mark is uptown now. Nobody's had any groundbreaking speed advances. They've had advances in materials used. Yeah, yeah.  Those are all great advancements and I'm sure will benefit the entire world of 3D printing now and down the road. But let's get it out quicker, man. This seems like it's it. What about like a full 3D printed home, like 3D printed coffee? 3D printed chairs. Probably. Probably. The 3D printed homes require like big, large cement printers. And they're basically printing prefab that require a little bit of assembly. But yeah, they're doing that in Austin. It's very cool. I mean, yeah. The more quickly you can do something like that, the more or the less daunting a project could be as long as you have the right material. So, you know what? What was it? 50 to 80 millimeters per hour? It may not sound fast to you, but I bet it resonates with 3D printing. Resonates. It resonates. At a fast clip. If you'd like to complain about these puns, you can get in touch with us on social media. We are at DTNS Show on Twitter and DTNS PIX, DTNS PIX on Instagram. Facebook is adding Show More and Show Less buttons. Sarah, tell us about them. Show More and Less buttons are below posts in a user's news feed. The buttons temporarily affect the ranking of similar content. So, you can also find the buttons in the three-dot menu on individual posts in the feed preference settings and eventually on reels. This is going to join the many ways a user can take it upon themselves to give feedback and have a little bit more control over what they see in their own news feed. You can hide posts. You can have your favorite friends. You can snooze posts from users or groups or pages that you're part of. Or you could just constantly change the view to chronological. Facebook does allow you to do that. Or you could just be like, I don't use Facebook. I like TikTok or Be Real. Facebook seems to be fighting a rearguard battle here to keep users while meta itself buys time to shift to its future bets like VR headsets and whatever the metaverse ends up being. It has a story that political advertisers feel that Facebook offers less return on investment than it used to partly because of limiting ad targeting but also because of a stagnating and aging user base. Scott, you mentioned earlier that Facebook is one of those things that people think of as a way to keep in touch with their grandpa. Is that the way that your kids keep in touch with you? Well, there's actually no. That's what's funny. Oh, interesting. I do keep track of a lot of other relatives that way. And honestly, Facebook and I don't have a very frequent relationship. But when I do check it, I do check in with my mom there. She loves Facebook. She's super into it. But she's 83. I'm not saying everybody's 83 using Facebook. Certainly not. But it's more for my family, even extended family. It's things like Be Real and Instagram, Twitter. To some extent, it's just straight up texting. We do a lot of groups and group texts. And so a lot of iMessage. Occasionally, a green bubble will be in there as well. And that's fine. We don't care. And that's kind of how we do it. In fact, my daughter's had a baby yesterday. A little daughter of her own. Oh, yeah. It was breaking news on the show yesterday. I heard. Yeah. Somebody said it came up on the show. Amos told me. And thanks for all the nice words, everybody. But anyway, she had this baby. And so what's the first way we all get to see the baby? Nobody's in the room with her, except her and her husband. We get to see it in this big, huge family group text. And then we disseminate it from there. I feel like that's a lot of people now. So again, it kind of goes what I was saying earlier about diversified communication methods. There's just so many other ways that people choose to do this stuff. I'm not sure Facebook is the end all be all, even for this kind of thing, even for private groups. So yeah, we, you know, we do it different ways. I'm sure everybody's got their own way. And some people, maybe all they do is Facebook and to them, I say good job. They do seem monolithic and huge. And, you know, when you have billions of users, it's kind of hard for you to crumble. But maybe these are some of the cracks in the late stages. I don't know. I certainly have, I know family members are a good example, but you know, there's people I know, whether it's friends or family or, you know, even an acquaintance that I used to work with type thing that are clearly on Facebook all the time.  And it's like, even if I'm not seeing half of the posts, because I'm rarely going to someone's actual profile and kind of looking at things that way. I just sort of check in, you know, make sure there's nothing burning down that I have to deal with as far as somebody trying to get a hold of me. And then I just am kind of out of there. I use Facebook Messenger a little bit, but as far as, you know, giving people more options of how their newsfeed is customized and works the best for them as an individual, that's all fine and good. Some of it though, I don't know, in the past, and I hope this makes it better in the past, I would see too much from someone that I don't interact with. You know, I'm not commenting on their posts enough for, and they're, I'm not really interested in the pictures of their family. No offense to them. You know, to the point where I'm like, well, I don't want to like mute them because I, we didn't get in a fight or anything. I can say, see fewer things like this. And that's never really worked very well. In fact, I can think of one person in particular who I will not out who I, you know, I could say see more, see less of this a hundred times and those posts just keep coming up. So maybe this is just designed to work better. Yeah, this just feels like requiring your, your users to do work or possibly just signaling, like, yeah, I'll say you want this. We know you don't really. So we'll give you a button that temporarily works. I don't know. I don't want to have to work that hard. If your algorithm works, it should just work. It should work well. And maybe an up and down button, right? Everybody's got them. That's fine. Let me, let me do that. But so many do you can go into the settings here. You can hide it. You can say, show me less of this. You could use the show more show less buttons. Like it just shows that they're tend to throw things against the wall. And I don't know. I think Scott summarized it great. He's a grandpa. And maybe Facebook is for great grandparents. Maybe I don't know. I feel like the youngest grandpa on the planet. But when I get in there, you know, I just, I can't wait to get out of there. I mean, here's why I think TikTok has such an advantage. And I think this is the reason why everybody's chasing TikTok right now. And they all are, they're all trying to do it. They're all trying to make TikTok, including YouTube, the big boys, they're all doing it. Why? I think the simple answer is they have an algorithm. They, everybody else has a hard time competing with. It's really good at giving you what you think you want. And if you don't want it, it's really good at just flicking past it. I'm done with whatever that is. You don't have to look at it and it's smart enough to go, he didn't stay there very long. So we're not feeding him those things anymore. So now it'll be these other things that he does seem to spend time with. And boy, even looked at that guy's profile and checked out his other videos. That must mean he likes animation more animation, please. I'm not saying that these are equal comparisons because they're not Facebook feeds a very different kind of content than something as simple as these are all videos in a row. So I know that they, you know, it's not the same and they're not comparable, but it's a great algorithm and an okay algorithm. There is a chasm of difference between those two things. Well, Hackaday and ours Technica both passed along pretty fun project from ink box software, which released a graphical operating system, the NES OS for Nintendo's NES console. Yes, it's a real OS. It's a limited one really only has two apps, a word processor and settings and eight, eight 32 byte files. But you've got a pointer. You can move icons around. You can customize some colors. NES OS is tiny 48k in size and the files have to be inside 2k of NVRAM that keeps data when the console isn't on, you know, have to turn it off, keep your data. Graphics memory had to deal with the NES only having two sprite memory grids. So we can only display 64 sprites at a time. So ink box had to combine the sprites into larger shapes to not get some of that flickering that many of us remember. The project is available in a ROM. You can use it through an emulator, but you could also make your own cartridge if you wanted to go a step further. This is so cool. It's so rad. I do a show all about retro gaming called Play Retro and we will absolutely talk about this thing happening. I mean, in some ways it's a little bit of a, you know, it's a kind of a goofy gimmicky. Hey, look what we could do. Kind of like somebody I guess recently built all of Minecraft in a map of Minecraft. In other words, a version of Minecraft is crazy. And I love that kind of stuff.  It's a little like that, but man, I love this kind of stuff. I love it. I love it from a preservation standpoint. I love that people are this creative. Like I kind of want to get the ROM and play with it. Well, I will actually get the ROM and play with it. And I'll report back here what I thought, but love it. No, we're not going to see a bunch of apps that are going to have their own developers conference, but I love the idea that you can take this old hardware. You say that now. This could be just the beginning, Scott. Never know. NESOS 2024. Did the NES need an operating system on a cartridge? No. Are we glad it's there? Yes. All right. Let's check out the mailbag. Jeff wrote in, Jeff had some fun using character.ai for text adventures. In fact, we were talking with you, Scott, about this last week. Jeff said, I described a scene of waking up on the beach surrounded by a shipwreck. But to see what the AI might do, I said there was the large footprint of our carnivorous dinosaur in the sand. It described the footprint perfectly. Added details about how the dinosaur had circled me and left. After searching the wreckage, I left with a gun. It had five bullets left in it. Fast forward about a dozen interactions, and I'm in a village where the chieftain's daughter, who the AI even gave a name, is translating between me and the village shaman, who's insisting I throw my gun that the AI gave me into the fire so to not anger their god. Also was holding a totem of a dinosaur.  Just blows my mind. Give me this AI plus dolly or stable diffusion to generate images of the scene, and I may never need to buy another video game again. I'm completely in agreement here. I streamed an hour of one of those bots, specifically the adventure game one, to a bunch of people in my streaming audience, and I was trying to throw stuff at it to throw it curves to really mess with it. By the time that thing was done, I was the Hulk. No, I'm sorry. I was half Hulk, half Batman, and I was fighting the Gorn. Kirk helped me fight the Gorn, but then Kirk turned on me, and we had to fight Kirk. Oh, no. It just showed up. I didn't even tell it to you. It just showed up. I summoned four lights to try to stop Picard. It was all a big thing. Anyway, there's a total blast, and I came away from that going, yeah, it's a little weird. And yes, you know, there aren't exactly the kind of progression type things we think of in video games, especially RPGs in this. They easily could be added, though, and you've got a very unique experience. You add in image generation to this. Suddenly I'm all on board on AI image generation, because that sounds like a wonderful application for that sort of thing. So I couldn't agree with this email more, and I had the same experience. I recommend people go check this character.ai thing out and just mess about. Let your imagination roll, and you'll be surprised what comes out of it. It was awesome. The only limit is your imagination. It's like ZomboCom. The only limit is yourself. Yeah. Like what you throw at it, it will then play on. It's so fascinating.  I don't. You're not scraping the internet properly. And then I realized that is not the point. I already know what I am. This is the other Sarah in the fun world doing other things. Yeah. Just the idea that you can come. It apparently works at Addiction Recovery Center. The fact that they have nothing, turns nothing into something. It just felt like new frontier to me. And maybe I'm just being tricked by the tricks of AI, but it felt immersive and emergent in a way that I haven't felt in a while. It was awesome.  What was that thing? Character.ai. Go check it out. Also, we made an offhand comment about finding cheap gas on the show with Rod Simmons. And Todd, helpfully recommended gasbuddy.com. Gasbuddy.com slash USA will help you find the cheapest gas near you. Thank you, Todd. Thanks, Todd. If only there was cheap gas near me. But hey, it's got to be somewhere around here. Thanks to you, Scott Johnson, for being with us today. And congratulations on the granddaughter. Very exciting for the fam. Let folks know what you've been up to lately. Well, other than feeling like I've aged two decades in one day. Other than that, I've been really busy working on a show called core. We have this show that we do every week on Thursdays. It's all about the video game business industry and the games that we're all playing. And if you're like, man, some of the stuff I hear you guys talk about on DTNS, I'd love to hear maybe broader discussion on some of those topics. That's exactly what we do. And I think you're going to like it. So check it out. It's over at frogpants.com slash core or just search for core wherever you get your podcast. Yes. Very cool. Special thanks to Dan Colbeck. Dan, you already know this, but for everybody else, Dan is one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. We thank you so much, Dan, for all the years of support. Yeah, thank you to Dan and everybody. There's all kinds of benefits you can get by becoming a patron, not the least of which is an ad free feed. Don't let that go to waste.  Patrons, stick around for the extended show. Good day, Internet. We roll right into it when DTNS wraps up. But just a reminder, you can catch DTNS live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We're back again tomorrow talking the Chips Act and Google's Pixel announcements with Jennifer Briney and Rob Dunwood joining us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Timing Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.


hold anything else. All right, hold anything else. Hey, hey, Steve, we hold items. We hold items. Are you messing with me? Is that it? I'll show you a microphone. Is your microphone? Here. Okay. Mr. McDowell. Mr. Duvall. Here. Mr. Badura. Here. Mr. Lyon. Here. Mr. Davis. Here. Mayor Benjamin. Here. Thank you. All right. Thank you. I'm Clark. Madam City Manager, let's go ahead and get things started. If everyone please stand and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge is to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The tradition has it that Councilman McDowell attends to lead us into the prayer. If I ask all of you please bow your heads for a moment and join us for a brief word. Father God, we ask that you watch over this convening of your children here at Columbia City Council. You give us the wisdom to make right decisions in the interests of the people of the city of Columbia. We ask that you pray over and watch over Mrs. McDowell, Reverend McDowell, as he attends to his mother's needs and in his absence that you cover him with your love and grace and mercy. We ask that you continue, Father God, to make this city the very best place it can be in the interests of her citizens. It's in his name we come. Amen. Amen. All right. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Move the previous question. Court, call a roll. Mr. Rickerman. Aye. Mr. Badora. Aye. Mr. Duvall. Aye. Mr. Bein. Aye. Mr. Davis. Aye. Mr. Benjamin. Aye. Any public input on items on the agenda? Seeing none. Mr. Rickerman. I think it would be helpful maybe if Joey or Clint would just let everybody understand item 13. It's a very large contract. Yeah, we have. And how it benefits the community and social worker. Sure there. And while we have a lot of really important issues on the agenda, we fully anticipate this would be a very brief meeting. So item 13 is a significant contract. Would you guys give us the, yeah please, the background of this $24 million plus contract? Okay, so this is the Lake Catherine sewer project. And we're replacing about 13,000 feet of large line gravity sewer. We're the existing lines about a 30, 36 inch. And we're replacing it with 36 and 42 inch. This is a clean water 2020 project. It eliminates a significant SSO that we have routinely when we have some significant rainfall. So it is a, it's a very important project for us. It really addresses an existing capacity issue that we have in our system today. When we have a significant rainfall, we have an SSO on Lake Catherine. So this project addresses that, removes that, but also allows for, even though it's a really built out area, it allows for a future potential growth as well. So it's a very important project for us at the city. So. Fantastic. We're to a local business enterprise and significant SWB. CDBE. We're meeting the 10% gold CDBE. Sure. Subcontract outreach program. We're meeting, I think it's 28% is what we have on this particular project. So it's, it's a big subcontract project as well. It's fantastic. And an SSO would be a sanitary sewer. Sanitary sewer. Yes, sir. All right. Fantastic. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Joey. Mr. Davis. Yeah. Just wanted to, since we're in, in territory, just note the, the commitment and on item 10. We're holding that. It won't be held. Which is the commitment for the higher part of the design services. As everyone knows that we've, the community and the council has been committed to this project and that would be a significant improvement. Consistent with what we've been doing with the park system. And also with recreation in the North Columbia area. All right. Thank you. Mr. Davis. All right. Is there a motion to approve items nine through 16 by consent? So moved. Second. Second. Second. Any discussion? Seeing none. And move the previous question. Court call row. Mr. Rickerman. Aye. Mr. Duvall. Aye. Mr. Padura. Aye. Item 17. We're going to take up the Columbia Housing Authority. Move the nominations of James Chatfield. Georgia Martin. Martin. Mayor. Mayor. Kara Simmons. And Anson Claire. I will, for appointment to the Housing Authority Board. I want to say some brief comments on behalf of all of the council. Second. Is there a second? Second. We were so impressed with the high quality of all the applicants. We kept putting out the call for more applications. And the community responded. And we got high quality applicants with leaders from both the corporate and community service. Some wonderful records of service. And hopefully, quite frankly, I think this is a desire that we will find so many of you willing to serve in other boards and commissions throughout the city. We feel great that these new appointees will work with the existing board members of the Columbia Housing Authority to make some important decisions that will help impact the residents now and in the future. The term for these new board members will be a third. I do also want to say thank you to the previous members of the commission for their service to the people of Columbia. And if there's no further discussion, I'm with the previous question. Mr. Rickerman. Aye. Mr. Badura. Aye. Mr. Duvall. Aye. Mr. Vine. Aye. Mr. Davis. Aye. Mayor Benjamin. Aye. We do have a press release for the members of the press highlighting the immediate appointees. Thank you. The greater Columbia Community Relations Council have a motion that we appoint Breelogue, Leslie Gadsden, Jeff March, Derek Swindle, Mickey Tangry, Tyler Bailey, and Reginald Hare, and that Dr. Corry, Claudia Allen, and Dr. Jennifer Clyburn-Reed, when her term expires. Is there a second? Second. Discussion. Again, another example of some fantastic applicants and we'll hopefully have an opportunity to integrate many of them into different boards and commissions as the opportunities come available. Move the previous question. Clerk Calderon. Mr. Rickerman. Aye. Mr. Duvall. Aye. Mr. Badura. Aye. Mr. Vine. Aye. The consideration of matters discussed during the work session. And then we have to discuss community promotions. Are there any other items? I'll make a motion there, unless someone else is prepared to do so. Hold on. You have the list. Okay. We moved consistent with the notice of funds available made for the community promotions budget. Move that the Austin Work Society received $10,000. The Federation Center for the Blind received $18,500. The Greater Columbia Community Relations Council received $15,000. Healthy Learners received $10,000. The USC Equity and Education Conference $3,000. Broken Homes $2,000. Every Black Girl $10,000. The Ram Foundation $10,000. Senior Resources $20,000. Serving Connect $14,000. Sister Care Incorporated $9,500. Special Olympics $9,000. The USC September Clark Exhibition $10,000. And Wren $9,000. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Ms. Divine. Just one thing, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to say, this is always hard. We always have a limited amount of funds for community promotions. And there's so many amazing and worthy organizations. You know, so it's hard to fund everybody, but I'm really happy with the list that we're presenting, because not only do we have some great organizations that we continue to fund like Sister Care and others, but we've got some new organizations that have never been funded by the city, which I think certainly supports or shows our support of diversifying our funds and making sure that organizations that haven't been in our pot before have an opportunity. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, for clarity and as a part of your motion, these funds come from your FY17-18 fund ballot. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am. All right. Any further discussion? Again, wonderful applications. We look forward to continuing the part of the community to help us meet our collective community goals. Moving to the previous question. Kurt Calderon. Mr. Rickerman. Aye. Mr. Duvall. Aye. Mr. Badura. Aye. Mr. Divine. Aye. Mr. Davis. Aye. Mr. Benjamin. Aye. Are there any other items from the report or referral? Mr. Badura. I have a referral. I wonder, and this is for public safety, I wonder if we can have a discussion about sirens, fire truck, ambulance, and police into looking into new frequency or a different sound just because of the new cars nowadays is a lot more quieter than they used to be. And I think maybe it's worth looking at the different version of sirens or frequency or loudness or something like that that we can maybe make that more aware for the cars in today's world just because it's a lot more quieter than they were before. And that's something that it's been researched before a couple of times and it's just something I want to look at as a city. Any possibility of maybe having a discussion with the chiefs first? I did. I think my conversation with the chief there isn't any federal regulations or any standards to any of that. I'm just my only feedback on that was when you look at other countries in Europe or outside the United States they have a different frequency and a different sound and I'm sure there is a reason for it and I just want to be able to look at that and see if there is any possibility to improve. Our emergency vehicles moving through the streets without anybody being in the way because they couldn't hurt here. Who's public safety committee? Daniel. Daniel. All right. Is that a motion? Yes, sir. For that item, is there a second? Second. Second. Discussion? For all of that item to the public safety committee with a previous question we'll call it all. Mr. Rickerman. Aye. Mr. Duvall. Aye. Mr. Badura. Aye. Mr. Devin. Aye. Mr. Davis. Aye. Mayor Benjamin. Aye. Yes, sir. Mr. Duvall. We have had two of the applicants that will approve for the housing authority come in. They missed their election but I'd like to recognize them. James Chatfield and Georgia Mearton. If y'all would stand so we could recognize y'all. Thank y'all for coming. Don't see a sign-in sheet. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. All right. Discussion with a previous question. All right. Mr. Rickerman. Aye. Mr. Duvall. Aye. Mr. Davis. Aye. Mayor Benjamin. Aye. Have a good evening. You can tell us. Okay.


city ballot and vote in your town polling places. So I'm Lisa Floyd. I'm the chair of the White River Unified District. And we will begin by doing introductions of the people here with us this evening. So if everyone would identify yourselves just so people know who they're talking to. We have that slide. I'm Andrew Jones. I'm the vice chair from South Carolina. My name is Lisa McCrory. I'm the clerk and I am in Bethel and I have a I have one kid that's in the high school he's in 11th grade and two kids that have graduated. One from the new Rudd and another one that graduated from Bethel before we merged. And I'm Chris Riley board member from Royalton and I've got two kids in the fourth grade. Rodney Ravel, Bethel Vermont. I have one high school student and this is probably my last meeting as they'll have a new director taking my place tomorrow. And then on the administration side my name's Jamie Canardy. I'm the WRVSU superintendent of schools. I'm Tara Weatherow. I am the WRVSU business manager. Oh and Bradley middle school principal. I'm Reed McCracken, the high school principal. And I'm Andrew Bowen. I'm the elementary principal. Thank you all for those introductions. We'll begin our presentation with some housekeeping items. All right so just couple housekeeping and budget or housekeeping items and budget vote information tonight is our second informational meeting and then tomorrow voting will be done via Australian ballot starting at 8 a.m. and ending at 7 p.m. both at the Royalton campus and at Bethel campus or the two voting locations for you know come to Royalton if you're a Royalton resident come to that campus and then go to the Bethel campus if you're a Bethel resident. If you have an absentee ballot and you haven't returned it yet you need to do so by 7 p.m. tomorrow and here's an example of what that ballot will look like.  Good evening. Thanks for joining us. So we wanted to kick off by talking a little bit about the White River Valley Supervisory Union as an organization and some of the changes we've made this current school year and as we move forward into the fiscal year of 21-22 to really just address some community concerns and trust across the 10 towns of WRVSU specific to the central office. One of the things that we've been focused on was addressing the deficits that we had across the Supervisory Union both at the district level and at the Supervisory Union level. There was an article in the Herald on Thursday and I want to take the opportunity just to address one of the things they reported was over a nine hundred thousand dollar deficit with the White River Unified District that was across the SU. It was never projected that the White River Unified District was going to have a deficit at that amount. Certainly the Supervisory Union was projected to have a deficit at that amount across all of our member districts and the Supervisory Union. The good news is is that we've been able to recoup some additional funds from our grants. We've been able to really have a focus this year on fiscal responsibility through the lens of appropriate and proactive supports and interventions for students, meaning that we're trying to get early intervention in place for our students so that we're not trying to fill academic needs and gaps both socially emotionally and academically through more intensive supports and interventions, meaning we're trying to keep our students here within the Supervisory Union and we are hyper focused on as staff leave what positions need to be filled or how can we look to do business differently. And in the White River Unified District throughout this past fiscal year, we chose not to replace some of those positions. And in the budget that we're going to present to you tonight, you'll see a couple of positions we decided not to fill based on folks that departed the organization. We have not had any of this take place and had to have an impact on programming, meaning we still offer foreign language. We're still offering music at the same level as that we were offering it. And we've been able to expand our alternative pathways programming and been able to have a schedule that's going to support more intensive intervention at our primary grades with the idea being that we're going to gap fill academics early because we know all the research shows that by the time students get to middle and high school that if students are still struggling with reading, writing and mathematics, that their trajectory is not great. And so we need to make certain that we're doing a really strong job at the elementary levels to gap fill so that when students get to middle and high school, they can pursue whatever dreams they have in secondary and post-secondary pursuits. This budget does support that and it supports it at a decreased bottom line for all of you, a decrease per people spending. And we believe that this budget will continue to support us paying down your deficit. And so I just wanted to make certain that I acknowledge that at the start. You won't hear me much more tonight, but do know that the administration and board has worked incredibly hard to bring you a fiscally responsible budget that didn't take away any programming for your children. And that I'm very proud of. In addition, we're focusing on investing in teachers and not programs. And what do I mean by that? We're having a clear focus across the supervisory union in professional development and strategic professional development that ensures that our teachers have common language, common instructional approaches and that they're research based. And so the budget as we move into next school year will have focused professional development at all levels of the organization. And it's part of why we're bringing in a chief academic officer next school year to help oversee that important work. We are able to do that because we were able to reduce the FTE in the supervisory union for next year by five full time professionals. I think that's important to note. So we did bring in a chief academic office, but the supervisory union office is going to be operating on five less people than it was as we started July 1st. We've also created interdependence through our eight schools. I'm really proud to note that we open on September 8th in person across all of our members schools and our elementary students have been in school five days a week throughout the entire school year, other than a couple small shutdowns that we had to have due to COVID-19. And we've been able to do that because our principals have been working together collaboratively. I'm proud that our principals meet every Thursday. And they meet without central office in the room to think tank and problem solve and to make certain that we're learning from each other to do what's best for kids. So I'm very excited about the work that we're is currently underway and the future of WRVSU in the White River Unified District. Thanks, Ray. So every board meeting we report out on these are our goals that as two campuses and one school we're working towards. So there's three of us that are the principals of this one school. I have the benefit of traveling between both campuses. But what we're working on as a team for everybody is develop personalized and flexible pathways for student learning. And that looks very different as we report out each month, providing a robust and multi tiered system of supports for students, which Mr. Cannerney, Superintendent Cannerney already touched upon. And while maybe it's been a little more difficult this year due to the pandemic, we are working on improving our community outreach and partnerships. So those are going to be some long standing goals that will be continuing to work on and you'll hear probably a little bit more about throughout this presentation. And again, I'm Owen Bradley. I'm the White River Valley Middle School principal. And one of the things that we do like all schools is have a continuous improvement plan. This is good practice. And we have organized this in our pre K 12 setting. And we have several goals and goals at each of the school levels, elementary, middle and high school, and some through line goals. So we are really proud of that. And it's what we it's our touchstone. We go back to that and make sure that we're meeting those or working towards those goals at all times. One of the ways we set our goals and make decisions is by using and looking at data, social emotional data about students as well as academic data. And this year we've been increasing our use of data across the elementary middle of high schools. One of the assessment tools we use is called star 360. That's a test that we give in the fall of September in January and again in May. So three times a year. And we meet twice a month as data teams across the school and report out to the community at a board meeting every trimester. Here are some of the highlights from those data reports. So I think our biggest highlight we're most excited about is making it 95 days of in person with our elementary students before we had to come out with COVID. So we're really excited about the the amount of learning in person we've been able to accomplish and the not that we've had not so much of a lack of instruction. And while you know we would love to tell you everything's rainbows and roses, we have work to do. And part of that work we've seen is in our mathematics programming. And we are drilling down deep on that and we're looking at vertical math. What that means is mathematics pre K through 12. And we're really focusing on how do we increase the programming so that it meets all needs. And at the same time, make sure students have strong skills as they move through the system. Generally speaking across our programs in math and reading, one of the big concerns that the data show a year after year is that over the summer there's a loss of student learning from the time students are out of the classroom. With the extra 12 weeks that we are out of the classroom because of COVID last spring, that was a very real concern and something that many schools have seen around the state. I think because we've been back five days a week in person from the start in elementary and four days a week in the middle school and high school, which is very unusual around Vermont, certainly around the country. We haven't seen that decline. We've been able to hold our stores pretty scores pretty steady. And there are a couple of bright spots like at the high school, our 10th grade math scores are showing an improvement of 10% year over year. I'm happy to present this next slide, which is outdoor learning. And, you know, this has become kind of very true throughout the country. And we there, I'm really proud that we were, but we're also constantly improving that. And we're moving that up into the high school. And we have a pre K program that's very robust outdoors and middle school. We took advantage of that for safety and for learning this year. And we're going to move that to the high school. There's so much as we know to learn outside. And in Vermont, it's really just a lovely way to extend your classroom and to engage students in learning. And we do everything from biology, arch mathematics, and even fire safety and learning shelter building outdoors. So some of the things to share with you co curricular Lee and COVID Lee, you will, when we had to close down last spring, our spring sports seasons and things like the high school musical were canceled, which was was quite a hit for students. And we had to change the way graduation worked. But starting this fall, we were able to get in some of our usual co curriculars, albeit in different forms. So we had a modified fall soccer and cross country season where students wore masks and generally stayed physically distant. We had a short outdoor fall drama production that was videotaped and shared with the larger audience. Here you can see our actors posing in the school cart courtyard. We've started playing a shortened winter season. So we've now had two boys and girls varsity basketball games. The girls are playing right now on our new donated pixelot video system, which is pretty impressive. If you haven't had a chance to check that out. And our high school boys take on Northfield tonight at seven after this meeting is over. So we're excited that they were able to get on the court and play a little bit. Very different experience with nobody in the stands. But glad that it's able to happen. Another highlight this year is that some students started a high school newspaper club. They've now put out two two editions of the Wildcat Insider school newsletter that's all digital. Page right. Another big change because of covid is the way our community based learning and flexible pathways have taken place this year. Usually we try to get we get over two dozen students out of the community working in job sites, doing internships, doing community service projects and generally getting real life experience that earns them credit in the school. That hasn't been so much the case this year, although we have been able to have some internships and encourage some students to look at different schedules this year to really facilitate their independent learning away from school and kind of set them on a pathway for success in their adult lives. Some new experiences for flexible pathway community service community based learning students. They've done a lot of interviewing kind of meeting with businesses in the community and videotaping interviews and putting together videos of what they've learned and entered a couple contests with those which has led to a lot more in different service learning experiences than we're usually used to. So I think we just wanted to wrap it up with saying thank you. Thank you for being here and your general support throughout this whole school year. We feel really proud about this budget. We think it's responsible and we hope you support it as much as you've supported us so far this whole year. And I get to tell you or say to you thank you all for all of your support in safety when it comes to the pandemic. I know that it's been there's been major inconvenience every possible way.  Temperatures and gloves and hand sanitizing on and on and on. And we really we feel the support and we are very happy for that. Thank you. And finally, you know, we as principals, we went through every line of this budget and out every place where we thought there was anything that that we could remove without significantly impacting student experience learning experiences. What do you know we've taken our roles as stewards of your taxpayer dollars very seriously. So thank you. And I'll just add before the board takes over on the financial aspects of the budget, I want to just thank our teachers, staffs and students again, because you're doing amazing work and I'm unbelievable. We appreciate it as the board and administration are of all your efforts. We couldn't be where we are without the efforts of our dedicated teachers, staffs and students. So thank you all very, very much. Thank you all for sharing about what happens in our schools on a day to day basis. I really appreciate that introduction. Andrew, Chris and I are going to share a little bit about our budget starting with our current financial situation. So you may have heard in the news that we started with a general fund deficit from our FY 20 audit of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And so one of the things that we've been trying to do and that the administration and the staff and teachers have been trying to do, led by Jamie Kanarney in the school district in Tara, is to be really fiscally responsible right now in order to bring forward a surplus that we can apply to our deficit. So that's what's been happening and we have been successful in reducing the deficit or we hope will be successful. We're projecting about one hundred and seventy thousand dollar surplus for FY twenty one and that will reduce the general fund deficit to one hundred and ninety five thousand dollars one hundred yes and three hundred forty four dollars. So it'll be significantly reduced. One of the things from the original number, one of the things that we know is that we have three years to satisfy the deficit or to pay it off. And so if we can move to the next slide, there's a little more information there. So what we'd like to do is continue to be as fiscally responsible as possible and apply any surpluses we have to that deficit and then next year actually decide whether what's left of the deficit will impact the tax rate. If it stayed the same at one hundred and ninety five thousand dollars, then it would be three cents for one year or we could ask for a bond to spread it over three years. We are hopeful that we can continue to make that number smaller as we move forward, but that's sort of the worst case scenario and how we would have to directly deal with that. One of the things that has happened that's helped us in terms of understanding where our finances are at is that we've created a finance committee. So members of our board who are interested in the financial side of things more deeply and have a skill set that allows them to dig in a little more deeply along with community members work more closely with the business office and then they bring reports to our regular board meetings. And that's been incredibly helpful. Especially as we prepared this year's budget and thought about this deficit. That brings us to our next slides on our spending changes and priorities. So I'll turn things over to Chris. So for some spending changes that that we were seeing as Superintendent Canary mentioned, there are some positions that we're not replacing. So there was one full time position in music that wasn't replaced. We also David Wells left at the end of last year the elementary school principal in Royalton and we didn't replace that position. And so that was another one full time equivalent position that we decreased. There's also three full time equivalent support staff positions that were decreased. And then with reconfiguration of scheduling and roles and responsibilities, there's been efficiencies that have been found in driver's education, foreign language and health. In terms of reinvestment, we are investing in pathways and pathways coordinator, also a coordinator of student services. And then again, increases in outdoor and experiential learning. So again, net spending decrease, though we're seeing is going from twelve million ninety eight thousand one hundred nineteen dollars down to twelve million twenty six thousand ninety nine dollars on the revenue side. So we have there's two sides to the budget. There's the expenses and then there's the revenues. So here are changes we're seeing on revenues for local revenues comparison of the the current school year twenty twenty one to next year twenty one twenty twenty two. We're projecting a decrease in interest income of twenty two thousand dollars and then also a decrease in tuition of twenty eight thousand dollars. The next two categories we're expecting to stay level but at sixty transportation money we're seeing that we're projecting that to go up by two thousand five hundred sixty seven dollars. But vocational transportation, we are projecting that to go down by eighteen thousand dollars adult learning and drivers at reimbursements. We expect to stay the same. But again, as the superintendent mentioned, in terms of grants trying to deliver more grants you know from the SU and bring them to the school level we're projecting a increase of revenue from grants of eighty nine thousand one hundred dollars. So overall local revenue projecting an increase of twenty two thousand nine hundred dollars. But then when we factor in state funding we are projecting seventy four thousand dollars decrease in educational spending and then also twenty thousand seven hundred dollar decrease in the tech center money that we receive. So overall that brings us to in terms of revenue, a overall decrease of seventy two thousand dollars that we're projecting. So and you can see those changes and the sums of the two columns for our equalized pupils. We're also down slightly, but the state is compensating for that in their calculation for enrollment due to covid. So for the coming year if our enrollment or ADM is down, the state will use last year's ADM count instead of this year's. Overall, our equalized pupils are down by point seven percent. All right, so I'm going to take over and do the fun part, which is how we calculate a tax rate from all those numbers. So just to do a quick review the calculating tax rate you take your spending and you subtract out your revenue and divide that by your equalized pupils to get a per pupil spending and then we convert that per pupil spending to an equalized rate by dividing it by the state yields factor, which we'll talk about in a bit. And then that's where the merger incentive calls off our equalized rate. The final rate is the equalized rate divided by the common level of appraisal. Now we'll go into each of those steps a little more detailed now. So just to summarize what was in the other other slides, the spending is down about seventy thousand dollars and revenues up local revenues up a little more than twenty thousand. So the net spending is down about a hundred thousand dollars or point eight percent are equalized. Peoples are down point seven percent. So when we divide those to the per pupil spending, they basically cancel each other out. So the per pupil spending is down just point one percent. But still a little decrease in per pupil spending is always a good thing. Particularly since you know you're dealing with health insurance increases and other increases that, you know, the administration worked hard to still provide a decreased budget. So so now to talk about the state yield. The state uses this factor to convert between per pupil spending and an equalized tax rate. You can think of the yield as how much one dollar's worth of tax, how much per pupil spending is worth one dollars worth of tax. The state has to estimate this value depended depending on how much they need to collect from property taxes. So they'll adjust it up or down to increase or decrease the amount of revenue they take in. But they can't know this what amount they need to take in until they've all the budgets have been passed. But they need to provide guidance for us giving these presentations so that we can give an estimated tax rates to the voters before they vote. So what the normal process is in December, the agency of education sends out a letter that has an estimated yield that we use for our projections. This year, they came out with a letter and the yield was down fairly pretty significantly from 10998 to 10,900 763. And so that would cause what the yield going down that would cause an increase in tax rate. So but that tax letter came out when there was still a lot of uncertainty about some of the other revenue sources that the state uses to fund education, which includes sales taxes and the lottery and meals and meals, taxes, meals and board taxes. So there was a lot of uncertainty about that. There was this was before. The first COVID relief or second COVID relief package to pass. So there was still a lot of uncertainty in January. The House Ways and Means Committee took another look at the revenue side of things and presented a bill, which is now in front of the House, which had a proposed yield of 11,385, which is significantly higher than the December projected yield and would be pretty good news for the tax rates. So, you know, we are a little conflicted about what yield value to use. Usually we just use the projected yield. But since new information has kind of come out since then, we just wanted to make sure people were aware that this is fairly uncertain what the yield will be. The final yield winds up getting passed by the legislature. And last year, you know, the proposed yield that was proposed by the House Ways and Means Committee wound up being the final year. But the year before that, it wound up changing multiple times throughout the process before it became a final law. So, you know, right now it's proposed at 11,385, but that could definitely change. And we don't want to over promise and, you know, say the tax rates are going to be lower than what they wind up being. So what we're using for projections is the yield last year's yield, which is kind of in between December tax letter yield and the yield that's currently before the legislature. So we're going to be using the 10,998 yield for these slides. But just be aware that, you know, if you look at between the December yield and the one that's proposed in the House Ways and Means Committee, the resulting tax rate, there's almost a 10 second cent difference between those two values. So this could have a fairly significant impact on what the final tax rates wind up being. So, but using that last year's yield, with our peer pupil spending essentially flat and the same yield, the preliminary rate winds up being about the same down slightly. The merger incentive, which we received for merging our two districts, is slowly phasing out. It goes down two cents a year. And so that is two cents lower than it was last year, which makes our tax rate go up two cents. So our equalized tax rate is up one point one percent for this proposed budget. Now, the final thing to talk about is the common level of appraisal. And this was another factor that was pretty significant in fact, and tax rates this year. The common level of appraisal is a way that the state adjusts the equalized tax rate to reflect the differing levels of appraisals in each town. You know, wouldn't be fair for a town that has appraised values that are lower than property rates to be spending or sending less money to the state education fund than a town that had appraised values that were higher. So they look at how the towns appraised values compared to actual sale prices in each town and come up with a factor that to convert the equalized rate to a final tax rate for each town. The common level of appraisal is independent for each town. So it's different for Bethel and it's different for Royalton. So despite our being one district, we have two separate CLA's because the appraisals are done separately for each town. So that's the main reason for that. It fell almost three percent in Bethel, which caused the tax rate to go up about four cents there. And it fell almost five percent in Royalton, causing almost eight cent increase in Royalton. So this is a fairly significant impact on the final tax rates. Just to look at what it's been doing over time, it's been consistently falling each year. And as the CLA goes down, that causes taxes to go up. So if you look just since FY 16, it's been twenty two cents the increase in taxes can be attributed just to the CLA and fifteen cents in Bethel. At some point, we'll do a reappraisal as a town and our CLA will go back up to reflect the higher appraised values. And you know, at that point, our rate will go down, but presumably the values, home values that we'll be paying an arm will be higher. So it kind of balances out in the end. So just to look at how each of these pieces impacts the final tax rate. The net spending changes decrease the taxes a little bit, but that was canceled out by the equalized pupil change. The incentive phase out adds two cents. The yield change if it's the. You know, one that's currently in legislator could lower our taxes by five cents or if it's closer to the. To the. Tax letter value, then it could add three cents. So that's a big source of uncertainty there, but hopefully it'll be lowering the tax rate in the end, but we don't know yet. And then finally, the CLA added almost four cents in Royalton and seven. Seven point three cents and sorry, seven point three cents in Royalton and three point eight cents in Bethel. So the final tax rate change in Bethel will be up five point six cents and up nine point two cents in Royalton. You know, I know that this is an increase in both towns, but the. We're been really happy with the amount of work the administration did to reining costs and. You know, provide us with a budget that cut spending and cut per people costs so that we could. Have a. A fiscally responsible budget here. So to go over the ballot and a little bit more detail here, this is what you'll see when you go to vote or if you have your. Your absentee ballot is normally when we're in person, we go over each of these articles individually. And vote on them separately. But now it's just a single ballot where each of these articles is a separate space. So if you want to go to the next ballot, we'll get each of the sections a little bit bigger so we can read them. So the first three that will. On the top left there are the. District officers like the moderator and district clerk and district treasurer. Each of those just has one person running for it. So if you want to vote for that person, you fill in the circle next to them. And if not, you can write in somebody else you want to see. If you do write in, you need to fill in the circle next to the right in part. So article four is to fix the salaries and the amount of six hundred dollars per member of for the school district officers for the two thousand twenty one and two thousand twenty two school year. Article five is to fix the salaries and the amount of one thousand fifty dollars for the school district treasurer for the twenty twenty one twenty two school year. And article six is big we lost Andrew Lisa. Yeah, I think so. So he was just talking about article six and article six is just our tax anticipation note. So that's the note that we typically talk about that allows the school district to borrow money and pay bills until they collect all of the taxes that are owed. So sometimes the timing just doesn't work out and that allows us to pay our bills on time. Do you want to take over article seven, Andrew? You can keep going. That's fine. OK. All right. So article seven is the actual budget that we just presented the information on. So that is the piece where the budget is approved and also it results in the education spending of eighteen thousand three hundred nine dollars and ninety seven cents per equalized pupil. Article eight and nine are for the Royalton school board candidate. We don't have any candidates this year. So you would need to write one in. So article eight has one for Royalton and then one for Bethel. And with us this evening we have one person, Shannon Morrill Cornelius, who previously served on our board from Royalton, but moved to Bethel, who is willing to be written in. And I'm hopeful she'll speak to you all a little bit more after we wrap up this presentation. And then finally, we have the overview of the budget as a whole, not the budget. I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm saying of the sample ballot as a whole again in our presentation just. To show you a little bit, if you haven't already voted because I know some people have what you'll see when you go to vote tomorrow. At this time, if people have questions, we're happy to entertain those. You can either use the raise hand function and I'll call on you. Or if you have called in, you can push star six and unmute. If you've called in, please identify yourself before you ask your question. So we know who we're talking to. Thank you. Shannon, would you like to ask a question or tell us a little bit about yourself? Well, that wasn't why I was calling in. I actually have a question. Great. So I am particularly you may know my husband's a nurse. I'm a geneticist. I'm particularly concerned about the cuts in health and health education, especially after this year, especially with I, you know, OK, my family is interested in health and I know the junk my kids have been sitting around eating. So I'm worried about the cuts in health education for our elementary students, especially, I think that we have to start them as young as possible. Could someone speak to that and why I know we're trying to to do more with less, but why that program seems to have been singled out. Jamie, I'll start. And then I think the principles can jump in. So Shannon, one of the approaches that we've been trying to implement across the elementary schools is around a wellness in social emotional curriculum that's implemented by all of our teachers. And so what we're looking to do is teach those concepts, but teach them across all classrooms. And so we've got a curriculum now that we've developed that's being taught by classroom teachers and Andrew could talk about what other members of the faculty are teaching that curriculum. But there are clearly identified lessons in learning intentions weekly. In addition to that, we've been contacted by Sam Drazen, who's been doing some really good work around social emotional learning that ties into health and wellness that we look to access and use next year as well that provides clear learning intentions and lessons that we could implement. I think the power of that then is is that all teachers are using common language. So there's common language and expectations, expectations and routines around those concepts and it's not just taught in health or indoor wellness based on what school calls it. Some elementaries call it wellness. Some elementary schools call it health. It's a one off and it's not necessarily integrated and or reinforced throughout the school day. And so the hope is that those concepts are reinforced and integrated throughout the school day and not just in health class. Andrea, did you want to add anything more to that? I don't know what you didn't say. I feel like you covered it. But yeah, we we're doing mandatory morning meetings this year. We started.  But we're slowly building into that a bunch of this, you know, the health, the wellness, all of that. So this was new this year, the whole morning meeting for everybody in the same way. But that's definitely where we have been trying to incorporate those things and look forward to doing more of it. Did that answer your question, Shannon? I guess also we currently have a health teacher has has that health professional been consulted in any way because I know that a lot of the things she was doing were more innovative than just health. I know when my I have one kid who's been through that in fourth and fifth and sixth grade. And some of the great things he learned were, you know, how to tell if an advertisement is fact or fiction and how to tell, which is so important, right? What are the alternative facts that we're learning here and how do you write anything? So I'm curious. I just I hate to see it lost. I think that there's a huge benefit to that. And I hate to see that devoted time lost. But I understand if everyone's trying to teach it. Thank you. And Owen Bradley would like to respond as well. Thanks, Shannon. Great questions.  We I agree with you the health programs robust and lovely. We actually have three people that teach health specifically content wise. We have Lori Smith, Melissa Purdy and Jim Hewitt. So at all three levels, the idea is to offer as much as we can. And at the same time, balance making sure that we're giving students strong literacy and mathematics skills. And I know you appreciate that as a medical professional. Thank you, Owen. We have other questions. Hi, this is Tammy Benoit. There is a question in the chat and the question in the chat is, do we know of any state or federal stimulus money may assist towards our budget? Thank you, Tammy. I missed that. Yeah, thanks. Hey, Tara, fill in the gaps for me where I miss it. But so one of the things that has just come down from the agency of education is that we need to put in place a recovery task force for COVID 19 and that money will be tied to S or two funds. And that's the elementary and secondary something act. But I forgot exactly what Esther stands for, but that's what it is. And so that was tied to money that was passed back earlier in the fall, late fall. That's not that doesn't have anything to do. Chris, with the current bills that are happening in D.C. And so we fully expect significant money brought in via S or two that will be focused on truancy concerns focused on professional development for teachers, focused on intervention, specifically, how do we deal with and address regression over the summer and get students who have some. We still have some students who haven't been in school since March and one of the last March and one of the things that we're finding is is that outcomes for our students that are in our virtual learning Academy or teachers have been working incredibly hard in the virtual learning Academy and doing a great job. There are very own teachers here across the SU, but the parents support at home specifically with our students in kindergarten, first, second, third, fourth grade and those primary grades are very dependent on the support they have at home. And so we've been working tirelessly to address virtual learning, but we also know we have some students that are going to need a great deal of support because of regression. And so we've been meeting already to address how we're going to do that in the summer. I think we're going to be ready to launch a really strong summer program that's partnered with one planet that's going to provide academic enrichment and intervention by licensed teachers throughout the summer. And we're going to target students and partners will be used to pay for it so that money is not going to be in the way of students accessing that programming that it will be open for all. And so those are some of the areas that the federal funds will be targeting. In addition to, we expect that some of this money can be used for infrastructure. And so we're hopeful that the timing is ripe for us to address our heating system within the Buffalo campus and that we'll be able to tap into some of these S or two funds in additional funds here in the future to offset that cost. And so with that, it's not going to impact the taxpayer because we do know that there are some delayed maintenance that we've had deferred maintenance that's occurred across the SU and part of that being in red, and specifically the heating system in Buffalo. And so we're going to be looking to tap into those monies in that regard, too. Tara, did I miss anything? Now you covered it all. And just to give the full title is elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund. Thank you. Thank you both. Shannon, you have another question. I do. So one more quick question or maybe not so quick because it's now March and we've been here a year right in covid land. So I'm just wondering if someone can give a brief synopsis about what this whole mess has done to us financially. There were, you know, games that didn't happen and refs that weren't paid and field trips that weren't gone on. But I also imagine there were costs that were incurred that we can't even see because parents can't go into the buildings anymore. So we have no idea what's going on except what our kids tell us. So could someone just speak to was it net gain, net loss, overall crazy money going anywhere? So Shannon, we've been able to maximize our covid relief funds. That's part of the federal funds we've received and any additional costs that were related to covid we've built to that grant. We also have an S or one grant that we will use for the remaining months of the spring. And the projected surplus that we're indicating to you, both of the SU and at the district, that is with the expenses that covid-19 and reimbursement projected and figured it. And so yes, we have incurred costs, but I got to say that the feds have done a good job of supporting those costs and assisting us to stay open and have a fully staffed virtual learning academy. Without those funds, we would be in trouble financially. But those funds have offset those costs. So I'm just briefly, can you because we can't see it's as a community, we have no eyes into the building. Can you comment on what did cost more? So there's programs that yeah, and I'll let the principles jump in. I mean, so one, we staffed our own fully staffed virtual learning academy, which has our teachers has one of the principles within the supervised reunion, Lindy Stetson, who's been overseeing it. And so there were there were some costs that we incurred based on needing to replace some teachers who are teaching in that with subs, long term subs. And so we've incurred some costs there. In addition, we brought in additional staff as floating subs because we knew we were going to have teachers and faculty out due to the protocols and procedures of COVID-19 in house screenings. And so therefore, we needed to have additional bodies to ensure that we didn't have to close due to a shortage of staff, which I'm probably haven't had to do yet across the SU. And of course, there's PPE cost around around cleaning and materials and things like, you know, heated lunch servers to get more meals out to students because we deliver meals to classrooms and students don't access the cafeteria, you know, just, you know, PPE. So there's been significant cost incurred in those things. I don't know if the principles you guys want to add any more. Certainly technology and devices was a big cost that we incurred and we were able to utilize our CFR funds to allow for us to purchase the technology and devices we needed to best support our students. I think it's all kind of. Oh, I didn't raise my hand. Sorry. I was just going to say it's kind of been a wash.   But yeah, we haven't gone on field trips and a lot of the some of the things we do that are normal, we have saved a bunch of money on as well. I would also say that, you know, one of the things that's been amazing with the faculty is we froze the budget right away. For not pandemic reasons because we didn't have a handle on it and Jamie wanted to get a handle and the faculty's been amazing. We have spent money in other places like tents and shovels and outdoor stuff, sleds. And we also have not spent money as you might say. I don't know if we get to know what the wash is yet probably later down the road. I'll also just add we also through efficiency. Vermont have upgraded your guys's ventilation system to over a quarter of a million dollars. And so that's been money that we've used to to refurbish our HVAC systems which have improved efficiency around heat cost and things specifically at our South Royalton campus. Thank you. Right. Perfect. Just checking the comments since I missed Chris's earlier. Alicia, you have a question for hi. Yes, I do. This is just more because I have sort of a new role being a property owner with tenants that have children that go to both schools. I'm just kind of wondering it got me thinking about all of the rental properties in Bethel and Royalton areas and at $18,000 a pupil. How much like if you have a family of four, that's a lot of money. I'm just wondering if there's ever anything in the budget that kind of, if there is anything that relates renting and things like that to like class per pupil, like if there's people that actually are not property owners. You know what I'm saying? I don't even know what I'm asking. I just kind of made this like general observation about that, that like if you have a family that has a lot of children, that is that's money that us that taxpayers, which I guess being a property owner, that's just a choice that we make. But is there ever anything that kind of shows that in our budget lines to like show people that sometimes this is why it's raised and whatnot? I saw Andrew raise his hand. So I'll let him take the first opportunity to respond. Yeah, I mean, one of the challenges we have is actually with falling student numbers not so like when we have more students were able to spread the spending that we have out over more students or per pupil spending goes down. So when you have families with large numbers of kids, that helps us because we're able to, you know, have more students to spread the spending out on. And yeah, the way that it works, it's just the property taxpayers are the ones that are paying into the Education Fund. So, you know, if you have a renter that has students, they're not paying for each of the students, they're paying rent to the landlord who then pays property taxes to the state. So I don't know, that would be my explanation for those things that it wants to And Alicia, I would just add every year it seems like or every couple of years the legislature takes up whether or not funding education spending primarily through property tax is the best means to do it and is their equity in it. And so once again, they've started to discuss it a little bit, although my sense is due to COVID-19 and other things that they have to navigate right now, it's not a priority. But I do think in general, something that Vermont will need to look at in the future is funding education via the property tax, the most equitable way to do it and most sustainable Okay, thank you. Thank you for the question. We have other questions either about the budget or programming, we're all here together, the ballot. Shannon, would you like to share a little bit about your willingness to be written in on the Bethel spot for school board member, school director? Sorry, my husband is out back with a chainsaw, if you can hear that in the distance, they are working on a screech owl house right now. My seven year old and he and they're trying to Lord, anyway, sorry. So my name is Shannon Moral Cornelius and I did put it in the chat just if you want to check how to spell it. I'm running for the Bethel seats specifically. And I was on the board previously for two years and had to step off because when we first moved up here, we were renting in South Royalton when I joined the board and we had planned to stay and build a house there and then we found the perfect house, but it was across the line in Bethel. So now we live here. And so now I'm running to get back on the board a little bit over a year later, but from the Bethel side. So if anyone has any questions, certainly feel free to find me on Facebook or, you know, let me know through chat if you want to call and chat later. I'm happy to do that. But so I'm running as a writing candidate, so you'd have to know how to spell my name. And as I have told even my dear friends, you can take your phone into the voting booth. So even my dear friends have a have a hard time spelling my entire name correctly. So I apologize for the length of that. But and we have two two kiddos in the school system, one who is a seventh grader and one who is a second grader. And like I said, spent today building a screech owl house and now is out and they just hung it up. So anyway, thank you. Thank you, Shannon. Right. Any other questions? Just had a positive comment from Chris maybe that the learning environment at the middle school has been a safe COVID learning experience. And he all and they always welcome more outdoor learning. So I appreciate that comment. Or Owen and his team has made it a great experience. All right. Okay, I guess that's that we've reached the conclusion of this meeting. If no one has any additional questions, I'm just going to glance back at our agenda that brings us to the end of the meeting. You're looking for a motion, Lisa. So we were looking for do we lose Lisa? Looks like we might have lost Lisa. I guess I'll entertain a motion to it. This is Lisa. I will second. All right. Thanks, everybody. And I hope see everybody at the polls tomorrow who hasn't done absentee ballot already. Good night, everyone. Thank you. Thanks for showing up.


This study investigates the effects of quench disorder on critical transitions in pattern-forming systems using the Swift-Hohenberg model and a vegetation dynamics model, finding that disorder increases the durability of pattern states and makes transitions more gradual, induces hysteresis, and can serve as an early indicator for critical transitions. This article was authored by Hezzi Yajak and Golan Bell.


Cash County authorities are investigating the death of a 21 year old Bemidji man who was found in a fish house Sunday morning. Deputies responded to the eel pod festival around nine a.m. on Sunday after a report of an unresponsive man in a fish house. The man was taken to the Park Rapids Hospital where he was pronounced dead on a rival. His name has not been released and autopsy is pending with the Ramsey County Medical Examiner's Office and authorities at this time are not speculating on the cause of death. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Hi! This is going to be a very quick announcement video. I will have something much longer that'll come out at the end of the year that will talk about the channel moving forward and some of the other things I'm doing for 2023. This is simply to ask you to subscribe to my new channel, Adam After Dark. If you only like my movie stuff, that's fine. It's going to stay here. I'll be doing movie reviews and rants going forward in the new year.  That sounded intentionally sexual. And there's a lot of that there too. So check me out on Adam After Dark on YouTube. It's a brand new channel, so it's not going to be monetized. It's not going to have any views or subscribers for a long time until I start porting some people over and getting some videos out there. I would appreciate your support. Also, I'm on Patreon at patreon.com slash adam does movies. There's a dollar tier. There's a $10 tier. You can go up as much as you want. And there's a lot of good perks, which includes access at any level to my secret channel, Adam Olinger, that has 300 plus videos that range from all sorts of different things, movie, video game, rants on like nonsensical things. It's a lot of fun. There's tons of videos there. Highly encourage it, especially when there's a dollar entry. Same with YouTube Join. Okay, there's the quick pitch. Like I said, I will have a much longer video that will talk about everything going on for the new year. Until that time, enjoy the content I'm putting out, and I'll talk to you soon. Take care. Thanks again for watching the video. If you didn't know, holidays are right around the corner. And what better way to celebrate than by spreading some Christmas cheer with some Adam Does Movies merch? There's t-shirts. There's throw pillows. There's mugs. There's phone cases. Oh, right at your fingertips. There's links below. There's links all over. Head on over to Spring slash Adam Does Movies. You can find a bunch of stuff there. Give a significant love one. The gift of me, this Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever you celebrate doesn't matter. Festivus, that's where I like to live. And I think you would like to live in one of these t-shirts.